If you could help save a piece of American history...

[my miss storm cat]

... would you?

She is history.

She is art.

She is our past.

She is the last of her kind and if we let her go we have nothing left.

Her name is the SS United States and, to this day, she holds the record for being the fastest ocean liner ever to cross the Atlantic as well as the largest one built in our country.

She is living history or rather now? She is dying history.

When my grandfather was 8 he was left behind, in Sicily, and told to come to America when he saved up enough to sail over alone and find the rest of the family. They had to leave someone behind so they left him, with no one, and sailed to the new world in steerage, of course. For anyone who thinks it looked bad in movies remember everything else aside, there was hardly any ventilation, hardly any food, the bunks were iron and four high and comically narrow, the mortality rate was pretty damned high so awful and crowded as it can look it was probably much much worse.

Meanwhile my grandfather who once had a knife put on his throat because he accidentally saw some mob murder (they really did say "you didn't see nothing" and then let him go) got a job as an apprentice and when he was 11he sailed over alone.

My other grandfather, also Italian, was named America. That pretty much sums up how strongly my ancestors felt about the chance to come here.

While the SS United States didn't yet exist they all came over by ship as I'm sure a lot of yours did.

Ocean liners have such a rich and important history in many of our lives whether we realize or appreciate it or not.

Cunard sister ships the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth and later on ships like the Independence and the Constitution... the SS France with her beautiful smokestacks...

Just about all of them are gone.

Scrapped.

Last time I looked there were about 32 Ocean liners left in the world and about a third of these in some form of decay or awaiting final excecution. If horses go to glue factories? Old ships become razor blades as they say.

The last American liner except for the United States was the Independence and she left San Francisco for Dubai about three years ago after being out of commission for an eternity. She left for her new home. Something happened though... some turn of events... and the plans changed and she is gone.

No chance of saving her.

Poof - she doesn't exist.

Kinda like Cutlass Bay or other random horses going over there. They get there and some are just not the same ond others are not heard from again.

We have a chance to save the last one... the last one here, the last piece of American history.

The SS United States has a chance and the conservancy can explain her history much better than I so please if you are so inclined take a look and consider a very small donation.

I know there are more important things in the world. I know there are all kinds of problems and people who go without and it might seem a frivolous thing, a ridiculous attempt but but but this is a tangible and historic icon. This is who we were are are. You built something? Well we can do it better, bigger and faster. You know what I'm saying? It defines us.

Living history, a floating musuem. I don't know, I think it's important anyway.

Last thing I want to say is of course I don't live out that way and so am not sure what the people think who have to look at her sad remains on a daily basis but kindly remember... the the Eiffel Tower was protested by the most famous architects and artists of the day who issued this statement...

"We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection…of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower … To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years … we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal"

The remains of the Titanic are being ruined by too many vessles going down there. Tourists in submarines landing on it, crushing it. As Robert Ballard (who found the remains) said they are "loving it to death". The newest Queen Elizabeth is a monstrous floating thing with no grace or history, deck after deck after deck... the most hideous ship with no line to her and sure - we have the Queen Mary but the United States is ours and hell can't we manage to save another since none like her kind exists or will be built again?

I hope she can be saved and not end up as scrap like so many of the White Star, French Lines, Cunard, Holland America, etc. ocean liners have been.

A very short tribute video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW-lV-SkzQU

For more information or to donate...

http://www.ssunitedstatesconservancy.org/

(Was debating giving this the title yes Cardus I even talk about dying ships, but...)

Seriously...

S.O.S.