Popular Culture
In which I pull another long-unread book off the To-Be-Read shelf:
There was a time when I felt guilty about the number of unread books sitting on my shelves. They come in faster than I can read them.* I don’t feel guilty anymore. More than once over the course of writing this book, I’ve found exactly the book I need sitting on my shelves waiting its…
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From the Archives: Word with a Past- Vaudeville
Over the last week I’ve spent some time thinking about vaudeville, cabaret, and music halls. I was about to plunge down a research rabbit-hole in service of one throw-away sentence, but historian and writer friend Sunny Stalter-Pace pulled me back from edge. (Sunny is currently working on a book a group biography called Backstage at…
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Mark Twain Wasn’t the Only Famous Person from Hannibal, MO, Pt. 2: Lester Gaba and the “Gaba Girls”
As I mentioned in my last blog post, a small local history museum in Hannibal, Missouri, introduced me to Hannibal-born celebrities who weren’t Mark Twain. One I knew. Two were totally new to me. Next up, Lester Gaba, who parlayed a talent for carving soap into an unlikely career, and stumbled into celebrity in the…
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