How to celebrate 100 years as a small city - 1931 in Lowell, Michigan

 

Michigan cities local history series*, "Images of America - Lowell" (zip 49331)

As part of the 100-year celebration of the founding of modern-day Lowell, Michigan in 1931, only a year and a half into the Great Depression (October 1929) the caption to the upper photo lists the special events and exhibitions organized for entertainment and edification of visitors and residents alike. How different will things be arranged in 2031, by comparison? At the centennial celebration the first day included an ox roast, crowning the Centennial Queen, band concert, baseball game, a hot-air balloon ascension, and a pageant of progress to end the evening with a look back at 100 years. For the second day there was a parade, addresses by dignitaries, a ball game and another pageant. On the last day they held a mass picnic, a reunion of current and former residents, dancing, singing, and exhibits. There is no mention of radio or print journalism gathering stories or special pamphlets and publications, photobooths or the carnival rides and games captured by pictures in this book. But in the time before TV and Internet, the airwaves for radio and the words of newspaper writers helped to document and report stories like these to surrounding towns and villages.

Jumping ahead to 2024 it is hard to imagine all of the same undertakings being expected or allowed to proceed due to caution about large crowds spreading Covid or attracting domestic terrorist groups or mass shooters. The social fabric has a few of the old threads but is largely woven into different patterns to give a much flimsier durability and texture than in 1931. This big event almost 100 years ago presents a kind of mirror for reflecting on the present. What they recognized as 'dignitary' might be more readily understood today as 'celebrity' or 'influencer', for instance. Parades are far less common now that so many people own personal automobiles, sometimes hugely expensive things depreciating by the day. And with so many people with jet travel experience for business or pleasure, the pass of parades is not so interesting or thrilling to impatient and multi-tasking people with fragmented attention spans and weighed down by debt, social anxiety, and dark imaginings about future uncertainties as consumers striving in a race to the bottom quality and prices. With the contagion of Artificial Intelligence echoing back and infiltrating all sorts of unexpected places and times, the task of building and protecting trust becomes all the more difficult.

Like any good history book, this slim set of photos and extended captions stirs interest in bygone times, places, and people. But it also invites comparison to today's livelihoods, aspirations, and range of experiences. On the one hand things change a lot. But on the other hand, the well-worn saying still holds truth, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (the more that things change, the more that they stay the same). The words change but the song remains the same when it comes to a lifetime of striving, dreams, temptations, stresses and reliefs.

*Authored by Lisa Barker Plank with the Lowell Area Historical Museum

Symbolic meanings - present and significant, or merely armchair speculations?

 

About 6 months after the presidential election the road sign lingers.

Social observers are trained in various academic traditions, from (public) art criticism to social psychology to social anthropology. Ethnographers who document individuals and groups of people within their cultural landscape draw on diverse theoretical approaches to interpret the things they seize upon. One scholarly field is  Symbolic Anthropology, in which artifacts like flags or architecture or lyrics are closely examined for layers of meanings carried, sometimes easily explained by local residents, but other times only dimly recognized or felt. So the question of which meanings govern the people's uses, intentions, and reactions can be hard to answer: must a person be consciously aware of a certain facet of the multiple meanings for that sense to make an impact? Or can dormant meanings in one generation turn out to be dominant meanings in another generation. Even within the same generation will different factions of people emphasize different significance according to their own purposes? Furthermore, leaving the firm ground of conscious discussion and perception, will meanings that are only dimly perceived also bear on a person's seeing and behavior. Going further still, can certain dimensions of a ritual, a habit, or a living space that are unseen, unable to be verbalized, and are claimed to be absent or are dismissed as mischaracterizations (lies) made by others also be real?

The case of this photo illustrates some of this wondering out loud. The USA election of the nation's chief executive takes place every 4 years, in this instance early November 2020, with the newly chosen president's term of office beginning with the swearing in at noon of January 20, 2021. That is when Joe R. Biden took the place of Donald J. Trump. In many cities there is a local ordinance that requires property owners to remove political campaign signage within 3 weeks of election day. But this large display is a few miles east of the city of Lowell, Michigan, outside the city limits. It consists of a blue TRUMP flag facing west and the white edition facing east, sandwiching heavy black plastic lining material to withstand rain, snow, and wind. For months the "Thank you, President Trump [thank you for working so hard to] Keep America Great" message greeted passing motorists on state highway M-21. But then sometime early in April or possibly March 2021 the sign was shredded with the sharp slashes made to it. Without talking to the person or persons who expressed one or more meanings in this act, it is hard to know what it signifies precisely, at least within the scope of awareness in the perpetrator's intentions. 

