Uncle Sam Day!
Perhaps the most recognizable poster in American history, James Montgomery Flagg’s depiction of Uncle Sam pointing at the viewer first appeared as a cover illustration for Leslie’s Weekly magazine on July 6, 1916. In that original version Uncle Sam asks: “What are YOU doing for preparedness.” Flagg’s inspiration came from a British magazine illustration created in 1914 by Alfred Leete. It featured Lord Kitchener, the United Kingdom’s Minister of State for War, pointing at the viewer while asserting “Your Country Needs YOU.”
To see more #UncleSamDay artifacts, visit our Digital Artifact Collection: https://fdr.artifacts.archives.gov/search/uncle%20sam
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Two illustrations from an article in the March 1930 issue of Good Housekeeping (about lowering the cost of having a baby) by James Montgomery Flagg.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, let me show you what art by Flagg every single American and likely others elsewhere are quite familiar with:
Yup, he created the best-known image of Uncle Sam. Bet you haven’t seen this other version he did, recommending people buy War Savings Stamps to support the war efforts during WW1 in 1917...
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A Priest in Korea is Moving to the AO3
Many years ago, I was friends with Scarlatti on Livejournal, and I found she had written a whole lot of M*A*S*H fanfiction (twenty stories! That was a whole lot back then!) using the name Iolanthe.
I read all her stories - mostly Hawkeye/Mulcahy: as far as I know, she was the very first person ever to write Hawkeye/Mulcahy slash stories - and I loved them and I started seeing Hawkcahy in the series and one of her stories gave me the idea for the story that eventually grew into Sins and Virtues.
She read the final part of S&V only in first draft - I started sending her sections as soon as I had finished them - because Susan had cancer, and she died, four months before she would have turned 40.
Her website, A Priest In Korea (William Christopher's description of M*A*S*H was "Oh, it's about a priest in Korea") fell into the Wayback machine, and last year, thinking of her stories again and looking for them, I found a complete snapshot of her website, and I thought "I could transfer this over to AO3 and let everyone read them: I bet they have a process for that".
They do. Julie was my Virgil as I walked through the Open Doors and now a priest in Korea has moved to AO3: A priest in Korea03.
The longest story on site isn't even a Hawkeye/Mulcahy story: it's a Francis Mulcahy & Margaret Houlihan story, Polarity, which uses "a creaky old sci-fi plot device" to put Francis into Margaret's body and Margaret into Francis's -
He grew even more uneasy under the appreciative once-over with which Dickinson now favored him, and a blush warmed his face. When he caught sight of Houlihan's sidelong glare, he wondered how she -- or any other woman, for that matter -- would normally handle that kind of attention.
"Well now, Major, I can see you're a take-charge kind of gal," Dickinson drawled. "Meaning no disrespect. But your C.O. would have my head on a platter if I sent you off without an armed escort. Ain't that how you got into this mess in the first place?"
And the next-longest is also not precisely Hawkeye/Mulcahy, Playing the Game:
The night air was pleasant and warm, and I was enjoying the mind-fuzzing effects of several beers, so my pace was unhurried. I'd almost made it to my tent when a man stepped out of the shadows behind the nurses' tent and latched onto my upper arm. "Hold it right there, Mister Vatican," he hissed.
I knew who it was without needing to see his face. No one but Colonel Sam Flagg, alleged CIA operative and all-around loose cannon, had ever addressed me in that fashion. I froze obediently, though my heart was racing and every instinct was telling me to flee for the hills at the earliest opportunity.
"Got a few questions for you," Flagg went on.
(sadly, now and forever unfinished, but rather in the sense of "there should have been more" than "ends on a cliffhanger")
She wrote what is still (as far as I can tell) the only Henry Blake/Trapper story, one of the few Radar/Hawkeye stories, and also Trapper/Mulcahy.
But mostly, she wrote about Francis Mulcahy falling in love with Hawkeye, and Hawkeye's gentle reciprocation.
Between us, we somehow managed to get the tent door open and cross the threshold. At that point, I expected Mulcahy to say goodnight and go pass out in his bunk, which is what I would've done, but instead he had a surprise for me.
As soon as the door closed behind us, he turned in my grasp until we were face to face. Before I had time to fully register what was going on, he'd looped his arms around my neck and was pulling me forward into a kiss.
It was, I think, the softest, sweetest, most tender kiss I've ever received...and one of the most inexplicably erotic.
What can I say? I loved her stories. She inspired me to write Hawkcahy long before that shipname was invented. I never got to meet her.
I'd like you all to read her stories, and thanks to Open Doors/AO3, there they are.
They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
This is sort of a sad post, but it shouldn't be: Susan was hilarious, and it's been a pleasure and an honour being her archivist.
Thanks, Susan.
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