Lewis Carroll’s book “Alice in Wonderland” keeps sneaking up on me. I’ve found two editions of it hiding among books and small items I’ve picked up in box lots at auctions over the past few months. I can understand why…
Category: Ephemera/Paper/Documents
I was recently thumbing through some old books that I’d found among my box lots from auctions. I usually get medical books, art books, classic novels, cookbooks and children’s books. I opened one hardback book with a maroon…
Recruiting at Howard Univ., 1949 style
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Photos
Anyone who knows anything about HBCUs knows Howard University in Washington. It’s not the oldest of the historically black colleges and universities but it is among the most august. It has a large web of…
Lawn jockey, Underground Railroad and a collection
Posted in Books, collectibles, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, history, and Photos
I met the historian and bibliophile Charles Blockson some years after I arrived in Philadelphia. I had gone to his enclave at Temple University, a small space that housed the thousands of books, manuscripts and artifacts…
A dream book of lottery numbers
Posted in Books, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, history, and Religion
I get a lot of requests from readers wanting to know where to buy a dream book and asking me to look up numbers for them. Please Google “dream book” to find an online store that sells…
The lost art of cookbook advertising pamphlets
Posted in Books, collectibles, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and food
Last week, I wrote about the lithographs on needle packs. They were executed so well that some of them were like works of art. This week, as I was going through my trove of ephemera…
Photos and the stories they do (or not) tell –
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, Photos, and Postcards
As you know, I love old photos. I like to imagine the stories behind each one of them. Who were these people and what were their lives like? I don’t go out of my way…
As spring nudges, a look back at Victory Gardens
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, Gardening, and Home
On my train trips into downtown Philadelphia, I would pass the remnants of a large community garden on a hill right near the tracks. Faded wooden structures, dead weeds, bald patches. It was wintertime and gardening…
At the turn of the 20th century, a census-taker stopped by a rented farm in Monroe County, Georgia, and wrote down the names of my great grandfather, Green Howard; his wife, Rebecca, and their six…
I was reading an article in my local newspaper yesterday about a trial in Munich, Germany, of a man accused of helping to murder 27,900 Jews at a Nazi camp in 1943. It reminded me…