1906 San Francisco earthquake - film

I love these old films. They show slices of history in an engaging form.

Excerpt from Library of Congress website:

This film shows the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906, and the devastation resulting from the subsequent three-day fire. The 8.3 magnitude earthquake struck at 5:12am and was centered along the San Andreas Fault, which slices through coastal California. Most of the cities of central California were badly damaged. San Francisco, with thousands of unreinforced brick buildings - and thousands more closely-spaced wooden Victorian dwellings - was poorly prepared for a major fire.

This film is hosted by the Library of Congress. To view go here Your best bet is to click on the mpeg file.  If that link doesn't work try going to http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/papr:@FIELD%28COLLID+sanfran%29 scroll down to number 17. Sorry about the broken links. I can't image what the Library of Congress is doing.

Love,
M

Isn't it amazing

Isn't it amazing how trends, attitudes, and fashion all seem to cycle around?

There are more movements these days than there are days of the week. (yeah I was going to say something else that was totally disgusting but decided against it. It sort of made me throw up in my mouth a bit so I figured I'd save you the details) 

Anyway, these days there is the:

whole food movement, 

gluten-free movement, 

meatless movement, 

lower sugar no high fructose movement

save money, spend less

buy local

you name it there is a movement, diet, foundation, organization, society, charity, cause, or association for it.

Funny thing is during World War I the United States rallied around their troops overseas by becoming Hoover Helpers. It was one cause that encompassed all of the ones listed above and everyone joined.

  

• Save the wheat. 
• Save the meat
• Save the milk
• Save the fats
• Save the sugar
• Save the fuel
• Use perishable food
• Use local supplies

94 years later these have become relevant again. Maybe it's just me (mostly likely since I'm a bit of an anthropology/history nut) but I find this a fascinating bit of social history.

Something else that I like about this is the idea of starting at home to help yourself and the greater collective. I know, I sound like a commune-loving, liberal whack-job who enjoys smoking pot, looking at flowers, singing Kum-By-ya, and holding hands but really if we all thought a little more about helping others and in the process help ourselves wouldn't that make life a little easier? I'm probably talking out of my a$$ but I've been kind of disillusioned lately by the American people and by people in general, including myself. Or maybe it is the winter blues. Whatever.

What do you think? Does anything on this list relate to you? Am I a liberal whack-job? Should I be worried about that?

Just please don't call me a Hooverite.

Love,

M

Moo Cards. this is not advertizing. this is information and adoration.

We buy these awesome cards from Moo Cards. They are little cards about 1 inch by 2 inches. What is really great about these cards and what everyone loves about them is the feel of them. They have this slick heavy feel about them. It's sort of sexy in a paper kind of way.

Added bonus? They have a funny name.

I order about 400 to 800 at a time and give them out like they were water. At $20 for 100 that is cheap advertising.

Here are some of my orders:


Most recent set:

This is the newest one. I had to doctor up the two at the bottom. They didn't fit in the little space provided. They were postcards sent to women suffrage members in the early 1900s. Somewhere, around 1905. The sixth one from the last is a snippet from a wine menu. It and it's Santa cousin (12th from the bottom) are my sleeper cards. The cards that I sneak in that makes everyone say; mmmmmm. Hey, we're a university! If we can put up pictures of naked guys we can have cards with Santa carrying a sack of wine away from a wall of wine barrels.

Second most recent set:

My favorites of this bunch are the cowboy (he is soooo Texas) and the little boy playing the violin. Though the armadillo isn't too bad either. The scary black dude? (#10 from the top) is Tom Blue, General Sam Houston's bodyguard, though I suspect he was called something else by Sam Houston. BTW, Sam Houston is the one before him. I take these images from collections from our digital library or from collections that will be on our digital library soon.

Third most recent set:

There's the little guy with the violin again. I just love him. Right next to him is the beer drinking gun wearing man. He's become our mascot. He pretty much sums up my management style. The rest of these are kind of boring. I hadn't really hit my quirky stride on ordering them at this point. I was still pretty new at my job and hadn't realized what I could get away with. Turns out; a lot!

