SideStream: What the Diablo?

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Jean Nelson

Radioactive Times

The members of California’s Abalone Alliance must have thought just that as they continually resisted the proliferation of U.S. nuclear power plants—the Diablo Canyon plant in San Luis Obispo County being one of them—in the 1970s and ’80s. The Diablo controversy began in 1963, with the Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s proposal to build a nuclear plant in California. Anti-nuclear activists later learned that the company had not conducted sufficient seismic tests for fear of gathering information that would ultimately delay construction. What’s more, the plant was to be built 2.5 miles away from an earthquake fault. PG&E made this discovery in 1962 but neglected to inform the surrounding community about this safety concern (“Diablo Canyon, a history of cover-ups and resistance”).

Organized forms of civil disobedience—leafleting, peaceful protests, etc.—occurred under the direction and encouragement of the Abalone Alliance, an umbrella organization of over 60 groups, including the Los Angeles-based Alliance for Survival. In addition to promoting the Alliance for Survival’s Radioactive Times, the Abalone Alliance also distributed its own newsletter, It’s About Times. Both of these newsletters closely covered the developments at Diablo, and both also strove to spread awareness about the harmful effects of nuclear power. In fact the Times, whose main slogan was to deliver “All the news they never print,” went so far as to criticize the Reagan administration for its financial support of nuclear fusion research while cutting the budgets for energy conservation and solar energy (“Nuke Time for Bonzo”).

The opposition of the Abalone-affiliated groups was formidable. In 1981, 10,000 local citizens instituted a two-week blockade of Diablo Canyon, resulting in 1901 arrests. That year, it was also revealed that “PG&E used wrong blueprints when installing key seismic supports” (“Diablo Canyon, a history of cover-ups and resistance”). Whistleblower John Horn lamented: “I wasn’t exactly popular around the office then because most people thought I was just kind of nitpicking, and that I was stirring up trouble” (“Diablo Canyon, a history of cover-ups and resistance”).

Despite these protests, Diablo Canyon was granted an operating license by The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on November 2, 1984, and will maintain this license until at least November 2, 2024 (“Diablo Canyon Power Plant, Unit 1”). On its website, PG&E maintains that “Diablo Canyon Power Plant is a safe, clean, reliable and vital resource for all Californians” (“Welcome to Diablo Canyon”).

However, the work—the history—of these sometimes overlooked grassroots anti-nuclear groups is still preserved within the Alternative Press Collections at the Dodd Center today, waiting to be rediscovered by researchers and students alike.

Krisela Karaja, Student Intern

Resources:

“AA Safe Energy Groups.” It’s About Times: Abalone Alliance Newsletter [San Francisco, CA] Mid-June—July, 1980: p. 11. Print. Alternative Press Collections. Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of
Connecticut Libraries.

“Abalone Alliance Newsletter: It’s About Times.” It’s About Times: Abalone Alliance Newsletter [San Francisco, CA] Mid-June—July, 1980: p. 2. Print. Alternative Press Collections. Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

“Diablo Canyon, a history of cover-ups and resistance: Do PG&E and the NRC Really Care About Safety?” [San Luis Obispo, CA] final edition, early 1984: p. 4. Print. Alternative Press Collections. Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

“Diablo Canyon Power Plant, Unit 1.” U.S. NRC: United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NRC, 24 June 2011. Web. 13 Oct. 2011.http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/reactor/diab1.html.

“Nuke Time for Bonzo.” Radioactive Times [San Luis Obispo, CA] Summer 1981: p. 3. Print. Alternative Press Collections. Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

“Welcome to Diablo Canyon.” PG&E. Pacific Gas & Electric Company, n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. <http://www.pge.com/myhome/edusafety/systemworks/dcpp/>.

The History of the Railroad in Litchfield, Connecticut — photographs and a talk on Wednesday, October 26

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Laura Smith

Railroad station in Litchfield, Connecticut, ca. 1900

On Wednesday, October 26, at 7:00p.m. I will be giving a talk at the Oliver Wolcott Library in Litchfield, Connecticut, about that town’s railroad history. The story starts with the Shepaug Valley Railroad, which opened for business on January 1, 1872, and traveled from Hawleyville to Litchfield in this mountainous region of western Connecticut. After financial difficulties in the 1870s and 1880s forced the railroad to restructure, the line emerged in 1887 as the Shepaug, Litchfield and Northern Railroad, only to come under the control of the massive New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, better known as the New Haven Railroad, in 1892. From that time to its final demise in 1948 it was known as the Shepaug Branch of the New Haven Railroad.

