America 1870-1900 - FAMILY PORTRAIT: God Bless Our Home

This section begins with a quote from Twain, “...when I was a boy, everybody was poor but didn’t know it; and everybody was comfortable, and did know it.” Not everyone, Samuel. 

This section is about family portraits - hence the name - which were a BIG DEAL! My family did one every year from 1965 to the late 80s at least, I even have one from the 2000s after my youngest was born, but before my dad died. We are a handsome bunch! We would dress up and go to Olan Mills or Sears and get shot. I tend to do it myself now, but good grief, it might benefit my family to have a professional do it sometime. I have MANY family portraits of various generations hanging on my walls. This is the one where I look the VERY PRETTIEST!! Look at how cute my sisters are. 

We are Julia, Betsy and Margaret for SURE!

First up is the Brooks family of New Hampshire, circa 1895. There are 28 of them and not a one is smiling.

The Fields of Natchez, Mississippi are pictured in 1895. The young women and kids are mostly smiling. The old women and men do not. There is a middle aged Black woman in the back row. She is not smiling either. 

The King family in Dallas in 1890 is a little blurry faced and seems to live in a shed. But they have glass windows, a cow and a bicycle, so they must have been comfortable at least.

The members of the Walters family of Lurbert County, Georgia all look very serious, down to the baby sitting on the ground in her little white dress. There are several women who could be her mom, but none of them seem to be freaking out about her dress getting ruined. So they’re far more poised than I ever was as a mother!

The Scandinavian family has no name. Perhaps their name is “Scandinavian” but they are actually Irish. I doubt it. They are all dressed up and posed nicely but I don’t know if they are aware they are being photobombed by a shaggy guy in jeans back by the porch. I wonder what the story is there?

The Lugo family from Bell, California circa 1888 has 17 members and the photo composition is quite nice. There’s one blurry baby and six half-smiles on the young adults. But Grandma is PISSED!

Hey, we’re back in Massillon, Ohio - home of the Massillon Museum. The E.B. Leightlys of 1890 seem both classy and loaded. The 3 daughters are definitely smiling a little, but Mama and the men look quite serious. 

Three generations of Norwegian family. Do the nordic folk not have names in the TL universe? These are 13 unsmiling immigrants and a frenzied horse in front of a cute stone house. 

The penultimate family is that of a “Nebraska farmer and his brood, East Custer County 1888.” So we know what he does. He farms and he keeps his pretty but prematurely old and exhausted wife in babies. There are 7 kids who appear to be 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 - like clockwork! I think they are in front of a soddy. I like that farmer Dow sprung for this portrait even though he couldn't afford lumber for a house. Of course in Nebraska, perhaps there wasn’t much lumber… Anyway, it means he either [a] is very proud of his family or [b] doing something his wife talked him in to. Either way, it’s nice. I hope the shadow figure riding a horse to the left of the house isn’t a ghost or an enemy from the past hell-bent on revenge. 

Manchester, New Hampshire’s Dow family is celebrating a golden wedding anniversary. Among them are 23 grownups, three kids and a dog.

And I am done - it’s been a fabulous 30 years!

America 1870-1900 - ENTERTAINMENT: Standing Room Only and The Greatest Showman on Earth

The penultimate chapter! A double spread of a Broadway streetcar with tons of advertisements for plays, oats and catsup!

Standing Room Only

After the Civil War, we got soft. Going from 12 hour workdays to 10 hour workdays. Half a day on Saturday - what is this sloth?? All of a sudden there was a little more coin rattling around and people wanted to be amused. 

Baseball broke the seal with the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings going on tour to defeat amateur clubs . In 1888 Mike “King” Kelly, the catcher for the Cubbies went to the White House and made fun of Grover Cleveland’s soft hands. I think, like Curley in OF MICE AND MEN, he kept that hand soft for his beautiful young wife!

John Drew is mentioned as a “star” - a new concept. A hit play TOO MUCH JOHNSON stayed on Broadway for 216 performances. And that’s just too much TOO MUCH JOHNSON. Wow, that sounds dirty.

