Part of The Cradle Project's mission to raise money for orphans in sub-Saharan Africa includes filling a warehouse with 1,000 cradles and cribs made by artists from around the world. The original warehouse space was a 20,000-square-foot building in the railyard that was once a locomotive repair shop. The lease of the space to Albuquerque Studios has changed the plan slightly.

Perhaps the wisest words ever uttered by Franklin D. Roosevelt were "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” In today's culture, we could sure use a dose of that idiom, straight down the gullet without a sugary chaser.

It would require some luck to peg the trim, thoughtfully bearded 50-year-old man sitting in the fading afternoon light as a foreign correspondent. Indeed, dressed in a sweater and jeans, wearing pink argyle socks that flash as he crosses a leg, Peter Godwin seems about as far from a war zone as one can get in a room of ceiling-high bookcases and an elegant symmetry of lamps and décor. In its lush, ordered calm, this salon is a world apart. Even Manhattan's nearby West Side Highway has been reduced to a soft whisper.