"Wolfgang" wrote...

snip stuff about old stuff

.. And, speaking of expositions, somewhere in
that mess of aerial views is a stunningly detailed rendition of Chicago's
1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

I have it somewhere (??) as well. A left-over from the history of Chicago
class, different semester. Maybe not the _same_ map, but an intricately
detailed one, almost down to Olmstead's placement of various plant types.

Wish I could tell you exactly where, but
I changed the file names when I downloaded them. I could email it to you
if you like. It's a 14 megabyte file, and you'll need a MrSID file
viewer. Don't know if you're familiar with the story of the exposition,
but it's an interesting one. The Museum of Science and Industry is the
only original structure remaining.

Only structure, yes, but much of the Hyde Park area still shows the fair's
plan. When SWMBO graced the U of C, we walked around the area quite a bit,
with a copy of the aforementioned map in hand. It's amazing how much of the
planning, if not the structure, remains.

If you're in Chicago on a warm summery day, I highly recommend the walk.

Then....take a walking tour of Pullman or the stock yards area. Not as much
evidence remains (well, more does exist in Pullman than the yards, but
either way, not too much) of the 'original' footprint, but there's enough
left to get a feel for what was happening just a few miles away from the
White City's beauty.


I'd heard a bit about it from time to time, but didn't
know much about it until I read "The Devil in the White City" a couple of
years ago. The story as told by Erik Larsen is a fascinating account of
how an impossible job got done in an amazingly short time......not quite
short enough to make the proposed opening on the 400th anniversary of
Columbus's landing.....but it was done fast nevertheless. The only thing
that saves this from being a REALLY good book is that Larsen seems to have
lost his mind entirely and tried to interweave an inane tale of a serial
killer who was working Chicago at the time into the story of the
exposition.....which it has absolutely nothing to do with.

Read it and agree, tho the Holmes (IIRC that was his name) character made
the story a bit more ...hmmm...what's the word? Dunno. Was gonna say it
made the story more titillating, but the letters from Burnham to his wife
were positively scorching (by Victorian standards anyway). I think Larsen
was trying to show two very meticulous men in Burnham and Holmes, in the
same city, at the same time, but with diametrically opposed goals. Or maybe
not? Either way, a good book that kept me company on an Isle Royale trip.



If you're still interested in that Salem business, Mary Beth Norton's "In
the Devil's Snare" is an excellent and highly detailed chronicle of the
events in and around Salem. That's the good news. The bad news is that
she fails miserably (embarrassingly, I think) to support her thesis. As
you doubtless remember, many theories have been proposed to explain the
bizarre series of events that led eventually to the deaths of 21 people.
None of them has been entirely satisfactory. Norton, borrowing a page
from modern psychology, proposes that the girls and young women at the
core of the accusations all shared a common exposure to depredations by
the local Indian tribes at the margins of settled lands and were all
suffering from what is now called post traumatic stress syndrome. An
interesting idea, which the author outlines pretty well in the
introductory matter......and then virtually ignores until the conclusion,
beginning on page 295. It looks as if she had no confidence at all in her
thesis and only pasted some crap in at the end because she was afraid that
someone would remember it from the beginning. Oh well, everything in
between is pretty good.

We read so many books for that class, I may have read this one. They all
became the same thing -- women who were 'uppity' got hung. Starkey, Godbeer,
and, IMO most importantly Karlsen all pretty much say the same thing, but
with varying geographic and/or social twists on the motivation. I didn't
take a ton from the class, but the Karlsen book, _Devil in the Shape of
Woman_ (or somesuch,) really made a great case that essentially the squeaky
wheel got the noose.


Dan
....No comments on the 'pageantry' thing? :-)