They define the most popular form of entertainment as the “variety show” with the interesting tidbit - “sometimes the choice between burlesque and vaudeville for a night’s entertainment was made when a stage manager peeked out at the audience and spied a cop.” I had always thought they were very separate entities. They also mention minstrel shows done in blackface with no indication that it was a bad thing. 

The real money was not made by performers, but by promoters. Tony Pastor, Harry Miner, B F Keith and E F Albee all made bank promoting shows. Keith and Albee started in Boston combining the Gaiety and Bijou theaters and spread their empire to 400 theaters coast to coast. 

In the section on P.T. Barnum - who TL clearly adores - it mentions “a negro woman” who Barnum billed as George Washington’s nurse. She was Joice Heth who was purchased by Barnum to display. He later repented of this and became an abolitionist. But TL mentions none of this.

I will not describe baseball or horse racing, because they still exist. But Primrose and West’s Big Minstrel Festival featuring “The Leaders of Modern Minstrelsy and the Genuine Negro Minstrels” bears some mention. The blurb beside it refers to P&W as “one of the boldest, presenting white and black performers on the same stage with equal billing.” I wonder if they were getting equal pay and equal amenities on the road. And the picture is diverse - Black men, White men, White men pretending to be Black men…

I have no interest in the circus. But the stage looks interesting. I have never heard of Ada Rehan, but apparently she was the first lady of the legitimate stage. 

And I have never heard of Henry J. Pain’s GREAT WAR SPECTACLE at Manhattan Beach - but it looks amazing!

Harry Miner’s Comedy 4 Company appears to have a pair of characters called “The Jeromes”, one of whom is either a person of color or in blackface. It is unclear which. 

There is a playbill for Lilly Clay’s Company of Ladies Only “An Adamless Eden” surely that is based on a poem by Sappho - and the 1880s version of Jackass. 

On page 266 a triple spread of “Buffalo Bill’s Western Spectacular” playbill is the precursor to the section. And also an illustration of the excesses of the time. I shan't photograph it because my regular sized photo skills are dreadful. I shudder to think what a triple spread photo would look like in my hands!

The Greatest Showman on Earth

And TL gets into it with Buffalo Bill! He hunted buffalo for railroad crews! He rode in the pony express! He fought Indians, scouted for the US Cavalry and performed for 11 seasons as a professional actor by the age of 37. So Bill was both performer AND promoter whilst Barnum was just the promoter. THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, indeed.

There is a bonkers story about Sitting Bull’s spirit going into a performing horse when he was gunned down. There is also mention of a Mrs. Phoebe Ann Butler who became Annie Oakley. Little Sure Shot is described as “a very comely young woman”. Was she? ANNIE GET YOUR GUN had me thinking otherwise. 

SO the entertainment section ends with a pretty girl and a horse possessed by a great leader of a disenfranchised population. And entertainment has pretty much remained thus. 

All quotes and photographs are from TL unless otherwise noted.

Ada Rehan picture - Burr Publishing Co. - The Burr McIntosh Monthly August, 1908 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Rehan#/media/File:Ada_Rehan_2.jpg

Bijou Theater picture - https://www.etsy.com/ie/listing/715137435/boston-bijou-theatre-digital-download-a

Buffalo Bill poster - https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/circus-poster.html

Joice Heth poster - https://www.bethelhistoricalsociety.com/index-joice-heth.htm

Phoebe Ann Butler picture - Underwood Archives/Getty Images - https://www.thoughtco.com/annie-oakley-1779790

Too Much Johnson picture - https://lokkeheiss.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/too-much-johnson-is-never-enough-orson-the-lost-film-of-orson-welles/

America 1870-1900 - THE CITY - in six parts!

The Magic Metropolis

There is a blurry faded photo of some ladies and children in 1877 San Francisco just leaving the theater. The waists on those women look painfully tiny.

Cities exploded in the gilded age as farm-folk and immigrants swelled their ranks. An unnamed  British visitor (Come on, TL, get your head out of your ass on these quotes!) described New York as “a lady in ball costume, with diamonds in her ears, and her toes out at her boots.” In other words, it was filthy, smelly and disgusting while at the same time being glorious.

