How to Work Better

Mural in Zurich:

http://www.swiss-miss.com/2011/08/how-to-work-better.html

Pickle Party! Immigration and Pickle History in the NYT, and in Lowell

Nice article I failed to link to a couple weeks ago when it was published in the New York Times: Immigrant Identities, Preserved in Vinegar?

One of the biggest battles over assimilation occurred a century ago in New York City, and the battleground was food. Politicians, public health experts and social reformers were alarmed by what they saw as immigrants’ penchant for highly seasoned cooking...Strongly flavored food, these officials believed, led to nervous, unstable people. Nervous, unstable people made bad Americans.

No immigrant food was more reviled than the garlicky, vinegary pickle. 

Speaking of which...Seeing as early-20th century immigration and industrial history are deeply interconnected pieces of our country's evolving story, Lowell National Historical Park presents Immigrant Food Traditions: Pickles on September 8 at 7:00 p.m. Demonstration, talk, and a movie! Check it out!

So, kosher dill or half-sours? Is there really any contest?

This is the best I can get at the supermarket in Mass., ok? Yum.

Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies

Artist Rachel Herrick's "Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies" is a pretty unique contemporary art endeavor. It has nothing to do with industrial history, but puts a sharp lens on museums, among other things, and I feel like blogging about it.

From her website, "MOCS and my work with North American Obeasts satirize the social stigma around fatness through the legitimizing tropes of science."

I won't explain it much more than that...just go check out the website: http://www.obeasts.org/.Working alongside the unique satirizing of social stigma, the work is a smart, surreal reflection of the formal power of (slick, modern) museum convention and conservation narratives. The website is pretty uncanny...sharp, unsettling, clever, museum-y.

Physical exhibition on view at the Maine College of Art! "MOCS @ICA Portland," advertises the MOCS website. "Dang, this looks interesting, they must mean Portland, Oregon," I thought. Imagine my pleasant surprise when it turned out to be Maine! Exhibition closes June 12; as soon as my decrepit car gets fixed I'm schlepping up to Portland. Updates to follow.

Shorpy: Homestead Factory Town, 1910

Factory Town: 1910

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

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.

Link: The "Dot Room" Video

And now, a brief interlude for something delightful on a Saturday morning. I think this video perfectly encapsulates a peak museum experience:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanhelsington/4176481018/

I'm not usually much for cute vids, but...this is super cute. So there.

[By way of Hyperallergic.]

Keeping Things

Museums keep things.


And we interpret, preserve, explore, and reimagine them. Today, the New York Times has a nice interactive feature called Belongings, which takes a personal look at the good old question of why we keep the things we do.


"There are three million immigrants in New York City. When they left home, knowing it could be forever, they packed what they could not bear to leave behind: necessities, luxuries, memories. Here is a look at what some of them brought."

Check it out here.

Trying Out

Is there any historic industry more dramatic, frightening, and fascinating than whaling?

No. Proof: Moby Dick. More proof: some amazing nighttime photos from the New Bedford Whaling Museum of "trying out." That's when, after taking a whale, the whaling ship becomes a fiery 24-hour factory dedicated to cutting it up and rendering the blubber. Allow Herman Melville to evoke the scene more elegantly, with my unnecessary emphasis added:

Here be it said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, shriveled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.

By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur- freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations.

And now, some eerie photos of this incredible, seafaring factory work.

And one close-up:

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: March 25, 1911-2011

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. On March 25, 1911, 146 garment workers in New York City were killed in a workplace fire. Infamously, management had locked the factory's exit doors. A wave of safety reform legislation and memorialization followed. For a moment, the dangerous realities that faced some of the nation's most marginalized industrial workers -- young, female, immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe -- gripped the nation's attention.

