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Archive for the ‘Current Events’ Category

Walk a Mile in My Shoes

Posted in Current Events, Music, Opinion, tagged , , on April 28, 2020| 2 Comments »

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“Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy.”

― Dean Koontz

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I’ve never read a Dean Koontz novel and don’t really know much about his work, outside of them mainly being in the thriller/horror genres. And though I couldn’t find which book the words above were from,  I liked his pointing out that so many of the qualities of the intellect that we admire mean little if they are not accompanied by compassion and empathy.

I’ve been writing this blog for over eleven years now (yikes!) and over that time I have often written about what I see as an empathy deficit in this country. Too many of us tend to not be able to recognize the hardships and problems of others, to see only how things relate to us personally. We seem to, more and more, have an inability to imagine how it might be to walk a mile in the shoes of someone else.

Maybe it’s always been that way and I’m just a little late to the show. That could well be the case. But I don’t think so. There’s been an increase of self-centered behaviors and a coarsening of our attitude towards others that is easily observable. Someone acting like a participant on an ugly reality TV show that would have once appalled us is now acceptable behavior..

It’s all I-got-mine now. Winners and losers. Chumps and champs.

Our president*** is but an ugly reminder of this new normal. A symptom that was inevitable.

You see it in his self-aggrandizing attitude and his “the world revolves around me” narcissism. But it’s his total lack of empathy that irks me the most, personally. For example in the totality of his daily briefings during the covid-19 crisis, he has devoted less than 4 1/2 minutes out of more than 28 hours to expressing any concern for the individuals who have fell victim to the virus. Most often, his time was spent patting himself and those around him on the back, saying what a terrific job he is doing.

Little mention of the lives ended or of those living, the families and friends, who have been affected by these deaths.

It’s not that he didn’t have an opportunity. Between March 26 and April 26, one month, approximately 54,000 Americans perished due to the virus. That is an enormous tragedy for these families, for the health workers, for their friends and for this nation. Each of these 54,000 is a story, a life filled with moments of love and laughter, sadness and loss.

He is without empathy, without true concern for his fellow humans. He doesn’t have the ability to place himself in the shoes of others, to a walk a mile in any other person’s shoes.

Whatever it takes, whatever it costs in human terms, to stroke his huge fragile ego is never too much. Take the West Point grads, for example. They have long been dispersed from the campus and plans were under way for a remote virtual commencement ceremony. But this selfish thing decided, without consulting the Army officials, that he would be speaking at the commencement in June. As a result, 1000 grads are going to have to return to West Point, be tested there for the virus then be placed in quarantine for 14 days on campus, all for the vanity of this thing and the fawning adulation he craves so much.

He doesn’t give a damn for the peril in which he places anyone, for the lives he burns through. We are all expendable accessories to him.

Not lives. Not families. Not individuals with feelings and futures.

No, we are assets to be used. Fodder.

Okay, I got off on a tangent there. But it still is in line with the message this morning. We can only measure our success and survival to the extent that it reaches down to the most vulnerable among us. In order to do that, we must be able to see the struggles of others, to envision ourselves in those  same struggles.

We don’t have a leader than can do that so it’s up to us to make the difference needed.

Let’s try to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes for once.

Here’s an old song from Joe South from back around 1970. You don’t hear much about Joe South anymore but he had a nice string of hits in the late 60’s/early 70’s. I always liked this song. Here’s Walk a Mile on My Shoes.

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Elbow Room

Posted in Biographical, Current Events, Event, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 26, 2020| 6 Comments »

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When the gates swing wide on the other side
Just beyond the sunset sea
There’ll be room to spare as we enter there
Room for you and room for me
For the gates are wide on the other side
Where the flowers ever bloom
On the right hand on the left hand
Fifty miles of elbow room

—50 Miles of Elbow Room, Herbert Buffum

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I have always longed for elbow room.

Huge arching domes of clear air above.

Wide open spaces for the eye to search.

Soundless vistas with not a soul to be seen.

