Mid-Manhattan Library

A man toils in the hot sun. He is picking the fruit and vegetables, the kind that are on our sandwiches purchased from a fast food restaurant, the kind that grace the salads we prepare for dinner. If the man working in the field is lucky, he is able to garner a spot closest to the truck where he turns out his bushels. If not he must walk down a long row of plants to deliver his bushel of just picked fruit and vegetables. His walk is long and makes the day seem endless and tiring. It is hot and the sun is burning bright. There is no shelter from the beating rays of the bright sun. His day is not a mere eight hour shift, with a one hour lunch. More likely it is a “sun up” to “sun down” shift, with a half hour lunch break thrown in where he can fit it. It is picking season, the harvest is ready, and time is of the essence. The more he picks the more he is paid. It is a constant grind, a six day a week job. From this crop he will move onto to another, following the fields that are ready to harvest. From the field he does not go to a nice home or a warm meal. His home is a cramp dilapidated trailer. Many men live in the trailer that was meant for no more than four people. Dirty mattresses cover the floor, the shower is filthy and a bare bulb hung from the ceiling lights the room. No one would choose to live this way.

Many of us have a romantic notion about where our food comes from. We see beautiful fruits and vegetables displayed at the store and notions of a man on a tractor, a quaint farmhouse in a pastoral setting come to mind. We simply don’t think about the path our food takes before it ends up on our table.

The food industry is no longer made up of small farms run “mom and pop” style. Instead a huge corporation will own a company that purchases the crops that go into making their product, like tomatoes for Del Monte. Someone else owns the land and someone else acts as a middleman who supplies workers to work the fields. These workers are desperate. They will be lured into working and living in dreadful conditions and then too scared to leave, only because they were gullible enough to think they would be treated fairly and paid a living wage. These are modern day slaves and they exist right here in the good old USA.

Many factors contribute to hiding the practice of slave labor. Big companies distance themselves from the actual illegal practice by not owning the land that is being farmed and not hiring the workers directly, but hiring a labor contractor to secure the workers. Big companies hide behind the letter of the law, knowing full well of the abhorrent conditions of the workers who supply the corporate giant with a product. If the law does not deter these companies to do the right thing, sometimes community protest can. Consumers who become educated will often boycott a product simply based on the knowledge that the company is engaging in shady practices. Globalization, greed and money is the motivation for this inhumane treatment of workers. If a company’s bottom line is being threatened, then suddenly what is being called into question will be dropped. No questions asked. If only we knew.

New York Public Library will host a FREE progam on Tuesday September 9th 2008, at 6:30 PM on the 6th floor of the Mid-Manhattan Library. Author John Bowe will be discussing his new book, Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy. John Bowe has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The American Prospect, National Public Radio’s This American Life, McSweeney’s, and others. He is the co-editor of , Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs, one of Harvard Business Review’s best books of 2000, and co-screenwriter of the film Basquiat.

John Bowe's website and blog.

Our visual world is made up of many bits and pieces. It is the fragments merging together to make up a whole that really make a difference in what we see. Taken alone, these individual parts tend to go unnoticed by most people. For example in architecture, it is the color of the stone, the decoration, the lettering on the sign above the door or the carved letters on a gravestone that help define the structure and create a feeling.

Lettering is a small part of the ornamentation of an architectural structure. It is generally the colossus of the structure itself that grabs the eye first, but if you look carefully and take in the entirety of a structure, a visual reward is there waiting and it is often in the letters of the words that adorn it.

Words are as much a part of our visual landscape as the buildings, streets and trees or the people we see every day. A vibrant visual world indeed. Many of us are inured to the most vulgar visual sights, as well as the sublime. Some of us don’t even notice the first spring flowers or the glowering flashing lights of a neon sign, advertising a dingy car service business. We may take a second glance but we easily move on, letting our eyes wonder aimlessly, registering nothing. But really there is much to admire in the letters of the words that plaster our visual landscape. It is the design of the letters that make words noticeable. Most us recognize what we like in structures all over the city without really even knowing why. Buildings are adorned with incised or raised letters above entryways, signs are brightly lit and splashes of paint in cryptic words jump off building walls on dimly lit streets. These visual displays are designed as a feast for our eyes and it is impressive and purposeful.

On Sept 2. at 6:30 PM, on the 6th floor, Mid-Manhattan will host a FREE slide lecture program From Gravestones to Graffiti: 250 Years of Lettering in New York, with guest speaker Paul Shaw. Paul Shaw is a designer and design historian. His specialty is lettering, whether written, drawn, carved or typographic. He teaches at Parsons School of Design and at the School of Visual Arts. He is also the author of Looking for Letters in New York: A Tale of Surprise and Dismay. Paul Shaw is the recipient of many prestigious grants and lectures widely. Mr. Shaw is an expert on the subject of letters and can speak eloquently on the design, complexity and craftsmanship of letters that are everywhere from subway signs, to grave markers, to graffiti. Please join us for a wonderful evening.

Books on letter design and graffiti can be found at the library in both the circulating and non-circulating catalogs. Also at the Picture Collection at the Mid-Manhattan Library, there are an abundance of images on letters/alphabets/graffiti that can be viewed.

More upcoming programs at Mid-Manhattan.

An article on Paul Shaw by New York Times' Streetscapes columnist Christopher Gray.