Full Steam Ahead, Ask Letters!

It's been a busy few weeks. First, my treacherous laptop suffered a meltdown; the only saving grace was that the friend who fixed it let me pay him in trade. He now has several newly-repaired and -restored WWII-era fountain pens for his use, including two lovely and precious Parker 51s--a big deal back in our grandfathers' time, and rather apropos considering what the laptop crash interrupted!

You see, following that adventure I got myself in line and reconstructed my write-up on Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard, which was in operation during WWII churming out Liberty and Victory ships. I focused on the women workers who were hired on; the transition, I learned, was far from smooth. Class, sexism, and racism all made the issue a real hot potato, based on info I gathered from archived issues of The Sun and The Afro-American

I must thank Katie Hern, one of our class's interns. She did her capstone on the Fairfield area, and turned me ontosome amazing stuff; a couple of photographs she turned up in an archive helped me to find more taken at the same time by Arthur Seigel, a photographer for the Office of War Information. The Library of Congress has a great collection of photos that were taken during the war, painting a picture of people just going about their lives.

Seriously, look at this! It's amazing!

Now, things really seem to be taking off in terms of the Garden Gala planning. The IRC Fellows are helping us design a postcard--a few options are showcased over on Mai Hyun's blog, and we're supposed to talk more about them on Tuesday. So far, I like the emphasis on the Garden's "place" in the ones that include shots of the water tower, a vital landmark and point of local pride. It's so beautiful!

Have you ever seen such a gorgeous piece of functional civic engineering? The gradients! Image courtesy of IRC fellow Brian Dillon.

Our T-shirts show up in class tomorrow, and we're working on the Ask letters for potential donors. (Pedantic nitpicker that I am, I in put a million notes about tiny little formatting issues!)