“I was drawn to and inspired by a photo taken by Charles Harris in Pittsburgh in 1949. The photo showed a group of schoolchildren getting ready to cross a road. One child is a safety patrol officer. He has his arms out to the sides, keeping the children behind him on the curb until it is safe for them to pass. He wears a cap and a pair of stylish round sunglasses that give him the air of a confident traffic cop. I saw this boy as a representation of young Black children looking after each other without any need for adults to intervene. You can see the other children respected their peer leader and were patiently waiting for his permission to cross. That image gave me some hope.
For the safety patrol officer, I chose to make his sash out of kente cloth, a woven Ghanaian cloth that used to symbolize wealth, status, and even royalty. Here the kente shows that the boy has been chosen as a leader by his teachers. I also used a Nigerian wax-resist fabric with the word “OK” printed all over it. The words act as a mantra protecting the children, just as the eye over his breast pocket serves as a talisman to ward against evil. Such protective symbols are used in African and Mediterranean cultures, while in ancient Egypt, these ideas come together in the Eye of Horus, a symbol of protection, royal power and good health.”
Herbert Spencer Zim was a teacher and author in the field of science. Sonia Bleeker (Zim) did the same for children but focusing on Anthropology. Sonia and Herbert travelled all over Africa, Europe and North and South America.
Always taking notes and doing research for her many books about Native Americans, Pre-Columbian cultures and various African tribes.
1954, 1955, 1958, 1960, 1963, 1969 Editions
The Quiz-Me Books were a series for youth featuring impressive Museum illustrations, a clearly written text and a concluding list of questions which sent the reader back into the text for further investigation.
Sonia’s INDIANS book is arranged by topics that are close and familiar to the lived experience of a contemporary child. Good starting points for beginning inquiry into complex cultures. Homes, Family Life, Hunting & Farming, Clothing & Ornaments, Languages, Tools & Weapons, Transportation & Trading, Religion & Ceremonies, Games, Feasts & Dancing.
Pre-Colonization Family Life is described as happy with parents who took good care of their children. A child naming ceremony was considered important to the clan because it bestowed upon each child a name that possessed special powers. A baby was given a nickname so that the secret name never got used up thereby wearing out its power. This is exactly the sort of anthropological detail that adds an element of magic and mystery which appeals to imaginations young & old.
A Busy Iroquois Household
Women are shown with breasts. And Sonia writes that all mothers nursed their children and the baby was always with its mother. Fathers took charge of sons when boys were old enough to learn planting, harvesting, hunting, weaving or chipping, flaking and fashioning arrows, wampum or turquoise ornaments.
Turquoise
Every Indian man, woman and child was once upon a time surrounded by relatives. Elders transmitted the ceremonies & rituals of the tribe as well as the sacred pathways to adulthood. Presented is the portrait of a stable and thriving society. BEFORE Invasion, Enslavement, Disease, Genocide, Occupation, Forced Relocation, Destruction of Food Sources, Demoralization, Despair. The Deliberate Devastation of a Way of Life.
Even a speed read of Sonia Bleeker’s Quiz-Me paperback would leave one asking very different kinds of end-of-chapter study questions. How can the annihilation of 80 Million Indigenous people be imagined? What facts should be included that might help us calculate such horror? Which anthropologists in 2025 are researching and writing for school age children seeking facts about cultures & customs recovered and revitalized precisely because of the richness they contribute to the vitality of democracy?
Herbert Spencer Zim. Ever meet him? You probably have if you’ve picked up one of the wonderful Golden Nature Series Paperbacks.
Herbert was the author or co-author of more than 100 books and countless articles. And he was known to generations of children as the man who explained everything from the workings of parachutes to which birds could be found in Central Park in the fall.
The Golden Nature series, including “Birds,” “Insects,” “Fishes” and “Trees,” exemplified his style. Concise, engaging and comprehensible to children without being simplistic. The 1966 book “Birds of North America,” which he co-wrote, is still regarded as a staple of the field.
Starting with “Mice, Men and Elephants” in 1942, he set about writing children’s science books at a dizzying pace. His early works, like “Air Navigation,” “Parachutes” and “Submarines,” often dealt with mechanical science.
In 1947 he became the editor of Simon & Schuster’s Golden Nature Guides, and he began writing some of the books in 1949. He also wrote articles for magazines, particularly those devoted to education. He edited a children’s encyclopedia, “Our Wonderful World,” in the mid-1950’s.
Golden Nature Guides
Like Herbert Zim, the Los Alamos scientists of The Manhattan Project, also believed that children in a Democracy need to understand the science of their world. In the 1960’s they began their own versions of elementary school science investigations designed precisely for classrooms. Hands-on places where curiosity and inquiry were encouraged. Not annihilated in the interest of profit-driven, corporate testing tyrants.
There was a philosophy.
The important thing in any learning is to be able to use it, to go beyond it, in the direction of still further learning and activity. When we look at our classrooms, what do we hope to find? We hope to find children working with confidence and intensity on problems of their own choosing. The primary objective at any given moment is that the children be involved with the caring about it enough to make their own effort to come to know it better.
Children work best when trying to find answers to problems that they themselves have chosen to investigate. These problems are best drawn from their own environment and tackled largely by practical investigations. Teachers should be responsible for thinking out and putting into practice the work of their own classes. In order to do so they should be able to find help where they need it.
A group of Los Alamos physicists were passionately fond of the elegance of physical phenomena such as pendulums, balances and inclined planes. They called themselves The Playground Physics Group. And started by looking at swings, seesaws and slides.
They had a good beginning set of materials and ques- tions for balances. And they were gathering courage to try them out with children. A footlong ruler was balanced on a rounded piece of wood, and a few metal washers were placed along it, preserving its balance. Someone held on to the stick and moved one of the washers. Next someone had to move another of the washers so that move compensated theirs and the ruler would remain balanced when they let go.
How about trying to make as many layers as one could have colored liquids? And then finding particles (rice, plastic bits, wood chips) that floated between the layers. Moving from beakers to closed pill bottles, focusing on the motions the liquids made as they were turned over or stirred up. A favorite was corn oil sit- ting on red-dyed glycerine with a few radish seeds at the interface.
Manhattan Project David Hawkins wrote:
“Along with the growth of intuition and understanding goes a necessary component which can only be called aesthetic. An enjoyment, a sheer enjoyment of the phenomena themselves. Make up a few color tubes and play with them. What is this good for? Is it going to lead to an understanding of density or surface tension? Probably not. Well then, what is it good for?
I think part of the answer is that the tubes are just good and one doesn’t have to ask immediately what they are good for, or indeed, whether they are good for anything at all. Try them out and just see if they generate further ideas for exploring the curious behaviours of different sorts of liquids.
Or think about butterflies. Here is much richer scientific fare. But would it have the richness if it were not for the marvellous colors and shapes and movements of these little animals? Every part of science has its own characteristic phenomena and gives rise to characteristic — one is tempted to say — art forms. Contrast the style of the caterpillars and butterflies with the elegant motion of a ten-foot pendulum.”
How About Ants! A little creature often ignored.
What is it? What does it do? How does it move? What does it eat? How does it catch its food? How does it live in these little sand pits? How does it eat? How does it make these little pits? Can it make pits in gravel? In flour? In sugar? In ashes? Does it prefer sand to gravel? How does it throw things out of its pit? How big a thing can it throw out of its pit? Can it see where it goes?
The likes of Philip Morrison, Frank Oppenheimer, Victor Weiskopf, Stan Ulam and Jerrold Zacharias were deeply interested in the activity of ants, bubbles, worms, pendulums, cardboard constructions and butterflies. They joined Herbert Zim and thousands of school teachers on the hunt for children who came absolutely alive in the presence of a natural/physical world that they were invited to encounter and explore.