The elbow room I long for is not that described in the lyrics of the 1930 gospel song, 50 Miles of Elbow Room, from songwriter Herbert Buffum. His version of elbow room is a placid paradise in the hereafter

Ideally, I don’t have to die to find my sought after elbow room. Of course, finding such a place might entail a little imagination along with a willingness to accept that this elbow room most likely will be located inside oneself.

Maybe that’s what I am trying to uncover with my work.

Elbow room. At least, my own little bits of elbow room.

The painting at the top is such a piece. It’s part of my aptly titled show, Social Distancing, that is still planned to open on June 5 at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. There is some doubt as to whether there will be an actual physical opening reception but there will be a show hung to be viewed so long there is– wait for it– social distancing.

This painting is titled Elbow Room, of course. It’s a return of sorts to my earlier work of the early and mid 2000’s, painted in the transparent inks I favor on paper. In a way, painting it felt like it was something inherent. Built in. Natural, like coming home, like a circle being completed.

For me, this is the hardest work to judge. It’s like looking at old family photos. You don’t look at the faces and apprise them for attractiveness or ugliness. You just see them for what you know them to be, for what they mean to you. How the outside world sees them is not important.

And this certainly feels like a family photo for me.

So, on this Sunday morning, let’s hear a bit of that song, 50 Miles of Elbow Room. I couldn’t find the original from Vaughan Happy Two. The two most significant versions are a gospel version from the Rev. F.W. McGee in 1933 and a traditional folk version from the Carter Family in 1942. The song I am playing today owes its influence to the Carter Family. It’s performed by a favorite of mine, Gillian Welch.

Have a good Sunday. Hope you find some elbow room for yourself, if that’s what you want.

 

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The Road to Hell

Posted in Current Events, Music, Opinion, tagged , , on April 24, 2020| 8 Comments »

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There could be only one result  . . .  If men insisted on being free from the burden of a life that was self-dependent and also responsible for the common good, they would cease to be free at all. Responsibility was the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms.

Edith Hamilton, The Echo of Greece [1957]

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Spent the last hour scouring the websites online trying to find some Clorox suppositories.

Or some sort of light bulb I could swallow that would cleanse my innards with its light and heat. I tried it with one here in the studio but burned the hell out of my lips before I could get it down my gullet.

Should have used an LED, I guess.

I thin I’m going to give up for now. Maybe I’ll try again later, after I get a rubdown at Fat Gert’s Massage Hut, a few frames at the Bowlarama and a quick touch up of the tattoo of Robert E. Lee holding a Confederate Flag that adorns my backside. I need to have more white added to Lee’s beard and a little more red on that rebel flag.

In reality, my head just hurts from the sheer amount of stupidity and reckless irresponsibility we’re witnessing in this country, from the alleged leader** of the country to the morons trying to block hospital entrances in protest over the fact that they can’t get their roots dyed or eat fajitas at Chili’s.

They scream out that it’s their liberty, the freedom to do whatever the hell they want to do with no responsibility to anyone or anything but their needs and desires.

It’s a most self-centered reading of that word, freedom. It might have been applicable ages ago, in the time of the Neanderthals or other ancient times but even then, freedom entailed a certain degree of responsibility to the clan or tribe in order to survive and to maintain safety and order.

Freedom always coexists with a responsibility for the common good of whatever form of society in which one lives. It doesn’t supersede it.

Without maintaining the common good of all those in that society, all freedoms were at peril. As the classicist author and educator Edith Hamilton points out in writings on the Athenian empire’s fall: When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

I understand that we all want this to be over, that people with the attention spans of fruit flies will get crazy anxious to get things moving. But no matter the amount of  Magical Thinking that flows through the addled mind of the president**,  our wishes and desires do not affect not how pandemics resolve themselves.

It takes time and concerted efforts to come up with real solutions based on sound science. It requires the smartest, most capable people trying to balance the common good with allowable liberties.

There are no shortcuts. You can’t say, “Screw this thing, I am going to do what I want to do and anybody that doesn’t like it can go to hell.”

That attitude might work in some situations and might even be recommended in some.

But this ain’t one of them.

