Tom Watson

Soul Survivor

Keith Richards ambled to the stage last night at the New York Public Library, hand in one jacket pocket, his now-gray locks free of 80s voodoo tchotchkes and lost holiday ornaments, a kind of hipster Beaux-Arts Bing Crosby in the appropriately similar Celeste Bartos room. There were no Telecasters to be found, just two large arm chairs and a few hundred guests and ticket-buyers, assembled to listen to a capella riffs on Life, the instant karmic classic from the Glimmer Twin sergeant major of open G rock classicism.

The genial almost grandfatherly presence that Richards inhabited during the 90-minute interview with a gentle, nearly apologetic Anthony DeCurtis was tinged with a surprising element that you don't normally associate with the pulsing, surging, synthetic Stones: wisdom. Life (which I received in signed glory last night and will read eagerly) is promoted as the back-stage memories of one of rock's true wild men, the against-the-odds survivor of the syringe and myriad hotel hi-jinks. Yet what Richards talked about last night comprised more lessons and guidance; the creator of Satisfaction morphed into beloved secular shaman, the dye-job on his ragged hair forsaken for a suburban vicar's authenticity. And there in the front pews like minor royalty at the feet of the liege were some of the bold-faced faithful: Steve van Zandt, Lou Reed, Jimmy Fallon, Lorne Michaels rubbing elbows with Library patrons who support its mission of knowledge and community wisdom.

Drugs, relations with women, conflict with life partner Mick Jagger, mortality itself (an end-state associated with the wild Keef since his mid-20s), the role of a band-as-family over a long period of time - these were the threads that might have led to tension and topical insight. (The only real news on the night was the Richards tip that the Stones may be back at it next year). Yet in this relaxed, seminar-like setting they did not. A part-time New Yorker and Connecticut gentry since the 70s, Richards bantered easily and with a shiny grin, pausing like the old hoofer he is for the laugh lines to take hold. And like his own guitar playing, he allowed white space to filter into the song, and he kept an ear out for the rhythm section along the way. As in many a Stones show, the best stuff from Keith came from a fill, a short riff, an unexpected upstroke.

When DeCurtis gently prodded him to talk about the women in his life, Richards parried easily - yet his answer was almost Confucian: "I found it very futile to write anything bad about women ... [pause - thumpa-thumpa] ... It just doesn't swing." Words to live by. A sea of nodding bald spots. The phrase "right on, man" was heard to be uttered by attending Boomers wearing faded Stones t-shirts over $200 jeans.

 The biggest light of the evening came from a surprisingly sweet topic toward the end, when DeCurtis asked Richards about his own children. Clearly a direct hit, and one that brought an older man's spoken version of the opening riff from Happy (at least to this fan's ear): “Wife, family kids. Nothing can come between them.” Then his own question. “What is a family? It sticks together." Salt of the earth talk from the leather-clad former junkie new age Dumbledore of modern living. Yet it swung.

Yet it's the music we want to hear about, that sonic wellspring we want to read about. In her rave review of Life in The Times - "by turns earnest and wicked, sweet and sarcastic and unsparing" - Michiko Kakutani says that...

...the most insistent melodic line in this volume has nothing to do with drugs or celebrity or scandal. It has to do with the spongelike love of music Mr. Richards inherited from his grandfather and his own sense of musical history, his reverence for the blues and R&B masters he has studied his entire life (“the tablets of stone”), and his determination to pass his own knowledge on down the line.

Or rather, all down the line. Whether talking about the Beatles - "primarily a vocal group where either Paul or John or even George took the lead" - or about the insistence of Motown in all of 60s rock, Richards evinced an obsessive's knowledge of both form and history. Expected of course, but still thrilling in its way because you realize that on Friday night in the old building on 42nd Street, you're in the presence not just of rock star fame (it's New York, after all, happens every day) but of perhaps the greatest living "wizard of synthesis" of that moment in time when British rockers took American blues and R&B and churned it into a different, brilliant and lasting form.

