Flowers!

Something simple this spring evening: pictures of flowers. These are from the category “Plants” at the USDA’s Digital Image Gallery. Give credit to the USDA and its photographer (if mentioned) for the use of these copyright-free images. Visit the site to see several dozen more and download size options.

Sunflowers, Image Number K5752-2, and Sunflowers in Fargo North Dakota, Image Number K5751-1. Both by Bruce Fritz.

 

 

 Clematis hybrid, Image Number K5546-14, by Scott Bauer

 

Wood sorrel, Oxalis, Image Number K5545-17, by Scott Bauer

 

Potato flowers, Image Number K4021-1, by Keith Weller

 

Fire lily, a Cyrtanthus hybrid, Image Number K5547-10,  by Scott Bauer

 

Flower of bird-of-paradise, Image Number K9054-1, by Scott Bauer.

A few more from the National Library of Ireland on Flickr Commons

A final look at the National Library of Ireland’s stream in the Commons on Flickr, starting with some photos from the set Easter 1916. Captions are from the Flickr album.

The remains of the Dublin Bread Company at 6-7 Lower Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street) after the Easter Rising in 1916.

Date: Definitely May 1916, if not the very end of April

 

 The shell of the G.P.O. on Sackville Street (later O’Connell Street), Dublin in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising.

The next is from the album, Irish Civil War:

 

 

National Army soldiers drive a car laden with wreaths through the streets of Dublin towards Glasnevin Cemetery for the burial of Michael Collins [Irish revolutionary leader]. August 28, 1922

Something lighter from Built Heritage album:

The Wonderful Barn,  Leixlip in Co. Kildare , c. 1900

And something older:

Dolmen at Feenagh in Co. Leitrim, c. 1858

And someone haunting:

Doon Well at Kilmacrenan in Co. Donegal, c. 1870

Nuns and Churches, National Library of Ireland, on Flickr’s Commons

More from the 38 sets of pictures from the National Library of Ireland, on Flickr’s Commons, starting with  some nuns from the set, “Collar, Cowl, and Coif“:

About this one, Flickr notes  “this nun was a member of the Daughters of Charity (of St. Vincent de Paul). The distinctive head dress is called a cornette, and led to this order being known as the Butterfly Nuns. The Daughters of Charity abandoned the cornette on 20 September 1964.” The picture also shows the Parnell Monument in Dublin.

Another nun, by Photographer Richard Tilbrook, on O’Connell Street, Dublin in 1964.

This one is on Ireland’s west coast at the Cliffs of Moher, 1962.

 The next few pictures are from the “Built Heritage” set.

The note on Flickr about the image below reads: Station Island, Lough Derg, Co. Donegal, c. 1890.   “The traditional pilgrimage involved three days of fasting and two days of prayer. The central prayer of the pilgrimage was called a ‘station’ – prayers were said at the penitential beds, in and around the basilica, at the lake edge and at two ancient crosses. The island’s penitential beds are the circular remains of monks’ cells about a metre high with an entrance and a cross in the centre. This station is St. Patrick’s Cross. The stone shaft in which the cross is set dates back to the Middle Ages and is a relic of monastic times on the island.”

This is Hore Abbey in Tipperary:

The 9th/10th century high cross at Monasterboice , Co. Louth.

 

Domesticated Animals: From the National Library of Ireland in the Flickr Commons

Another source on Flickr’s Commons, the National Library of Ireland, has 38 sets of pictures to choose from, including one called “4 Legs Good, 2 Legs Bad,” from which these come:

The Flickr description of this one of a Royal Welsh Fusilier with the Regimental Goat says it was taken around 1887 near Fermoy, Co. Cork.

 

A pug, circa 1900:

 

More is known about this photo, taken January 14, 1906: “This greyhound is Peerless de Wet, winner of the 1905 inaugural Irish Cup that is pictured here in pride of place (for Coursing, run at Limerick). The dog was born in 1902. He was owned by R.F. Phelan, who named his champion after General Christiaan Rudolf de Wet, a Boer General. One of these gentlemen may be R.F. Phelan.”

Here is Lieutenant H.J.P. King, an officer in the Royal Artillery, stationed at Waterford, in 1901:

Irish wolfhound Leitrim Boy, mascot for the Irish Guards, in 1917:

Skeletons!

