Niagara Falls—Frozen solid 100 years ago

Not much I want to write about after the "execution" of Troy Davis in Georgia last night, which feels so much like a "you can't stop me" from the state.

A cop is killed; cops go nuts at the thought (as they always do); a black man is arrested, witnessed are "produced" (induced); a black life for a cop life; and a state that digs in its heels. (Does it matter that Obama is president? Sometimes it's hard to find the boundaries of Tea Bag Nation.)

So here, from the photo archives of the distant past, as collected by David Blaine, is a picture from the era before women bobbed their hair (supposedly 1911, but no verifiable provenance available).

The Niagara River and Niagara Falls, frozen solid. (Click it to big it; it's quite the shot.)



Notice in the large image the women's hats, especially the one on our right. Women's hats were a good indication of social status or class. This is one wealthy family, from back when most of the money flowed upward, there was a small middle class (doctors were the low end of the wealthy, for example), and everyone else was working to survive — and I do mean everyone else.

When we look at (or read books set in) a pre-FDR world, the 90% or so of "everyone else" disappears, since the subjects (or heroes) are usually the upper class, in one of its flavors. The family in the picture above likely had money to travel (I hear the following year they took that long, expensive train ride to Yellowstone.)

Voilà our future, in two senses. (The climate sense needs no comment; the point sorta makes itself.)

GP