I recently finished reading Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City. The book, published in 2003, is an account - basically nonfiction, with a little novelistic speculation included - of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, intertwined with the story of America's first known serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes. It's a very compelling piece of storytelling. The Chicago World's Fair brought us electric street lighting, the Ferris Wheel, and a certain vision of urban design. The fair itself was called the White City, because the huge, neoclassical buildings that filled Jackson Park were covered with a sort of white stucco. It was a monumental accomplishment to build, and must have been amazing to see.
Most of the buildings built for the fair were designed to be only temporary structures, but two were permanent - the Palace of Fine Arts, which is now the Museum of Science and Industry, and the World's Congress Building near Grant Park, which is now the Art Institute of Chicago. We visited both of them when we were in Chicago this summer - I had no idea that they were built for the World's Fair.
While we were there, I did read a book of Chicago ghost stories, which had a chapter about the murderous Dr. Holmes. Holmes (whose real name was Herman W. Mudgett) built a three story, block-long building at 63rd and Wallace, not far from Jackson Park. There he rented out rooms to an unknown number of people and many of them disappeared. His hotel had rooms that appeared designed for asphixiation, and a crematory and quicklime pits that could destroy bodies were in the basement. Holmes killed many people in Chicago, but didn't come to the attention of law enforcement while he lived there. He was finally arrested in Boston and jailed in Philadelphia for insurance fraud in 1894, and a relentless detective named Geyer found evidence, in a cross-country investigation that extended into Canada, that Holmes had murdered three children. That led to the grisley discoveries in Holmes' vacant hotel in Chicago. Not long after the police found evidence of the crimes committed there, the building burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances. The site was vacant until a Post Office was built there in 1938.
The weekend before last I had a bad cold and didn't feel like doing much so I spent more time that I would have otherwise working on Tom's family history. Both sides of his father's family emigrated from Germany and ended up in the Chicago area during the 19th century. I had been unable until a couple of months ago to find any records from his father's mother's family - we couldn't find anyone named Buesdorf anywhere - but I went back and reviewed the earliest census record that listed his grandparents as a married couple and they were living at 14 Kroll Street with the Bewersdorfs. Once I had the name spelled correctly, I could find records. The earliest record I could find for Tom's great-grandfather Charles Bewersdorf was in an 1894 Chicago city directory that listed him as a carpenter, living at the Kroll Street address. We used Google Maps to look for Kroll Street in modern day Chicago and couldn't find it. We figured it didn't exist any more, that it must have been destroyed in some round of urban renewal.
So last weekend I found a list of street name changes for Chicago, and found that Kroll Street had become Seeley. Because the 1900 Census went from 23rd Street to Kroll, I think Kroll Street is now the 2300 block of South Seeley, in the Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago. It was settled by German and Irish immigrants in the mid-19th century, who were replaced by Czech immigrants, who were replaced by Mexican-Americans. This block of South Seeley contains a mixture of multifamily and single family homes, all built in the late 19th century; I don't know which one is the one where the Bewersdorfs lived, but I've seen pictures of the street from Google Maps. One of those houses is - I think - where Charles Bewersdorf, the carpenter, lived in 1894, with his family.
It was interesting thinking, as I read the book, that some of Tom's ancestors were in Chicago while these events were taking place. Charles was a carpenter - was he one of the thousands of workmen who helped build the White City? Did they attend the fair on Chicago Day? Thankfully, they probably never stayed at Holmes' World's Fair Hotel.
In 1907 Charles bought property in Melrose Park, and by the 1910 Census, that's where he lived, along with his wife Wilhelmina. But I still wonder about 14 Kroll Street. Maybe the next time we are in Chicago we can try to find it. And I might just have to go visit that Post Office, too.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Signs and Omens
It's not that I'm superstitious - I'm not, except in the hard-wired, limbic system-kind of way that almost all of us are - but the economy's still bad, the Government may shut down on September 30, and a satellite is going to hit the earth sometime today, so it's hard not to assign meaning to what may be chance observations.
Of course, sometimes when something usual happens, it does mean something. Last weekend I was running an errand and noticed that the "check engine" light was on. We took it in to the shop Monday morning and I asked while they were at it that they check the brakes. The "check engine" light was on because the gas cap was loose, as it turned out, but the brakes needed major work. So, at least if the satellite crashes into the road ahead of me, I might be able to stop.
Sometime in the last week or two I saw a bluebird in the backyard. I've been a backyard birdwatcher for a couple of years now and I've never seen a bluebird in the yard before. In fact, I've never seen a bluebird at all. I've been watching, but I haven't seen it back.
Tuesday night I was heading out to pick up Iain from Boy Scouts and heard fireworks. Driving down Cumberland, I saw them - explosions of red and gold, unexpectedly in the sky, visible between the trees. Later that night, a really loud party, somewhere nearby, followed by the flashing blue lights of a police car; after that it was quiet.
It's raining this morning, the sort of slow steady rain that soaks into the ground. It rained on Tuesday, and yesterday afternoon was raining when I came home from work and has been raining since then, I think. But on Wednesday, September 21 - the International Day of Peace - the paper pinwheels the Girl Scouts made at their last meeting were out on the lawn at Haygood, as a tangible expression of hope for something better.
They are made from plastic drinking straws, paper, beads, and a bit of pipe cleaner, and are not very substantial. I had assumed that they wouldn't really work as pinwheels, and the best we could hope for was a day that didn't rain, so I would not be retrieving bits of soggy paper from the Haygood lawn Wednesday night. But yesterday I got an email from one of the parents of a girl in the troop who said they had looked great, spinning in the breeze that day.
When we picked them up Wednesday night, Iain left one of them - the one I had made as a sample to show the girls - on the dashboard of the car. It had "International Peace Day" written in blue and green crayon in concentric squares on both sides of the paper wings. Yesterday when I got to work I decided to bring it into my office. If I held it just right, there was enough air movement just from walking for it to turn, and when there was a breeze, it spun.
I don't know that it means anything, but it did make me smile.
Of course, sometimes when something usual happens, it does mean something. Last weekend I was running an errand and noticed that the "check engine" light was on. We took it in to the shop Monday morning and I asked while they were at it that they check the brakes. The "check engine" light was on because the gas cap was loose, as it turned out, but the brakes needed major work. So, at least if the satellite crashes into the road ahead of me, I might be able to stop.
Sometime in the last week or two I saw a bluebird in the backyard. I've been a backyard birdwatcher for a couple of years now and I've never seen a bluebird in the yard before. In fact, I've never seen a bluebird at all. I've been watching, but I haven't seen it back.
Tuesday night I was heading out to pick up Iain from Boy Scouts and heard fireworks. Driving down Cumberland, I saw them - explosions of red and gold, unexpectedly in the sky, visible between the trees. Later that night, a really loud party, somewhere nearby, followed by the flashing blue lights of a police car; after that it was quiet.
It's raining this morning, the sort of slow steady rain that soaks into the ground. It rained on Tuesday, and yesterday afternoon was raining when I came home from work and has been raining since then, I think. But on Wednesday, September 21 - the International Day of Peace - the paper pinwheels the Girl Scouts made at their last meeting were out on the lawn at Haygood, as a tangible expression of hope for something better.
They are made from plastic drinking straws, paper, beads, and a bit of pipe cleaner, and are not very substantial. I had assumed that they wouldn't really work as pinwheels, and the best we could hope for was a day that didn't rain, so I would not be retrieving bits of soggy paper from the Haygood lawn Wednesday night. But yesterday I got an email from one of the parents of a girl in the troop who said they had looked great, spinning in the breeze that day.
When we picked them up Wednesday night, Iain left one of them - the one I had made as a sample to show the girls - on the dashboard of the car. It had "International Peace Day" written in blue and green crayon in concentric squares on both sides of the paper wings. Yesterday when I got to work I decided to bring it into my office. If I held it just right, there was enough air movement just from walking for it to turn, and when there was a breeze, it spun.
