Transmat bracelet

Sometimes the simplest things are the most striking. The perfect symmetry possible with modern machining has strewn our landscape with mathematically precise geometries, unseen to the casual users of products that contain them. Even when these shapes fail they are buried in their own graveyards without ceremony.

This steel bracelet was cut from gearteeth, heated in a forge and bent into shape, then milled out on the inside to be smooth. It was then varnished on the interior with Earth Safe Finishes’ Marine Varnish gloss, a non-toxic, water-based, low-VOC (volatile organic compound) sealant that will protect the wearer from the bare metal, which would otherwise rust.

I’ll be listing it on Etsy shortly.

Cabdriver Chronicles: New York’s Real Giants

Last week’s New York Giants Superbowl game ended in a victory prompting plenty of local news puffery. But the real giants are among us in this city, in their towering vertical Jotunheim: corporate clients like those served by the car service I take on late nights. This driver’s vignette made me wonder who’s got it better:

He was asked on Sunday to take a “timed job,” in which the driver takes a client somewhere and waits for him to return to the car, getting paid the while—about $100 an hour. He was to take someone to a bar to watch the Giants game and then home after an estimated 4-5 hours.

But the driver turned down $500 because he wanted to watch the game with his extended family, and apparently one of his relatives wouldn’t let him live it down if he missed it. (As a side note, this relative was both his cousin and brother-in-law.)

“♫♪ Nice work if you don’t need it, and you can get it in N.Y.! ♫♫♪♫”

Remembrance – Rainer Maria Rilke

Reblogged from The blog of Brian J. Svehaug:

And you wait, keep waiting for that one thing
which would infinitely enrich your life:
the powerful, uniquely uncommon,
the awakening of dormant stones,
depths that would reveal you to yourself.

In the dusk you notice the book shelves
with their volumes in gold and in brown;
and you think of far lands you journeyed,
of pictures and of shimmering gowns
worn by women you conquered and lost.

And it comes to you all of a sudden:
That was it! And you arise, for you are
aware of a year in your distant past
with its fears and events and prayers.

“Art Holds a Unity That History Does Not”

Accompanying illustrations: Revolutionary images in pointillized sepia imprecision.

My interest in Luxembourgish band Rome providentially coincided with my participation in early Occupy Wall Street. I was looking for cultural products that bore witness to, examined and problematized past revolutions. Rome’s latest release, “Die Aesthetik Der Herrschaftsfreiheit” (The Aesthetic of Anarchy), is a 3-album epic that opens with the statement: “Art Holds a Unity that History Does Not.” On the facing page is a pointillized image I suspect is from Spanish Civil War-era Barcelona. Like the image at left, the rendering hearkens to both newspaper-printing and the yellowing of time, while making indistinct the revolutionary image portrayed.

Though founder Jerome Reuter is from Luxembourg, Rome has been based out of Germany for some time. This changed recently, and I wonder if it had anything to do with Germany’s understandable sensitivity towards any talk straying beyond reformism. The music is very European: lyrics are in English but extensive samples and commentary are in German and French with the occasional Italian and Spanish. Reuter says English is “neutral.” As far as I can find, Rome is the only band in the European underground “neofolk” movement that is not crypto-/fascist in its iconography and lyrics, although it doesn’t shy away from confronting the ideological past and its legacies. (UPDATE: England’s Sieben is also clearly opposed to right wing use of “Blood and Soil” aesthetics, which I write about at this post.)

I recently ordered the European edition of 2011′s Die Aesthetik Der Herrschaftsfreiheit (3 CDs in three beautifully-bound booklets) to better understand and translate the lyrics; entire passages of this album are in German and my German is not strong enough to translate by ear. In the booklets, Rome credits its inspirations to “Bertolt Brecht, Peter Weiss, Pablo Neruda, Abel Paz, H-M Enzensberger, Georg Büchner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Reinaldo Arenas, Bertrand Russell, P-J Proudhon, Gustav Landauer, u.a. [und andere, and others]“.

The ballad “To Each His Storm” is a suitable introduction to this album. Though it uses the singer/songwriter format that Rome has increasingly used over its career, Die Aesthetik includes many fine examples of all styles and voices used by Rome across its prolific release calendar since 2006. Look for further translations and perhaps critiques as I proceed.

