In his effort serve his editors at Focus Magazine and alert their curious readers just how Europeans saw the American culture, German photographer Bernd Lohse (1911 - 1995) traveled throughout the country taking snap-shots of everything that charmed and repulsed him - take a look for yourself. This article is based on the research of Paul Popenoe (1888 - 1979), and the American Sociological Society that pointed out the high STD rate in Europe at the time indicated that the first sexual experiences among the males of that continent were with prostitutes. Two additional factors in the author's argument highlighted the alarmingly high suicide rate among young European women coupled with the fact that the illegitimate birthrate far outpaced that of the United States at that time. Illustrated with four images that depict how depraved European dating in the Fifties was and how darn wholesome American teenage dating used to be by comparison, this article presents some sociological data supporting the conclusion that American love is better than European love because the American approach to the topic was simply "easier" and Europeans are just a bunch of pervs. When this article first appeared, the Boy Scouts of America, as an institution, was barely thirty-five years old:
"The truth is that never in the history of mankind has a simple idea - an idea, incidentally, born in South Africa - so seized the imagination of boys the world over as has Scouting."
Both Boy Scots and Girl Scouts were active in the Japanese-American internment camps during W.W. II. Click here to read about that subject... When this article first appeared, the Statue of Liberty was praised as the tallest statue in the world - today, it doesn't even make the list of the tallest statues; nonetheless, here is a collection of facts about the Ladyy Liberty:
200,000 pounds of copper were used in the statue, enough copper for more than 100 stacks of pennies, each as tall as the Empire State Building.
Trans-Atlantic voyagers do not see Liberty until their ship enters N.Y. Harbor, but her torch can be seen 15 miles out.
Her index finger is eight feet long. Norman Rockwell (1894 1978) once remarked in an interview:
The view of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and the ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be.
- and his vision was shared with millions of Americans. He had a fondness for depicting everyday life in small town America, childhood friendships, family life, middle school sporting events and (as discussed in the attached article) the Boy Scouts. He knew who he was; he never referred to himself as an artist, he called himself an illustrator. Popcorn was introduced as a snack food to American movie-goers as a result of the candy shortages during the earliest years of the Second World War.
Attached is a petite notice documenting the fact that the substitute was a wise one:
"By 1952, movie houses accounted for about one-third of the nation's annual $350 million retail popcorn sales."
Reference is also made to the efforts that were made to secure "noiseless" popcorn bags.
If popcorn replaced sweets on the home front, what replaced steak?
| 