As the Shepaug, Litchfield and Northern Railroad it was nicknamed the “slow, late and noisy.” The route contained almost 200 curves, one tunnel, and several stiff grades. It was known as the “second most crooked railroad in the U.S.” (the most crooked was the Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railway in Marin County, California), measuring 32 miles of track but was actually 17 miles as the crow flies. Train speed could never exceed 20 miles per hour.

If you are interested in attending the talk at the Oliver Wolcott Library you can register at http://www.owlibrary.org/programs.php.

You can find more photographs from Litchfield’s railroad past on Flickr, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/doddcenter/sets/72157627746164811/

Laura Smith, Curator for Business, Railroad and Labor Collections

The Communist Party in Connecticut — a source for classroom instruction

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Laura Smith

Portion of a flyer advocating for the release of seven members of the Communist Party of Connecticut jailed for subversive activities in 1954.

In 1954 seven members of the Communist Party of Connecticut were arrested on charges of violating the Smith Act. The Smith Act, also known as the Alien Registration Act, was enacted in 1940 to set criminal penalties for anyone prosecuted for advocating the overthrow of the United States government. In the 1940s and 1950s, a time of the fear of Communism in the country, the Smith Act was used against political organizations and persons who disagreed with the government, even those who did so in non-violent ways.

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Questions to ask when considering these documents:

1) Is it right to jail someone just for his or her beliefs? Would it be right to put someone in jail if the government thought his or her beliefs would cause harm to America? Does the Smith Act violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

2) What is the purpose of this flyer? Does this flyer show that the Communist Party of Connecticut was trying to overthrow the government of the United States?

3) How do people think and behave when they are afraid? How does this flyer give evidence to the fears of the American people in the 1950s?

This primary source conforms to the Connecticut Social Studies Curriculum Framework for High School students, particularly Strand 1.9 — the rights and responsibilities of citizens, grade level expectation 47 — Analyze the tension between the need for national security and the protection of individual rights.

Larger images of the pages of this flyer are available here: page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4.

This flyer is from the papers of Jack Goldring, a member of the Communist Party of Connecticut and one of the seven arrested for subversive activities in May 1954. Goldring was eventually released on a technicality. By 1957 convictions under the Smith Act were deemed unconstitutional but the statute has never been repealed.

More information about the Smith Act can be found at this site from the University of Illinois: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/jerome/smithact.htm; and the Encyclopedia Brittanica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/549923/Smith-Act.

Laura Smith, Curator for Business, Railroad and Labor Collections

Sources for teaching about the Vietnam War

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Laura Smith

Cover of the book Postage Due: Forever Stamps, by C. David Thomas.

The New England History Teachers Association (http://www.nehta.net/) were to have their Fall meeting here at the Dodd Research Center this Friday, October 14, but we just got word that it has been canceled. Even so, I put together a list of resources that about the theme for the conference — “The Vietnam War: Scholarly Views and Classroom Applications” that may interest any History or Social Studies teacher who is doing a unit on the Vietnam War. Here are just a few of the many recently published sources about the Vietnam War available at the Dodd Research Center:

Foley, Michael S. Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance during the Vietnam War. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Carroll, Andrew, ed. War letters : Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars. New York : Scribner, 2001.

Caputo, Philip. Ten Thousand Days of Thunder. New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2005. Written by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for children, this book gives a full account of the war, from the reasons for intervention to the battles and those missing in action, to the war’s music and the protests at home.

Harrison-Hall, Jessica. Vietnam Behind the Lines : Images from the War, 1965-1975. London : British Museum Press, 2002.

O’Roark Dowell, Frances. Shooting the Moon. New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2008. A book for young readers, the story of this book is “When her brother is sent to fight in Vietnam, twelve-year-old Jamie begins to reconsider the army world that she has grown up in.”

Thomas, C. David. Postage Due: Forever Stamps. A series of unofficial postage stamps inspired by people and events from the Vietnam War era, self-published by the author in 2009.

Wachsberger, Ken, ed. Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press. East Lansing : Michigan State University Press, 2011.

These publications complement our extensive set of journals and books about the Vietnam War in the Alternative Press Collection.

Laura Smith, Curator for Business, Railroad and Labor Collections

October is Archives Month!

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Jean Nelson

In conjunction with the Society of American Archivists and the Council of State Archivists, Governor Malloy has proclaimed October 2011 as Connecticut Archives Month. Exhibits, lectures and presentations abound. See what’s going on at the Dodd Research Center here.

Official Statement on Archives Month, Governor Dannel P. Malloy, October 2011

Visit an Archives near you this month!

SideStream: To Drink or Not To Drink?

