Deconstruction

 Marketing spends incredible amounts of money and creative effort to produce TV commercials for their ends, not ours.

Every parent needs to show their teens how to deconstruct a TV commercial.
How are the actors, experts and spokespersons carefully selected?
What about their clothing, makeup and fitness?
How do the music, dancing and actor voices work to have an effect on the viewer?
Is the setting of the commercial realistic?
Does the commercial tell YOU what you should need or want?
What emotional effect does the commercial have on you?
Does the commercial promise what it can’t deliver?
Does the commercial subtly question your self-confidence, femininity or masculinity?
Is this product the best way to achieve any personal goals?
How does this product make you think about your wants vs. your needs?

Sacred

 Though my perspective may be limited, I don’t see that the spiritual or the sacred is of much interest to artists today. I don’t mean religion, though that could be an aspect of it. I mean a sense of awe before the beauty and complexity of the world, a search for the sublime, an appreciation of the connective web we all belong to, a belief that the sacred is pervasive.

In today’s world of power and brutality, art can make us see beauty or understand where we’ve gone astray. Unless we affirm the spiritual or sacred in the world, we lose the energy needed to make the world fully known to us and fully a part of us.
The choice to largely ignore this aspect of our human experience is a failure of contemporary art.

Art

 Art was a part of who I was as a kid, but so was mathematics. Mathematics was what I studied seriously through graduate school. Though I didn’t leave math behind, art emerged again and became the language that allowed me to express my own vision, my own way of making sense of what intrigued me. Art became a big part of who I was in the making and my teaching. Many artists and art lovers became friends. In the end, I think art made me more than I made art.

contemporary art

 Contemporary art is a hard nut to crack. It morphs into myriad forms and has so many things to say. It’s always new because its practitioners are always new. It can be confounding, funny, complicated, profound and provocative. But isn’t that its job?

Being overwhelming and demanding shouldn’t be off-putting. It should be a challenging adventure for the curious and those who are open-minded. Even the experts can be flummoxed by it. So take heart. All you need is to take it seriously, keep educating yourself and be open to what calls you.

Some questions

Some questions:
How is it that all of Trump’s trials only boost his numbers, but Hunter Biden’s legal battles bring down Joe’s numbers?
When Melania was on her dicey immigration path, was she vermin?
How come Trump followers seem to be radios with only one station?
If Trump thinks he is the victim of a witch hunt, why not give him an old-time test. Tie him up, dunk him in the pool at Mar-a-Lago and see if he floats?

If reelected, would Trump be a dictator or just a dick? 

Humanity

 Though the cause may be just, it’s hard to imagine that a people who have experienced the Holocaust would wage a war that was so brutal and deadly.

Innocent men, women and children killed in great numbers, their homes destroyed. Survivors starving and diseased without medical care. Displaced with nowhere to go and little food and water.
When we take away the humanity of others, we relinquish our own humanity.

Violence

Face it America
Violence entertains us
The bloody hero

Bullets in the head
A knife thrust hard in the gut
Any means for blood

Men fight, women too
Bloody faces and knuckles
Fight Club in the home

Soldiers see what’s real
Live it in their own bodies
PTSD kills

The Civil War drew
Spectators on the hillside
TV brings it home

No longer cowboy’s
Black and white morality
The streets decide it

Are we animals
Infected with hate and fear
Violent beings

Brutal, thuggish, mean
Violence is a language
Why do we use it

No, we’re better folks
Who haven’t figured out love

Or how to live it 

Calenius

 They call me Calenius. I was the Majestrate of Bethlehem during the time the Christ child was born. This was a bustling time of year because of the Roman tax mandates. The weather was not unpleasant but was unseasonably cold. Because I was busy--actually overwhelmed--by my duties, I did not visit the newborn nor meet the kings. All that I heard was testimony and rumor.

The innkeeper was of little help. I took the long walk to converse with the shepherds, who at the time the only remaining witnesses. One heard angels, the others did not. One saw the family leave toward Egypt. All felt they had been transformed but had not fully sorted out how.
We briefly thought about turning the manger site into a holy shrine, but some were ambivalent, some did not think we were prepared for the crowds of visitors and we all knew Herod would make this impossible.
Then the slaughter of the innocents.
You know the rest.

Melchior

 My name is Melchior. In my time we depended on the stars to guide the important decisions and directions in our lives. The Bethlehem star was an intriguing sign, and I was not the only one to be fascinated by it. By sheer coincidence, I met two other two kings guided by the same star, and we agreed to make the rest of the journey together.