 And in that context, Richards was at his most generous to Jagger. "Ain't nobody else could sing Midnight Rambler," he said, remembering conscious efforts to write for "the best front man in the business."

Richards was charmingly comfortable with his fame, while acknowledging that it sometimes destroys other people. "I've sort of grown into it," he said seriously, pausing to chuckle a smoker's thick chuckle.  "I'll be as famous as you like."

Vitally aware of his place in history, Richards was entirely approachable on the subject of that place - but  insistent that he didn't know it back then, "not consciously," at least. He maintains that he and others served almost as channels for that musical synthesis.

"When working, making those albums [mid-60s to early 70s]  it seemed very easy at the time," he said. "I'd guess you'd say we were on a roll. We were working a lot and, uh, songs were just popping out al over the place ... You do get swept along in the general tide of feelings. Obviously, something was happening and we were trying to put our finger on it ... In a way what can you do except to mirror or express what you're hearing around you?"

Then he added: "That's what a writer does."

Giving It Away on Seventh Avenue

From my column in Tina Brown's Daily Beast today on the annual Clinton Global Initiative philanthrofest at the Sheraton - turns out Mick Jagger was wrong: you can give it away on Seventh Avenue:

Six years after unveiling his Clinton Global Initiative in midtown Manhattan, Bill Clinton is happy to reel off the numbers: 1,946 commitments to social change in the world valued at $63 billion “which have already improved nearly 300 million lives.” That's almost 5  percent of the Earth's population. And those numbers will go up this year, as the usual pilgrims for social change make their way to the cool and cavernous Sheraton on Seventh Avenue to announce philanthropic deals, forge alliances, and tweet the latest star sighting.

At the center is an ex-president almost entirely unbound. In setting up CGI, gathering the world's leaders from the corporate, NGO and government spheres, and pressing for a diverse series of philanthropic commitments around the world, Bill Clinton has created a potent alternative to the cloistered, poll-driven, media-obsessed, 24-hour cycle of the 10th circle of hell known as the American Presidency.

To read the rest, dip your piggies in Da Beast.

A Death in the Blogging Family

The great Jon Swift has died. That's the "blogging" angle to a personal tragedy. In reality, the voice of Jon Swift - the hilarious faux conservative blogger whose talent and passion were evident in every post - belonged to Al Weisel, a sweet and good-natured journalist who happened to be the college roommate of my once-and-future collaborator Jason Chervokas.

I didn't know him well, but Al graciously agreed to be part of my little newcritics experiment of a couple of years back and his presence at some of our New York gatherings was generous, friendly, and low key - though the humor could sometimes be appropriately biting.

Al was on the way to his father's funeral in Virginia when he suffered a sudden aortic aneurysm and underwent several surgeries in an attempt to save his life. Sadly, they did not succeed.

Heartbreakingly, Al's mother has posted this comment to the Jon Swift blog, unmasking the true identify of her brilliant son - and yes, he was a blogging super-hero to many of us.

I don't know how else to tell you all who love this blog. I am Jon Swift's Mom and I guess I'm going to OUT him. He was Al Weisel, my beloved son. Al was on his way to his father's funeral in VA when he suffered 2 aortic aneurysms, a leaky aortic valve and an aortic artery dissection from his heart to his pelvis. He had 3 major surgeries within 24 hours and sometime during those surgeries also suffered a severe stroke. We, his 2 sisters, his brother, his partner and his best friend since he was 9 years old were with him as he took his last breath. We have all lost a shining start who warmed our hearts, tormented us and made us laugh as he giggled at our pulling something over on us. He passed away on February 27, 2010. My beloved child will live on in so many hearts. I miss him more than I can say. If you are on Facebook, go to organizations and join "Friends of Al Weisel, Unite!" It will give you just a taste of how special he was. Farewell, Jon (Al)

Al Weisel was the political poser's worst enemy as Jon Swift, but he was also a good guy to hang around the pub with and commiserate over New York's shrinking freelance rates. Gone all too soon, he'll be truly missed by many.