Getting ready for Halloween? Here’s some images from the Library of Congress.

The first is by Dr. Alice S. Kandell, who donated her Collection of Sikkim Photographs to the Library of Congress and placed them in the public domain.

Deity and skeleton masks, Gangtok, Sikkim, by Alice Kandell. LC-KAN05- 0094.

 

Frances Benjamin Johnston shot this picture in the mid-1930s of an Indian burial ground near what was believed to be the site of the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, Florida.

LC-DIG-csas-00429

 
Here’s a view of a corridor in the Cappuccino Catacombs, Rome, Italy, in August 1987.

LC-USZ62-54103

Why not some animal skeletons, starting with this interpretation of a dinosaur skeleton leashed to a man-like skelton somewhere near Murdo, South Dakota, photographed by Carol Highsmith in 2009?

LC-DIG-highsm-04579

 

This is just one in a series of pictures of horse skeletons in motion.

LC-USZC4-13861

Eadweard Muybridge created The attitudes of animals in motion : a series of photographs illustrating the consecutive positions assumed by animals in performing various movements in Palo Alto, California, in 1878 and 1879; the album was published in 1881.

Political Skeletons

My plan today was to search the Library of Congress for public domain Halloween theme images, but I was distracted by the number of political cartoons that surfaced with a search of the word “skeleton.” Some could easily have appeared in the editorial pages of  this morning’s paper, such as this one, published in 1873, 140 years ago: “The American juggernaut. Everything noble, patriotic, and progressive is crushed beneath the remorseless tread of that mammoth monster of corruption, cruelty, and fraud, the vampire rings of capital,”  by Matthew Morgan.

LC-USZ62-114825

The Justice Department is filing suit against several states over new restrictions on voting passed in 2013; Death at the polls, and free from “federal interference” by Thomas Nash for Harpers in 1879 is described by the Library of Congress as “Skeleton ‘solid Southern shot gun’ holding shotgun at polls, to prevent African Americans from voting.”

LC-USZ62-127750

Here’s one reminiscent of current controversies over immigration:

LC-USZC2-1043

Described by the Library of Congress as “Caricature showing Uncle Sam holding paper ‘Protest against Russian exclusion of Jewish Americans’ and looking in shock at Chinese skeleton ‘American exclusion of Chinese’ in closet,” this appeared in Puck in 1912.

Another “skeleton in the closet”: human rights abuses: A Skeleton of His Own by Udo Keppler was published in Puck in 1903. It “shows Uncle Sam holding a paper labeled ‘Protest against Russian Outrage’; he is standing with his back to a slightly open door revealing a skeleton labeled ‘Lynchings’ and holding a handgun and rope in his closet, he looks at the skeleton, realizing he is caught in a double-standard.”

LC-DIG-ppmsca-25763

Finally, food safety is the topic of this Puck illustration, Watch the Professor, published in 1906, presents  “an oversized man labeled ‘Beef Trust’, with skeleton face, performing a magic trick on a stage by taking ‘Diseased Livestock’ and pushing them through a tube labeled ‘Packingtown’ to produce packaged ‘Pure Meat Products’. A diminutive man, ‘The Prof’s Assistant’, wearing a cap labeled ‘Inspector’ is standing on the stage on the left.”

• 

  LC-DIG-ppmsca-26062

Florida Train Wrecks in Flickr Commons

I’ve been trying to figure out how to determine the train route my great-grandmother and the 4 youngest of her 11 kids took in 1918 when she decided she had had enough of living west of the Pecos River in Texas and would join a married daughter in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.  Her life, I presume, must have reached the metaphorical train wreck stage to have made such a radical move.

Looking through the State Library and Archives of Florida collection in the Flickr Commons, I was surprised by how many images in the Scenes from Florida Railroad History set featured train wrecks. No one, it seems, can help but look.

But first I suppose this was the ideal, a engine blowing coal smoke into the orange groves. Date is estimated as being in the 1910’s.

http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/158108

As we enter the most active part of hurricane season in South Florida, consider the problem of evacuating the Florida Keys or rescuing survivors.

