Thomas Cave's Tattoo: Hunger Moon

"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.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Hunger Moon

I went for a run this evening, at the bluest part of the evening, just an hour after sunset, just half an hour left before night. Deep deep twilight, but everything still visible. Beautiful.

What I would wish of a new austerity: fewer lights, less noise. The Cross Island parkway and the Whitestone bridge light up brilliantly at night, across Little Neck bay from where I live, and the traffic is a pleasant rush in the air, like surf, but that deep blue of twilight - like a hush - puts invention to shame.

According to the Indian moons, February is the 'hunger moon.'

This from another book recommendation to make, "Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, & Scuppernong Wine: The Folklore and Art of Southern Appalachian Cooking," by Joseph E. Dabney. Dabney is a retired newspaperman who has also written a history of corn whiskey, "Mountain Spirits."

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

Thomas Cave's Tattoo