ABSTRACT
Ehrich Weiss, the man who was later to become Harry Houdini, lived in New York. Houdini's particular genius lay in demonstrating how captivity and freedom are inextricably linked. Houdini was fond of street theater: One of his favorite acts was to hang, trapped inside a straitjacket, from the upper floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. In death-defying acts performed before astonished crowds all over the world, Houdini conveyed his enigmatic message—a successful escape requires that you must first be confined. Artie also had spent many years living in New York, working as a technical analyst and spending much of his spare time volunteering for arts groups. He says he found Freedom Center on the Internet, but seems to have little idea of what it actually is. Artie's doctors said that he's got a cyclic disease with periods of remission between psychotic "episodes".
