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Archive for the ‘Current Events’ Category

The Tour

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, tagged , , , on July 13, 2009| 2 Comments »

climbing-in-the-tourIt’s that time of the year again and I’m always surprised at how interested I can become in the Tour de France bicycle race.

I realized this today when I came into the studio and remembered that this was an off day on the Tour so I wouldn’t have the race on the television in the background here in the studio.  I found myself I little disappointed, much to my surprise.  

I’ve always been a sports fan since I was a kid but primarily the big sports like baseball, football and basketball.   Boxing, a staple of the Wide World of Sports, was also a favorite although over the years I have lost all interest.  But when I was a kid, boxing held more prominence in the public eye and Muhammad Ali was at his peak.  I remember even wanting to be a writer for Ring magazine when I was 12 years old.

But bicycle racing never got a lot of coverage here and the idea of it as a watchable sport seemed kind of far-fetched.  I mean, guys on bikes pedaling in big packs for a hundred miles at a clip through all kinds of terrain, going over the highest passable peaks?  It seemed kind of slow paced and didn’t have a lot of action even though the racers sometimes flew down steep precipices at crazy speeds.  The coverage never really captured the spirit of the competition.  Besides, we didn’t know the stars of the sport, who were almost always European.  We didn’t have our own horse in the race, at least anyone who could contend and pull in our interest.

American Greg LeMond changed that a bit in the late 80’s when he won three Tours.  He drew the initial glance from the American public and created a slight sensation.  But his name sounded so, so- how do I say this- French.  The casual fan was never quite sure if he was American.  There wasn’t the same level of of coverage and technology didn’t provide for the instant worldwide dispersal of information that it does today on the web.  

No, it took Lance Armstrong to pull us in.  No wondering about that name.  We now knew we had a horse in the race.  And what a horse he was.  He brought drama to the race, from his unlikely return after his battle with cancer to the way he dominated Tour after Tour in his cool, methodic manner.  The French press and bike racing establishment despised him and that only elevated him in our eyes.

So his victories made us finally watch and the coverage became better and more comprehensive, allowing us to see the real drama and beauty of the race.  To see how truly epic were the efforts of these athletes.  I ache just watching these guys struggle over these impossibly steep mountain passes day after day.  I am amazed at the level of dedication it must take to compete at this level.

So, it has become one of my habits in July to flip on the tube as I work and have the Tour there.  Skinny men with huge legs.  I would have never imagined.

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Quitters Never Win

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, Video, tagged , , on July 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Palin As much as I hate commenting on anything political in this blog and as much as I hate giving any more consideration to Sarah Palin, I couldn’t help myself this morning.  I don’t want to go into a whole spiel about her shortcomings ( I like to keep my posts short) or how her politics clash with mine.

No, rather I want to say that she has sold the American public a faulty bill of goods.

She sells herself as a maverick, tough and strong, but it seems to me, watching her these past several months, that she is all fluff.  Thin-skinned.  Hillary Clinton has absorbed infinitely more body blows through the years and she keeps fighting ahead.  Love her or hate her, Clinton will never be called a quitter.

Sarah Palin is a quitter.

And quitters never win.  Winners never quit.

Oh, you’ll hear the spin from the right and those who, for some unfathomable reason, viewed her as their voice that she is just being maverick-y.  Saving the Alaskan electorate oodles of cash by stepping aside and not doing as she claims all lame-duck governors do which is to travel on the public dime, promoting themselves.  As she has done for the past several months.  Wouldn’t it, therefore, be a more maverick gesture to say I am going to finish my term, especially in theses troubled times,  and do it to the fullest extent of my power?  Wouldn’t that best serve the Alaskan people?

No, Sarah Palin has chosen a self-serving path, one that will reward her with scads of cash and possibly a public pulpit that will lead to an even higher office.  That’s the story so far.  How it will play out is anyone’s guess.  As far as future public office, especially on a national level- we’ll know what we’re getting if we buy her bill of goods.

A quitter.

Don’t rule out that possibility.  As my Dad says- ” We’re the most gullible people on the face of the Earth.”

