Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Current Events’ Category

Waiting for the Next End of the World

Posted in Current Events, Neat Stuff, tagged , , , , , , , on December 22, 2012| 3 Comments »

William Miller's 1843 ChartWell, I got  up this morning and, outside of a light layer of snow on the ground, it looked pretty much the same as yesterday.  The world is still here and the Mayans have got some explaining to do for getting us all worked up.  Or were the Mayans just pulling our leg the whole time?

I’m not sure about that but I am pretty sure that this won’t be the last time someone predicts that the end of the world is upon us.  It’s happened on a regular basis throughout the history of civilization.  We seem to have some sort of predisposition for doomed thought that pops up in a big way every generation or so,  a doomsayer getting everybody’s panties in a knot with their what-seems-rational-at-the-moment reasoning  for the coming apocalypse.

One of my favorite apocalypses (how often do you get to say that?) was the End of the World of 1843 and 1844 as predicted by William Miller right here in the state of  New York, which was fertile ground at that time for new religion movements. Mormonism and Seventh-Day-Adventism, which sprang from Miller’s preaching, are the two best examples.

Miller was a preacher who came to the conclusion that the end was near through a complex system of mathematical calculations  based on his readings of the Old Testament.  He traveled throughout the northeast through the 1830’s and 40’s, preaching his prophecy of the coming end of the world.  It’s said that he spoke to over a million people during his promotion of the event and that over a hundred thousand actually chose to follow his instructions to sell their worldly possessions and gather on the hilltops with him, all dressed in white robes,  in March of 1843 to await the coming of the the lord and their rapture from this doomed place.   A great testament to the persuasive power of Miller’s preaching of his rationale for the prophecy.

It was a big deal at the time, with headlines carrying news of the prophecy and the hordes gathering for the end. But the day came with  a fizzle, not a boom.   When nothing happened at this event, an embarrassed Miller ran the numbers again.  I think he forgot to carry the seven as he added one column.  Whatever the case, he revised the date to a day in October of 1844.

I’m told that the world didn’t end on that particular day.  It was called The Great Disappointment and many of Miller’s followers abandoned him.  Some went on to form the Seventh Day Adventists.  Miller never gave up his belief in the ultimate truth of his prophecy, dying a few years later in 1849.

The chart at the top is one that Miller published to illustrate how he came to his conclusion.  Much of  the design and artwork was done by one of Miller’s followers,  William Matthew Prior, the famed American folk portrait painter who I featured in a post on his work recently.  You can see this amazing sheet at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown along with two portraits of Miller done by prior.  One is a spirit portrait, done afterMiller’s death.  It is Prior’s interpretation of Miller’s essential spirit, not the physical entity he inhabited while alive.

The Prior show, along with my own exhibit there, closes at the end of next  Sunday, December 30.  So time is short– for these shows, not this world.

Read Full Post »

Why?

Posted in Current Events, Uncategorized, tagged , on December 16, 2012| 12 Comments »

Newtown School December 2012I just don’t know.

How do you explain the insanity of what happened in Connecticut this past Friday?   How do you explain the terror of any event that has groups of children being led away with their eyes closed so they don’t have see what has transpired in their once seemingly safe classroom ?  I don’t think you can, although god knows that the airwaves are filled with those who think they can.

And the idea that there is somehow an answer to how future horrors like this can be avoided seem futile at best.  We all know that this will not be the last time such a  scene will occur here.  This is the seventh mass killing in the USA this year, the most in any single year.  By mass, I mean of four or more victims not including the shooter.  Last weekend’s shooting at the mall in Portland, with three deaths, doesn’t even qualify.

How many of us even remember that there was a shooting in Portland last week?  It has become just another bit of disturbing news that we filter out and discard with a quick thought that it happened  somewhere else and  that we ourselves, thankfully,  are safe.  Then we move on to something a bit less troubling.

To our great sorrow and shame, this type of tragedy has become a regular part of our lives, part of who we are.   And that means  that there will be no easy answers, if there are answers at all, because that would mean that something would have to change and change drastically.  And we cannot accept that much change in our lives.  We would rather live with the horror of what we have become than face the alternate challenges of  a new possibility.

