Old-fashioned pastimes are rendered in paper mache dolls. Those are finished with a sheen so extraordinarily oily-looking as to seem at odds with the theme of childhood innocence.
Each month's figures are placed against a traditional backdrop. Photo alteration includes adding bubbles, which apparently summon up the memory for the month.
In January Grandpa is busy tailoring. Presumably, he also tells stories to the kids who sit so raptly. To complete the cozy picture, Grandma stokes the brazier while memory bubbles float through the room.
Antipolitics, indeed... A little less of that mentality, and the orange-tinged antipolitica to end all antipolitca would have been stopped.
Somehow, Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso took a snapshot of the future. This definitely matches the current mood, for the sentient part of the American public.
The Republican Woman's Cookbook: Meats
National Federation of Republican Women, Montgomery, Alabama, 1969.
I don't imagine Maine was voting Democratic, so I'll assume it was on principle that the GOP promoted apartheid South Africa's lobster industry.
Another sponsor: the Florida Citrus Commission. Though it wasn't until the late '70s that anti-gay rights agitation by a newly political religious right would become associated with Florida orange juice—or that a boycott would then target the product.
Interesting that the group was based in Montgomery, even before the full-blown Southern Strategy. At the time, racists could still run as Democrats and be elected to offices across the South. During most of the 1960s, for instance, George (and later, Lurleen) Wallace held the Alabama governorship as Democrats. Wallace was re-elected in 1972, then ran in Democratic presidential primaries.
If Nixon's plan for the South was not yet in evidence, the little woman puts in an appearance (cloth coat not in evidence, either)...
Also (from the Introduction): "No matter how involved Republican women become in the local and national scene, we are primarily interested in our homes and families." So it was then as it is now— at least for purposes of public consumption and culture war branding.
Some recipes set out to maintain the brand—
There are proletarian meals, and it's even possible to believe some of these people weren't faking ("Governor Romney's Favorite Bean Soup").
The senator wasted no time or fuss in the kitchen.
Hers was one of only a handful of attributions under a woman's own name. Some are names they just don't make anymore...
Fern R. Uglick, Corr. Sec.
16th and 17th Wards WRC 7
Toldedo, Ohio
Florence P. Toothaker, Sec.-Treasurer
Platte Valley RWC
Encampment, Wyoming
Shirley B. Hassdenteufel, Prof. Chm.
New Windsor WRC
New Windsor, New York
Male officeholders and cabinet officers offered recipes under their own names, but submissions from the womenfolk all stress their being wives of ("Black Walnut Stew," courtesy, "Mrs. Barry Goldwater, Wife of Senator From Arizona").
Now there's a name inspiring genuine terror that anti-Commie belligerence would get us all blown up.
... Yet Goldwater's later criticism of fundamentalist crazies—and the fact that his wife helped found Planned Parenthood—would get him drummed out of their party today.
Srom Thurmond shows up here, but so do Edward Brooke (Mrs.) and two Rockefellers (Mrs. Nelson and Mrs. Winthrop). Once upon a time, there were actual moderates in their party. And compared to the ones about to take over DC, the racist wingnuts of yesteryear's GOP may come to seem like pikers.
To be fair, the oddest recipes are no odder than what's found in other fund-raising cookbooks of the period. So, we see here "exotic" jello molds, fried chicken coated in crushed Ritz crackers, and "chow mein" made with tomato soup.
We also have—
Those two are "Meat Combination Recipes," not part of this section—
GOP housewives of the past: veritable cosmopolitans.
1969 translation of a 1968 German teaching guide. I find the credits confusingly Germanic, but here goes. Author is Lothar Kampmann, acknowledging work by students of the Ruhr Advanced Teachers' Training College, Dortmund Section. That acknowledgement apparently applies to a section illustrating techniques, some used in succession to create complex prints. The book also credits illustrations from other printed sources, along with a school in Trantenroth, Bochum (also the Ruhr), the Kothe-Marxmeier School (the source of at least some of the student work reproduced, it would seem).