Now is a time of responsibility, of possibly sacrificing our selfish desires for the common good. I know that’s asking a lot in a country that is led by perhaps the most selfish human alive on this planet but it’s the only way out of this, short of being willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands more people, maybe your family and friends among them, so that you can feel like a free man in ‘murica.

Okay, I actually feel better after spewing that out. Here’s an old song, The Road to Hell, from an album of the same title in the late 80’s from Chris Rea that fills the bill this morning. It was pretty good album, one that I revisit every now and then.

Give a listen and if you can find those Clorox suppositories– well, you know what to do with them.

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The Quarantine House

Posted in Current Events, Event, Painting, Poetry, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on April 22, 2020| 2 Comments »

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Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

― Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings

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A newer painting, this one on paper called The Quarantine House, that is part of my upcoming show, Social Distancing, at the Principle Gallery. The show is tentatively scheduled to open on June 5. There is, of course, uncertainty about how it might proceed given the current circumstances.

Uncertainty is a common companion for most of us these days. In regular times in the past, there were types of uncertainty that I was comfortable with, having developed a tolerance of sorts for them. You know, things like belief systems, confidence in my own abilities and those sorts of things. In fact, preparing for my annual shows was one of the coping mechanisms that built up that tolerance..

It gave me a defined task and a dead focus on that task. Certainty.

It was a certainty that pushed all other uncertainty to the back of my mind, out of sight and rendered harmless.

But now, there is a constant uncertainty that runs through these days. I still have the task but it feels less defined, less certain. And that dead focus that has sustained me in the past now feels like it is being restrained. Or held captive.

Like it is the one being confined to that quarantine house. It knows there is work to be done but the uncertainty has brought it to a standstill in the dragging minutes and hours of its confinement. It looks around for something that will feed it but all it see are the corners of its confined space and out the windows nothing but endless plains and distant horizons.

That dead focus feeds on certainty and it feels a bit starved at the moment.

I know that dead focus will leave the quarantine house eventually, that it will find its way to sustenance of some sort. A small bit of certainty will whet its appetite and soon, it will once again be ravenous for all the time it can consume.

But for now, I just have to wait it out with that uncertainty as a housemate here in the studio.

 

 

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Bring on the Dunces

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged , , on April 17, 2020| 9 Comments »

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“Schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3%, in terms of total mortality. Any, you know, any life is a life lost, but … that might be a tradeoff some folks would consider.”

–Dr. Mehmet Oz, April 15, on Fox News/Sean Hannity

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“Appetizing opportunity”

“May only cost us 2 to 3%, in terms of total mortality”

Syndicated TV doctor and regular Fox News guest Dr. Oz created quite a firestorm with his appearance on Wednesday evening on the Sean Hannity show. He was was acting as the point of the spear for the administration’s new push to reopen the economy.

Because they have absolutely no plans for the comprehensive testing and screening needed to do so with even a modest degree of safety, their strategy is to soften up the American public to the idea that some of us will have to be sacrificed for the sake of the economy. They do so even though they know they risk the possibility of inflicting even greater long term damage to the economy if their actions end up prolonging this crisis and spread the virus even further.

So, out come their version of experts– the Dr. Oz’s and Dr. Drew’s and Dr. Phil’s– pulled directly off the TV screen to convince us that, hey, losing another 2-3% is no big deal at this point, especially if it means that Wall Street is happy.

So we end up with an “appetizing opportunity.”

Yes, when I think of putting other people’s children in harm’s way, appetizing is the first word that comes to mind. As a matter of fact, my mouth is watering a little right now just thinking about it.

Sounds ghoulish, doesn’t it? That’s because it is.

Now, I am willing to cut Dr. Oz a small break here and suggest that he was not talking about sacrificing 2-3% of the population. That would be unforgivably vile, if that is what he meant with his words.

He may have meant that we would be adding 2-3% to the total dead when this all over by doing so.

But even that is borderline ghoulish.

Right now, we have around 32,000 deaths and even that is a suspect number because of the lack of testing for the many who died from similar causes in the past couple of months and as a result were not added to the totals. But let’s say that if we continue as it is currently trending, we may very well end up with 100,000 dead.

That number comes with a continuance of the shutdown that has been in place now for the past month or so in most places. Without that shutdown and physical distancing, that 100,000 number would no doubt be in our rearview mirror by now and we would be heading to perhaps a number with seven figures in it.

But let’s go with that 100,000 number. Under the situation using Dr. Oz’s appetizing opportunity, they have reopened the schools first. Kids and teachers are back in place. So are bus drivers and cafeteria workers and custodians.

Let’s suppose Dr. Oz meant that by doing this we would only be adding 2-3% to the overall death total. That means that, using  the 100K figure, that you could tack on another 2- 3000 deaths.

That sounds yummy, doesn’t it?

And who would we willingly sacrifice to join this elite group?

Whose child?

Which teacher? Or bus driver?

Which parent? Or husband or wife?

If it’s your kid, will you just shrug your shoulders and be happy because the unemployment rate is dropping once more?

How about your spouse or your mom or dad?

Still sound appetizing?

And that is with still giving the good doctor the benefit of a doubt in what he meant with his words.

You have to remember that Dr. Oz, along with Dr. Drew, were prominent voices at the beginning of this who claimed this whole situation was being blown out of proportion, that is was a media fabrication. Dr. Drew has since apologized for being wrong in his judgement. But Dr. Oz has taken a different path and is on the dunce train. He’s now saying that the crisis that he said wasn’t a big deal might kill a lot of folks so it’s no big deal if we tack on a few more for the sake of expediency.

I will believe that it’s truly safe not by the words of a TV personality doctor best known for peddling fringe pseudo-science remedies or a reality TV president*** that displays sociopathic behavior on a regular basis. Or the words of any of his toadying cronies.

No, it will take some sort of action.

I will believe it’s safe when the president*** hauls his svelte 239 pounds, along with his whole clan of grifting cowboys and cowgirls, to the front of a Walmart and act as greeters for an afternoon. They could shake hands and take selfies with all the good, safe people for a couple of hours. That might convince me.

Hey, he could even combine it with a golf trip to his Bedminster, NJ, resort that he is so itching to take. There’s a Walmart only about 15 miles down the highway from it that would be the perfect place for such an event.

Now, that sounds like an appetizing opportunity to me.

 

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Hero’s Call/ Auction For the Food Bank

Posted in Auction, Current Events, Favorite Things, Painting, tagged , , , on April 16, 2020| 4 Comments »

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“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”

― Maya Angelou

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I am back to being angry this morning and badly want to vent.

But I won’t.

Instead, I am going to follow my own request from yesterday’s blogpost that we look past our own instincts for self preservation and try to do something good for others now.

I have to confess that the current crisis has me in my survival mode. As an artist, my business and livelihood is effectively in shutdown as many folks are also in survival mode which means that very few are buying paintings. I expect the income from my work to be cut by anywhere from 50 to 75% for the year unless something dramatic and unforeseen occurs. So, as a result, austerity has become the watchword around here.

I am not whining or complaining. It’s simply a fact that has to be handled. And we will deal with it. In fact, I am exceedingly grateful to be fortunate enough to have a small cushion to protect us, for the most part, for a reasonable period of time into the near future.

It’s those people who were less fortunate before this all started that make me worry most. They were already living on the fringes of survival. They were already experiencing food anxiety, not knowing where their next day or week’s meals were coming from. They were already struggling to meet rising rents and the many costs associated with raising a child. These were the folks who didn’t have $400 in savings to spare should an emergency arise. These were also, most likely, the folks working jobs that paid near the minimum wage and may have very well been laid off during this shutdown. And also most likely had little healthcare.

In normal times, with a smaller percentage of the population experiencing these problems, charitable organizations could pick up a lot of the slack that government assistance misses. But we are talking about a pretty thick slice of the pie now which makes it a problem that affects us all. Food banks around the country are being crushed by the huge demand from people in need.

I know that’s the case in my home area, which is an area that was never on very sturdy economic footing even in the best times over the past 30 or 40 years. In fact, just before the virus hit, this area was determined to be one of only two metropolitan areas in the entire nation to still be in recession.

