I first released this video 5 years ago, with the title “September 11 – Remembering after 15 years.” This version replaces the introduction with a title screen saying “Remembering September 11, 2001” so that it’s not tied to any other time other than the original events.

Much has happened in the years since the planes flew into the World Trade Center. The world seems far different, with terror attacks occurring all too frequently around the world, terror attacks that gain little or nothing for those who plot and plan them.

The first several images are from several years to a month before the attack. They simply show New York City with the twin towers still standing.

The music track used is “September 11, 2001 – Theme from the Last Castle” by Jerry Goldsmith. According to YouTube, videos using this track are viewable everywhere except Germany.

Image used in this video are public domain, accessed from the Library of Congress or the U.S. National Archives. Images are viewable in a Flickr album at https://www.flickr.com/photos/exit78/albums/72157672313859131

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 14¹

The Shavano, a local mountain route narrow-gauge train in Colorado, operated round-trip daily for 3 1/2 years, ending on November 24, 1940.  It ran from Salida [7,083 ft (2,159 m)] over Marshall Pass [10,842 ft (3,305 m)] to Gunnison [7,703 ft (2,347 m)] in the morning, returning in the evening. Today, a gravel road still follows the old railroad route over Marshall Pass but is closed to wheeled vehicles during the winter.²

The train’s name came from Mount Shavano, a 14,231-foot (4,338m) summit located in San Isabel National Forest.  It lies just east of the Continental Divide and west of the Arkansas River rising 7,200 feet above Salida.  The mountain was named for Ute Chief Shavano.³

War chief of the Uncompahgre (Tabeguache) band of Southern Utes and a close friend of Chief Ouray, Shavano had a deep mistrust of white people and the government.  A violent temper and propensity for hard-drinking led government administrators to block Shavano from becoming chief after Ouray’s death. Serving as one of the medicine men for the tribe, in 1885, Shavano was shot twice in the back by Sarrup, the father of two sick boys Shavano had failed to save. Someone had told Sarrup that Shavano had poisoned the boys. Shavano died three days later.^4,5

Call Number: OP-8479
Title: D&RGW train (Narrow Gauge), engine number 479, engine type 2-8-2
Credit: Denver Public Library Special Collections
Alternate Title: Denver & Rio Grande Western train (Narrow Gauge), engine number 479, engine type 2-8-2
Creator: Perry, Otto, 1894-1970
Date: 1940
Summary: Train #315, The Shavano; 4 cars, snow, and steam effect. Photographed above Mears Junction, Colo., November 17, 1940.
Description: 1 photonegative ; 9 x 14 cm; 1 photoprint (postcard) : silver gelatin, black and white ; 8 x 13 cm
Part Of: Otto C. Perry memorial collection of railroad photographs
Type of Material: Film photonegatives; Photographic postcards; Silver gelatin photoprints
Subject: Locomotives; Railroads–Trains–Pictorial works; Narrow gauge railroads; Railroad locomotives–Colorado–Mears Junction; Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway Company; Railroads, Narrow-gage.
Format-Medium: Photograph

Denver Public Library Digital Collections item permalink.

_____________________

Mike’s notes:

Image restoration note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
– cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject matter
– straighten image

Image restoration is the process of using digital restoration tools to create new digital versions of the images while also improving their quality and repairing damage.

1. While the main theme of this project is the bitter times between the 1929 crash of the stock market and the end of World War II, some of the items covered will be other interesting and historical material from the period.
2. “Shavano (Train).” Wikipedia, last edited May 11, 2021. Accessed September 7, 2021. https://en.wikipedia…Shavano_(train).
3. “Mount Shavano.” Wikipedia, January 28, 2021. Accessed September 7, 2021. https://en.wikipedia….Mount_Shavano.
4. Morreale, Don. “Menu.” YourHub, December 3, 2020. https://yourhub.denverpost.com/blog/2020/12/a-colorado-panorama-chief-shavano-and-josephine-speer/270819/.
5. Hogue, Una. “An Indian Chronicle & a Sketch on the Life OF Shavano: …” Salida Regional Library, 1920. Accessed September 7, 2021. http://salidaarchive.info…Life-of-Shavano.pdf.

