US postal carriers circa 1910, with the holiday mail. Then, as now, they hold it all together.
Image from this source.
Tag Archives: old photographs
A Glimpse of Another Christmas
E.B. Thompson was a successful photographer active in Washington DC in the early decades of the 20th century. Thompson, who was probably born around the time of the Civil War, gained prominence around the same time as Theodore Roosevelt; indeed, the Rough Rider may have been Thompson’s chief patron. Readers may recall reading this post about Thompson’s 1899 photograph of the coffins of American war dead awaiting burial at Arlington Cemetery.
Besides documenting the political scene, Thompson created and preserved many other pictures—photographs and stereographs—of everyday life in the District and other subjects of local and personal appeal. Among them was this picture of a turn-of-the-century open-air market, taken around Christmastime, as you can see.
Evidence internal to the photograph (such as the clothing and shutter speed) suggests it was taken no earlier than 1905. Prints of the original image were then colorized for sale. The color does a lot to draw us back into that earlier time.
Image: from this source.
A President Ventures Abroad
Given the international status of the United States today, the home-bound nature of the presidency during the first century-plus of the nation’s existence is hard to imagine. The first president to venture beyond the western hemisphere was Woodrow Wilson, who in 1919 traveled to Europe at the conclusion of the First World War to participate in the negotiations that produced the Treaty of Versailles.
During his trip, Wilson and his entourage visited Belgium, touring Ypres and other areas that had been devastated by the fighting. An anonymous photographer attached to the US Signal Corps documented the president’s tour of the war-torn landscape. The resulting deep-focus sepia prints preserve the occasion on which Wilson first saw something of late war in which he and the rest of the nation had been engaged.
Image: from this source.
Click image to enlarge.
Happy One!
Time to break out the champagne and celebrate:
Our Polity is one year old today!
The Good News? A Dollar Can’t Vote
As Election Day dawns, final tallies of money spent on the 2012 campaign are appearing. In a country where a dollar is sometimes taken as a measure of all things, it’s worth remembering that these billions have been expended in the hope of bending the great will that collectively lies with the American people.
That’s right, fellow citizens: at the end of the campaign, it all comes down to you. The special interests, the media, the national parties, the consultants: in the end they’re all equally powerless. It’s up to you to get out and vote today. Ignore the cynics: your action—no matter where you live—is an expression of power that remains awesome and singular. No matter who has the money or how it’s spent, the voter’s mind and heart are where power lives.
So get out and exercise your power today: vote for the best men and women, and may the best of them win!
Image: Lyndon Johnson signing the 1965 Voting Rights Act as Martin Luther King Jr. and others look on, from this source.