This is the first set:

Totally uninspiring. All I can say is that I got better.

What I didn't post was a picture of the back of these cards. I have our web address, a sentence about finding images online and my name and email address. I use them for business cards more often than my regular business cards.

I've ordered about 2200 of these over the last year and have been really happy with my paper advertising efforts. Of course, the social media and the search engines actually produce more hits but these are so cool that I'll never give them up.

What's the best thing about Moo Cards is their excellent customer service and friendly emails. Here's the last one they sent me:

Hello

I'm Little MOO - the bit of software that will be managing your order with moo.com. It will shortly be sent to Big MOO, our print machine who will print it for you in the next few days. I'll let you know when it's done and on its way to you.

If you've imported your images to MOO from another site, please make sure you don't remove or change the photos you've chosen from that site until this order has been printed, or some pictures may come out blank.

(If you've uploaded them directly to MOO, then there's no need to

worry.)

I know I'm in good hands with Little Moo.

The informational selection of the week is over. Have I done history yet? No? Never fear I seem to get to it every week.

Love,
M

Historic Maps or what looks like maps but could be something different

Amérique campagne.

CREATED/PUBLISHED

1782.

Camp a Huntz Tavern
These maps were drawn and used during the American Revolution.
They are quite detailed. Especially if you consider that they were drawn before GPS and GIS.
Is it me or does this map look sorta like internal organs?


Camp a Bullion's Tavern
"They come from the book The American Revolution and Its Era: Maps and Charts of North America and the West Indies, 1750-1789 represents an important historical record of the mapping of North America and the Caribbean." This is the quote from the website which is really the quote from the cataloger. Catalogers by nature don't seem to be a really creative bunch. I probably would have described this in a wholly and most likely inappropriate way.



Camp a Philadelphie [sic]
This book consists of about 2000 manuscript (manu = hand, script = written) maps from some of the most famous map makers of the time.
Notice that the map maker tells us which way the river flows. Every important info there. I imagine that it is easier to float your boat down river than up.



Peyton's Tavern

Yes, it does seem like they spent a lot of time at the tavern. I understand totally. The thing is that the tavern was more than a place to buy and drink liquor. Sure, they did that but taverns served as the hotel/diner/polling place/social networking place. Let's call them the Facebook of the 18th century.
Okay, more internal organs map.



Camp a Baltimore

Julie; my map librarian extraordinaire, what does Rade mean in historical map speak?

Want to see more? Want to see them in more detail? Want to zoom in and actually see the detail? Well, you'll need to head on over to the Library of Congress website because the big jerks turned off the right click feature. Making it harder for me to pilfer through their collection.
Check out The American Revolution and Its Era at the American Memory Project.

Have a great weekend everyone!
Love,
M

Ft. Sullivan, May to November 1779

This map is a draft of Fort Sullivan drawn by Col. Israel Shreve's in 1779 during the campaign against the British backed Iroquois Indians.




The fort was situated next to the Tioga River on the Pennsylvania and New York border. If you would like to read more about the campaign click here and here.

Doesn't look too bad for being a couple of hundred years old does it?

Love,
M


PS: Don't forget to enter the "Name this photo" contest from yesterday. Let's give Jen from Sprite's Keeper a little competition.

Where I bore you with historical stuff and shiny objects

These are digital surrogates of some very cool photos. Taken back in the mid-1930s by Luis Marquez. He enlarged and hand-tinted each of the photographs. When you look at the originals you can actually see the paint.

Kodak developed kodachrome and kodacolor film in 1935 and 1942 receptively and AGFA developed a color film in 1936. Unfortunately or fortunately for us, Luiz would not have had access to any of these. Color film was not in use in Mexico until somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 years later.



Luis Marquez was one of a very few Mexican photographers. He also turned out to be one of the more famous ones. Probably because he was very talented.

