1933: The Core of Time

I don't like writing about a day like this. Not because someone died, but because Jimmie was only 35 years old and had just completed a recording session at RCA in New York City. It pretty much killed him. TB. Boomers think dying young was something that was invented in 1970, but they had plenty of it during and after WWI. Bullets and shells, mustard gas, influenza, tuberculosis. Lots of TB. It was considered a romantic way to die- poetic even. Wasting away. But look at this photo, taken a day before he crossed over. Jimmie Rogers was always smilin'. I like to think of how he felt in the sun there, warm at last, feeling like the sun could heal him, might save him. I like to think of an alternative universe where he survived, got into the uptown Manhattan hep scene, eventually ...

Frank with TroutI've been re-watching the David Lynch soap Twin Peaks lately, picking up on things that I missed the first time around. The dream-like qualities sometimes ran afoul of my expectations. Seeing it again I recognize the moment when I lost the storyline. There's an episode portraying events which are supposed to have occurred in a single day, which, though technically possible, is totally implausible. While now I can appreciate it as a great way to tell a story, it lost me at the time. It wasn't following the comfortable dramatic arc I expected. Today's slice of 1933 began with a simple historic fact gleaned from Wikipedia. On this day, the Marpole Midden was recognized as a National Historic Site of Canada. What struck me was that, even though this place had been decl...

Gratuitous sex day. You might not have guessed it, after the general retreat from the wild abandon that was the 1920's, but people were still absolutely obsessed with sex in 1933. As they have been each and every year, ever- proving conclusively that time is both a wave AND a particle. But there are all different kinds of obsession. To begin, Max Earnst, the surrealist, the prankster. He was making a lot of art at this time, and it was wide-ranging in form. This work demonstrates just how ugly art it could get in 1933. Strangely fascinating though, innit? Next, a sweet little bronze (I think?) by Jean Arp, who was also very productive in '33. On this two-part sculpture, the "head" is balanced on a spike coming out of the "shell". This was a favorite plaything of Mrs. Vanderbilt,...

During a Congressional hearing, it is revealed that J. P. Morgan legally paid no taxes in 1931 and 1932. This caused a great public outcry, the result being that the scene in the hearing room was chaotic. "We are having a circus," complained Sen. Carter Glass, D-Va., "and the only things lacking now are peanuts and colored lemonade." Not sure what he meant by "colored" in this case, but at any rate, a savvy P.R. man for Barnum and Baily showed up with diminutive Lya Graf, a performer for the concern, and dropped her in Morgan's lap one morning. Seems like everyone enjoyed the joke. The photo made all the papers. The only thing missing was T.V. coverage, but this is well on its way, as you can see from the RCA test screen. Yes, it's a little warped, but completely recognizable- the ...

Leading off with a classic poster. The more I see of '33, the more I see that this particular graphic is a throwback to the nineteen twenties. It's good, but from the Italians I expect something more. From America, another Time cover boosting one of the "right" people. Dawes had famous brothers, was from a family who proudly traced themselves back to a Revolutionary War general or something, and after making a lot of dough in the late teens and early twenties he and his wife devoted themselves to civil service- not the kind that bureaucrats do, but the kind that gets your picture on the cover of Time magazine. This is to be expected. Then there is this interesting collage of "candid" photos of John Dillinger, found on an F.B.I. website. It represent the muscle the media could displ...

Noted intellectual Langston Hughes called him an entertaining huckster. Harlem's Rev George Wilson Becton encouraged his flock to contribute a dime a day to his church, and he lived well on the income, telling people that "God ain't poor". Tapping into the limited income of these folks may be why he ran afoul of the policy racket, aka "the numbers". It's a mystery who did the job or why, but he was gunned down in Philly on this day.Searching for a color for the Reverend's background, I recalled artist Reginald Marsh, and found that he was indeed active in 1933- in fact, his art plays wonderfully at the edge of ugly that predominated in '33 artwork, and I think it's due largely to the vibrancy of his palette. He steers clear of murkiness. And then there's an ad for lost shoes- wouldn...

The state of Pennsylvania voted to relax it's "Blue Laws" a bit come November, so the smart money (as it turns out) bought an NFL franchise, because games would be allowed on Sundays. The Pittsburgh Pirates. The saga of Engelbert Dollfuss continues. Austria's ruler was a right-winger, but he wasn't batshit crazy like Hitler, nor an egomaniac like Mussolini. Seems to me he was doing his level best to unite his country in an effort to resist a German takeover. On this day he founded the Fatherland Front, making it the single legal political party in Austria, by combining the forces of the Catholic church, the military, and industry. He sort of aped the Nazi uniform (with the addition of old-time piping) and flag (modifying the swastika into a cross) and even wore a stupid mustache lik...

Today, a bombing at a crowded railway station in Tientsin, China killed more than 100 people. So far I haven't learned anything more about this incident, but I have discovered that the city had a large and well-established foreign business "presence". Portions of the city had been conceded to Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Italy and Japan, and they had been made to resemble their home countries. Working there was a pretty sweet gig for the foreigners. Not sure how the USA missed out on the deal. Was the bombing a random act of terror? There were Japanese troops nearby in Manchuria, and the Japanese had been sending planes over major Chinese cities with impunity, dropping- not bombs- but loads of pamphlets telling the people "these could be bombs if we wanted them to be" and "res...

The Tennessee Valley Association, the TVA, was always somewhere in the background of my awareness growing up- sort of like Bob Hope. I mean, it was something that people thought was a big deal, whenever the subject came up, but as a kid, well, I sure didn't know why. I never thought Bob Hope's jokes were funny, and I assumed that everybody always had electricity. What's the big deal? Both of these things were brands, and I didn't know about brands when I was a kid. Well, I did, I was surrounded by them, but I didn't know that they had to be carefully created and nurtured, like exotic flowers or something. The TVA was probably oversold a bit, but maybe not. From anything I've seen from 1933, from the Golden Gate Bridge, to Boulder (now Hoover) Dam, to the White Sea- Baltic canal in ...

This is a big find- the radio program One Man's Family hit America's eardrums today and wormed its way into the nation's image of itself for the next couple of decades. Be sure to have a listen to the girl talk I've sampled- did anyone actually believe this drivel? What kept this program on the air for so long? I suppose it expressed ideas that radio listeners wanted to believe about themselves. Fantasyland. The same goes for Norway's Quisling, whose name, like Dr. Mudd, has become shorthand for a certain type of underhanded behavior. Quisling, like Dollfuss in Austria, thought that he could set himself up as dictator. But while Dollfuss actually had the position and the smarts to make a creditable attempt, Quisling had nothing but the uniform, flags and emblems, and the crappy bel...