Walter B. Platt of Charm City, Maryland gives a bit of advice to the city dweller on the need for exercise. I am feeling a little virtuous because I just worked out.

A Giant Stride for Builders

The Brooklyn Bridge was a big deal. Bridges in general changed the face of cities. Because of strides in materials and engineering the sky was, as they say, the limit. TL describes and shows Chicago’s “towering” 10 story Insurance Building. Also pictured are beautifully ornate buildings from the 1890s and Dewey Arch on 5th Avenue. 

Frederick Law Olmsted is mentioned as the creator of Central Park. Good job, Fred! 

The Swan Boats in Boston’s Public Garden are pictured. I have never ridden one - must remedy that when we are once again a Swan Boat riding society. There are ice skaters and zoo-goers enjoying themselves en masse on the pages as well. Cities were awesome for the affluent!

Diversity in the Marketplace

Oh TL, I don’t think you know what diversity even is! Oh my gosh, did ladies love to shop! Well, middle and upper class ladies, anyway. Marshall Field opened up to “give the lady what she wants.” He had high end stores, discount stores and a restaurant for the hungry shopper. I remember restaurants in department stores from when I was a kid. My Grandma would take us for lunch, or Mom would when Grandma was visiting. I distinctly remember eating chicken pot pie that came in a little cardboard house and it was amazing!

There is a neat juxtaposition between a beautifully ornate Cleveland Arcade circa 1890 and on the next page Detroit’s open air Central Market 10 years prior. What a difference!

Getting Around

San Francisco - home of Rice-a-roni - put in the first cable cars in 1873. It was a hit and L.A., Denver, Seattle and Omaha followed suit. I believe this would have been the main mode of transportation for most city dwellers if not for that antisemetic sumbitch Henry Ford. Electric trolleys started up in 1888. 

A New Lifestyle

Oh my gosh, “In 1872 new rows of four story town-houses rise along Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue in the freshly land-filled Back Bay Area.” It looks so sparse! There is talk of new fangled “apartment buildings” and mention is made of the dreaded “elevator sickness.” 

In the following pages Chinatown tenements and an Italian immigrant neighborhood in Philadelphia are shown. They go from the rich and powerful to the scrappiest. 

Nature Against the City

The blizzard of 1888 was far different in New York City than in DeSmet, South Dakota, that’s for sure. The aftermath of the Chicago fire is shown - precursor to the Salem fire which was experienced by my father-in-law’s parents!

Next up - Entertainment. Oh good, how I long to be entertained…

All quotes and photographs are from TL unless otherwise noted.

Higbee's - http://www.thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/

America 1870-1900 - NOSTROMS: Cure-Alls with a Kick

Well, it turns out that Nostrums is another word for patent medicines. How funny! A whole section with a new vocabulary word. The double spread is a patent medicine wagon in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. It is the vehicle of the Dr. Krohn Family Medicine Company. It reminds me of Mr Mysterious and Company by Sid Fleischman. 

To draw the line nicely, and fix definitely, where the medicine may end and the alcoholic beverage begins, is a task which has often perplexed and still greatly perplexes revenue officers. - Commissioner of Internal Revenue 1883

Paine's Celery Compound was good for what ails you at 21% alcohol. 

TL tells of how most nostroms were booze and opium. So I guess we are better off now that our medicines actually cure stuff sometimes. The next two pages are advertisements and they do seem to be promising things they can’t possibly deliver. There is an electric toothbrush and an “electric belt for ladies” (I know how that sounds. This is not that “ladies massager” you’ve read about.) Neither of them seems to run on any current. They are just “infused” with electricity.

Ooh! The next two pages are color adverts! So pretty! And still so useless. The companies made trading cards to market their wares. Kids in particular swapped them around like Wacky Packs and Pokémon of old. 

Ponds Extract has a hopped up science frog and his child labor assistant cooking up the stuff.

Lydia Pinkham’s grandchildren are pictured on her card. I wonder what happened to her fortune? So I looked it up and she was actually awesome! She was an abolitionist,  a friend and neighbor of Frederick Douglass in Lynn, Mass., and a proponent of women's health! Her home in Lynn is on the National Register of historic places and her former factory is now the Lydia Pinkham Open Studio. 

Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup has a mom so excited to get 5 minutes peace by drugging her child. 

Dr. Morse’s Indian Root Pills and Comstock’s Dead Shot Worm Pellets are fighting to the death on the frontier. 

Dr. J.C. Ayer of Lowell, Mass. has all his medicines dancing around the earth in a ballet of world domination!

The Insurance Medicine Company believed so strongly that their medicine wouldn’t actually kill you that they insured each 12-week supply with a $500 policy. I assume they did okay playing those numbers. 

And finally there is a bit about “medical almanacs” which were free books full of ads for the products, but also astrology, long range weather forecasts and jokes. Apparently for some families, those were the only books they owned, other than the Bible. It does make me think about the adage - if you’re getting something for free, you are the product. 

Next up - the city.

All quotes and photographs are from TL

America 1870-1900 - THE VICTORIANS in three parts!

Too Much is Not Enough

The spread is a plant and tea set strewn porch in Oakland, California that looks verdant and busy. E. L. Godkin is quoted as saying, “To be rich properly is indeed a fine art.” Yuck.

Apparently the age of affluent tackiness began when Diamond Jim Brady said, “Hell, I’m rich. It’s time I had some fun.” And in the photos of Victorian homes, inside and outside, there is just SO MUCH STUFF!! Marie Kondo would have a cow.  William Dean Howells describes it scathingly and it sounds dreadful. 

Everyone had a piano and decorated the hell out of it. Lady Char, my friend Choral-lyn and I are the only people I know who have pianos anymore. I should play it more often.

Monarch of His Domain

Hey, we’ve got some basic human rights for women! Men work like dogs to provide wealth and “leisure” for their families. But women get help from servants and now have time to read and start getting ideas about owning their own properly and voting.

Oh man, on the family portrait on page 187 some former library patron drew a mohawk on the baby and wrote something racist about Native Americans. I was able to erase it. 

Basically, being a woman was awful. Be pretty and good so that you can marry and do stuff for your husband. I hope he’s nice - because he is allowed to beat and rape you if he likes. And he owns all your stuff. 

The hairdos on page 190 are BONKERS! Because the Bible said long hair is a woman’s glory, it was rarely, if ever, cut. But because of primness, it wasn’t left “unfettered”. So some wild up-dos were invented. Give me a braid or a ponytail any day! 

There is a bustle picture that looks exhausting. The text says up to 20 yards of fabric could go into a gown. How could you function in that?

Pages 192-3 is a hipster smorgasbord of facial hair. These virile men are an inspiration to us all. 

The next section has three of the most resigned four-year-olds in the history of children. TL calls them “Reluctant Fontleroys” and it couldn’t be more apt. Their outfits are deadly uncomfortable and their moms and nannies should be spanked. There is a section that uses Burnett’s LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY and Twain’s TOM SAWYER and the gap between them to explain toxic masculinity. Without mentioning that toxic masculinity is a thing, because it hasn’t been defined yet. That being said LLF did kind of suck. Sara Crewe and Mary Lennox were both better men than he’ll ever be!

Next up is a double spread of some girls and their dolls and the chilling caption, “The personification of sugar and spice, 19 little girls in California treat their dolls to a tea party on a lawn in 1887. Such frolics were regarded as sound training for an era when most girls married young and spent the rest of their lives managing households that averaged five people.” And what is left unsaid is that there were very different economic, educational and cultural expectations and opportunities. 

Doing the Right Thing

Some ladies are taking tea in Michigan in the first picture. Perhaps this section will give us some of the ins and outs of “paying calls.”

Oh my gosh, this whole section is about etiquette. There is a question about “the propriety of an ‘elderly girl of 35’ visiting an artist’s studio alone.” I’d say go for it you deserving spinster! Go get some...art. It was argued at the time that “the ennobling and purifying” influences of art would protect her virtue. But she should bring a buddy just in case. Also, regarding men paying for theater tickets - if the gentleman pays, he might be expecting...things. So fraught!