Though staged these photographs represent aspects of Mexican life and spirituality. You can tell they are staged because if that woman had been walking around without shoes on, her feet would have been dirty. Turns out that Luis was something of a control freak. He collected the costumes for the models to wear, told the models which outfits to wear, and gave them the props and told them how to hold them.

Luis then gave copies of these photographs to the wife of the Texas State Governor, Mr. Allred. Mounted in a tooled leather case. Now, I could chide him for his use of leather as a binding but this would seem a tad bit stupid. One, the guy is dead. Dead people just don't listen real well. Or if they do you can't tell. They just lay there all dead-like. Two, very few people had concerns about animal cruelty and vegetarianism and stuff like that back then.

He gave the photos to the Governor's wife in an attempt to interest them in sponsoring his works. He was looking to get the photos made into postcards. If you have been reading this blog for any length of time you will know that postcards were very popular back in the early 20th century. They were purchased to be mailed to friends and family. They were also highly collected.

By having some of his photographs made into postcards and distributed cheaply Luis would have been able to make a name for himself. Great idea. Too bad it didn't quite work about that way. Or at least, not when it came to the Allreds. They turned out to be totally unhelpful. I'm not sure why. Most likely it didn't fit in with their life plan.

Four of his photos appeared in the May 1937 edition of National Geographic. Which would have been a coup. He also was published in a few other books and guides in the 1950s.

Soon color film made it's way to Mexico and Luis was right there to greet it. Making him progressive and controlling all at the same time. But these personality quirks didn't take away from the grandiose imagery and beautiful colors he achieved in these photographs. Perhaps it helped. His exacting nature makes these more than just snapshots of everyday life but brings them into the realm of still-lifes.

Think of the artistry of not only the composition but the hand painting of these photographs. This guy was incredible and very few people know of him or his work. I didn't until we came across these buried in a box with a whole bunch of the late Governor's things. Then I just had to find out more. It's the plight of a librarian. To always try to find out more.

So there, you made it to the end. You can wake up and take your head off your desks. Please file out quietly.

I'm going to call this my spin for this week. It sort of epitomizes the types of posts I do. Plus, Jen is giving us a free-for-all spin this week and I'm nothing if not opportunistic. She has links of others that are participating. Check them out here.

Love,
M

She's Gone

She's gone. Ten years of taking care of her are over. Granddaddy is still around to take care of. I still have JR and the boys to take care of; which helps but it's just not the same without her. There's a void. I have too much time on my hands. I'm never good when I have too much time on my hands.

At the end I was spending hours upon hours helping her dress and undress, making her meals, then watching so she ate them, taking her to doctors appointments, and reading to her because she just couldn't see well enough and it was her one true passion.

I braced myself to start cleaning out her room. This is really hard. A lot of her life is neatly arranged in this room. Oh, I'd been in it many many times before but now it's empty. Now, it's just stuff. Now it's just her stuff and I'm almost afraid to go in there. Instead of taking out a nightgown out of the drawer for her to wear to bed I'll be packing up those nightgowns forever. It's really hard.

Hauling in boxes, packing tape, and a Sharpie I make my way in to her room. The boys are at school, JR is at work, and Granddaddy is at my house next door taking a nap. I've got a good 2 hours to make a dent in this chore.

First dresser drawer; socks, hose and underwear. This is doable. Nothing here I hadn't delved into before. Just pretend I'm moving her to another room.

Second dresser drawer; nighties, slips and such. I've been in this drawer also. No surprises here. Or were there? Buried deep in the drawer. Wrapped in a full slip hid this little blue book.



Why ever would she hide a book in the bottom of her drawer wrapped in a slip? Unless, of course, the book happened to be titled..........

Sane Sex Life & Sane Sex Living.

This stopped me in my tracks. This I had to read. This I had to show JR. Wait, maybe this was something he didn't want to know about his mother. Was it really hers to begin with?

The copyright on this book is 1919 with reprints in 1922 & 1937. His parents weren't married until 1940. Was this really his mother's book? Did it belong to his grandparents? Maybe, his grandmother passed it on to his mother when she got married? It could have been Granddaddy's book but I really doubted that. Mago's parents were much more well read and would have bought into this kind of thing then Granddaddy's farmer parents.



