To celebrate Laura Ingalls Wilder’s birthday — she was born on this day in 1867 — we couldn’t decide whether to churn butter or make a corn-cob doll. So instead we chose to listen to this archived reading by Wendy McClure, and enjoy vicariously her adventures in obsessive Little House on the Prairie fandom. Wendy McClure reading, Live from Prairie Lights,Continue reading “The Wilder Life”
Category Archives: Iowa Digital Library
Driven by love
These transportation-themed (and occasionally offensive, by today’s standards) cards are among the several dozen vintage valentines now featured on our Iowa Digital Library Pinterest site.
A good beginning
Perhaps your New Year’s resolutions include a self-documentation project, like more frequent updates on Facebook, Twitter, or even a good old-fashioned diary? For inspiration, we present Iowa Byington Reed (1851-1936), an Iowa City native, teacher, seamstress, and housewife who wrote daily diary entries covering her life from age twenty to just a few weeks beforeContinue reading “A good beginning”
IDL wishes you HH
Happy holidays from the Iowa Digital Library! Ghosts of Christmas blog entries past:
Food for body and spirit
On the last page of James Doak’s 1760s Art of cookery, following recipes for ketchup and pickled mushrooms, we find what appears to be a catalog of his library, an impressive collection for the time. He lists the classics: Shakespeare, Pope, Cato, Milton, the Bible, as well as some intriguing titles: Whytt on Lyme water,Continue reading “Food for body and spirit”
Nile Kinnick Collection now online
Each fall tens of thousands of people cheer their beloved Iowa Hawkeyes in the football stadium that bears the name of Iowa’s only Heisman trophy winner: Nile Kinnick Jr. Standing only 5’8” tall, Kinnick was a giant among men, a champion athlete and scholar who gave his life for his country serving in World WarContinue reading “Nile Kinnick Collection now online”
Nothing new under the sun: the drought of 1863
From our Civil War Diaries and Letters collection comes a letter from Sam Clark, farming in southern Iowa, to his love interest Tillie in Illinois: Unless we have rain and that very soon the corn crop in this state will be almost a complete failure … The last rain that we have had to amountContinue reading “Nothing new under the sun: the drought of 1863”
Historic heat wave
Recent temperatures in the 100s here in Iowa have us cowering in our climate-controlled offices, but a browse through past heat waves documented in the Iowa Digital Library helps to put things in perspective. Worst of these was the summer of 1936, the hottest on record, marking the end of the Dust Bowl years. AContinue reading “Historic heat wave”
Mail call
In a twelve-page letter from soldier Sam Clark to his sweetheart Tillie Wise back in Iowa, a paean to the power of correspondence to lift the spirits of the troops: “I do think it does Soldiers the most good of any other race of beings to get letters. If you could only see them gatherContinue reading “Mail call”
A Nancy Drew birthday
University of Iowa alumna Mildred Wirt Benson — journalist, pilot, amateur archaeologist, ghost writer, and the original author of the Nancy Drew mystery series — was born on this day in 1905. To mark the anniversary, we’re featuring a gallery of her book covers, from the iconic to the unintentionally terrifying, on our Iowa Digital LibraryContinue reading “A Nancy Drew birthday”