Thomas Cave's Tattoo: Learn To Sew

"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, February 6, 2009

Learn To Sew

You might have missed this. If so, it makes pretty eye-opening reading.

"It looked as if the bad times had finally caught up to Ruth Taube, after she had managed, for 42 years, to float above temporary cutbacks, dwindling resources and unfortunate turns of events at her place of employment."

Read on.

And this: novelist and artist Douglas Coupland's observation on consumerism and the new economy (aka the New Great Depression) on the New York Times op-ed page, that "On the one hand, a big drop in consumption sounds like the advent of a new utopia where people stay at home to eat, play board games with neighbors and discover life's simpler pleasures. On the other, it might mean a social disaster to rival the fall of the Aztecs."

The 'economy' shed 598,000 jobs in January. And the market's up. It's like a vodka and Bull.

Below, Mr. Coupland's "Corporate Safety Blanket No. 1. The bailout in cotton with a silk trim, in an edition of ten.

Or, contact Ms. Taube about a reasonable facsimile. She copied her daughter's wedding dress from a dress at Bergdorf Goodman.

Or, learn to sew. It's going to come in handy.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

Thomas Cave's Tattoo