Here’s a little Dr. John to add a little punctuation…

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The Obligation

Posted in Current Events on July 4, 2009| 1 Comment »

fireworks-fourth-of-july-2 

 

There are two freedoms-

the false, where a man is free

to do what he likes; the true,

where he is free to do

what he ought.

 

-Charles Kingsley

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Grrrr….

Posted in Current Events on June 30, 2009| 4 Comments »

einstein quote boxOkay, so I’m feeling curmudgeonly today.

I’ve got a lot of things floating around in my head and can’t get a grip on any of them.  For instance, I recently heard a sports psychologist talk about the growing trend in anxiety disorders among the younger generation of young players.  He attributes it to the players not being prepared for exposure to greater pressure because they have been raised in an environment where everyone is a winner. Everyone gets a trophy.  They have not been allowed to fail miserably and when they are faced with the possibility of this they can’t cope. 

Makes sense.

Then I hear a story about Bernie Madoff and his being sentenced to 150 years in prison for his scam.  I find myself feeling bad because I am more incensed by his crime and his evident lack of remorse than I often am for more violent, horrible crimes.  I think it must be his attitude that seems to lack all compassion for his victims.  I can understand passionate rage and violence but his cold-blooded willingness to steal the future from people he often called friends is just beyond me.  There’s something about about this betrayal of faith that seems worse than some of the most violent crimes.  And for what?  A bigger private plane?  Solid gold shoe stretchers for his platinum shoes? This was a wealthy successful man before the scam started.   So was it simply greed?  Or was it just some inner malevolence, the same sort that is at the root of all evil human deeds?  I know that watching him over the past several months, I got the same feelings one might get from watching a true war criminal, one who done the unspeakable but has rationalized it within the framework of their mind.  Calm and cold.  Unrepentant.

Doesn’t make sense.

And then I hear a tidbit from the Michael jackson saga, that he weighed something like 112 pounds at the time of his death.  Talk of drug cocktails and his own Dr. Nick character.  Further evidence of a mind trapped in a downward spiral.  A sad end to a sad story.

Senseless.

Okay, so I’m feeling curmudgeonly today…

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Remembering the Artist…

Posted in Current Events, Video on June 26, 2009| 1 Comment »

Michael JacksonI wasn’t going to post anything on the untimely death of Michael Jackson.  There is going to be an over abundance of coverage and everything, good and bad, associated with the man will be examined to the tiniest detail.  There was already an excess amount of coverage of his life while he was living and I felt that I didn’t need to add to it.

But I caught a few moments of his performance of Billie Jean from the Jacksons’ 30th Anniversary special and found myself once more mesmerized by his movement.  It was something that had been lost in my mind, overpowered by the coverage of all the bizarre details of  his apparent flaws.  

But there was magic in this, particularly in the first few minutes.  The sheer mastery of his movements and the way he pulled us in was powerful and I found myself moved in a way I hadn’t imagined.   It’s hard to look away. 

Perhaps he was a flawed human.  But as an artist, if you are, as they say, as good as your best work, Michael Jackson was brilliant…

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Fire Sale

Posted in Current Events on June 25, 2009| 2 Comments »

sanford-for-presidentWell, I guess these things will be priced to sell now…

Normally, I don’t like to comment in this space about the political world and most of its denizens.  Those who come here aren’t looking for that and I’m not that comfortable expressing my political views, not that they’re far from mainstream.  But there were a couple of things that came to mind when watching Mark Sanford‘s press conference yesterday.

I take no pleasure in watching a person whose  life that has been apparently unraveling for some time have to make public disclosure of his shortcomings, regardless of how far apart we may be on the political spectrum.   I have only sympathy for his family and the public hell they’ll be enduring for the next few weeks.

But I will never understand the egos of these guys who live such public lives and think their infidelity and duplicity will not at some point be exposed, putting the very people they hold up on the campaign trail as their greatest treasure through this particular hell.  Particularly those who portray themselves as pillars of virtue.  There must be some sort of law floating around in the ether that if a politician proclaims his own righteousness and makes judgements on the shortcomings of others then he is destined to have his own mistakes and faults exposed. The Rule of Political Karma. 