TO EACH HIS STORM

This is close, far too close
You just might
Be blinded by this crown’s golden light
You just might
Be putting yourself in the flame
Which can only burn and shame

Our lawless life
Just seems so compelling
Because you too
Could ennoble yourself through rebelling
But what good are they
Ideals soaked in blood
What good are they
Buried in the mud

To each his ground on which to flourish
To each his storm in which to perish
Now that we’ve shed our clothes and shared our oaths
There’s no way back for you
Don’t kid yourself
We’d rather be mad than delighted
You’d rather be entertained than enlightened
There’s no way back to you

(ref)

This is too close… (cont)

Die Keller versiegelt
Die Bücher eingestampft
Die Bibliotheken verriefelt
Die Schriften verbrannt
Die Zeitungen geschwärzt
Die Portraits gewechselt
Die Vorstellungen gestört
Die Theater geschlossen
Die Filme zerstört
Die Spiegel erblindet

(trans.:)
The cellar is sealed
The books are shredded
The libraries are locked
The newspapers are redacted
The portraits are swapped out
The beliefs are deranged
The theaters are closed
The films are destroyed
The mirrors go blind

UPDATE:

I thought I’d not cause offense in uploading “To Each…”, since many other Trisol releases of Rome are on Youtube with thousands of views and comments. It was a considered decision.

But within 12 hours of posting a link to the video I made of this image & song, copyright owner Trisol Music Group GmbH had it removed. Fair enough. I’m sure they’ve put some money into developing Rome as a talent and {shudder} brand and it’s their right to manage their “content.” If you’re interested in Rome after this post and the 30-second clip I linked to on Amazon, much of Rome’s work released on the redoubtable Swedish independent, Cold Meat Industry, can be heard in its entirety on Youtube. (See Querkraft, a more industrial early release, with this chilling fan video.) It’s easy enough to buy the individual tracks from eMusic and Amazon/Google Play (or, if you must, iTunes), and for “Die Aesthetik” be aware that the U.S. edition is almost as costly as the EU hardcopy, for what appears to be very little: 3 individual CDs, priced around $31 apiece.

I’d hoped my translations might bolster Rome’s appeal in the Americas and may yet contact Trisol, but despair of an outcome consistent with what seems to be established precedent.

“The Late Lamented Fame of the Giant City of New York”

I’ve been too quiet, so I thought to share something I’ve long meant to: Bertolt Brecht’s poetry. Concern with copyright infringement—and the chore of scanning and cleanup—has stayed my keyboard, but if I receive a takedown request from vested parties I shall remove. (Though all English editions of his poetry could well be out of print, particularly the pellucid translations of Willet and Manheim from which I will excerpt exclusively.)

I know him mostly for his poetry and lyrics, particularly as sung by Dagmar Krause and Robyn Archer, which has given me a skewed picture of his oeuvre. Yet these are probably the best way to know him, without inviting obscurantists to prate about originality, political courage, personal conduct and worst of all his theory of theatre, the interpretation of which has led to a generation of audience abuse.

From what I know of Brecht, he would like his poems and songs to be shared, especially “in these dark times.” He has been called the greatest 20^th century German poet bar Rilke, so it’s a tragedy that he’s not better known for these plainspoken works. I’ll start with a rather epic one, but given that consumption always already starts in the lungs of the “West,” why not go for that windbaggiest of respiratory tracts? My home, New York, New York.

LATE LAMENTED FAME OF THE GIANT CITY OF NEW YORK

1
Who is there still remembers
The fame of the giant city of New York
In the decade after the Great War?

2
What a melting pot was America in those days – celebrated by poets!
God’s own country!
Invoked just by the initials of its names:
U.S.A.
Like an unmistakable childhood friend whom everyone knows.

3
This inexhaustible melting pot, so it was said
Received everything that fell into it and converted it
Within twice two weeks into something identifiable.
All races which landed on this zestful continent
Eagerly abandoned themselves and forgot their profoundest characteristics
Like bad habits
In order to become
As quickly as possible like those who were so much at home there.
And they received them with careless generosity as if they were utterly different
(Differing only through the difference of their miserable existences).
Like a good leaven they feared no
Mass of dough, however enormous : they knew
They would penetrate everything.
What fame! What a century!