Besides, who could we turn to to lead us to these needed changes in our culture?  The dysfunction of our political system, with extreme partisanship tied to self- and special-interests and the demonizing of one’s enemies, is indicative of the problem itself.  There is no one courageous enough to propose any type of solutions that would be large enough  to remotely change the culture that enables such horrors to be tolerated.

And if there were, we would probably have to destroy them.

That’s just who we are now.

So, we will mourn these children and their grieving parents and families. The media will buzz over the shooter and his psychological state for a week or two, all the while giving undue attention to this sick creature.  The politicians will begin to feign interest in taking action while the special interest groups from both sides will spar in public until something shiny and new captures the attention of the public, at which the debate will fade to background noise that we hardly hear at all.  And it will soon be a distant memory.

Then it will happen again.  And again. And again.

As I said, I don’t know anything.  But I do know that this will not be the last time that parents will face this ultimate horror, won’t be the last time we see images like those from Connecticut.  And that makes me want to weep even more.

 

Read Full Post »

Sick Dog Day

Posted in Current Events, Quote, tagged , , on November 22, 2012| 4 Comments »

Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.
–Joseph Stalin

********************

I was looking at a selection of quotes with a Thanksgiving theme when I stumbled across this lovely item from that great inspirational speaker, Joseph Stalin.  It was so much in contrast with the rests of the lovely platitudes that it made me laugh. Stalin would probably not be the guy you would want as a guest on Thanksgiving, especially if you expected him to say grace.  He would no doubt our holiday as a foolish expression of sentiment, a day for sick dogs to howl in thanks to their owners.

You know, even though it comes off as cruelly insensitive, I think Stalin’s comment might actually make sense.  Thanksgiving is a day where we realize that we are no better than our pets, that we are as dependent on others as they are on us for love and support.  We should do like our dogs and show our gratitude to those we love without condition.

Well, that’s okay by me.  Call me a sick dog because I am nothing if not grateful for so many people I have encountered in my life from my family and friends to people who I don’t even know who have offered kindnesses.

Here’s a reply to Stalin from a real human being, Elie Wiesel, “When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.”

So, whatever you might call today, be it Thanksgiving or Sick Dog Day, be thankful for those you know and love.  Be a dog today.  It’s the human thing to do.

PS-  The painting at the top is a new 24″ by 24″ canvas, titled Placid Pondering, part of the show at the Just Looking Gallery.

Read Full Post »

Vote… If You Can

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged , on November 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Well, today is Election Day.  Finally.  The campaign  has seemed like it has lasted forever but it will all soon be over and hopefully there will be a clear winner without any stench from the ongoing controversies over voter suppression and voter fraud, particularly in, but not limited to,  the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.   We all assume that in our democracy  every vote counts and that our right to cast that vote is an inalienable right.  But in these two states there are things happening that put both those assumptions to the test.

From Florida we see image after image of long lines of voters who are forced to wait sometimes up to 8 or 9 hours in order to cast their  ballots, conditions which even Republican Christine Todd Whitman says are akin to those one might see in an election in a Third World country.  You might notice that many of these lines are in areas heavily populated by minorities.  Denied the ability by the courts  to require more extensive ID from voters to fight the straw man of voter fraud they throw out as their reason, suppression has evolved into putting the determination of the voter to the test : How much will you tolerate in order to vote?

This is also happening in Ohio’s urban minority areas as well.  But there is a more insidious shadow hanging over Ohio in the potential for fraud in the vote count.  As documented yesterday in an article on the Salon.com site, there were software patches recently installed on the electronic voting machines in 39 Ohio counties that circumvented the certification process of the agency that oversees voting procedures in Ohio.  It is basically  uncertified and untested (by third parties)   tabulation software.  The possibilities for vote fraud are enormous.

Around the country in recent years, republican legislators have been crowing for more and more Voter ID laws to combat a problem that has not been in evidence for years. Outside of suppressing groups of voters that they see as not being in their camp,  I have always wondered why they were putting so much attention on this archaic form of voter fraud when the obvious way to corrupt the process is to let everyone vote and simply subvert the results.  It’s so much more effective than depending on people showing up at polling places to vote  multiple times, like a scene out of  the precincts of Chicago in the 1930’s.  Too slow and too many opportunites for something to go wrong or to be detected.  There are fewer conspirators to betray the plan if you can simply switch a vote for A to a vote for B, especially if the software does it seamlessly.  Everybody votes and everybody leaves the polls feeling that their  rights are in order and that their vote has been counted.  And though the exit polls might show that there is a discrepancy in the results that are announced , they can simply be shrugged off as flawed polling, something we hear everyday in the campaign.