I know that Sanford was not a true fire and brimstone guy, not a bible pounder.  Even so, there was this image of virtuousness that was always pushed when he was discussed.  He was bound to fall to the Rule of Political Karma.

But it wasn’t Sanford or his actions that bothered me yesterday.  His actions and the way his family life fell apart are everyday occurrences, unfortunately.  We see this all the time in our lives.  Maybe not in such so public a forum.

No, it was listening to the commentators and other politicos afterwards.  Words were thrown around like heroic, courageous, brave, and so on to describe Sanford’s performance.  It made my stomach turn.  The brave thing would have been coming forward weeks ago before he bugged out to Argentina, which drew the collective eye of the nation to his personal life.  There was nothing courageous in his press conference yesterday.  He had no other option, no choice.  He had put himself into a position where this was inevitable.  It was not an act of courage.

Maybe I’m being too picky about the words used.  It’s just the fact that they feel the need to elevate a trapped man’s obligatory confession into some sort of heroic deed that puts a burr in my saddle.  Bad decisions and dumb moves are not made heroic by saying, “I screwed up.”

Anyway, I know a guy who has some t-shirts.  Cheap…

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Omoni-Akujo

Posted in Current Events, tagged , on June 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Omoni-AkujoYou see them everywhere these days.

Angry old men.

Kind of like this guy, Omoni Akujo, which translates as angry old man, which is a character from classic Japanese theatre representing the ghost of an old man filled with anger and resentment.

The guys I see and hear  are not ghosts.  They’re real.  Unfortunately.  I think ghosts would be far more interesting than these guys.

They complain about any and everything.  They see doom in every movement forward.  They live in their own pleasant recollections of their past, conveniently erasing the darker moments from their memories.  Only their concerns matter and if a problem doesn’t touch them, it doesn’t exist.  But when there is a problem that they see as touching their protected cocoons or even something that will require them to do or see anything differently, listen to their screeching.

I imagine that President Obama must see thousands of these Omoni-akujos each time  he addresses the country.  So many people so fearful of being moved forward, willing to hold onto the past and systems that had devolved over the years to points where they no longer served the vast majority of the populace.  People so afraid of change that they will hold onto and even endorse practices that only harmed their welfare.  Choosing the devil they know…

But I have faith that President Obama will look past these horrible masks and the din they raise and hold his course ahead.  I know he’s strong and smart enough to shrug off the fears these Omoni-akujos scream out.  I only hope that we, the people who wanted so much the changes he offered, are strong enough to not fall prey to the anger and the fear  produced by these angry old men.  Remember, they want what is only good for them.  They are ghosts trying to frighten us into leaving them alone to do as they please.  They are not screaming for the greater good of all men…

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Currahee

Posted in Current Events, Neat Stuff, tagged , , , on May 15, 2009| 2 Comments »

CurraheeThis is a small painting from a few years back that is titled Currahee, a word I first heard in the WW II series, Band of Brothers .  It is a Cherokee word that means “stand alone” and it immediately struck me as a real word with some sort of innate power.  It was the battle cry for the 101st Airborne Division, the group of troops portrayed so well in Band of Brothers.  It stands for a sense of self-dependence with which I can identify so felt a connection with the word and my paintings, which are often primarily about the idea of standing alone.

The reason I mention this is that I recently saw a segment on CBS news about a soldier severely injured in Iraq, losing both his legs and suffering brain injuries which left him totally unresponsive. Back here in the States in the hospital, the soldier was visited by General David Petraeus who talked with the young man and after a bit, getting no response, turned to leave.  He turned back and yelled out the word.  Currahee.

The soldier immediately tried to sit up, trying to utter the word.  

Amazing.  Since then his progress has been remarkable and he is walking with the aid of two prosthetic legs and is speaking.  He recently appeared with Petraeus at, I believe, the New Jersey Hall of Fame.   You can see the original story here.

I am always in awe of the power of certain words and icons, how we place such personal meaning to them that they become ingrained in us, triggering instant emotion at the mere mention.  That is real power.

