Summer of 1970s Photos: Smiling at the Lost Generation

Throughout 2017, I spent a year writing about the Lost Generation - those born in the early 1880s to about 1900, who endured WWI, and a pandemic. Generation X is also considered a 'lost generation' - from our formative years through adulthood there was once again, in history, one major large scale crisis after another. 

To be Generation X means your early life overlapped with the end of the lives of the Lost Generation. There was this window of time, when we still had neighbors, friends, and other loved ones in our lives from that generation. We were fortunate if we got to know our Great Grandparents, even if it was only for a short time. To go back three generations in time is to find your generational kindred spirit. 

It was America's Bicentennial year when this photo was taken. There is the red shag carpet, and the fabric is printed with the shapes of retro Christmas tree ornaments. The colors and aesthetic of this 1970s space look like the 1960s have not yet left the collective consciousness in pop culture or interior design. 

One lost generation smiles at another lost generation

Here I am as a brand new Gen Xer, Irish on my father's side, sporting red hair before it turned blond, a color that came from the other Northern European people on my maternal side. I am smiling at my Lithuanian Great Grandfather. 

And while this is just me as a baby meeting my great grandfather, this is, in a larger sense, one lost generation smiling at another. 

Every generation has an epic collective story to tell as they grow older, especially if you are a lost generation. This means your path has been harder, the road has been longer. If you use this as a chance to grow in grace, and to not become bitter, it means your connection to other people can be greater, your compassion can be deeper. At the same time, I hold enormous space for the way people who have been through a hard life can struggle to focus on the positive, who can wrestle with wondering why it all had to be so difficult. I have struggled, too. And so did the Lost Generation. Among other things, they were all detrimentally affected by WWI in some way, and like us, experienced a pandemic. They were more susceptible to this virus than those older and younger than themselves during the years of 1918-1920 due to a flu they had gotten as children - one more thing that made them different, misunderstood, or lost. The effects of such history altering events were with them for the rest of their lives, even those who never talked about it - maybe especially those who never talked about it. It appears some had 'long-flu' then, like some have long-covid now. While they called it 'shell-shock' back then, we now call it PTSD. It can be unfortunate the way history repeats itself. 

My Great Grandfather has that classic story of coming to America as an immigrant, of seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time and all the emotion that went with that. He immigrated by himself when he was only 13 years old. And then spent his life working in the boiler factory in Kewanee, Illinois. I am still piecing together details of his life, but no one crosses the Atlantic at the age of 13 if their life is easy. 

The Lost Generation watching over Generation X

Throughout history there have only been small windows of time where two lost generations got to be together. And while we can find ourselves a bit lost in this world, what we do have is each other. When we find ourselves lost on the timeline of history in which we find ourselves, we can reach back out to our kindred generation with a prayer, a word, a moment. We can hold their life's mementos in our hands, we can tell their stories. We can remind them we loved them then, and that we love them now. Those on the other side don't want to be forgotten. 

Sending gratitude from Gen X to the Lost Generation, for the days, hours, and moments you spent with us. Thank you for the ways you still watch over us. Thank you for the ways you still show up for us in distant memories, in present dreams. 

This is just one great grandfather watching over his great granddaughter's crib. And yet, in a larger sense, this is the Lost Generation watching over Generation X.    

(c) 2024 All rights reserved, Chloe Koffas 

Messages from the Lost Generation to Generation X: A One Year Journey

Gen X's Connection to the Lost Generation

While the late wave of the Lost Generation experienced the last years of their lives, Generation X experienced their earliest years. They were the red leaves that had hung on through the worst heat of summer, while we were the green blades of grass shooting up toward the sun, only just realizing how cold the coming winter would become. As I've been on a one-year journey to find the Lost Generation, I have sought their wisdom. And I have realized that these leaves, this generation, even as they fell, were often trying to protect us or give to us in whatever way they could. When I was a small child, my Lost Generation great-grandfather had brought me a seedling tree from Illinois, down Highway 35, and across I-40, and planted it in our front yard. In the summer, it had shadowed me as my pinwheel blew in the soft breeze and, when fall came, it dropped its leaves in the street like little treasures.

When Ethan Hawke's character picks up the phone in Reality Bites and says, "Hello, you've reached the winter of our discontent," he isn't just alluding to the crisis that Gen X remembers as kids, he is reaching back in some way to Steinbeck.

Sinclair Lewis summed up the experience of the Lost Generation: "Winter is not a season, it's an occupation." As generations go, every four cycles is a 'lost generation', and the history that goes with those cycles is always winter, always discontent. This was life for the Lost Generation, this has, in many ways, been life for Generation X.

Why it matters to understand a previous generation is that it helps to better understand our own. Why it matters to study history is so that we don't keep repeating the same mistakes. We are still very much affected today by issues of the Lost Generation. History, as we experience it, is even continuously altered by WWI. One all too real example of this is that many bombs, designed to explode on impact, were left behind in the fields of Europe as the tired arms of soldiers sometimes laid them in the grass and walked away. Today, as farmers plow fields, or as people walk by, those bombs sometimes explode and those people are sometimes injured or killed, even though it is now a hundred years later. This is known, darkly, as the Iron Harvest.

