My Word with Douglas E. Welch

I never imagined when I started this series, that I would be ever writing about the horrors we have experienced as a nation in the last week.

The Constitution clearly states, “We the PEOPLE of the United States of America…”.

This all changed on January 6, 2021. On this day, a certain amount of our citizens decided that rather than continue our nation and government as it has been for 245 years, they would raise arms against their nation and their fellow citizens in an attempt to overthrow it.

A “Rubicon” was crossed that day. 

All of us realized that there are those among us who are not working FOR our society, but rather, AGAINST it. They broke with the basic tenets of society which says that we work together, peacefully — we establish norms and laws, collectively — for the benefit of all citizens. They decided that their rules, their norms, outweighed everyone else in our society and our nation. They raised arms directly against their government and their fellow citizens. I hope that we can all see this as wrong and the antithesis of the society we have tried to create.

Some have tried to establish an equivalency between the summer’s protests against racism and the inequitable application of justice. There is none. Attempting insurrection far outweighs anything we have seen. There can and should be no comparison.

Only one group of people tried to overthrow the government last week. They proudly committed their sedition in public, recording their plans and their actions. They cannot deny it and we cannot deny who they were. WE cannot deflect. We cannot lie about who they were. They showed us exactly who they were through their own voices and actions.

These people assaulted our collective society, attempting its overthrow, while simultaneously wanting to enjoy the benefits of our society, but society and civilization require us all to agree, collectively, on some very basic tenets. To abandon those is to abandon society and civilization.

A civilized society demands that we stand together against those who would seek to destroy it. If we do not we will lose our society, our civilization, and perhaps even our lives.

So, just what is “civics” anyway?

Civics is defined as: the study or science of the privileges and obligations of citizens.

Civic education is the study of the theoretical, political and practical aspects of citizenship, as well as its rights and duties. It includes the study of civil law and civil code, and the study of government with attention to the role of citizens―as opposed to external factors―in the operation and oversight of government. — League of Women Voters of Delaware.

In order to have the government we want, we need to both understand and engage in civics activities in our local communities. I am dedicated to doing better in 2021. How about you? 

Albrecht Düre – BBC In Our Time

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) who achieved fame throughout Europe for the power of his images. These range from his woodcut of a rhinoceros, to his watercolour of a young hare, to his drawing of praying hands and his stunning self-portraits such as that above (albeit here in a later monochrome reproduction) with his distinctive A D monogram. He was expected to follow his father and become a goldsmith, but found his own way to be a great artist, taking public commissions that built his reputation but did not pay, while creating a market for his prints, and he captured the timeless and the new in a world of great change.

With

Susan Foister
Deputy Director and Curator of German Paintings at the National Gallery

Giulia Bartrum
Freelance art historian and Former Curator of German Prints and Drawings at the British Museum

Ulinka Rublack
Professor of Early Modern European History and Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge

Listen to this podcast

Links and Further Reading on the BBC Web Site

A great story on how old films, now uploaded to YouTube and elsewhere can hold genealogical resources for those researching families or general history. Also, just a great example of how to approach any research project. — Douglas

Also Check out the Update Video, where I interview a living descendant of the Lochowicz family

In this video I discuss how I was able to identify people in the film 1911 A Trip Through New York City. In one scene of the video there is a well to do looking family being driven around by a chauffeur. The license plate on the car can be clearly seen as 65465, so I wondered if I could identify them through this little piece of information.

I learned through the Federal Highway Administration that there were 81,370 auto-mobiles registered in NY by 1911. I also learned registration was published publicly and quickly found a listing for license plate 65465 in the Brooklyn Life Magazine showing a June 12th, 1911 registration E.M.F. – Mrs. Lochwicz 548 Eighth Street. The car in the video definitely looked like a 1911 E.M.F. Model 30 Touring Car, so I tried to find the family in the 1910 census and was able to find them living at 548 Eighth Street. The household consisted of six people; Head of house Florian Lochowicz, his wife Antoinette Lochowicz (listed as Antonie in the census), their children Francis, Emily, and Elsie, and a servant named Mary Moriarty.

Florian Lochowicz was born in Posen in 1871 and immigrated to America in 1890. His wife Antoinette was a distant cousin of his and she was the daughter of Konstantyn Cornelius Lochowicz and Julia Hectus. Konstantyn had immigrated in 1864, possibly due to the January Uprising in Poland. Florian worked as a barber and became very prominent because J.P. Morgan was patron of Florian’s. Florian died unexpectedly in 1918 but was worth $70,000 at the time of his death. His wife continued running the Barbershops into the 1950s and still lived at their Brownstone home in NYC at 548 Eighth Street.

We’ve all heard the stories of the Wild West. Saloon Brawls, duels at high noon, ladies being tied to Train Tracks by moustachioed gentlemen, Cowboys fighting Indians. But how true is any of this? To put it bluntly. Just how ‘Wild’ was the Wild West. Find out in this short animated simple history documentary.

In this film we look at some simple ideas to help you build on your creative photography skills. Looking at how to make the most out interesting locations and also how you can explore the world using photography.

00:08 – Overview of how I work through photography ideas while shooting
04:17 – Order, form and symmetry
09:25 – Low angle perspective
12:24 – Frame within a frame
15:20 – Close-up details
19:12 – Unexpected details, patterns and textures
22:47 – Historical recording, research using photographs
24:53 – Delicate and subtle light
27:53 – Painterly landscapes
29:24 – Colours
31:12 – Minimal photography
32:26 – Low light
36:12 – Strange and playful ideas

In 1989, a wave of revolution swept across Eastern Europe, disrupting the Communist governments of Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and of course, Romania. But how did the Romanian Revolution play out and why couldn’t Nicolae Ceaușescu or the authorities stop it like they had done previously? And why did it end the way it did? With the same people still in power and the Ceaușescu’s subject to a mock trial.

Cities grow, adapt and change, like all living things. The Library’s map collections show this in all sorts of unexpected ways, offering a vision of days gone by, of what “normal” once looked like.  We present you with some fascinating glimpses of the cities of yesteryear in this edition of the Library’s Free to Use and Reuse sets of copyright-free images.

The good news about these, if you haven’t seen them before, is that they are yours for the taking — print them out, blow them up into huge posters, use them for laptop screensavers. It’s your choice. In the past few months, we’ve highlighted classic movie theaters, genealogy, maps of discovery and exploration and so on, but there are lots more.

Read Free to Use and Reuse: Maps of Cities via Library of Congress Blog

An interesting link found among my daily reading

If you’re running low on free educational content and you’re eager to use this time to improve your craft, we have some good news. The website Photography Life hast just released all of their premium photography courses, usually $150 apiece, for free on YouTube.

The announcement was made earlier today by Photography Life founder Nasim Mansurov, who explained that he and his staff felt compelled to help out the community during these difficult times.

Read Photography Life Just Released All of Their Paid Photography Courses for Free via PetaPixel