Thomas Cave's Tattoo: The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself

"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 23, 2009

The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself

"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today."

This from Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inaugural address in 1933. I think we're talking about the "D" word.

“We just have a difference here, and I’m president.”

This from the New York Times account of a "polite but pointed exchange" between Mr. Obama and the No. 2 House Republican, Eric Cantor of Virginia." The President took note of the parties’ fundamental differences on tax policy toward low-wage workers, and insisted that his view would prevail.

Inauguration.

Check.

One week down, and counting.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

Thomas Cave's Tattoo