Enter to win a fantastic Wind at My Back prize pack

In John Steinbeck's unendingly classic book The Grapes of Wrath, which delves into the heart of life and all its hardships during the Great Depression, there is a line that always springs to mind for me when I think of the excellent Canadian television series Wind at My Back, itself also set during the heartbreakingly hard years of the dirty thirties: "How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?"

For those who are not acquainted with this show from Sullivan Entertainment (the same production company that created the beloved Anne of Green Gables movies and the Road to Avonlea TV series, amongst other excellent works), it was a wholesome Canadian television series that focused on the lives of the fictional Bailey family, who were indeed struggling to keep their lives, memories, and the family itself intact despite the overwhelming odds against them.

The series was set in the (also fictional) little town of New Bedford, Ontario and has at times been likened to a Canadian version of The Waltons, though there are a good many differences between the two shows.



{Many of the key characters from Wind at My Back, some more lovable than others certainly, but all equally important to the dynamics of this wonderful Canadian period drama series.}



Loss and hardship, death and separation, sorrow and triumph all ring loudly through this family friendly show, which followed on the heels of (but wasn't tied to) Sullivan Entertainment's beloved Road to Avonlea, which wrapped up regular series filming the same year (1996) that Wind at My Back was launched. Running for five seasons of thirteen episodes a piece (followed by a made-for-TV Christmas themed movie), this series, like everything Sullivan Entertainment creates, was incredibly endearing, enjoyable and beautifully done.

From the period appropriate vintage and vintage reproduction clothing that was used throughout all five seasons (some of which, worn by cast members themselves, is now available to buy in Sullivan Entertainment's terrific online store called Shop at Sullivan, along with pieces from some of the company's other movies and TV series) to the soulful, gripping acting of the characters, especially the character Honey Bailey who endears more than her fair share of hardship right off the bat, Wind at My Back speaks to history fans and admirers of great family programming alike.

If we take whodunit mystery series out the equation, objectively, there haven't been a huge number of 1930s themed TV shows over the years, let alone ones set in Canada, and that element too is sure to appeal to many. Though Wind at My Back ceased production thirteen years ago now, its stories and themes are as a timeless as the day is long and filled with the sort of hard hitting, earnest struggles that Steinbeck himself would have instantly been drawn to.

Today, on what just happens to be my darling husband's 34th birthday, I'm immensely happy to let you know that I've teamed up with Sullivan Entertainment for a second (the first, which took place last October, was Road to Avonlea themed) stellar prize pack giveaway for one lucky North American winner. The winner will receive all four of the following items from Sullivan Entertainment's online shop:


-Season 1 of Wind at My Back



-The Wind at My Back soundtrack


-Wind at My Back cast photographed signed by series creator and producer Kevin Sullivan himself!


-Edwardian Style Clear Rhinestone Necklace and Earrings Set



How to enter:

There are five ways to enter this great giveaway. Please leave a separate comment for each way in which you enter so as to increase your chances of winning (five comments, for example, give you five times the odds that just one comment would).


1. Leave a comment on this post letting me know about one the things you most love or admire about the 1930s.


2. Like Sullivan Entertainment on Facebook and share about this giveaway there.


3. Follow Sullivan Entertainment on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway including including @sullivanent in your tweet.


4. Pin any image you'd like from SE's shop to any of your Pinterest boards. Leave a comment here with a link to your pin.


5. Subscribe to Shop at Sullivan Entertainment's newsletter.



Giveaway details


This giveaway is open to participants from North America. It will run from today's date, August 6th, until Wednesday August 13, 2014 at 11:59 PST. The winner will be selected using a random number generator and announced on Facebook and/or Twitter, as well as contacted directly by email or Facebook private message, if such contact information is available to me.

Once I've been in contact with the winner, I will pass along your information to the lovely folks at Sullivan Entertainment who will then mail out your prize package consisting of the four items detailed above. If you have any questions about this Wind at My Back giveaway, please don't hesitate to email me.

♥ ♥ ♥

Whether you've seen every episode of Wind at My Back, have never so much as even heard of it before, or fall anywhere in between, this giveaway is for you. As lovers of all things mid-twentieth century, Wind at My Back speaks to us on so many levels and warrants watching time and again, including with your children (youngsters who are fans of the 1930s themed American Girl dolls Kit and Ruthie are bound to especially adore this series).