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Jean Nelson

To drink or not to drink? This is a question most Americans rarely address, regarding the safety of their drinking water. Indeed, water contamination often appears irrelevant to us—a far-off issue confined to developing countries. However, as Jonathan King argues in his book Troubled Water: The Poisoning of America’s Drinking Water, instances of environmental contamination are far from isolated.

Written in 1985 by the Center for Investigative Reporting, one of the nation’s oldest nonprofit agencies covering crucial yet often neglected issues, Troubled Water raises awareness about contaminated groundwater. Burying toxic wastes is particularly harmful to groundwater –and, by association, drinking water—because chemicals “don’t readily disperse, settle out, or degrade” (King xi) at this level. Land disposal is a cheap, common, and sometimes significantly harmful waste management technique, as there is no way to fully ensure that the toxins will be kept from leaking into groundwater. In fact, “a leak of a single gallon of gasoline per day is enough to render the groundwater supply for a town of 50,000 people unfit to drink” (King xi).

Such contamination has had dire results in the past: the 1978 Love Canal scandal being one example. Despite warnings from Hooker Chemicals Co., schools and residential areas were built on and near a buried chemical waste site in Niagara Falls, NY. Wastes and toxins such as dioxin eventually spread as the water table rose—leaking into basements, sewers, and eventually area creeks. This contamination was also associated with an unprecedented number of health concerns among residents including miscarriages, birth defects, and the development of rare diseases.

Federal initiatives such as the 1980 Superfund program were established in the wake of these environmental scandals in order to hold polluters accountable after the fact. However, King suggests that the best way to seek environmental justice is for citizens to be proactive, so that environmental injustice never becomes an issue. He argues that “contamination has to be prevented before it happens” (173). He quotes Lois Gibbs, a prominent environmentalist and local leader in the call for action at Love Canal: “ ‘I’m really very optimistic. I see people moving, and I see things [i.e. citizen involvement] happening’ ” (180). If not, then, as Joel Hirschhorm—a 1980s Capitol Hill expert on toxic waste management—put it: “We will end up paying that [environmental] debt either with our money [in having to treat polluted areas] or our health” (qtd. in King xiv-xv).

Krisela Karaja, Student Intern

Resources:

“About CIR.” Center for Investigative Reporting. Center for Investigative Reporting, n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2011. Center for Investigative Reporting

DePalma, Anthony. “Love Canal Declared Clean, Ending Toxic Horror.” New York Times 18 Mar. 2004. Web Archives. 26 Sept. 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/18/nyregion/love-canal-declared-clean-ending-toxic-horror.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.

King, Jonathan. Troubled Water: The Poisoning of America’s Drinking Water—how government and industry allowed it to happen, and what you can do to ensure a safe supply in the home. Emmaus Pennsylvania, Rodale Press: 1985. Print. Alternative Press Collections. Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. Call number: APC Bk 389.

“Love Canal New York. EPA ID# NYD000606947.” EPA. United States Environmental Protection Agency, 25 Jan. 2010. Web. 26 Sept. 2011. <www.epa.gov/region2/superfund/npl/0201290c.pdf>.

Grace comes back to college

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Jean Nelson

Grace Blakeman, circa 1899

Grace Blakeman graduated from the Storrs Agricultural College, now the University of Connecticut, in 1896. After college, Miss Blakeman married fellow classmate Sherman W. Eddy in 1899. Active in the Congregational Church, a correspondent for the Hartford Courant, and a farm census taker, Grace died on March 26, 1919, of influenza. The portrait of Grace Blakeman (above) was painted by her cousin Fannie C. Burr of Monroe, Connecticut, and is presumed to have been painted in honor of Ms. Blakeman’s engagement to Mr. Eddy. The portrait was recently donated to the University Archives in recognition of Ms. Blakeman’s status as one of the first women to graduate from UConn.

Although UConn alums are always welcome to visit the University Archives, it is always a special treat when some of them (or their memorabilia) come to “stay” in the Archives and share their story with others interested in the history of the institution.

–Betsy Pittman, University Archivist

Oral Histories on the Kindertransport added

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Jean Nelson

l-r:Terri J. Goldich, Curator; Billie M. Levy, Donor; Kena Sosa, Researcher. Seated: Mrs. Eva Greenwood, Interviewee

Ms. Kena Sosa of Grand Prairie, Texas, was the 4th recipient of a Billie M. Levy Travel and Research Grant awarded by the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection. Ms. Sosa is a school librarian and teacher, with a BA in English and an MA in bilingual education with emphasis on teaching the gifted and talented. Her topic of research is the experience of Jewish children who escaped Nazi persecution to England and other countries by means of the Kindertransport program. The Northeast Children’s Literature Collection holds works on this topic which Ms. Sosa used to gather information on the experiences of the children faced with new sights, sounds, language, and in some cases, new families. Ms. Sosa also interviewed two women who were transported to England as part of Kindertransport to create oral histories documenting their experiences. (NOTE: Mrs. Greenwood’s interview begins in the middle of a sentence.)