When introducing a variety of techniques, authorial outlook is sometimes philosophical.
It starts with fingermarks
We see our children's first printing achievements on wallpaper and windowpanes, in magazines and books: their fingermarks. They are greasy or black with dirt Sometimes jam makes them coloured. They may be annoying to the housewife, but technically they are genuine poducts of printing. The young artist merely has to be guided on to the right lines.
Dirt and jam make way to colour. The little cups of the poster-paint box are ideal as the first inking pads. Since the tip of the thumb and the fingertips are of different sizes, we already have various sizes of block available for finger painting.
This is not by any means a technique only for infants' schools. Masters as eminent as Pablo Picasso have repeatedly made use of fingerprinting in lithography.
...
The whole hand, too is a suitable block. The print of a single hand can be extended with a print of the edge of the hand, the single whole fingers, or the fingertips. Or 'many hands' are used for printing.
Such handprints are known from the very early days of man. Neanderthal and Lascaux man used earth-coloured handprints in their cave paintings. One can rightly regard the fingerprint as the beginning of printing both for the individual and the human race.
In the sample work by students, ages range from nine to the teens. Some of this looks pretty sophisticated to me.
'Two Figures' (girl, 16). Paper print of patterns cut out of cartridge paper. Water colours.
Mostly, students observed their surroundings.
'In Port' (boy, 11). Grey-tone lino-cut.
'View of the Town through Scaffolding' (boy, 14). A lino-cut in which shape and white-line printing are combined.
'Industrial Landscape' (boy, 15). Two-colour roller print, brown and black block-printing ink.
'My Daddy is a Miner' (girl, 9). Print-through from a glass plate. All accidental features are reproduced.
Images suggests the region's heavy industry was still very evident in the 1960s. Now, notes wiki, Dortmund
...is known as Westphalia's "green metropolis". Nearly half the municipal territory consists of waterways, woodland, agriculture and green spaces with spacious parks... This stands in a stark contrast with nearly a hundred years of extensive coal mining and steel milling in the past.
Gritty though the area may have been at the time of this publication, that didn't stop the author from finding this merited a stern finger wag.
'Bicycles Outside the Playground' (boy, 14). Print-through monotype.
This is not how they should be left, blocking the entrance.
Industrial landscapes may have changed, but this 12-year old girl's lino-cut observes a scene that remains familiar (and pretty much universal).
To-mah-to...
The name of the vegetable (or fruit?) in Japanese, and the pronunciation of the syllables that decorate this baby T-shirt.
Yesterday was the fourth Sunday in June, so the day of the local Japanese community's annual flea market. I didn't really need a baby T-shirt, but at $.25, the design was too adorable to resist. I'm hoping it will fit a neighbor's one-and-a-half year old, so I can take pictures of him wearing it as he toddles by. He is a fast one, but maybe I can manage to get a rear view—
Two labels sewn inside the collar—
Another item I couldn't manage to resist—
This truly is using your noggin!
There are always giveaway piles, too. I picked up some home-maker magazines—
"Heart and Hand" (above, left) is devoted to recipes and crafts. Here are directions for making gift envelopes from decorative papers—
I like the inexplicable prop here; this hand-made envelope will be just the thing for storing your Blue Eagle tickets!
More seriously, it's interesting how this real artifact can become a context-free prop in a Japanese magazine illustration. I can't find any background, but the image shows tickets printed "In full compliance"—
Globe [?] TicketCompany, Los Angeles
(According to teeny and partly blurred font in magazine image)
The L.A. event may have been held under of the auspices of the Federal Theatre Project, which promoted public performances throughout the country. The Library of Congress's FTP collection includes photos; posters for plays and other public performances are in the WPA poster collection. Though I've seen lots of archival images, I've never come across tickets that from one of these long-ago events.
It's history that is all but lost to popular knowledge. And a depressing, if unsurprising, thing: never try searching "NRA" without adding, Great Depression.
