The Great Depression Two Kansas Diaries

During the decade of the 1930s the nation plunged from prosperity and great expectations into a sharp decline that adversely affected a greater percentage of people than any economic crisis before or since. During the Great Depression 25 percent of the nation\u27s work force became unemployed. No state was unaffected, and both cities and farms suffered, although each section of the economy displayed a different set of problems. For most urban dwellers the extent and depth of the crisis was measured by employment. Studs Terkel found the clearest, most succinct definition of the Depression when a once unemployed laborer said: The Depression ended in 1936, the day I got a job. 1 For farmers in western Kansas the Depression began in 1933 with thirty dust days and ended in 1939 when the rains came. The hard times were a staggering ordeal, both emotionally and economically, for millions of people, but some found the 1930s to be a time of opportunity while the Depression rolled over others without leaving a mark. Just how drastic the change could be and how disparate the impact of the Great Depression could be is illustrated in diaries kept by two Kansas women between 1935 and 1939. At the onset of the Depression, the two women seemed similar. They had received comparable, if not identical, educations in similar rural settings-small country towns. Both came from the British Protestant tradition, although one was Presbyterian and the other Methodist. They were of the same white, middle-class generation. Their values base and prior status were much the same, but the details of their lives were to determine how they reacted to the troubled times. Lucy Mabel Holmes was born to John and Frances M. Holmes in Baldwin, a small, rural town in down-state Illinois, on 10 June 1878. John Holmes was a construction contractor and carpenter. In 1890 the family moved to Topeka and Mabel (who used her middle name) lived there for the rest of her life. In 1935, when she began writing in her diary, she was fifty-seven years old, unmarried, and living with her sister, Elma, two years her senior, who was also unmarried. Elma had taught in Lafayette Elementary School when she first came to Topeka but was teaching at Randolph School in 1935. Mabel had served as secretary of the American Railway Express Company and as a stenographer for the Alliance Cooperative Investment Company before moving to a similar position at the Kansas State Horticultural Department. Her work schedule was quite flexible, and she frequently mentioned that she spent only the morning or afternoon at the office and took off time for long and short vacations.2 Elsie May Long wS\s born 31 October 1892, in Holton, Kansas, the second daughter of Alfonso Houston and Mary Jane Long. She attended public school in Holton. In 1909 or 1910, the family moved to a Ford County farm where her father worked for Charley E. Haywood as an informal foreman or manager. Elsie attended the Fowler Friends Academy for one year, then taught in a one-room country school for two years. On her twenty-second birthday (31 October 1914) she married Clarence O. Haywood, the son of her father\u27s employer. They began their married life on a wheat farm twelve miles north of Fowler, Kansas, and about twenty-five miles southwest of Dodge City. Two sons were born to the couple, Harold in 1915 and Bobby in 1921

The Great Depression Two Kansas Diaries

During the decade of the 1930s the nation plunged from prosperity and great expectations into a sharp decline that adversely affected a greater percentage of people than any economic crisis before or since. During the Great Depression 25 percent of the nation\u27s work force became unemployed. No state was unaffected, and both cities and farms suffered, although each section of the economy displayed a different set of problems. For most urban dwellers the extent and depth of the crisis was measured by employment. Studs Terkel found the clearest, most succinct definition of the Depression when a once unemployed laborer said: The Depression ended in 1936, the day I got a job. 1 For farmers in western Kansas the Depression began in 1933 with thirty dust days and ended in 1939 when the rains came. The hard times were a staggering ordeal, both emotionally and economically, for millions of people, but some found the 1930s to be a time of opportunity while the Depression rolled over others without leaving a mark. Just how drastic the change could be and how disparate the impact of the Great Depression could be is illustrated in diaries kept by two Kansas women between 1935 and 1939. At the onset of the Depression, the two women seemed similar. They had received comparable, if not identical, educations in similar rural settings-small country towns. Both came from the British Protestant tradition, although one was Presbyterian and the other Methodist. They were of the same white, middle-class generation. Their values base and prior status were much the same, but the details of their lives were to determine how they reacted to the troubled times. Lucy Mabel Holmes was born to John and Frances M. Holmes in Baldwin, a small, rural town in down-state Illinois, on 10 June 1878. John Holmes was a construction contractor and carpenter. In 1890 the family moved to Topeka and Mabel (who used her middle name) lived there for the rest of her life. In 1935, when she began writing in her diary, she was fifty-seven years old, unmarried, and living with her sister, Elma, two years her senior, who was also unmarried. Elma had taught in Lafayette Elementary School when she first came to Topeka but was teaching at Randolph School in 1935. Mabel had served as secretary of the American Railway Express Company and as a stenographer for the Alliance Cooperative Investment Company before moving to a similar position at the Kansas State Horticultural Department. Her work schedule was quite flexible, and she frequently mentioned that she spent only the morning or afternoon at the office and took off time for long and short vacations.2 Elsie May Long wS\s born 31 October 1892, in Holton, Kansas, the second daughter of Alfonso Houston and Mary Jane Long. She attended public school in Holton. In 1909 or 1910, the family moved to a Ford County farm where her father worked for Charley E. Haywood as an informal foreman or manager. Elsie attended the Fowler Friends Academy for one year, then taught in a one-room country school for two years. On her twenty-second birthday (31 October 1914) she married Clarence O. Haywood, the son of her father\u27s employer. They began their married life on a wheat farm twelve miles north of Fowler, Kansas, and about twenty-five miles southwest of Dodge City. Two sons were born to the couple, Harold in 1915 and Bobby in 1921