Jerrold Zacharias knew that reductionist data-points & testing tyranny were the ultimate enemy of thinking people in every democracy. He wrote:
“I feel emotionally toward the corporate testing industry as I would toward any other Merchant of Death. I feel that way because of what they do to the kids. I’m not saying they murder every child. Only 20% of them. Testing has distorted their ambitions. Distorted their careers. It’s not something that should be put in the hands of commercial enterprises.
I have often referred to tests as the Gestapo of Education Systems. Uniformity and Rigidity require Enforcement. So I have chosen a most denigrating title for the enforcement agency. Its hallmark is arbitrariness, secrecy, intolerance and cruelty.”
It is possible to make a pretty good weighing device, in the form of a balance, using a couple of soda straws, a few pins and a moderate amount of ingenuity. Jerold Zacharais liked to say that he could weigh a fly’s wing with such a device, and he probably could have.
Any student who struggled to achieve it would almost certainly emerge with a new respect for the meaning of measurement. The appreciation was the real point of PSSC. Not accuracy for its own sake but rather for the understanding that it made possible. It was designed to provide a sense of the playfulness that often characterizes good science and with the delight of discovery.
There were many other features of PSSC that were attractive to scientists. Improvising inexpensive and ingenious equipment such as the soda straw microbalance or thinking through how to make atoms and molecules real and believable, filming complicated but interesting physical phenomena. All of it had enormous appeal.
The film called A Million To One deserves description because it conveys so well the light-hearted spirit that came to exist in the studio. The PSSC equipment group had improved upon an invention called a dry-ice puck. It was a simple disk that could float almost without friction on a thin layer of gaseous carbon dioxide. Using the same principle as the British Hovercraft which rides on a cushion of air. The carbon dioxide is obtained from an evaporating piece of dry ice carried in a container attached to the puck. The whole structure weighs perhaps 2 kilograms. But friction is reduced to such a low level that the puck can be set skimming across a smooth surface by a very small force.
“Zach was so impressed by these dry-ice pucks that he kept saying, ‘I’d like to see a cockroach pulling one of these pucks.’ Unknown to him, the film crew went down to New York City and found a flea circus on 42nd Street run by a Professor So-and-So. They made a deal with this guy and they made a three or four minute film strip. The guy actually harnessed a flea to one of these five pound pucks. And they had the movie where the flea actually pulls this damn thing. It was really marvelous.”
A Different Sort Of Time: The Life Of Jerrold R. Zacharias/Scientist, Engineer, Educator. By Jack S. Goldstein/MIT 1992.
I somehow managed to cram myself into the narrow space at the back of an African 5th Grade classroom. Scientists, educators and administrators had traveled from America, England and other parts of Africa. We had come to Kano to attend a remarkable conference on African Science Education organized by Jerrold Zacharias.
Zacharias had arranged for us to come to this school to witness a local African teacher, who after only 2 weeks of training, was going to teach science not by TELLING students about it but by putting the simple materials of science, in this case flashlight bulbs & batteries, into their hands. Letting the children manipulate them and make their own experiments. Boxes of scraps containing bits of wire, paper, string, wood, paper clips and rubber bands. The teacher simply asking, “Can you light the bulb?’
Self-consciousness and uncertainty evaporated quickly. One by one, flashlight bulbs lit up. First in one part of the room and then another. Illuminating briefly each time the intense absorption and delight in the children’s faces. Each of us watching had felt that same sense of wondering delight as young children in rare and lucky moments of discovery. We were thrilled to recognize it again now. The teacher moved quietly among the groups of students. Offering encouragement here. Asking provocative questions there. “Can you make the bulb give a brighter light? Can you light 2 bulbs? Will string work in place of the wire?”
60 of us had gathered in Kano. Many of us professional physicists, chemists, biologists and physicians. We had little prior experience with children’s science or with Africa. Yet here we were. Filled with a contagious enthusiasm. Ready to learn. Ready to go forward. I did not understand by what magic Zacharias had persuaded hard-headed scientists that we might be useful in such an adventure. But he did and we were willing.
