loss of a Pearl

I have a Pearl in my family tree.   A friend's recent loss of her Aunt Pearl reminded me of my family treasure chest.

My Great Uncle Pearl - yep an uncle - was a dairy farmer on the New York - Vermont border his entire adult life. Furthermore, I imagine, in his childhood, he didn't wandered far beyond his most local farm yard.  His life skills and expertise as a successful dairy farmer would be difficult to duplicate.  Uncle Pearl was one of a vanishing breed who transitioned this country from its rural roots to its urban industrialization, and now to its global outsourcing.

His wife Marcia, my great aunt, was my mother's mother's sister. Great Aunt Marcia basically raised my mother after her mom died in one of the early and deadly influenza epidemics in the pre-vaccine and antibiotic twentieth century. My mother's family were also in the dairy "biz" and aunt Marcia would have merely stepped from one farm into another to lead her life. 

Aunt Marcia spent many years in a school house as either a student or a teacher. She was, however retired from teaching except Sunday school by the time I knew her. There is a wonderful picture of her as a young woman in a period white blouse and long white skirt standing with some other young women outside an old, well kept one room school house which sits at the top of a hill next to a long dirt road. It is impossible to tell if she is the teacher or one of the students. The transition from one position to the next, if judged by appearances, seems to have been relatively seamless. 

In our era of hugh school taxes, one wonders how so much was accomplished in one room.  And perhaps there is something to be said to returning to educational simplicity in terms of the physical plant.  It's a thought which is bound not to be very popular.  



Uncle Pearl died in his 80s when I was in college (in the 60s.) Aunt Marcia died three months later. Both had lived together, independently in their village home until the weeks before they died. That they were inseparable became all the more clear in losing them both so quickly.

Uncle Pearl and Aunt Marcia worked the farm until their mid or late seventies. Once they left the farm, they seemed to grow younger. Aunt Marcia replaced her long gray, fine haired nape-of-neck flyaway bun and wire rims with a short bob and stylish glasses. Uncle Pearl was less successful. However he'd discarded his aged and softened denim overhauls with a well worn gray wide pin striped suit and perma-pressed short sleeved shirt and assorted retro wide (mostly maroon) ties.


I have a couple thread bare crazy quilt pillow covers Aunt Marcia fashioned from uncle Pearl's (or someone's) discarded ties. Sadly it is the strong colorful high test aniline dyes which caused the silk and rayon to disintegrate on textiles of this era, inevitably creating many worn out ties. What's a loss for fashion became a gain for the crazy quilters. 



Both Aunt Marcia and Uncle Pearl had a couple of strategic gold teeth which flashed in the village house's electric lights as they talked in deep throated rumbles (Uncle Pearl) or high pitched twitters (Aunt Marcia) - voices which appeared to contain lyric syllables coupled with sighs and grunts. I can hear them speaking now in what, to my child's ear, was a guttural, clipped foreign language common to New England farm families – composed of wide flat sounds that I had to concentrate upon to understand. 

Their reverse aging was quite odd but now I realize how difficult a life working the farm must have been for them. However, I have never known two people who entertained such a hearty life despite their respective illnesses which they, for the most part, found undaunting, and who lived, as a result, truly full and happy lives. The older I find myself, the more I admire their existence and the more their honorific "Great" seems more appropriate in terms of accomplishment instead of relationship.

I have uncle Pearl's pressed back arm chair which has a dark brown patina (unlike that here pictured) having absorbed the farm's hearth smoke for about 60 years. 

I also found many of Aunt Marcia's recipe clippings in an old tin bread box in my mother's garage. Many papers were moth eaten and unreadable but one day, perhaps, I will try and decipher some of them. My mother inherited Aunt Marcia's baking ability, which was formidable. Both could throw together a lemon meringue pie with a pinch of this and a squirt of that and folded, stirred, whipped and sifted ingredients. They did this on an old kitchen table reserved for this process with a planed cylinder of wood and assorted spoons and measurement tools. When their tools found their way into my kitchen, they were coated with so many layers of unrecognizable substances that after cleaning they were demoted to the realm of non-functioning decorative objects.



My mother was a consummate user of Crisco - a sort of sanitized or fake lard, cheaper than butter which revolutionized baking. It's a material, made entirely of vegetable oil (before we knew that trans fats in the form of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil are a health hazard) - referred to as "shortening" for some reason; which glued ingredients into recognizable shape. I suspect my Aunt Marcia also used Crisco. It allowed a longer shelf life for baked goods - as we began that long process of removing all the actual real food from what we consume. Considering my tendency to personal girth (remember someone had to eat all those pies, cakes and cookies), learning to bake as a young woman became one of my reverse obsessions.  As a result, my mother's and great aunt's baking skills ended with them.








I suspect the secret family recipes are to be found within my aunt's and my mother's drawer-full of faded yellow clippings, scraps of greasy paper with handwritten formulas and notations, old Betty Crocker pamphlets and early direct mail baking soda and flour booklets - each of which is chocked full of recipes and cooking hints. 

It's all about the pie.

Someone has to create the recipes, someone has to make and sell the ingredients, someone has to convince someone that their client's ingredients are somehow superior, someone has to list everything in the ingredients (and their country of origin) on the label, someone should be testing the ingredients (although this being a government handled procedure - it's apparently usually ignored), someone has to bake the pie, and finally, and thankfully (except for those cases where ingredients were included which were concocted in China) —  everyone, should they dare, gets to eat the pie.

Rather than their content, I find the graphics and printing quality on many of the found pamphlets rather remarkable. One classic advert which I've framed  says "Isn't it time for a Strawberry Short Cake?" It's a beauty of delicate multi-color, early lithography. However the sentiment — ah, the sentiment is most wonderful. I must admit that vintage design, strangely persuasive print, package and label advertising is something I truly admire.  I confess to an instinct,  which might have been entirely unthinkable, I'm afraid, to my great aunt Marcia. Value, purpose, worth is clearly evaluated uniquely through each set of differing mult-generational eyes.

I have a pair of Aunt Marcia's turn-of-the-century (the one before this one just passed) hand made "drawers" that extended down nearly to one's knees.  I'm also now the keeper of a large box of family photos of total strangers with no known histories or connections to me. Sadly those memories were never mine and have been lost. My mother had no interest in family history (or antiques which she considered "used" furniture) and so...it's gone. But I retain the evidence of a family tree no matter what or where the branches grew or the fruit fell.  It's an odd sort of family abandonment which I suspect I am not alone in recognizing.  Talk about being orphaned.