Rescue train swept off the tracks by the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, Sept. 5, 1935.
“The hurricane washed this 11-car special train off the track soon after reaching the stricken area. The train was trying to rescue 683 World War I veterans in a rehabilitation camp, of which around 250 died as a result of the hurricane. The veterans, a remnant of the Bonus Army that marched on Washington, were employed for highway construction in the federal work relief project.”
http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/149572

Remains of a rescue train: Islamorada, Upper Matecumbe Key
http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/149535

Here’s a train headed to the Keys on a better day,

Florida East Coast Railway train traveling along Overseas Extension bridge
http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/27328

 

Here’s one from 1934. Jupiter is on the East Coast of Florida, not far, interestingly, from Cape Canaveral (Cape Kennedy), where NASA launched its rockets,

Florida East Coast Railway train wreck: Jupiter, Florida
http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/33296

How did this happen? The date is noted as “not after 1898.”

Head on collision of steam locomotives near Sanford, Florida
http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/146848

This is a mess. And I can’t figure out how it is possible that the guy standing on the rear of the train car looks so much larger than those on the ground.

Seaboard Air Line Railway train wreck, 1905
http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/146835

There are more pictures of wrecks in this set, as well as a number of shots of trains on their tracks. But I will close with a metaphorical train wreck: the treatment of Indians in the US. I did not know that Geronimo and defeated Apaches were shipped off to Florida:

Geronimo and fellow Apache Indian prisoners on their way to Florida by train, September 10, 1886. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/26504

 

 

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963

Carol Highsmith’s photo of the Wales window at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
Credit: The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-DIG-highsm-05063]

I have a new blog: Long Time Coming at  http://longtimecoming1963.wordpress.com/.

I’ve been neglecting my other blogs lately because I have been helping a friend by putting his mother’s book up as a blog. This is the fiftieth anniversary of the turning point in the Civil Rights Era in the US, and his mother, Elizabeth H. Cobbs, risked her life in 1977 to testify against her uncle by marriage, Robert Chambliss, who largely through her testimony was the first bomber of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to be convicted. She cooperated fully with the FBI in 1963, and had this become known, the Ku Klux Klan would have killed her, but her efforts then were futile because FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover decided to shelve the case indefinitely.

If you are unfamiliar with this event, briefly, on September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded in the basement of a black Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls, and seriously injuring a fifth. You may have heard of Spike Lee’s film, 4 Little Girls. 

This is what I wrote on the home page of Long Time Coming: 

This website presents in full the original text of Long Time Coming: An Insider’s Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing That Rocked The World written by Elizabeth H. Cobbs/Petric J. Smith and published by Crane Hill Publishers in 1994.

The author died in 1998.

Crane Hill Publishers is no longer operating, and Long Time Coming is out-of-print. The Estate of Petric J. Smith is making this digital edition available so that the story of the long journey to the conviction of Robert Chambliss for the death of Denise McNair in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, is accessible to a wider audience.  . . .

This digital edition takes advantage of its formatting by adding hyperlinks to the text. New pictures, which unless otherwise noted are in the public domain and available at the Library of Congress’s website, have also been included.

As I worked on the blog, I added public domain pictures to illustrate the story.

And as always with images of contemporary America, my best source was the The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Carol Highsmith has placed over 100,000 images in the public domain through her archive at the Library of Congress. She is now going state by state, capturing even more images of contemporary America.

For my purposes, I was fortunate that the first state she was able to cover was Alabama. You can read about that here.

I used a number of her photographs of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the Civil Rights Institute, and Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham in Long Time Coming. Here are just a few examples: 

 

Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama. The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-highsm-05091

 

Sculpture dedicated to the Foot Soldiers of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement. Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham, Alabama. The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. LC-DIG-highsm-05100

Ku Klux Klan exhibit, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham, Alabama. Credit: The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-DIG-highsm-05074]

 

For historical photos, the Library of Congress was also my best source. Examples:

GENERAL PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF SOUTHEAST (FRONT) AND NORTHEAST SIDE FROM KELLY-INGRAM PARK – Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, 1530 Sixth Avenue North, Birmingham, Jefferson County, AL. Library of Congress, HABS ALA,37-BIRM,33–2.