Our local food bank, Food Bank of the Southern Tier, has been a mainstay for many years now, doing yeoman’s work on the behalf of those in need. They are heroes all the time and in normal times, I try to donate cash to them on a regular basis. However, my own self survival mode has me cutting back on that a bit, unfortunately.

But I still want to help them and about the only way I can right now is by putting a piece of work up for auction to benefit them.

Here’s what I propose:

The painting shown at the top is an 18″ wide by 24″ high painting on canvas from a couple of years ago. It’s not a painting that has been shown much at all. It began it’s life as as a demonstration piece for the annual workshop I lead in Penn Yan. The class that year did a remarkable job with their own pieces while working from this painting. After the workshop, I brought this piece back to the studio and earnestly went to work on it. There was something in it that really spoke to me. It just felt like a prototypical piece for me and when it was done, it meant enough to me that I gave it the title Hero’s Call.

So, I am putting this painting, Hero’s Call, up for auction with all funds going completely to the Food Bank of the Southern Tier. I will pay all shipping costs.

A painting of this size of mine normally is valued at between $2400-2600. My goal for this auction would normally be to get as close to that amount as possible but I know that given the circumstances of these time, that would be a reach. So, I am shooting for getting about half of its value, $1250. That would do a lot of good for my local Food Bank.

The opening bid is set at $200.

The auction ends when a bid of $1250 is received.

You can bid by emailing me at info@gcmyers.com with Hero’s Call on the subject line.

If a bid of  $1250 is not received, the auction will end on Saturday at 12 noon EST. The high bid at that time will receive the painting.

This is your call, your chance to be a hero in a way.  Your winning bid will help a lot of people, perhaps taking away a bit of that anxiety about where their next meal comes from. Plus, you also receive what is, for me, a meaningful piece of art.

I know it’s a lot to ask in these times, but I do ask that you help if possible. If you can’t help me and my local Food Bank, help someone in your own area, even if can only spare a few dollars to your own food bank or similar charity that is being stressed by this moment.

Answer the call. Please.

UPDATE 8:15 AM: The call has been answered. I have received a bid of $1250. I am stunned at how quickly this came to be but am grateful beyond words. This will help a lot of folks in this area.

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All These Things That I’ve Done

Posted in Advice, Current Events, Music, tagged , on April 15, 2020| 2 Comments »

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Another head aches, another heart breaks
I am so much older than I can take
And my affection, well it comes and goes
I need direction to perfection, no no no no, help me out
Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don’t you put me on the backburner
You know you got to help me out, yeah

–The Killers, All These Things That I’ve Done

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Lots of pain and anxiety in the world right now. Sometimes, in times like this, we go into survival mode and focus solely on our own needs. That’s only natural. But at those times, we often see only our own fears and pain– as we perceive them– and then fail to recognize the very real suffering taking place around us.

And there is plenty of suffering taking place.

The families and friends of the 30,000 killed by this virus — actually, probably a much higher number if you account for those who have most likely died from the virus but were never tested and therefore, not counted– can attest to the sorrow and suffering. Then you factor in those folks who have lost jobs and insurances and are now homebound, unable to go out into the world and fend for themselves and their families. The pressure from the anxiety of finding enough food and paying the rent and enough of their other bills to keep the lights and heat on is enormous for these folks. And I am not even mentioning the idea of having to to comfort and school their kids.

Makes my own anxieties seem small and petty.

So, take care of yourself, okay? But don’t block out these others, don’t downplay their suffering, please. Try to reach out in some way, extend a helping hand. It could make all the difference for somebody.

And for yourself.

Here’s a favorite song,  All These Things That I’ve Done, from The Killers. It’s one of those songs that make me feel both large and small at the same time. I prefer feeling large but sometimes it takes feeling small to set me into motion, to move beyond myself.

Have a good day. Do something good for someone today.

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Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Posted in Current Events, Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on April 14, 2020| 1 Comment »

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My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Till then I walk alone

— Green Day, Boulevard of Broken Dreams

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At the top is another piece from my Social Distancing show at the Principle Gallery, tentatively scheduled for early June. This painting is called Shelter in Place. The interesting thing about this group of paintings of empty city streets is that most of them were completed well before the imposed isolation began. But the situation has certainly caught up with these pieces.