UPDATE: There's a Facebook group.

UPDATE II: Fine remembrances online - Jason, who knew him best among our group, because he knew him youngest. Please stop by his place and leave a comment; here's a bit:

In the nearly 30 years that I knew Al I didn't see him much--once or twice a year maybe, during some decades less, during some decades more. My sense of Al was that for him intimacy and emotion were never easy but there was something about our rare occasional conversations that I cherished deeply, and it was precisely the easy intimacy that results from sharing life events during those tender years when the vulnerable parts are all exposed no matter how well we think we're hiding them. I know that is the kind of friendship I'll never have the chance to develop again, so on a purely selfish level I'll miss Al more than probably he would have known.

Speaking of hiding things-- keeping secrets, was definitely one of Al's most treasured inner pastimes. For years, literally years, he would remind me with agitation about something I had written in the early Internet days to the effect that we've basically given up our privacy in the modern age anyway so why concern ourselves with protecting it online. Privacy, even secrecy, remained for Al a deeply cherished notion. I've been reading many of the blog posts eulogizing Al's Jon Swift persona. I know Al was proud of Jon Swift, perhaps a little frustrated by his inability to make it pay off in a kind of Matt Drudgey way. He certainly was gleeful about poking fun at conservative group think (sometimes the line between his parodies and the non-parodic statements of actual conservatives was indecipherable), and his malicious, gleeful, nervous laugh will be sorely missed. But I keep wondering, reading the Swift mourning, how many personae Al really had and who among his family, friends and lovers actually knew all of Al?

And James Wolcott really captured the Al Weisel that some of us came to know from New York gatherings of writers:

I met Al/Jon at the New Critics parties that Tom refers to, and he was a quietly intense guy, not in a bad way, but with a driven quality enabled him to devour all sorts of conservative craziness and alchemize it into comedy set-pieces dense with specifics but never losing their coherent purpose. There was always a "through-line" to his longer posts that had the electric hum of a third rail.

He was also the co-author of a lively book about James Dean and the making of Rebel Without a Cause, Live Fast, Die Young. I didn't have the sense Al/Jon lived too fast, but he definitely died too young.

Watching the spreadin profusion of links and tweets and comments this afternoon, it's amazing how many lives Al Weisel touched in his quietly intense way - mainly through the gift of his writing.

UPDATE III: Other heart-felt posts that should be read and commented on by friends in the blogging community:

Kathleen Maher

Blue Girl

Melissa McEwan

skippy the bush kangaroo

Open Court: New York and the Terror Trials

The right-wing blogosphere is damp this morning from the threat of accused 9/11 masterminds - gasp - holding forth on "why they did it" (Fox's headline) in open court here in New York.

Quakes a snide Jules Crittendon in not his most Churchillian moment: “Congress shall make no law abridging the right of jihadis to grandstand in front of juries.” Pam Geller, as unhinged as usual, smells some kind of White House plot to help the terrorists win: "And the clown in the White House will enjoy every disgusting minute of this obamanation. Jihad attacked America, jihad is winning."

At Gateway Pundit, the scorn for New York is obvious - and disgusting - in this little throwaway line: "The 9-11 terrorists are ready to rock New York City- again." Clever. Always nice to mix the living memories of fellow citizens jumping from 1,300 feet with a cheap political slogan.

My question for our right-wing brothers and sisters is this: Why so cowardly? Why is the usually "strict constructionist" crowd so afraid of public speech in an American courtroom? Do they think that New Yorkers will somehow come under the sway of those who plotted the murder of 2,700 of our neighbors? That we'll turn jihadi? That the words of those who would plan to fly planes full of human beings into buildings filled with other human beings will somehow become a public relations coup for Al Qaeda? And why do they lust so for a Chinese-style form of justice that favors a bullet in the head and a press release?

Why the fear?