Another chilling example of our connection to the Lost Generation is H1N1. In the winter of 2009, this virus was constantly in the news as a potential pandemic. We stood in line at a clinic for shots in the freezing cold, while volunteers handed us warm blankets. The Red Cross sign on the side of their truck had me thinking about the way they had helped relief efforts during WWI, but I did not know that what we were about to get immunized for was a variation of the same flu that wiped out a large number of the world's population a century before. Sadly, the Lost Generation was born during years that made them more susceptible to this horrible virus because of a different flu they had gotten as children. 

If you are Generation X, you may have known and loved people from the Lost Generation - I surely did. One thing that became more and more clear to me through this year of searching for them, for their wisdom, for their messages left to us, is that they saw our suffering, and knew our suffering because it was painstakingly familiar to them. Their lives were coming to an end as ours were beginning so they were often unable to intervene in our lives or help us in a way they could have if they had been younger, though I think they often did what they were able to in the time they had left.

The Lost Generation lived through a similar pattern of history, and therefore had a similar struggle that Gen X has now, and any wisdom or hope they left behind helps us on our own long journeys. Some of those messages are quoted on this blog over the past year. Beyond that wisdom, these are the two messages I found from them that have affected me the most....

How to Fight

One of those messages is the example they left us of how to fight. There were two well-known truces that took place during WWI: The Christmas Truce of 1914 (which would have been a day that would have the most meaning to soldiers on the Western Front) and the Easter Truce of 1916 (a day that would have the most meaning to soldiers on the Eastern Front). In both cases, soldiers stepped out of their trenches and broke bread with the other side, an act that included both risk and profound love. Many other small, localized truces took place during the war as well. This was a powerful message from the Lost Generation to us: we should always take a moment to see those we consider an enemy as truly human, or even if just for a moment, as brothers and sisters.

How to Have Hope

C.S. Lewis, one of the brightest voices of the Lost Generation, told us the reason our heart yearns for something earth can't supply is proof that heaven must be our home. This is the ultimate hope and the ultimate explanation for why we feel lost, because we are not yet home. This image of hope and light shows up in different ways in the writing of the Lost Generation - it was the green light that the Great Gatsby reached toward over the water, it is the lighthouse that Virginia Woolf told us to look toward.

Here's to the coming new year, when we look toward hope. It will be exactly one century from the year that WWI came to an end. In November of 2018, a centennial memorial for American WWI veterans will finally be opened. Up until now, the veterans of every other major war have been given a monument in Washington D.C., the Lost Generation has not. 

This is exactly what it means to be a lost generation.

May the Lost Generation rest in peace. And while we've said it for generations, it is always worth saying it again:

Peace on earth.

(c) writing by Chloe Koffas 2017, photos by Chloe, Portland, Oregon


Sources:

Time Magazine: Solving the Mystery Flu That Killed 50 Million People
WWI Centennial Memorial Info and a link to donate

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

Wikipedia: Iron Harvest 
An Easter Truce, 1916: Gateways to the First World War

Finding the Lost Generation: To Walk Where They Walked

One of the strangest, most mystical things I have experienced in the places I have lived, worked, or visited, is the way a space is filled with the history of the people who were there before. People sometimes talk about this when they tour some place of historical significance - especially if people once suffered there. To walk through Flanders Fields, so I have heard, is a haunting experience. No doubt, the WWI soldiers of the Lost Generation were among those who suffered the most of that era. 

Walking through old city streets, well known for the generation that once lived there, you sometimes feel the weight of their everyday hopes and fears, even if you don't know what their specific stories were. Sometimes you experience the presence of their stories like you feel humidity - you can't see the dampness, but you can definitely feel it rising off the sidewalks.

The Lost Generation was raised in a world of shadowbox signs lit with Edison bulbs and made their way in the world as adults when neon lit up behind glass window panes. Similarly, Generation X was raised in an analog world and came of age as the digital age began taking over. We are also called a 'lost' generation. We are, as generations go, their kindred spirits.

When I go walking through a neighborhood once lived in by the Lost Generation, I think of the childhoods they had, some beautiful and idyllic, some dark. I picture some of them growing up on farms in small Midwestern towns and some working in cities in factories at a far too young age.

I picture those with good childhoods visiting candy stores like this one, filling up a brown paper bag and riding their little wooden scooter home.

I picture the conversations of the Lost Generation in alleys surrounded by red brick buildings on early summer evening nights. If their generation was also nomadic generation - a 'lost' generation - then what message did they have for Generation X? Since they already lived through a similar time in history, made it to the other side, and are collectively similar to us,

that's the question I keep asking on this one-year journey as I look for the Lost Generation.

What we don't realize as we move through time, as we quietly revolve with the Earth, is that we are leaving a legacy, not just with each passing day, but with each passing hour, in our thoughts, in our intentions, in the words we speak, in the words leave unspoken. We leave a legacy by what we survive, from what we break ourselves away from, by the way we overcome.


I have a few memories of those who were very old when I was very young, though there are too many Lost Generation people in my family that I never got a chance to meet.

