<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Dime Library]]></title><description><![CDATA[Dime Library]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:21:28 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.dimelibrary.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[The Man Who Made the West Wild]]></title><description><![CDATA[150 years ago today. On August 2, 1876, Jack McCall walked into Nuttal &#38; Mann's Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, stepped up behind James Butler Hickok, put a revolver a few inches from the back of his head, and fired. Wild Bill stiffened, fell back in his chair, and never made a sound. Texas Jack Omohundro had known him for eight years. They met in 1868, when a cattle drive left the young Virginian in Hays City, Kansas, where Hickok was serving as a deputy United States marshal. Five years after...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/the-man-who-made-the-west-wild-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a6f60a831cea8f6c2489940</guid><pubDate>Sun, 02 Aug 2026 15:25:31 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_895b230927c94c6ba4421a0bb787eb86~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_960,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Happy Birthday, Texas Jack]]></title><description><![CDATA[One hundred eighty years ago today — July 27, 1846 — a boy was born at Pleasure Hill, his father's farm on Cunningham Creek, a mile and a half west of the courthouse at Palmyra, in Fluvanna County, Virginia. He was the fourth of the twelve children John Burwell Omohundro and Catherine Salome Baker had together, and the first of them born in that house. They named him John Baker Omohundro. Nobody remembers that name. His own family mislaid it. Malvern Hill Omohundro, Jack's much younger...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/happy-birthday-texas-jack-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a67783958b8a8f1abb12bb7</guid><pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:43:24 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_700b7ca168a04e5b9331a3ac3a68fb91~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_907,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Girl Among the Allieve: Marking 140 Years]]></title><description><![CDATA[One hundred and forty years ago today, on July 23, 1886, Giuseppina Morlacchi died at her farm in Billerica, Massachusetts. In her lifetime she was the most famous ballerina in America, "The Peerless" to the press, the woman who introduced the can-can to this country, the first Dove Eye in The Scouts of the Prairie, and the wife of Texas Jack Omohundro. She was buried from St. Joseph's in Lowell, three priests officiating, the attendance small. I had planned to publish a long biographical...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/a-girl-among-the-allieve-marking-140-years</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a6226e9532301fe59f51451</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:57:05 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_57ac377141324544a3a84c449dc26391~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_998,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Legend Maker: Ned Buntline, 140 Years Gone]]></title><description><![CDATA[Edward Zane Carroll Judson died of heart failure at 4:20 in the afternoon on July 16, 1886 — one hundred and forty years ago today — at Eagle's Nest, his twenty-room mansion in the Catskills above Stamford, New York. The funeral two days later was the largest the village had ever seen. The New York Times counted more than eight hundred mourners. Special trains ran on the Ulster and Delaware to bring them in. Nearly two hundred Grand Army of the Republic men marched in the procession, and...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/the-legend-maker-ned-buntline-140-years-gone</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a590970cb28250fe83b258c</guid><pubDate>Thu, 16 Jul 2026 19:17:05 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_9f93e675d0854104ad9f640a5470c26c~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Going Back for Him]]></title><description><![CDATA[A retrospective on the 2026 Texas Jack Association Roundup — and the road to Leadville 2030. I set out from Chattanooga just after five in the morning last Wednesday, driving north toward Richmond, hoping to beat the rush hour through Knoxville and Bristol. It's a long haul to make alone, but I wanted the time. This was my last Roundup as the Association's Vice-President. In October I take over as President, and somewhere, passing from my home state of Tennessee into the Old Dominion state of...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/going-back-for-him</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a4551c35f426652e34318fc</guid><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:05:01 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_6161e21db6e54f2b888481c6cefc8923~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_909,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[A New Photograph Of Texas Jack Junior]]></title><description><![CDATA[On an afternoon in the middle of August 1887, a Liverpool police constable (number 925, the record keeps him that anonymous) arrested a cowboy in Whitechapel and marched him, along with his horse, to the main bridewell. The horse was the charge: the mustang had been ridden through the streets with an unhealed wound festering under the saddle, and the constable meant to have its rider up for cruelty. At the bridewell, though, the officials ran into a difficulty they were not used to. They were...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/a-new-photograph-of-texas-jack-junior</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a2c73fc7d8250bfeab4a1cb</guid><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 21:24:16 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_6acc18743f194bcd949b7ef3e2b23a73~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Cowboy They Built]]></title><description><![CDATA[On the night of June 3rd, 1876, one hundred and fifty years ago, the curtain came down at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware, and Texas Jack Omohundro and Buffalo Bill Cody walked offstage together for the last time. There was no announcement that this was an ending. No reviewer marked it. The two men had stood on stages together for four years, played hundreds of shows from Maine to Texas, and turned themselves from a scout and a cowboy into what Cody called "first-class stars."