New Yorkers strongly favor public trials for these defendants and I agree. I saw haul 'em into court, and let's hear what they have to say. Yeah, I'd like to know "why they did it," deranged as it may be. And frankly, some creepy Saddam-style hanging in Gitmo will hardly avenge the deaths of our fellow New Yorkers, or bring the illusory "closure" to this act of mass violence that so many demand.

You see, I know what the right fears and it's not jihadi propaganda or an unlikely terrorist strike at the Federal Courthouse in Foley Square. No, they fear the loss of faceless and fearful monsters locked away from public view; they fear that these "masterminds" may be revealed - like the Nazis at Nuremburg - as small men of limited intelligence whose humanity was stripped away by a code of blind hatred and bloodlust. Yes, they'll look small in court - and they'll sound hateful and stupid. And perhaps, a chapter in history will close - and with it, a useful political tool. The right wing has tried to make "the 9/12" world last as long as possible for a reason.

A judge and a New York jury in open court is the way to move us all forward, out of the shadows.

And the Moon Rose Over an Open Field

Here's David Bowie opening the incredible Concert for New York in October, 2001 with one of my favorite Paul Simon songs. One of the things that struck me about this show (which was the moving cultural experience of my life) was deep appreciation of New York City and its position and role in the world by British musicians like Bowie, Jagger and Richards, Townshend and Daltrey, Elton John, Clapton, and Paul McCartney, who organized the concert. In some ways, their emotion and empathy drove the entire evening - and provided a release to the cops and firefighters who packed the Garden. It's almost as if - like the Queen, who ordered the Star-Spangled Banner played at Buckingham Palace - these British rockers really took the meaning of "America" (as they call call it) to heart. Anyway, Bowie:

I Can Almost Remember the Smiling Faces

As the lightning flashed over Corona and a driving rain that would have brought out the grounds crew at a baseball game pelted Citi Field Friday night, some aged rock and poll pyrotechnics lit the stage as well. It's tempting to say that Paul McCartney's show was the best thing to happen at the Mets new ballpark this season - while the Wilpons' losing franchise toils on the road - but that's almost too easy. Because McCartney pulled off something of a miracle in centerfield.

Now, I don't want to focus too much on age in this review - but the markers are obvious. As the country celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Apollo lunar mission, and New Yorkers the Miracle Mets, a rocking English dude the age of the astronauts and those Gil Hodges Metsies poured it on for two and half hour hours, covering a massive swath of the rock canon - a canon he helped to write.

Macca is 67 now and just boyish enough still to get away with the kind of practiced mugging and stragecraft first honed along the Hamburg docks in 1962. Sitting with my family in the first row of the upper deck - soaked and loving it - I made a mental note comparing what McCartney was accomplishing Friday night with the previous generation of entertainers, who looked and sounded their ages in late-career tours. Think Frank Sinatra going low on My Way, for instance. McCartney never went low Friday: he hit all the notes, screamed all the screams, and rang the bell on all those Little Richard falsettos he loves so much.

Backed by a tight four-piece unit - McCartney himself switched between bass, guitar, piano, mandolin, and then ukulele on a particularly touching version of George Harrison's Something - the show moved quickly and packed in 35 tunes ranging from I Saw Her Standing There (with a cameo from Billy Joel) to recent stuff from his 2008 recent Electric Arguments record, released pseudo-anonymously as the Firemen. That's a 44-year pop music bracket, for those keeping score. And frankly, the show was a reminder of just how much popular rock music owes to the lad from Liverpool.