When we arrived, the sounds of angels were like sweet lullabies, their wings aflutter, and the stable was surprisingly warm. The animals had wandered away, but the shepherds still knelt near the child. The child was not any more beautiful than any new baby, but his demeanor was so open and inviting, though he seemed a little unsettled by us. Maybe it was the camels.
The light that enveloped the manger was not the light of night or day, but a light that seemed spiritual or divine. This maybe most of all was affirmation that our journey had been worthwhile. We left our gifts, ignored the advice of the oily Herod and made our way home, discussing among ourselves what had happened and what it meant.

Micah

 

Yearning

 The first time homo sapiens filled burial sites with artifacts of life, there emerged a yearning and a hope for a life after death. The gods became the locus of this, and the vision of God became as varied as the languages, dress, art and behavior of human beings. God could be benign, obscure, loving, vengeful, fatherly and much more.

In a contemporary world of easily shared knowledge and many spiritual choices, how do we find a God that directs us to live the life we want to live?
The belief that there is no God, still does not dismiss the yearning toward something higher that is part of the full human being.

Circus

 Welcome to Barnum & Bailey’s Congressional Circus. Enjoy the trained elephants and donkeys go through their routines. Watch the politicos walk the tightrope. Thrill as they try to time wild legislation. Enjoy three rings of dog and pony shows. Watch as they flip and flop between trapezes and land in their safety net. And of course, clowns galore.

Finish up with the snack food and cotton candy they want to sell you.

Art student

 To many, an art student is a strange bird who has made the choice to pursue a relatively useless degree. While there may be a bit of truth in this from a social perspective, this idea comes from cultural stereotypes and the way art is perceived in K-12 education.

So, to clear this us, consider that art students study not only the visual language—arguably the most powerful in contemporary culture—but also written and spoken language, critical thinking, aesthetics and other disciplines in liberal arts.
They are problem solvers who work hard to develop their own personal voices.
They make art in a range of 2, 3 and 4-dimensional media, including the computer. They learn to use all the tools in the woodshop and might even learn to weld.
Is there a more complete area of study in the college curriculum?
So, art students, work hard, develop your voice, educate others when you can, persevere.

Adult Jesus

 Ever since his experience with the elders in the synagogue, Jesus felt he was a different person. He wasn’t sure how, but he was much more attentive to the world around him and how it worked. The words of the Bible he loved to read acted on him. He took many solitary walks to try to understand what this new life was.

He became so close to God that he sometimes thought he was God’s son. The miracles surprised even him, but he thought that they were not the real message. He felt at home with fishermen, prostitutes, lepers and other marginal folks. It was exhilarating, even with the increasing weight he seemed to be carrying.
And you know the rest.

Baby Jesus

 The angels left their perches on the stars and swarmed Bethlehem with their horns and crystal voices, making magic with their wings. The animals mooed and baaed and lowed. Baby Jesus reached out to pet them as children often do. The humble shepherds came, the ones whose job it is to care. The Three Kings were a different story. They were a bit intimidating to Baby Jesus. They brought him gold, frankincense and myrrh, and all he wanted was a teddy bear and a rattle. The innkeeper did bring blankets and keep the warm fire going.

The dream talker encouraged them to pack up and make the arduous trip to Egypt. In those days people listened to their dreams. Imagine a new mother and baby making a trip like that on a donkey.
Once they were there, Joseph took on odd jobs in carpentry and Mary made flatbread and sold it from their home. Jesus taught himself to read, studied the Bible and played joyfully with the Egyptian neighbor kids. He liked them a lot.
When reports came that Herod had died of liver and kidney failure, the family returned to settle in Nazareth.
You know the rest.

Hollywood

 It’s the Hollywood awards season glamour fest. Red carpets, cameras clicking, lavish, attention-getting gowns, rented jewelry, funky tuxes, gift bags worth thousands. It’s all part of the excess of their narcissistic circus.

Their rewards for entertaining us.
But what about the anonymous folks who risk their lives for us, who keep us safe, who see to our health, who teach our children?

3500

 Today is post 3500. I guess I did have something to say.

At war

 At War

The cold, bloody axe
Splits them again, choosing hate
As their engagement

Peace is buried now
In decades of sand and dust
While deep fear takes root

Who will remind us
We are all human beings
And that is what counts

War is a failure
To speak for humanity
Letting weapons talk

Mounds of bloody flesh
Dead children in mother’s arms
Will not deter them

Children are fodder
Hostages are brutalized
No one thinks of love

This is human beings
Shedding their right to glory
For the choice to kill

The sane have no voice
The peacemakers are stifled
War’s engine prevails

This is all of us
What we keep choosing to be
Noble words seem cheap

Peronal convenience

 Certainly, use of fossil fuels ais a part of climate change and climate disasters. For me, though, the real culprit is personal convenience. Personal convenience has created an explosive dependence on plastic products, excess packaging, high demand for fuel and incredible waste.