Unplighted Troths: Causes for Divorce in a Frontier Town Toward The End of the Nineteenth Century

W elcome to Dodge City, the biggest, wildest, wickedest little city on the continent, was the exuberant greeting given out-of-town visitors to Dodge\u27s Fourth ofJuly celebration in 1883. The assessment projected was a selfcongratulatory one shared and frequently envied by the rest of the United States. Dodge was enjoying the peak of its cattle-town fame and prosperity as the quintessential frontier boom town, unrestrained by convention, the very embodiment of waywardness and wantonness. Few communities seemed more at odds with the national social values and mores that later generations would label Victorian. As a mecca for free-spending cowboys it was a place to let off steam, live high, and have fun. For the merchants, gamblers, joint operators, and cattlemen it was a time to fleece the unwary, reap handsome profits, and grow respectably rich.

The diversity of assembly histories leading to disc galaxy formation in a LambdaCDM model

[Abridged] Typical disc galaxies forming in a LambdaCDM cosmology encounter a violent environment, where they often experience mergers with massive satellites. The fact that disc galaxies are ubiquitous in the local Universe suggests that a quiescent history is not necessary for their formation. Modern cosmological simulations can now obtain relatively realistic populations of disc galaxies, but it still remains to be clarified how discs manage to survive massive mergers. Here we use a suite of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations set in a LambdaCDM cosmology to elucidate the fate of discs encountering massive mergers. We extract a sample of approximately 100 disc galaxies and follow the changes in their post-merger morphologies, as tracked by their disc-to-total ratios (D/T). We also examine the relations between their present-day morphology, assembly history and gas fractions. We find that approximately half of present-day disc galaxies underwent at least one merger with a satellite of total mass exceeding the host system's stellar mass, a third had mergers with satellites of mass exceeding 3 times the host's stellar mass, and approximately one-sixth had mergers with satellites of mass exceeding 10 times of the host's stellar mass. These mergers lead to a sharp, but often temporary, decrease in the D/T of the hosts, implying that discs are usually disrupted but then quickly re-grow. To do so, high cold gas fractions are required post-merger, as well as a relatively quiescent recent history (over a few Gyrs before z=0). Our results show that discs can form via diverse merger pathways and that quiescent histories are not the dominant mode of disc formation

The Southern African Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000): Overview of the Dry Season Field Campaign

The Southern African Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000) is an international science project investigating the earth-atmosphere-human system in southern Africa. The programme was conducted over a two-year period from March 1999 to March 2001. The dry season field campaign (August-September 2000) was the most intensive activity and involved over 200 scientists from eighteen countries. The main objectives were to characterize and quantify biogenic, pyrogenic and anthropogenic aerosol and trace gas emissions and their transport and transformations in the atmosphere, and to validate NASA\u27s Earth Observing System\u27s satellite Terra within a scientific context. Five aircraft - two South African Weather Service Aerocommanders, the University of Washington\u27s CV-580, the U.K. Meteorological Office\u27s C-130, and NASA\u27s ER-2-with different altitude capabilities, participated in the campaign. Additional airborne sampling of southern African air masses, that had moved downwind of the subcontinent, was conducted by the CSIRO over Australia. Multiple observations were made in various geographical sectors under different synoptic conditions. Airborne missions were designed to optimize the value of synchronous over-flights of the Terra satellite platform, above regional ground validation and science targets. Numerous smaller-scale ground validation activities took place throughout the subcontinent during the campaign period

Challenges in quantifying changes in the global water cycle

Human influences have likely already impacted the large-scale water cycle but natural variability and observational uncertainty are substantial. It is essential to maintain and improve observational capabilities to better characterize changes. Understanding observed changes to the global water cycle is key to predicting future climate changes and their impacts. While many datasets document crucial variables such as precipitation, ocean salinity, runoff, and humidity, most are uncertain for determining long-term changes. In situ networks provide long time-series over land but are sparse in many regions, particularly the tropics. Satellite and reanalysis datasets provide global coverage, but their long-term stability is lacking. However, comparisons of changes among related variables can give insights into the robustness of observed changes. For example, ocean salinity, interpreted with an understanding of ocean processes, can help cross-validate precipitation. Observational evidence for human influences on the water cycle is emerging, but uncertainties resulting from internal variability and observational errors are too large to determine whether the observed and simulated changes are consistent. Improvements to the in situ and satellite observing networks that monitor the changing water cycle are required, yet continued data coverage is threatened by funding reductions. Uncertainty both in the role of anthropogenic aerosols, and due to large climate variability presently limits confidence in attribution of observed changes

