Civil War Era Photographic Portraiture #001
Originally Published in American Civil War Chronicles

Title: [Unidentified cadet in Virginia Military Institute uniform]
Date Created/Published: 1845.
Medium: 1 photograph : sixth-plate daguerreotype ; 9.4 x 8.1 cm (case)
Summary: Portrait of a young man who, in later years, might have fought in the Civil War as a Confederate soldier. The initials VMI, visible on his cap, are laterally reversed because of the daguerreotype process.
Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-34334 (digital file from original item)
Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
Call Number: DAG no. 1447 [P&P]
Notes:
…..Title devised by Library staff.
…..Case: Rinhart, no. 138 (reverse image).
…..Gift; Tom Liljenquist; 2012; (DLC/PP-2012:127).
…..More information about this collection is available at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.lilj
…..Purchased from: Bill Turner, La Plata, Maryland, 2012.
…..Forms part of: Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs (Library of Congress).
…..Forms part of: Daguerreotype collection (Library of Congress).

___________
Mike’s notes:

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

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 8

According to the “Life On The American Newsfront” section of Life magazine’s November 23, 1936, issue, Doctor Joseph Mayo was driving on the Burlington Railroad tracks, making a “short cut,” when he was hit by a train and killed after he had “bumped a mile over ties.”¹

I can’t imagine taking a shortcut by bumping along over railroad ties.

As a kid living in a railroad town, I shortcutted across tracks many a time as well as walked the tracks on the ties. There were seven or eight sets of tracks to cross and, even though there was a regular crossing and an overpass between home and downtown, I would sometimes cross between them.  A five or six-foot chainlink fence now runs on the south side of the tracks.²

So I’m somewhat familiar with railroad tracks and I can’t imagine anyone intentionally bumping along over ties in a car for any distance at all, let alone a mile or more.

Maybe it was different in Wisconsin in 1936.

I don’t think so.

The November 23rd, 1936, issue of Life was the first issue of a new magazine under an old name. Debuting during the height of the Great Depression, the reboot issue of the photo-heavy Life American news magazine¹ was quite different from the general interest and light entertainment magazine that had ended earlier that year. Publisher Henry Luce had bought the magazine for $92,000 simply because he wanted the name for his company, Time, Inc. Life‘s subscription list, features, and goodwill were sold to Judge, a satirical weekly publication.

Its “Life On The American Newsfront” section certainly didn’t have much depth, saying that Doctor Joseph Graham Mayo, son of famed surgeon Charles Mayo, took a shortcut by driving along the Burlington Railroad, bumping a mile over the ties before an express train came through at 65 mph, smashing his car and killing Mayo and Floosie, his hunting dog. It also says that Mayo and Floosie were buried together.

The New York Times of November 10 describes it differently:

Similar articles appeared in other papers around the country, such as the Boston Globe and the Rochester, Minnesota, Post-Bulletin.  It even made the front page of The Piqua Daily Call in Piqua, Ohio.

The railroad where Mayo died parallels the Mississippi.  So does the Great River Road in that area, though I’m sure it wasn’t called that then.

Back then, it was state highway 35.

It still is… and it runs parallel to the railroad tracks… just as it did back then.⁴

It was a little harder to research facts back then, but Life was able to get the pictures.

They should have been able to get the right facts.

Even if it was their “first” issue.

(At least one other piece in the “Life On The American Newsfront” section in that issue of Life also had factual issues.)

1. “In Alma, Wisconsin.” Life. Time Inc., November 23, 1936. Accessed August 22, 2021https://books.google.com/….
2. North Platte, Nebraska, is and always has been a railroad town. It “was first platted as a railroad town by (Union Pacific) chief engineer Grenville Dodge. He chose the location because of the availability of good water nearby, and its distance from Grand Island, Nebraska. The town, first known as ‘Hell on Wheels,’ received its first train in 1866. Dodge then constructed major shop facilities and winter quarters for its crews. In 1867 it began conducting main line operations through the town. The early yard was a flat-switched yard with 20 tracks.” Today, Bailey Yard is the world’s largest railroad classification yard. An average of 139 trains and over 14,000 railroad cars pass through Bailey Yard every day, and the yard sorts approximately 3,000 cars daily using the yard’s two humps. (Wikipedia)
3. “Dr. Joseph G. Mayo Is Killed by a Train; Son of Famous Surgeon Dies in Auto on Way to Wisconsin Home from Hunting Trip.” The New York Times, November 10, 1936. Accessed August 23, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/1936/11/10/archives….
4. “Official Highway Map of Wisconsin 1930.” content.wisconsinhistory.org. Accessed August 23, 2021. https://content.wisconsinhistory.org….