Ku Klux Klan, between 1921 and 1922. Library of Congress. LC-DIG-npcc-30454

Bomb-damaged home of Arthur Shores, NAACP attorney, Birmingham, Alabama. Photo by Marion Trikoskco, 1963 Sept. 5. LC-DIG-ppmsca-03194

Federalized National Guard troops on the campus of the University of Alabama, June 11, 1963 when African Americans Vivian Malone and James Hood registered for classes. Photo by Warren Leffler. LC-DIG-ds-01108

Mugshots are in the public domain:

Mugshot of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bomber Robert Chambliss, arrested September 26, 1977 for murder.

Frankly, were it not for Carol Highsmith’s incredible generosity in placing her work in the public domain, and the U.S. News & World Report magazine photograph collection at the Library of Congress [Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on work taken by staff photographers. Other material may be restricted by copyright. For more inforamtion, see U.S. News … (http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/078_usnw.html)], photographs for which permission need not be asked or licensing fees paid were hard to find.

—–

Note: On the Long Time Coming blog, you will also see photos with the note: Property of the Birmingham Public Library.  These are not in the public domain. I included these in that blog, but not in this one, because they also appear in the print version of Long Time Coming, meaning Elizabeth Cobbs/Petric J. Smith or Crane Hill Publishers secured permission for their use in 1994, and I am waiting to hear if that permission extends to digital editions. Meanwhile, I have included them there under Fair Use provisions, since the blog is not-for-profit but for educational purposes.

Flickr Commons: Southern Methodist University’s Photostream: Trains, Boats

Here are a few more images from Southern Methodist University’s photostream at the Flickr Commons.

Rights: Please cite Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library when using this image file. A high-quality version of this file may be obtained for a fee by contacting degolyer@smu.edu.

Bibliographic material is cut and pasted from the photostream.

The Old Way. The New Way.

Title: The Old Way. The New Way.

Date: ca. 1910

Part Of: Eric Steinfeldt collection of maritime views, Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

Place: Galveston, Galveston County, Texas

Locomotive No. 355, Krauss-Maffei

Creator: Bellingrodt, Carl

Date: 1940

Place: Germany

Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

No. 55. In Case of Emergency. Snow plow.

Creator: Benecke, Robert, 1835-1903
Date: 1873
Place: Kansas

Part Of: On the Kansas Pacific Railway collection, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

 

If you visit the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, you will find hundreds of artworks donated by “Ima Hogg.” There was a real woman by this name, daughter of a Texas Governor, James Stephen (Big Jim) Hogg. Why did he name his daughter Ima?  Here’s the Wiki take on the matter:

“Her first name was taken from her uncle Thomas Hogg‘s epic Civil War poem The Fate of Marvin, which featured two young women named Ima and Leila.^[4][5][6] According to Virginia Bernhard’s biography of Ima Hogg, “there are some who believe that James Stephen Hogg … named his only daughter Ima Hogg to attract the attention of Texas voters” in a year when he was running in a close race for district attorney of the Seventh District in Texas,^[3]which he won.^[7][8] Alternatively, correspondence from Jim Hogg indicates he may not have been conscious of the combined effect of his daughter’s first and last names.^[9]“

Ima Hogg later recounted that “my grandfather Stinson lived fifteen miles [24 km] from Mineola and news traveled slowly. When he learned of his granddaughter’s name he came trotting to town as fast as he could to protest but it was too late. The christening had taken place, and Ima I was to remain.”^[4] During her childhood, Hogg’s elder brother William often came home from school with a bloody nose, the result of defending, as she later recalled, “my good name”.^[10]

Ruthless or stupid, take your pick.

At least, “contrary to popular belief, Ima did not have a sister named Ura.”

Ima Hogg

Date: ca. 1909

Part Of: Eric Steinfeldt collection of maritime views

Place: Galveston, Galveston County, Texas

Physical Description: 1 photographic print (postcard)

 

Three U. S. Torpedo Boat Destroyers on Neches River, Beaumont, Texas.

Date: ca. 1910

Part Of: Eric Steinfeldt collection of maritime views, Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

Place: Beaumont, Jefferson County, Texas

 

 

Boat deck, Lusitania

Creator: Bedford Lemere & Co.
Date: ca. 1905-1907
Part Of: Photographs of Q.S.T.S. “Lusitania”, Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

Flickr Commons: Southern Methodist University’s Photostream

I’m back, finally, with a new post. Here are some examples of the close to 2300 photos Southern Methodist University (SMU) has placed in their Flickr Commons photostream and labeled as having “no known copyright restrictions.” All that is asked is that you “Please cite Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library when using this image file.” Some of the photos also include collection notes and photographer’s names, so it would be best to include those too.

