Before there was Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School on Boul Wash, there was Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High, and before that, Emerson grade school. There still is the Emerson Library at Brooks. Old names fade away. This Emerson fellow bears looking into.
He was America’s chief public intellectual, to use a hot phrase of a few years ago, in the first half of the 19th century-“America’s greatest idealist thinker, America’s most peculiar thinker,” said the late James Tuttleton of New York University. He gave speeches and wrote essays, and people paid attention to him. So should we, especially Emerson students, teachers, alumni, parents, and anyone else who lives or ever lived or will live in Oak Park.
There’s more more more of this by me at the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park & River Forest.
Blithe Spirit 
Sweet blog. I never know what I am going to come across next. I think you should do more posting as you have some pretty intelligent stuff to say.
I’ll be watching you . 🙂
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