More Shorpy

Shorpy continues to be one of my favorite blogs--"the 100-year-old photo blog" as it bills itself.  Here, a few recent images that struck me.  Each is linked to the larger original on the Shorpy site--to get the full effect (particularly of Winter Crossing, the railcar ferry), you should click through (new window).

A little person wearing a Coolidge ribbon (identified by readers as soprano Hansi Herman, of Rose's Royal Midgets).  What part of cigarette-smoking, fur-wearing, Coolidge-supporting, performing German midget seems politically incorrect to you?

Detroit, winter 1900.  The heart of the civilization of the great industrial age.  Steampunk has become a weirdly dominant subgenre, and this image shows why, even though no one would actually want to be standing out their amid the jagged ice floes and cutting winter wind, and even though most steampunk tends to the Victorian rather than the American Renaissance--somewhere at the other end of this stands a Stanford White palazzo, and....

This isn't Evelyn Nesbitt, despite my mention of Stanford White.  The original Gibson Girl?  Someday you'll see my mystery novel that takes place in the world of White, Saint-Gaudens, and the invention of the Adirondack style.

Or maybe you won't.  But it's fun to think about.

And, just to show that everything isn't in glorious black and white, a 4x5 Kodachrome from 1942