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 7

See images of Santo Tomás and other camps and more in my Manila, Philippines, February 1953 album on Flickr

Carl Mydans was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration in the 30s and Life magazine in the 40s. In 1942, Mydans had been captured by the Japanese in Manila, Philippines, with his wife Shelley and interned at Santo Tomás² camp for more than nine months before being moved to a Shanghai, China camp. After a year there, they were released as part of a POW exchange.  On February 3, 1945, accompanying an American unit of about 700 that punched through Manila with tanks, jeeps, weapon carriers, command cars, and engineering and service units, Life photographer Mydans was one of the first two men into Santo Tomás camp’s “big house.”

Internees Arriving in Santo Tomás, 1942

Carl Mydans:

But my route turned left with Colonel Conner rather than into the ambush and in a few moments the black, swale covered fence of my old prison camp of Santo Tomás was flanking us. For just a moment I felt a flush of illness. This was the moment I’d been living for for three years. But then I was caught in the scramble of dismounted infantry now crouching at the ready as they moved in black silhouetted columns on either side of the vehicles. Fires were burning over much of the city and the red-lighted sky and stealth of the scene and pitch of emotion had me shaking so that my camera bag pounded against me. Behind me was Frank Hewlett of United Press, no less gripped with emotion than I was. We had come all the way together and he had come for his wife Virginia³, who got caught in Manila and put in Santo Tomás while Frank went through Bataan and Corregidor and got out to Australia.

I go into Santo Tomas

Half the front gate was open, the inside was black. We shouted and got no answer. Two tanks rumbled up facing the gate and turned on powerful lights. I cut a hole through the fence and looked in but could see nothing. Then we threw up flares. A swale fence had been constructed across the front since my days there, cutting off the view of the building. There was some delay and Frank lay beside me alongside the fence. Then impatience got me and I turned to Frank and said, “The gate’s half open and I’m sure the Japs have gone. Let’s slip in.” Frank followed. As we reached the guardhouse at the gate entrance and approached the grass-covered bunker a Jap jumped from the other side four feet away, shrieked and fired point-blank at us. The blue flame blinded us for a moment as we hit the ground. The bullet had gone neatly between our heads. We lay there for a moment, then dragged ourselves on our stomachs along the side of the fence, breathing hard. Frank said simply, “There are Japs in there.”

Then, like many such scenes in war, I never did know the sequence for as I moved over toward Colonel Conner, who was directing the operation on foot by the edge of the road, someone shouted “grenade! and I hit the ground with my face in the gutter. Several men were wounded near by.

Then Colonel Conner shouted to the leading tank: “Run that tank in through the fence,” and behind him to several men huddled together, “Keep the flares going up as she goes in.”

The “Battling Basic⁴” medium tank got straightened away and walked through the concrete fence as if it were corrugated paper. The area was bright now for flares were hanging overhead. There was shooting behind us and on the other side of the camp. Jeeps with headlights on followed in and then the infantry, which spread out at once. Frank and I walked up to the second fence and I could see the building as I had once seen it before. There was the “big house” I had lived in so long. I walked farther in and shouted, “Any Americans in there?” There was no answer. Later we learned they had answered me with a chorus of “Yes, yes” but we did not hear them. Then tank lights caught three Japs with rifles in the beam and we rook cover.

“It’s been so long”

A moment later a long-coated American appeared from nowhere. He was an internee. He said simply, “You Americans?” A few voices answered tiredly, “Yes.”

“Good,” he said, “I’ll lead you in.”

Two tanks were just ahead and foot soldiers moved forward over the driveway outside of the main building where my wife Shelley and I had paced back and forth for so long. Frank and I were right behind the tank. Then our guide said suddenly, “There’s a Jap machine-gun nest on the left side of the building,” and as the tanks and soldiers turned left, I shouted to Frank, “I’m going in across the lawn,” and I made my last dash with Frank behind me. I tripped once, recovered myself and pushed into an hysterical mob of internees waving, shouting, screaming, some weeping. The feeble, shadowy light from several candles only partly lighted the large lobby. I could not say anything, the din was so terrific. Hands just felt me, pressed me, and voices cried, “Thank God you are here.” “It’s been so long.”

Crowds pressed in on me so closely that I could not move and then suddenly the crowd picked me up, 40-pound camera kit and all, and passed me from hand to hand overhead.

I was helpless, nor was I able to talk above the din. Then I was put down and a stern voice rang above all the others. “You are an American soldier? Put the light on yourself so we can see.” I turned the flashlight on myself and said, “I’m Carl Mydans.”

For a moment no one said anything. Then a woman’s voice came, “Carl Mydans. My God! It’s Carl Mydans,” and Betty Wilborne broke through the crowd and threw her arms around my neck and cried.

I was pushed through the crowds to the stairs in the main lobby with shouts of “speech” and for a moment I was unable to talk. I mumbled something about I never knew how good it could feel to be back here in Santo Tomás. Then I made my way out of the building, everyone feeling me, holding on to me as I struggled through the crowd. I brushed past a woman holding a weeping child. “No, darling, no,” she was saying, “he’s an American. He’s an American soldier. They have come for us, darling. Don’t be afraid.”

Outside I found a sight I had dreamed about many times. In the brilliant light beside the Battling Basic stood three Japanese in officers’ uniforms, ringed by soldiers pointing rifles at them. The Japanese were part of the administrative staff of this and other prison camps on Luzon. But they were strangers to me. The staff I knew had left some time ago.

Now I was aware of the crowds in the windows above, cheering and cheering. They had been there during my dash across the lawn but I was unaware of them. “God bless America.” “Oh what a sight for sore eyes you are.” “Oh how long we’ve waited,” were some of the things they shouted at us.

Hewlett finds his wife⁵

Throughout it all, Hewlett had stood at Mydans’s side, but he could not wait any longer. “I found a little girl who could answer the question which was foremost in my mind,” he later wrote. “She told me where I could find my wife and kindly offered to accompany me to the hospital where Mrs. Hewlett was held.”

The three years of war had been unkind to Virginia Hewlett, who like others had nearly starved to death in Santo Tomas. In the wake of her nervous breakdown, she refused to bathe or even eat, picking her nails and face with a blank stare.

“He’s gone, he’s gone,” she mumbled. “I didn’t know.”

In recent months, Virginia Hewlett had improved, but she often remained in a wheelchair. That night, amid the shouts and commotion, she rallied, standing in a windowsill. Virginia told her friend Rita Palmer she wished Frank could be with her to witness the liberation. She had no idea he was now just steps away.

Hewlett burst into the men’s ward of the camp hospital. “Where’s my wife?” the reporter demanded.

Nurse Eunice Young escorted the anxious reporter to the women’s ward. There for the first time in 1,128 days Frank Hewlett saw his wife. “I found her there today, recovering from a nervous breakdown. Doctors said she would have fully recovered now if she had had sufficient good food. Though never a big girl, her weight has dropped to 80 pounds, but I found her in excellent spirits,” he wrote in his first dispatch from the camp. “It was a reunion after years about which I do not want to think.”

Soon after, Hewlett approached Dunn. “I found her!” he shouted. “I found her!”

“Frank grabbed me in a rugged. bear-hug, then literally danced away to break the news to the others,” Dunn recalled. “We were in the midst of thousands of deliriously happy people, but not one could top the happiness of Frank Hewlett.”

Raising the Flag

(A Manila businessman had insisted that the flag-raising be by and for the internees.)⁶

Sunday morning we raised the American flag over Santo Tomás. The internees stood by breathlessly as the colors were carried to the front of the building. They shouted and cheered when they were raised. Then someone started singing God Bless America and the entire camp picked it up. I have never heard it sung as it was sung that day. I have never heard people singing God Bless America and weeping openly. And they have—never seen soldiers—hard-bitten youngsters such as make up the 1st Cavalry—stand unashamed and weep with them.

1. Mydans, Carl. “My God! It’s Carl Mydans.” Life. Time Inc. February 19, 1945. Accessed August 22, 2021. https://books.google.com/books….
2. Santo Tomas Internment Camp, also known as the Manila Internment Camp, was the largest of several camps in the Philippines in which the Japanese interned enemy civilians, mostly Americans, in World War II. The campus of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila was utilized for the camp, which housed more than 3,000 internees from January 1942 until February 1945. Conditions for the internees deteriorated during the war and by the time of the liberation of the camp by the U.S. Army many of the internees were near death from lack of food.  (read more at Wikipedia)
3. Scott, James. Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019.
   Virginia Hewlett was supposed to have been repatriated earlier.  However, Mydans wrote, “Under the stress of war and separation from Frank, whose fate she never learned, she lost her mind. At the last minute the Japanese had ruled she was too sick to travel. She had been left behind in prison.”
4. “40Th Anniversary of Liberation of Manila.” Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1985. Accessed August 22, 2021 https://www.latimes.com/archives….
   “We were within a few hundred yards of the University of Santo Tomas, in the darkness, when we began to pass many buildings, which were being blown up by the enemy. Many were burning, and the light from these fires aided us in reaching our destination. We entered the university grounds behind one of the two tanks of the 44th Tank Battalion of the 1st Cavalry Division accompanying us. This tank was nicknamed “Battling Basic,” the other was called “Georgia Peach.” The tank crashed through the gates and incidentally brought to a halt a large American Packard car filled with Japanese officers attempting to escape.”
5. Scott p. 141-142
6. Scott p. 190-192

Manila businessman Sam Wilson, who had served two years as a colonel of the guerrillas in Mindanao, arrived amid the morning excitement, anxious to see his wife and two sons. He brought with him a large American flag. “Bill Chase was ecstatic at the prospect of a formal review of his troops and a ceremonial flag-raising, but Sam overruled him,” CBS reporter Bill Dunn recalled. “This flag, he insisted, was for the internees. They must be allowed to raise it themselves.”

Even with the loudspeaker out, word spread that the American flag would be raised over Santo Tomas, and internees migrated toward the front entrance of the Main Building. Others leaned out of second-and third-floor windows, craning their necks for a glimpse. News reporters and army photographers jockeyed for spots to watch, some even climbing atop tanks and trucks to capture the historic moment. “Many prisoners put on the best clothes they had left,” Prising wrote. “The men hid their arms in long-sleeved shirts and each woman wore her most respectable dress. Few wished to look like prisoners of war—that would have been an admission of defeat.”

Dunn joined the crowd out front for the nine-thirty a.m. ceremony, describing it in his news report later that day. “It was simple but unforgettable,” he reported. “A few of the men emerged from a second-story window to the roof of the building entrance, unfurled the flag to the sight of thousands of milling internees in the courtyard before them, then slowly hauled it to its proud position once again. As it caught the breeze—still tinted with the smoke of a hundred fires—the hungry thousands, without signal, began to sing ‘God Bless America’ in voices choked with obvious emotion.”

Many of the internees lifted their arms over their heads as the words wafted through the crowd. An American bomber, as though on cue, buzzed the camp. “We nearly all broke down,” recalled nurse Denny Williams, “but if our voices failed, our faith in our country and its fighting men was stronger than ever.”

New York Times correspondent Ford Wilkins, whose weight had plummeted to ninety-nine pounds during his years as an internee, reflected on the ceremony’s importance in an article that day. “For three years these people had not been permitted to express their loyalty to their country or to demonstrate their feelings,” he wrote. “They had not seen an American flag, the symbol of their hopes and certainty of eventual liberation. This was the first display of the American flag in Manila since the Japanese invasion lowered the one in front of the High Commissioner’s Residence on January 2, 1942, trampled it underfoot and raised in its place the red circle on a white field.”

Amid the celebration, Dunn glanced over at Col. Fred Hamilton, who stood beside him. The cavalryman wept; so, too, Dunn noted, did other soldiers around him. The simple ceremony moved all who witnessed it. “No fanfare, no shouting,” Dunn reported that day. “Just a song that was more than a prayer.”

… is just a few months away.

When I was a kid, not yet a teen, I had figured out that I would be 48 just after the turn of the century.  I didn’t really think about anything past that point.  It was too far in the future.

Well, that turn-of-the-century point is soon to be 22 years in the past.  And, in just a few months, I’ll be on the other side of 70.

Time flies.

Well, not exactly.  The Y2K scare seems like ages ago. I retired 14 1/2 years ago and stopped contract work 3 3/4 years ago.

A lot of people didn’t make it this far.  Some didn’t even make it out of high school… others not to far past that.

I left to join the Navy only about 18 months after graduation and never really kept in touch with anyone.  Through social media and other online avenues, I’ve touched base with a few survivors and learned of a few others who have passed.  I’m sure there were others for all sort of reasons.  Many other people I’ve known, or their spouses, have gone along the way.

Too many, too young.

Life happens.

Until it doesn’t.

I guess I just vanished so far as any of my classmates knew.  One high school friend told me that she looked for my name on the Vietnam memorial but didn’t find it.  One classmate who supposedly was lost over there isn’t on the wall either.

I can’t say I was ever much of a risk taker.  Time has winnowed out some of those in my age group who were, I’m sure.

When I was considering the military, I just went to the Air Force and Navy recruiters.  With the war still in progress, becoming a marine or a soldier was just too risky.

So I ended up on a submarine and 15 1/2 months submerged over several deployments.

And working in nuclear power.

Being on a submarine was no more risky than any other type of ship, in my view.

Working in nuclear was as safe as any job – and much safer than many.

Sure, I have – and have had – my share of risk factors.  I was a smoker, but that was so long ago – it’ll be 40 years since I quit when I skip to the other side of 70 – that it has little or no bearing on my health today.  I had tried to quit multiple times for over a decade and then just quit cold turkey.

After I quit smoking, I gained weight and, except for a period in the first half of the 90s, have struggled with it since.  I take meds to deal with high blood pressure and pre-diabetes and had cataract surgery last summer.

Despite the weight, blood pressure, and pre-diabetes, I’m in fairly good shape compared to a lot of others my age. I try to keep active mentally – blogging, online researching, reading, etc. – and physically.  I averaged 3.8 miles a day walking in 2020.  This year I’m up to 4.3 miles a day.¹ I’ve also got some outside projects that require physical effort.

I think I’m positioned reasonably well for the journey on the other side of 70.  Karen follows a few months behind me.  She has some different issues than mine, but I’m not going to go into those.  She is mentally active with her blog and social media and she is also averaging several miles a day.

We know there will be issues to deal with.

Life happens.

1. After the gym closed in early March 2020, we bought a treadmill in June.  We’ve logged over 900 hours on the machine and over 2,150 miles, about the straight-line distance from San Francisco to Atlanta.

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 6

Working for the U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) from 1935 to 1940, Dorothea Lange was one of the greatest documentary photographers of depression-era America.  In 1940, shortly after leaving FSA, Lange was appointed Head Photographer for the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE)¹, working for a year traveling across California and Arizona.  Her BAE photos, many published in print publications, were meant to bring American public attention to the plight of agricultural workers such as migrants, sharecroppers, farmers, and farmworkers whose hardship was largely unknown.²

One of those photos was later printed as Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona and At the cotton wagon, migrant agricultural worker, Eloy, Arizona.  Prints of this photo reside in numerous museums and art galleries³ and have sold for very respectable sums⁴. The image appeared in a seminal 1962 exhibition, The Bitter Years, curated by Edward Steichen⁵. The show featured 209 images by photographers who worked under the umbrella of the Farm Security Administration—part of Roosevelt’s New Deal—in 1935-41. A 2012 art book, edited by Françoise Poos, titled The Bitter Years: Edward Steichen and the Farm Security Administration Photographs, includes images from the exhibit and essays on the FSA, its legacy and impact as well as the impact of Steichen.  The book’s cover photo is Lange’s Migratory Cotton Picker.^{6, 7}

I recognized the subject portrayed in the photo when I came across three images of him while browsing Dorothea Lange images online in the National Archives. I had previously used the image in an uncompleted blog project titled, The Bitter Years.⁸ One of the images—third image below—I found in the Archives was an uncropped version of the photo Lange used for Migratory Cotton Picker.