Civil War Era Photographic Portraiture No. 3
Originally Published in American Civil War Chronicles

Sold at auction June 2015 for $6,875. Heritage Auctions description:

“Confederate Soldier Quarter Plate Tintype. Stunning 1861 Melainotype of a Confederate officer. Really, for quality, condition and content one of the finest Confederate images we’ve ever offered. Plate with embossed Melainotype patent information embossed along bottom edge, unquestionably dating the image to 1861. Officer wears gray frock coat with high standup collar, black flashing on edges of pocket on each breast and the shoulder straps appear to have black centers, possibly denoting North Carolina. Wears rather narrow brimmed slouch hat with one side turned up. Holds five ball pillow pommel sword over his shoulder, the sword dating to circa 1825. Interestingly wearing what appears to be two watch chains. Classic Confederate wide leather belt with two leather tabs and two horseshoe shaped iron buckles for closure. Superb quality and condition, with cheeks skillfully tinted pink. A great Confederate image.”

historical.ha.com/itm/photography/tintypes/confederate-so…

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 13
Early Color Photography No. 1

“Negro boy near Cincinnati, Oho.”
John Vachon, 1942 or 1943¹

This photo has long been a favorite of mine.  I first shared it online about 16 years ago.

John Vachon²

The man who took this picture, John Vachon, became a photographer almost by accident. In 1936, he had been looking for a job for several months after attending graduate school at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.  The first job opening that came up through the patronage channels associated with the University was an opening for a messenger at the Resettlement Administration. “I went to the office I was told to go to and was interviewed by a guy named Roy Stryker. He told me that it was a temporary job, for a month only, to replace somebody who was going back to Montana, or something. I remember the title of the job was “Messenger,” but the duties Roy explained to me that day, telling me that they were going to be very dull, would be to write captions on the back of 8 x l0 photographs, the captions being on file cards which I would copy. So I did that for a month, and occasionally would turn the picture over and look at it. And then at the end of the month I was let go, and I was again unemployed in June.”

About 6 weeks later, Vachon was back at work doing the same job, captioning and cataloging pictures, even though the job title was “messenger.” After a few months, he had become interested in the pictures, started to be able to identify “one photographer’s work from the other, and admire certain pictures. It was in the spring of the next year, ’37, when I asked Stryker if I could use a camera just to see what I could do with it, which I had never in my life done or wanted to do. So I borrowed a camera and took pictures around Washington for most of that summer, you know, on my own.”

Vachon became more involved with the files, being elevated to “assistant clerk,” and gradually became responsible for their organization and classifications. Stryker also started sending him out on photo assignments, sometimes with others from the office.  It wasn’t until 1938 that he had his first long assignment, a month in Nebraska in the winter of 1938.  In 1941 he was classified as a photographer and, from then on, all he did was photography.

Vachon continued to work as a photographer including for Life for 2 years and Look for over 25.

The title of the photo.³

This photo was shared on Flickr in January 2008 by the Library of Congress.

While many comments are full of praise for the image, from the beginning there were comments regarding the title, including some who thought it was derogatory.

is it necessary to label the photo “Negro boy?” surly “boy” will do or if needed to make reference to his race for historical context: surly African American.

Fantastic portrait. But not diggin’ the title. Cheers.

Great photo but like others have said, the title diminishes the image.

Fix the title. What year are we living in again?

Terrible title…….You may be posting using the original archived title but why use it on Flickr ?

I read about 2 years’ worth of comments.  Most who comment on the title had no problem with it for a variety of reasons.  Several mentioned that the names of the NAACP⁴ and UNCF⁵ haven’t been changed, so why the fuss over the title of this photo?

Title: Negro boy near Cincinnati, Ohio
Creator(s): Vachon, John, 1914-1975, photographer
Date Created/Published: [1942 or 1943]
Medium: 1 slide : color.
Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-fsac-1a34281 (digital file from original slide) LC-USF351-276 (color film copy slide)
Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
Call Number: LC-USF35-276 [P&P]
Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Notes:
…..Transfer from U.S. Office of War Information, 1944.
…..General information about the FSA/OWI Color Photographs is available at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.fsac
…..Title from FSA or OWI agency caption.
…..Additional information about this photograph might be available through the Flickr Commons project at http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179172498

1. Vachon, John. “Negro Boy near Cincinnati, Ohio.” Library of Congress, [1942 or 1943]. Accessed August 26, 2021. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017877922/.
2. Doud, Richard. “Oral History Interview with John Vachon, 1964 April 28.” Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Accessed August 26, 2021. https://www.aaa.si.edu/…john-vachon.
3. The Library of Congress. “Negro Boy near Cincinnati, OHIO (LOC).” Flickr, January 8, 2008. https://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress….
4. NAACP—National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
5. UNCF— United Negro College Fund (A mind is a terrible thing to waste)

Royalty-free images by Mike¹ — No. 151 of over 1200 images

American Flamingo, Henry Vilas Zoo, Madison, Wisconsin, June 11, 2007

Henry Vilas Zoo²

Henry Vilas Zoo is a 28-acre (11 ha) public zoo in Madison, Wisconsin, United States, that is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). Owned by Dane County, the zoo charges no admission or parking fees. It receives over 750,000 visitors annually.