Click here for the transcript interview of Mrs. Eva Greenwood, or:

Here for the transcript of Mrs. Rita G. Kaplan.

Ms. Sosa has published on a wide variety of topics ranging from biracial children’s literature to netiquette for kids. She hopes
to use the results of her research to write a children’s book about the Kindertransport experience. Ms. Sosa presented the results of her research on April 21, 2011, at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

–Terri J. Goldich

From the Researcher’s Perspective…

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Jean Nelson

Music composed exclusively for the women magazine, El Correo de la Moda by D. Pascual Galeana (1852)

Click here to listen to the music (Thanks to Prof. Vargas Liñán for providing this music)

Since embarking in the project of digitizing a selection of Spanish Women’s Magazines from our Spanish Periodical and Newspapers Collection we have learned that making the collection accessible online has had the positive effect of attracting new users and visitors to the collection in-situ in addition to the many new users online. One of these visitors last spring was Prof. Belén Vargas Liñán, a Strochlitz’s awardee, from the University of Almería, Spain, who came to research the relationship between music and women’s images found in our print collection of Spanish women’s magazines.

In her own words she shared with us:

My research at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center is part of my doctoral thesis, currently ongoing, on the music in Spanish magazines between 1833 and 1874. Five years ago I became aware of the Dodd Center periodical collection (through the online catalog), but my interest for this collection increased last year when I visited the digital portal of women’s magazines prepared by Marisol Ramos. The collection of Spanish magazines and newspapers in the Dodd Center is very valuable to researchers as a complement of Spain’s archival collections, because it contains newspapers that do not exist in the public archives of our country and it completes partial collections preserved in them, especially emerging musical and cultural magazines from Madrid and Andalusia. Moreover, we note that many specimens preserved in Storrs are not as damaged as their peers at the National Library in Madrid, and many titles still contain many supplements fashion plates and scores that existing copies found in the Iberian Peninsula did not preserved.

Newspapers are primary sources that are extremely helpful to approach the study of musical life, anytime, anywhere. It does not only provides information on works, composers and performers, but it also allows the study of sociological aspects of music such as musical taste of the public, the business of music publishers, the main musical spaces of a city, type of music education offered by institutions and professionals, or the controversy surrounding the opera and zarzuela in the Spanish society of the time. In this line, an extremely interesting facet that we can discover in the pages of nineteenth-century press is the image of women and their relationship with music.

Prof. Vargas Liñán came to the Dodd Center to study different types of magazines and newspapers which contain music and how it was presented to a female audience and how that reflected a vision of feminism in Spanish society during the 19^th century. While at Storrs, Prof. Vargas Liñán shared her findings with us in the traditional Strochlitz Lecture which we taped. Click here to listen to her video presentation (in English–you should download the viewer Silverlight). Also, click here for the presentation’s text (both in English).

It was a pleasure to support Prof. Vargas Liñán’s research and we look forward to providing more ways to give access to all our collections at the Dodd Center.

Marisol Ramos, Curator for Latin American and Caribbean Collections

SideStream: New Blog Series Featuring Sources on Environmental Issues

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Jean Nelson

Join me in welcoming our new guest blogger, Krisela Karaja, UConn student, intern, and author of SideStream, a brand new blog series that highlights archival materials available at the Dodd Research Center. The new series will offer an insider’s view of the rich collections useful for studying the history and evolution of global environmental issues today. Krisela will explore the diversity of materials from the Alternative Press, Human Rights, and political collections, and share her discoveries along the way. Take it away Krisela!

Melissa Watterworth Batt, Curator of Literary, Natural History and Rare Books Collections

SideStream: The Same Oiled Story

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Jean Nelson

Cover page, Northwest Passage, 1971

The APC originated in the late 1960s, inspired by the political, social, and cultural advocacy of UConn students at that time. The materials in this collection emphasize the importance of grassroots organizations and alternative media in providing different stories and perspectives to a public drowning in mainstream. Unfortunately, most UConn undergrads are unaware that these invaluable research materials are at their fingertips, literally waiting to be examined. I was one of these students until two weeks ago, after being formally introduced to all the resources the Dodd has to offer in subject areas ranging from politics, to women’s studies, to the environment itself. This got me to thinking: what about other students? What about students majoring in Environmental Studies or other areas that deviate from the typical subjects often associated with archival research? Would it even occur to them to look in the APC when researching a historically documented ecological issue? Well it should!

I’ve been digging through the APC archives for a while now and believe me—it’s a gold mine ranging back to the late 1950s and 1960s. I personally struck gold when looking through Northwest Passage, a bi-weekly Bellingham, Washington newspaper printed from 1969 to 1986. The paper grew very popular as far as grassroots news is concerned and it quickly evolved into an ecological
journal with a national subscription base, including a number of mainstream media sources.

Publisher Frank Kathman, one of the three co-founders, boasted: “[W]e soon found that the Passage had a monopoly on environmental information in the Northwest.” Add the newspaper’s penchant for publishing risqué stories on topics such as personal marijuana cultivation, its willingness to include articles and commentaries from subscribers, and the “Molasses Jug,”—a local funk section including everything from old wives’ remedies to advice on herbal supplements—and you’ve got a recipe for underground news success. This recipe was especially savored in Bellingham, because as Kathman asserted, “[It] seemed like a microcosm of the American dream. A place where a small but ambitious paper could really be effective.” It was, indeed, effective—especially when it came to
covering key environmental issues of the period: “[We] made establishment papers look like they were shirking their duties.”

Of course any mainstream paper would have been shamed, had its coverage of the 1971 Anacortes Oil spill, for instance, been compared to the incessant coverage of Kathman’s staff. Northwest Passage had addressed the oil issue for some time before the spill, as the controversial debate raged over expanding ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company) oil tankers and production in Alaska. The Anacortes incident sent 210,000 gallons of no. 2 diesel oil spilling into the Guemes Channel. The number was initially reported as 5000 gallons, not barrels, delaying action until six to sixteen hours later. Only about 5% of the oil was cleaned, and a study of the previous 1969 spill near the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute found that bacterial degradation after oil spills is slow. Toxic hydrocarbons remain—especially if diesel fuel is spilled. The most toxic areas dissipate quickly, and cannot be cleaned at all. The Passage was apparently also successful at portending the future. The April 26, 1971
issue included an article titled “Our Fine Feathered Friends,” explaining how to care for birds, should they be harmed by potential oil spills. Author David Wolf concluded his article on a hopeful note: “May we never find ourselves in need of these procedures.” Turns out these procedures would be needed the same day the issue was printed!

Apparently the supposedly archived environmental hot topics of the late 60s and early 70s are still simmering—dare I say boiling?–in the world outside the Dodd Center today.

Krisela Karaja, Student Intern

Resources:

Kathman, Frank. “Passage History.” Northwest Passage [Bellingham, Washington] 15 Mar. – 28 Mar. 1971: Vol. 4 No. 2. Alternative Press Collections. Archives and Special Collections
at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

Northwest Passage [Bellingham, Washington] 10 May – 23 May 1971: Vol. 5 No. 3. Alternative Press Collections. Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

University of Connecticut. UConn EcoHusky. UConn Office of Environmental Policy, n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2011. http://ecohusky.uconn.edu/.

Wolf, David. “Our Fine Feathered Friends.” Northwest Passage [Bellingham, Washington] 26 Apr. – 9 May 1971: Vol. 5 No. 2. Alternative Press Collections. Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

73 years ago today…

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Jean Nelson

…the Hurricane of 1938 slammed into southern New England.

No Tweets, no IM, no text messages. To reach fellow students with news about a devastating hurricane, the Connecticut Campus (it wouldn’t add Daily to its name until 1954) put out a special edition on September 22.

Printing presses were not operating, so the editors used a hand-cranked mimeograph machine to publish the news. The 1938 hurricane was a surprise. There wasn’t a week of watching and waiting as the storm neared by Connecticut shoreline as we had with Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.

A survey of the damage conducted in the days following the hurricane by two forestry students would find 1,762 trees were either snapped off or uprooted on the campus grounds. Sherman P. Hollister, superintendent of grounds, told the Campus it might take one hundred years for the campus to regain its former beauty.

On page 65 of the 1939 Nutmeg Yearbook, a sixteen-photograph montage shows some of the damage on campus. The only caption reads: Windy Wednesday.

Decades later, Provost Albert Waugh, a faculty member in 1938, wrote in his diary:

“How the wind blew! How the rains fell! And how the hug oaks were torn out by their roots or their great trunks broken in half! Thirty-five years later we have in our back yard a great swamp maple with a long spiraling scar once and a half around its truck where the tree was twisted like a corkscrew!”

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–Mark J. Roy, University Communications (retired)