We have become so used to personal convenience that we can’t acknowledge our part in climate change. We are probably no longer capable of making the fundamental changes we must make in our lifestyles.

Silence

 We are afraid of silence. The silence that leaves us alone with our thoughts. The thoughts that come from deep within us. The thoughts that call us to be human. The thoughts that remind us we have souls.

We are addicted to the distractions of noise, hoopla and spectacle. We think the substance of the world is outside of us, when the world in us is waiting to be found.

Little shit

 I was a little shit when I was a kid. During that phase, I learned a lot about human behavior, and I learned about what kind of person I didn’t want to be. With effort I turned myself into a decent human being.

This made me think that Jesus was very possibly a little shit as a kid, too—precocious, rebellious, hanging out with the bad kids. God the Father had to prepare Jesus for the difficult life he was destined to live, and being a perfect son just wouldn’t do that.
Just a thought.

Athlete/teacher

 A highly paid pro athlete enters the elementary classroom volunteering a few hours of his time. Then the inevitable hoopla and media attention. The kids are excited. But the teacher, there every day and working for only a modest salary, gets no real attention. This is the microcosm of our culture of celebrity worship.

Trump

 I don’t mind saying. I have compassion. I have integrity. I have intellect. I have a moral compass. That is why I can say with assurance that Donald Trump has none of these. He was never loved and doesn’t know how to love. He tries to fill his emptiness with wealth and notoriety—which will never be enough. He is a political coward and broke his pledge to uphold the Constitution. The number of his followers confounds me.

New services

 Three amazing new services

Tired of hospitals and high hospital bills? Robodoc is the answer for you. This compact robotic surgical unit comes with CDs to direct 20 different operations. It’s been proven in hospitals across America, and now you can rent or own. All that is needed is a friend or family member to give the anesthesia.

We know it’s difficult to get seniors to shower. But now, Mike’s Senior Wash is available in your neighborhood. Just secure your loved one into one of the comfortable seats on Mike’s conveyor belt for a wetting, a soaping, a rinse and a blow dry. Shampoo separate.

Everyone has their favorite positions for sex. Everyone wants to try new things.
That’s why you’ll thoroughly enjoy the Sex Number Bed. With 100 different settings, you are sure to enjoy exploring all your erotic possibilities.

Freedom

 Freedom comes with responsibilities, otherwise freedom is anarchy. Freedom is a gift that requires a thank you note. Freedom comes through citizenship, which is the connective tissue that makes a nation. That does not mean that personal freedom is given up. It means that personal freedom must be continually and consciously assessed in terms of the good of the community and the consequences of personal actions.

This to me is a mature understanding of freedom.

Donald

 The Ballad of Donald Trump

I’ve blonded my hair
And oranged my face
To get myself ready
For the Republican race
My home’s Mar-a-Lago
Where I golf and I play
Where top secret documents
Are all locked away
Nikki and Ron way behind in the pack
My numbers are great
And there’s nothing I lack
My suit is dark blue
And I only own one
My tie is bright red
And my outfit is done
The witch hunt continues
From courtroom to judge
I’ll lie and I’ll wriggle
But I’ll never budge
My rallies are awesome
The crowds wildly cheer
I open my arms
To tell them I’m here
I ramble out words that
Fall like the rain
I offer my victimhood
But never explain
I value their ignorance
Keeps them loyal to me
Though I’m a crook and a liar
As is easy to see
So morals be damned
They get you nowhere
My only advice
America beware

Calling

 When art is seen and practiced as a profession, there are expectations on both the artist and the client. These deal with sales, marketing, quality and “professionalism.”

When art is seen and practiced as a calling, it’s a different story. Art is a drive, even a compulsion, that often starts in childhood. It’s relentless in search of a truth and pushes aside public criticism or rejection. The journey must be taken; the art must be made.
There are ways to make art between these two practices. But any way chosen should be driven by commitment and integrity.

July 2024

 In July of 2024, I will turn 80. So I’m starting early with my efforts to look my best. Here are my plans.

--eyebrow reweaving
--eyelid rejuvenation
--botox for puffy, kissable lips
--nipple reconstruction
--navel and tummy tightening
--butt tuck
--calf and pec implants
I think that should do it.