An old turd is about to get 'newturd'

Hackescher Markt, Berlin, Sept. 2001

Prelude

   I’ve always been fascinated by what goes on in the alleys and loading docks behind shops, restaurants and taverns — all that jumble of inner city chaotic support, remnants of a hard day’s work, rat-infested dashed dreams of failed enterprises. It’s all there. The story of that building is all there.
   The essence of the back stairs, as it literally translates, can reveal structured efficiency or disorganized happenstance: unnerving, comical, threatening or oddly dreamlike.
   The front of any building tells you only what the owners want you to believe and tout absurd offers; the back alley will provide stories of how things really are. It is where the truth resides.
   The façade is the fantasy, the siren song, the beacon that beckons.
   The hintertreppe is the reality, the grimy, necessary ugliness, the shadowy 'back way’ that simultaneously hides and reveals the dirty work and what’s behind that storied back door or broken window or manacled gate.
   Amid all the perversions in American Beauty, spiritual beauty was captured in the film amid everyday ugliness — a plastic shopping bag caught in the breeze (essentially a piece of trash), something you wouldn’t bother to stop and consider. The playful dance mesmerizes the new boy next door to tears. He can see beauty in everything and it hurts.
   I am interested these moments, these images; and invite you to email me your favorite image of a back alley, store dock area, or not who's in the bleachers but what's under the intricate structure, as I am going to create a photo blog of such images.
Now, about that Newturing
   You know everyone and his dog will whine about the money factor in tomorrow's Florida GOP primary, but Newt Gingrich did himself no favors. I heard one wag repeat a sentiment from the '90s that, "the more you get to know Newt, the less you like him."
   That sentiment has apparently caught up with the perfesser at the same time Romney, Inc., emptied all of the former Speaker's baggage (and there was plenty of it) in TV ads blanketing Florida. Mitt is sittin' pretty while Gingrich gets redder and redder screaming "liar, liar, liar" as documentary footage of Newt's House foibles oozes out of the TV.
   Primary day should show a double-digit foot-stomper for Mr. Mitt. Thus the history of Jan. 31, 2012, could spawn the start of a third-party bid — Mr. Gingrich is not going to go quietly for the Sake of the Party because the Sake of Newt is just too strong.