The scenes of empty streets from around the world that we have seen on our screens in the past month are often haunting. They really capture the feel of this crisis, especially the day to day rhythms of life.

Or lack of rhythm.

I know that this is my biggest takeaway thus far.

I say that this isolation is neither nothing new or daunting for me, as an artist and as someone who would rather be alone for the most part. I have spent over two decades happily alone in my studio. There’s a certain rhythm that I find in this solitude, one that is comforting and nurturing to the creative process.

But that is the rhythm of a self-imposed isolation, more like the feeling of a hermitage or retreat. This feels different. It is more claustrophobic, more imposed from the outside.

More like solitary confinement. The hermit’s cell might not be much different than the cell of a prisoner in solitary in size and adornment but the feel one has in each is distinctly different.

The hermit chooses to be cloistered there and finds ample space in that small cell to wander and explore the vastness of the mind. The prisoner’s experience is set upon them and the closeness of the cell becomes even smaller, more confined. Even the mind seems walled in.

The same setting but with two different situations and two decidedly different rhythms of being.

The current situation of shelter in place seems like an odd mixture of the two, sowing confusion in my role as either hermit or prisoner, which most definitely throws my rhythms out of whack. There are moments of productive peacefulness followed quickly by a high level of anxiety that leaves me listless, almost frozen in place.

Oh, how I long for my hermit’s rhythm to be completely restored…

Anyway, here’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams from Green Day. Seems to match up with the painting.

Hope you find your rhythm. Have a good day.

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No Mail?

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, Painting, tagged , , on April 13, 2020| 1 Comment »

I shake my head a lot these days.

And swear. I have always cursed a lot, probably much more than is necessary under any circumstance. But these days, it’s been an unending torrent of blue language. I feel like a gunfighter with my hand forever resting on the six-shooter hanging at my side, all six chambers loaded with curse words of all sorts and in every imaginable combination. Hey, just because I’m crude doesn’t mean I can’t be creative.

But the past day or two, the thing that had me shooting that six gun into the sky is the current president*** and his desire to see the US Postal Service fail, saying that he will veto any emergency bill that adds funds for this most essential service, one that has seen a number of its employees stricken with the covid-19 virus.

There has long been a desire among some on the right to privatize the postal service. In fact, in 2006 under the second Bush administration that was gung ho on privatizing as many government services as possible, they enacted a mandate for the USPS that required them to prefund the employee retirement fund for the next 75 years with a ten year period. It was a measure that added $5-6 billion to the USPS budget each year, sending a service that ran, for the most part, profitably for ages into a financial freefall.

This mandate of funding retirements for 75 years– basically for a generation not yet born– is not done nor required by any or other government agency or any private company. Can you imagine a private company having to pay for the entire retirement of a new employee within the next few years? It is a ridiculous requirement and one that is intended to drive the USPS into insolvency, as it would do for any other company required to follow it.

Why would they do this? Privatization, as I said. There is a firm belief in many on the right that government is inherently inept and can do nothing efficiently. This always strikes me as being funny because these same people often believe that big government is involved in conspiracies that would require it to be the exact opposite of that. Privatization takes them off the books and, sadly, would make them a new vehicle for corruption.

The USPS is often maligned but they are still a wonder of efficiency in my eyes. Throw a letter in an envelope, jot down an address and add a stamp and stick it in the box at the end of the driveway. A person picks it up and a day or two later it is delivered anywhere in this country for 55 cents. The people who complain about this are the same people who bitch that gas doesn’t cost thirty cents a gallon anymore. To me, accessing the infrastructure that can do such a thing for less than buck is perhaps the best bargain around.

The infrastructure to do this is incredible, a force of 600,000 employees who have been the lifeline for many for most of the time as a nation. Some say that most of our messaging can be done via the web now or through private carriers such as UPS or FedEx. Of course, there is a profit necessary in order to accomplish it with private companies. FedEx would certainly never be able to deliver a letter for 55 cents. So, any increase in the price of doing such would be a de facto tax.

