SEPTEMBER 18, 2007 --

1. Support family farmers

This, as LPR understands it, is what Farm Aid, the family farm movement founded in 1985, by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp, is all about.

On September 9, Farm Aid brought its annual concert to Randall's Island in New York City. Before the concert got underway, Farm Aid convened a message / photo op, including New York Gov, Eliot Spitzer, along with Messrs. Nelson, Young and Mellencamp and others.

LPR detected a bit of self-consciousness that the gathering was held, this year in New York City? Why the self-consciousness? Why shouldn't it be held in NYC if Farm Aid is interested in bringing farmers and consumers together? Or is that indeed the aim? LPR heard no concern expressed about the rapidly rising cost of food, of milk and milk products.

LPR did hear Gov. Spitzer get in a reference to global warming, Mr. Mellencamp noted that average citizens are not getting treated right, and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe read a proclamation from the mayor, while getting upstaged by City Council Speaker Quinn.

Governor Spitzer

The populism of the Farm Aid message is contrasted by the class-structured atmosphere of the gathering where general admission people are kept away from "VIPs" and the questions at the photo op were, as far as LPR could tell, tightly controlled.

The absence of effective traffic control for people arriving in the morning by car suggests to LPR that Randall's Island is to be the first venue to have"congestion pricing."

If City Hall wants that Randall's Island -- home of Carl Icahn Stadium --to be future home to large-audience outdoor events in
New York City, LPR advises people to wait until City Hall develops a rational traffic pattern for the island. (Of course, City Hall, thus far, has shown scant interest in a rational traffic plan for NYC-at large.)

Randalls Island traffic worthy of midtown jams -- traffic conditions at about 10 AM were chaotic.

Boat used top bring some people to the island.

Farm Aid Fast Food

2. Union Square Park

LPR learned six years ago, that if there is one populist venue in the City of New York, it is at Union Square Park, which became the site of spontaneous expressions of support for the City, sympathy for the victims and their families, the two weeks following 9/11.

Not likely to have voted for Bush …

And the tradition continues. The Home Grown Fair at Union Square Park, September 8, was intended, as suggested by at least one speaker, to be a taste of, and lure to, the Farm Aid concert.

Applying the basic populist test --haimishkeit level-- Farm Aid didn't come close. For example: at Union Square Park, the Connecticut-based "Dinners at the Farm" roasted a couple of thousand ears of corn that it handed out to people. At Farm Aid, security people were ready to pounce on, to use Mr. Mellencamp's term: "the normal guy" who gave the teensiest sign he did not know his place.

3. September 11, 2007

On the 6th anniversary of this national
disaster/tragedy, the apparent division was: Family - People. In terms of logistics for the observance in the vicinity of Ground Zero in Manhattan, security forces acted to keep the Families separate from the People. It is not clear to LPR has this kind of physical separation encourages unity of sympathy and of purpose. Rather than encouraging unity, officials seem to have settled on elevating the Families to VIP status.

The basis for such elevation is not clear to LPR. What became clear to LPR, this 9/11, is that conspiracy-minded people feel free to express their conclusions with no need to present facts. It would not take much imagination to link the treatment of the Families qua VIPs to the conspiracy the demonstrators want probed. Conclusion first, facts -- perhaps -- later.

Silent call for 9/11 probe

Public up the block

Family Members Only … but where's the sign?

Mennonite chorus from western Massachusetts

The general public seemed to be discouraged from attending the 9/11 observance

Plasticuffs at the ready

Trying to photograph a demonstration of the conspiracy-minded, near the PATH station at the north end of Ground Zero, LPR, learned from a Port Authority police captain that this was not New York City property but Port Authority property. This woman captain quickly insisted that I should get off the PA's property. And a gentleman in a blue business suit -- obviously another PA police person -- made it clear he would assist the captain if need be.

So much evidence of the heavy-hand, this 9/'11 aftermath. Unity and freedom, anyone?