Library of Congress historical photos online

Crane operator at TVA's Douglas Dam, Tennessee (LOC)
Photo by Alfred T. Palmer, 1942
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress

The Library of Congress has put up about 3000 photographs at the online site Flickr.com. About two thousand of them are from the 1930s and 1940s -- in color! The pictures were or the Farm Security Administration and/or the Office of War Information, often by some of the great photographers of the day, including John Vachon, Jack Delano, Alfred T. Palmer, and Marion Post Wolcott. The rest are photos for the Bain News Service taken between 1910 and 1912.

Suffragettes posting bills (LOC) (ca. 1911)
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress

What's really nice is that the photos are searchable by tags like "plane," "suffrage," or tennessee," and that the results can be viewed as a slideshow (click the links).

Rural school children, San Augustine County, Texas (LOC)
Photo by John Vachon, 1943.
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress

To just start at the top, click here; for a slideshow view of all of the photos, click here, then sit back and watch the show. I've been looking through them all evening. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:43:00 AM -- |  

 
Maryland's messenger meets Mercury
The MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) probe is engaged in its first flyby of Mercury, and is sending images back to Earth:

This MESSENGER image was taken from a distance of about 18,000 kilometers (11,000 miles), about 56 minutes before the spacecraft's closest encounter with Mercury. It shows a region roughly 500 kilometers (300 miles) across, and craters as small as 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) can be seen in this image.

The voyage is itself something of a triumph of celestial navigation: the probe was timed and programmed to fly by Venus twice to slow it sufficiently to enter Mercury's orbit -- with the first visit taking place when Venus was on the opposite side of the sun (October 2006), and with the final approach to Mercury orbit slated for 2011, after two more fly-bys of that planet. A critical course correction -- a.k.a. "trajectory course maneuver," or TCM -- took place late last year, monitored by mission controllers in Laurel, Maryland:

Mission controllers at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, verified the start of the maneuver about 13 minutes after the start of TCM-19 when the first signals indicating spacecraft thruster activity reached NASA's Deep Space Network tracking station outside Canberra, Australia.

So what can be learned from Mercury? It's apparently an unusually dense planet -- 60% metal core, twice as much as Earth -- and may thus provide a new data point for understanding planetary formation generally, including the Earth's:

Understanding this "end member" among the terrestrial planets is crucial to developing a better understanding of how the planets in our solar system formed and evolved.

(Via Chad Orzel's delicious astronomy and uncertain principles.) posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:15:00 PM -- |  

 
Video: last leg of Nirenberg's "March in My Name" for impeachment
Filmed and edited by Takoma Park's own Michelle Bailey.

From John Nirenberg's remarks in front of the National Archives:

...even with the separation of powers, even with the checks and balances, even with the staggered election cycles, they put in impeachment. Because they so feared that the executive would be tempted to abuse his power much like the kings and queens that they were familiar with. [...]

And yet today we find ourselves now facing a crisis of the Constitution... The Democrats have in their silence granted a pardon to the President and the Vice President ... and future presidents. Not only has their silence granted them a pardon for their many crimes, but their silence has also amended the Constitution. By being silent and allowing a shift in power from Congress to the executive they have changed the document -- they have changed the Constitution which ...they have sworn to uphold... [...]

We wouldn't have ever thought the Constitution would be trashed peacefully, quietly, through silence.

From David Swanson's remarks:

...John Conyers is telling us "no - we have subpoena powers, we've got FOIA, we've got contempt." But it's as if a labor union had announced "we will never strike" and then announced "but we can whine, and we can bitch." If you don't put impeachment back, you cannot get subpoenas enforced, you cannot get FOIA requests enforced, you cannot get contempt citations delivered -- forget it, you're powerless, you've removed the power of the people through our representatives from the Constitution, there is no more Constitution.

And ten, twenty years from now we won't even be doing this across the street of what they told us is a place of business. We'll be doing it in hiding. We'll be doing it in hiding. Now is the time to act, while we can still attempt to do this.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:07:00 AM -- |  

 
A walk to strengthen a weakening Constitution
John Nirenberg is a retired college professor from Vermont who began walking from Boston's Faneuil Hall to Washington, D.C. on December 2 last year to demonstrate his support for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney. In the first entry on his web site about the march -- March In My Name -- he explained:

I’ve decided that being outraged isn’t enough. Bush and Cheney have so perverted our system of government, I have to do more than just be angry. What can we do as citizens? As a former Social Studies and American History teacher I remember telling my students to get involved, to vote, to speak their minds. Today, unfortunately, that’s not enough. We voted for change a year ago and nothing has happened. Congress is controlled by the Democrats but instead of holding the administration accountable for its wanton disregard of the Constitution, gets scolded by Bush for inaction and is intimidated by Cheney! Yikes, what’s a citizen to do?

I have chosen to march for the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney for their many high crimes and misdemeanors including placing themselves above the law.

I joined several dozen other impeachment supporters in accompanying him on the last leg of his journey on Saturday morning at the National Arboretum. We chose a huge and seemingly abandoned parking place for the rendezvous with John and his support crew. Not abandoned enough, though -- the cars had to be reparked elsewhere, we were told by Arboretum police (or rent-a-cops, not sure which to be honest). Fine, whatever.

Around quarter to 10 the initial group -- about twenty of us -- started walking west down New York Avenue, which (other than the Arboretum quickly left behind) is initially a fairly bleak urban panorama -- gas stations, overpasses, Washington Times printing plant, cheap motels. But as it bends southwest it begins to descend into Washington proper. I stopped briefly to take in a nice view of the city and the Capitol building in the distance. The weather was fine; blue skies and a sunny day; it must have been a great sight indeed for John after his long walk south. Along the way, we got mostly honks of support and thumbs-up reactions, though on one occasion an angry fellow yelled out of his window... what was it... oh, yes: "You guys are the greatest for sticking up for our Constitution!" At least, that's how I remember it now.

We made for Union Station, where additional supporters rendezvoused with us around 11:30, among them AfterDowningStreet's David Swanson, with his wife and little boy (Wesley; not quite two; loves pigeons; cute as a button; smiles or wails enormously as warranted.) We were also joined by Deborah Vollmer, who is once again challenging Chris Van Hollen in the primary (February 12) for the Democratic candidate for Maryland's 8th Congressional District. Ms. Vollmer is running a decidedly low-budget, shoestring type of campaign, but I hope her advocacy for impeachment and for a tougher Democratic stance on ending the Iraq War cuts into Mr. Van Hollen's totals a month from now.

As we waited for others to join us, security personnel again approached. We had set down our signs, and assured the security people we were just passing through. But they preferred we do so sooner rather than later; with two new participants costumed as Bush and Cheney in prison stripes, we apparently seemed like an imminent threat to make a slow Saturday more interesting than they wanted it to be.

Union Station being private property, we made a kind of slow retreat across the Liberty Bell plaza in front of the station, with "Bush", "Cheney," and two Code Pink "policewomen" blowing whistles at them. Cheney was very good; he found a little branch of a bush and started waving it around, declaring "I've got my own branch now, so go f*** yerself." Some concern was expressed about young Wesley's exposure to such language, but he either didn't hear or didn't care, and survived.

Our destination was the National Archives -- home to original copies the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Archives (or NARA, National Archives and Records Administration) have spared no expense to protect the physical documents from decay; in 2003, the documents were enclosed in "new airtight containers made of aluminum, titanium, and glass that will be filled with argon gas." But we quickly learned that while the Archives may be wizards at protecting the documents themselves, they're not so good at protecting the values those documents are supposed to represent and protect.

We gathered on the right side of the staircase -- next to an inscription intoning "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- and were quickly met by NARA rent-a-cops. "You can't have those signs here," they said, meaning our local green "IMPEACH THEM" signs or the Vermonter's yellow counterparts. "This is a place of business," one of the security people explained. "Business!?" I reacted, only to be hushed (wisely) by fellow Takoma Park impeachment activist Lisa Moscatiello, who was trying to defuse the situation and negotiate some kind of compromise. But we eventually capitulated and crossed the street to march up and down the block for a short while holding our signs.

We gathered to listen to brief remarks by Nirenberg, Swanson, and Ray McGovern -- an ex-CIA agent who has been a vocal war opponent and impeachment advocate. For his part, Nirenberg said that his walk was simply "Phase One" of his efforts, which will now turn to lobbying Congressmembers to take up impeachment hearings. John will meet with Rep. Wexler, who also wants impeachment hearings, and hopes to meet with Nancy Pelosi, who still wants them off the table. I confess I didn't take notes about Swanson's and McGovern's remarks -- I agreed with them, and noted that Swanson also thought the "place of business" comment was a strange view of the mission of the National Archives. Like much of the march, the remarks were videotaped by Michelle Bailey, and will soon be available for viewing on her web site ("Impeach Them!"). [UPDATE: see above]

And then it was over, or so it seemed. Having walked hundreds of miles to see them, John and others wanted to go in and have a look at the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. I stayed across the street with the signs and other paraphernalia of the march -- bullhorn, satchels, whatnot. But inside, one last disappointing brush with our diminished United States of America was unfolding.

As John's wife Allyson reports at the March in My Name site, she was stopped and told she couldn't enter wearing the yellow rain poncho with a protest slogan on it. The slogan -- "Save the Constitution"!*

I tried to talk to the guard about my goal in being in the building – simply to see the Constitution of the United States. He wasn’t convinced and kept repeating his mantra, “Just take off the poncho and you can go in.” I asked him what was wrong with my poncho. He replied that they do not allow protests inside the building. I said that I was not protesting, that I was just an American citizen visiting the most important document of our country. [...]

I asked for a copy of the policy that mandated I remove my objectionable clothing in order to see the Constitution. They would provide nothing… I asked them how the policy is practiced - that knowing how they interpret and implement the policy might help me understand the policy or law I was violating. They simply and finally said, “You will have to leave if you do not remove your garment.”

So she chose to leave.

And, as I was turning to leave, I told him he was part and parcel of the reason that I found it necessary to articulate my point of view to “Save the Constitution,” on my clothing. “You might want to read the Constitution before you leave work today to find out what this is all about.” I said as I left.

She told us outside, "I'm not going to take off a poncho with a political statement on it to go in and see the document giving me the right to keep it on."

I'm almost as dissatisfied with myself as with the cops involved -- for not being surprised or immediately outraged any more. In the scheme of things, it's obviously not a major incident if someone doesn't get to wear precisely what she wants to precisely where and when she wants to, and I don't feel comfortable trying to make a cause celebre out of it compared to homelessness, the war in Iraq, or our broken, stupid health care system, to name but a few alternatives. Yet I should think someone or other in NARA ought to blush if they ever read this account or others like it. Either their rules or their personnel did a silly, stupid, bad thing on Saturday.

Viewed in retrospect, as dispassionately as I'm able to, we were repeatedly and unjustifiably put on the defensive throughout the day for peacefully, imaginatively, and determinedly doing nothing more than saying what we thought about a highly important political issue. Completely shrugging off these little slights is just conditioning for shrugging off the next bigger one. Meanwhile, I'm just waiting for someone to say "what if anyone just had whatever they wanted on their t-shirt, or baseball cap -- then what?" Because my answer would be: "Then the Bill of Rights would be working as intended."

John Nirenberg walked to the National Archives to help defend its most cherished contents: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But by the time he got there, it was just a place of business, more concerned with "defending" them from him.

=====
* The full text of the poncho reads: Save the Constitution -- Impeach Bush/Cheney -- Tell Speaker Pelosi (202) 225-0100 -- www.marchinmyname.org. Pretty inflammatory stuff!

NOTES: For a few more photographs of mine, go here; for a lot more, see Michelle's slideshow; as mentioned above, she'll also have video soon; check this post for updates.
UPDATE, 1/15: More discussion at my post about this at American Street; see also Avedon Carol ("The Sideshow") and AfterDowningStreet.org.
UPDATE, 1/15: David Swanson ("AfterDowningStreet.org") writes: "[Fellow Nirenberg marcher] Suzanne Haviland reported that a guard told her, "The reason I'm stopping you is that you are wearing something that criticizes the President. I'm a federal employee, and I'm not allowed to criticize the President." I remember hearing about this, too, but didn't know who to attribute it to.
UPDATE, 1/16: Libby ("The Newshoggers"): Is this freedom?
EDIT, 1/16: Allyson, not Allison.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 AM -- |  

 
Happy fourth birthday, fact-esque!
E-Robin's blog "fact-esque" is celebrating its fourth birthday, so here's a birthday cake; I hope it's OK with photographer "longwayround" (seems to be under the license), but if not, I'll find another one.

"Fact-esque" is one of my favorite blogs; eRobin manages a rare blend of activism, smarts, passion, and good humor that I haven't found anywhere else.

Each of her readers will have their own favorite posts, but here are a few of mine:

• White House Letter -- eRobin pinch hits a grand slam for Liz Bumiller. Eerily, Bumiller actually wrote very nearly the same thing the next year.
  
• Social Security 70th anniversary week
  
• The Chuck Pennacchio Online Petition Drive -- eRobin organized bloggers to write on behalf of insurgent candidate Chuck Pennacchio, running against DINO "I'd vote for Sam Alito if only I could" Bob Casey for Pennsylvania's junior Senate seat.
• Casting Call! -- features "Curious George" book cover and a casting call for firefighters in the wake of yet another Bush photo-op with them, after Katrina.
  
• ... and I could go on.
  

I've met eRobin once, at a demonstration back in 2005; she's as nice in person as she seems online. As Edwards supporters will be chanting in 2012: Four more years! Four more years! ...Well, whether they're chanting that or not in 2012, I am right now. Keep up the great work, eRobin -- long may you blog! posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:16:00 PM -- |