DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (Case): Disaster: Response and Recovery:
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Description of Pictures: Disaster: Response and Recovery
June 27, 2007 – January 25, 2008
This exhibition reveals how the Postal Service responds to disasters -- natural or manmade -- that dramatically affect everyday life in an instant. Among the objects representing disaster in two cases are postal keys recovered from the body of sea post clerk Oscar Woody, who perished trying to protect the mail aboard the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Titanic; a mailbox remnant that survived the San Francisco earthquake of 1906; and an envelope postmarked the first day mail service resumed in New Orleans after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.
Archival film footage of the construction of the Titanic runs continuously.
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
PMDIS_071211_01.JPG: Mail Carton Remnant:
Mail is often flown on commercial air carriers in plastic mailing containers. This container was destroyed when United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked and crashed on September 11, 2001.
PMDIS_071211_06.JPG: Keys to RMS Titanic's Mailbags:
To ensure the security and privacy of the mail, the mailbags were kept under lock and key. Despite the valiant efforts of the clerks to salvage the mail as the Titanic was sinking, most of it was lost when the ship sank.
PMDIS_071211_10.JPG: Personal Effects Bag:
All five postal clerks aboard the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Titanic perished at sea. After the wreck, workers recovered the personal effects of American clerk Oscar S. Woody from his body and returned them to his widow in this bag.
PMDIS_071211_25.JPG: Mailbox Remnant:
Floodwaters rushing through Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on May 31, 1889, wiped out telephone, telegraph, railroad, and mail lines. Emergency mail routes were established on horseback between Johnstown and nearby cities. Mail across the Mid-Atlantic region had to be rerouted through New York.
PMDIS_071211_29.JPG: Mailbox Remnant:
On April 18, 1906, an earthquake and subsequent fire destroyed much of San Francisco. The main post office was damaged, but service resumed two days later. For several days after the disaster, portal clerks accepted letters without stamps.
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2007 photos: Equipment this year: I used the Fuji S9000 almost exclusively except for the period when it broke and I had to send it back for repairs. In August, I bought a Canon Rebel Xti, my first digital SLR (vs regular digital) which I tried as well but I wasn't that excited by it.
Trips this year: Two weeks down south (including Graceland, Shiloh, VIcksburg, and New Orleans), a week at a time share in Costa Rica over my 50th birthday, a week off for a family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with sidetrips to Dayton, Springfield, and Madison), a week in San Diego for the Comic-Con with a side trip to Michigan for two family reunions, a drive up to Niagara Falls, a couple of weekend jaunts including the Civil War Preservation Trust Grand Review in Vicksburg, and a December journey to three state capitols (Richmond, Raleigh, and Columbia). I saw sites in 18 states and 3 other countries this year -- the first year I'd been to more than two other countries since we lived in Venezuela when I was a little toddler.
Ego strokes: A photo that I took at the National Archives was used as the author photo on the book jacket for David A. Nichols' "A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution." I became a volunteer photographer at both Sixth and I Historic Synagogue and the Civil War Preservation Trust (later renamed "Civil War Trust")..
Number of photos taken this year: 225,000.
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