“Among the many WPA initiatives I discovered in my early research were archaeological digs and historical re-creations, and they gave me the idea for an analogous effort: to create an ever-expanding excavation to reveal a buried and lost civilization. This was not, however, a civilization engulfed by the jungles of Guatemala or the sands of Egypt. It was our own history and a monument to an era a mere eighty years old but almost entirely forgotten by what Gore Vidal called the ‘United States of Amnesia.’”… Gray Brechin’s “Uncovering the New Deal’s Hidden History,” detailing the origins and development of The Living New Deal, has been reprinted in the newsletter of the Blue Mountain Center, an Upstate New York-based, nonprofit community space for writers, artists, and activists. (It initially appeared as “A New Deal for California: Finding a Hidden History in Plain Sight” for BOOM: A Journal of California. ). Check it out and look back on our salad days!