Count Your Blessings

After a whirlwind year, we’re fast approaching yet another holiday season that’s not quite normal. But one thing that hasn’t changed? Documents from the 19th and 20th centuries continue to be a cornucopia of 21st-century Thanksgiving blog post fodder. (Most especially those from Chicago’s renowned Newberry Library, to which I’m exceedingly grateful for digitizing, transcribing Read More

Clip of the Week: November 17, 2021

James Morgan (70) was charged (before Alderman R. Corry and Mr J. H. Jotham, C.C.) at the Cardiff Police Court to-day with being drunk on the Hayes on Wednesday evening. Prisoner, who is a grizzled old veteran, expressed his remorse at his little misadventure and instinctively produced an ancient looking parchment bearing a record of Read More

Corney Grain’s Refrains

When you’re born with the name “Richard Corney Grain,” you’re destined for either greatness or ridicule. In the case of the 19th-century British entertainer, he found a bit of both. My unfortunate name is likewise the subject of much controversy. My parents played a very bad practical joke on me when they gave me the Read More

Clip of the Week: November 3, 2021

If you’ve memorized all two hours and eight minutes of the movie “Jurassic Park,” are best friends with Chicago’s most famous resident dinosaur and want to make Joseph “My Resume Is Better than Yours” Leidy super jealous, do I have a vacation destination for you: Bone City, they call it—and it is one of the Read More