The Beatles numbers came easily, sans pomp and circumstance and the knighthood, and they provided a bit of time capsule quantum theory to a stadium filled with three generations of fans. Yesterday, of course (with an orchestral sampling toward the end), The Long and Winding Road (same), Eleanor Rigby (played with bit more of the bouncy soul Aretha Franklin gave her brilliant cover), Back in the USSR, Paperback Writer, I'm Down, Got To Get You Into My Life, Get Back, Blackbird, Drive My Car (a surprising show opener), Hey Jude (the requisite crowd-swaying sing-along), and McCartney's gemstone elegy for his mother, Let It Be. There was another elegy as well; although McCartney dedicated his recent Here Today to the fallen John Lennon - "my friend John," gone these 29 years - the real tip o' the hat toward his partner came with his segue from a standard rendition of A Day in the Life into Lennon's solo anthem, Give Peace a Chance - which he knowingly urged his largely upper middle class American audience to sing along with him. Yes, there was a message there - and a catch in the throat as well.

Just as there was when McCartney played My Love for his late wife, Linda, his partner in the schmaltzy yet rollicking 70s band, Wings. Because of its superlight mid-70s  fluff exemplified by the bestselling Wings at the Speed of Sound (sometimes ridiculed as "Wings at the Speed of Disco") - whose hits were ignored at Citi Field - McCartney's immediate post-Beatles decade often doesn't get the props it should. Yet it's fertile territory indeed, from the world-class rocker Jet (my single fave Macca solo tune) to the bombastic Bond soundtrack Live And Let Die, accompanied Friday night by flame pots and fireworks. And the Wings stuff brought back memories of spinning Wings Over America, circa 1974, then one of the hardest-rocking live records in circulation.

And yes, even at his advanced age (sadly, this focus is hard to avoid; witness the storyline around golfer Tom Watson's quixotic run at the British Open title this weekend), McCartney loves to toss off the mantle of pop songwriter Hall of Famer, switch his Hofner bass for a lefty Les Paul, and do a little shredding. He did just that on two bluesy rockers - one slow, one blistering - that shook the still-setting concrete in the new ballpark. I've Got a Feeling - from the Let It Be record, when the fissures of eventual break-up were showing in Beatleland - has always been and underrated Fab Four B-side, reputedly written duing the rollicking Hamburg days and rewritten later on. McCartney delivered the opening guitar lines with clear relish Friday night, strolling to the front of the stage to belt out the lyrics. And on Helter Skelter, the Beatles' main contribution to the heavy metal genre, Sir Paul extended his solo and just rambled on - setting up a false ending that eventually morphed into Purple Haze.

And a story about his pal Jimi Hendrix - which seems appropriate to me, given the predilictions of my fellow concert-goers. This morning on the beach, there was my guitar-playing 11-year-old, wearing his Hendrix t-shirt and regaling the beach blanket crowd with tales of the "great Paul McCartney concert" he'd seen Friday night. Sometimes - but not very often at all - time does seem to stand still. Music can do that.

I'm In a New York State of Mind

As Digby says, everybody thinks their state is the worst. But New Yorkers are wearing a particular shade of red these days, in shocked embarrassment at the depths of our state government. Aspects of the Republican coup in the upper house of the New York State Legislature seemed to be more the province of imaginations like Jon Swift's, rather than any kind of statecraft. Since two Democrats crossed the aisle in a power grab apparently motivated by billionaire Tom Golisano's hurt feelings over being ignored by a new Democratic majority whose victory he helped to finance, the State Senate has been in a state of comic gridlock, highlighted by comic declarations about having the right key to get into the chamber.

No one looks good. The Democrats, led by an accidental Governor boasting approval ratings lower than Elliot Spitzer's after the call girl scandal, feature an astoundingly weak line-up outside of Assembly boss Shelly Silver and Attorney General Cuomo. The Republicans, used to holding onto the Senate by winning in barely-populated districts to counter the electoral might of New York City - and through an unwritten 30-year deal to share power in the Legislature - have always taken the obstructionist route. On both sides of the aisle, perp walks are almost as routine as fundraisers.

Now a State Supreme Court judge has given the warring Senate parties until Monday to strike a deal on power-sharing and legislative structure, so that the state's business can proceed. Good luck. We may as well hope for an early budget and cuts to the legislators' salaries and perks. As Ballon-Juice blogger DougJ says, "No matter how cynical I get about New York State government, I just can’t keep up."