Another image of the subject in a similar pose wearing a hat can be found at Oakland Museum of California.  The location is given as Eloy, Arizona in 1940 and described as “Migratory cotton picker with his sack slung over his shoulder rests at the scales before returning to work in the field.”⁹

While some online sites claim that their version is protected by copyright, the original image was taken as part of Lange’s employment with the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE), a unit of the Department of Agriculture and is, thus, a work of the U.S. Government and, as such, not subject to copyright restrictions.

1. In 1922, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE)…  was established by the merger of the Office of Farm Management and Farm Economics and the Bureau of Markets and Crop Estimates, bringing together responsibility for data collection and economic research/analysis in a single agency. This new agency brought together for the first time in data collection and economic analysis and research.
   • “Economic Research Service.” Wikipedia. last edited May 30, 2021. Accessed August 16, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Research_Service.
2. “Dorothea Lange – Migratory Cotton Worker, Eloy, Arizona, 1940: Photographs New YORK Monday, March 31, 2014 Lot 47.” Phillips Auctioneers, LLC. Accessed August 16, 2021. https://www.phillips.com/detail/dorothea-lange/NY040114/47.
3. Museums and Galleries:
   • Museum of Modern Art,
   • Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
   • National Gallery of Art,
   • Oakland Museum of California (this one is actually from a film negative and the the image is reversed from the normal prints)
   • Yale University Art Gallery
   • Museum of Contemporary Photography
4. Print sales
   • Christie’s (Closed, October 9, 2017) $200,000, Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona, annotated ‘BAE 332’ on back
   • Christies (Closed April 10, 2008) $49,000, At the cotton wagon, migrant agricultural worker, Eloy, Arizona, print made in the 1950
5. Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography. Steichen was credited with transforming photography into an art form.
   • “Edward Steichen.” Wikipedia, last edited August 12, 2021. Accessed August 16, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Steichen.
6. “The Bitter Years: Edward Steichen and the Farm Security Administration Photographs.”| ARTBOOK 9781935202868. D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, September 30, 2012. Accessed August 16, 2021 https://www.artbook.com/9781935202868.html.
7. Originally priced $60, I found a copy online said to be in very good condition and ordered it.  With shipping and handling, it was about $15, and should be here in one to three weeks.
8. Goad, Mike. “Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona–The Bitter YEARS 005.” Exit78, September 5, 2016. https://exit78.com/migratory-cotton-picker-eloy-arizona-the-bitter-years-005/.
9. “Dorothea Lange: Omca Eloy, Arizona.” Dorothea Lange Digital Archive | OMCA: Oakland Museum of CA, June 24, 2020. Accessed August 16, 2021. https://dorothealange.museumca.org/image/eloy-arizona/A67.137.40059.4/?section=in-the-fields.

Twenty-three years ago, British doctor Andrew Wakefield published an article linking childhood autism to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet¹ and announced at a press conference that he had concerns about the MMR vaccine and its relationship to autism.

With some very careless media reporting, the findings went viral.

MMR vaccinations plunged.

It was a very small “study.”

“12 children (mean age 6 years [range 3–10], 11 boys) were referred to a paediatric gastroenterology unit with a history of normal development followed by loss of acquired skills, including language, together with diarrhoea and abdominal pain.”²

A 2003 paper in the The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine after reviewing a dozen epidemiological studies “concluded that there was no evidence of an association between autism and MMR.” Numerous studies in peer-reviewed journals concluded the same.  The British General Medical Council “revoked Wakefield’s medical license after a lengthy hearing, citing numerous ethical violations that tainted his work, like failing to disclose financing from lawyers who were mounting a case against vaccine manufacturers.” The Lancet retracted Wakefield’s paper in 2010. In 2011, The British Medical Journal concluded his research was unethically financed and fraudulent.³

Wakefield’s fraudulent actions have been tied to various epidemics and deaths.  His study and claims linking the MMR vaccine to autism led to decline in vaccination rates in the US, UK and Ireland, with a corresponding rise in measles and mumps cases along with serious illness and death.⁴

One 2011 study concluded, “The alleged autism-vaccine connection is, perhaps, the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years.”⁵

Kids died.

