Thomas Cave's Tattoo: This Land

"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

This Land

Anne Guiney has a good editorial in the 1.21.09 issue of The Architect's Newspaper, on the new public works, or the infrastructure projects promised by the Obama administration which could transform large parts of the country while employing people, much the way projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority did in the 1930s.

"For architects, engineers, planners, developers, mass-transit advocates, and anyone with an interest in smart growth, that means it's time to speak up and join the discussion about funds from the federal stimulus package, and to advocate that they be used in ways that are truly sustainable and forward-looking."

Elsewhere in that issue, an article on new buildings for the D.C. Public Library system. The architect, David Adjaye, is quoted: "It's not just about making libraries, but about making centers of excellence for the community."

Note to the Obama administration - the national library system is our intellectual and educational infrastructure, and needs the large-scale imagination and infusion of project funds that bridges and highways are likely to get. The mind travels too. Provide for its adventures.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

Thomas Cave's Tattoo