The Diary of Abba Owen

Newest chapter in an ongoing serialization of the 1888 diary of Abba Owen, daughter of Ypsilanti mineral water baron Tubal Cain Owen and Anna (Stowe Foote) Owen. The Owens lived in a now-vanished house near the current day Roosevelt School building on EMU, where Tubal also had his magical and very profitable well.

Friday Oct. 26th: It has been a rainy day. Richard did not take his violin lesson because he was sick. Sen telephoned from Ann Arbor this afternoon saying he would come down to-morrow and bring one of his room-mates. Prof. Luderer stayed over to-night from the ten o'clock train. I did not see him for he came when I was in bed and went before I got up.

Saturday Oct. 27: It rained hard this morning but cleared up this afternoon and was [real] warm. Suv arrived at half past eleven accompanied by his friend and room mate Mr. Moore. This afternoon Eber and Richard took them to ride and see the city.

This evening we played six-handed euchre Eber, Suv and I played against Mr. Moore, Richard, and Mama and our side beat. They went home on the 9 o'clock train for their other room mate is going to sing a solo at the Congregational Church and as they wanted to get home to-night. The wind blew quite hard to-night and it is cooler.

Sunday Oct. 28: This has been a pleasant day but colder than yesterday. Mama, Grandma and I went to church this morning. They used to have a chorus choir but they have changed and had a quartet. Miss Satsun soprano, Miss Barnard alto, Mr. Pease tenor and Mr. Spaulding bass and we like it much better.Eber Mama and I went to church again this evening.

Monday October 29th: It has been a lovely day. Mama, Grandma, and I went to Detroit this morning at 7 o'clock. We went in to shop. Just as we had got through with our dinner and were walking towards the Russel House who should walk up behind us but Uncle Criss Potter and I can tell you we were surprised for we thought he and his family were abroad but he said they had been home a month. He said he had telephoned to Papa saying that he would be out to Ypsi, on the half-past one o'clock train so we parted.

We did not come back until the four o'clock train and when we got down to the depot at Detroit who should [we] see but Uncle Cain. It seems he got left on the other train so we all came out together which was very pleasant.

Uncle Cain took Jim and Agnes around with him and they met Aunt Nell, Gertrude, and Margaret, and stayed traveling around France, Switzerland, and England for about 3 months and then all came home together. He said they were all sick both going and coming.

Uncle Cain said when he went over it was so foggy that you could not see from one end of the boat to the other and they blew the fog-horn every minute and he said all the family were very glad to get back home.

We also met Mr. Mervin on the street and he said he was coming out to Ypsi in a few days. Uncle Cain went home on the 9:30 train.

Eber went over to the first lecture in the Normal Lecture Course we all have tickets for the whole course but Eber was the only one that went. Mr. [blank space] lectured on the Arctic Regions and Eber enjoyed it very much.

Tuesday Oct. 30th: This morning Miss Morton came to do some sewing for us. Papa received a telegram from Uncle Cain wanting him to come over to Chicago so Papa went to-night on the half past nine o'clock train.

I went over to our musical club this afternoon and we had a very nice time. Mr. Panne [?] brought 15 copies of a trio and made it a present to the club and we practiced on it and it went very nicely.

I took my violin lesson this morning. There was a man from an Ann Arbor green-house around to-day selling Chrysanthemums and they were the prettiest ones I have seen and mama bought 5 of them and they are lovely.

Wensday Oct. 31st: To-day has been warm and pleasant. Mama and Grandma went down town this afternoon and I was down to Grandpa's [walking?] arrived and Mr. and Mrs. Bloon drove in and so I entertained Mrs. Bloon until grandma came back. We walked all around the two places and did not go in the house for it was so warm that we thought it pleasant out doors.

Mama went to the wedding reception of Miss Kate Glover to Mr. S. Soring Brooke. They were married at seven o'clock and the reception was from eight to ten after which they started for Boston which is to be their home. There were a great many people at the reception and she had a great many beautiful and valuable gifts. Her father made her a present of a $6,000 check [$141,444 today]. We had a rain shower about half past seven this evening.

Thursday Nov. 1st, 1888: This had been a lovely warm day just like Spring. Grandma and I walked down to church this morning but we made a mistake in the hour and so church was over when we got there so we turned around and came back.We had a very slight sun shower about noon and that is the sign that it will rain tomorrow.

