Hole in the Clouds

Isadorables

Oct 6, 2013

After her two children, Deirdre Craig and Patrick Singer, drowned in 1913 in the aftermath of a car accident in Paris, Isadora Duncan adopted six dancer daughters, the Isadorables. Three of them–Maria-Theresa Duncan, Anna Duncan, and Irma Duncan– nurtured Isadora's dance techniques and instructional philosophy long after she herself was killed in another notorious car accident in 1927.

This photo is believed to date from 1920 or thereabouts, in New York.

dance   Isadora Duncan   dancers   modern dance   circa 1920   (Image credit: Arnold Genthe via Shorpy)  

Nelson

Oct 5, 2013

There's a new mural in the neighborhood, bolted high on the wall of a new house at the corner of Fitzwater and Smedley. Looks to be a private project, not part of the city's Mural Arts Program, and it's hard to say if it's intended as permanent street art, since it mostly blocks the windows of the house. But it's something to look at, a portrait of Nelson Mandela looming above a scrim of drippy red and black streaks. The painter signed the mural illegibly; we believe that whoever he or she is, he or she got it right, those dark, worldly, heavy-lidded eyes in a brilliant red face.

art   house   streetscape   mural   neighborhood   Nelson Mandela  

The Leaning Tower of Washington

Oct 2, 2013

Ninety-nine years ago, in the winter of 1914, a Washington lawyer by the name of Wrisley Brown could fly on horseback across West Potomac Park without encountering traffic or tourists or even another horse.
 
Woodrow Wilson was president then, and the world was different. But when I was a little girl, which spanned a few years roughly halfway between the Wilson era and the current unpleasantness, people still rode horses in West Potomac Park, at least on summer Sundays, when the polo teams were playing. The Internet tells me that polo still happens there, with the Washington Monument as backdrop, or at least still happened there this past summer; presumably, it could also happen again next summer if the Republicans decide to unshut the government and reopen the park.

The Washington Monument is listing leftward in this picture, as are the trees in the park. That's an artifact of 1914 photographic technology, which utilized a slit in a spring-wound sheet-metal shutter to allow light focused by the lens to reach the glass-plate film. The slit would drop from top to bottom to expose the plate, but because there was a lens in front of the slit that inverted the light rays, the plate was actually exposed from bottom to top. And meanwhile, for this picture, the photographer was panning from left to right to follow the moving horse. Objects that weren't moving kinda got an angle to them.

A couple of years ago, the Washington Monument came close to acquiring a much more serious lean. The monument took a $15-million blow from a 5.8 earthquake and remains shrouded today in scaffolding, for repairs that probably are not considered important during a government shutdown, even though half the bill has been covered by a private philanthropist. We just can't have nice things any more because, you know, because.

They can play their polo somewhere else, I don't have a problem with that, but who are these people who think it's okay to let the Washington Monument fall to pieces?
horse   1914   Wrisley Brown   West Potomac Park   Washington Monument   D.C.   (Image credit: Harris & Ewing via Shorpy)  

Now Selling––Not

Oct 1, 2013

On one of these cranes in the sky above Bethesda, Maryland, is a "Now Selling" sign, urging people to go ahead and put their money down for new condos currently under construction.

Odds are, however, that nobody's buying the condos–or much of anything else–in Bethesda or elsewhere in the Washington area this week. An estimated 700,000 people anticipate being furloughed for an unknown length of time, and hundreds of thousands more will be expected to do their work as usual except without any guarantee of a paycheck.

This is how we roll nowadays, in the greatest country on earth. . . .

The cranes will likely keep on craning, like other non-governmental operations, at least until the reduced level of spending in the regional economy pushes businesspeople to furlough even more employees.

Bethesda   government shutdown   D.C.   (Image credit: Little Fuji)  

Food for Victory

Sep 22, 2013

By the summer of 1942, the American war effort was in such high gear that many agricultural regions were experiencing a severe labor shortage. All the young men were serving in the military, almost everybody else was working in war industries, and nobody was left to pick the nation's peas and beans.

As part of a program designated "Food for Victory," this specially chartered train brought more than three hundred high school boys and girls from the coal-mining town of Richwood, West Virginia, to the farming district around Batavia in upstate New York, where they would pick peaches, apples, tomatoes, and other crops. The program also brought in teenagers from other non-farming places, including Brooklyn, New York, where one of the high schoolers who signed on to help with the harvest upstate was the young Helen Ruskin, Norman's mother.

New York   West Virginia   Helen   train   World War II   high school   1942   youth   Richwood   (Image credit: John Collier via Shorpy)  

Where You Gonna Run To?

Sep 12, 2013

Baby Kaspar woke up bright and early–6 a.m.–on his first morning in America. His jetlagged parents were not pleased. No doubt, they hadn't slept quite as soundly as he had during the long flights from Estonia to Chicago.

His grandmother was happy to retrieve him from their room, even at 6 a.m., but Kaspar wasn't so sure about her. He complained. He complained more loudly. So she took him outside for a long walk.

Outside, life was good. Kaspar found pebbles and then some pebbles and after that some pebbles. But back in the house again, where his parents were still trying to sleep, he remembered his distress. His grandmother wasn't his mother or his father. He ran from her.

When she got near, he told her to go away. Loudly. If she came nearer, he ran. This went on till he'd reached the far end of the house, up against the back door, where he could run no further.

There were cushions there on the floor, new pads for the garden furniture, and so it came to pass that Kaspar lay down in the doorway and curled up and went back to sleep.

And his grandmother? "I just sat next to him," she said, "and laughed at this world."

Illinois   baby   sleep   doorway   Kaspar   Oak Park   (Image credit: K. Maldre)