There is a funny bit from Twain’s “The Adventures of Colonel Sellers” which is available at Project Gutenberg under the name THE GILDED AGE. There is also a double spread of a proper Atlanta couple about to take a Sunday drive like Laura and Manly. There is the first person of color I have seen in over 60 pages standing on the porch dressed very nattily in a vest and trousers. I believe he is an employee rather than a guest. 

Then there is a birthday party with 17 or 18 kids seated around the table in a “prosperous New York home” waiting for cake. This is from the Byron Collection at the Museum of the City of New York. You can tell by the amount of blurriness in their faces which kids know how to sit still for 3 seconds and which ones just can’t.

There is a men’s camping picture from the Bohemian Grove which takes me back to TALES OF THE CITY. it is juxtaposed with a picture of an “Old Ladies’ Home” - a campsite with some gals sewing and listening to a friend read aloud. Other than the very heavy dresses, it looks like my kind of party!

 Next up - Nostrums. Whatever they are when they’re at home. 

All quotes and photographs are from TL

America 1870-1900 - THE PRESS: From Good Gray to Dirty Yellow

[If you are a reader, please forgive the lack of pictures. I just want to get this up and will edit and enrich some other time. Or not. I am pretty much just doing this for me at this point. If you want pictures then you can damn well comment for them! And if you know me, you might want to email too, because I always forget to moderate my comments. I am really a terrible blogger! Here is a dreamy picture of Joseph Pulitzer to try to make it up to you.]

The spread is “Newspaper Row” during the Spanish American War in 1898. There is a W. C. Loftus store in the picture. I wonder if they are any relation to the DeSmet Loftuses. 

 “Accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a woman.” Joseph Pulitzer

And we’re off! The press is inaccurate and men’s virtue is unquestionable. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose…

So much text in the newspapers. The style was called a tombstone. Yikes! Headlines, those bastard precursors to the screaming chryons, were about to smash the tombstone to bits!

Pulitzer was quite pithy, “Gentlemen, heretofore you have all been living in the parlor and taking baths every day. Now I wish you to understand that, in future, you are all walking down the Bowery.” Meaning that his paper the New York World was going to be the paper that represented the little guy. He declared his papers to be “dedicated to the cause of the people rather than to that of the purse potentates.” He was a good cusser too. He would “split a word to insert an oath, his favorite being ‘indegoddamnpendant’.”

He used lurid stories to draw big circulation numbers, but through editorializing, he tried to change things for the better. And he would set them up and chop them down. He basically got Grover Cleveland elected, but when Cleveland married a girl half his age, Pulitzer printed salacious details of their relationship to get readers. 

He used his paper to raise money to do upkeep on the Statue of Liberty and he sent out Nellie Bly [Nellie Bly, a woman!]  to see the world in 72 days. Perhaps he was one of the first to make the media feel like a way of identifying one’s self, like people who think “I read the Globe and I am smart. You read the Herald and are a dummy.” (Or conversely, “I read the Herald and I am a regular guy. You read the Globe and are a snob.”)

He also launched the first newspaper comics page. He seems to have had misophonia, “the noise of crumpling paper, even the sound of someone eating toast, drove him into agonies.” And in 1889 he went blind!

Just as I am beginning to think Joseph Pulitzer hung the moon, I saw his story about the Missing Link. Oh, so he did that kind of “journalism” too. 

TL gives his origin story that is easily Wikipedia-ed if you’re interested. He was a hell of a businessman, but an awful manager, who pitted employees against each other  in a textbook toxic work environment. But he single handedly staved off war with England in 1895 which irked Teddy Roosevelt to no end. 

The writer of this section clearly has no love for Teddy. He makes him look like a jerk more than once. The first time for opining that capping horse car drivers’ work day at 12 hours is “communistic” and secondly for trying to have Pulitzer jailed for not going along with his war plan. Oh, and bonus - Teddy is also quoted as saying “he looked forward enthusiastically to the ‘conquest of Canada’.”

[According to the front page reprint from February 11, 1898 there was a story about murdered babies in Harlem. Could this be abortion related? Eva Godorsi and Mrs. Agusta Nack are mentioned. Look this up!]

