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JUNE 2020
New Deal Map Gets a Makeover

We are happy to announce new and improved features to our online national map of New Deal sites. We’ve switched over from Google maps to a new platform, Mapbox.
Visitors to livingnewdeal.org will find a more colorful map ([link removed] ) minus much of the commercial clutter found on Google maps. There are color-coded markers for every mapped site for the New Deal agency responsible for the project and icons to represent the project categories. The pop-up summary for each site is clearer, as are the search, filter and location functions. We will continue to add improvements to make the map more user friendly.
Thanks go to our webmaster, Lisa Thompson, for all her good work over the months it has taken to de-bug the new platform. Please try out the map on your computer or mobile phone. We welcome your questions and feedback (mailto:[email protected].) .
Help Us Spread the Word

That the Living New Deal has accomplished so much, so fast, is in no small part thanks to our volunteer sleuths, who submit their New Deal discoveries to us. Our website now features more than 16,000 unique sites. We’re looking for some social media ambassadors to help us fuel the national conversation about the New Deal. Please repost our content and “Like” us on Facebook ([link removed]) , retweet and follow us on Twitter ([link removed]) , and tag and follow us on Instagram ([link removed]) .
Our online publications, The Fireside ([link removed]) and The Lowdown ([link removed]) reach more than 4,000 readers a month. Forward them to your friends and colleagues and invite them to join our mailing list. Subscriptions are free.
If you have suggestions for our social media team, email us at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .
We look forward to crossing virtual paths with you soon.
Recording New Deal History

Few records exist of any coordinated attempt to sum up all that the New Deal built. That’s probably because the one agency that might have done it— the Historical Records Survey (HRS) ([link removed] ) , established in 1935, was shut down in 1943 during the war.
The HRS was originally part of WPA’s Federal Writers Project ([link removed]) . Its charge was surveying and indexing historically significant records in state, county and local archives. The official mission statement was the "discovery, preservation and listing of basic materials for research in the history of the United States."
The HRS accomplished a great deal in its seven-and-a-half years. How many historians, scholars, lawyers, librarians, and genealogists realize they are standing on the shoulders of WPA workers— many of them women— who preserved and organized the records they are using some 80 years later? Had the HRS survived a few more years it could have done the grand summation that the Living New Deal is now attempting. But then we wouldn’t have the fun of doing it. Learn more ([link removed]) .
Lisa Thompson Acts Out

Since 2013, Lisa Thompson ([link removed]) has tended Livingnewdeal.org ([link removed]) , adding to and troubleshooting our website as it has grown in content and complexity. Her latest upgrades have it humming faster and smoother than ever. Lisa added a glossary of New Deal terms to our site, deciphering the alphabet soup of agencies like SSA, TVA, CWA, NRA, CCC, WPA, PWA or SEC. (LOL!) She’s now working on a mobile app and YouTube page.
Lisa became interested in theater while in high school in Newport Beach, California. Nowadays she’s writing and performing for “Write Away!” an online improv troupe. She’s also taking part in Monday Night Playground ([link removed]) , a prestigious program for emerging playwrights. Her original play, "Strike Home," recently received a staged reading at Berkeley Repertory Theater. “24 Hour Plays—Stories from our zoomed-out, spaced-out, spread-out humanity,” a series of viral monologues ([link removed]) that actors film and post from their phones while sheltered in place, inspired Lisa to record a story of her own. Watch her perform “Murmurations ([link removed]) .”

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Don Redman & His Orchestra,1933
** "Doin' the New Low Down" ([link removed])
was a hit record in 1932, the year FDR was elected president.
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Our mailing address is:
The Living New Deal
Department of Geography
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720

** Susan Ives (mailto:[email protected])
, Editor
** Sheera Bleckman ([link removed])
, Production

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