While checking out the new Recovery.gov Symbol I found this article on the WPA by Saul Friedman >>

[1776Forever]

WilliamPitt posted the new logo here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5176880&mesg_id=5176880

Isn't it awesome?



When I read the post and saw the logo it brought back memories of my Dad who was one of the dynamite men on the roads projects in West Virginia and Southern Ohio. Every time I take a trip through W.V. I think of him and his crews! What a great job they did! Thanks Dad - You rocked!

After looking up some history on the WPA I found this fantastic article by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Saul Friedman:

REFLECTIONS: The WPA

http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2009/02/reflections-the-wpa.html

Sometimes, like now, I think those macro-economists, to turn a phrase, can’t see the trees for the forest. That is, they talk in big, big numbers, and averages, and means and median, but they miss the important little things, like people.

(snip)

I don’t really know whether the great jobs programs of the New Deal got us out of the Depression. But it doesn’t matter. More important than the macro arguments, is what the much-maligned Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps did for virtually every state and hundreds of towns in America, and the millions of men, women and children it helped during the hard times. Those benefits are still being seen and felt 60 years later.

When I lived in right-wing, anti-federal government Texas (which hasn’t changed much) it came as a shock to the know-nothings when I wrote that their beloved Alamo in downtown San Antonio was restored with the help of the WPA. And the city’s beautiful River Walk was the muddy San Antonio River until WPA workers fixed it up with landscaping, stone work, and walkways and lovely stone bridges that still stand. Today, the River Walk is at the center of the city’s life, with restaurants, shops and barges that ply the river serving dinner to tourists.

While browsing the web in search of more information about the WPA, which was renamed the Works Project Administration in 1939, I discovered that the WPA also built the obelisk of the San Jacinto monument outside Houston, which marks the battle in 1836 that gave Texas (and much of the west) its independence from Mexico.

If I may digress, I like the true story about how a slightly wounded Sam Houston and the captured General Santa Anna, made peace sitting under a tree smoking dope.

But closer to my point - that it’s the little things that count a lot - was this note that I came across from the University of Georgia Libraries, commenting on its collection of photographs that

“...chronicle the various WPA projects which took place in Georgia. The projects were the same in most all of the states and included basic work such as street building and repair.”

One such project was a beautiful, stone monument to the town of Cassville, which was burned to the ground in Sherman’s march across the state.

The WPA, born in 1935 at an initial cost of $4.8 billion, was at the time, the largest “relief” program in American history (now it’s called “stimulus”). By 1941, when spending on the coming war pulled America out of the lingering slump, WPA had cost $11.4 billion and put eight million men and women to work building 1,634 public schools, 105 airports, 3,000 tennis courts, 5,800 libraries, 3,300 storage dams, hundreds of miles of roads, sewer lines, while the CCC built roads through national and state parks, fire towers, and scores of campgrounds, many of which are in use today.

I doubt if George Bush even suspected that his weekend retreat, Camp David, which Franklin Roosevelt called Shangri-la, was built by the WPA as a recreation area in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland. Do baseball fans know that WPA workers built Doubleday Field, in Cooperstown, New York, in 1939 to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of America’s pastime on that hallowed ground?

The architecturally unique bridges of the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut were built by the WPA. Not until 1937 did New York City get an airport, La Guardia Field (named after the city’s New Deal era mayor), with its beautiful art-deco main terminal, all built by WPA labor.

(More at the link)

..............

Wow! That is impressive!

YES WE CAN! :fistbump:

[Hell Hath No Fury]

1. WPA projects remain some of the coolest...

ever -- great design!

My Grandfather was a dynamite man for the WPA here in the Bay Area! :D Small WPA world. :hi:

[1776Forever]

3. Here's to the men & women that worked their way through the mountains of the depression

....and came out on the other side making the way for us to travel for many many years!

:fistbump:

[bananas]

2. (self-deleted - link fixed)

http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2009/02/reflections-the-wpa.html
(Which I got from your post in the other thread - thanks!)

[1776Forever]

4. Thanks! Fixed it - Appreciate that!

:yourock:

[Divine Discontent]

5. what an interesting read! K&R