The same way the tall flowers in yards once leaned toward turn-of-the-century kitchens to eavesdrop on dinner table conversations, is how I am searching for the words and wisdom of the Lost Generation. Sometimes, beyond the words of T.S. Eliott, or E.E. Cummings, I wonder about those who never were able to put their thoughts down on paper, those whose lives are now just documented by a couple of photographs, some passed on stories, or a digital copy of their 1920 census information.

I remember the fireflies that would dance in the humid summer air in the yard of my great-grandparents' house in Illinois. When the day would come to an end for the Lost Generation, night would fall quietly on their houses, and stories of their lives would lean in golden light against their window panes. That light would slowly make its way to the sidewalks, to the streets, hoping to make its way into the world, wanting to be heard. 

The streets still hold that glow, that golden light, the streets still hold the story of the Lost Generation. 

(c) 2017  Writing by Chloe Koffas all rights reserved, color photos by Chloe (c) 2016, Boise, Idaho 

Finding the Lost Generation: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

A lot of  us Gen Xers, especially Second Wave Xers, have memories of our youth sprinkled with the songs of The Smashing Pumpkins in the background. I started listening to them roughly halfway through high school. I had this little red and orange patch attached to my backpack, Pumpkins posters around my room, and Siamese Dream often found its way into my CD player.

As I blog my way through a year-long journey to find the Lost Generation, (those born around 1885-1900 or soon after) I've noticed that a lot of Gen Xers, also known as a 'lost generation', have a fascination with The Gilded Age (from about the 1870s - around 1900) and the Roaring 1920's. For some, that fascination overlaps with the Victorian Age (1837-1901). This era is seen in the art of the Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album. The imagery from the "Tonight, Tonight" video is from the 1902 silent film Le Voyage dans la Lune. Billy Corgan, who wrote almost all the music on the album, drew sketches of his ideas for John Craig, the artist who designed the collage images. Craig was influenced by Dadaism which began around 1915. Inspiration for many of the songs came about while Corgan was on his 1920's era piano.

While two volumes of the album - Dawn to Dusk and Twilight to Starlight - fit on a double CD,  it is actually takes up 3 on vinyl. Mellon Collie was released October 24, 1995 - my freshman year in college and became album of the year. "1979" was the band's biggest hit single ever. We are quick to turn up the volume when it's charming rhythm comes on the radio, though the melancholy side of it is the way our Gen X youth and our mortality are intertwined.

When the band went on tour for the Mellon Collie album in 1996, I was a sophomore at University of Houston. It was a balmy early December when my friend and I went to see them at The Summit. It was an amazing show and I needed a memento to take with me - my zero shirt.


1996 was a year when the yuppie values of the older generation felt like they still overshadowed us as we tried to make our way into the adult world, causing many of us to think more about what we could give the world than what we could take from it. For me, wearing this shirt was an antithetical rebellion to their narcissistic success. Boomer businessmen, some of them my relatives, would look at me when I'd wear this shirt with expressions ranging from confusion to pure disdain. Fellow Xers would see wearing this and give me an approving nod. I'd walk down the street with that School House Rock song stuck in my head, "My Hero, Zero."

I'd borrowed my friend's CD set of this album around the time of the Mellon Collie tour, and the music from that album will always hold the memories of those mid-'90s days, but I never got my own copy of the album until the 2012 reissue. One afternoon when I lived in Portland, Oregon, I took the train to Everyday Music, a small, local music store, because I knew the album would be there. Standing in line to pay, I waved the album in the air and excitedly made an announcement to the entire store that after waiting for years, I was finally buying the Mellon Collie album. Flannel-clad Gen Xers from around the store clapped for me, Gen Xers squatting down looking at bins of retro vinyl stood up and and cheered for me. Everyone in the store from other generations looked at me blankly.

I'm thankful to my fellow Xers in Houston for the approving nods during the Mellon Collie tour when seeing me walk by in this black, long sleeved shirt with Doc Martens in 90 degree heat. And thanks, fellow Xers in Portland, for cheering me on when I finally bought the album reissue over fifteen years later. Your cheers and applause brought an enormous smile to my face as I went outside the music store to tear the cellophane off this album under the misty clouds, walking toward the Willamette River....

Some have called this an 'end of an era' album, some have called it The Wall for Generation X. What I can say is that there is something significant about this album, culturally, generationally, and otherwise.

While this album is full of justifiable rage and sorrow, there are bits and pieces of hope. Referring to the song, Tonight, Tonight, in the sleeve of the 2012 reissue that I have, Corgan said "That's just one of those songs that really connects with people - the chords, the message, everything. And somehow the song continues to hold that power."

These words have held a lot of power for us as a generation, they elevated us through the '90's when a changing millennium was at our door, and when the wounds of youth were still fresh on our skin:   "...life can change...you're not stuck in vain."

One of the many things this expansive album captures is the residual pain of growing up in the most anti-child phase in modern history. Billy Corgan's childhood was an excruciating one, it was full of a lot of the same abuse and agony that a lot of Gen X knew in our most impressionable years. To take a look at his online blog from several years back is to walk down a dark, familiar alley of a common Gen X childhood. Some of the most heartbreaking and most resonating words I've ever heard from a Gen Xer are contained within the song "To Forgive:"

...I sensed my loss before I even learned to talk
And I remember my birthdays
Empty party afternoons won't come back...