In 2019, The Skeptic Magazine awarded Wakefield its 2018 Rusty Razor award for “pseudoscience and bad critical thinking.” At that time, the anti-vaxxer movement had “had an ugly resurgence in recent years, in turn prompting a notable rise of easily preventable diseases across the developed world.” The CDC had recently released a report saying that “the number of US children under the age of two who haven’t received any life-saving immunizations has quadrupled since 2001.”⁶

It’s happening again. Untruths and distortions about the COVID vaccines are killing thousands every week.  “Anti-vaxxers, along with conservative politicians and TV commentators, are slandering vaccines as ineffective, dangerous and part of a government plot to enslave the citizenry.”⁷

New COVID cases are soaring.

99% of new COVID patients in hospitals are unvaccinated.

Some will die.

Trouble is, some people don’t listen to evidence. Instead, they surf a seductively scary sea of false information, much of it anecdotal, on TV and social media. Mendacity works. Researchers at MIT have found that even minimal exposure to this nonsense depresses vaccination rates.

Meanwhile, the whole subject of COVID-19 has become so politicized that reasoned debate is difficult. More than 85 percent of Democrats have had at least one shot, but only 52 percent of Republicans. The New York Times reports that the least vaccinated counties in the U.S. have one thing in common: they all voted for Donald Trump. For some Republicans, refusing to get vaccinated has become a badge of political loyalty.

It’s tempting to say: “Darwin was right. Let these idiots go. It’s their choice.” But that response is neither humane nor intelligent. People may get COVID-19 through their own stupidity, but they go on to infect other people – and all of them become potential petri dishes for new, more contagious, more vaccine-resistant variants.⁸

I got my first vaccination – Moderna – as soon as I could.

The second Moderna injection was four weeks later.

I plan to get the booster eight months after that one.

How ‘bout you?

1. Morrison, Donald. “Turning the Tide in the Vaccine (Mis)Information Wars.” The Berkshire Eagle, July 22, 2021. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://www.berkshireeagle.com/opinion/columnists/donald-morrison-turning….
2. Wakefield, Andrew J, et al. “RETRACTED: Ileal-Lymphoid-Nodular Hyperplasia, Non-Specific Colitis, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder in Children.” The Lancet, February 28, 1998. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://www.thelancet.com/…..
   • This is the RETRACTED article. The web article and the pdf both display the word RETRACTED prominently.
3. Dominus, Susan. “The Crash and Burn of an Autism Guru.” The New York Times, April 21, 2011. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24.
4. “Andrew Wakefield (Section: Epidemics, Effects, and Reception).” Wikipedia, last edit August 19, 2021. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield.
5. Flaherty DK. The Vaccine-Autism Connection: A Public Health Crisis Caused by Unethical Medical Practices and Fraudulent Science. Annals of Pharmacotherapy. 2011;45(10):1302-1304. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://journals.sagepub.com/…
6. Hale, Tom. “This Year’s Award for the Worst Pseudoscience Is Especially Deserved.” IFLScience. IFLScience, July 8, 2019. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine….
7. Morrison
8. ibid

Vintage Camping Images No. 1

Camp in Tusuyan Forest, Hermit Rim, Grand Canyon, Ariz.¹

This camping image is from the second decade of the 20th century – probably before 2019 when the national park was established – on the south rim of the Grand Canyon somewhere to the west of present day Grand Canyon Village historic district.

Tusayan National Forest was established by the U.S. Forest Service in Arizona on July 1, 1910 with 1,830,487 acres  from part of Coconino National Forest and other lands. On October 22, 1934 the entire forest was transferred to Prescott National Forest and the name was discontinued.²

“Hermit Rim” refers to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.  The Hermit Rim Road was constructed in 1913.  The current Hermit Road runs west 7 miles from Canyon Village along the rim to Hermits Rest and Hermit trailhead.

