More Silver Lining.

I'll admit it - I have an addiction to Vanity Fair magazine. The mix of politics, culture and fashion is precisely my cup of tea. If I had to pick a favorite article or segment in the magazine, without a millisecond of hesitation, I'd pick the Editor's Letter. I received my February 2009 issue, opened it straight to the Editor's Letter and in the end I was so pleased with the month's article that I felt the need to post it. The entire piece is pretty long-winded (read the whole letter here) so I've copy and pasted from VanityFair.com the section that I particularly liked. Please take a moment to enjoy.


"If this is the Second Great Depression, or the Great Retrenchment, or the Great Reckoning, or whatever it’s going to be called, there has to be a silver lining somewhere. Perhaps all those expensive educations and burning talents that wound up on Wall Street moving money around will be redirected to fields of endeavor with some tangible output. In the years between 1929 and 1939, creative talent in the U.S. flowered as in no other period of the last century. The 30s, a decade of devastating hardship for so many, was also the golden age of art, photography, theater, and film. In New York City alone the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center were built during the 10 years beginning in 1929. The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Frick, and the Guggenheim all opened their doors during this period. And many of our great magazines, including Fortune, Life, Newsweek, and Esquire, were started during the decade. After the collapse of Wall Street in the 1920s, the culture stopped being all about money, and the country survived and ultimately flourished. Amid the wreckage we’ve created, America will most certainly rise again, and it might even be a better place to live and dream." - Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, February 2009.