Pursuits : Elizabeth Thomsen

Disturbing Thanksgiving Postcard

2009-11-14T05:15:29Z

In Flanders Field

2009-11-11T18:29:31Z

No Mans Land, Flanders Field, France, 1919

In Flanders Field
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 – 1918)

When I was a child, my parents had an old recording of this song and I loved it’s rousing, patriotic cheerfulness, sending the boys off to the War to End All Wars. But in school my teacher recited In Flanders Field to the class, and I found the middle verse chilling: “We are the dead. Short days ago, we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow…” I still do, and think of it every time I read more young men and women going off to war and dying.

Over There, by George M. Cohan, sung by Arthur Fields, Columbia A2470, recorded in 1917, from the 78RPM Collection on the Internet Archive

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-30T04:02:40Z

“The clock is striking midnight
The spell the witch will cast
All the fairies, ghosts and goblins
Will be conjured from the past”

I love the great collection of old postcards at Cardcow.com. It’s an online store, but they keep the card images and information online after they’re sold, and they’ve accumulated a huge collection over the years.

This 1912 Halloween postcard by Samuel L. Schmucker is one of my favorites — it’s quite racy and I like that owl thing on her head. Is that supposed to be some kind of hat or headdress, or a real bird that just happened to land there? This card is expensive, $129.95, but the image is available free to send as an ecard, download as wallpaper, or embed as a webpage.

Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Markers

2009-10-30T03:36:54Z

I have lived in Massachusetts most of my life, and I have always been aware of these distinctive historical markers. The first one I really remember was the one for the Fairbanks House in Dedham. We lived nearby and used to pass it all the time. Then I noticed others around occasionally when we went on Sunday drives. I never gave them much thought, though — I’ve always just thought of them as part of the landscape.

Then I started photographing them and putting them on Flickr, and it became a sort of game, trying to “collect” as many as I could find. They were put in place as part of in 1930, and although they’re sturdy, heavy signs made of iron, many have been lost over the years to storms, accidents, development and other causes. I have heard that some may have been melted down in a World War II iron drive, but no one really knows what happened to them all, or how many are left.

But we do know how many there were, where they were located and what they said, because the book Historical Markers Erected by Massachusetts Bay Colony is available from the Internet Archive. The book was published in 1930 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and it’s an alphabetical list by community with the text and location of every marker, and includes a few photographs of the markers. It’s interesting reading these. It makes me wonder how the decisions were made on what places and events were selected for the markers.

The text for the signs was revised and approved by historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, giving them a high degree of trustworthiness. However, at least one sign, the John Rogers Homestead, had an error. The text reads: “Near this spot stood the John Rogers homestead, which was destroyed in the Indian massacre of 1695, and the entire family killed.” However, the entire family was not killed, according to the 1816 An Historical Memoir of Billerica, in Massachusetts. This sign has the last phrase, “and the entire family killed” painted out. This is an interesting effect. The intent of the white paint to remove the text is clear, but the raised letters make it easy to read the original text. It’s much like strikeover text online…it makes the correction while preserving record of the error.

The condition of the markers varies greatly. Some are in excellent condition, some are in good shape and show signs of repair and restoration, and some are in poor condition, like the Oldest House in Cambridge marker. MassHighway is responsible for maintenance, and this post on their blog, Historic Signs of a Job Well Done, shows a marker before and after restoration, and asks the public to report markers in need of attention.

The signs were erected in 1930 with the auto tourist in mind, and are placed so they can be read from the car. Most are easy to photograph, especially since they have two identical sides. I try both sides to get the best results in terms of both light and background.

I’m not the only one photographing these, of course. I started the Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Historical Markers group on Flickr, and others have posted some pictures there. There are also many of the signs photographed and documented on two of my favorite sites: the Historic Marker Database (Example: The Church in Salem Village) and the Waymarking site (Example: Macy-Colby House.)

A Stop at Willoughby

2009-10-25T04:01:36Z

Gart Williams is a New York advertising executive who is burnt out. His boss, Oliver Misrell (All-Over Miserable?), is a tyrant whose motto is Push-Push-Push, and his wife Jane is a cold, selfish woman who doesn’t care if he’s happy as long as he keeps making money.

After a terrible day at the office, Gart gets on the commuter train home to Connecticut. It’s dark and snowy outside, and the weary Gart drifts off to sleep. When he wakes up, the conductor is calling out the stop for Willoughby. The train has been transformed into something from the nineteenth century, and when he looks out and sees a summer afternoon in a small town of 100 years ago, with a band playing, a couple of barefoot boys walking by with fishing poles, and a horse-drawn wagon waiting at the station. When he questions the conductor about the town, he’s told it’s a quiet place where a man can slow down and “live his life full measure.” When he goes to the steps to look out, the train jars back into motion, and Gart wakes up in his seat, back in the present.

Gart’s life at work and at home become more and more difficult, and he has two more dreams of Willoughby on the train. The third time, he gets off and walks through the town square, where people greet him by name and he feels a sense of calm and peace he hasn’t known in many years. Has he escaped to a new life or jumped to his death?

I watched this episode for the first time when I was ten years old, and I remember it well. I knew nothing about the world of advertising, of course, but I knew what it was like to have troubles and to long to escape to another place and time, where it’s always sunny and the band plays on.

The ending was shocking to me, unbearably sad but also sort of beautiful in a way. It was a vision of what Heaven might be like. My father had died a few months before, and I worried over the idea of an afterlife a lot. The image of Heaven I had from church and especially from the book The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell just didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t picture my father sitting on a cloud playing a harp and polishing his halo. But after seeing this episode, I thought that maybe when your body dies, the real you goes someplace nice like Willoughby. I found this thought very comforting.

I have been watching all the Twilight Zone episodes again, and realizing what an important influence they were on me when I was growing up. They made me think, much more so than anything we read or talked about at school.

A Stop at Willoughby — Watch the full episode free on CBS.com

Day and Night Diner

2009-10-24T01:27:18Z

I travel around Massachusetts a lot for work, mostly for meetings, but I rarely seem to be able to take advantage of these trips to visit a new diner. Even when I know there’s a diner in town, it seems that they are never near enough to the meeting site, and I usually don’t have any time to spare before I have to get back to the office.

Wednesday, however, I really lucked out. I had a meeting at the Palmer Public Library. I knew that the Day and Night Diner was in Palmer, but I’ve never been to Palmer before and didn’t know where it was in relation to the library. A quick check of addresses showed that the diner was directly across the street from the library.

I was able to run over and get a few pictures during a break. It’s my very favorite type of diner, a classic Worcester Lunch Car Company diner from 1944. The thing I love about these diners is the perfect curve of the roofline on the short ends, similar to Deb’s Diner in Salem (Mass.) and the Boulevard in Worcester. The Day and Night is also one of those rare diners set on its lot perpendicular to the street — the entrance is on the one of those short ends, under that perfect curve.

I didn’t have time to check out the interior, the food or (most importantly) the coffee, but I’ll definitely make a point of getting off the Mass. Pike next time I am out that way to make a proper visit!

Day and Night Diner
1456 Main Street / Route 20
Palmer, Massachusetts

Worcester Lunch Car Company #781, 1944

On the Air

2009-10-19T03:28:15Z

On the Air is a 1937 educational film about radio broadcasting from the Jam Handy Organization. It opens with a studio radio performance by celebrated violinist David Rubinoff and his orchestra, all dressed in formal attire, showing the musicians but also some of the production details — hand signals from the booth, and adjustments of various dials and knobs. And then we’re off on a technical explanation of sound waves, radio signals, amplification and transmission, showing how the sound from the studio is makes it way into the living rooms and automobiles of America.

This ten minute black-and-white film was made for the Chevrolet Division, General Motors Corporation, and is one of several Jam Handy productions from the Prelinger Archives available through the Internet Archive.

On the Air — Internet Archive

Columbus Day

2009-10-09T22:44:31Z

Cardcow.com

Another great vintage postcard from Cardcow.com. I appreciate that they provide embed code in various sizes to make it easy for anyone to post these cards on blogs and websites.

Ribsy

2009-10-08T04:33:10Z

Ribsy, by Beverly Cleary

This is an old favorite of mine, but I haven’t read it in many years. I was almost afraid to read it again. I’ve been rereading a lot of favorite books lately, and many of them have been disappointing. The books simply aren’t as good as they used to be. Ribsy, however, seemed as sweet, fresh and funny as it was when I read it to my little brother over forty years ago.

Ribsy is a good-natured mutt who lives with his boy Henry Huggins. He certainly never intended to run away, but one rainy day he escapes from the parked car while his family is shopping to chase a little dog who has been barking at him, and finds himself lost and confused in the parking lot.

“Ribsy had a pretty good nose, but unfortunately he was no bloodhound. He had never tracked a lost child over mountains and through forests. He was just an ordinary city dog, trying to track his owner across an enormous parking lot that smelled of oil and exhaust.”

And so Ribsy’s adventures begin. He’s misses Henry and the familiar pattern of life at home, but he has no idea how to find his way home. He’s an optimistic and resourceful dog, and he makes some friends along the road. He doesn’t like the violet-scented bubble bath he receives from a group of rambunctious children in one home. He enjoys his time as the class mascot for a group of second-graders until the day someone brings their pet squirrel for show-and-tell. Lonely old Mrs. Frawley is kind, but Ribsy doesn’t really like wearing a coat, or posing for her friends wearing a straw hat and spectacles and clutching a corncob pipe between his teeth. When he disrupts the final play of the high school football game, he gets his photo in the newspaper, which ultimately helps Henry, who never gave up hope, to find him.

The wonderful thing about this book is the point of view, which is almost totally Ribsy’s. We see the world through the dog’s eyes…or more often, his nose. We understand how he thinks, what he wants and how he feels.

Although I still love this story, I couldn’t help but feel like the Huggins family are terribly irresponsible dog owners. They allow Ribsy to come and go as he pleases and roam freely through the neighborhood unleashed. In the opening chapter, they leave him alone outside when they go on their shopping expedition, and allow him to chase the car for several blocks through busy intersections, only stopping to let him in the car when Henry worries that he’s going to get run over. But when I was growing up, there were no leash laws and all of our dogs ran free. Lots of neighborhood dogs chased cars. And it was sad but not particularly unusual for dogs to run away and get lost, or to get hit by a car and be injured or killed.

I don’t think it’s fair to judge the Huggins family by today’s dog care standards, but I wonder how today’s kids, raised in a leash-law world, see this aspect of the book.

October

2009-10-04T03:56:16Z