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Article: Stop Me if You've Heard This One.(My Turn)(collection of stories about the Great Depression gathered through the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration)
- Article from:
- Newsweek
- Article date:
- February 16, 2009
- Author:
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Don't underestimate the power of storytelling. It got folks through the Depression. It can work now, too.
If my grandmother Blanche were around to read the headlines today, I know just what story she would tell: in the mid-1920s, at the height of the Florida land rush, she was working in a real-estate office in Palm Beach. Times were flush and sales were booming. This exuberance was on display in a showy mosaic map of Florida embedded in the office floor.
To highlight Palm Beach, the artist had cemented in a shiny silver dollar.aBefore long, the speculative bubble burst, helped along by a hurricane. One morning my grandmother and her colleagues arrived ...