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NPR

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Researchers To Recreate Historic European Scents In $3.3M Study : NPR

The team will then work with chemists and perfumers to recreate around 120 scents — with the plan to help museums integrate them into exhibits to create an immersive step into history.

"If there's one thing that I hope will come out of this project, it's that the people that we interact with will go away thinking, what are the smells around me every day?" Tullet said. "How can I train my nose a bit better and engage with the smells around me?"

During the Bubonic plague, you might have smelled burning tar or rosemary, which was believed to ward off the disease. As the world faces another global pandemic, our smell-scapes are being changed again, he said.

Scent is precious, and that's even more apparent during the pandemic, he said. One of the symptoms of the coronavirus can be a loss of smell. Once it's gone, many people realize how important it is, he said.

Rural Resettlement Administration

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I’ve been trying to learn more about the Rural Resettlement Administration. 🚜

Did families benefit from their government resettlement or did they end up suffering over the long term? A lot has been written about the Japanese resettlement in the World War and the Indian Resettlement program to encourage natives to move off reservations in the 1950s but not about the earlier program. That’s why I shared that article earlier about Rexford Tugwell. Didn’t answer my question but still interesting.

Rexford Tugwell

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Rexford Tugwell

Roosevelt asked Tugwell what post he would like. He replied that he would like to appointed assistant secretary of agriculture under Henry A. Wallace. The authors of American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace (2001) has commented: "They presented a rather odd picture together - the dapper Columbia University professor and the tousled Iowa editor - but they made a good team. They were men of ideas and shared a vision of government that was activist and progressive. Wallace knew the practical aspects of American farming in the way a sailor knew the stars. And Tugwell knew Franklin Roosevelt."

On 8th March 1933, Wallace and Tugwell met with Roosevelt and asked him to expand the scope of the special congressional session to include the agricultural crisis as well as the banking emergency. Roosevelt agreed to this suggestion and it was agreed to summon the nation's farm leaders to an "emergency conference" to be held in Washington. Wallace went on national radio and told the country: "Today, in this country, men are fighting to save their homes. That is not just a figure of speech. That is a brutal fact, a bitter commentary on agriculture's twelve years' struggle.... Emergency action is imperative."

After being elected, Roosevelt appointed Tugwell as an assistant secretary to the Agriculture Department. In 1934 he was promoted to under under secretary where he worked closely with Henry Wallace. Roosevelt consulted Tugwell about many aspects of the New Deal and helped to plan the Agricultural Adjustment Act.