What and who were the Eugenics people? There was no internet to turn to for information so off to the library I went; dragging 2 elementary age boys and one geriatric man. Sending them off to their respective corners I start my digging.



It seems this group had a vested interest in sex or at least procreation. They believed that you could discourage negative traits and genetic abnormalities by discouraging reproduction between people who had bad traits or bad genes. Sound familiar?


Hitler was all over this shit. I'm pretty sure the Eugenics people didn't mean it to be used quite the way Hitler did but there you have it.


After finding out who the Eugenics people were I came to the conclusion that this book had to have been Mago's mother's book. the Progressive Era was just her cup of tea.

Whoever's book it was originally doesn't really matter at this stage but what does matter is that it give me an interesting look at my mother-in-law and her mother. It gives me an interesting look at how sex was viewed by this particular group at this particular time in American history.

And damn! It's one of the funniest reads I've ever had. I thought so then and I think so now. I did share this with JR years later when the pain of losing his mom wore off a little. We got a good laugh out of it.

Love,
M


PS: enlarge the pictures and read the table of contents and you tell me if this isn't the funniest thing you've read in awhile.

Time Was.....

Time was that this was the way Americans got their news.

From magazines that would send reporters and artists out to the battle fields.
To record the battle with hand drawn sketches.
Talk about embedded reporters.

War was very personal back then.
You looked your enemy in the eye.
Sometimes your enemy was your neighbor, friend or brother.
With technology war has become very impersonal.
It's sad really.

Would we be so eager to engage in war if we had a personal relationship with our opponent?

Love,
M

Sorry about getting all preachy. When I look at magazines from 1864 I can't help but make comparisons.

Ceud Mile Failte

A hundred thousand welcomes to you my friends and

a Happy St. Paddy's day to boot.

Delving deep into my Irish postcards book I've come up with the top 10 Irish stereotype cards.

Number 10
complete with Gaelic greeting.
And may you catch the spirit.

Number 9
Sentimentality


Number 8
Shamrocks


Number 7
Erin Go Bragh


Number 6
Patriotic
(keep in mind that when thee postcards were produce
Ireland was still under British rule)


Number 5
Saucy little Irish lass
Number 4
Bald Monk preaching to frogs.
This one is just a tad strange
Number 3
Possibly drunken revelry

Number 2
Rosy cheeked guy with a mug in his hand.
Hey, you do the math
And the number 1
stereotypical Irishman
expressed in postcard form

Love,
M

Wordless Wednesday - I'm afraid of the tongue

Want to join the fun and literally phone one in today? Go to Wordless Wednesdays

Love,
M

Wordless Wednesday-back when wearing fur wouldn't get you attacked

This is part of the wordless Wednesday mania sweeping the blogosphere. Want to be a lemming like me or see other lemmings? Follow this link.

Love,
M

A couple of tough old birds

I am descended from these two women. The one on the right was my great great grandma and the one on the left is her mother. Let it be said that I don't think I look like either. Thank you God! Then again if I had had their life I would probably look as tough as shoe leather.

Take Grandma Meadows there on the left. She was born in 1813 in Kentucky. It is family lore that she was Cherokee Indian or at least a good part. She married Grandpa Meadows in 1834 and had 12 living children. She lived to be over 100 years old.

Grandpa and Grandma Meadows moved from Kentucky in 1838. I believe that Grandpa Meadows might have been in a bit of trouble with his family for marrying an Indian. I believe this because he is not mentioned again in any other family histories after his marriage and because his grandfather fought these same Indians during the Revolutionary war. Something tells me they were none too happy with him.

My Grandfather remembered Grandma Meadows as never speaking English though she knew it. She only spoke French. I think she was still a little pissed about the whole Trail of Tears thing. Go figure. Even though she wasn't part of it she must have known family and friends that were. It was a good thing that my Great Grandpa Weible spoke French or no one in the family could have communicated with her.