4
Ah, those voices of their women coming from the sound-boxes!
Thus they sang (take good care of those records!) in the golden age.
Harmony of the evening waters at Miami!
Uncontainable gaiety of the generations driving fast over unending roads!
Mighty lamentations of women singing, faithfully mourning Broad-chested men, but ever surrounded by
Broad-chested men!

5
They collected whole parks of rare human specimens
Fed them scientifically, bathed them and weighed them
So that their incomparable gestures might be perpetuated in photographs
For all who came after.

6
They raised up their gigantic buildings with incomparable waste
Of the best human material. Quite openly, before the whole world
They squeezed from their workers all that was in them
Fired rifles into the coal mines and threw their used-up bones and
Exhausted muscles on the streets with
Good-natured laughter.
But in sporting acknowledgement they reported
The same rough obstinacy in workers on strike
With homeric exaggeration.

7
Poverty was considered despicable there.
In the films of this blessed nation
Men down on their luck, on seeing the homes of the poor
(which included pianos and leather couches)
Killed themselves out of hand.

8
What fame! What a century!
Oh we too demanded such broad-gauge overcoats of rough material
With the padded shoulders which make men so broad
That three of them fill the entire sidewalk.
We too sought to brake our gestures
Thrust our hands slowly into our pockets and work ourselves slowly
Out of the armchairs in which we had reclined (as for all eternity)
Like a whole State turning over
And we too stuffed our mouths full of chewing gum (Beech-nut)
Which was supposed eventually to push forward the jawbone
And sat with jaws ruminating as in endless greed.
To our faces too we wished to lend that feared impenetrability
Of the poker-faced man who propounded himself to his fellow citizens
As an insoluble riddle.
We too perpetually smiled, as if before or after a good piece of business
Which is the proof of a well-ordered digestion.
We too liked to slap our companions (all of them future customers)
On arm and thigh and between the shoulder-blades
Testing how to get such fellows into our hands
By the same caressing or grabbing motions as for dogs.
So we imitated this renowned race of men who seemed destined
To rule the world by helping it to progress.

9
What confidence! What an inspiration!
Those machine rooms: the biggest in the world!
The car factories campaigned for an increase in the birthrate:
they had started making cars (on hire purchase)
For the unborn. Whoever threw away
Practically unused clothing (but so
That it rotted at once, preferably in quicklime)
Was paid a bonus. Those bridges
Which linked flourishing land with flourishing land ! Endless ! The longest in the world!
The men who piled their stones so high
That they towered over all, anxiously watched from their summits the new buildings
Springing up from the ground, soon to overtower
Their own mammoth size.
(Some were beginning to fear that the growth of such cities
Could no longer be stopped, that they would have to finish their days
With twenty storeys of other cities above them
And would be stacked in coffins which would be buried
One on top of the other.)

10
But apart from that: what confidence! Even the dead
Were made up and given a cosy smile
(These are characteristics I am setting down from memory; others
I have forgotten) for not even those who had got away
Were allowed to be without hope.

11
What people they were! Their boxers the strongest!
Their inventors the most practical! Their trains the fastest!
And also the most crowded!
And it all looked like lasting a thousand years
For the people of the city of New York put it about themselves:
That their city was built on the rock and hence
Indestructible.

12
Truly their whole system of communal life was beyond compare.
What fame! What a century!

13
Admittedly that century lasted
A bare eight years.

14
For one day there ran through the world the rumour of strange collapses
On a famous continent, and its banknotes hoarded only yesterday
Were rejected in disgust like rotten stinking fish.

15
Today when the word has gone round
That these people are bankrupt
We on the other continents (which are indeed bankrupt as well)
See many things differently and, so we think, more clearly.

16
What of the skyscrapers?
We observe them more coolly.
What contemptible hovels skyscrapers are when they no longer yield rents!
Rising so high, full of poverty? Touching the clouds, full of debt?
What of the railroad trains?

In the railroad trains, which resemble hotels on wheels, they say
Often nobody lives.
He travels nowhere
With incomparable rapidity.
What of the bridges? The longest in the world, they now link
Scrapheap with scrapheap.
And what of the people?

17
They still make up, we hear, but now
It’s to grab a job. Twenty-two year old girls
Sniff cocaine now before setting out
To capture a place at a typewriter.
Desperate parents inject poison into their daughters’ thighs
To make them look red hot.

