Depression
Leveling hummocks in dust bowl, thirty miles north of Dalhart, Texas. Farmer: “Every dime I got is tied up right here. If I don’t get it out, I’ve got to drive off and leave it. Where would I go and what would I do? I know what the land did once for me, maybe it will do it again.” Son: “It would be better if the sod had never been broke. My father’s broke plenty of it. Could I get a job in California?”
Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration, June 1938. New York Public Library, 48893db0-8d02-0136-6724-1f99981d5ab5.
“Migrant worker looking through back window of automobile near Prague, Oklahoma. Lincoln County, Oklahoma,” The New York Public Library, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/8bfbd237-2cf8-aed1-e040-e00a1806680b.
‘Emigration—Detailing the Progress and Vicissitudes of an Emigrant’ (1833)
Here is a 15-panel satire by C.J. Grant, perhaps meant for working-class Britons. In it, British emigrants could get away from taxes, but expect frightning exotic animals, cannibals, isolation, poverty, and homesickness. Read the panels in high definition at the Library of Congress, and check out Matthew Crowther’s blog post about the artist at Yesterday’s Papers for some publishing context.
Saco River in Conway, NH, just upstream from the covered bridges on afternoon of December 25, 2019.
Mt. Washington from Intervale, NH, on January 31, 2020.
Speaking of imagined walls, here’s one from 1916, courtesy of the Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006681433/.
Female employees of the German munitions factory WASAG in their work clothes, 1916. The one on the right seems to have been “conscripted” (zwangsverpflichtet), though it is unclear on what basis. She was also apparently highly skilled insofar as she was a production manager (Produktionsleiterin) of some kind. Source: Haus der Geschichte Wittenberg, “Arbeiterinnen der WASAG Reinsdorf,” https://st.museum-digital.de/index.php?t=objekt&oges=69193
On a coastal farm in Astoria, Oregon, near Wireless Road, because of the Marconi antennas there
In Astoria, Oregon.
All DC area residents have complaints and even horror stories to tell about the Metro. Since introducing it to children in the family from out of town, I’ve started looking at it with fresh eyes.
Photograph by Mark R. Stoneman (markstoneman.com)
Photograph by Mark R. Stoneman (markstoneman.com)
Photograph by Mark R. Stoneman (markstoneman.com)
Photograph by Mark R. Stoneman (markstoneman.com)