Trash To Treasure

A friend alerted me to superforest.org, a site with a wealth of interest, good intention, healing attitude, and utility. Very much in the spirit of what we are trying to do here, but with an enviable professionalism too. Please visit it.

Among the recent posts, an item on a 12 year old inventor, Max Wallack, and his "Home Dome."
















Max seems to understand the idea that he could be living in a Depression. He is the 2008 winner of the Trash to Treasure competition, sponsored by Intel and featured on "Design Squad," a PBS kids show on design/build on WGBH.

Trash to treasure is a powerful tool, in the right hands. Mr. Obama - give this gentleman a job. Infrastructure czar? Emergency housing authority? Wallack's budget was literally peanuts: packing peanuts.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

Park Avenue Brisket

As promised, "Park Avenue Brisket," from "Mrs. Smith." (See Wed., Jan. 28, for the circumstances by which I came to be served it.)

1 first cut brisket aprox 4 lb , trimmed
5 carrots, each peeled and cut in 3
1 large potatoe, unpeeled and cut in 8

sauce
14 oz can organic diced tomatoes
1/2 c red wine (on the sweeter side)
18 oz heintz ketchup
18 oz water
1 packet lipton recipe secrets onion soup mix (put through a sieve and discard solid onions pieces)

~preheat oven to 350F
~in large bowl combine sauce ingredients
~place flameproof casserole pan oven over high heat, and lightly brown brisket on both sides
~add carrots and potatoes to pan around meat and then pour sauce over
~cover and bring sauce to a boil
~move covered pan into oven and leave for 3 hours, or until meat is very tender
~remove pan and let cool
~slice meet against the grain and put back into pan
~if cooking liquids have become too thick add with water before putting meat back in
~place covered pan in oven for another 20 minutes
~at the last minute, remove lid and broil to crisp fat on top

My gut feeling - some pun intended - is that you should only serve this to close friends, because you will make a pig of yourself - as I did - eating it.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

"Playful, Elegant"

Looking for historical information on hobos and companion animals, I came across Shannon Moriarty's blog post on the homeless and their pets at change.org - and why shelter (people not animal) policies help keep the homeless and their pets on the street.


I've seen them; you have too. Read about it - and relief efforts several cities have mounted - and the readers' comments, including homeless with pets.

I would still appreciate leads on historical information on Great Depression- era hobos and their companion animals.

What got me started? I adopted a kitten between lay-offs last year, the first animal I've ever taken in. And the first cat I've ever lived with - I grew up with dogs. I'm assuming it was myself I was feeling sorry for, but, for whatever reason, it seemed to make sense. I don't believe I acted irresponsibly, though life at home is more precarious now than it was then.


















Her name is Lucy, which was my mother's middle name. I felt in need of some of my mother's spirit when I adopted her, I think. She's a classic American tabby.



Lucy is also what vets call a "CH cat." I didn't know this when I lofted her out of a cage and up onto my shoulder at the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington, NY on a busy Sunday of adoptions last August, wearing her red kitten's collar with the scarred adoption-ID tag. I just thought she was good-looking. She is.

CH, or cerebellar hypoplasia, is a result of a mother cat's exposure to feline infectious enteritis, or distemper, while pregnant. Kittens are born with damage to the cerebellum, which controls coordination and balance. Though the damage is permanent, it is not degenerative and CH cats have a normal life expectancy.

Lucy wobbles and wags when she walks up to you, all expectation, like an excited little kitty. Part of that is CH. She races and plays, and chases and crouches and prances away when she wants to be hunted. She falls down stairs and hits the sides of beds when she tries sailing up onto them, and lands on her back when she leaps.

It's Depression-era comedy, but now as then, there's a Big Message involved.

She is the happiest creature I know. It's daunting. No ambivalence about anything; no fear; no sadness; no doubt that she's loved, an optimism, as each day begins, that it will be full of all the things that she likes the most. And that everything and everyone around her will be instrumental and supportive in her enjoying them.

The parallels to my attitudes to adversity - or lack of them - are pretty obvious. It's no wonder you'd want something like that around if you lived on the street, one of life's travelers.

Lucy's spoiled, as rotten as I can make her. When I was last employed, this meant weekly new toys from a pet store on Madison Avenue, the best money could buy, up to about five dollars: wicker ping-pong balls with tail feathers sticking out the back, velour monkeys on bungee cords that you dangle from window locks, sausage-like tummy pillows upholstered in a leopard print, ethically queasily and realistic baby mice - anything American entrepreneurs and Chinese factory workers could hold hands across the ocean about, and make for 10 cents and sell for five dollars. The store had McCain and Obama look-a-like dog toys during the campaigns, the message being, I'm guessing, that you buy your opponent and feed it to the dogs. Cute. The smaller and whiter the dog, in certain Manhattan zip codes, let's say, the funnier the joke got. Or pit bulls in the Bronx.

Which brings me to my point. I don't buy animal toys anymore. There's the $. And the fact that I don't walk down Madison Avenue on a daily basis.

What does Lucy do? I hear mobilizing animal-lovers ask. Stop right there.

Now, I make them.

Exhibit A:
























This is the white plastic foam rings that safe-package a cylinder of blank DVDs when you buy them, tied together with a piece of butcher's twine.

It makes Lucy beserk. In a good way. (Well, what do we know?) Is it as good as - or as educational - as a wicker ping-pong ball with tail feathers sticking out the back? Readers?

It reminded me, the minute I made it, of the great Anni Albers' jewelry, constructed from hardware-store hardware.






















To quote New York's Museum of Modern Art museum store website, which is selling the Anni Albers' design, paper clips and a sink drainer, above, in a 'studio jewelry kit' -

"During World War II, when materials were in short supply, Albers invented ways to create playful, elegant jewelry using simple components usually found in hardware shops and stationary stores."

I don't think Lucy would have a problem with that.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

FYI, please check the wealth of 'junk jewelry' sites - like Junk Jewelry - which take the everyday and attempt to transform it. We could only hope to claim this aim as our own.

The 787

The $787 billion stimulus package is history. Signed, sealed, and no one knows what's going to be delivered, or where it will deliver us.

















It calls to mind America's other 787: Boeing's 'Dreamliner.' The first major airliner to use composite materials for most of its construction, according to its manufacturer. In other words, we don't really know what it's made of, we're just going to get in it and hope it goes up. Four production delays: we're still waiting. But we want it to fly. See you in 2010.

Meanwhile, we're out on the tarmac in President Obama's Dreamliner. Nothing could be more aptly named, given the expectations. If the economy takes off, will everyone grab hands and cheer, like they do on flights that hit turbulence and pull above it? Or just order drinks.

Hawaii or bust!

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

Musical Chairs

I wanted comfort food this evening, but I didn't want comfort food from my corner of the world - which is feeling a little tight these days - so I'm making Vietnamese beef and carrot stew, from the excellent Corinne Trang's "Authentic Vietnamese Cooking: Food from a Family Table." As Ms. Trang explains, it's a Vietnamese dish based on the classic French boeuf aux carottes.












The ingredients are a litany of tastes one might find satisfying in an Asian stew: five-spice powder, coconut, lemongrass, chilies, ginger, etc. Ms. Trang calls for de-fatting it, but I always enjoy eating the first round of Asian stew just the way it usually is: fatty. It turns rice into a major chow.

I worked up a hunger at New York City's Department of Finance in Jamaica, Queens. I went to appeal a parking ticket. Two things I learned that I'll pass along to the other hardened criminals in the room: if you are standing next to your car, and your car is double-parked, you're double-parked. And can be ticketed by an industrious traffic officer, holding back the relentless tide of decivilizing forces loose in the world today. Two: if you have a valid registration, but it's not stuck to the inside corner of your windshield, you are in violation of not properly displaying a valid registration.

Ka-ching. Another blow against my amoral empire. There are automatic payment kiosks at the Finance Department, which operate like ATMs, though I don't know if you can actually deposit money against future violations. You're lawless - there are bound to be more. And there is a large maze of 'hearing rooms' where you go to appeal, like fluorescently-lit confessionals. You sit across a desk from an unattractive hologram that smells - I mean, a city official - and robotically discuss the terms of your debt to society. You get an instant discount for just having showed up - they knock off some money - but in exchange, you're guilty without argument, and if you argue, they take your discount away and increase the original fine. If you ask to see a judge, they tell you a judge is going to make it even worse.

Ain't life grand. Add a little five-spice to it.

My favorite part of the exchange: the Department will arrange financing with you, if you can't pay the fine in full. But, if you can't pay the fine because you're unemployed, for example, and the $143 fine would be half of what the other government agency - the unemployment bureau - sends you every week, Finance can't finance you because you have to have a job to be eligible for financing. In case you don't pay the financing - they can put a lean on your salary. The other way to pay - if you're unemployed, for example, and don't have the money, period - is to forfeit your vehicle. Easy! You can always search for jobs on-line. Who needs a car?

This exquisite construct brought to mind the bail-out now being pushed through the Great Bowel of bureaucracy - our national government - and my realization on the drive home that if the government works similarly on all levels (I'm confident it does), then trillions of dollars are being made available for what, and who is eligible, and how and why? My lasting image of the Department of Finance was the seating arrangement by which we were made to wait outside the hearing rooms. A line of chairs against one wall, the chair at the top of the line being the chair that the next person being seen occupied. When he or she stood up to go in, the guard in the waiting room made everyone stand up and advance one chair and sit down again, like a game of musical chairs. There were about forty people involved, including mothers with babies and the lame. And it happened about once a minute.










This, I thought, is our great nation - patient, lawless, obedient, trusting, shortchanged of common sense - participating in the government's game of citizenship. Start the music.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

Yes! We Have No Bananas

Breaking news on the head-in-the-sand front. The New York Times, in a small editorial piece by Eduardo Porter in Tuesday's paper, discussed the D-word head-on, and posed the question, "Are we in a Depression?"

Well, God bless the New York Times. We are or we aren't, it decided, kinda, or we aren't, but we are, sorta, woulda. It's all a question of what you call what we're in.

It's semantics "Dance With The Stars." This quick left-to-right, right-to-left tango after Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain dropped the D-word inadvertently (so matter of factly, in fact, that you'd swear there's a Depression on) in a talk about fiscal stimulus. Aides called it a 'slip of the tongue,' as though he'd stepped on a banana peel with his mouth. Then there's the International Monetary Fund's Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who said the first-world was already in a Depression. What'does she know? And on and on. It's entertaining, depressing - as in the other well-known sense of the word - and here at "Thomas Cave's Tattoo," we believe, validating.






It's a Depression. Let's get on with it; call some friends over; smoke some bananas, get out the sewing kits and patch some jeans. Look good walking past the restaurants you used to go into.




The best bit in Mr. Porter's piece is President Jimmy Carter heavy-hoodooing his inflation expert, Albert Kahn, about using the word "depression" in speeches in 1978 on soaring inflation. Mr. Kahn routinely replaced it with "banana," which no one blinked at.

Yes! We Have No Bananas. We Have No Bananas Today.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

FYI, "Yes! We Have No Bananas" is a song by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn from the 1922 Broadway revue, "Make It Snappy." It was sung by Eddie Cantor. Benny Goodman and Spike Jones also covered the song.

For a recorded excerpt, click here for The Authentic History Center's clip.

Preservation Road

It's deja vu all over again, as those greater than me have said. The WPA housing projects from the first Great American Depression are now being threatened with destruction, or razed, just as the New Great American Depression is getting underway - with housing projects. Read Tracie Rozhon's New York Times article, "New Deal Architecture Faces Bulldozer." As Ms. Rozhon, a former colleague, quotes Robert A. Caro as saying, "It’s ironic to be tearing them down just when America is going through tough times again." Caro wrote about the W.P.A. in “The Power Broker,” his book about the builder Robert Moses. “We should be preserving them and honoring them. They serve as monuments to the fact that it is possible to combine infrastructure with beauty.”

What goes around comes around, etc. There are dozens of sturdy sayings for situations like this.

Should we be preserving this stuff? Your call - call in please. Or, should we be concentrating on the beautiful, contemporary flower of the New Great Depression, and what it could / will produce? Are preservationists marching down the right road? Or do we need a next generation of preservationists who are prepared to preserve us - and not the buildings coming down around us. Priorities please: and your comments.

Is this a New Great Depression? It's certainly beginning to smell that way, even if the press won't come out and call it that. What would you call this?

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

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.

The New WPA

Welcome to the New WPA. I promised you a treasury of American drinking songs. I don't know if this constitutes a public-works project, but, so it begins. This was performed for me in the comfort of someone else's living room, by one of the surf-mama Courages of San Diego. The lady will remain anonymous, out of propriety 'from another age,' but suffice it to say, she goes by the name "Nolans Mom" in some circles. She adopted a full sailor's tilt in her stance when she prepared her audience to hear her rendition. For the musical, I'm trying to get you a recording too. In an e-mail message, Nolans Mom explained that her great uncle taught her the song in the '80s, when he was in his 80s. And her father claims he learned it in med school in the '40s.

