The 30 | Death
At least nine people died from the fires that resulted when a train with nearly 170 school teachers aboard crashed in eastern Pennsylvania in April 1911. In...
The 30 | Wonder
You might recognize the polka dots of a Wonder Bread store in Wyoming. / LOC Take heart if you dread another year-end, best-of list. I promise this...
The 30 | Friends
Sweaty friends and sunrise, all for zero dollars. / Photo credit: fellow running and pie enthusiast Matt Anzur. Many of us move through life like rockets on...
The 30 | Identity
Fans of Hocus Pocus will recognize the Old Burial Hill Cemetery, a 17th-century graveyard in Marblehead, Mass. / Dustin Renwick All Hallows Eve allows us to...
The 30 | Menu
Two boys hoist produce at a roadside stand in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1936. / LOC Late last month and earlier this month, I finished reading two books about...
The 30 | Strike
Sandlot baseball has not changed much in a century, shown here in 1918. / LOC A month like this generates easy existential fodder -- how do any of us produce...
The 30 | Scattered
Glittering pieces adorn the Resurrection Chapel of the Washington National Cathedral. / Dustin Renwick A bucket of mosaic tiles tossed into a tornado. That...
The 30 | Cloudy
Sunset over Lake Michigan belies the reality that it rained every day on my vacation. / Dustin Renwick A triathlon teammate told about a cycling trip on...
The 30 | Quoted
John Reynolds performs a stunt in the District of Columbia in 1917. / Library of Congress Fun fact: the Netherlands produces almost one billion tons of...
The 30 | Seeing Space
Introspection via selfie isn't new (no caption except circa 1915). / Library of Congress The eyes had it this month, including some entertaining data...
The 30 | Backstory
A peek inside the machinery. / Dustin Renwick The act of completing a piece art necessarily removes the mess from its creation. A final product -- whether...
The 30 | Dive
Josephine Bartlett dives into Sheepshead Bay, New York City, in July 1914. / The Library of Congress While pacing through a piece about how our brains...
A Short Prologue
Exploring the world through words and pictures consumes a fair bit of my free time as a writer and a professional curious person. Since 2011, I've used...