Thomas Cave's Tattoo: Is Everybody Happy?

"Thomas Cave's Tattoo"

I've started a blog that discusses what I call the New Great Depression - the idea that the next few years will constitute a Depression era, and not simple recession. I believe that to understand it in that way will enrich it, and encourage everyone in this country to make this era a creative period, a positive time, an act of construction, and not a cause for panic, chaos and fear. This is a chance for renaissance.

If the New Great Depression produces art, literature, theater, film, community, and a discovery of human value, as the first one did, who wouldn't want to be a part of it.

I am here to barter, trade, share, talk, listen, discuss, argue, understand, make fun, and make peace with the lack of the old prosperity. It was corrupt, and corroded, and it's gone. The dead weight of spoils has been lifted.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

"About Thomas Cave"

Mr. Cave is the gentleman in the photograph that graces this home page. The photograph was taken by the American photographer Dorothea Lange, who so powerfully documented the country and its citizens during the Great Depression. I found this photograph at www.shorpy.com, a website with a specialty in Depression images. According to Shorpy's site, the Lange photograph, titled "535-07-5248 and Wife," was taken in Oregon in August of 1939. The gentleman is described as an unemployed lumber worker. His tattoo is his Social Security number, by which he is referred to in the title of the photograph. A public records search conducted by Shorpy's revealed that the number belonged to Thomas Cave, who was born in 1912 and died in 1980 in Portland. His wife's name, Ann Kathryn, who died in 2000, appears on their tombstone, a photograph of which is appended under Shorpy's readers' comments.

Mr. Cave is 27 years old in Lange's picture.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Is Everybody Happy?

I was reminded this morning of a favorite recent book, "The Happiest Man in the World: An Account of the Life of Poppa Neutrino" by Alec Wilkinson, and out this month in paperback. Neutrino is a nearly indigent person Wilkinson has written a curious life and times account of. The proposition that his subject is the happiest man in the world - without root and in pursuit of his dreams - remains the book's beautifully-written debate until the very last word. If hard times are often unhappy, happiness, Wilkinson shows us of Neutrino, can often be difficult too.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

1 comments:

Alex said...: You're right. I LOVED this book, and it's perfect Depression-era reading. I might have to propose it to my Book Club, which is a perfect Depression-era social group especially when everybody gets their books from the public library. . .; January 30, 2009 11:56 AM

Thomas Cave's Tattoo