David probably feels safe here. Lots of people do. We drive through the woods and exhale (if they aren’t bulldozed down for new developments, or if we aren’t attacked by random assaulters).
We film Bannerman Island on the train on the way into New York City on a Moody Monday, knowing that we are going into a very fast paced life, but will return to a nice and slow life. Which works on its own clock.
The photographer of the New York Times article went into his home to photograph him and his wife, Peggy Ross, a former Beacon City Council Member, at one of their tables. “This mess is swallowing every little corner of our lives,” Peggy told the Times. “What does the golf course have to do with anything?”
The golf course is everything. First of all, golf courses are where lots of these deals and networkings get done. And people in Trump’s life are buried (that we know of so far)! But really, a golf course doesn’t need to be fancy to matter. People want to know who people are around them. The only reason we knew David was on this board is because Mayor Lee Kyriacou thought it mattered when he used David’s position there to justify his appointment to the Board of Assessment Review.
Which leads us to the next board: the “tax board” that the New York Times glazed over. Taxes are not sexy, fun, interesting, but they are also everything. Yes, David “volunteers” his time to be on this board, but what he is doing impacts people’s properties.
Further, Mayor Kyriacou did not tell the public that his appointment was married to a former City Council Member, or had been very involved in wanting to develop the Madame Brett factory to be a private contemporary art museum with an architect who owned 20 other properties at the time. All of this matters.
But the public was not told this - or reminded of this - at the board appointment. And nothing disastrous may have happened. But we need to know. Because lots of people in Beacon know that we are not told the full picture in some matters.
In fact, we were not told that David was no longer on that board after ALBB sent him that email. Which he never responded to. To this day - he’s never answered my question about New Mexico. But he answered it to the New York Times in their article.
Disappearing
ALBB’s questions did not matter to David, in that, he never responded. He may have made actions in his life because of the questions, but otherwise, ALBB’s questions did not matter. I had to find the answers a different way.
Personally, I’m used to disappearing. That’s the beauty of living in NYC. You can disappear in the crowd of NYC. If you fall down, the people might see you and help you back up, and then keep walking. I loved that about NYC.
David was very upset about being in the files. “Because I’m tainted,” he answered Peggy to her question about the golf course. “I’m in the files.”
I would say that David is not tainted. He was seen.
In this New York Times article, David went on to explore his role in the art and fundraising world that Epstein was so relied upon. These fundraisers needed his money. He gave it. But with strings attached. Those strings were stories that he wove to protect himself. To create reality and normalize things like pedophilia and rape so that his world could continue.
David was very honest about his reflections in the New York Times piece. “The best thing to do is to call up the golf course and resign,” David said that he told Peggy.
“You’re guilty of poor judgement,” Peggy responded. “You never saw any girls. You never witnessed any crimes.”
This feeling of fear is not unique to Peggy. Several wives of fundraiswers like David may be harboring the same fear of the unknown. The Times reported that “Peggy had assumed Ross cut ties with Epstein aftre he retired from full-time museum work in the early 2000s. She hadn’t known about the emails until the files were released, beacuse Ross never thoguht they were worth mentioning to her.”
David took the Times reporter to his backyard studio to reflect on the famous people he was in pictures with. He prided himself on getting artists money. When at the San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art David wanted to acquire the artist Robert Rauschenberg’s personal collection for the museum. “He remembered asking Rauschenberg to write down any price. The artist scrawled $22 million on a piece of paper, and Ross agreed without haggling and closed the deal.”
But in Beacon, David could disappear into his more comfortable life of music and muffins. Guitars and bands. No pressure from needing to make deals like that, with people who have enormous amounts of money to deliver. “Some donors were great, wonderful people who became friends - people who cared deeply about art.” David told the reporter. “Some were horrible assholes with just unbelievably troglodyte points of view, and I was the karma wash.”
The Muffins
The Times took a video of David making muffins. Baking is what people do when they need to go to their soul. The Times reported: “He had survived cancer four times, and he found himself reflecting on his career and writing about legacy. ‘There’s more integrity in making something that nobody will ever see than in trying to hustle and blow smoke.’”
About the music he makes with local musicians in Beacon: “It’s taken years to shrink my ego down to size. I’ve made progress, but I’m still trying to get there.”
Why We’re Here
We’re in this spot because we have been lied to for(ever) so long. So many presidencies. Even local politics - the lies are thick. It takes a lot of digging, interviewing, cross-referencing to find the lie. With Epstein, women and men have been telling about what happened to them. They have gone on record. But nothing.
We are still going through a genocide of Palestine, and now Lebanon. By our country - What more do people need to see or be told to realize that small things matter? People are done. Ownership is required. It doesn’t mean that one’s soul is done. Or cooked. Or…it just means that everything matters.
This is why the Comment section at the New York Times is backfiring for young David. No more victimizing. The concern should be for the people abused, killed, tortured, threatened, harassed by Epstein and those around him. Forward motion. Impacting something in forward motion that makes a difference that makes a change in this hellscape we are currently swirling in.
David should keep breathing. Keep making muffins. Keep making music. Keep taking ownership. Move forward.
No more covering. No more excuses.
Free Palestine.
