Odd Bits
Queen Magrethe I, Pt. 2
One of my favorite things about writing this blog is the conversations I have with my readers about the subjects of my posts, or in fact about history in general. This morning I got a sidebar to the life of Queen Margrethe I from textile maven Julie Holyoke, who is my cousin by marriage and…
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From the Archives: Joan of Arc and the French resistance
More than once in the last few years, I’ve stumbled across stories in old issues of the Chicago Tribune that caught my imagination even though they did not deal with my current project. This headline from May 13, 1945, grabbed my attention: “FRANCE HONORS JOAN OF ARC AS ‘FIRST PARTISAN’. “ The piece began “The…
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Building Blocks
I’ve lived in Chicago since the fall of 1980, but I never noticed that the street side of the Tribune Tower is embedded with stones from famous buildings around the world until recently. The trigger for me was correspondence from Sigrid Schultz detailing her successes and failures in acquiring, authenticating, and shipping stones to the…
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