Attention Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress: The Drinking Song Archive. "T'was a night in late September"

T'was a night in late September,
and a night that I'll remember,
when to bed to walk to home I vainly tried..
As my feet began to stutter,
and I lay down in the gutter,
a pig came up and lay down by my side.
Oh we talked of stormy weather as when two friends get together,
and a lady passing by was heard to say:
"You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses,
and the pig got up and slowly walked away....he walked away

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

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."

Are You Polite When You're Wrong?

I applied for a journalism fellowship this week, which involved a lot - of a lot - of paperwork, in quadruplicate. It's a long shot; let's hope for the best.

I also applied for a job at a large national bookstore chain, seeking minimum-wage employment to pay the bills. You apply on-line, and it involves a lot - of a lot - of virtual paperwork, at least as much as applying for a major fellowship as one of journalism's nascent geniuses. Somehow I didn't expect the one to have much to do with the other, but, it did.

The bookstore application is roughly 40 pages (count 'em) long. For a job that will pay you 12 dollars an hour, at tops. It involves dozens of pages of questions that try psychologically sheep-herding you into buzzing shears, like, do you get angry often, do you smile, do you get on well with others, are you polite when you're wrong, are you always right (yes), do you go into sleep mode if no one gives you something to do, are you a born leader. My favorite question - much more upfront - are you a convicted felon? Nothing subtle there, except, the application assures you parenthetically that your answer will have no bearing on your potential employment. Uh, huh. Yes, I'm a convicted felon. Book theft. What can I say? I love to read. And I'm too poor to buy books. That's why I'm applying for a minimum-wage job.

The application also asks for as many references as the fellowship did. Well, let's see, Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. Ask for Reverend Dave.

















My Greek landlord Bobby in Astoria once gave me an invaluable piece of advice. "Billy" he said. "Always write your own check." By this he meant, don't expect anyone else to be able to employ you as well as you can employ yourself.

So how did we get into this mess?

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

Lemons

If life gives you lemons, design a lemonade stand.




Seattle architect John Morefield has set up a booth at the Ballard farmers' market, where he gives design advice for five cents a pop, into a can. He told a local reporter he was inspired in part by Lucy's psychiatric advice booth in the comic strip "Peanuts."














Morefield was laid off twice this past year, he says. On Sunday, he made 35 cents, reported komonews.com, and he continues to make a lot of press. (Trapezoidal titanium masters, be forewarned. The New World may well want a lot more of Mr. Morefield, and a lot less of lemon luxury goods that leak.)

The nickels go to a food bank; the press Mr. Morefield keeps to network with.

This is New Great Depression resourcefulness at its best. Way to go Mr. Morefield. I'm joining the line for a word with you, and happy to pay the nickel. Hope we can have you here.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

The Living and the Dead

The snow. It's snowing here on Little Neck bay, where I live. Do you remember, Joyce's wondrous line, about the snow falling on the living and the dead.

I put on an LP, now that night is here, and was struck by my gesture. That's how the indigent affluent spend their evenings - with fine stereos, turntables, not CDs. It gets worse. The LP I put on is a recording of Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier," sung by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. A collectible recording? We'll find out when I try selling it, along with much of what I own, in the weeks ahead.

This recording was given to me by a friend on his deathbed. How's that for opera? He knew he was sick and dying, so he cleared up the broader points of the business of being alive, settled into his (borrowed) house, saw a short list of friends, and drank the hemlock. It was actually a weak tea with a stupefying dose of drugs in it. A generous and humane agency in New York helped it happen.

I left with his LPs. Music that I hope he took with him somehow. Including Ms. Schwarzkopf, as the unhappy Marschallin. How to avoid the pain of age, even with money? Die youngish.

Money's not my problem right now. As in, I haven't got any. I have the scratchy voices of the past, on vinyl, like memories that relied on available technology. That's what memories do as you get older. At a certain point, they start popping and skipping. And drifting, on to the living and the dead, like -

Recently on CD, and on-line: "Lookbook," with Grant Cutler and Maggie Morrison.














Completely addictive.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

Breadlines & Champagne

If it takes a Depression to bring back the Depression, then, so be it.


You couldn't ask for a greater gift than the "Breadlines & Champagne" Depression-era movie series just opened at the Film Forum in New York. Fifty films from back in the day. Capra, Sturges, La Cava, Wyler, Hawks, and more movies, and as the New York Times points out, they're "filthy with stars" - Lombard, Harlow, Tracy, Colbert, Stanwyck, Gable, Bogart, et al. This is the creme de la creme soup kitchen soup of Hollywood film-making. You could stand a spoon in it. If you don't live in New York, check out the list, and rent, rent, rent.


Thank you for listening, ma'am.

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.