Training Literature Field Unit No. 1

Lawrence Britton (SN2), on duty at port lookout aboard USS Nassau (CVE-16)

Helytimes began in 2012.  Our idea was

1. become good at writing for the Internet
2. a writer should have a website
3. have a space to collect, digest and share items of interest.

We’ve tried to come up with a mission statement or guiding purpose, but the truth is, this is stuff we had to get out of our head.

The healthiest thing to do was share it.

The best way to put it might be a place to share crazy interesting things we’ve come across.

Since then we’ve published over 1,050 posts.  We’re just now starting to get good at it, in our opinion.

Here are the twenty-one most popular posts:

1. No On Measure S (by guest Hayes)

The moral here is probably that we should start a local LA news-and-takes site written by other people.

1. Sundown, Gordon Lightfoot (1974)

2. Mountaineering Movies on Netflix Instant, Ranked

3. Fred Trump

4. Cinderella and Interrogation Technique

5. The Great Debates 

6. Karl Ove Knausgaard

7. Fascinated by: Ray Dalio

8. How Big Was Mexico City in 1519?

9. American Historical Figure Who Reminds Me Of Trump

10. Losing The War by Lee Sandlin 

11. Conversations With Kennedy

12. Oil Wells In National Parks

13. THE WONDER TRAIL 

14. Gay Hobo Slang

15. Vertigo Sucks

16. Jackie Smoking Pregnant

17. The story of Cahokia

18. Ireland should take in two million refugees 

19. Twenty Greatest Australian Artistic Accomplishments of All Time 

20. The White House Pool 

One lesson here might be to have more local LA journalism written by other people.  Keep meaning to start a whole site for that but I do have a full-time job plus several other projects.

In our opinion the most successful post on Helytimes was

Record Group 80: Series: General Photographic File Of the Department of the Navy, 1943-1958 

although it didn’t crack the top 21, just felt like a time where we added something of value to the Internet and readers responded.

It’s about the work of the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit, also known as the Training Literature Field Unit No. 1, assembled by the great photographer Edward Steichen.

One thread of Helytimes is attempts to reach into the past and find the sources that give us understanding of the past.

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Two personal favorites:

Everything is something.

and

Special Snowflakes

This has been the annual performance review and address to the Helytimes readership:

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That photo taken by one of Steichen’s guys, Wayne Miller:

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