From a symbolic point of view, the assault on the fabric of the political campaign flags could be an uncomplicated action to tell the property owner (or the person who the property own gave permission for the display) that the election is finished, the new president is in office, and the old president's traces and trappings should disappear. A more complicated statement might take into account the audience of curious drivers - those who resonate outrage to the offense, those who agree with the defacing action, and those indifferent to political matters all together. In this wider interpretation, not only does the vandal send a message to the display owner, but also communicates to the wider world of spectators: "Ex-president Trump is a blight to be removed," for instance. "I am doing that public service for you all. Since he shredded civil social life, now let his fabric representation be torn, too." An even more tenuous interpretation might be to view the violence as not only physical, but also symbolic: slashing apart the Trump name is hoped to work like a Voodoo doll to harm the one being referenced in name or in the form of figurine.

Going back to the initial question posed in the title of this article, there are seemingly unlimited layers of meaning to distinguish singly or in various combinations. In the eyes of those conducting the symbolic work of creating the display, and those destroying the display; or in the eyes of those passers-by who live in the vicinity or who happen to take this road one day and notice the sign, can anybody trained in Symbolic Anthropology ever make a convincing conclusion about the truest and most comprehensive interpretation for the whole thing? Or will any declaration have to be bracketed as "conscious meaning," "semi-aware," and "present but unacknowledged" dimensions of the significance. That is an open question: just because one interviewee says it is true, or on the contrary, denies a given point of view, that does not serve as the final word on the way that meanings are expressed, impressed, reworked, and associated from the immediate to more figurative or abstract realms of significance. This confluence and contradiction in interpretation echoes the tensions sometimes seen between "insider" (emic) and "outsider" (etic) standpoints.

In the end, symbolic interpretations have a valuable place in social analysis by widening the frame of meanings and motivations. But the most reliable assessment about one interpretation rising above others would seem to come from cross-checking the stated interpretation against observable responses: how people react, take action (or fail to act), and what they say that is consonant or that contradicts that claimed interpretation. The more that these parallel forms of meaning speak to each other, the more likely that the particular interpretation holds true. For this roadside statement near the intersection of Pinkney Road and M-21 just east of Lowell one thing is certain: the printed message associated with Trump now is rendered illegible. It shows the strike-through editing made of it.

Night-life and small town movie theaters - viewing the outside world

before the Internet, rich audio-visual experiences were formed here

The theater building on main street in Lowell, Michigan 49331 appears on the Wiki-Shoot-Me (photographing your hometown) project. The interactive map can be searched by postal code or place name to view red dots that lack a photo and invite an upload. The green dots indicate the buildings, parks, monuments and so on that already have a photo to represent them. An example of the dots from city center in Grand Rapids, MI 49503 is online at tinyurl.com/wikishootme49503

A certain number of the buildings identified for photo uploads to document the cultural landscape consist of former movie theaters, where people would spend their money before home entertainment of televisions became affordable and the programming attracted buyers of the appliances in the 1960s. Even with a small black and white TV, later color, many people in the 1970s and less so the 1980s still found it worth congregating in front of the big screen for bigger than life adventures, love stories, and historical or fantasy worlds brought to life. Later the proliferation of video cassettes (1980s) and DVDs (1990s), as well as premium programs delivered by cable providers to the privacy of one's home would greatly diminish the movie going habits that reigned supreme from 1920 to 1980.

These days some of the old theaters live on as live stages or have been repurposed for retail sales. Other buildings are vacant or have been razed. But still within living memory of people in their 40s and older, there is the sight of dusk on a summer evening as the marquee lights shine with the title of the feature film, along with its mmpa age-rating (G for general audiences including children, PG-13 for parental guidance or kids 13 and older, R for restricted to age 18 and above, X and XX and XXX for "adult" entertainment). As a subset of those mass entertainment heydays of movie theaters, there was also a time when outdoor screens of drive-in theaters attracted many drivers and their passengers during the warmer weather, perhaps from the 1940s until the middle of the 1970s. Collectively it is hard to gauge the influence of and the importance on viewing culture and the worldviews cultivated in young minds by these big scenes on the silvery screens.