When I hear earlier songs of Smashing Pumpkins, I get that pulsing energy of my earlier 1990's teenage years in my veins, when I hear Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, I feel this deep sense of loss in the lyrics of this album. My first look at those lyrics in the mid-90's was when I first just began to realize that loss was a collective loss - a generational one. Maybe the reason many of us felt a connection to Billy Corgan is that he expressed our own grief. He was as angry and tired as any of us, and yet he has still given to us words of hope, even through the most mournful of his music. And maybe we Gen Xers need that message now as much as we needed it in the 1990's:

Life can change, we're not stuck in vain. 

(c) Images: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness 2012 reissue album liner by 
The Smashing Pumpkins/Billy Corgan, John Craig, Virgin Records. 

Writing by Chloe Koffas (c) 2017 

Sources: 

God, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Christian Music

Christ and Pop Culture: Billy Corgan, God, and Rock Music

10 Crazy Facts You Didn't Know About Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

An Open Letter to U2: Their Impact on a Lost Generation

To Bono, Adam, Edge, and Larry:

Each night throughout The Joshua Tree Tour 2017, as the colored stage lights shine like sun through stained glass upon the crowd, the majority of us will be from Generation X. Taking The Joshua Tree back on tour is not only significant, it is truly epic -- specifically to a generation of Americans who grew up in a Crisis Era. From the days you were a garage band, Generation X has watched society fall apart -- from corporate greed to recession, from scandals to toxic meltdowns, from riots to war -- it has all been part of continued Crisis for us.

A few years ago, I visited the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California -- a testament to the suffering of Gen X owing to the turbulent events of his presidency that spanned our formative years. It was a painful walk through a wasteland of our youth. Within this building were images reminding me of living my childhood under the threat of nuclear annihilation, an exhibit reminding me that as a five-year-old, I had to try to understand what the term "assassination attempt" meant, and a picture with a few poetic words reminding me that America had hand picked seven heroes to send into space for its children to love, and then let us watch them perish on live TV. It was Mourning in America in our youth and, strangely, it feels a whole lot like that now. In recent years, whenever I hear Mothers of the Disappeared, I think about how all those children who disappeared in the 1980's were Generation X.

If Reagan was the grandfather we didn't quite understand, but tried to love because our family told us we should, Trump is the stepfather we hoped would never unpack his bags in our house. Reagan was inaugurated when many of us Gen Xers were still too young to vote, and most Gen Xers I hang out with voted for anyone but Trump. You understand we are dealing with resurgent issues our generation first confronted in the 1980's. You already know that in some ways, it feels that our society has taken a step backwards.

On this tour, as your fervent voice fills the stadiums and the ethereally pure sound of the Edge's guitar sends lightening through our cells, for many Gen Xers, The Joshua Tree is still playing in the background of our lives. As you know, some say Still Haven't Found is the anthem of our generation. For a lot of us, you have been our favorite band for as long as anyone can have one. The rifts of Adam's bass are forever etched into our consciousness. The rhythms of Larry's drums formed a musical foundation during our most impressionable years. Thank you for creating the soundtrack of a generation.

If we were raised with a weak moral compass, your music helped us calibrate it. You opened our eyes to those around the world who have suffered even more than we have. If we were taught to value 80's materialism, you opened our eyes to famine and suffering around the world. In a decade when it was tempting to be consumed with fashion and image, you shifted our thoughts to the pain of The Troubles in Ireland, to the wounds from Apartheid in South Africa, to the injustice and suffering in Latin America. Even now, your messages of women's rights, extreme poverty, and ending HIV in our generation encourage us to keep raising our voices, to keep fighting the good fight. In 2013, I did a photographic pilgrimage to the Mojave Desert about The Joshua Tree album. What it got me thinking about is that we should do all we can as a generation to leave this desert a better place than we found it, to work to alleviate the suffering of others, to pass on glimpses of hope as we get glimpses of it ourselves.

The tragedy, beyond Gen X growing up in a Crisis Era, is that we have always lived in one. And all the while, as the story of our lives unfolded, your music played on the radio, on our record players, cassette players, CD players, and eventually our MP3 players and smartphones. You played your music for a 'lost' generation, a fatherless latchkey generation, a 'throwaway' generation. And that agony we felt is essentially what punk is a response to, and what your roots are, which may be why you understood us so well. If there was nothing consistent in our lives, at least your music was. Thank you for giving us the full circle of this music, especially if we missed it the first time around....

When the first Joshua tour took place, I was just a kid in New Mexico who didn't have enough allowance money for a ticket, and no one to drive me west to Tempe or south to Las Cruces. That's part of why this tour, this second chance is so incredible. And for those Xers who can't make it to any of the Joshua concerts this time because of the weight of life, perhaps you could perform spontaneously in some city as they commute home from work. As you did in  LA or here in San Francisco in 1987... maybe rock and roll can stop the traffic once again.

It took a few miracles, but I somehow found my place up front during your recent Santa Clara show. As I stood between the branches of the Joshua Tree shaped stage, the show was everything I hoped it would be. More than once my veins were filled with adrenaline. More than once my eyes were filled with tears. It was worth the 30 year wait.