I don't know that it means anything, but it did make me smile.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Friday Night at the Movies
So this week at work all the movie buzz has been about Contagion, the movie that just came out about a killer virus that threatens Life on Earth as We Know It (I haven't seen the movie yet so I'm not completely sure about that part, but I do know that Kate Winslett, playing a CDC doctor, dies heroically, so it must be really bad, if they kill off one of the stars.) I'm looking forward to seeing it - I've heard it's compelling and scary and good story-telling as well as the subject of some extremely cool but creepy marketing.
But that's not actually what kept me awake last night, even though I was really tired when I finally got to bed. Last night Tom and I watched a movie that we'd had for a while from Netflix, "The Lives of Others." I don't remember why I ordered it - we are always looking for German movies for our German-speaking family members (that would be everyone but me) - but I'm glad I did, and that we watched it before mailing it back.
This 2006 film is about life under surveillance in the former East Germany. I don't want to give away the ending, but it's a compelling story of life under pressure in a country that tried to control what people could read and write. The fonts of every known typewriter in East Germany were identifiable by State Security, and if documents were found with content that wasn't to their liking, there were people whose job it was to identify the typewriter that was used to type it. A untraceable typewriter smuggled from the West plays an important part in the story.
In 1984, when the movie takes place, writing was done on paper with typewriters, making writing an act of great risk in countries totalitarian societies. Of course writing is still risky - journalists and novelists and playwrights and poets and scholars and bloggers still risk imprisonment or worse in many countries around the world. But it's harder and harder to control words - they control the newspapers, you post to the web. They control state television, you post to YouTube. They control the internet, you use a cell phone. Probably the role of social media in the uprisings in the Middle East and north Africa has been overblown, but I am sure that the nearly unrestrained flow of information across borders has contributed to the astonishing events that have taken place this year.
I hope it is not to long before I see a wonderfully compelling movie about how things used to be under an oppressive regime in Yemen or Syria, and I'll look back and say I remember that, I remember when it was like that. Until then, there are still brave people who are putting their lives at risk for a better future for themselves, their children, their country by marching, by writing, by uploading cell phone videos, by fighting well-equipped armies with almost nothing. The best hope for a peaceful future for the region and the world is a rapid transition to democracy. We have a chance, this time, to be on the right side of history.
But that's not actually what kept me awake last night, even though I was really tired when I finally got to bed. Last night Tom and I watched a movie that we'd had for a while from Netflix, "The Lives of Others." I don't remember why I ordered it - we are always looking for German movies for our German-speaking family members (that would be everyone but me) - but I'm glad I did, and that we watched it before mailing it back.
This 2006 film is about life under surveillance in the former East Germany. I don't want to give away the ending, but it's a compelling story of life under pressure in a country that tried to control what people could read and write. The fonts of every known typewriter in East Germany were identifiable by State Security, and if documents were found with content that wasn't to their liking, there were people whose job it was to identify the typewriter that was used to type it. A untraceable typewriter smuggled from the West plays an important part in the story.
In 1984, when the movie takes place, writing was done on paper with typewriters, making writing an act of great risk in countries totalitarian societies. Of course writing is still risky - journalists and novelists and playwrights and poets and scholars and bloggers still risk imprisonment or worse in many countries around the world. But it's harder and harder to control words - they control the newspapers, you post to the web. They control state television, you post to YouTube. They control the internet, you use a cell phone. Probably the role of social media in the uprisings in the Middle East and north Africa has been overblown, but I am sure that the nearly unrestrained flow of information across borders has contributed to the astonishing events that have taken place this year.
I hope it is not to long before I see a wonderfully compelling movie about how things used to be under an oppressive regime in Yemen or Syria, and I'll look back and say I remember that, I remember when it was like that. Until then, there are still brave people who are putting their lives at risk for a better future for themselves, their children, their country by marching, by writing, by uploading cell phone videos, by fighting well-equipped armies with almost nothing. The best hope for a peaceful future for the region and the world is a rapid transition to democracy. We have a chance, this time, to be on the right side of history.
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