SMU is located in Dallas, TX, and so unsurprisingly a number of their albums feature topics related to Texas and the Southwest. There are lots covering the oil industry, which is probably the most unique feature of this photostream. But there are some albums that go further afield, Alaska in the early 20th century and German trains, for example.

SMU includes this note to accompany its images: “A high-quality version of this file may be obtained for a fee by contacting degolyer@smu.edu.”

Bibliographic material is cut and pasted from the photostream.

One of the oddest things that caught my eye was a series of postcards — postcards! — depicting firing squads, executed bodies, and disposal of the dead from the Mexican Revolution. Who would choose to send such a thing — and to whom? And what would you write: “Wish you were here, right here, right in the line of fire?”

Here’s a mild example.

Triple execution in Mexico

Creator: Horne, Walter H., 1883-1921             Date: January 15, 1916           Place: Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico

Part Of: Collection of Walter H. Horne photographs, Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

I’m not including the worst. I have some taste. But I will tell you where to find them.

This one — a postcard, remember — of a man killed in battle Nov 2, 1915 1/2 mile south of Agua Prieta, Mexico is really horrid, and this of the dead on the battlefield isn’t much better.

Here’s another view of Mexico altogether.

The Observatory, Chichen Itza

Creator: Medellin, Octavio    Date: 1959    Place: Yucatan, Mexico

Cite: Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

The oil industry has long been interested in Mexico, or so it appears from many of the shots here, including this dramatic one of a oil well fire.

 

Potrero del Llano No. 4  burning

Date: ca. 1914-1915   Place: Tuxpan, Veracruz, Mexico

Part Of: Manning Texas and Mexico Collection,  Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

Meanwhile, back in the US:

Climax-Molybdenum Co., Iowa Colony, Texas, rough neck and fish tail bit on drill collar

Creator: Robert Yarnall Richie          Date: November 2, 1938        Place: Iowa Colony, Texas

Part Of: Robert Yarnall Richie photograph collection, Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

Gulf Oil Corp., #1 F. C. C. Unit

Creator: Richie, Robert Yarnall         Date: July 15, 1956            Place: Port Arthur, Texas

Part Of: Robert Yarnall Richie Photograph Collection, Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

Did you know that before Texas was a state it was a nation, the Republic of Texas? Here’s an example of its currency. I’m amused by the Venus figure in the upper left corner. Somehow, I doubt in Texas’s 21st century political climate that its lawmakers would suffer the presence of a nude woman on any document, let alone money.

Republic of Texas $50.00 (fifty dollars) ”redback” note

County of Origin: Travis County    Town of Issue: Austin

Currency Type: “Redback”        Denomination: $50.00

Bank Issuer: Republic of Texas

Imprint: Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson. New Orleans.; Rawdon, Wright & Hatch New-York.; Engraved by Geo. [W.] Hatch.

Date Issued: May 22, 1839

Vignette: (L) Nude Venus standing. (C) Steamship (three-mast side-wheeler) and sailing ship (brig). (R) Bust of Stephen F. Austin. Lower center: Lone Star seal.

Notes: This ”redback” note was issued in Austin by the Republic of Texas. Redbacks were issued from late 1839 until 1842.

Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

A True Girl of the West.

Creator: Cornish, George Bancroft               Date: 1906

Part Of: 101 Ranch and Burroum Ranch, Del Rio, Texas, Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

Did you ever see The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, a 1972 feature starring Paul Newman and introducing Victoria Principal (later of Dallas fame) and a cast including Ned Beatty, Anthony Perkins, John Huston, Roddy McDowell, Ava Gardner and so on and on? You ought to. It was based on a real Texan.

Judge Roy Bean, Justice of the Peace, Law West of the Pecos Building

Creator: Studer Photo

Part Of: Lawrence T. Jones III Texas photography collection, Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

Finally, we have this guy, who, it seems, for reasons best known to himself, thought it a fine idea to ride a  longhorn steer from Brownsville, TX to New York City.

Ralph Sanders and ”Jerry.” May 12, 1930.

 Place: Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas

Part Of: Collection of real photographic postcards of Texas, Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library