“When is the Civil War Event at Frugal Muse?” by S.M. O’Connor

“Civil War Women: Spies, Nurses & Soldiers: A Presentation by Author & Historian Don C. White” will take place at Frugal Muse Books, Music & Video in west suburban DuPage County on Thursday, September 19, 2019 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Jon Patterson, a collector of military antiques, will be on hand, as will reenactor Brian Conroy, who will be dressed as a Union Army soldier. This will be an opportunity to learn about roles women played in the American Civil War while viewing artifacts (including muskets, shells, and land-surveying equipment) and archival documents signed by General (and later President) U.S. Grant and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Select items will be offered for sale.

Figure 1 Credit: Frugal Muse Caption: “Civil War Women: Spies, Nurses & Soldiers: A Presentation by Author & Historian Don C. White” is one of the many books-signings and book discussions and other events that take place at Frugal Muse throughout the year.

Frugal Muse Books, Music and Video, also known as Frugal Muse Books & Video, and Frugal Muse Books & Media Superstore, is an independent bookstore in Darien, Illinois, located in a storefront with nearly 7,000-square-feet of retail space in Chestnut Court strip mall at the southeast corner of 75^th Street and Lemont Road. It opened on October 15, 2000 and was part of a small, Madison, Wisconsin-based chain of superstores until manager Paul Garrison and his wife, Robyn, purchased it. There was a grand re-opening under the new ownership on Friday, July 25, 2014. Frugal Muse sells (and buys) a mixture of new and used books, graphic novels, audio-books, C.D.s, movies, and vinyl records, as well as cards, bookmarks, and Frugal Muse t-shirts. They can special order books and audio-books generally for 20% off the list price and offer a discount on used books for teachers, homeschoolers, and librarians.

Credit: Frugal Muse Books Caption: At the time Paul Garrison narrated this advertisement for Frugal Muse, he was the manager, but he and his wife now own the bookshop.

The address is 7511 Lemont Road, Darien, Illinois. The phone number is (630) 427-1140.

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The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.