100 Years Ago - Hallowe'en Party Planning

 

A little party planning from The Woman's Magazine October 1914 issue. Pardon the small print, there's only so much magnifying that can be done before it stops making the words clearer and begins turning them into an ink-blot test!

Happy Earth Day

Environmental Cartoon from 1938 issue of the Rotarian

Sometimes I get a kick out of what we think of as new. Take Earth Day as an example. The Earth Day Network marks April 22, 1970 as the beginning of the movement, stating "Earth Day 1970 capitalized on the emerging consciousness, channeling the energy of the anti-war protest movement and putting environmental concerns front and center." It all sounds good, I mean more and more of us don't actually remember the 70's so we're prone to take the word of 'official' sources to tell us what happened and to read that information as historic rather than the opinion (informed or otherwise) it really is. The problem happens when the facts get in the way. 

June 1948 saw the first piece of legislation to lay down federal regulation of water quality, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, passed by Congress.  The years between 1948 and 1970 would see the government playing a larger role, imposing regulations to control automotive emissions, protect endangered species, and Environmental Impact Statements for Federal legislation. But even the landmark FWPCA wasn’t the beginning of awareness of the value and importance of nature. 

As early as 1864 California was setting aside park land in the Yosemite Valley. This action came, in part, as a response to Frederick Law Olmstead’s suppressed manifesto calling for greater protection of Yosemite and the growing realization that America’s wild spaces were an asset worth protecting. In 1872 Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill creating Yellowstone as the country’s first national park and by 1890 Yosemite would join Yellowstone in lands set aside as protected natural spaces. 

Surely, none of these facts change the dire state of the planet we’re facing today. To survive, we must give up the convenient ignorance that makes the damage we do on a daily basis acceptable. By becoming more educated about the environment and how we can improve it and that not only applies to understanding how our habits and choices impact the planet, it also means understanding our whole history. It means avoiding seeing the generations which preceded ours as all bad or all good and merely seeing them as all human. 

Happy Earth Day to everyone. Go out and help the planet, do a good deed, and learn something that will change your life and the lives of all those who will come after you. It’s the least you can do.

A Window on the Past

Sometimes, while pouring through the archives, I come across an address. It might be part of an ad or a mention in an article, but I'm always left wondering what's at that geographic point today. Most of the time the end result of my search is disappointing., humanity has a bad habit of obliterating its architectural past, but there are occasional surprises.

The photo to the right was snipped from a 1921 issue of American Cookery a now defunct cooking and lifestyle magazine. It comes from an article that, of all things, discusses American Colonial architecture and specifically Palladian type windows. It states “This famous dwelling, the work of an English architect, who built it in about 1770, is linked with American history through its use by General Gage as his headquarters during the Revolution.” That line is pretty typical of high-end magazine copy from the twenties, it looks back to the American Revolution with a reverence that British magazines reserve for royalty.

Maybe it’s not surprising that the structure still stands. After all, in a way it is the American equivalent of a royal home (in spite of the fact Gage was on the other side), tied to the birth of the nation and independence from England. If it had been the home of the local butcher or copper smith, well you’d likely be looking at a parking lot. Aside from the loss of the railing that once lined the top of the window and Google Street View's glitches, the window remains pretty much as it did nearly a hundred years ago.

I guess I shouldn’t complain about preservation when it happens. At least the place is standing, we haven't lost it to corporate greed or the need to accommodate America's ever-growing population. Suburban sprawl hasn't replaced 75 Beacon Street with The Shops at 75 Beacon Street or a Starbucks. It's more than can be said for many historic homes, regardless of how important their former occupants might have been.

100 Years Ago Today - Yosemite

On the 126th birthday of Yosemite National Park - and the day when congress has shut the park system down because their inability to set aside self-interest is somewhat less than that of a kindergarten class - I thought I'd air a clipping that appeared in the 1913 issue of Popular Science. The Park Service was just beginning to consider allowing automobiles into America's parks and Yosemite was still on the proverbial fence (or is that guardrail).

How Every Quarterback Feels on Sunday...

Came across this image of Johnny Unitas in a 60's issue of Boy's Life. I think he's expressing a sentiment felt by every NFL quarterback on Sunday.