18
Gramophone records are still sold, not many of course
But what do they tell us, these cows who have not learned
To sing? What
Is the sense of these songs? What have they really
Been singing to us all these years long?
Why do we now dislike these once celebrated voices?
Why do these photos of cities no longer make the slightest impression on us?
Because word has gone round
That these people are bankrupt.

19
For their machines, it is said, lie in huge heaps (the biggest in the world)
And rust
Like the machines of theOld World (in smaller heaps).

20
World championships are still contested before a few spectators
who have absent-mindedly stayed in their places:
Each time the strongest competitor
Stands no chance against the mysterious law
That drives people away from shops stocked to bursting.

21
Clutching their smile (but nothing else now) the retired world champions
Stand in the way of the last few streetcars left running.
Three of these broad-gauge fellows fill the sidewalk, but
What will fill them before nightfall?
The padding warms only the shoulders of those who in interminable columns
Hurry day and night through the empty canyons of lifeless stonepiles.
Their gestures are slow, like those of hungry and enfeebled beasts.
Like a whole State turning over
They work themselves slowly out of the gutters in which they
seem to be lying as for all eternity.
Their confidence, it is said
Is still there; it is based on the hope that
Tomorrow the rain will fall upwards.

22
But some, we hear, can still find jobs: in those places
Where whole wagon-loads of wheat are being shovelled into the ocean
Called pacific.
And those who spend their nights on benches are, we hear, apt to
Think quite impermissible thoughts as they see
Those empty skyscrapers before dropping off to sleep.

23
What a bankruptcy! How
Great a fame has departed! What a discovery:
That their system of communal life displays
The same miserable flaw as that of
More modest people.

Arizona Suite

Note the staples and drawstring.

Without meaning to be an upcycler, my father invented a clever solution to Arizona’s woodpecker plague upon citrus. Every year woodpeckers flock to orange trees and lance the fruit with their beaks to slake their thirst. When a person tries to pick the fruit later on, it has become a Death Star of rot, perhaps seething with some larval beetles or flies as well.

Oranges: juice boxes for woodpeckers.

Arizona newspapers recommended festooning your trees with compact discs to scare off the woodpeckers, but it worked no better than other homestead woodpecker remedies. My father hit upon the idea of slipping the foam-net sleeves often used for Asian pears over the oranges, but we could never eat enough of those to cover a whole tree’s fruit. Rifling through the materials reserves, he found some rolls of kitchen drawer liner.

Kitchen drawer liners are sold in much larger square footage than anyone needs, to be sure the manufacturers can make a profit. The nubbly ones that keep things from skidding around when drawers are used allow plenty of air flow and have a texture woodpeckers seem to find repellent.

Believe me, they're worth it.

With the meticulousness evolved by retirees, he crafted little bag/sleeves out of liner squares by folding and stapling them together at the edges. He even laced drawstrings for some. Incredibly, he then slipped them over every growing orange within reach—and has done so yearly for nearly a decade.

The bags don’t deteriorate in the harsh desert sun, and they allow room for growth and light exposure. Maybe we share blood with whomever invented the “poire prisonniere” method of growing a pear inside an eau de vie bottle. I’d pitch my father’s upcycling solution to a local newspaper, but suspect that only we think a glass of fresh Arizona Sweet juice is worth such trouble. Cheers, dad.

Slavery-Free Christmas: What Is to Be Done?

This begins to look like lots of Christmas.

I’m not too shy to say “Christmas,” though even my annual token obeisance at a church thousands of miles from my home has gone unobserved for years now. I don’t need to have a “Keep Christ in Christmas” sign on my lawn either. If I must give gifts they must reflect humanist principles. I do need to see my family and emphasize something often forgotten in the shove-flooding savagery of this grasping holiday: Slavery.

“People hoisting themselves out of poverty with hard work” is boilerplate globalization-speak in defense of outsourcing. But expropriated peasants and dissidents, for their part, are not choosing to leave “poverty”—or freedom. Al-Jazeera recently produced a program about China’s laogai (government labor camps), part of their ongoing series on slavery.

This has never been a popular news topic in the States. A little digging yields yellow(ed) coverage like this 1999 CNN chestnut:

Red Giant!…A fundamental policy of the Laogai states that ‘forced labor is a means toward the goal of thought reform’…Organ harvesting!…We cannot condemn the evil actions of the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet Gulag while we ignore the continuing brutality of the Laogai.