Meanwhile, if you want the latest on one of the traitorous Democrats, Senator Pedro Espada, the Bronx blog BoogieDowner is going wall-to-wall with Espada coverage.

And They Still Come to New York

These days, there's a bank on every corner in Manhattan. Some of them are still solvent. The old-timey diners and burger joints and real neighborhood bars are dwindling relics. The smoke shops and drug stores - not the chains, the ones with soda counters - are gone. The newsstands have been redesigned in sleek Euro post-modernism. The cabs have video screens.

New York is replacing itself with a version that is less recognizable, more saccharine and less grimy. Sleek signage. Big brands. Soaring towers. Streetscapes will all the interest of a bad virtual reality walk-through, all pale vanilla and man-made granite. Glass curtain walls, once the province of visionary architects, now slide from street to sky on every failed insurance building and former investment bank in town. The damned napkins have ads on them.

Yet, they still come to New York.

From my day-time perch over 42nd and Second, I watched the comic book armed camp that envelops the east side of midtown when the General Assembly opens and the president comes to town. Security becomes a cartoon best watched from on high, a parade of emergency services vehicles, ambulances, blacked-out Suburbans, snarling NYPD Harleys, police buses, scooters, bikes and what appear to be lightly-armored troop carriers. The hotel next door swarms with men in dark suits speaking into lapel pics as curly little chords run down into their shirts. Machine guns in Grand Central and out on Lex are the norm. Two Coast Guard warships sit in the East River. There are dogs. Many of them. And strangely, in a way, plain old uniformed cops directing traffic and standing around waiting for orders, doing what the Feds direct.

Yeah, they still come to New York, though our financial center is failing, perhaps for the final time. Will Wall Street be truly vestigial old-fashioned New York reference, clinging to the marketplace like that burger joint up on 52nd Street where not a single waiter was born after 1940?

The traffic cones and people barriers form extra lanes of traffic all along 42nd Street and avenues from First to Lexington, routing a virtual parade of motorcades. look, that was has 10 motorcycles, two ambulances, a dozen suburbans, and screaming sirens. Might  be Bush. But there's another: one SUV, one NYPD cruiser, and a single motorcycle. The president of what small country? He (or she) still comes to New York, and not just for the half-price sale that is the flood of Euros to the city's stores.

Last night, a few bloggers made their way to the top of the Sheraton over on Seventh. I've been going there since the mid-80s, when I was a young political reporter covering the annual Bronx County Democratic dinners - the ones hosted by boss Stanley Friedman, a man with serious personal style who grandly feted the old titans, guys like Carmine DeSapio. The place has had a face-lift, but the big ballrooms are still there and the man who is hosting his own shadow gathering of world leaders for the fourth year was in fine form on the 45th floor. Bill Clinton can still hold a crowd of smart people in the palm of his hand, holding forth with a depth of knowledge that stuns and overshadows and destroys the tiny, cramped intellect of the man who rode in the really big motorcade past my office this afternoon, the forgotten man just serving out his failed term as big events swirl around his deserted island of contempt.

We waited in small, steamy hotel room making small talk about blogs with aides while the Secret Service watched the hallway and the greatest president of our lifetimes talked about economics (or so we guessed) with the president of Paraguay down the hall. Then we all sat around the living room in the suite and mostly listened (questions were few) to Clinton discuss the economic crisis and what he'd do. Suffice to say, he suggested a better deal than the rapine weaseling of $700 billion from the taxpayers' account. We all thought the same thing though no one spoke it aloud. Yes, what a difference an administration makes.

Then it was down into the New York evening, my walk from west to east to the station, dodging the motorcades and lock-down zones. Was that fall in the air or just the chill of the city's tax base at basement temperature?

Still, the streets were filled. They were filled today. The helicopters buzzed and the motorcades whizzed along. Yes, they still come to New York.

UPDATE: We'll be blogging CGI over at onPhilanthropy - and I'll be Twittering away as the spirit moves me.