I am one of those people who have always loved the idea of mail. It has always been a part of my life, a first life line to the outside world when I was child living in the relative isolation of our rural home. I have friends that I still write to overseas that I befriended through the mail. While we now email more, the hand written letters and notes that I still receive mean so much more to me than a n electronic message read on a screen. The fact that the sender put it in the envelope and addressed it and a different person picked it up and inserted it into this incredible system to get to me makes it a small miracle.

The USPS can easily be saved. Of course, the forces that be and their wealthy friends see it as a cash cow to be exploited. Whether we let that happen is up to us. Call– or better yet, write– your representatives in congress and tell them to keep their hands off the post office.

Here’s an older blog entry about the prospect of receiving mail as a kid. I have done a few paintings that reflect this memory, including the one at the top from back in 2009.

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For me, this painting reminds me of my childhood and the house I consider my childhood home, an old farmhouse that sat by itself with no neighbors in sight. Specifically, this painting reminds me of exact memories I have of trudging to the mailbox as an 8 or 9 year-old in the hot summer sun. There’s a certain dry dustiness from the driveway and the heat is just building in the late morning. It’s a lazy time for a child. Late July and many weeks to go before school resumes. The excitement of school ending has faded and the child finds himself spending his days trying to find ways to not be bored into submission.

The trip to the mail box is always a highlight of the day, filled with the possibility that there might be something in it for me. Something that is addressed only to and for me, a validation that I exist in the outside world and am not stranded on this hot, dry summer island. Usually, the tinge of excitement fades quickly as I open the old metal mailbox and find nothing there for me. But occasionally there is something different, so much so that I recognize it without even seeing the name on the envelope or package label.

It’s mine, for me, directed to me. Perhaps it’s my Boy’s Life or the Summer Weekly Reader. I would then spend the day reading them from front to back, reading the stories and checking out the ads in Boy’s Life for new Schwinn bikes. Oh, those days were so good. The smell of the newly printed pages mingling with the heat and dust of the day to create a cocktail whose aroma I can still recall.

But most days, it was nothing. Just the normal family things– bills, advertisements and magazines. Or nothing at all. The short walk back to the house seemed duller and hotter on those days.

That’s what I see in this piece, even thought it doesn’t depict everything I’ve described in any detail. There’s a mood in it that recalls those feeling from an 8 or 9 year-old, one of anticipation and one of disappointment.

Childhood days with no mail.

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Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out With Me

Posted in Current Events, Music, tagged , , , on April 11, 2020| 2 Comments »

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The whole thing’s coming down so let’s just get out of the way
Well I’m not paranoid there is no conspiracy
But I swear Big Brother’s watching me
Turn on, tune in, drop out, give up with me

–Cracker, Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out With Me

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As much as I try to avoid the news lately, it seems to somehow find its way to me. Oh, there is an occasional bit of good news such as the amazing drop in carbon emissions around the globe caused by the world basically taking a nice long break. Air quality in cities that have long been recognized among the most polluted in the world are now at levels that are considered very good. In cities in northern India, the clear air has given them views of the looming Himalayas that haven’t been seen in a purported 30 years. City dwellers in these same cities are reporting that they are seeing the stars at night, something some claim to have never seen.

That’s a hopeful sign that the earth will quickly repair itself after we sloppy human pests vacate the premises.

Unfortunately, it seems like Mother Nature is urging us to leave a little quicker than we humans would like. Not only are we facing the horrors of covid-19, which tragically caused at least 2000 deaths yesterday here in the USA, I awoke to find that the Krakatoa volcano is erupting and that a highly virulent strain of bird flu has broken out on the turkey farms of South Carolina.

I had to turn off the news, fearful what new fresh slice of hell the next segment (and Mother Nature) might have in store for me.

Or rather, for us.

So, let’s turn on some appropriate music. A little Cracker performing their Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out With Me. If Ma Nature’s coming for us, maybe I best get out of her way. The figure is the Omega, the last man on earth, and the Red Tree is the Alpha, a symbol of new growth, of rebirth.

The painting at the top is titled From Omega to Alpha and is currently at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

 

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