The history of America's weather forecasts

0:00Lynn Heidelbaugh:Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

0:16Rebecca Trautmann:WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

0:20Lynn Heidelbaugh:I want to create enough interest in water through my work that others will begin to share the same beauty and the same understanding that I have. What the work of renowned Indigenous artist Truman Lowe reveals about the story of American art.

0:53Lynn Heidelbaugh:It's Friday, May 1st, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBOR Boston. I'm Shiko Theuri. Today on the show, we continue our series examining 25 objects that helped tell the story of America in honor of the country's 250th birthday, including an essential relic of the past that helped predict the future. Before the dawn of broadcast, Americans got their weather reports at a frequented neighborhood fixture.

1:23Rebecca Trautmann:And because at the time most rural Americans were having to go to the post office to pick up their mail, it had the forecast and the synopsis of what happened the day before.

1:41Lynn Heidelbaugh:But first, American history is often told through dates and documents. But in a new exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Indian, it's told through running water and dense forests. The exhibit, titled Water's Edge, showcases the work of the late Ho-Chunk artist Truman Lowe. Rebecca Troutman is the curator of this new exhibit and tells Indira Lakshmanan about Feather Canoe. It's a minimalist sculpture made of willow saplings, feathers, and copper wire. Yes, so it's a very kind of delicate, minimalist sculpture made using peeled willow branches or saplings with white feathers suspended within.

2:23Lynn Heidelbaugh:It's made in the shape of a canoe, but Truman Lowe is kind of reducing, simplifying the shape of the canoe to its essence. It has an openness and an airiness to it that really gives the sense of floating or of suspension in the air. And to give listeners who can't see it an idea, I just want to say that it's the size, it's life size, like a real canoe. And it's just beautiful. It's the shape of maybe a very simplified fish hanging on the wall with gorgeous feathers in this very minimalist scaffolding, let's say, made of saplings. It's just a beautiful work. Tell us about this artist Truman Lowe and why he was important.

3:09Lynn Heidelbaugh:Yes, so Truman Lowe was primarily a sculptor. He also did drawings and paintings as well. And he created works that portray or suggest the waters and the woodlands of the place where he was raised, as well as canoes. Canoes were another favorite subject in his work. Well, we found an interview that Lowe did with the University of Wisconsin. He talks about his inspiration from the natural world, especially from the woods of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin's reservation where he grew up. Let's listen. I want to create enough interest in water through my work that others will begin to share the same beauty and the same understanding that I have of moving water.

3:55Lynn Heidelbaugh:A lot of times it's taken for granted. And there's only so much water that exists on this earth. I love that sentiment there. And that work is part of a larger exhibit you have on display that includes sculptures, drawings, and other works by Truman Lowe. Tell us why you chose Feather Canoe as a piece that exemplifies his art. You know, so Truman Lowe grew up along the Black River in Wisconsin, spent a lot of time there with his family in the Ho-Chunk community there, fishing, swimming, felt this really strong connection to moving water to rivers, streams, waterfalls, and to the canoes that are used to travel these waters.

4:37Lynn Heidelbaugh:He spoke a lot about how he really admired Ho-Chunk people's knowledge of wood and of trees and their ways of building things with wood, whether dwellings or canoes, other kinds of structures. He loved recreational canoeing, that sensation of floating between the sky and the earth. And he loved the structure of a canoe, the way that it's so ideally suited for the waterways that it's intended to travel. And so it was really an important subject of his work. And it's just such a beautiful piece, too. and it's in our collection at the National Museum of the American Indian. What was Truman Lowe's impact on tribal communities through his art?

5:14Lynn Heidelbaugh:So in addition to being an artist, he's also very deeply connected to the place that he was from and to Ho-Chunk history, cultural knowledge, creative practices. And so he had kind of an independence to his work that I think was inspiring to a lot of younger artists. He also was an educator. He taught sculpture for 35 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, teaching generations of artists, including many Native artists. And he was this museum's first curator of contemporary art and organized some really important and influential exhibitions and helped to grow our collection of contemporary art.

5:53Lynn Heidelbaugh:And that was before his death in 2019. Now, the Native American story is, of course, fundamental, literally seminal in the story of America. Tell us what you think Truman Lowe's artwork and his also his work as a curator at your museum. Tell us about the larger story of this country at 250. Yeah, so, you know, through Truman's work and all these different roles, he really helped to bring us to the place we are today, where the work of Indigenous contemporary artists is being collected and shown in mainstream major art museums, being shown next to and in conversation with work by their now Native contemporaries.

6:38Lynn Heidelbaugh:And this really enriches the story of American art. It really expands that conversation and the possibilities of what American art can be. Rebecca Troutman is an assistant curator of contemporary art at the National Museum of the American Indian part of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much, Rebecca. Thank you so much.

7:01Lynn Heidelbaugh:Coming up next, David Folkenflick speaks to a curator at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. about our nation's first weather reports. That's after the break.

7:30Rebecca Trautmann:Hey, it's Ben Brock Johnson from WBUR Podcasts. As a dad, I will say that climate change feels overwhelming. But my kids, they meet every challenge with so much imagination. That's why we made The Midnight Rebellion, a podcast for our whole family where we can put our heads together. Because every choice we make can help save the planet. Find and listen to The Midnight Rebellion in your podcast feed right now.

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9:21Rebecca Trautmann:Think about how you checked on the weather this morning. Use an app, a push alert, maybe your favorite public radio station. Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Americans got that same information from the post office. Farmer's bulletins were early versions of weather reports put together every evening except Sunday in Washington, D.C. These bulletins were information lifelines for rural America. One of them from 1879 now sits in the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Lynn Heidelbrough is a curator at the museum who specializes in the history of mail in this country. We asked her to tell us about Farmers' Bulletins as we look at 25 objects that tell the story of America.

10:00Rebecca Trautmann:Lynn, welcome to Here and Now. Happy to be here. Thank you. So, Lynn, what was the inspiration and the need for these Farmers' Bulletins? Very early on in American history, you have folks like Thomas Jefferson who are taking daily weather recordings and trying to understand their natural world and systematize it. And then when the first secretary of the Smithsonian begins, he sets up a series of observational stations, 150 of them, with the help of volunteers and the Army studying various areas across the U.S. So by the time the post office department is involved, the Department of the Army is running a weather bureau and harnessing the new invention of telegraphs and the telegraph network, being able to get those reports out.

10:50Rebecca Trautmann:Where were these bulletins typically displayed? Yeah, they were displayed at post offices. So this is one of the many services that the post office was doing in addition to the mail. And because at the time most rural Americans were having to go to the post office to pick up their mail, it was often a daily, weekly kind of occurrence. They would be at their local post office and it had the forecast and the synopsis of what happened the day before. So what was and what will be? Tell me about the kinds of information that readers found on these bulletins as they stopped by their post office to get an update.

11:31Rebecca Trautmann:Yeah, so it has information that was being reported by observers for the Army Signal 4, and those were being telegraphed back by midnight. And then this report was put together by 1 a.m. It could be anything about rain totals, the direction of the wind, much more about current conditions than forecasts. I mean, the addition that you have up in the website from 1879 is kind of incredible to me. It was almost exactly 147 years ago to the day, a little bit more than 147 years. It is weather information for the entire country, region by region, a breakdown, really an early version of the weather app on my phone.

12:15Rebecca Trautmann:Among the information is stuff about the Ohio River. It says it's fallen 16 inches at Cincinnati, but it has risen afoot at Louisville and 27 inches in Pittsburgh. That level of granular detail, how did it compile all of this information, the federal government at that time? Yeah, it was through a network of the Army Signal Corps and other observers with some basic but essential scientific equipment, thermometers and barometers, and actually to economize. They were using ciphers, so they were using coded words and numbers so that they could not spend so much money on sending a telegraph. So hundreds of these reports were coming in from all over the U.S.

13:00Rebecca Trautmann:and then were being compiled in Washington, D.C., printed and then distributed to post offices. During this time, the country was growing rapidly in population and in terms of how far west the frontier extended, right? How important were bulletins like this in allowing the country to cohere, particularly as we think about rural parts of the country? Since we're looking at 1874, these farmers' bulletins, this is a time period, as I mentioned, that the farmers are going to the post office, whereas the counterparts in urban areas are starting to get their mail at home. So it's really tying the American and American experience together through the network of the post office department, being a conduit of information and personal messages, messages from your government and circulars and notices coming in from your local governments.

13:56Rebecca Trautmann:Eventually, these bulletins get replaced by newer technology. You mentioned the telegraph. Then comes radio, telephones, television, presumably replacing bulletins like this. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, what do these bulletins tell us about our country during those decades, the late 1800s, the early 1900s, before the explosion of technology that really transformed the 20th century? It's one of those incremental ways that you're experimenting and trying to harness new inventions. And you're right, the telephones come in to speed the type of information, amount of information that's being exchanged about weather reports.

14:38Rebecca Trautmann:So the role of the post office fades within this. But at the core, the interest is still understanding our natural world and how it affects us, how it affects our commerce, our agriculture. How do you take care of your crops and your livelihood, your livestock? We've been speaking to Lynn Heidelbaugh. She's a curator at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Lynn, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.

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16:12Lynn Heidelbaugh:Support for this podcast and the following message come from strawberry.me. If you could go back and talk to your younger self, would you tell yourself that you have a job that truly makes you happy? Many people are stuck in jobs they've outgrown or never really wanted. A career coach from strawberry.me can help you move on to something you actually love. Benefit from having a dedicated coach in your corner and get 50 % off your first coaching session at strawberry.me. This message comes from IXL. IXL's Level Up Diagnostic gives immediate benchmark results along with personalized action plans that link directly to IXL's skill practice.

16:53Lynn Heidelbaugh:More at IXL.com slash NPR. And before we go, how much sleep did you get last night? How about the night before? If your sleep tracking device is often shaming you more than praising you, there may be a way to fix that. And that matters because the National Institutes of Health say sleep deprivation can increase your risk of heart disease, obesity, dementia, and many other health conditions you don't want. Professor Luc Baudois of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, suggests a technique called cognitive shuffling.

17:29Rebecca Trautmann:Choose a random word like the word piano, and then you would actually spell it out in your head. And for each letter, you try to imagine something that starts with that letter. So with the word piano, it starts with a P. So start by imagining a piano. You might imagine a peach, a park, you know, and you linger for five to 10 seconds on each one. then moving on to another one. Maybe you know somebody called Paul. And then when you're bored or can't think of anything else that starts with the first letter, you move on to the second letter, in this case I, and you might think of India, igloo, or island.

18:03Rebecca Trautmann:So you imagine one thing after another, and then eventually if this works, you doze off and you might not even make it to the third letter.

18:09Lynn Heidelbaugh:It's a stimulating conversation you can find at hereandnow.org. Let us know if it works better than counting sheep.

18:22Lynn Heidelbaugh:Here and Now Anytime comes from NPR and WBOR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Will Wacke. Today's editors were Michael Scotto and Kat Welch. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Andre Peralta. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And the executive producer of Here and Now is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. We'll be back Monday.

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