House Calls: The Lake Nervous Album
A couple freaked by the economy lets us into their world.
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The Lake
Toni Schlesinger, the author of Five Flights Up, has spent the last year visiting and photographing the homes of people who have been hit by the economic crash—people who lost their money, their savings, their terrors, their dream-lives, and their pluck. Step inside their lives with "House Calls."
It is said that one cannot always see the car coming down the road, the sky about to fall, the monster rise from the deep. One day in Lake Placid ...
Photograph by Shuli Sade.
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The Couple
... where Karen Davidson and Peter Seward had moved in 2005 and were so happy spending their days with the robins and the squirrels ...
Photograph by Shuli Sade.
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The Barn
... and living in their renovated barn on nine acres in Adirondack State Park ...
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The Music Room
... and practicing in the music room. But then, that day ...
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The Despair
... the recession hit. Even the animals in the forest lost their zest. Karen, a freelance designer, had worked very hard to have what she had.
Photograph by Shuli Sade.
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The Loft
She used to own a whole loft in an old cheese warehouse in TriBeCa. “Six designers bought the building as a partnership in l987,” she said. “We spent 12 years bringing it up to code. I had to borrow the $250,000 from my father who had helped me get a loan that took years to pay off, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I cashed out after 9/11, sold the loft for $1.6 million, bought the property here for $65,000, spent $l85,000 to turn the barn into a living space, put a lion’s share of the rest of the money in the market. Well ...”
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The Panic
“It’s down like everybody else. We’d invested conservatively, a nest egg for the future. We’ve been watching our money evaporate. Fear comes in waves, a recurrent sick, panicky feeling, that everything is a Ponzi scheme. In January, I had three design jobs lined up. They were cancelled.”
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The Trail
“Pete and I met hiking in 1998. The plan was we could move up here and do our freelance work. Pete is a painter.”
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The Reading
“Pete’s been reading these gloom and doom books for years. But it first hit me at that garden party last year. It was that geologist from Princeton ...”
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The Resolve
“We both started sending out resumes. I’m applying to teach. Pete’s looking into forestry. He’s applied for a temporary job with the Census.”
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The Grass
“We’re involved in grassroots sustainability for long term survival, farmers co-ops. We’re improving our soil. We have to become more self- reliant. We count our blessings that we have our artisan well. In January ...
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12 of 12 The Freezer
“... we got another freezer. (Hidden in the dark.) We bought a half a lamb. There are a lot of hunters where we live. Pete was thinking of becoming a hunter, deer hunter. You have to take a test. But it’s just a thought. My inclination is to just take the money all out.”