The Henry Vilas Zoo is one of ten remaining free zoos in North America.³

American flamingo⁴

The American flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber) is a large species of flamingo closely related to the greater flamingo and Chilean flamingo. It was formerly considered conspecific with the greater flamingo, but that treatment is now widely viewed (e.g. by the American and British Ornithologists’ Unions) as incorrect due to a lack of evidence. It is also known as the Caribbean flamingo, although it is also present in the Galápagos Islands. It is the only flamingo that naturally inhabits North America.

Flamingos or flamingoes /fləˈmɪŋɡoʊz/ are a type of wading bird in the family Phoenicopteridae, the only bird family in the order Phoenicopteriformes. Four flamingo species are distributed throughout the Americas, including the Caribbean, and two species are native to Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Post Endnotes

1. I am sharing some of my public domain images in periodic blog posts.
2. “Henry Vilas Zoo.” Wikipedia, most recent edit, May 9, 2021. Accessed August 26, 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org…Henry_Vilas_Zoo.
3. “Welcome to Henry Vilas ZOO: Madison, Wisconsin.” Henry Vilas Zoo, last update, August 23, 2021. Accessed August 26, 2021.  https://www.henryvilaszoo.gov/.
4. “American Flamingo.” Wikipedia, most recent edit, August 19, 2021. Accessed August 24, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org…flamingo.

Series Notes:

• This image is also shared as public domain on Pixabay,  Flickr, and Pinterest.
• Images are being shared in the sequence they were accepted by Pixabay, a royalty-free image-sharing site.
• Only images specifically identified as such are public domain or creative commons on our pages.
• All other images are copyright protected by me, creative commons, or used under the provisions of fair use.

I noticed it at least twice Saturday night coming home from our daughter’s place.

First, a little history.

Our first vehicle with cruise control was an International Scout Traveler that we bought in 1977.  I really liked that feature.  Without it, since I did most of the driving, driving long distances could literally be a pain with constantly having to control the engine throttle with your foot.

Our next car, a Dodge Colt, didn’t have it.  When we bought a second vehicle in 1982, I actually installed cruise control—and it worked!

On one of our first long interstate trips in it, we noticed we would see the same vehicles over and over again.  That used to be pretty normal back when cruise control wasn’t common, but for some reason, on this trip, since our speed was very constant, it was more apparent.  Some of the vehicles would blast past us and, a few miles down the road, would come upon them dawdling along only to have them blast past us again at some point later on.

Rinse and repeat. Over and over.

I took to calling them hurry-up-go-slows.

We haven’t seen that so much in recent years since most vehicles now have cruise control.  With near-constant speed, once you pass a car or truck or it passes you on the interstate, they’re gone and forgotten.

Usually.

Saturday night, there were two of them on I40, both trucks, one soon after we got on the interstate, the other later.  We would pass them and then, shortly after, there they were again.

One of them for way too long matched my speed, sitting on my left in my blind spot.  I slowed down to let him get a ways ahead before resuming on the speed control.  Not long afterward, there he was again going quite a bit slower.  As I passed him, he sped up and paced us a couple of car lengths back in the right lane for several miles until he came up behind another car going a bit slower, where he stayed, pacing them, I guess.

The second one was a left-lane hog.  Even though it is now against the law to drive in the leftmost lane except for passing or where the road surface is bad in the right lane(s)¹, a lot of people still tend to stay in the left lane, though most will move over when a faster vehicle approaches from the rear. This one didn’t so I passed on the right.  Of course, a while later, here he came again.  A few minutes, there he was again, this time going slower in the right lane.  After repeating this a time or two more, I dropped our speed a couple of miles an hour.  Didn’t see him again after I resumed speed.

Hurry up, go slow.

1. This is a very new law.  Previously, the law required that drivers move to the right to allow faster traffic to pass.  Now it supposedly prohibits travel in the left-most lane of a multi-lane highway except to pass.

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 12

by J. Russell Smith¹,
September 1934²

See the full article (pdf)

1. “J. Russell Smith.” Wikipedia, last edit, June 19, 2021. Accessed August 26, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Russell_Smith.
2. Smith, J. Russell. “The Drought—Act of God and Freedom.” Survey Graphic 23, no. 9, September 1934.

