Your Neighborhood, 100 Years Ago

Have you ever wished that you could step back in time-- just for a moment-- to experience your neighborhood as it was long ago?

Photographs offer a glimpse, of course; but while photographs convey the look and feel of a place, they usually don't reveal the area's layout.  For example, if you lived in this spot 100 years ago, where would you shop?  What might you do in your spare time?  What sources of light and heat were available? Sanborn maps-- detailed city and town records maintained by the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company-- can help you to visualize a neighborhood at this level, as they show and label individual shops, residences, churches, and other community resources.

And now, these addictive maps are online!!  (When I first encountered Sanborn maps in grad school, one had to go to the city library and page through them, physically.  It was fun, but also a lot of trouble.)

For example, I'll link you to the following images at the University of Missouri:

... Old St. Patrick Oratory (Kansas City, MO) in 1896

Zoom in, and find surrounding hotels, offices, dwellings (coded "D"), shops ("S"), the public library, the YMCA, a laundry, a drugstore...

... St. Francis De Sales Oratory (St. Louis, MO) in 1909
You'll see nearby tenements, flats ("F"), movie theaters ("moving pictures"), pool rooms, saloons (abbreviated "sal"), a laundry, etc.


Kansas residents can find many of their maps here, at the University of Kansas Libraries.

Whatever your city/state, be sure-- if you're interested--to check the online resources of your public library!  Many county libraries have begun to offer digital access to their local maps... Keep in mind, too, that the Sanborn Company began these records in 1867 and updated them throughout the 20th century, so many different editions may be available to you.  If your local library offers only maps dating from 1920- 1930, for example, look at the holdings of your area academic library-- there could very well be more!

Wouldn't this research make an interesting homeschool project in History?!

PS:  Here's a helpful key to common Sanborn map abbreviations (University of Michigan).

Snood sighting!

Chances are you're already well acquainted with Regina Coeli Creations, Delena's online shop specializing in pretty, Mass-appropriate headcoverings. However, if not-- or if you haven't been there recently-- check out the cuteness (and feminine dignity, of course!):

In case you missed it, Delena's also offering 15% off your next purchase.

Jacob's Toy Box

Christine, a local Catholic homeschooling mother of six, has opened an online store for her beautiful handmade dolls and other toys.   I find the dolls especially enchanting:  they have that old-fashioned, Laura-Ingalls-Wilder appeal that makes a mom feel so good about her daughter's delight in them!

The store's name-- Jacob's Toy Box-- has bittersweet significance.  On the accompanying blog, Christine writes:

This spring I was anxiously awaiting the birth of our 7th child, Jacob.  For each of my children I have made a special blanket or quilt before s/he was born.  While at the fabric store getting material for Jacob's blanket, I saw a pattern for a stuffed animal and decided to make one for my soon to be born son, Jacob.  The stuffed animal turned out adorable.
      
Tragedy struck June 2, 2012.  Jacob died at 32 weeks gestation.  The doctors don't know what happened.
      
While grieving for our son, I needed a way to honor and remember him.  I thought of the joy I had sewing the stuffed animal for him and decided to start the business Jacob's Toy Box...   [source]

Please pay her a visit.  Her creations are simply beautiful!!

YA Nostalgia

Lately I've found myself revisiting many books that I'd loved as a child, most of which I still love.  Little Women...  the Anne of Green Gables series... the Little House books... Charlotte Sometimes, A Girl of the Limberlost, An Old-Fashioned Girl, The Lamplighter, Summer of My German Soldier, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Jacob Have I Loved, Bridge to Terebithia, Harriet the Spy.  I could go on and on, as I suspect that you could, too...  Reading them now, I appreciate anew their charm and warmth and wit; and I imagine the day that my little daughters will encounter them for the first time.  How wonderful, to discover these stories-- to read them without prior knowledge of how they develop and end!  Will my girls be enthralled?  I hope so.  (If not, they're sure to laugh at how excited I'll be!)