Perhaps the Voter ID  controversy is in itself a ruse, a diversion from the bigger scam.  I hope I’m wrong here and that this is simply some crazy conspiracy theory.  But in a race where over  two billion dollars have been spent to obtain power, the stakes are indeed high enough to not rule out any possibility.  I hope that the authorities are taking this seriously and that if this subversion of our system is taking place that the perpetrators are handled severely.  We deserve to vote and have it  honestly counted.  Otherwise , our whole system falls apart.

So, lets assume that the system is still pure and get out there and do the responsible thing: Vote.

 

Read Full Post »

Liberal

Posted in Biographical, Current Events, tagged , on November 5, 2012| 3 Comments »

Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It’s the other way around. They never vote for us.

–Dan Quayle

*************

I don’t know why I used the quote above from Dan Quayle except that it made me laugh when I stumbled across it.  This has been a particularly long and tough political season and  Quayle’s clueless words made me step back from it a  bit.   Though I consider myself an independent, I am definitely liberal in my political leanings and always have been .  There have been points in my life, especially now in the time of the ideologues, when liberalism has been portrayed as some sort of anarchistic/atheistic/communist movement with the word liberal being thrown about  as an insult.  That bothers me because I have always been proud of the accomplishments of those people who came before me who carried the banner of progressive thought with honor.

They were extraordinarily brave people who spoke out against the outrages of the day that stood in direct contradiction to the liberal belief in equality and liberty for all.  They were the abolitionists of the 1800’s fighting the heavily moneyed institution  of slavery.  They were the suffragettes  who fought so that women might have voting equality and the union organizers of the early 1900’s who fought for safer working conditions and fair pay and  against child labor.   They were the people  who stood against the Fascists in Europe in  the 1930’s and 1940’s.  They were the ones  who marched and died so that civil rights were for everyone.

They were the people who sought to clean the stains of these inequalities from our flag and in every case they came up against conservative opposition.  There was always a group who tried to maintain the status quo, to protect against what they felt was an attack on their America, even though their America was one based on injustice and inequality.  Can you imagine an America without these ideals that  Liberalism has championed, a world where the conservative thought of the day  had somehow persevered ?  Sure, it’s easy to say that slavery would have ended or that women would have received the vote anyhow on their own but there was no guarantee.  Just the fact that it took until the 1960’s that a hard won Civil Rights Act was enacted is proof of that.

Think how your own life might be different without liberal thought and action.  I can guarantee you that it would not be a better life or a better world.

 Damn right,  I’m a Liberal.

Read Full Post »

Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth

Posted in Current Events, Music, Video, tagged , , , , on October 31, 2012| 6 Comments »

It’s been hard to not watch the coming of  Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath over the last few days.  Locally, we pretty much dodged the worst of the storm, mainly suffering through some strong winds though not as damaging as we had feared.  But it’s been sad to see how Sandy has affected the coast here in the Northeast.  I know that it doesn’t in any way rival the devastation of Katrina, thankfully, but its been hard to see how much damage has been inflicted on regions that are so familiar.  Maybe it is the fact that this type of destruction is so uncommon in these areas that makes it so startling.  I don’t know.  Time will soon tell if this is indeed  the result of climate change  and unusual storms like Sandy will become more and more common.  Our Governor Cuomo here in NY commented recently about how 100 year floods now seem to come every 2 years.

Ah, the wrath of Mother Earth.

Here’s a little music  that warns about taking our relationship with Mother Earth too lightly.  First recorded by cult rockers Sparks in their Glam phase in the 70’s, Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth, is covered here by my favorite, Neko Case.

Read Full Post »

Which President Is It This Time?

