It is Friday the 13th. The writers at Refuge Farm are aware of that, and traveling anyway on a gray morning. There is a luncheon to attend, and a book to be promoted. The Section pooled limited resources, hired our Bolivian driver, and are prepared to don acceptable Capital Area clothing and hurtle across the wet concrete corridors to a place that we all knew in our times as part of the Industrial-Military Complex. Dwight Eisenhower warned us about that long ago.
We don’t have time for that this morning, nor the part of Ike’s warning about how science could be corrupted by the strange symbiosis of Lysenko-style inversion of cash and the Scientific Method.
Instead, we were going to draft a little piece about Rosie. Not that strange pink Rambler the Chairman owned. Rosie the Riveter, the woman whose captured image was transformed into a message of strength and indomitable will. There are problems with that, since the famous poster on the left was only used in an internal Westinghouse Ad that appeared for two weeks and vanished until rediscovery in the 1980s made it stand for something else. George Lincoln Rockwell took a stab at her portrayal in his unique American style of humor. That image traveled across America with the art entitled “The Four Freedoms,” and was known to a much larger audience during the conflict than Miller’s version. Some of those freedoms are under assault now, with the resolution unknown.
George later apologized to his subject for bulking up her 19-year-old petite form with muscle and irony. Not seen in this depiction is the copy of a book of that time called “Mein Kampf” under her boot.
There are five or six women who said they were the model for Rosie. It is fun to romp through their histories and their stories. “We Can Do It!” is the image that later fit a new struggle, and is a favorite for those of us who were part of it. Others enjoy the intrinsic humor and sandwich depicted in the Rockwell version.
We would plunge into the matter in more depth, but it is Friday the 13th, and we have places to go and functions to attend.
More on that tomorrow. In the meantime, be safe today. We know you can do it!
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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