...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/the-cowboy-they-built</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a2019a07eced14b46ef7d48</guid><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:57:03 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_20a272569ac94deb98833681bbc4a254~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_894,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The "Museum" at the Best Western]]></title><description><![CDATA[A Facebook page called "History Haven, " — 165,000 followers, listed on the platform as a "Museum," with a publicly posted address at 2111 N Lacrosse St in Rapid City, South Dakota — published a post on May 4 about three of the most famous Westerners who ever lived. Within a few days it had picked up over 2,000 likes, 124 comments, and 249 shares. Two things you should know up front. The first is that 2111 N Lacrosse St in Rapid City is the Best Western Ramkota Hotel. Unless the museum is...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/the-museum-at-the-best-western</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fbb2324f7ebdc9f6a3e392</guid><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 21:46:21 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_9ef2ea3fb86c4d058422021aa06734d0~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_844,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[NYMPHS OF THE BALLET]]></title><description><![CDATA[Just four months after her husband Texas Jack Omohundro died of pneumonia in Leadville, his widow was training ballerinas in Philadelphia. This Philadelphia Record dispatch—reprinted in the New Orleans States and New Orleans Item on November 17, 1880—finds Mlle. Morlacchi at the stage door of the National Theatre, sorting some eighty hopefuls into Amazons for the spectacular drama Esmeralda. The reporter, taking her exclamations at face value, files her accent as French. She was Milanese,...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/nymphs-of-the-ballet</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f361f074e706383dae0128</guid><pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:28:33 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_ac2d4fb3f48e45a1a34e591c38a7e121~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_724,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Note on Where Else I'm Writing]]></title><description><![CDATA[In an essay I put up today at matthewkerns.com , there's a passage that a Dime Library reader might recognize as being in the house style: Any major American religion emerging in the 1830s was going to be violent and westward-moving. Not because of specific theology, but because that's what religion becomes under frontier conditions. When expanding territory meets religious authority meets secular resistance, you get Porter Rockwell. The violence isn't incidental to Mormon history — it's what...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/a-note-on-where-else-i-m-writing</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69e3bd80d5f4a61eef2a8930</guid><pubDate>Sat, 18 Apr 2026 17:31:21 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_36a3569c7cbd40cc83826cf7398918f0~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[John C. Reilly Is Buffalo Bill]]></title><description><![CDATA[On April 10th, John C. Reilly steps into the boots of William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody in Heads or Tails , a new Italian-American Western from directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis. And I have to say, I'm excited. Reilly is one of those actors who seems incapable of giving a bad performance. Whether he's breaking your heart in Chicago , making you laugh until it hurts in Step Brothers , or disappearing into the quiet dignity of Stan Laurel in Stan &#38; Ollie , the man finds something...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/john-c-reilly-is-buffalo-bill</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cd1f16f59112f11d9de3d7</guid><pubDate>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:38:07 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="http://youtu.be/7-J68TTWfD0?si=tzKjxasnOReyX_Fy" length="0" type="video"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Remembering Ron Hicks]]></title><description><![CDATA[I don’t remember the first year my friend Tony invited me up to his house for the Fourth of July. I know what the plan was. It was the Fourth, it was his mom’s birthday, and we were going to grill out, eat some of his dad’s smoked pork ribs, shoot off some fireworks, and drink some beers. That was the invitation. That was the door. But when Ron and Ann Hicks opened that door, they opened it wider than I knew. Because the invitation they extended to me, they extended to my wife. And then to my...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/remembering-ron-hicks</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69bc525cc6c9669173c8f15a</guid><pubDate>Thu, 19 Mar 2026 19:45:32 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_1b3ed2c7e0dc44a5b59600f9d08d6ec1~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Remembering "Bobby" Carradine: The Kindness of a Cowboy Nerd]]></title><description><![CDATA[The news of Robert "Bobby" Carradine’s passing at 71 is a heavy blow, not just because of the legendary acting dynasty he belonged to, but because of the specific, gentle light he brought to the screen.  His niece, Martha Plimpton, shared a beautiful tribute noting that of all the eight Carradine brothers, Bobby was "the absolute best" because of his inherent decency and heart. She credited his talent to his kindness—a rare, nonjudgmental love that made everyone around him feel seen. I had...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/remembering-bobby-carradine-the-kindness-of-a-cowboy-nerd</link><guid isPermaLink="false">699d95658133563068c98942</guid><pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2026 12:27:35 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_8604a9d3caea4b7fa5432616b94eed24~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Robert Duvall]]></title><description><![CDATA[Robert Duvall was more than an actor. He was an anchor. As news of his passing at 95 (on February 15, 2026) circulates, it’s hard not to look back at a career that feels less like a filmography and more like a map of the American cinema over the last 60 plus years. Duvall was the ultimate craftsman. He was the "actor's actor" who managed to be a household name without ever losing the chameleon-like mystery of a character performer. Duvall’s film debut was as Boo Radley in the 1962 classic To...