BOB'S BITS

[Stanley]

ROSIE

You’re not supposed to have too much pride, but I can’t help have some about that poster. It’s just sad I didn’t know it was me sooner. Geraldine Doyle, 2002, as quoted in the Lansing [MI] State Journal.

‘That poster’ was the “We Can Do It” one, of a woman war worker. Her (presumably) long hair tied up in a red bandana, her blue denim shirt sleeves rolled up, she’s flexing her right bicep. Her assertiveness shines out of a bright, blaring background. She proudly celebrates the woman workers of WWII. And they needed to be celebrated, for most of the young men workers were at war, or (like my father) training for it. Meanwhile, America’s industries were transformed into “the arsenal of democracy,” and they had to recruit a new work force. Of course white woman workers had been around for some time, their ranks swelled by European immigrants, especially in low-wage jobs, but now women had to work in heavy industries. The “We Can Do It” poster was, originally, part of Westinghouse’s recruitment effort. It became better known in the 1970s as new-wave feminists took up the image of the strong woman. In Michigan, Geraldine Doyle saw the poster, remembered that her photo had been taken when she worked at an Ann Arbor metal press, and put herself forward as the likely model for ‘Rosie the Riveter.’ Geraldine Doyle (née Duff) was born in a Detroit suburb on July 31, 1924. Her mother, a composer, encouraged Geraldine’s talent at the cello. But the war came, and the young cellist became a young metal worker. Fearful for her hands. she soon left that work, married a dentist, raised six kids, and then became proud of her war work, possibly (who knows?) prouder than she had ever been before. And she was taken up by the media as the ‘real’ Rosie the Riveter. Geraldine was remembered that way when she died in 2010. Meanwhile, out in Washington, Naomi Fraley and her sister remembered that when they’d worked at a Naval Air Station (as machinists) Naomi’s picture (bending over a metal press) had been taken and seemed to be the model for the “We Can Do It” poster. Three times married, a long-time waitress at a Palm Springs watering hole, and even at 80 a bit of a flashy dame, she was at first ignored. But after Ms. Doyle’s death in 2010 Naomi’s case was taken up by historians, and it’s now argued that Naomi Fraley (née Parker) was the original poster girl. I have an open mind on the matter, but when I became dean of an honors college that was (and remained) 2/3rds female, I decided that the best art work I could hang outside my office door was the “We Can Do It” poster. It was great propaganda, and it does ring a truth. Women can do, and be proud of the doing. But after the war, government, industry, and Hollywood worked like beavers to get women back home, safely married. So maybe Geraldine Doyle was, historically speaking, the “real” Rosie. ©.

[Tripps]

I've just had a skim round - and there are a lot of other alliteratively named candidates for the image.

Not to mention "Wendy the Welder".

[Stanley]

CLAUDIUS

“I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other . . . was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot", or "That Claudius", or "Claudius the Stammerer", or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius". The Emperor Claudius, in Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934).

Emperor Claudius wrote his own autobiography, but it hasn’t survived. To fill out a complex character, Robert Graves produced a two-volume novel-autobiography. It’s full of poetic license (and Graves was a pretty fair poet), but overall it’s about right. It was also used as text for the BBC docudrama, I, Claudius (1976) starring Derek Jacobi. If it’s anywhere on stream, you should take it in. The ‘real’ Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, etc., was born in Gaul (Lyon in present-day France) on August 1, 10 BCE. His pedigree was good enough (his grandmama was a wife of the divine Augustus) that he was taken in as a sort of cadet member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (27 BCE to 64 CE) which formalized Julius Caesar’s murder of the Roman Republic. For almost any family member, that meant wealth, power, and danger. Indeed, one’s life expectancy waned as one’s power waxed, and Julio-Claudian history is full of assassinations (poisonings, skewerings, assisted suicides, etc.). Young Claudius avoided all this because no one thought much of him. He had a limp. He stammered. He had a noticeable palsy. And in a family whose business was heroism and glory, such a child didn’t count for much. His mother thought him irremediably stupid and farmed the boy out to his grandmother. (Later, as emperor, Claudius deified grandma, although not, it seems, out of gratitude). In due course, “Uncle Claudius” became sidekick to his nephew, the infamous Caligula. Caligula’s excesses offended even the Praetorian Guard, who assassinated him. Somehow (and there’s a lot of disagreement on this) Claudius survived, and for some reason the Praetorian’s proclaimed him emperor, in 41 CE. Claudius, who’d prospered reasonably well as a weak-bodied and absent-minded uncle, did pretty well in this “golden predicament.” As Roman Emperors go, he was OK. Along with the usual flaws (murders, etc.) he rebuilt Rome (two new aqueducts and one repaired), strengthened the imperial bureaucracy, and—probably above all—was the Roman emperor who finally conquered Britain (at least as far north as the Fosse Way). It made him a hero and bought him a “triumph,” even though he was only in Britain for a couple of weeks. And in a departure from custom, he brought a conquered British chief, Caractacus, back to Rome and set the barbarian up in a luxury villa. So Claudius is a bit of a puzzle. And the puzzle includes his death, in 54 CE. Was it poison, administered (or overseen) by his third wife, Agripina? Or did this 64 year old man-god succumb to his childhood illnesses? Either way, he was replaced by Nero, which was not an improvement. ©