CGHS Library

Boston Public Library's Travel Posters

Almost every public library has a strong online presence, and city library sites are normally spectacular. Boston Public Library has some collections on flickr, including 351 travel posters from the 1920s and 1940s, when the average person could seriously travel if he wanted because of railways, luxurious ocean liners, and good highways. "Travel agents and ticket offices during this period were festooned with vivid, eye-catching posters, all designed to capture the beauty, excitement and adventure of travel." Now these same posters make nostalgic and artistic statements about a time long gone.

Kansas Day Celebration V: Bloody Bill Anderson (BIO Anderson)

"Anderson [was] the most savage and sadistic of all Civil War guerrillas. There is gore galore in this . . . pulse-quickening narrative of 'bitter bloodshed,' for no other rebel guerrila was more clearly motivated by revenge than Bloody Bill." Daniel Sutherland in Civil War History

Kansas Day Celebration IV: Kansas Museum of History

Online exhibits

Browse these online exhibits.

• All That Glitters: Dressing Up & Stepping Out
• Beyond Lewis and Clark: The Army Explores the West (higher speed)
• Beyond Lewis and Clark: The Army Explores the West (slower speed)
• Carry A. Nation: The Famous and Original Bar Room Smasher
• Everyone Needs a Hobby: Kansas Collectors and Collecting
• Forces of Nature
• From Far Away Russia: Russian-Germans in Kansas
• Game Faces:  Kansans in Sports
• Keep the Flag to the Front: Battle Flags of Kansas
• Lincoln in Kansas
• Marijana:  My People's Painter
• Moments of Glory:  Kansans' Achievements
• Sinners and Saints: Vice and Reform in Kansas
• They're Playing Our Song: Community Bands in Kansas
• Wheat People: Celebrating Kansas Harvest
• Willing to Die for Freedom:  A Look Back at Kansas Territory

and take a look at the web page.

Kansas Day Celebration III (551.55 MEN)

At 7:14 p.m. on an early summer evening in 1966, an EF-5 tornado a half-mile wide barreled over an Indian burial mound at the southwest edge of Topeka, Kansas, and proceeded to slash an eight-mile channel of destruction across the breadth of Kansas’ capital city. The towering black column packed winds of more than 200 miles an hour as it roared through the community. By the time the twister lifted over Topeka's eastern outskirts about 20 minutes later, a university and approximately 800 homes and buildings had been destroyed. Another 3,000 were damaged. The total cost of the devastation topped $100 million, making the tornado one of the most destructive in American history. And Hell Followed With It: Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado reconstructs the spellbinding tale of that epic day. Dozens of people from all walks of life who survived the event have been interviewed; each provides a highly personal and often emotional account of what they saw, felt and heard. The book also provides a panoramic backdrop of time and place. There’s the Indian legend about the hill that was supposed to shield the city from tornadoes and the curse that destroyed that protection, the history of settlement on the Great Plains and a gritty rendering of everyday life in a largely blue-collar, middle-American community in the mid-1960s. (from topekatornado.com)

 

Kansas Day Celebration II: The Kansa Indians (978.100497 Unrau)

I bought an updated copy of probably the best history of the Kansa. While the writing style is rather academic and dry in the beginning, it improves, particulary when Unrau quotes from contemporary sources. One example occurs when describing Kansa living conditions on page 37.

"The obvious lack of family privacy apparently did not bother the Indians, but it left an indelible impression on some white visitors. The Reverend Isaac McCoy complained in 1828 that 'half the village' appreared to crowd into the lodge assigned to him; children cried without interruption, adults screamed wildly, and the air was so saturated with smoke from the fireplaces and tobacco pipes that he was forced to punch a hole in the wall in order to breathe."

Kansas Day Celebration I: Carrie Nation (BIO Nation)

When Carry Nation marched into saloons with her hatchet in the early 1900s, patrons barricaded themselves behind closed doors, beat her with a broom, and hurled raw eggs. Twice she was nearly carried away by a lynch mob. What drew this gritty woman to the temperance cause that she eventually personified? In this new biography, Grace retells the life of Nation from her upbringing in Kentucky and devastating first marriage to her ascendancy as a full-time smasher, preacher, lecturer, off-Broadway performer, and, from time to time, jailbird. Nation has often been lampooned for her obsession with "hatchetation," but Grace's biography lets readers see that, in her day, Nation was widely admired as a riveting speaker and offered a model of politically active womanhood at a time when states still legislated whether or not women could wear trousers. The book admirably interweaves early 20th-century religious culture, regional politics, the suffrage and temperance movements, and the woman who worked zealously to unite them all. (Library Journal's Review from Amazon.com)

Illuminated Manuscripts

"The British Library is showcasing its treasure trove of illuminated manuscripts collected by the kings and queens of England between the 9th and 16th Centuries - from King Athelstan to Henry VIII."

These manuscripts are so well preserved. The artists used animal skins so they are still in very good condition and the colors are bright even after centuries. 

I did take issue with some of lead curator Scot McKendrick's commentary. He compares two psalters, one with an illustration of King David, who wrote many of the songs, or Psalms, preserved in the Old Testament, and who is also described in his youth as a harpist. One of the psalters features a beautiful picture of David in the beginning of the first Psalm, "Blessed is the man / Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, / Nor stands in the path of sinners, / Nor sits in the seat of the scornful; / But his delight is in the law of the LORD, / And in His law he meditates day and night." Mr. McKendrick says that this man is David, and that is true, but it more accurately could refer to any man who finds his salvation in the law of the LORD, particularly Jesus, who was the only man who managed to perfectly delight in the law of the LORD. Every blessed man finds his identity and salvation only through Jesus, according to Christian doctrine.

When McKendrick then looks at another manuscript that features Henry VIII, he says that Henry egotistically is putting himself in David's place. While Henry was indeed flawed in many ways, he was familiar with the Psalms and knew that it would be best to represent himself to his people as a godly man, a blessed man. Another observation is that illuminated manuscripts are at least 80% about the pictures. Look at how the artist portrays Henry here. He is gnomish, scholarly, at rest; hardly the regal figure David is in the other manuscript--perhaps, the artist might be saying, not all that blessed after all.

Landmark Court Cases

Oyez, Oyez, Oh Yay! has very clear explanations of landmark court cases that students should know. Though the site was designed for Texas students and Texas test preparation, it is valuable for anybody studying the history of US freedom.

*WHAT DOES "OYEZ, OYEZ, OYEZ" MEAN?

"Oyez" is primarily pronounced "o-yay," although sometimes as "o-yez" or "o-yes." It is used three times in succession to introduce the opening of a court of law, especially the U.S. Supreme Court. Word origin is Middle English and descends from the Anglo-Norman "oyez," the plural imperative form of "oyer" ("to hear"). Thus, it means "hear ye" – a common call for silence or attention in medieval England. (Excerpt from Oyez, Oyez, Oh Yay!)

 

100 Years of Style