Thomas Edison Archive
An Angel Choir, Titans of Industry, and a Writers’ Festival: Western New York’s Chautauqua Institution
When I arrive in early June to teach at the Writer’s Festival, the Chautauqua Institution is a ghost town. The lake laps against the shoreline and the proliferation of white wicker chairs on the historic Athenaeum hotel veranda are mostly empty.
Upton Sinclair, the spirit of Sophocles, and me: a Visit to Lily Dale
In 1922, writer and spiritualism convert Upton Sinclair wrote, “You may go to Lily Dale … and in row after row of tents, you may hear and even see, every kind of spirit you ever dreamed of, ringing bells and shaking tambourines and dancing jigs. And you may