“Typical farmhouse, spring housecleaning, homemade quilts and bedding in sun. Coffee County, Alabama.” Photo taken April 1939 by Marion Post Wolcott.
Via Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black and White Negatives Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
While we were in the southwest of Rwanda last week, we stopped at a small cove in Cyangugu to visit the Safe T Stop project, which helps members of the local fishing and fish-selling communities organize to prevent HIV-AIDS.
Safe T Stop is supported by PEPFAR through USAID.
The project has sponsored a brightly painted traditional fishing boat. When the fisherman see it on the water, they know they can get condoms and health information.
Rwandan fishing boats are actually three connected boats. The nets hang in the spaces between them.
The boat’s builders re-used parts of old tires.
Organizing to fight HIV-AIDS has helped the communities organize to improve their businesses as well. They showed us cages for farming tilipia and a new commercial refrigerator.
The Rwandan boats always remind me of cranes coming in for a landing. The hills in the distance are in the DR Congo.
“Cottages at Maplewood [Waseca, Minnesota],” ca. 1880-1899. By Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Maplewood Park on Clear Lake was a national vacation attraction at the end of the nineteenth century. Click the image to enlarge it.
For another sort of summer cabin living, see today’s New York Times, here.
An inlet of Lake Kivu, viewed from Kagabiro in western Rwanda.
“Gardens surrounding the Indian Pueblo of Zuni, in which are raised a variety of vegetables, such as peppers, onions, garlic, etc.,” c. 1873, by Timothy H. O’Sullivan, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The Zuni people of western New Mexico have long built a form of kitchen garden (now) called “waffle gardens.”
Each square plot is about 2′ to 8′ wide with bermed sides of unamended soil. The design efficiently captures and holds rainwater and retards evaporation. The Zuni traditionally filled their gardens with corn, beans, and squash.
Timothy H. O’Sullivan, who took the picture above, photographed events of the Civil War as an employee of Alexander Gardner.
From 1871 to 1874, he traveled the southwestern United States as part of a survey of the land west of the 100th meridian. Later, he worked in Washington, D.C., as an official photographer for the U.S. Geological Survey. He died of tuberculosis at age 42.
“Zuni gardens,” c. 1927, by Edward Curtis, via Library of Congress.
Edward Curtis, a Seattle photographer, took over 40,000 images of life in 80 native American tribes. The photo above was one of 2,000 he published, from 1907 to 1930, in the 20-volume The North American Indian.
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