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 11

Dorothea Lange^{1, 2}

One of the weekends that I find I think of often…, is a weekend in April of 1934 or ‘5, I don’t remember which now, when I went down to Imperial Valley, California, to photograph the harvesting of one of the crops; as I remember now, it was the early peas or the early carrots. The assignment was the beginning of the migration, of the migratory workers as they start there in the early part of the season and then as they moved op. I was going to follow it through. The story of migratory labor in California is an old story. I had completed what I was going to do, and I started on the way home, driving up the main highway, which was right through the length of the state, and it was (a) very rainy afternoon. I stopped at a gas station to get some gas, and there was a car full of people, a family there at that gas station. I waited while they were getting there gas, and they looked very woebegone to me. They were American whites. I looked at the license plate on the car, and it was Oklahoma. I got out of the car, and I approached them and asked something about which way they were going, were they looking for work, I’ve forgotten what the question was at the time, And they said, “We’ve been blown out.” I questioned what they meant, and then they old me about the dust storm. They were the first arrivals that I saw. There were the people who got up that day quick and left. They saw they had no crop back there. They had to get out. All of that day, driving for the next maybe two hundred miles—no, three or four hundred miles—I saw these people. And I couldn’t wait. I photographed it. I had those first ones. That was the beginning of the first day of the landslide that cut this continent and it’s still going on. Don’t mean that people haven’t migrated before, but this shaking off of people from their own roots started with those big storms and it was like a movement of the earth, you see, and that rainy afternoon I remember, because I made the discovery. It was up to that time unobserved. There are books and books and books on that subject now.

1. Doud, Richard K. “Oral History Interview with Dorothea Lange, 1964 May 22.” Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Accessed August 25, 2021. https://www.aaa.si.edu/…dorothea-lange…transcript.
2. Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) was a photographer in California. Lange worked on FSA photograph project during the Depression.

I’ve got a sore throat, feel feverish and, at times, actually have a slight fever.

These are my usual symptoms for a mild cold that occurs, for me, maybe a couple of times a year—except for the last year and a half, when I’ve had none.

Many of the symptoms of the COVID delta variant are similar to a cold, allergies, or sinus infection.  Since we are going to be visiting family this weekend, I was getting a little concerned with the symptoms, though everyone that will be there is vaccinated, and thought I ought to find out for sure that it wasn’t COVID. Karen and I are both fully vaccinated, but no vaccine is 100% effective at preventing infection.¹

I had not previously had any reason to get tested for COVID.  Since this is the first time I’ve had any symptoms that could possibly indicate COVID, I was unsure where I might go to get tested.  There had been a COVID triage center set up in the area very early on in the pandemic, but that has long since closed.  I checked CVS and Walgreens online but they didn’t have any appointment openings for testing locally.  I didn’t know whether the clinic I normally go to did the tests, so I called to see if I could get one there or if they could tell me where I could get one.  They set me up for an appointment at 3:15 that day, Wednesday.

Amesh A. Adalja, MD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, “recommends people with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 or a cold see their doctor for testing or consider taking a rapid antigen at-home test.”²

The clinic is in a small town near our rural home.  It wasn’t busy—no one in the waiting room when I got there and one lady departed from the examing area shortly after.  The young nurse who took the nasal sample is very experienced with it as she was one of those who staffed the triage center while it was open.³ When I asked, she told me that, because of volume, it could take a couple of days to get the test results to me.

I was only wanting to get tested so was a little surprised when she told me to wait for a couple of minutes and the doctor would be in.  He looked in my ears and throat and checked my breathing with a stethoscope—a mini-exam given my symptoms—and told me that everything looked clear. He told me that someone would call me with the results the next day.

Later, much later, that evening, just as I was getting ready for bed, I checked e-mail and found a message sent at 5 PM saying that the doctor “has posted your test results to your Patient Portal.”  The test had been completed at 3:19 and had a note saying: “This test result was sent to you as soon as it became available. Your provider may not have reviewed these results yet.”⁴

The test was a PCR test “intended for the qualitative detection of
nucleic acid from SARS-CoV-2.  It was negative.

They also tested for Type A and B influenza and RSV⁵. All three came back negative.

I guess it must just be a summer cold.

Just like I thought.

“If your test rules out COVID-19 and you’re left with a summer cold, Dr. Adalja says you can treat your symptoms with over-the-counter cough and cold remedies.”⁶

DayQuil, NightQuil, and Zicam—just like normal.  Ricola, too, for the sore throat.

1. Rogers, Kaleigh. “Still Unsure about Getting the Covid-19 Vaccine? Start Here.” FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, August 11, 2021. Accessed August 29, 2021. https://fivethirtyeight.com/.
2. Brown, Maressa. “Summer Colds and Covid-19 Have Similar Symptoms-Here’s How to Know Which One You Might Have.” Health.com, August 12, 2021. Accessed September 2, 2021. https://www.health.com/…summer-cold-or-covid.
3. I am acquainted with her from outside her work.  We were both members of a gym that closed early in the pandemic.  The gym is owned by the local hospital system which decided a couple of months ago not to reopen it.
4. I did get a call the next day at 8:04 AM
5. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), also called human respiratory syncytial virus and human orthopneumovirus, is a very common, contagious virus that causes infections of the respiratory tract.
6. Brown.