THE LATE 19th

It happens every year at this time.

We get involved in so many traditional doings: gift shopping, the sending of cards, the viewing of certain movies and reading certain books and thinking of days so long ago…

And it hits us that so many of our favorite and important memories and conveniences and cultural innovations had their significant takeoffs within just a few years of each other.

Marshall Fields; Macy’s; J.L. Hudson’s; New York Central Park; Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive; the Great American West [the legendary truths]; innumerable magazines and newspapers still vital (albeit evolved) to this day; thousands of townhouses in London, New York, Chicago, etc., still in good shape serving a variety of needs;  births of so many technical innovations – the forerunners of much we take so for granted today: sewing machines, elevators, ice machines, steel companies, internal combustion engines skyscrapers, medical advances; Christmas cards and Christmas trees; Sherlock Holmes and public awareness of Charles Dickens…I could go on.

The brevity of this list displays several realities: I have not taken the time to even approach completeness; forgetfulness; and ignorance of lots and lots of good stuff.

Thank goodness I do not depend on this journal for an income.

But enough.

All the enumerated above came to be in the late 19th Century…all within a few years of each other.

We think of our present as a time of great innovation.

And it is.

But what a prodigious era of development was the late 19th as well.