Then in 2002 China entered the World Trade Organization, whereupon even this shrill searchlighting disappeared from our shores. Al-Jazeera takes a more serious tone, but still includes indictments like “state-sponsored slavery” and compares the face of slavery past (woodcuts of African-Americans chained at the neck) to the face of slavery today (Homer Simpson slippers made in a laogai). It’s a well-done piece rich with facts; I took an envelope-back of notes while sitting on my Chinese-made couch (don’t ask). Among the gems:

In 2010 U.S. imported $250B worth of goods from China…3-5,000,000 people are in laogai at any time (www.laogaimuseum.org)…laojiao means “reeducation through labor”…Chinese saying: “Laogai is dark and laojiao is bitter”…”Abigail” was charged with worshiping in an unlicensed Christian church (“disturbing order and security of society”) and made Christmas lights during her sentence  in the laogai…The EU lacks even the token protections of the U.S., importing $355B USD yearly from China, without a single law or regulation covering laogai products.

“WHAT IS TO BE DONE?” one asks, but maybe not in caps. I can only offer what I did by way of suggestion. This year I’ve found refurnishing my wardrobe very liberating, as I did so entirely with vintage, surplus and U.S.-made items, often military or workwear. (No one can tell the difference anymore since designers have been jacking designs from utility clothing for decades.) I bought a grip of stuff from Etsy where other makers like myself are, and some Made in USA items, and for the first time in memory feel proud of my holiday shopping. None of it supports the slavery of which I am the sworn enemy’s scion.

If you live in a food desert, where all your subsistence shopping must take place at a Wal-Mart, you’ll have to use the Internet, which I did for all of this shopping because I live in BoxStoreTon, a stripmalled suburb of New York City. These are a few of the items I and a like-minded friend found with an hour’s effort, and we’re proud to say we didn’t go Doorbusters or pepper-spray anyone to get them.

• A hummingbird feeder designed, tooled & molded in the U.S. The unusual design (54 ports simulate real flowers!) may survive the brutal Arizona sun and make my mum smile.
• A snakewood and gold-plated letter opener to replace the clunky, tatty one used by her father-in-law. The wood is from Surinam, but this is Our America anyway.
• A nuno felted scarf for her mother-in-law, who will doubtless appreciate the drape and textures of this silk gauze fused with wool felt.
• A wall-pocket fused glass vase that a girl I’m interested in will love, because she loves essential oils and this is the perfect way to decorate a wall while diffusing rosemary fragrance throughout a small room.
• A glass-tile photo-applique pendant of Chicago’s skyline which will remind same girl of Chicago, the only other place in America she knows well, and which she often misses. It looks even better in real life.
• An daunting oatmeal cowl scarf  with handmade zebrawood buttons (which had better be made by the same women in Brooklyn…). Its versatility is part of its charm.
• You might also consider a hammock from Twin Oaks, an intentional community of 100 people in rural Virginia who have been exemplifying horizontal democracy since 1967…Nowadays, there’s a waiting list to join.

Billbored

What's that logo suffocating under that comm truck?

I’m finished with promotional materials masquerading as useful objects. Even donating your time you’re bound to accumulate some as “thanks”; a friend worked for a food donation project hosted by Barilla, and got a branded bag and a T-shirt that somehow ended up in my drawer. (These things are like bad pennies.) A bank gives you a T-shirt advertising the bank for giving them your personal info on a credit-card application: a twofer!

We save these items until they crowd out wearable clothes, then trash-bag them for “charity.” This guarantees that whenever we drive through an area replete with government housing, we see children frolicking in oversize shirts hawking sodas or airlines or discount sporting goods. Wearing this crap enables their parents to spend money on food or medicine. When they in turn give it away, threadbare and faded, it ends up in the Global South through the “rag trade” of clothing-by-the-pound, where it is beamed back into the Occident via late-night commercials promising help for harelip children or starving displaced peasants.

The final irony may be the garment’s retirement in its hometown. Production of promotional garments uses the cheapest of cut-rate textile labor—just check the labels of anything wearable and free, then look up the country of origin+sweatshop or +exploit or +”child labor.” So a shirt produced in a Honduras sweatshop may return to finish its days on a child in Talanga. Has so much value ever been wrung from an advertising farthing?