No Lipstick on Lehman's Pig

We may not be yet headed toward a world made by hand - to borrow the title, if not the mood of James Kunstler's dark cinematic novel of our post-energy future - but we may be headed toward a New York without its economic engine. Tonight, Lehman Brothers and its 158 years of Wall Street history teeter on the edge of oblivion, with no bail-out on offer from you and me, the humble taxpayer. Merrill Lynch is in talks with Bank of America to save itself. We - that's you and me, dear reader - have guaranteed the mortgage-backed security nest of vipers at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in order to "save" that market. Insurance giant AIG edges toward the edge. The dollar's in the crapper, thanks to Republican policy protecting companies who make beau coup bucks by selling American-made on the cheap. And the polls now favor that failed political party and its former opposition leader, now comfy in the arms of both the K Street lobbyists who sold the economy down the river - and the flunky neocons who send other people's children to die in a failed experiment. Yeah, I don't know what the Bush Doctrine is either, except what I've heard on Fox. But when those thousands of six - and yes, seven-figure jobs - leave New York never to return in the lifetimes of those holding the pink slips and carrying cardboard boxes, it means the pork barrel of Federal emergency aid is empty. And there ain't puttin' no lipstick on that pig.

Ticonderoga's Choke Point

Ticonderoga, originally uploaded by Tom Watson.

Fort Ticonderoga commands the west side of the lower end of Lake Champlain, its cannon covering both the approach from Canada and the St. Lawrence the north to the southern end of the lake - and the critical portage to the top of Lake George, only a mile or so to the east. In 18th century terms, it was a crucial valve in the plumbing that conducted men and material through the resource-laden wilderness between Albany and Quebec. During the French & Indian War, it was the site of a particularly brutal little battle that the French - builders of the fort - won over the British; their victory was, however, short-lived. The English eventually won control over the areas to the north and west of Albany thanks to an influx of troops and superior American officers, from the young George Washington to the trackers and guides immortalized by James Fenimore Cooper several generations later.

Surrendered to Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen during the early Revolution and its cannon hauled by boat down Lake George and overland along the basic route of the Mass Turnpike to Boston - there to assist Washington in hurling the British from Boston - the fort was a picturesque wreck by the first years of the Republic; Jefferson and Madison, touring upstate New York, strolled its romantic ruins and marveled at the lakes. Rebuilt a hundred years ago - and in stages ever since - Ticonderoga today is the gem of New York's colonial historic sites, perfectly genuine at its stony base and brilliantly simple in its presentation. There is no gaudy visitors center, no audio visuals, no sense of the precious.

Yet, as we read this week in the Times, it's a financial wreck - a ruin of philanthropic ambition and management, and is considering selling its art collection or closing for a year. We visited Ticonderoga - my third visit, my children's second - last week on the way home from Lake George, and spend an hour wandering the battlements and peering at the collection of arms and other archeological wonders in the simple galleries housed in reconstructed barracks. It remains a wild and beautiful spot, its bloody history aside, and the views across the farmlands and up toward Mount Defiance (where the British mule-hauled cannon to eventually force Ticonderoga's surrender from the rebels) are singularly beautiful. Moreover, they tell almost the complete story of New York's importance to the new United States - sitting astride one of the great inland trade routes linking Canada with Albany and the Mohawk, New York and the Hudson.

The Times story quoted Cliff Siegfried, director of the New York State Museum and the State Department of Education’s assistant commissioner for museums, who hinted at state support to save Ticonderoga (run now by a private foundation) from closing.

“Its importance to the economy of that region and the history of New York is obvious,” Siegfried said. “We’re going to work with them to make sure that it doesn’t fail. This is a hiccup in its history.”

I hope so. But I also wonder why this country doesn't have equivalent of the UK's excellent National Trust, some sort of national repository charged with preserving history and heritage; too many important sites are maintained as roadside attractions - or rich people's playthings.