The Cold War influenced Zacharias strongly. Reinforcing his unembarrassed love for Democracy, Decency and Fair Play. He felt a scientist’s abhorrence of dogmatism. Especially the forms of it that he encountered. McCarthism, Communism, Know-Nothingism and Radicalism of any sort. He came to believe that Education was the most effective way to address the ills of the world. “In order to save Democracy, we’ve got to educate the people who vote. There’s no question in my mind about that.”
A Different Sort of Time/The Life of Jerrold R. Zacharias/Scientist, Engineer, Educator. By Jack S. Goldstein/MIT 1992
Robert Wolfe Columbus Dispatch Owner-Publisher took his family vacations in the American West. Inspired by those adventures, in 1927 he purchased 20 acres of land in Pickerington, Ohio. And created what became a 64 acre wooded retreat which was named WIGWAM.
It was furnished with Native American decor.
Tableware and carpeting displayed the theme. The Wigwam dishes and glasses carried the 1930s picture of Two Gun White Calf. One of three Native American Indians who posed for the likeness of the Indian on the Buffalo Nickel. A portrait that was taken by Walter Nice, a photographer for the Columbus Dispatch newspaper in 1909. Mr. Wolfe engaged a Dispatch cartoonist to paint stagecoaches, trains, airplanes, covered wagons, teepees, cowboy cabins and other scenes from the American West. The Native American decor continued outside with an authentic totem pole.
In 1910 Columbus city officials hired Edgar S. Martin to advise them on how to begin a Parks and Recreation Program. Martin’s efforts met stiff resistance from conservative taxpayers but the idea prevailed. And Martin convinced Columbus City Council to appropriate $15,000 for an initial investment. State bonds were then issued for purchase of playground and recreation equipment.
Edgar Martin was an avid supporter of the emerging Boy Scout movement. He established the first Boy Scout organization in Franklin County Ohio and was responsible for introducing naturalist outdoorsman woodcraft expert Ernest Thompson Seton to Columbus.
Seton first lectured in 1927 at the Franklin County Memorial Hall where he immediately helped raise $1,300 to launch the first Scout troop. He found enthusiastic supporters in the League of Ohio Sportsmen. Seton gave talks at their statewide assemblies about nature conservation and appreciation, woodcraft, Scouting, hiking, natural health, Native American Indian lore, dances, prayers, games, clothing, fun, wisdom and reverence for the great outdoors.
The Wolfe Family purchased the Columbus Dispatch newspaper in 1905. Their newspaper immediately began to cover Seton’s Columbus community activation faithfully. The League Of Ohio Sportsmen began bringing Boy Scouts to Seton lectures. On 12/18/1927 Columbus Ohio Scouts met Seton at the Deshler Wallick Hotel. Seton talked to the men and boys about the traditions of Woodcraft Indian Council Fires, the outdoors and its enjoyments. Seton’s Woodcraft League of America was explicitly presented as a recreational opportunity for girls and boys.
By May 1928 the Mayor of Columbus had authorized the head of City Recreation to collaborate with Seton on plans for building an Indian Woodcraft Village on city property, located on the banks of the Scioto River. The site of an original Wyandot Native encampment.
Seton’s 1928 drawings included an Indian Village Day Camp headquarters building. A smokehouse kitchen. Wigwams, teepees, longhouses.There was a trash burning area. A sweat lodge and a Sun Bath. Bunkhouses. And an outdoor education space for plays, dances, games, storytelling, camp crafts, wood crafts and community gatherings. Periodically, Seton offered training workshops at the Columbus Board of Education for any adults interested in becoming teachers of woodcraft and leaders in woodcraft nature study.
