From WOOD COUNTY MUSEUM
The Wood County Museum, 13660 County Home Road, Bowling Green, will host the first installment of its “Great Depression Lecture Series” titled, “Commodity Crisis: Farmers, Markets, and the Rural Economy of the 1920s.” The event will take place on Wednesday, Jan. 28, at 6 p.m., in the Wood County Museum meeting room. The event is free and open to the public. Attendees may RSVP here.
A decade before the United States was thrown into a global economic depression, dire conditions in the countryside offered signs of a looming crisis. The rural farm economy, plagued by flailing commodity prices and ballooning debts, highlighted an underlying instability in global markets. As farmers faced new and unprecedented challenges, policymakers in Washington were slow to act and farm families paid the price. In this program, speakers will begin the dissection of the Great Depression by investigating the period’s first victims: America’s struggling farmers. In doing so, the groundwork will be laid for better understanding the many faces and places affected by this historic economic crisis.
This is the first installment in the Great Depression Lecture Series, an America250 program. This is a Wood County Park District lead event, in partnership with the Wood County Museum.
The museum will host the second installment of the “Great Depression Lecture Series” titled, “The Roaring Twenties? Consumption, Credit, and Change in American Cities.” The event will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 4, at 6 p.m., in the Wood County Museum meeting room. The event is free and open to the public. Attendees may RSVP here.
Wood County Museum will also present “Whose Idea Was That: Ohio Inventors” as part of its America250 Lecture Series. The lecture will take place on Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 6 p.m., at the Wood County Museum meeting room.
Tickets are free for members and $7 each for non-members. Attendees may purchase tickets here. Tickets include a self-guided tour of the museum in addition to the program. To get the member rate, each person attending must be a member. Members may not make reservations for non-members on their behalf.
People may be surprised to learn that Ohio inventors have given the world items such as traffic signals, astronaut suits, Saran Wrap, and Life Savers candy. Attendees can learn about these and other Ohio inventions and inventors in this lecture, told in a storytelling format by Bette Lou Higgins.
Higgins is a founding member and now artistic director of Eden Valley Enterprises, an educational and cultural organization that developed living history programs beginning in the 1970s. Her professional life has been spent combining theatrical skills and knowledge of history to depict Ohio’s historical figures.
