Ann
Born in Greenpoint.
Father, born Austria-Hungary.
Father worked in the mines in Homestead PA before moving to New York. She says he never wanted to talk about it. I told her my grandfather was a Pinkerton.
[My grandfather was born in the Bronx. My grandmother was born on South 6th Street in Williamsburg]
25 years on the floor at Leviton.
11 years as the manager of a small store on Manhattan Ave.
Wanted to be a doctor.
Languages: English, Polish, Slovak, Russian, French.
Maintains a correspondence since 1947, in French, with a woman who knew and now tends the grave of her brother, killed and buried just before the end of the war, in 1945.
We chat over coffee at the donut shop a few times a month, complaining to each other about the onslaught of yuppies and rude midwestern teenagers.
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Thinking more about the article on the art market in yesterday's Times (see below) what really shocked me the degree to which the discussion was limited to the morphology of the market—like trying to understand the ocean by looking at the waves. Is this what Leiter et al. mean by a 'technical' discussion: a discussion of surfaces? History without social history. No sociology, anthropology? If Weber decides to study protestant Christianity and its relation to capitalism is this to be derided as not technical enough because he's not talking about economics?
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Chris Hedges

The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with stories of courage and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war. The vanquished know the essence of war—death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life. All other narratives about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence, as well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the license to kill with impunity.

That's a sexy paragraph.

I remember a friend from school, from the film department. His thesis film was a documentary about a couple of friends who were junkies. He said he wanted to take the romance out of addiction, to show the sadness and boredom. The film was as sexy as that paragraph, as sexy as a photo by Tim Page. The woman was stunningly beautiful. I knew her sister; they both tested positive later. Bill died 10(?) years ago of a brain hemorrhage. He'd switched to coke.

"Take the glamour out of war? You can't take the glamour out of war... War is good for you!!"
Tim Page is now a pacifist.