November's blog: The Virtual Dime Museum
This month's featured blog,
the Virtual Dime
Museum,
is a shift from personal history --
October’s Melindaville
-- to popular
history, offering a change of pace for November.
The Virtual Dime Museum provides a peek at
advertisements, news stories, and sundry
entertainments from the mid-1800s into the early 20th
century. It is full of oddities and bizarre medical
concoctions, sideshows and haunted houses. Writer
Lidian, born and raised in New York City and now
living in Canada, has created an entertaining and
well-written three-ring circus of pop history,
Brooklyn and New York history, and Victorian pop
culture.
Whether it’s digging up an 1896 item about a skeleton hand found in Flatbush or profiling Victorian fascinations such as the animated bust, Lidian brings a sense of humor to the Virtual Dime Museum. Her interests in genealogy and history combined with her mad research and writing skills results in a diverting and dryly funny read. And if you like your pop history a little more recent, check out her other blog of kitsch and camp, Kitchen Retro.