My inheritance from my mother lay in a large grocery bag filled with twelve inch muslin squares cut from feed bags. A transfer depicting each one of the 48 state birds and flowers lay with every white square. With a bit of tenacity, I started embroidering those designs collected in the 1930’s Dust Bowl. After […]
Dust pneumonia. A respiratory illness that slithered like a snake across the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, and Colorado during the 1930’s. The continual coughing jag, high fever, nausea, chest pains and shortness of breath signaled the dreaded condition. Old people succumbed. Those afflicted with bronchitis, asthma or tuberculosis breathed in the dust to their detriment. But […]
Life Through a Lens “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves – for the rights of all who are destitute.” Proverbs 31:8 Ever wonder who took the iconic photos from the Dust Bowl that make our hearts ache and give us nightmares? A few pioneers in a new field of photo documentary brought […]
The one thing that every family in the 1930’s Dust Bowl savored for Christmas was an orange. In our own culture of entitlement and excess, the thought of one orange constituting the holiday pay load is unimaginable. But getting an orange was a big deal because citrus fruit wasn’t affordable during the rest of the […]
“They were trailblazers for women in the military, for the Army Nurse Corps. They set the example for the rest of the services. Their story told the world…that women are tough, they can serve in combat and they can survive.” -Lt. Col. Nancy Cantrell, nurse and historian Preparation from Life The 99 Navy and Army […]
For two hours, Vernon and I watched disturbing, yet stunning visuals flash across our television screen. Frightening images of gigantic black blizzards engulfing barns and cities with devastating results. Plagues of jackrabbits and locusts. Old and young coughing from dust pneumonia. The first DVD of The Dust Bowl, by Ken Burns, sent chills pearling over our […]
During the darkest days of the Great Depression, thousands of Oklahoma families migrated from the Dust Bowl to California in automobiles piled high with their earthly belongings. The grove owners and truck farmers referred to the penniless refugees from drought as “Okies”. The name carried prejudice toward the migrants trying to escape starvation by working […]