Eventually, Pulitzer and Hearst started the Spanish American War. Yep, journalism has been tearing down and shoring up American democracy for at least 120 years. But Pulitzer did regret his manipulation in the end apparently. And now there is this prize.

This chapter ends with no representation of people of color and no women except possible abortionists and Grover Cleveland’s child bride - but the negative slant on the women is nearly mitigated by Nellie Bly...

All quotes are from TL. Pulitzer photo courtesy of LOC.gov.

America 1870-1900 - EDUCATION- The Ladder of Learning

[Wherein I get off track an awful lot, but manage to come back again and again to the topic of...]

EDUCATION! How very timely! Everyone in America is currently an expert on this subject of education. I think most of the ennui I have been feeling the past few days is because of the uncertainty about schools reopening. Once we know what we are in for, it will be less stressful. My line is that I am a team player and I have had a good run. If my school opens up, I will be there doing my job in a hazmat suit and if I die, all that I demand is that every person I know who has talked about the “Plandemic” be forced to kiss me on the lips before I go! With tongue, of course.  

But back to Time Life.  The classroom pictured in the double spread is integrated! There are a handful of black kids sprinkled among the majority white kids. Four out of twenty-four is the ratio. And the male female ratio is not too bad - ten girls and fourteen boys. It is a grade school classroom in Valley Falls, Kansas. The picture is from the Kansas State Historical Society out of Topeka. 

THE LADDER OF LEARNING

Andrew Carnegie, among other things, was a fan of education. He would have loved Joe Willard! One in 400 Americans had a college degree in 1900. Four out of four people who live in my house have a college degree. Call it lucky, call it blessed, but I get to ride the tail of the greatest era in US history for middle class white ladies. The early feminists tossed me a soft ball with regard to access to access. I didn’t have to fight for my rights, they were given to me. Not in every aspect of life, but as far as voting, owning property and birth control. 

The divisiveness in this country is straight up to do with manipulation. With a divided population, people in power can get away with a lot. And sadly, much of that division is educational. Our president says, “I love an ignorant voting block.” Of course you do sir, of course you do. 

Carnegie is described as a "plutocrat" - a person whose power is derived by their wealth.  Let me think if I can find any examples of plutocrats in our current society. Hmmm...

Time Life talks about the strictness of 19th century education. By 1898 most children were getting some kind of schooling. I think about Richard Peck’s books and how 1910-1940s classrooms were described. Heck, Laura Ingalls at 15 years old taught on the prairie. Things were surely different!

ARGH! They have a quote from “one educator” and in attempting to google it on my phone I got a lot of very depressing stories of today’s educational disparity. When I did a search for the exact quote - "the high school is the institution which shall level the distinction between the rich and the poor" - I was surprised that two fairly reputable books seemed to be basically plagiarizing this section for This Fabulous Century! And also, wow, schools are not equal. No they are not.

Beverly’s schools are great, lack of elementary librarians notwithstanding. There is a history of high schools being disrespected in Beverly. The first high school was going to be built out in the boonies so that only kids with the means to get there would be able to attend. Those would be the kids of the immigrants who lived downtown and worked at the Shoe. But eventually smarter and more just heads prevailed. You can check out The Origins of Public High Schools : a Reexamination of the Beverly High School Controversy by Maris A. Vinovskis if you are curious about our local history.

Back to Time Life - The US went from having 500 high schools in 1870 (the year my house was built!) to 6000 in 1900. And colleges boomed too. It appears that Carnegie believed that the hope of a college education was a great motivator. He come up from nothing as an immigrant from Scotland, I think, but he did some dirty dealings to get ahead. I really should investigate further before shooting off my mouth. 

Funny, just today I was saying that I still have hope for capitalism. I was so sure I was a socialist. Funny how to conservatives I appear to be a dyed in the wool liberal, but to the far left I am a capitalist pawn. This is where I step off. I refuse to define myself as liberal. Yes, I support liberal causes and I vote for mostly liberal candidates. 

