You are here: Home / America From ten years ago! Pardon the formatting–ten years ago was still blogger. It’s funny the connections we humans make when we live a Big Life filled with family & friends & books & The World-Wide-Web, isn’t it? I noted a few things that happened this week in history and here’s what Daughter C had to
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Scanned from A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents Volume V (Bureau of National Literature, 1913, 1897).
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The Farm. November 19, 2023. Happy Thanksgiving Week! This week we’ll rummage through 12 years’ worth of Thanksgiving related posts and see what we can come up with from bygone days. I am semi-inclined to write something new, so stay tuned for that as well. And as a reminded, the latest reiteration of Jesse Jackson’s
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Another random find from Mr. Big Food’s Bog Food Manual and Survivalist Flourishing Guide. This one from “Tributes,” Cooking with Czech Recipes Cookbook, Texas Czech Genealogical Society (2021). I take it this was written by someone just remembering what she’d been told by her grandparents. Very folksy. As we come to the close of our
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Remember Clementine Paddleford and her How America Eats cookbook? In the 1950s she traveled the United States to discover…well, how America eats. The cookbook is filled with great stories. Now, 70 years on, the stories are like a blast from the past. A window into another time and place. A book well worth Hold that
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Having a long running blog is like keeping a diary. Someone, somewhere in the USA or UK (no Koreans have visited yet today) read this post from January 23, 2012. I saw it in the list and hadn’t a clue so I clicked on it. This is from when we first got Missy! By the
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From the archives–June 11, 2013. I learned a lot doing those “on this day” type posts. oldest signer of The Declaration of Independence, who said, Those who would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety it was in June of 1752 that Franklin flew a kite (1).
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This is a good little story. It’s a shame James Whitcomb Riley, The Hoosier Poet, has fallen out of favor. That old book I mentioned yesterday–Children’s Reading: A Guide for Parents and Teachers (1926)–includes Riley and his works among reading for kids. A lot of his books have been digitized and almost all are free.
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Originally posted May 2019. The population of the town in which this high school was located was 8,704 in 1970, and 7,730 in 1980. By my count there were 37 students in the Latin Club that year. Years ago, seventh graders in this town had the option to take two year-end tests, one in language
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From a series of newspaper articles I wrote in 2014. Cross posted to The Old Books Blog. Books Bygone: What does history mean to you? “What does history mean to you? Is it alive, or is it dead and buried in the past? Is it a list of dry happenings with drier dates, or is
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“This book has been twelve years in the making. It was in January 1948 I started criss-crossing the United States as roving Food Editor for This Week Magazine–my assignment, tell “How America Eats.” I have traveled by train, plane, automobile, by mule back, on foot–in all over 800,000 miles.” –Clementine Paddleford, How America Eats
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Happy Thanksgiving, all! Who is thankful we don’t have to catch our turkeys? Hope everyone has just exactly the sort of day you’re hoping for! More of Grandma Moses’s work here.
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Yes, indeed, Dear Readers–it’s time once again for our annual mini-rant about why I don’t like the term, “Black Friday.” [Minor edits form original] “Black Friday” Thoughts: Part 1 Originally published on November 24, 2011 These two short essays are from Lines of a Layman: T)he Golden Rule in Every Day Living. The author is a guy named
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Long time readers will recall that I have a very personal relationship with J.C. Penney–the store, and the man. My attachment to the store began before I was born, and continued until we broke up after a very long and sad decline. “It’s not me, it’s you,” was how I finally ended it. My attachment
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#LaborDay (3) Published on September 7, 2020 by Marica Mr. and Mrs. Luis Avila grow fruit and vegetables and sell them at a roadside stand in Chimayo, New Mexico, thus eliminating the “middleman’s” margin. Farmers get only about 40 cents of the consumer’s food dollar. The Face of Rural America: The 1976 Yearbook of Agriculture [Link goes to
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#LaborDay (2) Published on September 7, 2020 by Marica Ordinary People and Everyday Life: Perspectives on the New Social History (1983) [Link goes to Amazon. Used from$1.98] Review: Ordinary People and Everyday Life: Perspectives on the New Social History presents thoughts by ten prominent scholars in American history and material culture on a new way of doing history in the
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From a couple of years ago. #LaborDay Published on September 7, 2020 by Marica Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1939) [Link goes to Amazon. Audible version of this crappy old book is free.] That infallible source which has “multiple issues” (I’ll say!): Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a book with text by American writer James Agee and photographs by American photographer Walker Evans,
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This is a good one, especially if you live some place that approximates flyover land. No Gun for You! Published on August 22, 2019 by Marica | Edit This is hilarious. I tried to buy a gun at Walmart twice, and roadblocks left me empty-handed both times I encourage you to read the whole thing because it is laugh out
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This is an interesting one. And you know this is not a political blog. But we do like history and we think there’s value in the observations of those who lived in the past. Interesting also because this was another instance of Big Dogs Jawin’–the early years of developing Missy and Rocky’s characters. This one
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No comment Today in history! Published on August 9, 2014 by Marica | Edit Those were the days, right?
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