Posted in Current Events, Early Paintings, tagged , , on September 18, 2012| Leave a Comment »

As soon as my wife saw the absurd shtick that Clint Eastwood delivered at the Republican National Convention speaking to an empty chair that possessed an invisible President Obama, she turned and deadpanned to me, “Oh my god, you can never paint a chair again.”  I laughed but didn’t fret.  There have always been plenty of  readings for the meaning of the chair in various cultures as well as in my paintings so a new, albeit ridiculous, interpretation wouldn’t make much of a difference.  But it has made me go back through my files and look at some of the chair paintings from the past.

I try to figure out which president each might be.

I’ve found quite a few Lincolns, a Taft and both Roosevelts.  Then there was a Jefferson, a Grant and a Clinton.  All three assassinated presidents were there– McKinley, Garfield and JFK.  George Washington and Old Hickory , of course.  Still looking for a Polk and a Martin Van Buren.  I think it may be difficult to find a Millard Fillmore but, hey, you never know.  He should actually be easiest to find as he hailed from not far from me in the Finger Lakes region but he still is not located in my paintings.

The painting above?

Dick Nixon.  And if Clint Eastwood thought the Obama chair had a potty mouth, wait until he gets a load of this chair.

Read Full Post »

“Internal Landscapes” Now Open

Posted in Current Events, tagged , , , , , , , on August 18, 2012| 2 Comments »

My exhibition, Internal Landscapes: The Paintings of GC Myers, has officially opened at the Fenimore Art Museum in lovely Cooperstown, NY.  The exhibit hangs until the end of the year, December 31.  It’s a select group of mostly larger paintings from the last few years along with a few very early small pieces that show the beginning stages of the evolution of my work.

One of the highlights for me is the first public showing of the piece shown above, The Internal Landscape, a painting familiar to regular readers of this blog.  It is a very large painting, measuring 54″ high by 84″ wide.  This large scale gives it  a real presence in any space.

If you can make it to the Fenimore in the next month, the exhibit hanging in the adjacent gallery is American Impressionism: Paintings of Light and Life, which is a grand collection of paintings from the likes of Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam and William Merritt Chase.  And if you’re looking for real star power, there’s even a piece from one of the most influential Impressionists, Claude Monet.  Plus there are several other great exhibits not to mention the incredible Thaw Collection of American Indian Art, which is worth the trip on its own.  I’m pretty excited to be in such grand company.

On November 7, I will be giving a talk on show after a luncheon, from 12:30 until 2:30,  as part of the museum’s Food For Thought lecture series.

Read Full Post »

Beyond Limits

Posted in Current Events, Neat Stuff, tagged , , on August 5, 2012| 3 Comments »

I’m an Olympic junkie.  Summer or winter, it doesn’t matter to me.  I revel in the thrill of this global competition and find myself watching things intently that in other times would not draw even a glance.  Trampolining.  Badminton.  Racewalking. Of course, there is the draw the household names, mainly professional athletes like NBA stars and tennis players.  Or Michael Phelps who has made himself a household name in a sport , swimming, that really only has a huge following in Olympic years.  Hard not to marvel at the accomplishments of these finely tuned athletes on this global stage.

But it is the stories of the other participants, those who most likely will never stand on the podium with medals around their necks, that makes these games so special.  Stories of people who have overcome the greatest of adversities to stand equally alongside the household names.  Simply being there and giving their all is a victory.

Today, Oscar Pistorius of South Africa continues the most unlikely of quests as he runs in the semi-finals of the Men’s 400M.  Unlikely, because he is without both of his lower legs,  born without fibulas in both legs.  Running on carbon fiber blades, Pistorius has trained, raced and fought legal battles over a number of years to simply run in these Olympics.  He doesn’t figure to medal or even make the finals.   The legal battles stem from those say the blades give him an unfair advantage which sounds pretty humorous that anyone is accusing a man without legs as having any sort of advantage.  I don’t want to focus on that aspect of this story however.

For me, this is a story about altering our perceptions of our limitations, both physical and mental.   His journey should be a gold medal  example for any of us who has ever sold ourselves short and taken the easier path because of  limits imposed by ourselves or others.  Watching him makes me wonder how many times I have limited myself, how many times I had listened to those who said that I couldn’t do this or that and gave up.

So, I will be watching today, marveling at a man who had the will to follow his dream, as well as wondering at a world of evolving medical technology that allows a legless man to go from a life in a wheelchair to being able to run with power and grace.  In a world that sometimes seems ugly and hard,  that is a huge change in perception.  Makes me believe we might live in a time of miracles if we decide to look at it that way.

