Thomas Cave's Tattoo: Project!

"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.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Project!

Duh. It dawned on me that the last Great American Depression was full of projects - the WPA, the TVA, illustrated here with Watts Bar Dam, etc. That's what everybody remembers and that's what everybody's excited about now - the prospect of projects. After we decide to admit that it's a New Great American Depression.

As Cher Horowitz says in Amy Heckerling's pre-New Great Depression classic "Clueless," - "Project!"

Obviously, there will be some serious stuff. Infrastructure - the word in and of itself is serious. But there's also stuff like John Morefield's architectural booth (see below), or the drinking-song archive (see above). Serious two.

Readers. At last, we need your help. Give us your ideas for projects. The great public works - big and small, bigger and smaller - of the New Great American Depression. The New WPA. What has to be done? Who stands to do it?

To borrow a nickel from Mr. Morefield, give us your 5 cents worth of advice.

Thank you for listening ma'am.

FYI, an excellent new book on the TVA, "The Tennessee Valley Authority: Design and Persuasion."

Thomas Cave's Tattoo