WolfeNotes.com

Favorites from the Library of Congress Collection

[Update: my apologies that all the original photos I posted were taken down by NJ.Com and lost. If you use the title of the photo, I hope the links at Library Of Congress work. ~~~ end update]

Is there any doubt that the artists got it right and had a true vision?

Here are my favorites:

Matanuska Colonists : A couple with child
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=164&iid=4005

George Biddle, the founder of the Federal Art Project (FAP) in 1935, said that because of the FAP, the Depression exerted, “a more invigorating effect on American art than any past event in the country’s history.” … For American art, it was a vital period that invigorated the entire country’s perception of what art could be and brought American art into the international forefront.
Wall Street
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=427&iid=3716

FBI and the Statue of Liberty
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=427&iid=3715

Farmer and Sons Walking in Face of Dust Storm
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=174&iid=1298

Country Store on a Sunday Afternoon
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=174&iid=4003

Eat more fish
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=161&iid=3383

Smiling Girls from Utuado
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=164&iid=1971

Commuters
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=174&iid=3278

Railroad Women Having Lunch
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=174&iid=3200

Itinerant Photographer, Columbus, Ohio
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=185&iid=3988

Children in the tenement district, Brockton, Mass.
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=164&iid=3992

The FAP created thousands of murals in public buildings all across the country. Artist such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Louise Nevelson, all left a moment of their creativity to posterity because of this program. As art historian Francis O’Connor said, “Something very vital indeed, something revolutionary happened to American culture during the 1930’s.”

One of the FAP’s major activities was the index of American Design. The project helped popularizing American folk art by documenting the countries “usable past” of over 20,000 photographic records of American art, painting, sculpture, handicraft and folk art.

By 1943, unemployment –the primary reason for the programs creation –dipped to the point that the program was canceled. The Library of Congress is the largest single holder of WPA posters, having over 900 in its collection.

http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=183&iid=3431

Bill Moyers interview asks: How do they [Wall Street] get away with it?

Bill Wolfe

Video for those that like to watch:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html
Transcript for those that like to read:
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.
For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street have reminded us that “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.” In fact, the man you’re about to meet wrote a book with just that title. It was based upon his experience as a tough regulator during one of the darkest chapters in our financial history: the savings and loan scandal in the late 1980s.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: These numbers as large as they are, vastly understate the problem of fraud.
BILL MOYERS: Bill Black was in New York this week for a conference at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice where scholars and journalists gathered to ask the question, “How do they get away with it?” Well, no one has asked that question more often than Bill Black.

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EPA to monitor toxic air pollution at 62 schools in 22 states

Bill WolfeUS EPA selected Paulsboro High School for monitoring potential impacts of toxic air pollutants.
I targeted this school in a January 8, 2008 NJ Voices post

On March 31, 2009 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that they will monitor air quality outside (but curiously, not inside where kids are exposed) two NJ schools. The monitoring is part of a new national effort.
The new EPA initiative was prompted by media expose and local activists, not government regulators, who shamefully were asleep at the switch.
Realization of the EPA program resulted from the leadership of California Senator Barbara Boxer, who, as Chair of the Senate Environment Committee, secured a commitment from Lisa Jackson during Jackson’s confirmation hearings for EPA Administrator (we wrote about that and reiterated the Paulsboro HS case in a January 25, 2009: Politics versus science
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wolfe/2009/01/politics_versus_science.html

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Bill WolfeEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson pledged at her Senate confirmation hearing that she would address perchlorate. EPA did not respond to requests today for comment

New federal Centers for Disease Control sampling finds Perchlorate in US infant formula – EPA has no comment
New developments vindicate what we previously wrote about the toxic chemical perchlorate back in in January:
Rocket Fuel in your water?
DEP Ignored Scientists Warnings and Failed to Regulate Perchlorate in drinking water – Lisa Jackson to be asked why

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Photo’s by Dorothea Lange:

https://www.loc.gov/visit/#shop?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=65&iid=1108&scid=464

https://www.loc.gov/search/?in=&q=Dorothea+lange&new=true&st=

https://guides.loc.gov/migrant-mother

(more)

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