Seton-designed Indian Village Day Camp was formally dedicated in May of 1928. It was laid out next to the Fishinger Road Bridge. The camp was grouped around a longhouse which functioned as the Dining Hall and Council Chamber. There were 5 teepees and 2 wooden lodges providing sleeping quarters. City Recreation operated the camp and when in summer season, there were nightly Council Fire Gatherings for 50 inner city children.
July 4, 1932 the Dispatch newspaper ran a story on Indian Village Camp plans for the national holiday. Boys week and girls week alternated. On 7/4/1932 city neighbors were invited to visit. At 2:30 PM a play was performed. Sports, field games, bead-making and swimming were on the schedule. Supper was served at 5:30 PM. And at 6:30 PM The Scioto River Boat Club staged canoe races! At 7:15 PM Mayor Worley gave an address. Joined by campers who put on a Seton-inspired Council Ring Ceremony.
At 8 PM The Improved Order of Red Men, under the leadership of one Harry Lehman, concluded the evening program.
Harry Lehman’s IORM was founded in 1834. It was a national fraternity with members wearing Native costume and nomenclature. Their rituals were historically focused on preservation. One member said, “The value of the ceremonies of our Order is their historical accuracy. They seek not merely to imitate, but to preserve. When the time comes that the Indian race is extinct, our Order will occupy a place original and unique. And becoming at once, the interpreter of Indian customs and the repository of Indian traditions.” Columbus Red Men Lodge #128 continues to operate in Columbus 2023. Located at 2634 N High St, Columbus, OH, United States, 43202.
In July of 1949 the Columbus Dispatch newspaper again referenced Seton’s tradition. A Summer Reading List of Nature Books included a review of Ellsworth Jaeger’s COUNCIL FIRES. The Buffalo Museum of Science Curator was a member of Seton’s Woodcraft League. And he produced a detailed account of campfires, fire-lighting, peace pipe ceremonies, games, songs, stories, Indian dances, Indian equipment and how to make all of it using whatever was locally available.
Dr Samuel S Palmer Pastor of Broad Street Presbyterian Church initially helped Seton start the Indian Village Day Camp. Mrs Maude Fowler Wolfe was the wife of Dispatch publisher, banker & civic leader Edgar Wolfe. She served on the Board of Broad Street Presbyterian.
The chosen location was rich in Wyandot Indian lore and Seton hand-carved a large Totem for the encampment. Mr. A W “Bugs” Raymond was the Parks and Recreation Director. In the beginning, he operated the camp on weekends only. But after that, the Federally-funded WPA arrived and helped construct the cook shack and other new buildings.
By 1947 the Dispatch newspaper boasted of the camp’s 11 cabins each housing 8 campers + counselors. Swimming pool, shuffleboard court, a dining hall and well-equipped kitchen. A recreation hall for rainy day programming and a crafts department. In 1947 camp sessions were 2 weeks long. Offering hiking, boating, swimming, fishing, camp fires, Indian lore activities, games, dramatics and gymnastics. Tuition was $18 a session with additional costs covered by philanthropic donations.
Ernest Thompson Seton’s Camp-craft work lives on. Today you can visit Seton Woodcrafters in the modern Czech Republic!
The Czech Woodcraft League 2023 continues to bring people to nature and teach them how to stay there and get by with just a minimum of the items they have brought from their home in the city. It is believed that this is the way how to bring back to life the things which have been forgotten, both spiritual and practical. When camping in nature people can understand again where they have come from and revive their bonds with nature.
We practice so-called primitive camping, imitating techniques of the Native Americans, primeval people, indigenous people and others who were masters of woodcraft.
Our aim is not to imitate indigenous people in all details or promote the escape from civilization. We just want to help people find the roots of their humanity.We believe that lifelong education is the core principle of building true humanity. That is why we put stress on learning by doing within the Deed system. Using E T Seton’s Birch Bark Roll of Woodcraft, which was modernized and updated after the Czech Woodcraft League Revival in 1990.