In a story  in today’s Miami Herald, Linda Robertson writes about Pistorius’  mother and how her   perceptions changed Oscar:

Pistorius’ late mother, Sheila, didn’t think Oscar would be able to walk, let alone run when he was born without fibulas. But after his legs were amputated at 11 months and he was fitted with prosthetics, she decided not to give him special treatment. Pistorius recalled Sheila, whom he described as “a bit hard-core and no-nonsense,” once telling him and his brother, “ ‘Carl, you put on your shoes and Oscar you put on your legs, and that’s the last I want to hear about it.’ I didn’t grow up thinking I had a disability. I grew up thinking I had different shoes.”

Put on your legs and run, Oscar.

Read Full Post »

Kinkade Dies

Posted in Current Events, tagged , on April 8, 2012| 9 Comments »

The death of Thomas Kinkade was announced yesterday.  The self=proclaimed  Painter of Light was only 54 and his death is attributed to natural causes with an autopsy upcoming to determine what actually caused his early demise. 

I am not really sure what to say here.  I was not a fan of his work but never really wanted to join those who openly jeered at his often saccharine paintings of thatched cottages with windows that looked like the inhabitants were reading by huge floodlights.  To rail against these paintings was to rail against those people who did connect with that sort of art, be it good or bad.  And that is not a good thing.

Art is a personal taste and can’t be dictated.  You like what you like.  And that is as it should be.

And, whether you liked Kinkade’s paintings or despised them, there were those who had a taste for them.  A great many of them.  His paintings obviously filled a niche.  He had legions of fans who bought his prints and paintings and books and mousepads and plates and figurines and on and on.  Even homes in communities based on his paintings.

Ubiquitous.

 To me, his gauzy paintings always reminded me of walking into our local Loblaw’s grocery store as a child where near the entrance they had inexpensive copies of  highly sentimental paintings, undistinguished for the most part,  printed on thick gray cardboard stapled into cheap wooden frames.  I believe that you could buy them for a few dollars with a certain amount of groceries purchased.  That was the artwork of my childhood, the sugary farmsteads and watery city street scenes that adorned seemingly every home I entered as a kid. 

 I had no judgment of them then but noticed them and their ubiquitity in my world.  They aroused no emotion in me.  Nothing.  I neither liked them nor disliked them.  They served a purpose for the folks who had them hanging on their walls and even the tritest piece of this work was preferable to not having anything on the walls of these lower middle- class homes.  When I think about Kinkade’s work, that is pretty much how it comes across to me– it arouses no emotion in me and I find myself having no feelings one way or the other.  It’s there to cover bare walls and that was okay to me.  His mass market approach to art, while a bit distasteful, didn’t offend me.  He was simply filling a niche.  He took a market that was once filled by my Loblaws supermarket and today is often littered with factory produced works  sold in starving artist sales in every Holiday Inn  across the country and made it his personal  kingdom.  He became the face and signature of mass produced work.

And that’s okay, for what it’s worth. 

Will it have lasting value to future generations?  Now that’s a different story.  It will, in the short run, over the next ten or twenty years, probably hold its appeal, and value,  for some people.  But as the next generations comes along, I have a feeling that Kinkade’s work will be little more than a footnote in the history of art.  It’s happened to the great mass artists of most every generation.  The popularity they held fades to anonymity over the generations.  I could be wrong here but I sincerely doubt it.

Unfortunately, I fear that the people who bought into Kinkade’s sales pitch and paid dearly for his mass produced pieces  thinking they would continue to grow in value will be forced to face this reality.  And that’s the distasteful part here.  Not the in the artistic merit of the work itself, but in the way it was marketed, manipulating people with Christian themes that never seemed to quite jibe with the reality of the artist’s life.  There is a marked lack of taste in this.

Oh, well.  I feel badly for the human tragedy of  his family’s loss.  There’s something sad in the premature death of anyone.  But I don’t feel the tragedy in not seeing what great works he might have someday produced.  His work is all here now.  For some, that is enough.  For others, too much.  For me, it’s just there, like those cardboard paintings at Loblaws.

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »