lemonmon's blog

Depending upon the sort of New Yorker one is talking to, Inwood is either where Columbia University plays its football games, or it is the area that lies below the south anchor of the Henry Hudson Bridge, or it is ultimate stop on the A train. In all cases, it is the narrow northern tip of Manhattan, a place where midtown cab drivers don’t know where it is or believe that Payson Avenue or Cumming Street or Indian Road exists. Many people reject that Inwood is really part of Manhattan, and this probably stems from the state of mind depicted in the W.P.A. Guide to New York City, published in the 1930's. It said that Inwood's ''rivers and hills insulate a suburban community that is as separate an entity as any in Manhattan.''

Although change is clearly afoot, Inwood retains many of the characteristics it had when it was intensively developed in the 30's. Before that, it had been unfolding much as expected by Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner, J. James R. Croes, who in a plan submitted in 1876, envisioned it as a residential neighborhood for ''fairly comfortable people.'' Some of the comfortable buildings of earlier times, still bearing faint letters offering ''steam heat and hot water'' and other amenities, are in trouble now. At least two old buildings are being rehabilitated privately and others bear plaques noting rehabilitation with tax aid. But the low-rise and light density character persists. Tucked among the low rises are one-and two-family houses with trees and tiny yards.

1900s Inwood, New York Wildlife

Today's Wildlife

The neighborhood bubbles with children and schools: Good Shepherd and St. Jude's Roman Catholic elementary schools, the Northeastern Academy of the Seventh Day Adventists, St. Matthew's Lutheran School and a public elementary school and junior high school keep the buses full and the pizzerias busy. For all its suburban quality, Inwood is not just that. On the east side of 10th Avenue, it is a transport hub of the MTA, with a huge train yard and an ancient brick barn for city buses that spans 10 city blocks. A kennel and a pet crematory sits next to an auto laundry. Other than that, I really did not know much about the history of my area, since Wikipedia can only offer so much. The Dyckman Farmhouse is exactly the same in how it’s described. In the 1700s, Inwood consisted of miles of farmland, and prior to that Algonquin Indians settled the area. Even to this day, its possible to find Algonquin weapons and utensils buried in the ground near the caves hidden within the park. There is even an observation station located in the park that gives a brief history of the park. Walking through the Indian trials is just as amazing as they described it to be in the WPA guide. As soon as you walk 20 ft. deep, it feels like you literally escape into another world. Many exercisers and nature observers use the hilly trails, however, once you are inside you instantly feel isolated. You can’t even hear the noisy city life bustling just moments away. I’ve used these trails several times, and witnessed the wildlife: rabbits, insects, snakes, etc. To think in New York City there was wildlife beyond pigeons!

See America First

The emerging tourist industry in the United States promoted tourism as a ritual of American citizenship. Urging middle class tourists to refrain from visiting Europe when they had not toured their own country kept American dollars from escaping abroad, but also mapped an idealized American history and tradition across the American landscape, defining an organic nationalism that linked national identity to a shared territory and history. In Berkowitz’ A New Deal For Leisure, the industrializing countries of Europe and North America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created a vacation away from home to constitute as a marker of middle-class status. The grand tour, once only an option for the aristocratic elite, had become accessible to the middle class through rising standards of living and lower costs.

Under the influence of the socialist movement, access to an annual paid summer vacation spread beyond the middle classes and came increasingly to be seen by workers as their entitlement in a democratic society. New Deal programs and changing attitudes of trade unions combined to create a new demand by worker families for the vacation as an integral component of their standard of living. In addition to advertising, other modes were applied to encourage middle class America to travel beyond their towns and see things they have never seen.

In the arts, sculptist Westermann tried his hand at printmaking with the same iconoclastic touch. Turning a popular advertising slogan for tourism on its head, Westermann created a series of prints titled See America First. Advertisers wanted Americans to travel domestic and spend their money in America to help fuel the American economic machine. Westermann calls on people to open their eyes and actually see the America they’re traveling in as a place desperately in need of a spiritual awakening. As flames lick upwards and surround a bare skull, the words “See America First” take on a sinister cast that belie the sunny optimism of the post-war period. Westermann’s work is perceived by some as anti-American, but there is a sense of the love he had for his country as an assemblage of people rather than as an abstract concept grown beyond the control of those same people. If we could only see America first as just the combined desires and hopes of ordinary people, then those desires and hopes might actually be realized.

Prostitution Whore

A million dollars doesn’t buy you what it once did. But at the time of the Great Depression, it would have certainly spared you from a lot of worries and troubles that most of the American population suffered from. Nathaniel West’s A Cool Million starts off with this old saying, “John D. Rockefeller would give a cool million to have a stomach like yours.” What kind of stomach does he mean? It seems that from reading the novel, West's hero has no street smarts at all. He is persecuted, robbed, lied to, and hideously mutilated from head to foot. And he takes it all in stride. Apparently his stomach was strong enough to endure him through all this ridiculous series of events, or is it his extreme naivety? Scene after scene, Pitkin is dismantmantled, much like that of the American Dream. At what price will people pay to realize there is no authentic, optimistic American Dream anymore? Betty’s life epitomizes that the dream is nothing more than a commodity of capitalism. From being raped by the drunkard Bill Baxter, the death of both her parents, raped by Tom Baxter, kidnapped by Italians, to being sold to a Chinaman who runs a whorehouse with girls of all nation. Although her room is American colonial with ships in bottles, carved whalebone, and hooked rugs, it’s just a cloak that conceals the underlying issue.

In the early 1930s before the advent of the New Deal, many Americans believed that the economic crisis might lead to social and sexual chaos. Unable to comprehend the vastness of the nation's economic troubles, they often translated them into problems of gender instead. Thus, images of fallen women populate the Depression-era cultural landscape. Such images directly influenced state policy and action, shaping employment and welfare options not only for prostitutes but also for a much broader group of women. A committee of prominent New Yorkers, known as the Seabury Committee, found in 1931 that prostitution was on the increase in their city. They claimed that women were becoming prostitutes because more legitimate jobs were unavailable. Places such as the Chicken Ranch in Fayette County, Texas became wildly popular. Although this old brothel is no longer opened, it accepted chickens as payment during the Great Depression. Over time the place became overrun with chickens.

Prostitution can be seen as symbolizing the rottenness of all capitalist, property-based societies. Althought Betty was far from embracing a true prostitution whore, West’s A Cool Million made it apparent how American society is more supportive achieving the dream through unrespectable means rather than through merit.

Coal Queen

“Do not let words put the message in your heart but let your heart put words on paper," a strong message Jack Conroy would give to writers. From his life in the mines, he was able to convey it through his writings. The special relationship between man and minerals defined the parameters of the mining life. Although coal mining was dark, dirty, and dangerous work, something about it appealed to many a hardworking coal loader.

Before the widespread introduction of sophisticated underground machines into the process around World War II, coal mining was a highly labor-intensive industry. Thousands of workers laboriously extracted the mineral from the unwilling earth. Yet the desolate hills and hollows of many pre-industrial areas were still largely uninhabited, offering no such teeming workforce. Thus as the railroads snaked along the river bottoms into the coal fields in the late 19th century, companies were forced to import their labor and set up mining communities, literally overnight replacing silent mountains and roaring streams with a boisterous new society of steel, smoke and sinew. The ever-present danger from gas and dust explosions and roof falls helped to strengthen the special relationship between man and mine, for only the most skilled men could be trusted to perform the delicate operation skillfully and safely. Coal miners tempted death each workday, and the men knew that their survival depended upon the skill of their fellow workers on the shift. Also helping to build close ties among the workers was the very nature of the small and isolated mining towns, which clung to hillsides, dotted ravines, and sprawled promiscuously along creek beds throughout the coal fields. In these tiny "walking communities," work and home were closely inter-related. Often the railroad was the only way into or out of the towns, whose miners houses perched neatly in terraced rows on the steep rugged hillsides. This isolation bred close-knit ties of family, neighborhood, church, and home. Forbidden by a hoary superstition from entering the mines, coalfield women built elaborate support networks based around the work rhythms of the weekly household chores.

