Skip to main content

This just in from the late 1890s

By













I know it's not the weekend, but was sure this was an appropriately historical photograph.

Meander away.

Comments

  1. avrdsNovember 12, 2009 at 4:59 AM

    A little photographic history to go with it:

    http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/11/style/20091112-tin-slideshow_index.html

    It appears that the 1890s must appear somehow idyllic after all we've gone through recently.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonNovember 12, 2009 at 8:25 AM

    Fun photograph. Nice idea going back to "tintypes" for ad campaigns. Fits the Ralph Lauren image.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TripplerNovember 12, 2009 at 6:04 PM

    nice pics - those dudes are sporting some cool duds

    ReplyDelete
  4. James FergusonNovember 13, 2009 at 12:08 PM

    Finally received my copy of Zeitoun. Handsome little book. Anyone interested in joining me in reading it sometime soon?

    ReplyDelete
  5. James FergusonNovember 13, 2009 at 3:24 PM

    Don't know why the blogs are not updated fully, but I've added new material to Vilnius Daze since 4 weeks ago.

    ReplyDelete
  6. avrdsNovember 13, 2009 at 5:17 PM

    Glad you all enjoyed this photo flash from the past. I really did fall for this one, assuming it was historical. Some of the others are obviously of this era -- in fact some seem downright campy. (Thank goodness puget isn't around to jump all over that comment!)

    ReplyDelete
  7. avrdsNovember 15, 2009 at 4:42 PM

    In a true Sunday morning meander, it's very overcast and cold here this a.m. but the sun must have peeked through somewhere to the east of the mountains because the snow atop of snowbowl, the local ski hill that I see from my living room, just lit up a bright pink.

    Now it's gone, but nice to know the sun is out there somewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  8. avrdsNovember 16, 2009 at 10:38 PM

    Hunger in America:

    The number of Americans who lacked reliable access to sufficient food shot up last year to its highest point since the government began surveying in 1995, the Agriculture Department reported on Monday.

    In its annual report on hunger, the department said that 17 million American households, or 14.6 percent of the total, “had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year.” That was an increase from 13 million households, or 11.1 percent, the previous year.

    The results provided a more human sense of the costs of a recession that has officially ended but continues to take a daily toll on households; it describes the plight not of a faceless General Motors or A.I.G. but of families with too little food on their children’s plates.


    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/us/17hunger.html

    ReplyDelete
  9. avrdsNovember 19, 2009 at 10:49 PM

    An interesting debate on Afghanistan:

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113735039

    There's a link there for the debate as well as a transcript. I found it fascinating -- particularly since Steve Coll argues for staying there.

    ReplyDelete
  10. avrdsNovember 19, 2009 at 10:58 PM

    This looks like an interesting series. Haven't listened to this one, but might at some point, assuming I can stomach it:

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97752303

    ReplyDelete
  11. James FergusonNovember 20, 2009 at 12:40 PM

    There's some funny things going on in posting order, throwing Mencken and Ragtime out of order, but I guess as long as the posts get on the screen thats OK.

    ReplyDelete
  12. James FergusonNovember 20, 2009 at 1:49 PM

    There were a couple of floating "drafts" that seemed to throw things out of order. I deleted them.

    ReplyDelete
  13. avrdsNovember 22, 2009 at 2:01 AM

    If you are particularly bored this p.m., you can listen to the "debates" about whether or not to "debate" the health care bill in the Senate here:

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22886841#22886841

    I'm sure CSpan is also carrying them live.

    I've been listening to bits and pieces of the so-called debate until I can't stand it anymore and then have to hit mute. How in the world did these people get into such positions of power in this country?

    ReplyDelete
  14. James FergusonNovember 24, 2009 at 1:58 PM

    Still posting out of order. Please take note of Jonathan Safran Foer's new book "Eating Animals." I updated the settings so will see if that does any good in the future.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

By
A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...
170 comments
Read more