Currahee…

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Fear Overload

Posted in Current Events, Quote, tagged on April 29, 2009| 1 Comment »

The Mind Ponders

 

What we fear comes to pass more speedily than what we hope.
—- Publilius Syrus – Moral Sayings (1st C B.C.)

 

I don’t think I have to tell anyone that we’re living in a world that right now is full of fear.  Everywhere you turn there is news of some sort bordering on the apocalyptic.  We have the swine flu scare which I still call the swine flu– no offense meant to my porcine friends.  There is financial ruin and a new Great Depression with every newscast.  There is the ongoing conflicts between religious factions in the Middle East and elsewhere leading straight to Armageddon.  Armed druglords with thousands of violent foot soldiers from Mexico.  Asteroids plummeting towards our planet.  Global warming raising ocean levels until our coastal cities are engulfed in water.  Hybrid werewolf/vampires roaming in packs through the streets of our cities, seeking brains for their zombie overlords.  Okay, maybe that one is a little beyond the pale– I think I saw it on Glenn Beck.

And yesterday we happened to sit down with a cup of tea to watch Oprah and we were faced with flesh-eating viruses.  MRSA and strep infections that eat away at the tissue of the body with such speed that in some that the doctors can barely stay ahead of the spread of the bacteria as they hack away body parts.  There was a lady on the show who was a chef and cut her finger while slicing celery.  No big deal, right?  Within  60 hours she had lost her right arm, shoulder and breast all the way to her sternum before they were able to stop the spread.  She now lives with her ribs and lungs covered by a thin layer of skin.  It was an amazing thing to see.  

It was just another ingredient in our recipe of fear.  There are points when I take the time and list all these things that I no longer wonder at the wingnuts who claim we are at the end of days.  But I can’t quite buy in all the way.  I like looking at history and throughout history people of every age believed they were at the  end of time, that civilization had decayed to a point where it could no longer stagger forward.  And yet, here we are.  

Maybe it’s some form of narcissism that makes us believe that ours is the generation that ends our continuum on this planet.  Maybe it’s just plain old fear and the ignorance that usually accompanies it, the ignorance that blinds us to the fact that we are adaptable beings and through the adversities of our times we will somehow stagger onward.  The future may not be as we hope for or envision but remember, we live in a world that is much different than earlier generations imagined for us when they were having these same thoughts.  But the fact remains, we are, for better or worse, still here.

The point of this is that we must not focus on our fears but must look at them as mere obstacles to overcome.  Fear makes us less rational and more reactionary and if we continue to believe the fear that this is some sort of end time, then we will create the conditions to make it so.  To paraphrase Publilius Syrus: If we let fears rule our lives, our greatest fears will come to bear…

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Shadow World

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, Video, tagged , on April 10, 2009| 7 Comments »

ShadowmaskIt’s been about six months since I started writing this blog and in that time I’ve become a lot more familiar with this odd shadow world of blogs.  

I’m not so sure it’s a world with which I would want to spend too much time.

Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I’ve enjoyed writing about my little world, getting to hear from a lot of diverse people and I often enjoy reading the blogs of others.  There are many people who produce wonderful blogs, full of humor and insight.  But on the flipside, all too often, it’s a non-stop freakshow of anger and hatred.  Idiocy and lunacy.  An endless display of  moronic babble, people who nitpick and dissect every miniscule detail of whatever happens to piss them off that day.  These are people whose idea of reasonable debate is to yell louder and longer than the next guy, throwing all logic aside and spewing venom from the behind the veil of their cyber-anonymity.

As you can see, their rants incite rage.

Hey, I understand anger.  I understand rage.  But my anger and rage can be quelled with reason and rational thought.  Many of these idjits remind me of those poor dogs who are chained to doghouses all alone.  They have no contact and become increasingly mad, barking and snarling at everyone and everything.  

I don’t know, maybe these people are like those pitiful dogs.  Maybe they need some compassion.  Perhaps they need some kindness.  Maybe they need to shed a tear or two…

Well, here’s a song from Johnny Cash singing his version of the Loudon Wainwright song, The Man Who Couldn’t Cry.  Maybe these folks should put down their poison pens and give a listen.  Couldn’t hurt…

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