Friday Nov. 2: It has been windy all day and it rained pretty nearly all the morning. Eber has gone to Lyceum this evening at the Union School.

Thanks for reading! Tune in next Tuesday for another week of Abba's diary!

Allie McCullough, Othello, and Texting

Dusty D has been reflecting on the fact that in the last diary excerpt, Allie said she had been reading "Othello." Not for school, but for leisure. She said she didn't like it much--which means she was also able, at 16 years of age, to assess and evaluate one of the greatest works in the language. She absorbed the content and formed an opinion.

Dusty D does not know of any 16-year-old in Washtenaw County who would not only read Othello for pleasure but be able to express an opinion on it.

Contrast this to the recent NYT story about a family, each of whose members are avid, day-long users of screen culture. Each member of the family checks their cell or computer first thing in the morning--even before breakfast, to which Mom summons them by texting.

How does a given medium shape its content, and how does that particular rendering of content shape our ideas of the nature of knowledge and communication and our technique of processing it?

Allie's world had one medium: print. Her usage of media involved the active technique of reading, in which the reader is actively making sense of the text, proceeding at one's own pace, and in the quiet of the mind forming questions and making evaluations. The medium allows for long, complicated sentences and ideas which we also see in her pastime of attending her Lyceum oratory club. For fun, she attended several hours of oratory at each club meeting. Don't forget the commencement exercise at Normal, which featured a slate of speakers whose number is unimaginable by today's standards.

The medium's content, in something like Othello, is contextualized. Events take place within a long narrative, like the long political essays in the papers of her day. Information is not a hodgepodge of snippets of decontextualized short bits, as in a modern news show or a text message or the average Internet browse.

Dusty D would posit that the media available to Allie, and the lack of such constant modern-day distractions as cellphone rings, conditioned her mind to be better able to weigh complex ideas, form lucid and organized oratory of her own to read at the Lyceum (where her talents were recognized), and have overall a richer and sturdier life of the mind than the average teen today. Her mind was furnished with Hepplewhite. Not Ikea.

Ypsilanti Teen Diarist Allie McCullough at an 1874 Open Mike Night

Kind readers may recall that Allie speaks often of the "Lyceum." What was it?

It was an Open Mike Night at which members read aloud their original essays. Like a Poetry Slam--except it was a Prose Slam. With no mikes.

In the old papers, DD has seen mention of 3 Lyceum "clubs" in Ypsilanti in Allie's day. There was one at the Normal School (EMU). There was the Union Lyceum in which Allie participated--this appears to have been for high school students. And around this time something called the "People's Lyceum" was being organized.

This was considered entertainment.

Allie was good at it, though. She actually appeared in the Ypsilanti Commercial of June 20, 1874, in an article covering the Union Lyceum meeting that praised her talk. Her essay, "Step by Step," dealt with the incremental progressive steps we must take in order to improve various aspects of our lives. She later was elected an officer in the club.

Most of the Lyceum topics were ones that to modern sensibilities would seem unbelievably trite, pedantic, and didactic. It's hard to get into the 19th-century mindset and grasp how anyone could sit through these talks instead of, say, trimming one's toenails. But this was a popular pastime, in a society with no radio, no telephone, no movie theater, no TV. Faced with the absence of those things, I might wander down to the Lyceum hall too, to see what my friends were presenting on.

But judge for yourself. Here is the program for the June 20, 1874 Lyceum Allie participated in:

1. Prayer by Rev. Mr. Tindall.
2. A capella number: "The Stars that are Shining Above Us"
3. Oration by T. H. Holmes: "Delusions"
4. Essay by Allie McCullough: "Step by Step"
5. Musical trio: "Wake, Gentle Zephyr"
6. Oration by A. B. Hawkins: "The Land of Our Pride"
7. Essay by Jessie Hendricks "Extravagance"

[intermission time yet? NO!]

8. Oration by Frank Herald: "Marks" [we leave in history]
9. Musical duet: "Hunting Song"
10. Humorous essay by Lydia Day on "Seminary Times"
11. Oration by A. E. Lucking: "The Policies of the Nations"
12. Benediction by Rev. Mr. Tindall.

Phew. But you have to hand it to them: they made their own evening of entertainment without pricey gewgaws or glowing screens. DD admires that self-reliance. I still don't want to sit through one of these, though.