From the Depression era fashions and hairstyles to portrayal of the kind of difficulties so many of our own relatives faced during these harrowing years to the heartwarming relationships between the Bailey family members and their ability to ultimately make it through no matter what, this series is ideal for vintage fans fan everywhere.

It is a sincere pleasure and honour to be collaborating with Sullivan Entertainment again for another wonderful giveaway and I want to sincerely thank for the opportunity to do so this month. Many thanks as well to everyone who enters. Best of luck to one and all!

Remembering the invaluable work of photographer Dorothea Lange

✯ Day 146 of Vintage 365 ✯

 

To call Dorothea Lange's photographs incalculably meaningful pieces of world history, would scarcely begin to convey the degree of importance that this pioneering photographer's work captured for all the world to see.

Professionally trained in New York and taught by well known photographer Clarence Hudson White (other famed students of whom include Paul Outerbridge, Margaret Bourke-White and Ralph Steiner), Lange apprenticed with several photography studios before opening up her own portrait studio in 1918 on the other side of the country in San Francisco, which proved to be quite successful for her.

As the years rolled on however and the Great Depression hit the US with an intensity unlike any other economic crisis the US had ever faced, Dorothea begin venturing out of the comfortable confines of her portrait studio and on the streets, populated as they now were with a great many folks whose lives had been turned upside down my the financial nightmare America was swept up in.

Lange's honest, at times gritty, completely captivating photographic studies of unemployed, homeless and various other downtrodden people quickly caught the eye of other local photographers and was responsible for her becoming employed with the Federal Resettlement Administration.

Together with her second husband (Paul Schuster Taylor), Lange travelled across America documenting with great skill, the startling realities that so many were struggling greatly with during the Depression. From rural farmers to migrant workers, throughout the 1930s Dorothea turned her lens on many of the poorest and lest remembered (by the government of the day) people in America at the time.

Lange's haunting images, which showed men, women and children of all ages, were instantly recognized for their startlingly earnest portrayal of life for those on the out and out. They were distributed free to newspapers right across the US and quickly became some of the best known photographs of the Great Depression.

{This short two minute YouTube video shows a wonderful selection of Dorothea Lange's Depression era photographs set against a lovely tune that elegantly helps to highlight the impactful-ness of these now timeless images.}

 

Of all the photographs Dorothea Lange captured during her lifetime, perhaps none is as well known – nor heart wrenching - as her image "Migrant Mother", which depicts 32 year old Florence Owens Thompson and two of her children. In the image we see Florence's incredibly concerned looking face, whereas those of her two young kids are turned away from the camera as they lean sorrowfully into their mother's shoulders.

Now an icon of the era, this image perfectly captures the grief and hardship that so many endured during the 1930s. In an interview that Lange gave in 1960 she is quoted as saying of Florence, "She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it."

And indeed, through Dorothea Lange's work there was a definitive equalizing of humankind. She didn't set out to stage life, she aimed to capture it in all its raw and brutal honesty, as though seen through the very eyes of those who lived and suffered, survived and somehow kept going during the 1930s.

For Lange, her images were never about garnering fame or fortune (as so poignantly evident by the fact the she gave up her Guggenheim Fellowship award, which she received in 1941, so that she could photograph the forced evacuation of Japanese immigrants on US soil following the attack on Pearl Harbor), she sought to preserve the hardships of time and made no bones about using a critical, bitingly realistic eye as she did so.

Today, May 26th, was the date on which in 1895 Dorothea Lange was born, and as such I wanted to stop and set aside some time to remember the life (she passed away in 1965 at the age of 70) not only of this superb documentary photographer herself, but of all those she captured on film during her career.

With a lens, Lange froze time, ensuring that both people of the day and many generations to come would have an eye-opening look at the less than glamorous side of life during the bleakest days of the mid-twentieth century.

Thank you, Dorothea, for each photograph, every life you preserved on film, every bit of history your excellent work ensured would never be forgotten. You were a gifted photographer, incredible documentary creator, and a wonderfully caring human being; the world is a better, more informed place because you were a part of it.