A lot of photographers worked for the Farm Security Administration during the depression; last week was Dorothea Lange. Here’s one posed by a different stylist—Russell Lee.
Medium format nitrate negative by Russell Lee for the FSA.
“White mother with children at migrant camp. Weslaco, Texas.” Background for this series of photos as recorded by Russell Lee in his notes: “Local employment men say that there was no need for migrant labor to handle the citrus and vegetable crops in the valley, the local supply of labor being ample for this purpose. Most of the local labor is Mexican and the labor contractors favor Mexican labor over white labor, partly because the Mexican will work much cheaper than whites. One white woman who was a permanent resident said that the white people who lived in the valley had no trouble with the Mexicans. The Mexicans were good neighbors, she said, always willing to share what they had. She said the white migrants who came into the valley and resented and misunderstood the Mexicans caused the trouble between the two races. Some towns in this section permit camping only in trailers. The charge for camping in tents is about fifty cents per week, including water, which in some cases must be carried four city blocks. Privies are tin, very bad condition. Garbage is collected only once a week, with large dumps of decaying fruits and vegetables scattered among the camps. Some of the white migrants in this camp were very suspicious of governmental activity, due to the use by south Texas newspapers of the term ‘concentration camps’ referring to Farm Security Administration camps.”
I went to that site and found this photo of a butcher shop in NYC selling Possums. Seems apt, what with our rapidly growing eaglets and general running discussion of eating odd meats….
Damn you Bluthner, that one was in queue for a couple of weeks from now! Great minds, eh?
It’s a wonderful shot—y’all should take a look.
Bluthner:
Now all we need is a recipe for possum. Anyone?
From my 1975 edition of the Joy of Cooking:
Sorry that last bit wasn’t meant to be set in quotes.
Could that be rubber?
Mind you it depends how you harvest it
I should think you’d be faint with hunger pangs by the time you actually got to eat it.
Expat,
Couldn’t work out the rubber comment. so googled ‘possum’ and ‘rubber’ and found out that you seem to know more about plucking possum than I would have guessed:
Of course in Vermont they have Michelin or Goodyear embossed on the side walls
I love this blog.
Where else would a thread ostensibly about photography engender a recipe for possum and witticisms about road-kill?
I’m not being a smart-ass, it really tickles the shit out of me.
Eat your heart out, CiF.
Plucking possums? I shouldn’t have let NatashaF talk me into the second Guinness, I fear I’m having hallucinations.
Way things are going UK selling it’s health service AND it’s policing to American companies- living like Skink, in the bush eating road kill, looks ever more attractive.
But not even Skink would eat a road-killed possum. Unless he was really hungry.
Amazing creatures possums. I’d never seen one until I came to VT. They are incredibly adaptable, non specialized and can thrive in many diverse environments.
I also enjoyed this from Wikipedia
I guess it works.
Expat:
Fascinating. 4 hours? I wonder how many possums have been skinned a little too early?
When I was a boy a baby possum fell off it’s mum into one of our water troughs, probably when she leaned in to drink, and in the morning I found it swimming, unable to climb out. My sister and I rescued it, dried it off and warmed it up, fed it milk from a baby bottle with a tiny teat, and it used to cling on to our shirts – just like it would to it’s mother- as we walked around. It was really sweet, and though it had very sharp teeth never bit us.
Alas it only lived a couple of months. Probably caught a cold or something from one of us and died.
Or maybe we only thought it was dead, and buried it alive!
Lordy, I wander away for a few days and come back to the Road-Kill Diner. What a merry crew you are.
Gunny, you are correct, our AMC has nothing on this. Mike could appreciate (remember which state he is from!), but he is too busy keeping the DB editors happy.
I’ve been busy with classes for my new job, plus hanging with the space rocket geeks last weekend in Phoenix, the “Space Access Conference”. There are many good things happening with that bunch. The change over the 14 years that I’ve attended that show has been quite amazing. Vaporware and ppt-engineering have given way to videos of real tests.
Even a branch of Boeing is into the act now.
And now I also know how to use that road-kill, something that may prove useful if the Jellyfish wins this year.
All knowledge is useful, in some manner.