depression

I watched Cinderella Man for the first time last night and really enjoyed it! Not only is it a great, well, Cinderella story, but it also provides good insight into what life during the Depression was like. I've seen other movies set during the depression (my all-time favorite being O Brother, Where Art Thou?), but really liked the attention to detail paid in this movie. Yes, many movies do a good job of showing the desperation of that time, but in this movie, I appreciated seeing some of the creative ways that people met the challenges of Depression-era existence. Neighborhood kids all celebrating their birthdays together so that the cost of the cake could be shared, a mother adding water to milk to make it go further, etc. I like those everyday, seemingly unimportant details...

I've posted stuff about Shorpy: the 100-year-old photo blog before, but just thought that I would take this opportunity to point to their great collection of Depression-era photos. Many of them are by Dorothea Lange, whose work is pretty incredible.