Friendship Botanic Gardens is a 106-acre nature preserve at the eastern edge of Michigan City, Indiana, just a mile from the beautiful beaches of Lake Michigan. Its intriguing history dates back 80 years to the time it was founded as International Friendship Gardens and Music Festivals. Some of its ethnic gardens are still in existence, plus towering trees planted by the original developers, spectacular displays of roses and lilies, notable sculpture, a newly established children's garden, and a Symphony Garden that features musical events ranging from light opera to pop rock. The gardens are open to the public during the blooming season (May through October) and for special seasonal events such as maple syrup tree-tapping (in February) and a Thanksgiving Day walk.
Situated along the southern shores of Lake Michigan, between Mount Baldy and the Indiana-Michigan border, is a unique Midwestern landscape. Established at the foot of Hoosier Slide, a natural landmark, Michigan City had attracted a diverse group of pioneers, industrialists, and fun-lovers by the late 1800s. Hoosier Slide is now gone. While the rugged dunes in the east have been replaced by resort communities, the beauty that first captivated settlers is as evident now as it was in the early part of the 20th century.
What happens when a meagerly-educated peasant girl is chosen in 1903 to leave her family and accompany her illiterate godfather from Europe to the Midlands of America? Young Anna Barbara Mrkvicka left the dirt floor of her over-crowded one room home to enter an unknown world and overwhelming challenges at every turn. Through Different Eyes describes the back-breaking peasant life of that era. Anna worked in the fields at six years of age. It travels with the young peasant in steerage on a daunting ocean voyage, and it reveals the frustrating immigrant experience of Ellis Island. It explores the sounds and smells of sleeping for six weeks on steamy tenement rooftops of New York Citys dangerous Lower East Side, sometimes with a knife handy for protection. The journey includes a lengthy train ride into the Heartland of the United States, reveals the anxiety of arriving to work with strangers on an isolated farmstead in early Iowa. With no way to learn the English language of America, for three hard years the frightened girl was unable to escape an abusive step-aunt. She was neither paid for her exhausting farm work nor allowed enough to eat; she was beaten. Yet Anna not only miraculously survived her ordeals, her grit and determination at last enabled her to bring all seven members of her family and a foster brother to Iowa in 1909. It was just in time; World War I was threatening to engulf Europe. After years of research, this creative biography honors all unsung immigrants like young Anna. It pays homage to the millions of men and women who desperately struggled to transplant their family lives to the freedom of Americatheir precious gift to those of us so privileged to be citizens of this great land.
Bolshevik Women is a history of the women who joined the Soviet Communist Party before 1921. The book examines the reasons these women became revolutionaries, the work they did in the underground before 1917, their participation in the revolution and civil war, and their service in the building of the USSR. Drawing on a database of more than five hundred individuals as well as on intensive research into the lives of the most prominent female Bolsheviks, the study argues that women were important members of the Communist Party at its lower levels during its formative years. They were lieutenants, printing leaflets, speaking to crowds, and running party operations in the cities. They also created one of the most remarkable efforts to emancipate women from traditional society of the twentieth century. This book traces their fascinating lives from the earliest years of the revolutionary movement through to their old age in the time of Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
This examination of illustrations in early American books, pamphlets, magazines, almanacs, and broadsides provides a new perspective on the social, cultural, and political environment of the late colonial period and the early republic. American printers and engravers drew upon a rich tradition of Christian visual imagery. Used first to inculcate Protestant doctrines, regional symbolism later served to promote reverence for the new republic. The chapters are devoted to momento mori imagery, children's readers, visionary literature, and illustrated Bibles. One chapter shows the demonization of the Indians even as the Indian was being adopted as a symbol of America. Other chapters deal with propaganda for the American Revolution, canonization of leaders, secularized roles for women, and socialization of sites in the new nation.Throughout, analysis of image and text shows how the religious and the secular contrasted, coexisted, and intermingled in eighteenth-century American illustrated imprints. Barbara E. Lacey is a Professor of history at St. Joseph College. It includes more than 110 illustrations.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.