Curmudgeons

 Hello, your Sports Curmudgeon here.

The Olympics got off to a start with a bling-laden spectacle of 10,000 athletes from 200 countries sailing down the Seine in bateaus. These athletes will be housed and fed in new “villages” as they go for the gold. They will be showcased and touted in new performance venues with luscious back stories of their lives. Billions of dollars go in and billions of dollars go out. And the homeless are pushed off the streets and the poor are still poor.

The start of the CSO season, the Cincinnati Ballet season, the theater season, and fine shows at the CAM and the CAC are not significant to the local TV news, but they are excited about the start of the local high school football season.

Serious Cincinnati visual artists will work for decades and decades crafting their art, exhibiting nationally and internationally. In their careers, they will not get as much media attention as Joe Burrow’s new hairdo has.

Professional sports are not essential services, but art is.

Strange

 It took me a while to realize that being strange wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Many entertainers we admire create strange personas. Artists explode with strangeness out of box after box in their search for a vision.

Strangeness can be what defines our uniqueness. Admitting strangeness in ourselves is being true to ourselves, because in fact, we’re all strange.

Sentence

 

Stats

 Statistics can frame the story, but they can’t tell the story.

Burgos

 Sitting alone in the cathedral in Burgos, Spain while the organist practiced.

That was a sacred space.
Staring at Giotto’s angels.
That was a sacred space.
Standing with gargoyles at the top of Chartres Cathedral.
That was a sacred space.
Standing in front of the Van Eyck altarpiece in Bruges.
That was a sacred space.
Swimming naked in a cold, clear river.
That was a sacred space.
Dona Rosa and her two weeping daughters handing us our new baby in Guatemala.
That was a sacred space.
A bipolar vision of oneness.
That was a sacred space.
We find ourselves in all kinds of sacred spaces, and it’s our own heightened awareness that makes them sacred.

Artists

 

Draw

 Artists! Whatever you do, don’t stop drawing. Drawing is your signature as an artist, innate and authentic. When the hand is drawing, the mind, the eye, the heart are triggered. It’s you at your most naked and unencumbered. Da Vinci, Durer, Holbein, Grunewald, Tiepolo, Pontormo, Grosz, Shiele, Kollwitz, Ingres, Degas, Picasso, Tchelitchew, Anderli, Dine, DeKooning and many more. Join them. Draw!

Stupidity

 Stupidity is simply laziness of mind.

Ignorance is simply the unwillingness to do the work.
Greed is simply when enough is never enough.
Envy is simply when you believe in another more than you believe in yourself.
Arrogance is simply thinking you are a more important human being than others.
Conformity is simply trusting others more than trusting yourself.

GOP

 I wanted to watch Trump’s acceptance speech, and I did until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I did hear a string of pompous and self-referential thank you’s. I heard rambling bluster full of false statements. The “unity” part was scant. It was clear that the audience didn’t expect or want a coherent, intelligent, thoughtful speech with clear policies and solutions that might go down for the ages instead of forgotten the next day.

The GOP has gone from Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump.
From a party committed to anti-slavery to the Republican Party of today.
From “of the people, by the people and for the people” to of the party, by the party and for the party.
From healthy dissent to forced conformity.
From uplifting speech to rambling incoherence.
From passionate calls for healing to flabby calls for unity.

Rep Convention

 

America

 America’s inception was the first sign that it was a great nation. Even in its faults and failures—war, slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, gender rights—America showed its persistence to right its wrongs, all built on its values and Constitution.

Each voter must thoughtfully ask themselves what they believe America’s fundamental values are in the light of our country’s history of courage, failure, inhumanity and great achievement.
Voting is not just a right but a responsibility to be informed and with the good of all citizens in mind.

Jesus

 Trump’s come to Jesus moment. All the heartfelt calls for unity. All the laments for the persistent violence in America. These are all bullshit unless they are followed—not by more hot air—but by swift, meaningful and effective actions.

These are not new problems in America, and America is indeed in trouble because it has neglected to address them.
Trump is not Matthew knocked from his horse. He has a lot of work to do to overcome his history of lies, cheating, and felonious behavior.
More than that, it is us who have to stop being numbed by entertainment, spectacle, consumerism, convenience and celebrity worship.

What else

 

Part 2

 

Part 1

 

Consider this

 Consider this.

The Democrats are having a generally open airing about Biden’s candidacy. What to do with this decent man who has done well in his first term, served his country for more that 50 years but is clearly showing signs of aging.

Donald Trump is a convicted felon, sex offender and liar is and is rated by over 150 historians as the worst president ever. He has been impeached twice, but all but a few Republicans won’t question his morality. This are just sycophants.

New services

 New services for those in need.

--Botched Botox Support Group
--Overcoming the Shame of Toenail Fungus
--Orgasm Donation Program
--Stupidity Anonymous
--Hair Don’ts Prevention Hotline

Every day

 

Ten Commandments

 The Ten Commandments have been the bedrock of religious values for 3000 years. Though they still contain insights about human behavior, it’s time for them to be rewritten. And I am taking on that task.

Why me? Why not me? I haven’t seen a burning bush or been spoken to by God or ascended Mt. Rumpke. I’m just an ordinary guy.

So here goes. In these times, it’s hard to give commandments. So I’ll call them
The Ten Lessons.

1. God expects humans to love one another. Follow no God who leads you to evil and brutality.
2. God can only be known in the individual aspect God reveals to each of us. So respect all the aspects of God, for in this way the fullness of God is revealed to us.
3. Respect God by listening for God in the creation around you. Let your actions speak this respect.
4. Set aside a timeplace where you are alert and responsive to God and the workings of God’s spirit in you.
5. Honor those who gifted you with human life and those who gave of their lives to nurture you toward full humanness.
6. Respect the sacredness of all human life. The taking of any life diminishes your own and can only be redeemed in the sincere and conscientious petition for God’s grace.
7. Let sexual union be always an act of loving and giving. If a sign of commitment, live that commitment. If the commitment no longer holds, end it with compassion and integrity.
8. Be led by generosity, giving back with humility. Take only what you need so as to preserve the dignity, integrity and innocence of the world around you.
9. Know your own good heart, and don’t betray it. Let honesty be the measure of your dealings with others.
10. Use the material world as a means to the spiritual world. Let what you need come from what you have earned by your work, and let your abundance be shared according to your blessings.

Debate

 In the debate, Joe Biden may have shown himself to be mentally impaired, but Donald Trump clearly showed himself to be morally impaired. Voters listened to Trump’s bluster and believed it. Voters listened to Biden, but were not willing to give the attention to the important things he said.

The media have swamped the airwaves with attention to Biden’s poor performance. The Democrats have openly discussed the consequences of Biden’s debate. Yet the media have done little to fact-check Trump’s excessive lies and toxic views. The Republican sycophants don’t question any of the antics of their lying, womanizing crooked felon.

Values

 You can measure a society’s values by the way the disenfranchised are treated.

It’s that easy.

Love glances

 Love glances off of some of us.

For some of us, love is a seed that sprouts and withers.
Love remains only romance for many of us.
For some of us, love is too big a risk.
Love is the most natural thing for some of us.
For some of us, love is a commitment that never wavers.
Love is a spiritual experience for some of us.
For some of us, love demands we pay attention.
Love is the force that some of us never use fully.
For some of us, love is a mystery.

buffoons

 

In my life