Author: Laura Eppinger

What Do You Call It: Italian Ice? Granita? Water Ice? Where I live, a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia, we call it “water ice,” and most often pair it with a fresh soft pretzel. In this area we can choose between a few bigger names for franchises in the water ice game, but the locally-owned spots have fierce fan bases and inspire hometown rivalries. (My partner and I ate cherry bordeaux water ice from Diane’s Italian Water Ices in Voorhees, NJ after we signed our marriage license, and this will be part of our story forever!) Or, you may call…

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), American poet tied to the Transcendentalist movement, is famous for immortal lines like “O Captain! My Captain!” Less well-known are his penchant for literary gossip and inability to throw a single scrap of paper away, no matter how wrinkled or ratty with time. A Look at Walt Whitman’s Time in Camden Whitman moved from Washington, D.C. to Camden, NJ in 1873; first to live with his brother George. He later bought his own home, a small, wooden-frame, two-story house on Martin Luther King Street (formerly Mickle, as it would have been in Whitman’s time). This was the…

“I am vast, I contain multitudes,” goes one oft-quoted line from “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman. In the American literary canon, the questions and ideas explored in Whitman’s poetry are taught as exploring humanity’s place in the universe; students learn to regard Whitman as philosophical and erudite. But I am here to tell you, you can celebrate the Halloween season with the poetry and biography of “My W.W.” The morbid is absolutely contained within Whitman’s multitudes. Walt Whitman vs. Edgar Allen Poe In 1880, Whitman reviewed a new collection by Edgar Allen Poe in his diary. He was not…

Born Ehrich Weiss in 1874, the man who took the stage name Harry Houdini pushed himself to his human limits as one of the most daring escape artists and stunt performers in recorded history. His search for novelty obsessed him; he allowed the mechanics of handcuffs to obsess him, waking up at 5 a.m. to take apart different pairs for years. He was also ruthless to competitors, sowing rumors in the press about how other escape artists used cheap tricks to accomplish their feats. Houdini didn’t rise to fame simply because he took on grander risks and public stunts; he…

June 18, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte’s retreat at Waterloo, signaled the end of his empire and the beginning of his exile. But Napoleon wasn’t the only Bonaparte on the throne at that time, for he had appointed his siblings to kingdoms across Europe. Napoleon named himself Emperor of France; his brother Louis was crowned King of Holland; the Bonaparte sister Elisa was granted the title of Duchess of Tuscany. All of these reigns ended in 1815, and the Bonapartes scattered to the wind after relinquishing these thrones. Two of Napoleon’s seven siblings lived in the United States at one time or…

March and April 2023 were celebrated as the 111th bloom of Japanese varieties of cherry trees across our nation’s capital city, with an estimated 1.5 million tourists flocking to the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in the Tidal Basin of West Potomac Park. But how these trees arrived and survived is a story with more twists and turns than you may have expected. (Although perhaps not quite as dramatic as episode 49 of The Twilight Zone, where the cherry trees serve as a cue about which year one unfortunate time-traveling protagonist is in at different parts of the story. This is…

Here are the five reasons that the Hadrosaurus Statue in Haddonfield, NJ is giving humanity the side-eye, not including the fact that its eyes always rested on either side of its head because its skeleton was evolved to be that way. Shame on you, this statue of a Hadrosaurus in Haddonfield, NJ says. 1. The “Bone Wars” help humans to remember spectacle over science. The rivalry of Edward Marsh and Othniel Cope, as they excavated hundreds of fossils in the American West and battled to name and claim these “discoveries,” is the stuff of (shameful) legend. The Gilded Age competition…

If America’s City of Brotherly Love is anything, it’s passionate about football. Philadelphia is now infamous for the fan reactions to the Eagles’ victory at Super Bowl LII, which included folks scaling telephone poles and other acts of public debauchery, even though city officials had greased these poles before the game in anticipation of reactions to the final score. (The grease didn’t work and Philadelphians still ascended those poles, hit ’em high, hit ’em low, watch our eagles fly!) Is it racist and problematic that white male fans break stuff on the streets whenever our NFL team definitely wins (or, okay, maybe…