Recently brought to my attention: the New York Times has assembled extraordinary coverage of the many facets of the fire: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire/?ref=nyregion

Some particular highlights of museum-think interest:
Triangle Fire: Clinging to Scraps of Memories
Triangle Fire: A Frontier in Photojournalism (interactive)
Garment Work in New York 100 Years After the Triangle Fire (video)
In a Tragedy, a Mission to Remember
Remembering the Triangle Fire, 100 Years Later

And, last but not least, from President Obama's resolution marking today's 100th anniversary:
Despite the enormous progress made since the Triangle factory fire, we are still fighting to provide adequate working conditions for all women and men on the job, ensure no person within our borders is exploited for their labor, and uphold collective bargaining as a tool to give workers a seat at the tables of power...As we mark the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, let us resolve to renew the urgency that tragedy inspired and recommit to our shared responsibility to provide a safe environment for all American workers.

More factory music

The Lowell Factory Girl, courtesy of modern-day Wobbly David Rovics. More music in museums.

NYT: Grab a Brew While They Face Death

Grab a Brew While They Face Death
Today, the Times introduces us to "Coal," a new series a la "Deadliest Catch," "Ice Road Truckers," etc. on Spike TV. With less Arctic -- it's about coal. Mining. In West Virginia:


It’s an uneasy modern dynamic. The men on these “documentary-reality” shows sacrifice their bodies and risk their lives doing down and dangerous jobs to try to provide a good life for themselves and their families. But what the producers and viewers want is what they call “good TV” — in this case, working-class fantasies aimed at men craving televised booster shots of testosterone.

Then, mix a little capitalist-class fantasy into that sudsy all-American brew:

• "People have no idea how important the coal industry is to America," says Mike Crowder, CEO of Cobalt Coal, in a video on Spike's website.

Leave it to Times commenters to bring us back:

• "Egad! Must be backed by the coal and gas industry? Manly men want to leave the coal in the ground," says Times online commenter Jim S., of Illinois.

Ok, so what's so commercially successful about TV that celebrates/showcases/exploits traditional (read masculine) industry that industrial museum don't got? Besides being accessible from the comforts of one's couch. I don't know, I tragically do not get Spike TV. It feels weird to think about coal mining as escapist entertainment -- but really, is this so different from my own coal-fascination and horror? I've never even been near a coal mine, but I have some sort of idealized/romanticized/escapist/earnest/ironic love of mining songs.


So maybe it's about nostalgia, whether it's Spike nostalgia for a myth of all-American industry, manliness, manual labor, or left-wing New England lady-blogger nostalgia for a myth of old-time authenticity and class struggle. Museums shouldn't trade in nostalgic myths, but the feeling of personal connection contained in them is potentially valuable when harnessed more critically: it comes back to people, our different experiences, the stories we tell, and the values we attach to one another.


Also, TV: Undercover Boss and Secret Millionaire make me want to puke.

Welcome to Pine Point

Welcome to Pine Point

Go have a look at this incredible online interactive multimedia mind blowing documentary about the town of Pine Point way up in Canada's Northwest Territories. The mine built it, a community grew, the mine closed, the town was completely razed.

This site is a testament to people and memory and postindustrial spaces totally unlike anything else.

See also:
Museum 2.0: Welcome to Pine Point: A Multimedia Exploration of Nostalgia, History, and What it Means to be Human. Great anaylsis by Nina Simon at Museum 2.0 linking the techniques used and connections made here to the museum experience.

UPDATE: OK, so http://www.nfb.ca/ is my new favorite website. Enjoy documentaries, animations, alternative dramas and interactive productions on the web, on your personalized home page, or on your iPhone. Free for personal use and on a subscription basis for schools and institutions. Where have you been all my life, National Film Board of Canada??? Canadians are so nice!

The highest settlement in the world is a gold mining town

From photojournalist Mark Ovaska, by way of NPR, a remarkable series of photos from Rinconada, Peru. This is what a modern-day gold rush very, very high up in the Andes looks like. The vision of the industry's human and environmental impact is astounding...see the whole Glacier Gold series here.



From NPR: A miner makes his way up a steep trail during a shift change in La Rinconada, Peru. Revolving shifts allow miners to see daylight every few days. Copyright Mark Ovaska, 2010.



