Today’s Federal work environment features the flextime and flexplace policies that have evolved over the past several decades. As a result, few current U.S. Government employees remember when agencies had fixed work hours. Before the flex policies went into effect, start and end times for offices in Washington, DC, were staggered to spread out the … Continue reading When Will You Be In The Office (1959)?
Mount Rushmore
Today’s post is written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives at Denver The contractors were given seven years to do the impossible: dam up the mighty Colorado River in Black Canyon, southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. But it only took them five, when in 1936 the completed dam was formally turned over to … Continue reading The Story of Two Presidents and One Dam Model
On February 8, 1967, famed American author John Steinbeck, then in Bangkok, Thailand, sent Secretary of State Dean Rusk a letter. In it, Steinbeck excoriated the performance of the press in Vietnam and criticized anti-war protesters. Steinbeck is the author of major American literary classics such as Tortilla Flat (1935), Of Mice and Men (1937), … Continue reading The Wrath of Steinbeck: John Steinbeck on the Press in Vietnam, 1967
Today’s post is written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives at Denver. “That’s a mechanical drawing . . . where’s some human interest?” posed the famous artist as he took in the vista of Arizona’s 710-foot-tall, 1,560-foot-wide Glen Canyon Dam. The Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) staffers accompanying the artist—who at that point in … Continue reading Norman Rockwell and his Dam Painting
Alcatraz Island
Employees in a bureaucracy do not always receive recognition for their contributions to the success of their institutions. This is especially true in large agencies facing a constant barrage of activities such as the Department of State. There are occasional exceptions to that rule. One of those came about in early 1952 after the mid-January … Continue reading Recognition for a job well done, 1952
During the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, communications personnel in the Department of State and at U.S. diplomatic posts overseas handling telegraphic communications went into overdrive. In addition to the standard day-to-day telegrams flowing back and forth between the Department and its diplomatic and consular posts overseas, the communicators had to take care of … Continue reading Recognition for a job well done, 1962
By late December 1960 and early January 1961, the last 30 days of the Eisenhower presidency, the U.S. relationship with Fidel Castro-led Cuba had deteriorated to the point where formal relations were about to be severed. On December 31, 1960, the U.S. embassy in Havana reported that the Cuban “revolutionary press” was carrying stories that … Continue reading “Nuts” Redux
The Wright Brothers and Airports in the National Register of Historic Places