Our cell phones will be lighting up arenas like ten thousand candles - a reflection of the light you brought to us. And if the last three decades have worn us down, if your performance of some song or another is not quite as strong as before, know that the rhythm and chords of our lives will lift like incense to the top rows of stadiums in these upcoming summer nights and we will sing the words for you. We know those words well, because those words have carried us, you have carried us, let us carry you.

To second chances and grace,

Chloe Koffas
San Jose, CA

(c) Writing and photos by Chloe - The Mojave Desert, 

U2's The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 at Levi's Stadium, Santa Clara, CA

This piece, at one time was translated into Italian and published on the site for Italy's U2 fan club 

Finding the Lost Generation: Of Intelligence and Infinite Hope

One of the most influential thoughts that F. Scott Fitzgerald ever shared is this:

"The test of a first rate-intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time..."

Of all the wisdom Fitzgerald is known for, this quote from The Great Gatsby both strikes me and resonates with me the most:

"Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope."

At first glance, the two quotes above are unrelated. Look back again. I believe that among the wisdom that can be found in Fitzgerald's writing, the second quote is the most true incarnation of the original quote.

As we get to know people, their rough edges emerge, and if those edges are extremely rough, we find ourselves constantly scraped up and wounded by being in their life, and walking away is necessary. In other situations, we decide to stay, or to stay in touch, and to show forgiveness when a person's shortcomings surface (as we hope they will do in return). To hold the knowledge that every person we know is flawed yet to remember that those flaws probably come from the fact that we live in a very flawed world, is to be a loving person.

To know that when people hurt us, that it might not even be personal, it might be that they are lashing out at how someone else hurt them, is to show grace. When we can avoid judging others in those initial moments of forming an opinion of them when we first meet them, or even when we've known them for a lifetime, we participate in something truly infinite.

When it comes to quotes by Fitzgerald and the expatriate friends he drank wine with in Parisian cafes, I am only somewhat interested in the thoughts they had about human intellect, maybe because of all the spiritual and philosophical issues that exist among a generation, and of all the wisdom that can be passed on from one lost generation to another, I am much more interested in the limitless of the human soul. And if we look back to the wisdom of generations that came from saints or philosophers or artists from all the centuries that led us to this moment, they all left a certain reverberating message for us. It's in the leaning stones in the British Isles, and in the chipped, antiquated marble of the statues of the Mediterranean, and in the hieroglyphics of the caves of Northern Africa, and maybe even in the gilded edges of California buildings of the 1920's. And the message is this:

 The human soul is infinite.  

___________________________________________

(c) 2017 writing by Chloe Koffas all right reserved 
photography by Chloe - The Saint Claire Hotel,  built 1926, San Jose, CA

Huffington Post's article: why you should re-read The Great Gatsby as an adult

Finding the Lost Generation: Of Hunger and Hoovervilles

When her picture was published in newspapers, it caused an emotional stir across the country. The U.S. federal government sent thousands of pounds of food to the camp where her photo was taken, but by the time it arrived she and her family had already left to look for work elsewhere. The pea fields at that farm had frozen, which meant no work and no pay for migrant workers. Near the end of her life, almost fifty years later, her son put an appeal in the San Jose Mercury newspaper for people to send money to help with her overwhelming medical expenses as she was struggling with multiple health issues. Letters with money came in the mail from all over, much of it in the form of crumpled one-dollar bills. People responded because they had not forgotten her.  There was a connection they had always felt to her because of her picture.

There are certain images that have been ingrained onto the consciousness of the past few generations - one of these would be "Migrant Mother." It is not only the most iconic picture from the Great Depression, it is one of the most significant images of the 20th century. I thought until recently that the legendary woman in this photo was still anonymous, but near the end of her life she was identified as Florence Owens Thompson. Until now, I never saw the baby in her arms.

Dorthea Lange/Library of Congress/Public Domain

Why we cannot get over this photo is not just because of the mental exhaustion on her face or the creases on her brow that should not yet be present on the skin of a woman only 32 years old. It is more so because we see the inestimable greatness that is in her. In this woman's eyes is a strength that goes beyond Greek myth, in her face is the wisdom rooted in her Native blood, in her composition is fear wrestling with profound courage. Florence Leona Christie Owens Thompson could pick 500 pounds of cotton in one day, which was more than most of the men who worked the fields with her. This is a mother who raised ten children, and who worked any kind of job she could in fields, waiting tables, bar-tending, or doing factory work. Her father abandoned her even before she was born. She was already a widow at the time this picture was taken in 1936. Her family history was connected to the Trail of Tears. If anyone has ever known the depths of heartache, this soul did. And you can see it all in her immortally beautiful face. 

Lange/Public Domain

"Hoover-villes" were groups of shacks located on the edges of cities during the Great Depression. These shacks were often made from cardboard or scrap wood. The same name was applied to roadside temporary shelters that destitute families looking for work erected as they tried to escape the Dust Bowl and migrate to California. These shelters could be made of bed sheets or canvas and could be held up with tree branches.