A Woodcraft International Meeting is being planned for sometime in 2023-2024. Uncertain political landscapes will determine if the gathering is ZOOM or Hybrid/meaning a bit of both.
OBJECTIVES: Create an international coalition of Woodcraft practitioners. Develop new friendships and connections across the world. Share best practices across the world. Identify ways to improve traditional WC/Woodcraft activities intended to reduce/eliminate Amerindian cultural appropriation and increase each organization’s focus on their own culture.
Activism means one is ACTIVE. Nimble, energetic, progressing, vital, vigorous, getting things done.
When Elsie Ripley Clapp answered John Dewey’s request and took on the Directorship of the New Deal Arthurdale Community School, she went in prepared to quite literally get her hands dirty.
There was no school building. For that matter, there was no Arthurdale Community. It was a buckwheat farm owned by Mr. Arthur which was about to be plowed under and converted into a FDR Hot Political Potato.
Critics came climbing out of the woodwork complaining that the Resettlement Administration was nothing more than thinly-disguised socialism/communism/collectivism.
A Living New Deal
The Arthurdale school and its Homestead were what we might call today a Pop-Up. An instant Emergency Relief effort on a massive scale. “Destitute or low-income families from rural and urban areas would be transferred to newly-built towns. Their employment would address the converging catastrophes of soil erosion, stream pollution, seacoast erosion, reforestation, forestation, and flooding. The government would make loans to finance the purchase of farm lands. Also money for the equipment needed by farmers, farm tenants, croppers or farm laborers.” Rexford Tugwell, the Undersecretary of Agriculture, was put in charge.
Clapp did not waste time Political Protest Posting on Blogs, Instagram, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, WordPress or YouTube. She had a big job to do. Arthurdale Activism was not mistaken for a string of words shouting back at hostile, bitter, virulent, venomous, fat cat critics. Her about-to-be Public School had to get up and running. The proof of the pudding really is in the eating. She knew it would start out messy, muddy, maddening and miraculous. It was all of that and more.
Coalminers’ Kids Building A New Life For Themselves In Arturdale
The coal miner families of Scott’s Run West Virginia knew they were abandoned. No work, no money, no food, no running water, no heat, no medical care, no schooling. No way out. No surprise. The boom and bust cycles of industrial mining had remained the same since before the Civil War. Once the unrestrained greedy barons departed, the human misery set in. There was no rescue in sight.
1938 Pursglove Mine Scott’s Run
But the families of Uvalde Robb Elementary did not know they were abandoned. Yes, they had inherited a legacy from decades of bigotry against indigenous Hispanics. But all around them was the ever-present, well-armed law enforcement. Border Patrol Costumed As Hunter-Killers roaming the barrio-colonia arresting Migration People and shoving them into the rapacious For Profit Detention Centers located nearby.
It turned out that the only policing competence required in Uvalde was the ability to slide up next to Gov Abbott’s right-wing wallet and purchase as much Military Industrial Complex Tough Guy paraphernalia as the city/county budget would allow. It was simply an investment in Make Believe. A stage play, a manipulation, an illusion and a calculated strategy operating to preserve and perpetuate raw, political power. No protection. No rescue in sight.
“On the bloody morning after, many Tin Soldiers rode away.” One Tin Soldier Song Lyric/Brian Potter / Dennis Earle Lambert 1969
Scott’s Run was a long valley of coal seams crowded with camp after camp. As Elsie Ripley Clapp/ERC drove along she saw abandoned tipples, burning slag heaps, no trees, no gardens. Steep hillsides made barren, coal black, ugly and dangerous with flimsy, dilapidated shacks.
Some were crowded along a highway but others much worse, were perched high on hillsides. unkempt, leaning, empty storefronts, broken glass fronts, rickety porches. There were worn-out advertisements, dirty under-stocked stores, trash for as far as the eye could see.
