Musical accompaniment: Elvis Presley, Stranger in the Crowd
I usually feel uneasy in big crowds though sometimes–like New Year’s Eve–it’s exciting to be part of one!
While I might find crowds to be intimidating, pictures of groups of people are usually fascinating. In old pictures, you can discern some things about a person we have no other way of knowing. How tall they are, how they interact with others… Everyone in the picture came to be there by a unique series of events and usually there isn’t one uniform emotion on their faces.
Shorpy.com
Group of people sitting on a stack of logs at the Grandview farm. The barn is in the background. Harry S. Truman at the extreme left and Mary Jane Truman is seated in the middle. The rest are unidentified.
The National Archives.
A daffodil party in New York City in 1909. Has anyone heard of a daffodil party before?
LOC
Franklin D. Roosevelt with other unidentified people in Hyde Park, 1900.
The National Archives.
1920 group portrait by Jessie Tarbox Beals of friends in her Fifth Avenue studio.
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
At present, I don’t have more information on this one but I plan to look! For now, we know it originally came from Bain News Service and is called “Crowd awaiting kidnappers trial.” It’s dated December 14, 1910.
LOC
This next one, also from Bain News Service, is called “Crowd outside prison, penitentiary outbreak.” The photograph is undated.
LOC
Just hours left in 2024! If you set New Year’s resolutions, did you achieve them this year?
old spirituals 
Vintage photos make me wonder about the people, their lifestyle, their thinking, just everything about them that made them unique. How different were they from people of today? Inevitably I conclude that though they may not have had the modern conveniences of today, they were still people like us in many other ways and their little foibles were no different from people of the 21st Century.
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I think about that last question a lot—how different were people then than they are today? I never feel satisfied with the answer. I feel like they were more sensitive and genteel. On the other hand, human nature never changes.
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I remember a history professor saying to us, “Remember folks, the more things change, the more people stay just the same.”
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Very true!
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I am always impressed by the dress habits of the early 1900s. Men wore a suit and tie as a matter of routine. Women were always attired in a dress and, when outdoors, a large hat. People were much more formal. Imagine someone from 1900s walking done the street in 2025. Seeing a young woman in Lululemon pants and an exposed midsection would possibly cause them to go into a frenzy.
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Old photos are always fascinating. Those heavy swimsuits must have been a drowning hazard, lol. The Daffodil Party I assume took place in the Spring though I have never heard of anything like it. Maybe it was just a ladies’ spring get-together. Their outfits are lovely but I imagine all those bodies with all those clothes on set the temperature soaring in that room. Kidnapping was certainly a thing at the turn of the last century, wasn’t it? It was a big deal and a way to try and get big ransoms from people. Now we have hackers “kidnapping” our servers and demanding ransoms. As for New Year resolutions, that is a big “never” for me. I only determine to grow and to become who I need to grow and become over the next year however that may present itself. So far, I have done just that every year out of sheer necessity…bahahahaha!
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Even though swimming would be less comfortable, I think I’d like to be more covered up! I usually don’t make New Year’s resolutions but this year I decided to actually start applying things I’ve learned. I write down all these great tips I hear but I never do anything with them. It’s a generic goal but doing that has the potential to make life so much better! I like your thinking though; sounds much more sensible than making crazy goals.
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that picture up top of the swimmers looks very modern despite the swimsuits!
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I think if you just took the swimmers’ faces and placed clothes of today on their bodies, most of them would look just like us. I do think our time in history has more nut cases, though. People were more respectful of other people’s beliefs and property, etc. Our country had law and order and authority was respected, with some exceptions. Kids could play outside without adult supervision until the street lights came on.
The picture of the Truman farm brings back memories of my childhood from 1955 to 1962, when I lived just a few miles from that farm.
Getting back to the subject of crowds, a New Year’s Eve on the Las Vegas Strip in the 1970’s was my first and last! Lol
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Happy New Year!!!p
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