The year was 1893. Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat elected President after the Civil War, was back in office, and the world was going to heck.
Hundreds of banks were folding, thousands of businesses shut down, and millions of households had no providers. Among the causes was a depletion of gold from the national reserves. Another were years of falling crop prices, leading to Continue reading
Elizabeth Cotten was a blues and folk singer/guitarist born in Chapel Hill, NC in 1893.
During her teens, she wrote a song called “Freight Train,” which was then recorded on vinyl in 1956. It was covered over a dozen times by The Grateful Dead, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and many more. Later, it was stolen via copyright by a British songwriter, but was eventually returned due to pressure within the music community. Continue reading
FI/RE (pronounced like the word fire) stands for Financially Independent, Retiring Early. Among the sub-cultures of this movement is a group called the Mustachians due to their fandom of Peter Adeney, creator of Mr. Money Mustache.
Among the influences that led to Adeney wanting everyone to build their “stache” so they could live on their own terms was Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau talked and wrote a great deal on the value and virtue of frugal living.
We will dive into his ideas by exploring 3 of his works.
The US Civil War bolstered the need for efficient mail delivery. In 1861, one could write “soldier’s letter” on an envelope and the recipient would pay the postage. In 1863, Congress passed legislation that mail delivery in cities could be free! To reliably send funds from a battlefield to home, a money order system was established in 1864.
With such a reliable way to transmit money, fraud went from coast-to-coast.
Fraud is the intentional deception of another for some type of gain. Mail fraud adds the element of using the post office. The improved postal system during the Civil War created a phenomenal opportunity for con artists for the following reasons:
What Spirit Photography can tell us about the Science behind Spiritualism and the Act of Mourning
[Unidentified elderly woman seated, three “spirits” in the background]; William H. Mumler (American, 1832 – 1884); 1862–1875; Albumen silver print; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Three images encapsulate two entwined structures of feeling that emerged in the United States during the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the presence of the facemask and the presence of absence [1]. The direction and future of these structures of feeling—and the pandemic—is unknown. However, these structures of feeling can help us unpack the meaning of the pandemic as we move forward to whatever the future may bring.
The pandemic has politicized the facemask, transforming an effective, traditional tool in health and medicine into a political statement. One form of the politicization of the facemask has already been exhaustively covered in the daily news cycle and social media; antimaskers place individual autonomy dis-engaged from community responsibility over the health of the nation, genuine civic engagement, and scientific evidence. However, wearing the facemask is more than a political statement on responsibility, science, and health, as its political symbology has also been integrated into protest and activism against police brutality:
A couple wears masks that read “I Can’t Breathe” during a demonstration in Minneapolis on Saturday. Jim Urquhart for NPR
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I had so much hope for 2021. After the ball dropped on New Years Day my street erupted into a fireworks display that I have not seen since the last time I saw the New York Philharmonic. Let me be real with you, hypothetical reader, for a moment. 2021 was not the doorway to an alternate dimension, and the United States is plagued by disease, and political and social unrest. The Covid-19 virus continues to spread virtually unchecked in the United States as vaccine wielding doctors and nurses entered the fray and begin to administer vaccines to the public. Optimistic reporting promises a gradual release from this pandemic induced isolation mid to late spring. Then, six days into the new year, domestic terrorists ran amok in the United States Capital in an attempt, as recent reporting is making clear, to certify the vote and bring violence and death to our elected officials. At least 6 lives were lost and uncounted political officials, capital staff and police were left horrified by the assault on personal safety as Americans collectively witnessed an attack on a symbol of our democratic institution. By January 13th former President Trump was impeached for the second time. On February 13th he was simultaneously found guilty and acquitted. Whatever we are experiencing in our personal lives, whether good, bad, or indifferent, Americans in particular have likely been watching their hopes for a better 2021 sink like a ship to the briny depths.
In the fall of 2019, during my Fulbright Fellowship in Chile, which coincided with a social revolution that continues to reverberate across Chilean society, a large graffiti-mural caught my attention along a wall in downtown Santiago: “Tu normalidad es privilegio!”
Photograph by Eric Zolov
Everyone is experiencing the “New” World in COVID-19 times; the author penned the feature during April and May 2020, when “Spring” is trying to meet “Summer.”
Big Piney River as viewed from Devil’s Elbow Bridge Devils Elbow, Missouri
While most of the late seventeenth and eighteenth century was relatively quiet regarding witchcraft, dark magic, and Devil worshiping, accusations of witchcraft would once again appear in the Ozark region of Missouri and Arkansas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The geography of the Ozark region could best be described as rolling hills, heavily forested, and composed of remote agricultural communities that were largely self-sufficient. The Ozarks were originally colonized by the French but eventually, British squatters, poor farmers, and adventurers would make their way into the region even though it was illegal for British citizens to settle west of the Appalachian Mountains.
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