In this same area, even now, Hoovervilles still exist, even if they go by a different name. As my husband was driving us onto a freeway recently, I looked over the edge to a reservoir, to where people go for water, and community, and to pitch tents on the grass. What I saw that day was a man sitting in a red folding lawn chair in a florescent yellow shirt, the morning sunlight falling onto his tired blue eyes staring off into the distance, much like the tired gray eyes of the migrant mother. The man was clearly Generation X. He is probably someone's father. If not, he is someone's son. A man in a neon yellow shirt in front of the backdrop of brightly colored, modern-day camping tents can seem so far away from the black-and-white images of the Depression Era. We see the agonizing images of poverty in America almost a century ago and want to believe this kind of suffering is safely in the distant past. Kerosene lamps have been replaced by solar powered flashlights, and tin pie pans have been replaced by plastic containers. Everything was different between the man in the red folding chair and the image of the migrant mother sitting on a wooden box, yet everything was hauntingly the same.  

Florence Thompson, was asked once, "Did you ever lose hope?'

She responded, "Nope, If I'd'a lost hope, this country never would have made it."

Her words tell us to never give up hope, because your hope sustains not only you and your own family,  your own individual hope is what sustains us all collectively.

May we never give up hope that tomorrow can be better, or next year, or that the next decade can be better. May we never stop hoping that our children will have a better life than we did.

Let's not forget the suffering of the migrant mother and her family. Let's not forget the man who sleeps tonight on the cold ground in Silicon Valley, in the shadow of affluence, by the reservoir on the side of the freeway.  

______________________________

Black and white photography by Dorthea Lange, 1936, Nipomo Valley, California
Color photography by Chloe Koffas, 2016, Napa Valley, California
Writing (c) 2017 by Chloe, all rights reserved

                                                      _____________________________


Cancer affected the Migrant Mother, and mesothelioma affects a disproportionate number of Native Americans. The outreach of Mesothelioma.net found this blog post after it was published and asked to have their info added here. This link explains why Native Americans have been at higher risk and the web site offers resources such as access to trust money for those affected:

hope, faith, help




Articles/Sources:

American Story: 'Mona Lisa' of Dust Bowl 'Never Lost Hope'

The Hidden Life Story of the Iconic 'Migrant Mother" - Mashable


And a book I hope to read sometime soon:
Migrant Mother: The Untold Story

Generational note: A large number of the parents during the Great Depression were from the Lost Generation. A large number of the children were from the G.I. Generation. Being from a generation is partly about the year you were born, though I feel it is much more about your life experiences. Florence Thompson was born in 1903, and while I consider her part of the Lost Generation, by some definitions this would make her part of the G.I. (Greatest) Generation. Either way, she is legendary and I send her my love across space and time.

Finding the Last Lost Generation: Langston Hughes and the Deep of Rivers

In my quest to reach back to the last Lost Generation (those who would've been roughly the age that Generation X is now, a century ago) I am looking back to see what advice, hope, or wisdom they left for us. An essential voice from among that generation was Langston Hughes. Not only was he part of the Harlem Renaissance, he was a contributor to classic literature that has since been read and studied by multiple generations.

My favorite people have this way of balancing wit and the heaviness of life with grace. Through my growing-up years, pieces of Langston Hughes' poetry would pop up in the literature classes I took. For weeks afterwards, his message would resonate in my mind. With each piece, he would would open my eyes more and more to the suffering endured by African Americans. More recently, I made my way through the perceptive and unshakable poetry he wrote through the earlier decades of the 20th century.  Hughes' words and stories, like his ancestral heritage, covered a wide range of American geography and beyond. He wrote of the stress and frustration of the people in crowded cities struggling to pay their rent and of the pain and isolation of people in small rural towns, tired from working the land.  

In my first experience of the Mississippi River as a nine-year-old, I stood in awe of the potent water as I floated across it on a ferry. It was powerful and magnificent, and I could feel the history of it emanating all around me: an intense sorrow and a thousand untold stories lifting from it, mixing with the heavy summer humidity.

I felt something similar as a college student the first time I saw the Kansas River from the window of a plane as it wound through the frozen winter circles and squares of farmland, like the patches on a threadbare quilt. Not so long after that, I saw Lawrence, Kansas for the first time where Langston Hughes spent most of his childhood and walked the same streets that my paternal grandfather from the GI Generation had walked during his days as a professor at the University of Kansas. How strange it is to walk where someone walked that you feel you know on some level, yet their life ended before yours began.  Sometimes it seems that we can get a glimpse (or maybe some fleeting electrical impulse) of the connection we have to those people by walking where they walked, by opening the door of some small shop on some busy street, hoping their hand once touched the same door handle.  Of antiquated doors that I pulled open to small shops or buildings around the university - on Massachusetts Street, or Tennessee Street, or Kentucky Street in Lawrence, Kansas, I can only hope that my grandfather, or that Langston, opened one of those same doors.

...I've known rivers: 

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins. 

My soul has grown deep like the rivers...

When a generation, a Lost Generation in particular, who grows up and lives most of their life in a time of Crisis, what we can do is to take what wisdom we have gained from our suffering and to use it to make the world more just, with our stories, with our voices. Hughes wanted an America where everyone is free and equal, and his words are just as relevant today as they were when he wrote them. His writing is one of the reasons that we see classic literature as necessary to culture - it is a way to remind of us of what wrongs we are likely to fall back into as a society if we are not vigilant. In fact, many of the things that were wrong with society when he wrote his words are still wrong. Hughes stressed racial consciousness in his writing and that message is just as needed now as it was a century ago.   