Decadal changes in fire frequencies shift tree communities and functional traits

Global change has resulted in chronic shifts in fire regimes. Variability in the sensitivity of tree communities to multi-decadal changes in fire regimes is critical to anticipating shifts in ecosystem structure and function, yet remains poorly understood. Here, we address the overall effects of fire on tree communities and the factors controlling their sensitivity in 29 sites that experienced multi-decadal alterations in fire frequencies in savanna and forest ecosystems across tropical and temperate regions. Fire had a strong overall effect on tree communities, with an average fire frequency (one fire every three years) reducing stem density by 48% and basal area by 53% after 50 years, relative to unburned plots. The largest changes occurred in savanna ecosystems and in sites with strong wet seasons or strong dry seasons, pointing to fire characteristics and species composition as important. Analyses of functional traits highlighted the impact of fire-driven changes in soil nutrients because frequent burning favoured trees with low biomass nitrogen and phosphorus content, and with more efficient nitrogen acquisition through ectomycorrhizal symbioses. Taken together, the response of trees to altered fire frequencies depends both on climatic and vegetation determinants of fire behaviour and tree growth, and the coupling between fire-driven nutrient losses and plant traits

The Cell Adhesion Molecule “CAR” and Sialic Acid on Human Erythrocytes Influence Adenovirus In Vivo Biodistribution

Although it has been known for 50 years that adenoviruses (Ads) interact with erythrocytes ex vivo, the molecular and structural basis for this interaction, which has been serendipitously exploited for diagnostic tests, is unknown. In this study, we characterized the interaction between erythrocytes and unrelated Ad serotypes, human 5 (HAd5) and 37 (HAd37), and canine 2 (CAV-2). While these serotypes agglutinate human erythrocytes, they use different receptors, have different tropisms and/or infect different species. Using molecular, biochemical, structural and transgenic animal-based analyses, we found that the primary erythrocyte interaction domain for HAd37 is its sialic acid binding site, while CAV-2 binding depends on at least three factors: electrostatic interactions, sialic acid binding and, unexpectedly, binding to the coxsackievirus and adenovirus receptor (CAR) on human erythrocytes. We show that the presence of CAR on erythrocytes leads to prolonged in vivo blood half-life and significantly reduced liver infection when a CAR-tropic Ad is injected intravenously. This study provides i) a molecular and structural rationale for Ad–erythrocyte interactions, ii) a basis to improve vector-mediated gene transfer and iii) a mechanism that may explain the biodistribution and pathogenic inconsistencies found between human and animal models

Dissection of a QTL Hotspot on Mouse Distal Chromosome 1 that Modulates Neurobehavioral Phenotypes and Gene Expression

A remarkably diverse set of traits maps to a region on mouse distal chromosome 1 (Chr 1) that corresponds to human Chr 1q21–q23. This region is highly enriched in quantitative trait loci (QTLs) that control neural and behavioral phenotypes, including motor behavior, escape latency, emotionality, seizure susceptibility (Szs1), and responses to ethanol, caffeine, pentobarbital, and haloperidol. This region also controls the expression of a remarkably large number of genes, including genes that are associated with some of the classical traits that map to distal Chr 1 (e.g., seizure susceptibility). Here, we ask whether this QTL-rich region on Chr 1 (Qrr1) consists of a single master locus or a mixture of linked, but functionally unrelated, QTLs. To answer this question and to evaluate candidate genes, we generated and analyzed several gene expression, haplotype, and sequence datasets. We exploited six complementary mouse crosses, and combed through 18 expression datasets to determine class membership of genes modulated by Qrr1. Qrr1 can be broadly divided into a proximal part (Qrr1p) and a distal part (Qrr1d), each associated with the expression of distinct subsets of genes. Qrr1d controls RNA metabolism and protein synthesis, including the expression of ∼20 aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases. Qrr1d contains a tRNA cluster, and this is a functionally pertinent candidate for the tRNA synthetases. Rgs7 and Fmn2 are other strong candidates in Qrr1d. FMN2 protein has pronounced expression in neurons, including in the dendrites, and deletion of Fmn2 had a strong effect on the expression of few genes modulated by Qrr1d. Our analysis revealed a highly complex gene expression regulatory interval in Qrr1, composed of multiple loci modulating the expression of functionally cognate sets of genes