But I AM a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, an educator, a librarian, a reader, a singer and the only two time winner of the Beverly High School Dancing with the Teachers Contest. Those are what I am, but my politics are what I think. Some people really are their politics. And in the past that has been what has made them heroes or villains. Except for in times of national unity, most people were in their bubble and stayed there. But those bubbles were mostly economic, religious, racial and fairly stagnant. Now with the information available to spiral into the virtual echo chamber that tells you that you are RIGHT and everyone else is wrong people are defining themselves by what they think rather than what they do and it is so very, very dangerous. 

Was the Vietnam era this bad with regard to unity? What saved us was the press. But the current people in power are hellbent on splintering that too. And MSNBC and Fox are just two sides of the same coin - hellbent on stirring the pot for revenue. Could it be that USA TODAY might save us? That feels like putting my faith in Time Life to give me an accurate portrayal of American history. I must take this time to once again preach the wonder that is All Sides. For the love of America - go take a look. 

Wow, I have gotten WAY off track!

Johns Hopkins, Ezra Cornell, Leland Stanford, and John D. Rockefeller all endowed colleges. Rockefeller didn’t want his named after him so it is the University of Chicago. And it started out as a Baptist school. Who knew??

“For Victorian children grade school was a robot parade ground for the mind.” Ha! Well, the folks at Time Life wrote this when I was in a “pod” at my suburban Cleveland area elementary school and I was in the “Independence” reading group so I never learned ITA. I did, however, get to read SRA cards. All of them!

There are some pictures in the next few pages that deal with desk position and handwriting.  There is a chart of food related arithmetic that reminds me that it is almost time for dinner!

They quote an “Educational Axiom in the Training of Children - It is better to do one thing 100 times than to do 100 things one time.” It almost seems like they are trying to educate a complacent work force. Holy cow, no wonder we are always being accused of “indoctrinating” students. We 100% teach the opposite. We have to! Computers can do 100 things a second. We need kids who can think, figure, extrapolate, collaborate - all the things a computer can’t do. The internet does all our remembering now, freeing us up to concentrate on the creative aspects of educating. If only everyone had the same quality of education, that would be swell. 

There is a pictorial alphabet, a McGuffy reader, and a lovely map from Swinton’s A Complete Course in Geography. There is also a delightful elocution series of specific poses for acting out specific phrases. I just acted them out and now agree with Mark Twain who described them as “the painfully exact and spasmodic gestures which a machine might have used.” Oh machines, you have ruined everything, even elocution. 

There is a Declaration of Independence lesson and a song and a “Testimonial of Merit” for punctuality, deportment and diligent attention to study from Litchfield New York in 1888. I wonder if there are similar things in my educational archive. Well, not MY educational archive, but the one housed at my library. Well, not MY library. Hmmmm… I do seem to believe things belong to me, don’t I?

There are some little white Iowans celebrating the last day of school. My beloved Aunt Ginger, who lives in a very high tourist area, says that Iowa stands for “idiots out walking around” which seems kind of mean, but also very funny. 

The last section in education is a love letter to Cornell that I had declared I would read but not take notes on as the only thing I know about Cornell is that it is Andy Bernard’s alma mater and it was the only Ivy I realistically thought I could get into. Not that I applied, I just assumed. I guess we will never know. 

So that is what I said, but then I started reading and of course made notes, because how could I not?

So Cornell went co-ed in 1872 and it is wonderful to see women in the laboratory and the library just owning their places. But then came the fraternities. Oh well…

Freshman crew, varsity crew and women’s crew are all shown. They are a hearty bunch and I assume there are some Boston Aunties among the ladies. One of the girls in the second row is smiling awfully sweetly as if she has a secret love! One can hope. And the women’s team had their own boathouse by 1896. Go Cornell!

The final picture is the football team and I’m not going to lie. They are a pretty bunch. They look to a man like they could be fronting an indie band in 2014. 

Next up - THE PRESS! Bwahahaha… I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. If Time Life didn’t want me getting all navel-gaze-y it shouldn’t have been reading this morning’s New York Times over my shoulder and picking its content from there. 

All photos are public domain or from TL unless otherwise noted. All quotes are from TL.

"Beverly High School" Beverly Library,  June 2, 2002

The Office. Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2006

Stamberg, Susan. "How Andrew Carnegie Turned His Fortune Into A Library Legacy." NPR: Morning Edition, August 1, 2013.