I was a young child when her photographs began to tell the world of our life in the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Indeed my brother and I were two such “dreamers.”

The music of Woody Guthrie and the photographs of Dorthea Lange informed the world and gave hope that our plight was understood.

Thanks for posting these, As with everything else, the right wing is trying to deny the truths of the Depression and the Dust Bowel. and their causes. The NYT just completed a series debunking Lange’s photos. I say if you want more visual proof, I have a shoe box full.

The new Harper’s has a book review of “Dancing in the Dark:A Cultural History of the Great Depression” talks about the arts, entertainment, books, photographers, and music of the Depression. FDR’s WPA hired artists who brought the nation together not by hiding poverty and the plight of the unemployed, but highlighting it. There was a sense of common cause. Can we do this again? Or are we too compartmentalized and digitized?

Those WPA and CCC workers found a way to work their way out of Depression of many sorts, the public works projects still would be a very good idea.

People still alive fail to speak out, and have let the Republicans make it sound like they were trying even back then to fix those problems.

The truth is they created those problems, and did everything they could to keep them from being repaired. They fought FDR harder than they are fighting Obama, yet get away with it because people are to stupid to know or learn the truth. They believe what the Republicans tell them, never looking back to check for truth.

Well I have certainly been speaking out all my life, though I never ran for office or had the skill to write commercially.
http://firefliesandbonfires.com/dust_bowl_memoir.html
http://firefliesandbonfires.com/family_memoir.html

Most of us however just wanted to forget, even felt ashamed, and went about the business of building a life.

Too compartmentalized. Too conditioned by suburban living, McMansions, screw-you attitudes.

Thank you. My Mom and Dad were CCC supervisors, teaching skills like sewing and sowing, a family joke now. Building culverts for drainage was a specialty. They came out of it too.

I am not as hopeless. Those affected were living pretty remote rural lives, a number of them as seasonal farmers, I think the WPA and CCC and other works programs did bring us together. I also cannot emphasize enough how the genuine caring of the patrician Roosevelts was unifying. Then of course the war did encourage collaboration and cooperation. You might be interested in my diary here which describes some of the influence of shared goals in collaboration changed for a time the way medical research was done. I think government incentives to similar projects can again happen. A lot of this insane warship of money was induced by clever business as right wing marketing.

I never saw a culvert that didn’t say WPA on it until I was in my 30s.

Jacob -

Have you noticed all of the ‘nice’ responses to this diary? Your point is as well made as ever, but the lack of diatribe allows folks to absorb it.

Hadn’t seen your handle for awhile. Glad that you’re back, if you were missing.

Look up Alan Pogue some time. He’s been an authentic ‘disciple’ of folks like D. Lange for over 40 years.

I used to live in PA. and like you say much of what they did is not only still there, but well used today.

Relatives that were in it before they died told of how it saved them.

2009 in America is vastly different from 1939, as your comment lays out.

Beginning in the 1960s, Americans were taught they could be who they wanted to be, have what they wanted, live separately and independently from others.

It was a message that resonated with the baby boomers.

The idea of community was both figuratively and literally discarded.

Thanks for the comment and all the interest.

I agree but with some caveats as to the region I grew up in. The sixties thing is I think more a romaticization of the way it was on the plains, especially the southern plains following the Civil War These farmers and wildcatters were pretty independent and many opposed the New Deal, It was a mix of those trying to build community across great distances and those more interested in exploiting the earth and its resources.. .And our friends the GOP were spreading Red Menace hysteria and eugenics.

In summary it is my view that the New Deal did not just shore up a solid sense of community but was faced with a much more complex problem.

To be honest these tea baggers don’t sound a lot different from some of my relatives. Even my father was at first convinced it was the Reds that attacked Pearl Harbor.

You are older than I, and I respect your view. A lot.

Please keep posting here.

Thank You! I am loving it here. As to the “ancient times,” Do realize a lot of what I put down is a memoir and open to other interpretations.