The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair, February 1864. A young woman steps up to the Post Office counter and asks “Anything for me, if you please?”
The Brooklyn Fair To Aid Union Soldiers During the U.S. Civil War
Sarah Hale’s Campaign for a National Thanksgiving Holiday
If you love Thanksgiving, you should learn the name Sarah Josepha Hale. Starting in 1846 and continuing until her retirement in 1877, Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879) used her position as editress of Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine — one of the most popular and influential magazines of the time — to campaign for a national Thanksgiving […]
How a 3,930 Pound Cheese Helped Union Army Soldiers During the Civil War
The poster said “Presentation of the 3,930 lb. Cheese! To the Sanitary Commission.” What was that about? Why such a big cheese? Who was the Sanitary Commission?
Ancient Roman-Style Carrots
Many of us have old recipes that we love to cook — perhaps they have been passed down through the generations on index cards, or are from old community cookbooks with frayed corners and well-worn covers. But few are as old as this post’s recipe for carrots simmered with cumin, mint and vinegar. This recipe […]
Book Review: “Golden Gate” by Kevin Starr
The Golden Gate Bridge is a global icon, a triumph of engineering, and a work of art. In American terms, it was shaped by the City Beautiful movement, the Progressive Era, and the Great Depression. More mysteriously, the Bridge expresses those forces that science tells us constitute the dynamics of nature itself. Like the Parthenon, […]
The Otis House: When Wilshire Boulevard was Mansion Row in Los Angeles
I was browsing through the amazing digital archives of the New York Public Library recently, looking for fun stuff to pin to my Slices of Blue Sky Pinterest boards, and I ran across an old postcard from Los Angeles that caught my attention. The photo isn’t much — it’s a pretty big Spanish-style house — […]
TV as Demolition: When the TV Show “Emergency” Filmed in Compton
One of my less productive minor obsessions is with the 1970s TV show “Emergency.” It began when a saw a bit of an episode set in San Francisco, which led me to buy a set of DVD that included the episode when “Emergency” filmed in San Francisco so I could learn the details of the […]
Three More Old Postcards of San Francisco: the Golden Gate, Fort Point and Sutro Baths
This post has a few more old San Francisco images from the New York Public Library Digital Collections. The first two of postcards were taken before the addition of a major landmark, and the last was taken before the destruction of a major landmark. Before the Bridge The first photo is an undated postcard from […]
When “Emergency” Filmed in San Francisco
As a child, I sometimes watched the TV series “Emergency”, which ran from 1972 to 1979. Even though it featured crises and injuries that could easily happen to me or my friends or family, the show must have had some kind of attraction. Perhaps it was all of the heavy equipment or the explosions. With […]
Mmmmm…Rye Bread Ice Cream, or Solving the Mystery of “Ice Cream, Bisque of Black Bread”
Updated, June 2016, May 2017 Sometimes I see something so mysterious and compelling — like “Ice cream, bisque of black bread, a la Delmonico” — that I need to track down its story. Most of the time, I lose interest or have no hope of finding the answer, but sometimes lightning strikes and I find […]