Every Christmas, my immediate family received a set of pillow cases with handmade tatted or crocheted lace on its edges from Aunt Marcia in a recycled, scented, decorative stationary box. I found, in my mother's keepsakes, many of the old boxes which are treasures in themselves. We also always received a set of fancy soaps with very strong aromas which were meant to be kept in a linen drawer for sweeter dreams or floral scented panties (go ahead and connect those dots.) I still have one or two of Aunt Marcia's crocheted pillow cases. They are worn thin and faded - unusable, but bits of tangible family history. Oddly, until more recently, I thought everyone had an aunt or grandmother who sent these types of holiday presents. Consequently, it seemed natural to continue what I knew of gift giving traditions by presenting "smelly" soaps to friends in their honor on special occasions. Did anyone have any idea of what to do with their pre-aroma therapy presents? Too many old, wonderful and strangely functional traditions are lost as they are set aside, unused or re-gifted and passed blindly forward.

Where the Green Grass Grows

I was born on Uncle Pearl's birthday and so, I suppose that is why he named a black and white cow after me. To be fair, this was not a one time occurrence. Over the years, there were several cows awarded this privilege. I'm sure, as a child, the where abouts of earlier cow namesakes was left a little sketchy and I prefer to leave it that way. My mother explained that the naming was a gift and a large honor. No other cousin or niece was so awarded a similar namesake. One might have thought a cow naming an odd reward for a contemporary post war child. In retrospect, there might have been a tinge of embarrassment in having an entire cow named after me — but considering the alternative, I'll take the whole cow thank you. The memory is now so endearing, I'm proud to acknowledge to have befriended the soft brown eyes within the boulder sized head of a several hundred pound Holstein who was named Suzie.  I must admit I could never have picked out my Suzie from  a group of her peers but I bet she was easily spotted in her several reiterations by my cow savvy Uncle Pearl.  My great aunt and uncle had no children of their own so I guess I was almost their grandchild. I suspect the cows, dogs, cats, ducks, chickens and what have you were also part of their multi-species family (well, all but the individuals destined for the stock pot.)


My love of farm houses grew from so many fond memories of Aunt Marcia and Uncle Pearl's homestead way, way off in the country with what seemed to be, acres and acres of beautiful rolling hills covered in thick green grass, corn, grains and a stand or two of trees. The tune and lyrics to "over the river and through the woods" comes to mind when I remember the trip to their house. The drive took forever for a small girl from our upstate New York home. Knowing the visit would be wonderful always made me nearly sick with anticipation. The trip itself was long — a considerable distance to travel in our assorted red and white Chevrolets.



To a child's sensibilities, the trip encountered very few odd bits of fun along the way. The Chevrolet was not equipped with a DVD player in the back seat.  In fact, the only way I could avoid severe car sickness was to keep a window partly opened and keep my eyes on the passing landscape.  There was something about the intense red color of the big fenders and hood, the shine off the chrome and the ride on the fat rubber tires which still drives me to nausea.  My father considered red the ONLY car color which could safely be driven on the highway.  I can, to this day, not ride in a intensely red car.  In days long past, Porsche burgundy, thankfully, was the closest shade I was able to safely endure.  That fact, was, at least, a spot of good news.

Burma-Shave sign groupings were always anticipated, diligently hunted and never failed to satisfy even with the fading verses of some previous year's travel.

Shaving brushes

You'll soon see 'em

On a shelf

In some museum

Burma-Shave

My aunt and uncle's house, like mine, had registers ( open grates) in the floors of the upstairs rooms and I could sit upstairs by myself playing quietly and listen to the adults gossip downstairs about all manner of normally verboten grown up things.  I thought my eves dropping intensely clever and never considered that my parents and aunt and uncle could clearly hear me as easily as I heard them.  I probably was supposed to be taking a nap.  I guess I thought sound, like heat, traveled uni-directionally — upwards.  

Some years later I was slowly alerted to another creative use for a ceiling grate.   Amedeus, my large black and white Maine Coon cat was intensely jealous of my mother's cat Christopher, who came to live with us after she was taken ill.  All of Christopher's considerable bulk, some 22 pounds of him, was fond of assuaging his new insecurities by draping himself in my lap as I tried to read or watch tv in the library.  After dozing and awakening to startling liquids which mysteriously found their way onto the table lamp next to me (with disturbing, odiferous results), I was convinced poor, old Christopher had some serious behavioral problems.  After several similar post dozing incidents where I found my shirt, my head, my chair similarly liquified — I began to blame the transplant, Christopher with greater and greater severity.  However, incidentally, I noticed Christopher was also being liberally sprinkled in liquid.  Either he had really bad aim or the source of the liquid was elsewhere.  Finally, I discovered Christopher and I were dozing under a cat-made shower courtesy of smarty pants Amedeus, which down poured through the grate under which we sat.  Since then, leaving nothing to chance, in our house, an extremely large coffee table book on the wonders of the Irish countryside resides topside of the grate over the library.  And I've found that being mindful of the location of ceiling and floor grates in a house full of animals is easier than living with the consequences of blissful ignorance.  Although, to be honest, one can never second guess a smart cat. 




In a specially designed alcove of Aunt Marcia's front sitting room, there was a large, somewhat built in antique organ which you pumped in order to play. I was allowed full access and spent many hours making the machine make very bad music which no one seemed to mind.  I had to grow into the organ, waiting until my feet could reach the foot pumps to hear the organ's voice. I am sure the instrument was granted a minimum of my attention since it was forced to battle with the many serious, spectacular splendors of farm life. However, on some days it rained and indoor activities were limited. I suppose I wasn't really strong enough to make much of a racket even when my feet could touch the pedals. My Aunt was an accomplished organist as was my mother (I think) but I don't recall either of them ever playing for me. By the time I knew my great aunt Marcia, her cataracts made her eyesight very poor and she could no longer read music to play. I do seem to recall my Aunt's high singing voice and standing near the organ to sing Christmas Carols. Someone must have been playing and I suppose it was either my mother or my aunt. The organ was not all that attractive a "sound machine" to my then Perry Como and Patti Page taste. Years later when people began to bring small electric pianos (known usually as organs) into their homes, my connection to the much stranger sound of a pump organ became apparent. I recall baby-sitting while I was in college in a home where a small Wurlitzer just begged to be played. I'm afraid I didn't like the newer organ's version of music much more than the old one. The updated option of pressing a button to add a rhythm section to one's "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was quite tempting.  I'm not sure, to my ears, if adding bells and whistles was a step forward or back.

All the family would convene sporadically for enormous meals.  What I mean by this is not in the amount of food consumed, although it would have been sizable, but the number of people eating.  My mother's brother and wife and their seven children often joined my mother, father and me and my aunt and uncle. When my mother sold off the furniture from the village home after my great aunt and uncle were gone, she sold a matched set of a dozen press backed chairs for a ridiculously low price at a yard sale...which is part of the reason why I rescued Uncle Pearl's arm chair. These chairs were arranged around a table which must have been a good 15 or 20 feet long for an average family farm meal. Several table cloths had to be overlaid to cover the entire table. The table did not make it to the village home. Most of the farm house furnishings, including original Tiffany lamps, remained (to my later horror) with the house when the farm was sold. 

There was a shinny, glossy white incongruous rectangular box in the corner of the dining room. It was the new refrigerator — as opposed to the old "ice box" which was probably unused for cold storage but still housed in the kitchen. Since the new appliance was an example of a "new" fang-led machine (to my aunt and uncle), it was given a prestigious location as a symbol of relative prosperity. I believe their first requirement for the appliance was that it should be handy which somehow made its location successful. It was always full of of raw milk some of which was used to make ice cream — an incredibly delicious treat. 

Things like fruits and vegetables were in the root cellar under the house. We certainly have lost a lot of "systems" which worked much better for preservation of foods than what we currently find indispencable. As far as I recall, the refrigerator was for indoor cold beverages...that's it. One might have found homemade cold salads and cold cuts and handmade mayonnaise and mustard in the frig — but it was never stocked with all the things most of us, these days find essential. 

The freezer was always in the basement. I have a freezer (I don't use) in the basement too. My mother used her basement freezer, but then again, she cooked all her meals and shopped like clock-work on Saturdays. I was so bored as a pre-teenager that I used to think grocery shopping at Slim's was the highlight of the week, and perhaps it was. I recall trailing sullenly after my mother in her bermuda shorts and curlers. Women used to regularly shop with their hair still "set" for a variety of bad reasons. One forgets the Jetson's environment of assorted head gear apparatus and concealment wrappings that used to be commonplace in our shopping arenas in the country. Lest I forget, the beauty of the home freezer meant meats and veggies could last longer and sales and specials could be used to keep the freezer stocked. I believe the underlying reason for this behavior had something to do with not wanting to run out of food. And this survival instinct is a remnant from poorer times which is uncomfortably sounding more and more like the era in which we currently find ourselves.

Great Aunt Marcia's kitchen was about thirty feet long and half again as wide. It was heated with an enormous cast iron cooking stove which she used as well as a conventional range. There was always a kitten or two nearby staying toasty.  My farm job was to collect the warm eggs from the hen house (cleverly designed so one could stick ones hand in under each hen and retrieve the eggs without disturbing the chicken - or that was the theory.)  I was also trusted to carry the fresh milk to the kitchen from the milk house (sometimes know as a spring house) next to the road. 

When I was really little, this job was accomplished with adult supervision. But later on, from the time I was strong enough to carry a pail of milk or a basket of eggs — the job became my own. The water was always so cold in the stone trough of the milk house that it kept the milk pails chilled to just the right temperature. The large metal milk cans were left sitting in the spring house for the regular milk truck to take away for processing on some sort of regular schedule. The Spring House was open to the dirt road it sat next to. There was no concern about items being stolen. I have one of the milk cans on my kitchen porch. My mother had it in her kitchen with dog food inside and later, after it became difficult to open – in her dining room as a decorative piece. I recall this same milk can I have on my kitchen porch was always in my way once it made its way to the dining room. I sat on the same side of my family table as the milk can. To my mind, the milk can had priority.



The barns were big and red with white trim and uncle Pearl could knock a stool under a cow and squirt milk into a pail five feet away. There were barns for machinery, barns for storage, barns for just about anything, fences and corrals for farm animals and a big main cement floored barn for the cows. The herd was large but by no means anything like this centuries big corporate machine farms. Uncle Pearl ran the farm with a sole farm hand and one or two good dogs.

My family history is the primary reason I love Columbia County....for the black and white cows and what is left of the farms. I hope other children here are allowed the memories with which I was rewarded. I've met one young man who was raised on a Columbia County dairy farm and his memories are much like my own. Traditions remain in family run farms although the technology, when it can be afforded, threatens to over power the simplicity of the past. I hope some other young hands will remember collecting warm chicken eggs in the afternoon sun.

'til the cows come home

You should have seen the farm dog(s) bring home the cows after dinner from the far pastures. The dogs could open the gates. Astounding really. Fiercely loyal. Uncle Pearl would send the dogs from his rocker on the porch and we'd watch while we sat on the steps and the sun began to set. Soon a leader cow would begin to amble over the crest of a distant hill and come into view with dashes of silky piebald fur flashing at its heels. I think Uncle Pearl sent the dogs out with a simple whistle. Sometimes it was just one dog and if it was two dogs, one was always in training — being trained primarily by the senior dog. Uncle Pearl need not have done anything. The dogs knew when it was time to retrieve the cows and the cows knew when it was time to return to the barn. However, knowing this, did not make the return trip home any less eventful. 

It always took a dog to orchestrate the long walk home of the cows. (If you're interested in what the cows coming home looks like, follow the link [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBioDFGbqHI] to watch and listen; surely worth a good You Tube gander; however, don't start thinkin' maybe you should have listened a little more to those good ole Mavericks who fell by the wayside in the last election — just because you might like watchin' the cows come home, you bet cha'.) The herd was a many membered, ominous group of large animals being moved along by a relatively small, but vastly faster and many, many times smarter, running dog . The dog was always one of the most important assets of the farm – easily as important as a tractor or a milking machine. Uncle Pearl respected the dogs in a way I've never seen a person connect with an animal in my life. They were a remarkable team...my uncle and his farm dogs. I have no memory of the names of the dogs. Somehow the farm dog names, unlike those of the dogs I loved at my own home, were such a minor part of their existence. Like my Great Uncle Pearl, his dogs were also farmers and seemed to grow right up out of the dirt.    A remarkable harvest.

By the way, the barn was always full of barn cats lapping up the intentionally spilled milk. They were quite feral. So it's no wonder I live with my own herd.



This story offered as a simple step back to a time when 55 ways to save eggs was a concept worth pursuing. 

S.

73 days and counting

Elated, hopeful, proud of my fellow citizens and a little in love with a tall man and his tall wife and his adorable children.

This will not be an easy transition and I'm not expecting quick fixes...but still....

WOW, we can! Yes, we did.

GOBAMA

One small consideration - I hope the Obama's consider a mixed breed puppy or an older dog adoption to join their family in the White House. It's a small thing, but it seems the more appropriate.

on our way to the polls...

Rocky link

How many millions of dollars have been spent over the past two years to bring the message of a few of our leaders (and a few other hangers on) to the people? I am sure we will get the answer to this question a few million times over the next few weeks.

We've got to find a better way of electing a president.

I've heard a few options.

One idea (John Cleese's if one can believe the Internet) is to give ourselves back to Great Britain. There's a precedent, of course. And there's nothing in that option which restructures a presidential election system - except, the simplest change - eliminating the office.

I wonder, did wagons, horses, oxen and mules walk, ride and drive on the left side of the road during George II's reign in America? These days, the driving situation would have to be worked out since Americans have little or no capacity to change from right to left. I believe this a good part of the problem, isn't it?

Another suggestion is to mandate our elected Congressional representatives to pick someone or a few people and decide among themselves who should be president. Again, there's a precedent for this procedure since I think G. Washington owes his tenure as our president to this system. Was he a one term president? Does anybody know? (I've been filled-in. The original G.W. was a two term president.) I wonder if anyone taught us that bit of information? Oh, I could google it...but I prefer to believe that the original G.W. was only a single digit president. Perhaps no one believed he'd work out. And too bad the original G.W.'s term limit behavior wasn't followed by the current fellow (well, as it turns out sameolesameole.) Alas.

Which leads us to our current pickle. I am astounded about how much air and pixel and viewing time is being devoted to the question of America's recession. Why is there any doubt? We hear about the fellows who are running for president and then we hear which company has scored a few billion dollars and then we hear the debate regarding the recession.

It's a quandary.

I've found another solution is simply to trudge out to the polls and pull the level as we still do in my rural neighborhood. No hanging chads for us country folk. No electronic do-hinkies. We do our election duties in ancient metal booths with their original gray serge curtains on the incredibly noisy metal track. We push those mechanical fingers that line up (sort of) underneath or next to names of those running for office and the states or counties proposals which we think is giving us some input into how local governments are run.

We have a Congresswoman to elect this year. She's running a clean campaign against a rich guy who's been in the current G.W.'s pocket for ages. He talks a big talk (trise into my phone on one of those automatic calling annoying intrusions into my kitchen or bedroom. He's also flung lots of flotsam at our Congresswoman's politics and history (she worked for big tobacco but she's reformed now that she's pocketed the big bucks...or that's her opponents message...I don't care as long as she supports environmental issues and green energy. It would be nice to see the war come to an end as well.) Anyhow she beat the last incumbent dead beat fellow whose head was protruding from G.W.'s pants - in a tight campaign one term ago.

So, my buddy Rocky has composed a message which speaks, literally, more to the issues I hold near and dear. You'll have to follow the Rocky link, to listen.

Rocky link

I have to thank Blue Mountain for their excellent talking cards which I feel I've monopolized for my own amusement for the past couple days.

I imagine I'll have something to say on November 5th. Won't we all.

BOO TO THE PEOPLE !

It's all Hallow's eve again.  Heavy on the chocolate. 

I've learned a new word.  It's BOO-tini.  It's a special Hallowe'en beverage.  It's served with a skewer of candy corn or a small candy pumpkin.  Best as a double.

My friend Tom has sent me a few seasonal graphics from which I selected a few to share. You might also want to take a look at (and a listen to) a special holiday greeting from your new york country girl. You'll have to click below Spike to see and hear a Hallowe'en message.

Spike link

We've had snow in Canaan; a big, heavy wet snow which pulled the branches to the ground, snapped the lilac trunks on the hill and pulled down three arbors of roses, bittersweet, honeysuckle and wisteria. Hopefully the vines will not have been damaged.

An early snow is such a misplaced event — living things that grow in the earth are not yet ready. And as usual, I must agree.  

But today, after two days of cold, bitter days and nights...the air has warmed and most of the snow has melted off. The trees and shrubs are attempting to pull themselves up again to their full height.  I know how they feel. 

Heavy on the chocolate !

ice caps should not melt. chocolate should.

a newer deal

photo credit: Margaret Bourke-White, 1904-1971

People want to "own" a part of world they live in, want to contribute to the world's history by living within a space they can care for, some land they can tend. We, as Americans are trained from birth that our quest for a home of our own is a life objective which gives us purpose and reason for existence...in pursuit of the American Dream.

a housing development (like Levittown) in construction in the 1940's

photo credit: Margaret Bourke-White, 1904-1971

As a result, our civilization has formalized the process of finding and obtaining places to live into the profitable real estate market with many layers of people making a little profit (or a large profit) from an individual's desire to own a piece of the pie.

Instead of the earlier, simple transaction where rural individuals traded their goods with someone for a chunk of land or a dwelling (or both), we live now within a complex system of loans and taxes and lawyers and inspectors and municipalities all of whom dictate part of the cost and system for the granting of clear title to property. "Ownership" is not as clear as we were led to expect.

As a friend said, aren't we all simply "renters" on planet Earth?

As the layers of people, and municipalities making profits in the real estate market increased, the possibility of problems blossomed. Excessive greed and related complexities increased exponentially. And with increasing less frequency as one would hope, our leaders actually passed legislation during the Carter presidency which made it possible or easier for the "little guy" to obtain part of the American Dream. However concepts with the best intentions... often go awry.

For the past several years the housing market has been cattle prodded by a government (or that's one excuse) to give everyone or nearly everyone, no matter how little money they made or had on hand, a chance to buy a home. More buyers, more profits, more homes for sale, prices increase, rates of interest for mortgage loans fluctuate, greater buyers' power grows, more lenders compete. Sounds like normal capitalism in a free market, doesn't it?

Naturally the larger the demand for homes, the more potential profit in the marketplace and many of us (in homes) looked on the "boom" happily until we began paying the higher taxes levied upon our increasingly more (on paper) valuable property. Hell, it's the same damn house...why is the state asking for more and more taxes? How has the state contributed to the value of my home?

More and more houses went onto the market. In some cases lower and middle class owners were unable to keep up with the doubling annual taxes and insurance added to a house's normal expenses and were forced to try and sell before they went into default. In other cases owners hoped to capitalize on the new higher value of their home by selling (although where they would move to is a mystery.) But as buyers thinned out, inflated property prices began to fall, leaving many owners with mortgages higher than the falling value of their home. The cash out lower interest rate deals (some of them sub prime adjustible rate fiacsos) which the industry heralded pre, post and at the height of the real estate boom entangled almost every home owner in some way be they upper class, middle class, lower class or illegal aliens. Caught in the whimpering of the failing boom – some could cash correct. Others could not.

The real estate boom was a supply and demand phenomenon wasn't it?
Now I'm not so sure.

It seems that caution was thrown to the wind in efforts to make home ownership a reality. In the creating of all sorts of shaky deals and complicated vehicles and variable interest rates for lending rather suspect loans to a greater number of individuals, caution became a phenomenon of the past. The real estate market became more than the finding and selling or buying of a property...much, much more.

Now we find out that the true marketplace was in the buying and selling of bundled loans to other sources that thought they could do something kinky with the profit margin and sell it to somebody else. And these sorts of bundles were so secure, being based on actual real property in a boom market, that they were insured against defaults by other organizations who took a piece of the profits for creating those assurances that these bundled loans "were good." And so on and so on.

Didn't anyone guess that the risks of the loan obligations of a few or a great many of those actual human families (bundled into more risky financial vehicles) might become defaulted upon if interest rates made the cost of loans beyond those families' means?

Now we hear that this senator or that senator warned somebody along the regulatory line last year or the year before that these so-called unregulated derivatives (what somebody for some unknown and mysterious reason has named the bundled bits of sub prime and fixed mortgages)...these "vehicles" were dangerous. And we're given the reasons...no regulations (from the Democrats), no regulations (from the republicans), bad legislation (from the republicans), bad leadership (from the Democrats), complex systems (from the treasury department), weapons of mass destruction (from Mr. Buffet), too many illegal aliens given mortgages (from the republicans), I lost my stock value too (from the CEO making $480,000,000.00 per year), should cancel our next executive outing (from the insurance firm bailed out on taxpayer dollars with the $200k spa bill on our tab), how can I save my home (from the family behind on their mortgage/tax/insurance payments on a loan which jumped up to 11% interest from a 4% sub prime variable loan when they "bought" the house), and where is all that $700 billion going (from every American), and do you think this is going to work (from Charlie Rose's nightly interviews of whichever "expert" he happens to corral), and why is the stock market still crashing (from the brokers), and investor confidence will be restored in this difficult time (from our lame duck president.)

duh.

Why would financial markets want regulations on deals on which they could make enormous profits while no one was looking (or understanding what they were doing)? Why would we expect those beholden to those financial barons (our elected representatives) to encourage the creation of regulations which might stymie the flow of profits to big business? What's sort of system works like this? Oh yeah, the American way.

Are we incapable of recognizing that the same system, let's call it capitalism, which encourages corporations and the political leaders they influence (via cronyism and those peddlers on L street) and support (in campaign contributions) often has nothing to do with protecting its citizens, until somebody sticks a pin in the balloon?

So who got caught, when did they know they were doomed
and why is our government "fixing" them?

Who knows?

But, like every house built of cards, the entire Ponce scheme collapsed when not a few defaults "happened" as the economy tightened and those beautiful low, low sub prime interest rates on variable rate mortgages began to climb...but a whole lot of defaults "happened"...making the paper the bundled deals were written upon of less worth than the value of the loans. We've all heard this was happening for months now, a couple years. Wasn't anyone in the treasury department listening? Bailing out the Fannies and Freddies is just one part of the so-called solution. Somewhere down the line, all of the defaulted home loans are backed up by actual property with some sort of intrinsic value (once the real estate bubble breaks and cascades down to fill the pool of the what's left of housing market.)

So is the American government now the world's biggest landlord? Or should it be?

Did the US government obtain ownership to the real estate in this $700,000,000,000.00 deal to bail-out the faltering and bankrupt companies who entered into the business of buying the ill conceived and shady derivative paper? Well no. I'm wondering why not?

Why not get rid of the middle man and layers of profit, which didn't work anyhow and let those corporations dry up. Haven't we proved they suck?

Can we collect all the homes and give them back to people? Or sell them cheaply with fixed rate low interest rate, truly government guaranteed mortgages (they're called FHA - Federal Housing Administration mortgages and have existed since 1934) as inner city real estate is often sold in the process of turning around a worn out section of a city. This time it's simply a worn out section of our economy. Except in this case nothing besides the companies of the greedy bastards who made the mess is actually run down. Isn't the buying up of the defaulted mortgages the McCain campaign idea? Why isn't it the Bush idea? Or the Obama idea? Or the Senate's idea? Does the Senate understand what is going on? Or are our representatives sheep following a few Treasury Department Svengali herders and as stupid as they appear? Is our government, in handing out vast amounts of money, asking for some sort of security? If not, why not?

I want a money back guarantee

photo credit: Margaret Bourke-White, 1904-1971

So what's "commercial paper?"

(besides what today's tax dollar is supposedly pumping up)

Funding Commercial Paper is another part of this scheme to "fix" the greed and stupidity of the few. Commercial Paper is the unsecured loans that big corporations procure ( for 2 -270 days) to keep their business afloat. Commercial Paper is "rated" based on the assets and so forth of the businesses borrowing and these loans are the "credit" in the crunch that we've been hearing about drying up over the past weeks. Apparently the credit crunch had trickled down where only overnight loans are available or one or two day loans. And which then cause small and large companies to not be able to borrow easily "for their internal needs" making it necessary for these companies to live within their means, like the rest of us.

As we know the "biggest losers" among companies hadn't enough "means" and not being able to borrow to keep themselves afloat until they could leverage the next deal... caused some companies to collapse since all they really were/are are shells for the next shell game. The worst of these faltering financial institutions (as I said, the shell in the shell game) which our government has seen fit to bolster with $700,000,000,000.00 (I simply like writing out all those zeros...I've never had the occasion before, so indulge me) are simply vehicles for transferring paper, commercial or otherwise with no true assets or tangible products. A good part of their business was buying, selling and bundling papers created from bits and pieces of risky mortgage loans.

Making the business of our grandest financial institutions basically a "bet" that the holder of the loans would be able to repay.

And they lost the bet.

And so, every American (every world citizen) all are suddenly holding the same losing hand? What happened to the "hold 'em or fold 'em" philosophy of good gambling? Were the stakes so secure or the world so naive that our grand financial institutions could simply bluff and get away with it? Until somebody called "all in" and they were finally compelled to show us their cards...and fold.

Commercial Paper vs. Credit Card Debt

The entire system of personal credit cards is remarkably like the commercial paper formula. However in the credit card scenario a normal human being (you and me) with unsecured loans in the form of credit card debt which is extended basically to anyone who wants it...has to pay interest rates of at the very least 8 or 9% to the average of 18 - 22% for a normal annual credit debt which is NOT paid off in entirety on a monthly basis. The highest APRs are extended to those with less than pristine credit ratings, or those who simply don't call up and demand a lower annual APR from their credit card companies. Most Americans have their own personal unsecured loan(s). Functioning in civilization without credit cards is difficult. There were years in the life of a bedeviled artist when only Discover (card) thought I was a risk worth taking. Now ask if I'm a loyal customer? Pretty much.

The corporations who use commercial paper unsecured loans pay between 4% and 6% interest for their short term loans. Do you see a disparity? One would think that if you wanted to keep a citizen's money in his or her pockets (as all those running for re-election or speechifying us with lengthy complex explanations of the meltdown...including the media who make their livings clarifying the spin cycles of politicians and elected or appointed government officials), it would make sense to regulate the rates of interest charged by credit card companies. Why should the high profit margin to credit card companies be "encouraged?" Isn't charging a customers 22% annually to loan out short term unsecured credit when the credit card company can borrow money at a 5% or less rate in commercial paper - excessive? The credit card company has no reason to spend any of their profit because even with their continual borrowing of commercial paper...they stand to bring in a 17% rate of profit per year. Even with overhead and bill collectors' fees, a credit card company is a highly profitable enterprise.

Isn't a credit card company a lot like a more socially acceptable loan shark?
Isn't this some of what Americans are screaming about?
Unfairness, inequities, like that?

Who is bailing out the Americans who are caught in the American Dream?

Of course nobody likes to hear about a CEO of a bankrupt collapsed company bringing in a $400,000,000.00 - $500,000,000.00 salary. I've recently read that of the 5 top CEOs from the big financial groups, 3 of which collapsed during the past two weeks....of those 5 CEOs the gross income they collectively gathered was more than a billion dollars over a couple years.

Do the math, multiply by the fortune 1000

What did 3 or these 5 guys do except, in the end, bankrupttheir companies? Were the gains to the stockholders of these companies grand enough to offset their total lose of investment last week? Should anyone collect a salary for doing a bad job....when the big ticket salaries might have kept the company liquid? When anyone else in the American lower hierarchy of business does their job badly they are fired. Why can't CEOs, under these circumstances where their companies tanked, sunk, were plowed under....why aren't these guys being fired retroactively? Someone on a NPR call-in program said that it is illegal to retroactively require someone be accountable financially for the loses of a firm he/she heads unless fraud is involved. The corporation is the shelter and the individual's steering the corporation are NOT at fault. Well, who the hell is? One doesn't have to speculate all that far to know who wrote that law. What constitutes fraud in the case of ruining a company, losing billions of investor dollars? Isn't knowingly hiding the lack of company assets in investments one steered the company to make...a cover-up? Is a cover-up fruad? And if it isn't, why isn't it?

What's the incentive for a CEO to do a good job? It can't be all a matter of ego. Isn't this a place for better regulation and new rules which WILL jeopardize bad CEOs and executives and government officals (including treasury secretaries and presidents) retroactively if they create a giant mess in the American sandbox? Isn't it stupid of the American government to issue "get out of jail free" cards at the start of the game? Every American embraces "do not pass GO, do not collect $200."

Why aren't there rules in the game?

A Newer Deal

photo credit: Margaret Bourke-White, 1904-1971

It's totally a no win situation for the common man. Who can trust that the shoring up of a flounderings of Wall Street will keep Main Streets' citizens afloat? A house of cards always falls down? Can any amount of bail out funds "fix" it? Or is an ethical component missing from whatever good business has become?

Will the quick fix of $700 billion simply prop up the house of cards or can we hope for a new deck? Will $700 billion simply reposition the shells in the game or can we finally locate and remove the pea? Will anybody shout out...."hey, the emperor's not wearing clothes." Not withstanding the view of a naked emperor...hoping it isn't George W., are we this stupid? Perhaps we are.

A worst case scenario

So today's influx of part of that $700 billion dollars into the commercial paper bank(s) will keep big business operating as it has since Regan occupied the white house....well beyond their means, with some "promises" of possible future government regulations. While Americans, who are in every sense the "owners" of this country, who hire out the complexities of the management of the United States to those we elect to public office....have to live well within our means.

The middle class is shrinking exponentially and dramatically and dribbling into the invisible outter edge of humanity. The trickle down theory of economic growth or shrinkage is still in effect. If companies can function well and make profits, will then Americans prosper (and by default, this being a global economy, planet earth's citizen prosper)? Can the bursting of our economic bubble be patched while we wait for its guts to spill into the Main Stream of Main Street?

Have we become one giant economic sewer?

Will the benefits of trickling down post 2008 take the next decade to reach those lowest in the pool of wealth? Can recovery ever dribble into the dessert and parking lots where those citizens pushed out of the pool now live and struggle and hope? Is that too many cascading water analogies?

Can America afford to not look out after our own?

We've been warned in the past few days that we are at the start of a difficult economic period of our history. Yeah, well duh.

What does economic meltdown look like day by day?

Can we expect that the savings of individuals will be shrinking and disappearing...bank holdings will be disappearing, smaller banks will be bought up by bigger ones...the ability to make loans on a regional level will be ending or nearly unavailable....charities who support the systems and people the country is unwilling or unable to help will become more and more pinched and overwhelmed and falter....and retail will become a thing reserved for the rich...prices will correct and drop for everything eliminating some or all of the profit for the manufacturer, losing jobs, closing more doors...small market farms will disappear and be bought up by the factory farms....the food supply will become more and more toxic as profit instead of food becomes the motive for farming or we rely more and more on unregulated (there's that word) imports...the haves and the have nots will continue to separate by greater and greater variables....the middle class will slip lower perhaps into the poverty class?

Will our government be forced somehow finally
to support America's
"we the people?"

Will our government become bankrupt? Aren't we already bankrupt if our country's treasury is stretched way beyond its means and borrowing heavily from foreign powers? Our national debt yesterday went beyond the figures on the tote board in Times Square. Someone is buying a new board. That's one solution.

One day the United States may have to go into chapter 11 (or for this country perhaps it will be chapter 1776) when no other county has the means or inclination to loan us more money. Having borrowed so extensively from China (and others), one recourse might be to sell off a few US assets....perhaps a little real estate could be sold considering the central so-called "cause" of our current financial woes.

I'd suggest we sell off Alaska. Maybe, like the Alaskan governor's jet, we could sell her state on ebay. That said, the good news is Sarah Palin will become somebody else's "nudge, nudge, wink,wink" girl. One might think that the grizzly bears, wolves, polar bears and all the other wild life and wild country some of us know are America's true national treasurers - will no longer be "protected" by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But the reality is these wild species and places will have more chance of survival in other hands than they have had under our current system of governmental "protection." Our government doesn't do to well on issues of regulation or protection...of anything or anybody. Is this a maverick enough solution for you Mr. McCain?

photo credit: Margaret Bourke-White, 1904-1971

Don't forget to vote!

gray day lifting

photo: 911digitalarchive.org

Yesterday, as everyone knows, was September 11, 2008. It was the first time in seven years that I did not approach the date with an anxiety and dread.

Which is not to say, once I realized it was 9/11, that I didn't become teary eyed and sad again. I did. I watched a History Channel commemorative piece of compiled documentary film and voice - 102 Minutes and relived again shock, outrage and grief.

But there was a difference. Something has healed. I didn't seem to be carrying this grief within me anymore....and I felt lighter as a result...sad but not depressed.

I sat in the same chair as the one I sat in seven years ago and watched the same scenes as I did seven years ago and was unable to move my eyes from the screen as was true seven years ago....but finally I'd let something go.

Was I particularly long to heal?

If it took me seven years to let go of the trauma of 9/11 and I was NOT on the scene, related to anyone lost, but simply a former NYC resident and a long time design contractor to the city's power company with contacts and resources still within the city...what sort of trauma have those with tangible loses during 9/11 endured? What sort of trauma have the relief workers and men and women who searched through the rubble for weeks, months endured?

I lost a part of my visual memory of a city I was a resident of for two decades. There is a tangible hole in my visual reality and this hurts me. It is however a minor loss.

The trauma of 9/11 was larger, greater, more complex that anything before experienced...for many people. Is the physical and emotional pain felt by those of us estranged from the city, who lost no one, who "did" nothing to repair the city's physical plant insignificant?

Of course I mourned for the people who worked in the towers who lost their lives. I was terrified with them. I clung to the same hope they clung to. I cheered for the men and women on the job who went to the aid of those trapped in the buildings or directed to safety those who made it out with those from nearby buildings. Later I joined the city and so many families who mourned the loss of the city servicemen who climbed up so many staircases searching for people to help out of the burning towers, only to be killed as the buildings fell down upon them.

I identified with the confusion and distress and fear of my fellow NYC citizens. I cried for the couple who plunged to their deaths hand in hand. I attempted to find solace in written words about the events of the day. I wrote about the support of my fellow country folks who hung out flags of all denominations - some tattered, and black with something which wasn't dust - that surely had seen battles during their life times. I wrote about the villages and towns and country places which rallied to the support of whomever and whatever would happen from that day forward.

But still the grief clung to me.

I wondered if the firemen who parked their fire trucks outside of Gristedes on 6th Avenue or the A&P at the Zuckendorf Towers and who walked the aisles collecting the food for the meal one or two of them would prepare that day - in black and yellow rubber garb - who appeared to be some of the tallest and strongest men I'd ever seen... I wondered if they were some of the men lost in those towers?

I wondered if the Blue Cross Blue Shield people I visited on a business project and whose office views I coveted, made it out alive?

I am happy to have first ventured to the top of the towers with two small children and shared an unbelieveable view and sense of place with the freshness of younger eyes and spirits. I wondered if those two children's memories of the towers, now as grown young men, are forever combined with my own of our shared afternoon on the observation deck?

I wondered if my photographer friend of long ago who took me to Windows on the World at the top of the North tower on what was a totally overcast evening...remembers my belief that the powers that be would lift the clouds so we could enjoy the view with our dinner...if he remembers the towers as I do when the clouds opened and the entire city was at our feet? And how astounding and spectacular that view was?

And if that last horrific view of those lost in those towers is something I can ever forget?

I wondered if all the artists and craftspeople who were invited to contribute (their art work) and then to attend the fancy soiree auction for the Museum of Contemporary Crafts with Vice President Mondale were as nervous as I was to be with such celebrity that we forgot we were on top of such an amazing structure and being catered to by wait people and chefs some of whom surely perished years later on 9/11. How perfect they'd made our evening.

I wondered if Philippe Petit mourned the loss of the venue for his remarkable feat of walking back and forth from the top of North tower to South tower...and if that was absurd to wonder?

10048

I am remembering my introduction to the towers years ago. I'd spent an evening at a friend's unique loft in lower Manhattan. The main room had a built-in hot tub against one wall. A beautiful ceramic pathway led to the steps up to the mouth of the tub and radiated to the center of the main room. The WTC towers were a block or so away. I had never visited the towers.



During the evening we took a hike under and on the raised concourse, around the enormous 80 foot tall marbled lobbies 208 feet on each side. We admired tall polished metal arches reminiscent of a gothic - Islamic combo which appeared to hold up a vertically embossed exterior which disappeared 110 floors above us. The base of the buildings were quiet, empty, eerie and still - darker at street level than in the night sky where thousands of office windows sparkle. 

I had a private viewing of a very public place - the same place where 50,000 thousand persons bustled in on Monday morning and 200,000 visitors convened daily to conduct their business within the 7 Trade Center buildings. After the towers came down, was it odd to wonder if the loft survived?

The zebra bar so named (informally) for it's exterior painted stripes on a TriBeCa corner blocks North of the towers ... was one of "our" places to meet, eat, drink, talk, on a Friday night. This coincided with the instincts of many other literate beings who fell into TriBeCa, where wide empty streets along the sidewalks against loading docks of blocky warehouse type buildings were the rule, not the exception. This was the extended neighborhood of the WTC. Where one night, after the firing of a friend (unjustly, of course) three of us convened to obliterate the problems of the day and ordered the house special platters of middle eastern specialties and had so much food we had to commander more sidewalk tables. I wondered is the neighborhood the same around the pits of where the WTC used to be? Could it ever be the same?

I wondered if the client I bundled my marketing piece with in his print job remembers the image on my postcard? Does anyone remember that post card? It was a photo retouchced surreal image of buildings and streets poking through torn tufts of clouds showing a part of the city in digital semi-ruin. The photo was taken from the top of the WTC. The altered image was used to create a whacky travel postcard of a place called SOGO (my business name, a la SOHO, NOHO and a silly place called MOHO...the median down the center of Houston Street). Why did I create a bombed out image of lower Manhattan a decade prior to 9/11? The question, the image haunts me.

In greeting people long not seen since my leaving the city several years before 9/11...in the first few minutes of conversation, each has shared independently what happened to them after the horrors of that day. It's an odd, no longer unexpected and disturbing connection. There must be millions of same stories.

bravery has real meaning

There were many brave people who demonstrated themselves during and after 9/11. The word unfolded its true meaning around the events. I don't think I ever knew bravery as a tangible behavior until 9/11. It had been the stuff of the silver screen and novels and history books; it became the stuff of everyday people. Now I tend to cringe when the word is over used or ill used and I am angered for those who were truly brave during the events surrounding 9/11. But I don't think they'd mind.

Are all brave people heros?

The Pennsylvania plane passengers who diverted the fourth plane were remarkable, strong, smart, brave and frightened humans. They are certainly the stuff of legends with their "let's roll" battle cry. I used to find myself in the plane with them and wondered what I might do. It's part of the agony of the day to not measure up.

I know less about the Pentagon attack because news casts of events in Washington fell out of my shocked mind. But I've read of more ordinary people who worked to save one another. I recall the reports of the airline passenger, a wife calling her husband on her cell to warn him that the white house might be under attack before the plane she traveled in disintegrated into the side of the Pentagon. These people knew they were about to die, swiftly one hopes and still they had the presence of mind to warn others, to console those they left behind.

I find I am proud of people I never knew. Perhaps, in part, this is what national pride is all about. Has the word hero become too small to hold the memory of so many lost people?

Remembering the intent of people who called their homes and families from the WTC leaving messages of love and farewell. The remarkable nature of those phone calls, how kind, how loving, how sad.

And all the photos of the lost in Union Square which was a block from where I formerly lived and worked. And then the waiting for what became the lack of survivors and images of the debris and papers and gray dust that coated the city and its people. The truckloads of debris being trucked out of the site, the cadaver dogs and the call for special booties to save their bleeding feet. And the media coverage of the families and memorials over the years. Each so heartfelt and sad.

I have listened twice to all the names as a homage to each individual lost. I feel others pay tribute in this fashion. Now the children are growing big who speak their parent's names. They look strong and healthy. They seem to have survived with loving memories.

But mostly what I know is how the world changed in those 102 minutes. Phrases like "forever changed" make me cringe whenever I hear them. I know this is the truth, nonetheless I hate this reality. And I dislike all those who use our fears to their political advantage. This year will prove a telling testament to US citizens' abilities to stand up for themselves and vote bravely against the fear mongers.

I am not particularly fond of the name "Freedom Tower" but I have no better name to add to those considered. America Tower or Spirit Tower or even Tower of Freedom seem better to me. Like every other artist I drew a plan of a memorial as part of my personal ritual of grief and renewal. Mine was two enormous polished stone cubes to fill the footprints of the fallen towers, 208 feet per side, engraved with the names of those lost and embossed with the image of the arched grid work of the broken towers. Reminisent of the VietNam memorial.

To me, the memorial of the WTC must be at ground level for those who will come to see it and for the families who see what we call Ground Zero as the resting place of those they love. What happens to the skyline seems superficial.

The VietNam memorial is incredibly powerful. It engenders profound silence and respect and solidarity. It gribs the Earth. It is called simply The Wall. Will the Freedom Tower be called, one day, The Tower? The VietNam memorial combines the very personal with a grand scale. It is very beautifully finished and fits into its landscape perfectly. Its size, its long view and perspective mirrors the overwhelming consequences of war. Is the crystalline Freedom Tower of the same stuff? I just don't know. What I do know is the footprint of ground zero is sacred ground. The essence of the people who died on that spot will always remain. This I can feel; anyone can feel.

I am appalled at the lack of direction in the construction of the Freedom Tower and the delays holding up the project. The squabbles, the tantrums, the changes...are these particularly American?

I am sorry to say that I don't particularly like any of the designs on paper or even in 3-D mock-up cityscapes. I think the Freedom Tower looks like a lipstick brush case, similar to the Kaiser Wilheim Memorial Cathedral in Berlin whose bombed out structure was filled with memorial buildings which the locals call a lipstick case and compact. The Freedom Tower is more retro in design than modern and simply enormous. I would not have made such a tall structure (1776 feet: approx. 400 feet taller than the height of WTC [North] Tower One). It seems brazen and unsafe. I would have made something which generated a shadow of the original towers. Or I would inscribe that shadow on the site of Ground Zero. Are their two reflecting pools within the footprints of the original towers? That would make sense.

I'm afraid I will always want the twin towers to return to my landscape. I will not embrace the change easily. The new structure verifies the reality of 9/11 and the loss. In that view, the delays are understandable.

But today I feel ready to build - to go forward and embrace the future. Finally my disproportionate grief has subsided. I didn't notice as it left me but I am sure it has gone. Oddly, being host to a type of 9/11 induced post traumatic stress syndrome is another similarity many Americans undoubtedly share.