This card is from Detroit Publishing Company, series 79000. The series dates from 1910-c. 1921 and  was printed for other publishers, such as Fred Harvey, as with this postcard.³

1. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Camp in Tusuyan Forest, Hermit Rim, Grand Canyon, Ariz.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed August 18, 2021. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-9d93-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
2. “Tusayan National Forest.” Wikipedia, last edit February 22, 2021. accessed August 18, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusayan_National_Forest.
3. “Dating Guide for Detroit Company Postcards (DPC).” The Newberry. Accessed August 18, 2021. https://www.newberry.org/sites/default/files/researchguide-attachments/Detroit%20Postcard%20Dating%20Guide.pdf.

And then the dispossessed were drawn west—from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless—restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do—to lift, to push, to pick, to cut—anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land.¹

On October 29, 1929,—Black Tuesday—was marked by a sharp drop in the stock market.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was especially hard hit with high trading volume, falling 12%, one of the larges on-day drops in stock market history.  A panic sell-off effectively ended the Roaring Twenties and launched the global economy into the Great Depression.²

For the United States, the next 15 years would see the great dust storms of the drought-stricken plains region, massive unemployment during a depression that was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, and a global war that also involved most of the world’s countries.

Dust, drought, depression, and war—a new project

Over the life of this blog, I have posted many, many times on the great depression and the dust bowl, usually just sharing images, sometimes going into more depth.  This new “project” will take a different approach.  There will still be relevant photos or images—I can’t see doing a post without at least one image—but there will also be content associated with the period from the crash of the stock market to the end of World War II, usually including one or more of the themes dust, drought, depression, and war.

Each blog post will be an exploration of something from the almost 16 years between the crash of the stock market and the end of World War 2—no limits, no specific focus.

I want to vary the focus up so that I’m not always concentrating in one area. In the first few posts, I found myself falling into that trap with three posts related to the drought in 1930.  To add some randomness to the posts, I used a random date generator to select one year’s worth of dates between Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, and September 2, 1945, the end of the Second World War.  Those dates were then sorted in a spreadsheet using a random order function.

From that list of dates, I plan to pick the top date and do an image search on that date.  If I find an image that’s related to one or more of the themes, then the post will be related to that image.  If there isn’t an image that’s relevant, then I’ll do a regular Google search and/or a New York Times article search.

I may also stumble across a topic to blog on separate from the list of dates.

Posts already prepared—both published and scheduled—are listed at Dust, drought, depression, and war – the posts. The randomly selected and randomly ordered blog post prompt dates for future posts are also included.  Some significant dates may later be inserted or substituted.

1. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York, NY: Viking Press, 1939.
2. Halton, Clay. “Black Tuesday.” Investopedia. Investopedia, May 19, 2021. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blacktuesday.asp.

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 5

In the 1934 mayoral election in New Orleans, Senator Huey P. Long¹, the Democratic political leader of Louisiana convinced John Klorer, Sr., a respected engineer and father of the editor of Long’s American Progress newspaper, to oppose the incumbent mayor, T. Semmes Walmsley.

In the final days of the campaign, Long supporters were caught removing names of Old Regular supporters from the voter rolls, so the registration books were seized by the civil sheriff and placed in the Orleans Parish Prison for safekeeping. Long’s ally Governor Oscar K. Allen ordered the Louisiana National Guard to mobilize for New Orleans to defend the registrar’s office, while Walmsley threatened to deputize ten thousand “special police.” With potential armed clashes between the National Guard and Walmsley’s police looming, a last-minute agreement to submit to an arbitration committee averted a crisis.²

The following article appeared in the New York Times on September 8, 1934.³  The image above is a composite from public domain photos.

Protest Calling of Troops.

Long Broadcasts Warning.

Mayor Points to Own Power.

Martial Law Predicted.

1. “Huey Long.” Wikipedia.  last edit August 13, 2021. Accessed August 15, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long.
2. “1934 New Orleans Mayoral Election.” Wikipedia. last edited June 25, 2020.Accessed August 15, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_New_Orleans_mayoral_election.
3. Daniell, F. Raymond. “2,000 Troops Move into New ORLEANS; Long IS ‘Dictator’; but His Faction Loses Two Important Court Rulings COVERING PRIMARY.” The New York Times. September 8, 1934. https://www.nytimes.com/1934/09/08/archives/2000-troops-move-into-new-orleans-long-is-dictator-but-his-faction.html.