Category: History
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Stonewall at 40
Rick Bowes writes a guest blog over at Matt Cheney’s blog The Mumpsimus, on Stonewall forty years later. Read it. It’s not only good, it’s a great perspective.
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Out of this furnace
I’ve been reading a novel called “Out of this Furnace” for one of my summer courses. It’s by Thomas Bell, an author from Braddock, Pennsylvania who grew up in a steel mill family. The novel is semi-autobiographical, following three generations of a Slovak immigrant family from the turn of the century through the thirties. The…
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Congrats, Maine
Congratulations, Maine, on being the next state to rise out of the mire of a twisted sensibility. Let’s hope more will follow soon. Until then, I leave you with this really awesome poem by Frank O’Hara: Homosexuality So we are taking off our masks, are we, and keeping our mouths shut? as if we’d…
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Youngstown: Descent into Darkness
My friend Deb over at Youngstown Moxie found this great photography project on rustbelt cities created by freelance photojournalist Sean Posey of San Francisco. His family left Youngstown in the 80s and now he’s putting together a fine art/documentary project that will look at Youngstown and other areas of Michigan and Pennsylvania as it considers…
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Modern Ruins
One of my favorite sites on the internet these days is Shaun O’Boyle’s Modern Ruins. Full of photographic essays about places whose industries, way of life, or some other historical aspect, has fallen into ruin, it’s a beautiful way to preserve a particular swath of our cultural memory. My favorite is the Big Steel collection,…
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Research
This may be a long shot, but if anyone out there knows of links online or books or documentaries, or anything really, that has to do with munitions factories in the United States during WWII, I could really use some help finding stuff. I’ve been waiting to use the archives at the Museum of Labor…