Among my idle fancies of usefulness: If I were to teach welding in the hood, I would teach young adults how to make bookcases out of kitchen sinks. This assumes good enough schooling and parenting that they would care about reading, and that they wouldn’t be too proud to use bookcases made out of scrap metal, itself an aesthetic of privilege—so never mind.

Oh, that's who. Note the T-shirt elastic at top.

Covering ads on free clothing would be a more fun and realistic thing to do, with a younger group, maybe as part of a larger arts workshop. I think explaining why endorsements should be covered would be most of the point, perhaps taking the angle that if Serena Williams and Kobe are getting paid so much to appear with those logos, why should you only get a XXL T-shirt big enough for a fort?

I recently discovered I could use Earth Safe Finishes’ gel medium to adhere patches to work clothes, and thought to re-message some hats and tees that I’d wear if they didn’t carry ads. ESF gel medium, intended as a paint base, actually works better as a fabric glue than anything I’ve used intended for that purpose.  I burn, cut through and dissolve a lot of fabric in my work, and have been able to join fabrics as inapposite as canvas duck to denim, or sheer polyester to wool/cotton blend. I’m happy that I can do this without VOCs or solvents, for what good is preservation if it requires further destruction?

You need only smear the covering fabric patch liberally with gel medium and press it over the logo or slogan, then wait about 10 minutes for it to dry. Then a few passes with a dry iron at 70% heat will fix the adhesive and secure it against wear, tear, washing & drying. It remains flexible enough for knees and soft enough for the inside of hats, but stronger than store-bought patches. An environmentally responsible product that’s more effective and versatile than comparable substitutes—this really is the 21st century.

Look at these nice soldiers helping some farmer with his cactus silo!

Domestic Blitz

One of my favorite things about scrapyards is their casual juxtaposition of the consumer and the industrial, the ornamental and the functional. This dozer was doubtless pushing around a mountain of assorted waste when it hooked this forlorn lawnchair which, having a value by weight of less than a penny for the hollow aluminum tubing of its frame, was too unprofitable to remove from here.

Actions at OWS: The Reformation

At Lafayette and Duane, the numbers insane.

The bruited about death of OWS was greatly exaggerated. I never doubted it though I haven’t returned in almost a month. Despite the destruction of 5,000 books and all the accoutrements of outdoor survival in Liberty Park (since Brookfield Properties requested the purge, never mind “Zuccotti,” let’s revert to its prior name), the movement has only grown stronger. Events of November 17 #N17 bore this out, with unconfirmed estimates of 10,000 people having manifested.

I stopped by Jamaica, Queens to see if an Occupation of the major commuter hub had taken place, as planned. Forty-five minutes after it was supposed to have started, there was nothing unusual in this swarming station. Continuing to Foley Square, at 1700 I found unprecedented legions of people clogging everything within 3 blocks of the square across from City Hall. Unions and citizens alike stood shoulder to shoulder, and flyering was such that I needed a satchel for it all. PA system was permitted, and in addition to the usual exhortations (even one from a child) highlights included a choral rendition of the First Article of Occupation by the Church of Stop Shopping Choir and some flow from various hip hop performers (but damned if I didn’t hear that one was Fab Five Freddy?!). Treatments of James Brown’s “The Payback” were appreciated, as was PE’s “Fight the Power,” but that only made me wonder why Chuck D had not represented at OWS. Fortunately I left as Tears for Fears inexplicably came over the PA: Everybody may want to rule the world, but OWS is not about leaders.

At some point while I was listening to the PA, people began to filter out from Foley Square. There was a crawling procession towards the bridge, which I joined with some friends who’d intermittently visited OWS over its 2 months. The street was solid with people for several blocks, and clusters periodically broke into different chants.

On the bridge, I noticed a big difference from the “Arresting of the 700″ march over a month earlier. Traffic on both sides was riotous with support. Motorcyclists revved their engines, cars honked, fists jabbed from windows and moon roofs. It was almost too easy to cross, casually discussing whether the breakup of the camp had been a net gain for the movement. After all, the rout had ended the administrative chore of the encampment, the internecine bickering, the cyclopean effort required to make the movement’s practical face reflect its ideals in the face of repression, infiltration and simple incivility.

Someone had requisitioned a huge projector and pointed it at one of the skyscrapers overlooking the bridge, facing towards Brooklyn so it was behind the waves of marchers. “99%” it read in scorching white. When I looked again the stencil font read “We Are Winning.”