Labor back in the day

On this Labor Day in the United States, we pause to contemplate the positions assigned women in the days of the Great Depression (the closer to "household arts" the better). All are posters commissioned by the Works Progress Administration:

("Girls - Are you interested?" image credit; "Jobs for Girls & Women" image credit; "Occupations related to household arts" image credit; "Train" image credit)

On April 14

On this day in ...
... 1939 (70 years ago today), John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath was published. Sold at $2.75 a copy, it became both an immediate bestseller and an immediate target for banning and burning. But the timeless Depression-era story of the Joad family, driven from their dust-bowled home in Oklahoma into unwelcoming migrant labor camps in California, outlasted critics. These seem good economic times to (re)read Grapes -- or, for that matter, the excellent nonfiction account of the same phenomenon, Factories in the Field, written by Carey McWilliams the very same year.
... 2009 (today), are celebrated New Year's festivals in Thai and Cambodian cultures. (credit for 2003 photo of Thai New Year festivities in Australia)

(Prior April 14 posts are here and here)

Roosevelt memorial

Had the opportunity during my recent visit to Washington, D.C., to make a 1st visit to the Roosevelt Memorial installed a few years back on the edge of the Tidal Basin, a stone's throw from the Jefferson Memorial. The bronze statues recalling the life and times of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President during the Great Depression and World War II, and Eleanor Roosevelt, 1st Lady and, eventually, U.S. delegate to the United Nations, were set against dark granite. The words etched in stone, they shone.

Depression-era soup kitchen line

Crippled by polio a decade before his election as President, FDR sits in his seldom-photographed wheelchair.

Perhaps the most famous line from FDR's 1st Inaugural Address in 1932; audio here.

Fala stands sentry at the foot of FDR.

Real men, and women, hate war.

Though the Roosevelts' record was not unblemished, their lifework helped to open a new era of human rights.

A call to global justice.

ER beside the symbol of the United Nations. Many women stopped, climbed into the alcove, and had their photos taken in a sisterly stance right next to Eleanor.