In 1861 her then 53 year old husband up and decided to join the Union army. This would not have necessarily been a bad thing but they were living in a Southern sympathetic county in Missouri. She pretty much told Grandpa Meadows when he was on furlough that they were all moving up north during the war. After almost 30 years of marriage and a dozen kids I'd have been tempted to kick his fool butt out. Leaving her to be terrorized while he went off to play soldier. What was the man thinking? It wasn't like he had any ties to the North. He was a simple illiterate farmer. Whatever his reasons he stayed in either the Union army or the Missouri State militia until April 14, 1864.

After the war they moved to Reynolds County, Missouri where Great Grandpa Meadows died 21 years later in 1885. Grandma Meadows continued to live in the little house in the woods that Grandpa Weible built for her on his property. She had no running water, electricity (pretty sure they didn't have any in the entire county in the 1910s) or a bathroom.

Tough? These two women had to be.

Thus ends our family history hour for today.

Love,
M

Wordless Wednesday so no news

Momento Monday - News

The DIL and I were driving home the other day from work and she's all going on about how we should go through all the family stuff I've been dragging around all these years and how important it is to write stuff down and how the boys won't care, Yada, yada, yada.

Her reasoning (which is probably sound but I don't want to admit it and since she reads this blog she'll know I was listening as she yammered on. Oh well.) is that if I die tomorrow all the stories that I drug out of my mother-in-law will be lost. The problem with this "let's pull your shit out of the closets and disgorge all the family history in your head" theory means that I may just have to do work.
Way too lazy here, folks.
It would be a lot more fun if I could just tease her with bits of information over a long period of time. She's incredibly anal so this would make her crazy. I'm all over that!

I can't torment the boys anymore (they just don't fall for it, the jerks) so I need to have someone to torment. She fits the bill really well.

This is my husband's grandfather. It is his graduation from Pharmacy school portrait.
Isn't he handsome? JR and the youngest Boy look a lot like him.
Get a load of that collar! Bet, made turning his head difficult.

Here is his graduation certificate.
Anyone know where Collingwood, Ontario is?
I think it is north of Toronto.

This is a photo of his mother. Most likely before she had a dozen kids.

Here is the whole family.
Yep, I was right. You have a dozen curtain climbers and you start to look old real quick. I only had 2 and they aged me.
10 boys. Good Grief!
That little girl on the left was probably the worst of the bunch. You know how those babies are. Spoken like a true middle child.

Here are some shots of the older boys.

JR's grandpa moved down to the United States around the turn of the 20th century. He settled in North Dakota and married JR's grandmother in 1911. She was 18 and he was about 36. My mother-in-law was born 11 months later. They then packed up and moved to Montana.

So that ought to be enough info to satisfy the DIL for a while. If not, she'll just have to wait. I can't be expected to spew family history all at once. This is a dish best savored.


Love,
M

If only these were worth something today

This old gentleman was my husband's maternal grandfather. (Isn't JR adorable?)
JR's Granddaddy Bill was quite a character.

He was raised (or at least spent some time) in this house north of Toronto in about the 1870-1880s.
He was many many things.
He trained to be a pharmacist in Canada then immigrated the U.S. in his 20s.
He farmed a bit in Montana
He owned a drug store there also.
During the Great Depression he would trade products in his store for whatever services the people had to offer.
According to my MIL he would bring home men (mostly) for lunch without telling his wife. They would feed them then put them to work for the day. I have hundreds of photos from that time period because of a lot of down on their luck photographers came to his store for supplies. (she usually wasn't pleased. Not because she had to feed them but because then she would have to have her picture taken without dressing up first. I know this because I asked my MIL why her mother always looked a little put out).

He was also a Wildcatter.
He bought hundreds of shares of oil stocks from 1918 to 1927.

The last coupon clipped out of these stocks was September 1928.

Now they are only lovely reminders of him.
We also think that they are beautiful in their own ornate way.
So I guess they are worth something after all.

Love,
M