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/robert-duvall</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69936b3e7e0fff329611f937</guid><pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 19:16:10 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_117a261005404b19b0b6347c070a4da9~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_620,h_387,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Speaking of Shad Reminds me of Fish]]></title><description><![CDATA[In April 1876, "Texas Jack" Omohundro was in the home stretch of a marathon. He and Buffalo Bill Cody were eight months into a grueling dramatic tour that had begun in Philadelphia the previous August. By the time the troupe arrived for their three-night stand in Rochester on April 10th, they had already traversed the Eastern Seaboard, dipped deep into the South through Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama, crossed into Texas, and battled a Northern winter through the Midwest and Ontario. They had...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/playing-at-salmon</link><guid isPermaLink="false">699310b46afbe985b7a2fd00</guid><pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 13:20:39 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_64445adaf0654e7f978bb29ff91c6f9f~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Valentine's Day 1884]]></title><description><![CDATA[On February 14, 1884, Theodore Roosevelt suffered an unimaginable tragedy, losing both his wife and mother on the same day, in the same house. Theodore Roosevelt 1884 Just two days earlier, his wife, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, had given birth to their daughter. Theodore, who was at that time a young state assemblyman serving in Albany, was urgently called home to New York City because his mother, Mittie, had fallen gravely ill with typhoid fever. By the time he arrived, however, he was met...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/valentine-s-day-1884</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6991eec4743e81fba75bf78f</guid><pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2026 16:18:54 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_97ff29aa230642d995d3e6ee72effc1b~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_820,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Legends in Teacups]]></title><description><![CDATA[In 2000, I boarded a plane for the first time, heading to Los Angeles to meet my friend Amanda and begin our trek following Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature tour. I was a California novice, so she convinced me that Disneyland was a mandatory stop. We eventually made it to the front of the line for the Mad Tea Party, and as we were ushered into our teacup, the next four people in line piled in with us. I sat down, reached for the center dial to spin, and looked up straight into the face of...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/legends-in-teacups</link><guid isPermaLink="false">697d6534fbb82e5a6533e89e</guid><pubDate>Sat, 31 Jan 2026 02:13:25 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_d23395780c4641a8ad9e20f2c3fdf8c6~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_675,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Anatomy of a Plagiarism]]></title><description><![CDATA[It is often said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Though that phrase has often been misattributed to Oscar Wilde, it was actually included in a collection of aphorisms by charles Caleb Colton, printed in 1820, 34 years before Wilde's birth. Sometimes, attribution, like imitation, can be tricky. In the world of history, writing, and research, it has a different name: plagiarism. Recently, a post by @Dr_TheHistories /  @archaeohistories (Dr. Mohammad Firoz Khan) went viral on X...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/anatomy-of-a-plagiarism</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69694415286ae18832d35240</guid><pubDate>Thu, 15 Jan 2026 20:57:33 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_6637f76f5109441f900a2e4b5b8978d2~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_559,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Cow Camp To Kitchen: A Culinary Texas Jack]]></title><description><![CDATA[Continuing our look through the archives of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  (which recently announced it would be shuttering its doors), I came across this curious piece of culinary history from the February 3, 1958, edition. While yesterday we shared the Gazette’s coverage of Texas Jack’s final resting place in Leadville, today we see how his name lived on in the mid-century American kitchen. This recipe for "Texas Jack" —a hearty mix of bacon, kidney beans, and frankfurters served over English...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/cow-camp-to-kitchen-a-culinary-texas-jack</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6966939de0a666a18e6b0110</guid><pubDate>Tue, 13 Jan 2026 18:49:05 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_c1a37be331e344ba8371c2ae4864d19e~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The End of the Gazette]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  newspaper, which has been in print for nearly 240 years since it was founded as the Pittsburgh Gazette in July of 1786, just announced it will cease operations in May. The Post-Gazette was one of the many papers I referenced when I was researching my Texas Jack book, so I thought I would share a few stories from its pages. This one, from the July 25, 1887, edition shares an illustration of the second marker to adorn Texas Jack's grave in Leadville, Colorado. The...]]></description><link>https://www.dimelibrary.com/post/the-end-of-the-gazette</link><guid isPermaLink="false">696691cef1ba376a5bbfd415</guid><pubDate>Tue, 13 Jan 2026 18:41:22 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/104311_efc9fd3be37a4cdbafd97276733727fb~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew Kerns</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>