Shorpy: Homestead Factory Town, 1910

Factory Town: 1910

Homestead, PA. Homestead Steel Works, Carnegie Steel Co., 1910.

What do you do with a canal to the moon?

This is a delightful song from episode 400 of This American Life. It's all about the Erie Canal and the trials and tribulations of dealing with semi-obselete historical-industrial infrastructure:

http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/special/400_Bonus_Nancy_song.mp3

Rad!

Parks-in-progress! Labor history! Community comment!

Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study Newsletter #1

http://www.facebook.com/chavezstudy

Right now! The National Park Service is conducting a series of public meetings on a special resource study to consider designating an NPS site or affiliated area in recognition of Cesar Chavez and the farm labor movement. Circle-chairs and a flip chart! I think I've just identified my NPS dream job: Public Meeting flip-charter, extraordinaire.

A recent public meeting on the Chavez Special Resource study.

This would be (I think) the first NPS area dedicated primarily to an exploration of the history of organized labor/labor organizing. The national park system doesn't need to (and shouldn't) try to represent every major theme and prominent moment in our national heritage. But the combination of a unique and broadly relevant story, and a significant number of meaningful historic locations that could be included in a park or trail, gives this proposal real promise.

[I suppose I would think so.]

The really exciting part of this process is the Park Service's commitment to holding a well-organized series of public comment meetings, not as an afterthought or gesture, but (it seems), as an actual, integral part of the planning process. There are big, basic questions -- where would it be? how would it be organized? where does local community need and interest lie? These public meetings should really be able to shape the answers.

See newsletter #1 for a schedule of meetings (sorry, AZ and CA only) and more info.

And, a little debate on the subject: http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2011/05/should-cesar-chavez-site-be-added-national-park-system8070

Free stuff for when you don't have a budget: DIY clip art

Clip art is the worst! It's generic and cheesy. It's not cohesive -- start using it and next thing you know you've got ten images in ten different (cheesy) styles.

I won't go on. If you want to read a longer and more articulate rant against clipart, see Interpretation by Design: Why Clip Art is Evil.

But what's a museum kid to do? Your supervisor want a snappy poster for next month's family program! You don't have a budget! Clip art is free...colorful...tempting. I'll admit, I've done it.

As suggested in the aforementioned Interpretation by Design posting, making your own can be a great alternative. It takes a little more time -- second only to budgets in things you probably don't have...but it's fun, reusable, and in my possibly irrational opinion, totally worth it!

Ok, I'm a pretty terrible artist, but here's how I got my hands on some free, cohesive, non-generic, and pretty cute -- if I may say so -- images for a recent programming publication. Maybe this is obvious...but it took my a while to get it right:

1. Find some pictures of whatever you want on Google Image Search.
2. Print them out.
3. Draw over the important part of the image with a black Sharpie.
4. Put a blank piece of paper on top and trace your underlying Sharpie lines in pencil. 
5. Make any alterations and adjustments to your pencil-image.
6. Retrace over the pencil lines in Sharpie.
7. Put ony more blank piece of paper on top and trace your underlying Sharpie lines in Sharpie -- this creates a clean, pencil-free copy.
8. Find a coworker who has a scanner, and scan your clean, 3rd-generation Sharpie images from step 7.
9. Use 'em! (You can use a really basic free photo editor like MS Office Picture Manager or even...Word...to clean them up. With black and white line images I'd recommend upping the contrast as much as possible and setting the white background as the transparent color before you drop them into your publication.)

Results -- not exactly the work of a professional artiste, but a great alternative for interesting, professional-looking, kid/family-oriented publications:

The Memory Keeper

Yankee Magazine? Yankee Magazine! The Memory Keeper -- worth a read.

Joe Manning's Lewis Hine Project is an ongoing attempt to track the lives and descendants of hundreds of young mill workers photographed by Lewis Hine throughout Massachusetts as part of an early 20th century National Child Labor Committee investigation. Hine photographed kids at work in mills, mines, sweatshops, and farms around the country. As a snapshot of the history of work and exploitation, the photos are powerful; but what happened to these kids? Finding out how their stories played out is an incredibly compelling way to more deeply understand the history, meaning, and experience of work in people's lives.

Seems like this collection is ripe for such efforts around the country...anyone heard of other individuals, museums, or organizations attempting to track the lives and descendants of Hine's subjects?

From the article:

"These children returned to their spinning machines and their looms and went back to work. They grew up and lived their lives. Many of them likely forgot their brief encounters with Hine. Almost none of them ever saw their photographs or heard how they were used.

"For me, this is an enormous album of unfinished stories," Manning says, gesturing to his binder. Hine had taken only snapshots: two-dimensional renderings of a single moment in time. Manning needs more than that: "I look at one of these kids, and my reaction is: Whatever happened to this kid? Is that it? Is this all I know? Is this all I'll ever find out?" That's Manning's goal: He wants to find out what happened next."

Featured folks from the article:



Dana Smith for Yankee Magazine, 2011. Jenn Ford, great-granddaughter of Mamie Laberge, with her great-grandmother's photograph.



Lewis Hine, 1911. Library of Congress. Mamie La Barge at her machine. Under legal age. Location: Winchendon, Massachusetts.

Lewis Hine took many more pictures of Mamie Laberge and her family during his visit to Winchendon than are featured in the article. Check them out at the Library of Congress.