It sometimes seems that when you stand by a river, you can feel, even if just for a moment, everyone who has stood there at that same place before you. I know it's true of the Kansas River and of the Mississippi, I imagine it is true of the Euphrates and the Nile. It is the experience of standing quietly, intently, by rivers, and in searching for the wisdom of previous generations that our souls can grow deeper.  Let your soul grow deep.  

Quotes by Langston Hughes

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(c) 2017 All rights reserved.  Writing and and photography by Chloe Koffas.  Photo: Boise River, Idaho

Finding the Last Lost Generation: The Last Time I'll Ever Read Hemingway

Among the most well-known authors of the last Lost Generation is, of course, Hemingway.   In my one-year journey of finding the last Lost Generation, I hope to bring to light what he and many other of those writers have to tell us about our present situation - the world of the 2010s.  Because Gen X is also considered a Lost Generation, I am especially interested in what they have to say to us. One place I am going on this journey is to the pages of classic books where they consciously left their wisdom for us in print. After all, as Carl Sagan said, "Books break the shackles of time..."

As I opened the first page of The Sun Also Rises, it had the following quote from Ecclesiastes in old King James English:

"One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever....The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose....The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits....All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again."

There is something of a cosmic connection between my life as a Gen Xer and Hemingway, because my great grandmother (who was one of my main connections from the last Lost Generation) and Hemingway were born only a couple of hours and months apart.  What is fascinating to me as a generational writer is that as a child, I was held in the embrace of both maternal and paternal great-grandparents - people born in the 1890s or very soon after, and when I hold my daughter who was born after the millennium, I sometimes pause and feel amazed at the fact that my skin has felt the embrace of people who came from three separate centuries.

Within Hemingway's stories are those deeply affected by WWI; those trying to not remember it.  After the war, there is this partying and bar-hopping lifestyle that many younger people took on as they attempted to blot out the bad memories of the war.  With that lifestyle came this futility, this lack of joy, a realization that excess leads to nowhere.  That may be one of the biggest similarities between the current Lost Generation and the last one: a need to blot out the bad memories. 

To borrow from another Hemingway book that many of us read in high school, A Farewell to Arms, a story about the young men of WWI, "They were beaten to start with.  They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army.  That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start.  Put him in power and see how wise he is." The deep discontent of the last Lost Generation resonates with the current one, with Generation X.  Society frayed apart throughout our entire youth, more subtly than it did during WWI, but it crumbled, and it left many of us bitter and cynical.   In many cases, it also made us wise.

In The Sun Also Rises, a character says, "Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it?  Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?"

This is the last time I'll read Hemingway.  While our youth is full of firsts, once we reach middle age, we begin to experience all of our lasts.  His words often make me feel like I am standing, completely alone at an empty beach and the person who was supposed to meet there to watch the sunset with me never showed up.

"You are all a lost generation."   -Gertrude Stein

Sometimes, the only hope we have when we are standing completely alone on the shore is that if yesterday was not what we hoped it would be, and if today was even worse, the sun will rise again tomorrow.

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places..." -Hemingway

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(c) 2017 writing and photography by Chloe Koffas - photo at Rockaway Beach, Oregon

Finding the Last Lost Generation: The Christmas Truce of WWI

To go back in time exactly one century ago, the world found itself at Christmas time, about halfway through WWI. Because of how the cycles of history go, you can reach back to a similar era to better understand the present one. As the cycles of generations go, once every four generations is a Lost Generation.  This is what Generation X is, this is what the soldiers of WWI were.


In the spirit of seeing history and time as cyclical and not linear, I am beginning a new project as the year comes to an end. It is a journey of reaching back to the last Lost Generation to find synchronicity between their generation and Gen X. Beyond that, I want to see what messages, what signposts, they left for us, to help us and to give us hope, because the journey of Generation X is much like theirs.

The main event that defined the last lost generation was WWI. An extraordinary signpost they gave us very early in that war was the Christmas Truce of 1914. French, German, British, and other soldiers declared impromptu truces along areas between the English Channel and Switzerland. Not everyone in the war stopped fighting that Christmas, but individual units dotting the Western Front put down their weapons as a sort of rebellion against the violence of war. Stepping out of their trenches to exchange a smile or a handshake, to have a drink or smoke together, to sing Christmas carols, and to bury their dead. Those who chose to participate saw a humanity in each other they could not see before.  Soldiers spoke to each other in broken forms of each other's languages, in every European accent you can think of, to make a genuine connection with the other side. A similar spontaneous situation took place on the Eastern front, the first move coming from Austro-Hungarian commanders, and Russian soldiers reciprocated. At Easter 1915, Orthodox troops created truces with the other side as well.

