For Steam Women

Schlesinger Library on the
History of Women in America

Toiling deep in the photo archives of the American Steam Society, in preparation for the Flann O'Brien Centennial Celebration, I discovered this photo of Amelia Earhart. Thought to be from 1935-1937, the last years of her life, we don't know who took it or where. It gives a good idea why she was so beloved--on land or in the sky.

Earhart's disappearance in 1937, a year before the BQE opened, can be seen as a signal moment in American consciousness of travel--from romantic individualism to an increasingly humdrum mass experience.

In "Amelia," one of her most beautiful songs, Joni Mitchell brought the sea, sky, road (alas not rail) together:

A ghost of aviation

Isle of Wight, 1969 (David Hurn)

She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea, like me she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm.