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.

What sort of person do we want for our VP?

Need I say more?

celtic thoughts

if you click on this image, it will expand to a proper sized print....just for you

Working on something a bit different (for me).

Inspired by the work of an old friend (that's you Brian) and a few of the words that were written by a long gone dear friend and the woman who gave me my first post college job so long ago (Mrs. Elizabeth D. Couey).

This then embedded with an old Celtic proverb and linked together with a few original ideas of what would make a good Celtic blessing in my view.

And these words presented in Celtic font Kells, Aon Cari Condensed initial caps and headed by PR Unical - all freeware shared by some talented folks.

The blessing then wrapped in a complex variety of borders within borders inspired by illuminated manuscripts - my old noted authority art professor Jacques Guilmain presented to sleepy art students at Stony Brook University so many years ago. The history and actuality of which then caused me (dragging Evie) to pursue the Book of Kells to it's rightful home at Trinity College Library, Dublin to see the book's page of the day (or month) again, many years ago.

Thus having been always awed by the skill of the early monastic gospel illuminators.....I find myself dabbling in their ink pots with my own electronic variations.

The text reads:

A Celtic Blessing

May you be surrounded by the comforts of family and tribe,

And your pantry and pockets be full.

May you walk in the footsteps of the mighty and all roadways lead you to home.

May cool rain quench your flowers' thirst, renew your spirit and wash your troubles away.

May your blanket show the patterns of peace and affection,

and happiness shine in your eyes.

go n-e'iri' leat

The last bit is Irish Gaelic for good luck (I think) without the proper Fada (accents.)

so mote it be

S.