There are times when we find ourselves so lost, the only place we feel even remotely at home is in No Man's Land. Yet, this can be the place where the best of human moments exist, a place where we are the least alone.  In our current political climate, we see an enormous split, where many have dug into ideological trenches. We can step out of these trenches, these digital veils, and open our hearts to hear the stories and struggles of those on the other side. We can choose to see the faces of those who believe differently than we do as truly human, and know that we all feel anger, fear, heartbreak, and hope in the exact same way.

In just three minutes, this powerful clip gives you a glimpse into that extraordinary day that changed history because of human kindness.  (Or search YouTube for Sainsbury's official 2014 Christmas ad).



When we can climb out of our trenches, and extend a hand, we can see the divine in others, and they can see the divine in us.  May we all have moments this season where we show kindness that we, in some way, change history.

Joyeux Noël

Fröliche Weihnachten

Vrolijk Kerstfeest

Buon Natale

счастливого Рождества

Boldog Karácsonyt

  Merry Christmas.  

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(c) Chloe Koffas 2016

sources: Wikipedia, History.com

When the Light Ascends (Week 52 of Fireflies at Dusk: A 52-Week Project)

There is a snapshot image from another time and place that has time-lapsed itself into my soul. It is an image full of a hundred different things entering my senses all at once. The small town Illinois backyard at dusk at my great-grandparent's house would be heavy with summer humidity, the smell of earth, and the feel of soft grass under my feet. When it would become just dark enough, I could see the fireflies illuminating the night. Their choreographed motion was both mesmerizing and beautiful. The darker night would become, the brighter their glow. I would catch them in a mason jar and watch their light gather in an ethereal swirl of movement through the glass. They would ascend, and descend, and ascend again. After setting them free, it would soon be time to go upstairs and fall asleep to the sound of trains breaking through in the distance. I would wake up to sunlight flooding through the windows, the smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen, and the sound of the wood floors creaking from generations of footsteps that had walked through the hallways. While the glow that filled the nights of the rest of my Generation X childhood would come mostly from video games or TV shows, I never forgot the glow of the fireflies. I never forgot those illuminated mason jars on those Midwestern summer evenings.

Sometimes, now that I am two thousand miles away and thirty something years older, that place and time will call to me and I can feel my heart swelling with some sort of longing. Sometimes a breeze blows into the house and the earth smells exactly like it did on those Illinois nights - rain in the distance falling on farmland, dust being brought down from the atmosphere back to the earth, the hallowed wood of the trees, and the soft, sweet grass. Sometimes, late at night, when an Oregon train goes wailing by in the distance, when I'm half awake, I think for a moment that I am a small child back in Illinois.

If you are Generation X, you were born into one of the most neglected generations in modern history. Thankfully, this doesn't apply to every family, as there are Gen Xers who were well loved in their growing up years - yet while I know Xers who had good childhoods, I know many more who did not. The logic of the times included parental self-immersion which led to, and even required, self-reliance for Xers. The years that Generation X grew up have even been called the most anti-child era in the history of America - and this left Gen X with a pretty hardened edge. The zeitgeist took a wrenching toll on me, and although my childhood was wrought with the same darkness and chaos as most Gen Xers, it was also full of many blessings and good moments that I cling to. Through all my growing-up years, the most meaningful thing of all was a steadfast undertow of light - enough that the darkness could never completely overtake me.

I remember the Illinois dusk. The heavy, tired dusk in those days would hang over the streets, and the houses, and our hearts, foreshadowing a darkness sure to manifest in the coming years and decades. My Great Grandparents' small town had seen a pandemic, and the Great Depression, and poverty, and wars, and the way factory workers have to struggle to feed their families. And history is known to repeat itself. Yet, right in the midst of the enveloping anxiety that came as the sun would slip down below the horizon, a profound peace would emerge. A message would resonate within me, telling me not to be afraid when the dusk comes, and not to be afraid when dusk turns to night, because morning always follows.

I remember the sacred evenings - the sound of the screen door as it tapped against its metal frame, the dusk slowly growing darker. The fireflies would illuminate the glass jar sitting on a red and white checkered tablecloth on a wood table in my Great Grandparent's backyard to mark time, and place, and the meaning of a life and a family. On those summer nights when I would catch the fireflies, I would only keep them in the jar a short time - I wanted most of all to watch them fly again toward the treetops when my Great Grandfather would call out, "Now set them free!" 

If there was a message that Generation X needed to be told in their childhoods, a message we can send back in time to our child-hearts all those years ago, it is this: 

Do not be afraid, because, soon enough, you'll be free.  

If there is a message that Generation X needs to be completely conscious of through the struggles of adulthood, it is this:

Do not be afraid, because the light always ascends. 

Do not be afraid, because the dawn always follows the night.

If there is a message our Great Grandparents, also from a lost generation, would want to send, it is this:

We still have messages for you, come search for them at dusk, and search again at dawn.

As the years went on, when dusk would grow darker and the dark of night would follow, the memory of those glass jars was enough light to sustain me....

Through the darkest of nights, I was given enough light to carry me, and that light was the substance of God. 

Those fleeting moments of unbounded peace and joy stayed imprinted on my consciousness throughout my life - when the fireflies would fly upward, when their light would ascend. While we know that the dusk always leads to night, even the darkest night finally leads once again to the day.


Fireflies at Dusk.

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(c) 2012 images and writing by Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved