#salemtogether

A couple of years ago I complained about the lack of WPA muralsin any of Salem’s public buildings: this struck me, as an impression and little else, as a lack of New Deal investment in Depression-era Salem. I’ve had time to survey the paper trail now and boy was I wrong: Salem benefited tremendously from the work of New Deal agencies, and not just in terms of its infrastructure but its culture as…

Since the beginning of the corona quarantine, I’ve been contributing to an initiative called #salemtogetherwhich has focused on past episodes of challenge and adversity in Salem’s history in an effort to kindle some context, and perhaps even resilience. There has been a flurry of social media posts on the great Salem Fire of 1914, the Flu Epidemic of 1918-1919, and this week it’s all about World…

The death of Bradstreet Parker of Salem in September of 1918 was not only tragic but representative: of those many young American men who rushed to fight in the Great War, only to die before they left these shores from disease, of the lethal impact on youth of this particular form of influenza, and of the confusion that reigned in that frantic fall. Mr. Parker is reported to have died at home, in…