Everyone knew everyone else, and today old-timers especially miss this fierce sense of community. Although the towns were segregated by race and ethnicity, such distinctions vanished at the two most predominant institutions in the community, the mine and the company store.

Waiting For Nothing?

From picking fruit to hustling homosexuals, I found Tom Kromer’s Waiting for Nothing to be a hard-edged perspective of the Great Depression’s wandering workers. A proletarian writer, Kromer depicts the hobo life during the 1930s much more realistically. It isn’t the easy-going, laid back, campfire nights under the starry skies kind of life that other writers portrayed it to be. He lived the hobo life, day to day “on the fritz.”

The novel was very true to the lifestyle he experienced, “I had no idea of getting Waiting for Nothing published, therefore, I wrote it just as I felt it, and used the language that stiffs use even when it wasn’t always the nicest language in the world.” This is what made it appealing to me more than any of the other readings. I felt what he felt. For much of the book, there was an animalistic undertone to his words/actions. The Great Depression was the survival of the fittest. Everyone evolved into animals just to survive through the night. When Kromer encounters a fellow stiff at the mission, he realizes only the adaptable survive. This stiff carries a chicken wire under his arm just to avoid being troubled by the police, and also has an ingenious plan that lands more money than Kromer ever thought would happen, “I can see that this stiff has got brains, and what is more, he has got imagination.” It is this kind of tenacity that helps people overcome unfortunate events. However, by the end of this meeting, Kromer still doesn’t have the courage to do what this creative man does that makes his life easier, “I sit here in this restaurant and think. Why can’t I do what this stiff does? I have as much brains as he has. I have the imagination, too. But I cannot do it. It is the guts. I do not have the guts to dive down on a doughnut in front of a bunch of women. There is no use talking. I will never have the guts to do that.”

Kromer’s intentions of should have, could have, would have done whatever he needed to do to get money for food, and of seizing the moment was reiterated throughout the novel. He never followed through with anything. He never used that heavy stick to beat someone for the money in their pockets; he never robs the bank even when the opportune moment arose; in a crowd with other hobos, none of them rallied together against the hijackers. All his expectations lead to nowhere at the end of every scenario. It makes me wonder if his life would have turned out better if he had done all these things he wanted to do? Would his life have gotten any easier? Realistically it wouldn’t have. He would have been killed, arrested, or beaten. Fortunately his extreme lack of courage caused him not to follow through with his plans, and possibly granted him more luck than what he thought he didn’t have.

Woody Guthrie

"A lot of young guys show up with their guitars," archivist George Arevalo said. "They're interested in mining the song lyrics for inspiration. "We get writers, researchers, journalists, and students doing dissertations. We had one young guy come up who was writing a book on famous dishwashers. And wouldn't you know, Woody was once a dishwasher." Guthrie was plenty more: social crusader, essayist, painter, environmentalist, recording artist, and influence to a generation of folk-rock artists from Dylan to Bruce Springsteen and more. Born in Okemah, Okla., in 1912, he traveled the country during the Depression, playing a guitar that had the slogan "This machine kills fascists" pasted onto it. The songs he wrote and sang with his reedy tenor, including "Do Re Mi," "Dust Bowl Blues" and "Union Maid," was a testament to the suffering he witnessed among the poor and the powerless. Those and other recordings of Guthrie performing solo and with contemporaries such as Pete Seeger and the Weavers are part of the archive, and can be sampled.

Although in much of the travel literature we have read, a pleasant easy going lifestyle isn’t always the case when living on the road. Several are serious studies of the human form; others are bawdy cartoons of the same. His oldest daughter died in a fire, His sister also died in a fire; a son died in a car accident; his mother succumbed to Huntington's disease, a genetic neurological disorder that took 15 years to kill Guthrie and, later, two of his eight children. Travelers face disease, danger, threats, and downtrodden times on a daily basis. Although Guthrie made appeared to teenage boys, as the patron saint of youthful rebellion, living on the road doesn’t necessarily mean living off the fruits of freedom.

Evan's Image for "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men"

The way in which photographers and writers accurately depict facts with feelings in their collaborations is vital to documentary photography. Words alone cannot make it possible to see, know, and feel the details of life, to give off the reaction that you are experiencing a part of someone else’s life. In Agee and Evans’ “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”, their approach was as gentle and straightforward as possible. To avoid any exploitation, manipulation, or alternate versions of reality, their main goal had no intentions of political propaganda. It was simply to show other Americans the life of Southerners. For others such as Caldwell and Bourke-White in “You Have Seen Their Faces,” making alterations, embellishment, and even fabricating quotes made it difficult to show real life for those suffering in the South.

Unlike, Caldwell and Bourke-White, Agee and Evans made a strenuous effort to avoid labeling and patronizing. Agee and Evans presented their subjects quite differently. Agee’s explanations of the interaction with the tenants are free of condescending descriptions. The author gave the tenants respect, and through this showed the beauty of struggle in their photographs. Bourke-White’s photos, albeit, were amazing; we saw their ripped clothing; we saw the pain in their eyes, we saw the doubt and worries of the future, we saw their frail, almost skeleton like figures, etc.

Bourke-White and Caldwell sought out to capture their experience of this world, and they did so zealously and embellished a lot of the details through the stereotypical quotes underneath the photographs. Although the authors may not have intended the captions to particularly reflect this, nonetheless it was a reflection of their own view and not the true words of those living in that moment. Agee, on the other hand, documented everything with respect for the people he was portraying. Reality was in no way tampered with. Evans did not expose reality. He revealed it. More so, he allowed it to reveal itself.

The Endless Road

To what extent are writers capturing the hardships and dilemmas of traveling on the road? While reading the selected articles, it became apparent that there are different versions of life on the travel road is like. Some authors faced danger; others faced an awakening of terrible conditions, while others simply just watched what was happening. There is always a battle in keeping the integrity of a story as realistic as possible. Should writers just separate themselves apart from the circumstances? After spending months, even years on the road, how do they translate these multiple experiences into a sincere account?

Hickok’s “One Third Of a Nation”, Asch’s “The Road”, and Anderson’s “At the Mine Mouth” all exemplify the author’s genuine description of life across America. The aim for Hickok was “to go out around the country and look this thing over. I don’t want statistics from you. I don’t want the social-worker angle. I just want your own reaction, as an ordinary citizen. Go talk with preachers and teachers, businessmen, workers, farmers. Go talk to the unemployed, those who are on relief and those who aren’t. And when you talk with them don’t ever forget that but for the grace of God you, I, and of our friends might be in their shoes. Tell me what you see and hear. All of it.” Every writer faces the challenge of how to tell his or her story. Even today, authors such as James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) choose to convey the message they want to show the world. In Asch’s The Road, regular citizens he encounters misconstrue the truth without him needing to embellish anything,” The girl I had talked to and said she was a secretary, then it had come out she was a house servant.” In Adamic’s “My America,” it is amazingly surprising, as discussed in class, how lucky this female hitchhiker was to never have gotten raped or murdered along her travels.

As an individual and nothing more, writers in this time period were sent to feel, to live, to experience what life was like for many struggling Americans. They were sent to tell their story, and keeping the validity of their stories is vital to its entire purpose. In a society where fabrication prevails the truth, it’s become harder to trust what we read is legitimate. Without truth, many stories can become a piece of fiction.

"Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use." - Mark Twain

The Long ValleyAfter reading an entire novel, either two results can occur. The first being the story could have left the reader feeling as though something is still missing. Or, the novel in its entirety can have exactly what was needed. In Steinbeck’s The Long Valley, the story “Breakfast” seemed to be lacking a certain Je ne sais pas. When the story was added to Chapter 22 of The Grapes Of Wrath, the 4-page short story seemed to hold a deeper, poignant meaning to many critics. In Gary D. Schmidt’s Steinbeck’s ‘Breakfast’: A Reconsideration serves to show that a simple story can have an intricate significance when applied to another larger piece of art.

Covici stated that “Breakfast” was simply “a fragment: and a “short sketch”. Eda Walton, stated that his “stories are competent, but reading them one goes through no authentic experience." Set alone in The Long Valley, “Breakfast” appears to be a simple scene capturing life from the Salinas Valley in 1934. It has its own separate meaning in which “the story is a culmination of his attempt to articulate the meaning which he feels is in the scene, a meaning which still eludes him at the end of the story. For remembering is not enough to make the details cohere in a meaningful way, even though it brings "the curious warm pleasure."

In The Grapes of Wrath, however, the kindness and good nature of the migrant workers are captured. Family unity is part of a communal way of life that extends to all people, to those outside of their own family circle. By the end of "Breakfast," the narrator has an inability to communicate what he knows is beautiful. In Grapes of Wrath, beauty holds a strong presence. The family bond is much more intricate, representing generations intertwined with one another

A coherent work of art can form into a work, which shapes details into a meaningful unity. It is interesting to see that sometimes when taken out of context, a story can have an alternate effect on the reader than what was intended. Although incorporated into a larger work of art, "Breakfast" still maintains its own artistic truthfulness.

Mexican Migrant WorkerThe 1930’s were a time entrenched with racial prejudice. At various points in the Grapes of Wrath, racism (not just on a ethnic, but also on a class level) develops in minute yet potent statements. As the novel opens up, stories are told about how past generations of farmers fought to acquire the land from Native Americans, “Grampa took up the land, and he had to kill the Indians and drive them away.” In chapter 18, violence and hatred directed towards minorities are exemplified once again when Tom Joad describes how his grandfather “an’ another fella whanged into a bunch a Navajo in the night. They was havin’ the time a their life, an’ same time you wouldn’ give a gopher for their chance.” Even police officers refered the Joad family in Chapter 18 as Okies; “Okie use’ ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you’re a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you’re scum. Don’t mean nothing itself, it’s the way they say it.” As discussed in class, was the Grapes of Wrath truly representative of the people affected by the Dust Bowl at that time?

In Cunningham’s article Rethinking the Politics of The Grapes of Wrath, he poses an interesting observation, “The novel scarcely mentions the Mexican and Filipino migrant workers who dominated the California fields and orchards into the late thirties, instead implying that Anglo-Saxon whites were the only subjects worthy of treatment.” Not all of the citizens affected by the Dust Bowl were Anglo-American. Mexican immigrants heavily occupied California and other areas of the West coast. Migrant farm workers of all races lived in temporary camps like this as they moved from farm to farm to follow the seasonal work. In the 1900s, the Mexican Revolution and the series of Mexican civil wars that followed pushed many Mexicans to flee to the United States. Many U.S. farm owners recruited Mexicans and Mexican Americans because they believed that these desperate workers would tolerate living conditions that workers of other races would not. Mexican and Mexican American workers often earned more in the United States than they could in Mexico's civil war economy, although California farmers paid Mexican and Mexican American workers significantly less than white American workers. By the 1920s, at least three quarters of California's farm workers were Mexican or Mexican American. As the Great Depression took a toll on California's economy during the 1930s, however, Mexicans and Mexican Americans became targets for discrimination and removal. White government officials claimed that Mexican immigrants made up the majority of the California unemployed and white trade unions claimed that Mexican immigrants were taking jobs that should go to white men. In reality, a new supply of white refugees desperate for jobs was flooding California from the Midwest due to the Dust Bowl crisis, making up the majority of the unemployed.