And then there were the men. Listless, smutty-faced with their raggedy sweet-faced children and maimed curs. One single camp was built on a cinder heap. Not a tree. Families living in long shacks. Just one room or two with a foul privy behind. What passed for a school was 40 children in a room, sitting in desks from 9-4. All of it resting precariously on a hillside high above.
There was Nadia Danilevsky talking to men who were laying pipes for what might become a public water system. At long last, they were going to have running water and certainly that would help. But no amount of water could wash away the utter, awful ugliness, nor the listless/hopeless atmosphere.
This place was a rotting shell leftover from the Boom Days. It was the epitome of abyss and abandon. And one could not help feeling outraged that human beings would be obliged to exist under such miserable circumstances. This description became the POINT of the Community School.
Scavenging For Coal To Warm & Cook
The Community School that E.R. Clapp went on to create was what we might today call an activist school. It was a public school that took action.
Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas is of a similar mind and history. Clapp and her cohorts had the tragic residue of industrial/police state greed and corruption to deal with. Uvalde was afflicted with the pernicious legacy of colonizing capitalism fueled and excused by rampant racism. Robb sits in the middle of its Hispanic community.
Its families have fought tooth and nail since the late 1960’s for a safe facility, books, buses, nutritious school meals, Spanish-speaking faculty. The basics.
Genoveva Morales, mother of 11, filed the first lawsuit in 1970 that resulted in a Court integration order. That came after a massive, multiple school walkout. Six weeks of protests, pickets, armed Texas Rangers patrolling the Hispanic streets of Uvalde, Huey helicopters flying overhead and taking recon photos of marchers. The Community School responded with packed, contentious school board meetings, a Freedom School, a Free Lunch program, a newsletter, a Teatro/Theater company and much more.
In 1980 The US Department of Justice sued Uvalde schools. It charged them with racial discrimination and the persistence of policies that diluted the voting power of neighborhood Hispanics. At-large school board elections had been engineered to ensure that no Mexican Americans won.
Marching For Their Lives
If you want to STOP a Community School dead in its tracks, make sure no one from the community can get elected to governance, oversight, policy/finance/curriculum decisions or review of the parent complaints that pile up after decades of abuse and neglect and exploitation.
When Elsie Ripley Clapp first toured the ruined coal camps of Scotts Run WV, they were dangerous places. Children were dying and so were the adults. No, not dangerous like the gun massacre in Uvalde TX.
In Great Depression Era Scotts Run, no one had thousands of dollars to spend on expensive weapons of war + ammo. Even bullets for a squirrel gun were at a premium. So was the squirrel meat. Everyone was starving and perishing the old fashioned way. TB, scurvy, rickets, pellagra, typhoid, pneumonia, hunger. Slow and lethal.
Elsie Clapp came from the social and economic class of people responsible for this carnage. What she saw came as no surprise.
She knew that the Gilded Age had made their millions off the backs of laboring miners and then simply walked away once the plunder was complete. She knew this but she did not accept it. It was wrong and it could be remediated. And so she set about creating a Community School.
Snow Ice Shoeless Search For A Chunk Of Coal
There could be no Community School without living-breathing inhabitants. And conditions had been allowed to get so bad that the area most closely resembled a war zone full of 4,000-5,000 skeletal humans on their very last leg. President Hoover had been sitting on a fund of money originally designated for feeding Belgian and French children post WWI.
At long last the war relief money was ultimately handed over to Alice Davis, Nadia Danilevsky and Clarence Pickett with the American Friends Service Committee. Food rations and fuel for warmth and cooking was the first order of business. Clapp described seeing scrawny children playing in stinky, sulphur-ridden puddles by the side of the road. She walked into a long, corrugated-iron shed with #7 painted on the roof. Down the length of the shed were small cots. A wood stove was at one end and a jerry-rigged shower at the other. A young woman with an ancient air about her, bent over and toothless, introduced Elsie to the improvised, rudimentary Nursery School. “We bathes ‘em. We feeds ‘em and we sleeps ‘em,” she proudly announced. This constituted a beginning at the center of oblivion.
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