Over the weekend I was lucky enough to pick up a number of classic YA novels from the local thrift shop, among them a newer one I'd never read:  Lyddie, by Katherine Paterson (one of my favorite authors in this genre).  And so of course, I couldn't rest until I'd finished it, right?  ...Well worth the late hours!  Set in the 1840s, Lyddie is the story of a farm girl, her family broken by poverty and mental illness, who labors in the textile factories of Lowell, MA in hope of earning enough to reunite her brothers and sisters.  I think that Patterson does an excellent job of conveying a central tension of that time and place:  While arduous working conditions provoke Lowell women to organize against company management, at the same time the factory offered girls like Lyddie economic and cultural advantages that they could never have experienced at home on the farm.  From one perspective, it was "wage slavery"; but from another, it was unprecedented independence and (yes, yes) empowerment.   As the story progresses, Lyddie must negotiate these tensions to decide what she really wants to do with her life-- and claiming that ability to choose is, for her (as it would be for most women of her day), an astonishing step.  I couldn't put it down!

One caveat:  I wouldn't give this novel to my daughters until they were at least 12, and even then I would plan to discuss with them some of the situations encountered therein. I think particularly of a manager's attempts to take sexual advantage of his female employees (two instances, both assertively thwarted by the women, no indelicate or gratuitous detail); and the extramarital pregnancy of one of Lyddie's co-workers, which the book seems to interpret as a matter of personal freedom v. stifling paternalistic morality. ...  Moms, definitely vet this one beforehand!



...If you have a moment, please suggest to me your favorites!  What books did you love as a young girl?

To Henry Rago, poet and De Paul alumnus

"Laughter and books and wine are holy things; and living is good; and death is a breathlessness with the whole adventure of finding everywhere the traces of one great beauty..."

                ~Henry Rago, "Plea for Uncommon Sense," De Paulia (February 4, 1937) 2.


Dear Henry Rago,

I met you in 1936.  (You never met me.)  It was when you began that column for the De Paul University newspaper, and-- well, your words leapt out of that blurry microfilm image and gleamed. Just gleamed! I began to look forward to finding your column, again and again; I even fancied that I could discern your cadence in unsigned editorials. Later, in the files of Chicago Inter-Student Catholic Action, I found a short play that you'd written in 1940-- a clever anti-war skit that made me laugh out loud--as well as a few poems, all of which strengthened an impression I'd already received: that, if I'd been at De Paul in 1936-37, I'd have been, well, intrigued. 

But from a distance.  While you described yourself as "timid," you seemed popular and involved in everything-- from CISCA to newspaper to drama to Homecoming and intramural sports-- so no, I would never have braved the writerly crowd surrounding your booth at Pixley's or the Roma! And if I had, could I have joined your banter on the Mystical Body implications of a cheeseburger. . . ?

Researching a (21st-century) dissertation on collegiate Catholic Action, however, I took the liberty of citing your poems and newspaper columns as illustrations of a developing liturgical/social justice culture among Depression-era Catholic youth.  (I hope that you don't mind.)

Looking further, I'm thrilled to find that--no shock!-- you'd indeed become a renowned poet, theology professor, and editor of the well-known literary journal Poetry. Today you have your own web tribute, one much more fitting than any I could construct... since, after all, I only watched you from afar in your student days, at De Paul in 1936.

PS:  While I'd love to share a poem or two that I found in the files of CISCA, I'm concerned about copyright issues-- so instead I'll link to your wonderful "Sonnet for God," which Poetry published in 1934.

Tethered to the Coffeepot

To put it briefly:  Rough night.  Again.  (Also, note to self: Never bring the toddler to bed with us after a night waking!  The result will be a baby bouncing on the mattress as we're trying to sleep and, ultimately, tortured screams when she's replaced in the crib.)

So early this morning I crept down to the kitchen and, armed with a cup of coffee and both baby monitors, tried to recover some shadow of interest in the world.  As usual, I went to the NPR website and listened to the Hourly News-- that five-minute audio rundown of headlines, available on demand, which is so convenient for a tired mom who has little time/motivation to click through Drudge Report or the New York Times.  (Conservative stations, Catholic stations, won't you develop something similar?)

This video, too, I find to be a helpful mood-brightener, both because of the upbeat music (who can resist the Pastoral Symphony?), and because of the obvious joy that these musicians take in its performance.  They're living in the moment, reveling in what they do-- and yes, it's just a little bit contagious!

Time for that fourth cup of coffee.  Happy Monday to all!