farm foreclosure sale during the Great Depression

My obsession* with this story welcomes further ratiocination: Greg Palast makes some connections which Wall Street, the White House and their joint instrument, a discretionary Justice Department, would prefer to to keep hidden from the rest of us. See the argument in his piece titled "Eliot’s Mess: The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked"

*
broadcast in two earlier posts, beginning about one week ago, here and here

[uncredited {Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange?} image from annette on picasaweb]

These crocus guys have been livening up our garden for a week or so already. Yes, the little trifoliate leaflets around them belong to our local frais de bois.

William Hogarth Enthusiasm Delineated 1761

This is stupid, if not just evil. No, I'm not talking about Eliot Spitzer. Let him deal with his family; it's not our concern. People are screaming at the Governor about his marital infidelity and announcing or calling for the end of his career. Meanwhile, George Bush's murder count in Iraq, already in the hundreds of thousands, continues to mount and no one will pull the plug or talk about impeachment.

I simply don't care what kind of sex the people I vote for engage in, just as I insist that they not care about my own - or yours either. Murder and other high crimes I care about.

[image from payer.de via fortunecity]

In 2003 nearly a million people marched in the streets of New York against a war (to which the majority of the country was opposed even then) only days before it began and the U.S. press hardly mentioned they were there, but last night a small explosive was detonated outside the door of the Times Square military recruiting station, presumably intended to send a similar anti-war message. This time a protest somehow manages to stir the media.

Our democratic system isn't working; peaceful protests are not considered newsworthy. It would be nice if we could believe that the only people who are learning this lesson are those who would not consider violence a reasonable means of effecting political change.

[first image by David Karp of AP; second by Keith Bedford of REUTERS; both found on Yahoo!photos]

Drill Hall floor of the Armory

Drill Hall vault of the Armory

We were at the press preview for the Whitney Biennial this afternoon. This year the venue has been expanded to include the Seventh Regiment Armory, in whose extravagant nineteenth-century precincts many of the exhibition's performance art elements (including some interactive experiences scheduled throughout the next month) have been assigned high-ceilinged rooms and closets.

But I as I wrote last week I always have a lot of trouble resisting the aesthetic and historical seductions of architecture like this even when there's exciting contemporary art to be seen. So here I am writing a post preceding my observations of this year's Biennial with a couple images of the Armory which shelters some of the installations, and to show that I'm not indifferent to the charms of Marcel Breuer's own hall, I'm including a view of his lobby ceiling, one of my favorite details in the Whitney itself.

lobby ceiling of the Whitney