NPR: Coal Reignites A Mighty Battle Of Labor History

From All Things Considered: Coal Reignites A Mighty Battle Of Labor History

Great story about the 1921 "battle of Blair Mountain," in West Virginia, and current controversy over adding it to the National Register of Historic Places. Preserve the space of a landmark event in US labor and mining history, or open the site to mountaintop removal mining? This story is an unusually direct glimpse into the tensions that often arise between preservation, economic realities, and memory in dealing with local labor heritage and industrial history.

A sign commemorating the battle of Blair Mountain in Logan County, W.Va. NPR.

Key points:

King believes this is hallowed ground, like Gettysburg or the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., places where America's history was forever changed. But he's had a hard time making that case to the folks in Logan County — a place where every fourth person is out of work.

There are only about 16,000 miners in West Virginia today. Mountaintop removal doesn't require as much manpower as underground mining. These are coveted jobs; they pay well. So for the most part, miners are more interested in seeing the economy grow than preserving what they see as just another mountain.

"This is a political fight, this is a social fight, this is a fight about our history, our heritage, our culture," Simmons says. "It's a fight about what kind of society West Virginia is going to be going forward and what has been in its past."

Sounds to me like labor heritage interpretation at its best, and most relevant.

UPDATE (ish): The plot thickens?  http://www.sierraclub.org/environmentallaw/lawsuits/0312.aspx

American Experience: Triangle Fire

Highly recommended! American Experience: Triangle Fire. PBS is currently streaming the entire hour-long documentrary online:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/triangle/player/

The film focuses not only on the fire itself, but on the extraordinary struggle to unionize female garment workers in the year that led up to the tragedy. One point made in the film stuck out, so much so that I wrote it down. In going out on strike to fight for improved working conditions and wages, thousands of these women "walked away from the only thing between their families and starvation" -- their dangerous, low-paid jobs.

That's what I call interpretation! A simply, evocatively made point that applies not only to this particular series of events, but that gets at the essence of Progressive Era labor struggles. Whether in New York, Lawrence, Paterson, etc., a powerful mixture of community, conviction, and desperation drove workers in this country's burgeoning industrial centers to take enormous personal risks for a chance at something better.

Industrial Light & Magic: 1915

Shorpy does it again!

Salon: What Wisconsin's governor is really threatening

Today, in the ongoing and infuriating saga of Gov. Scott Walker and his assault on public employees/collective bargaining rights...an enlightening article on the history of the labor movement and the National Guard: What Wisconsin's Governor is Really Threatening

"This would be the first time in nearly 80 years that the National Guard would be used to break a strike by Wisconsin workers, and the first time in over 40 years that the National Guard would be used against public workers anywhere in the country. The last time was the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968, just before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination."

Reposted -- "Big Tipper: 1910"

Very cool image from Shorpy today: http://www.shorpy.com/node/9682?size=_original

"Toledo, Ohio, circa 1910. "Brown hoist, Ohio Central coal dock." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company."

Devastation from Above

Check it out: striking, gorgeous, horrifying aerial photographs from J. Henry Fair documenting contemporary industrial impact on the landscape. I could see these as a temporary exhibit in just about any good industrial history museum, looking at the ongoing environmental effects of industrialization in a unique way.

Worth looking through the whole set: Devastation from Above

UPDATE: The New York Times has more today. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/arts/design/14earth.html

Bauxite Waste, J. Henry Fair.

LABOR ARTS

How am I just learning about this website now? From the Rober Wagner Labor Archives at NYU (my own alma mater! Again, how did I not know about this...), and several other partners, LABOR ARTS is:

"a virtual museum; we gather, identify and display images of the cultural artifacts of working people and their organizations. Our mission is to present powerful images that help us understand the past and present lives of working people. AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney has urged all international unions to cooperate in locating for display on Labor Arts 'the treasure trove of cultural objects that have moved workers into action from the very inception of our movement.'"

So far -- and have only scratched the surface of this resource -- loving the Scenes of American Labor exhibit:

Taos Diner, Jack R. Smith, 2005



Indians Fishing Cielilo Falls - Columbia River, Millard Sheets, 1950

It's a way cool site with an incredible variety of media. Check it out!