Gail's Blog

Along the two miles of boardwalk along the Atlantic Ocean in Spring Lake, N.J. are visible reminders of the power of government work projects in hard times. The WPA put artists to work as well as construction workers. This tile is one of several still lining the brick walls along the boardwalk near the snack pavillions in Spring Lake, which were carved by artists employed by the Works Projects Administration. The tiles represent the style of the time, simple, strong and direct. It reflects the spirit of the people who worked for WPA. WPA was initiated by Franklyn Delano Roosevelt to put jobless Americans back to work, and its scope was far greater than anything we've seen since. The Federal Theatre Project put playwrites, actors, directors and stagehands back to work. The photographers employed by the WPA fanned out across the nation to document the lives of our people in their struggles and strengths. Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans were just two of the photographers who allowed t

She started crying two weeks ago and couldn't stop. So she wouldn't go down to meals at Sunrise because she'd cry, and "people would be annoyed". "How can you tell they are annoyed, Mom?" "Because they ignore me." "Maybe they are ignoring you because they don't know what else to do?" "No. They are annoyed. I'll stay in my room." She stopped eating, and called my sister over and over. She cried, sobbed and gulped like an abandoned child. She wouldn't watch TV because, "I used to watch TV with Gordon." She wouldn't read because, "I read when I was with Gordon". Gordon, her husband of 28 years, died in March. She went to Sunrise directly from a stay in a nursing facility where she lived while Gordon died slowly, with much struggle, and a conviction that he'd make it, and take care of her again. He promised her. She believed him whole-heartedly. She misses him dreadfully. But she won't

The girl is my mother when she was in elementary school. The dog and boy were neighbors. I scanned this photo recently, though I've had it on the mantle in a pewter frame for years. Photoshop is miraculous! I can see the detail, now. Looking at a photograph is like looking through a tunnel to the past, with the path traveled since etched on the walls. I see her as a bright-faced child and yet also see the pains and pleasures on the path she took since then. I know my mother's life wasn't a happy one, with a pedophile for a father, and job descrimination as a Jew in WWII era Cleveland. She quit school before high school to work, and then quit a dry-cleaning job where she was referred to as "The Jew girl". She afterwards wrote "Protestant" where it asked for religion on job applications. When she was fifteen, my mother moved to "The Projects", as both my parents called it, and met my father, who was not Jewish, but a handsome boy whose first lan