2012 Friends Galore
Mike Keenan flew home yesterday morning. However, he was still here to go out to dinner at Miss Saigon with Stan Derilian and his entourage, Ann, his wife, and their friends Stan and Marie, who are traveling with them. Kai wanted to see Stan so she brought her family along too, which put 11 people around the table. The boys came with game tablets so they hardly participated at all, although Ryder traveled under the table to see his Grandma Sue. I caught of a snatch of a conversation between Sue and Ann about Ryder’s syndrome. Ann is a nurse with 40 years experience; she recently decided to retire after she tore a ligament in her ankle. We congregated around that same long table we had the last time we ate there. Stan sat across from me so we could talk. I told him some things about my hospitalization and ongoing health concerns and he told me he was slowing down, no longer taking on new customers, just old ones, and he was spending more time on other interest, like making brandy and betting on horses. It had been decades since I last saw Ann. She looked about the same, only now she is the wrinkled version of what I remembered. The last time I saw her we still lived on the Prichard property. She and Marie are bosom pals and have been ever since they met. Marie is Stan’s second wife who bore none of his six children by another woman now dead. Stan looks like a Mennonite minister, like the salt of the earth, foursquare and knowledgeable about things. He had worked for years for the Canadian Forest service, I think in British Columbia. This is the third driving tour they have made with Derilians. Mike Keenan was at the end of the table with Stan the Mennonite and they chatted amiably. Marie responded enthusiastically to my Mandala Designs, which were on my desk when they stopped at the house. I think she was a painter but I am not sure. Sue paid for the dinner ($234), which upset the Canadian couple that wanted to pay their way. Stan told them they could chip in when they return to Tucson on Friday. That was a change of plan but I thought a good idea. They thought it was incredible that she would pay for perfect strangers.
We still have not seen anything of Bill P while Paul and Stan and Mike have been here, which is unusual for Bill. He no doubt has his hands full with Sue and the two boys, plus he anticipates a visit from Aaron, his son, and his wife and toddler, who we’d like to meet. Yesterday I tried to catch up on some sleep. Guests are welcome but they do wear me out.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Back Cover of BRIDGE
Through my twenties and into my thirties, the era of my professional life as an artist, I was basically a rationalist and a secular humanist, pretty much the ‘religion’ of my main mentors in higher education. I was beyond church-going religion, regarding it as old hat and without merit. I was an abstract expressionist and proud of it and an idealist concerned with justice and human dignity for all. But under this high-sounding cover some pathologizing was going on, that is, there were multiple rivulets sneaking out of me, like secret clues to the sickness and chaos that was roiling deep inside me. They poured out through the chinks in my armour, especially in regard sexuality, masculine identity, personal fears and anxiety, and eventually became part of my creative expression. My marriage was also rocked by these new powers in my consciousness. Beneath my cool and confident exterior self was an inner self set upon by demons and a chaos that I soon realized I had to address or be permanently crippled psychologically. It was like Persephone being dragged down into darkness by Hades. I began to see things as if through a glass darkly and this dark vision deepen when I went to UNLV to teach. By my fifth year in Las Vegas I saw academe as snake pit of vicious scholars; art was a profession and practice that had no meaning beyond its own definition; creativity was a desacralized thing that was turning into a secular exercise in the marketplace. The Vietnam War had painted my horizon’s black, so I quit painting and started drawing in pen and ink—forgetting Pollock and embracing George Grosz and Max Beckmann as my new role models. Bridge in the Fog deals with my transition from a soul lost to one found
Trip to San Diego
We just got home after seeing my primary, Dr. Irene Duarte. The appointment run close to 45 minutes because Sue was with and we had a lot questions related to the recent hospital stay, the new drug cocktail the doctors gave me, when is it proper to call 911, and what to use when the pain in my feet becomes severe. Irene is a 45-year-old Mexican American woman married to a doctor, also Mexican American, who she met in Med school at the U of AZ. She has two kids that must be close to finishing high school. She’s been my primary for at least 15 years. Sue mentioned afterward that the two of us had a nice rhythm together. I usually lead and she responds with information. When we described my condition on 2/23/2012 she said definitely we should have called 911, because in no way could Sue handle my body; she needed help as I was close to completely immobile. If there is a next time we won’t hesitate and call for help. We went through the drug list. The new A-Fib drug, Maltaq, she had never heard of and would check on it. I questioned the double dose of potassium every day. She said that was due to the heavy use of diuretics. But we did a blood test to see where my system is at in regard potassium. She sent in four prescriptions on the list where there was only one more on the bottle. She said all the drugs for neuropathy had, as side effects, a tendency to cause edema, which is no help for me. (I had already told her Dr. Capaccio had removed Exforge from my drug list because it also causes edema.) I told her when the pain got to be around eight on a scale of ten I dropped some oxycodone a dentist had given me a couple years ago, and it handle the pain nicely; in fact, from then on my feet started to improve. She said I should use it again if it gets really bad but no more than twice a week. She’ll see me again in a month and revisit the problem and see how I am doing. She checked my lungs, saying they sounded good with no fluid in them. Last but not least she gave me a home nebulizer, but she forgot to give me the chemical that goes with it. Maybe she’ll call that in to Walgreen’s.
Just before we left home we got a call from Kaia. She and Aaron were in San Diego for a three day celebration for their ten wedding anniversary. They were supposed to drive home this morning with time enough to pick the kids up form school this afternoon, but they have run afoul bad weather in southern California and are having a hard time getting out of the area because rain or snow have closed access to the roads east. Their wedding was marred by cold, windy weather and now on their ten anniversary they had to stay inside their hotel accommodations rather than lying on the beach due to cold and rain and snow, which is also blocking their way home. They called us this afternoon. It took them six hours to get as far as Palm Springs. They were resting in another hotel and were planning to head home early tomorrow morning. Talk about the best-laid plans of mice and men?
The weather here is about the same as southern California. We have had heavy rain, snow in various locations, especially in the mountains, and it hailed when Sue went to the store on Oracle Road. And it is very cold. The weather lady is predicting it will be freezing tonight.
Sue went to visit Larry Masters in UMC hospital this afternoon. He called yesterday to inform her he had a stroke and would she please come see him. She did go and came home depressed because he is in such a complete fog about what happened and they wouldn’t leave him go outside for a smoke, so he kept mumbling I should die—“there is no end to my misery.” On and on the story rolls. I worry about Sue in this mess. What can she possibly owe this guy to put up with his foggy bottom?
Just before we left home we got a call from Kaia. She and Aaron were in San Diego for a three day celebration for their ten wedding anniversary. They were supposed to drive home this morning with time enough to pick the kids up form school this afternoon, but they have run afoul bad weather in southern California and are having a hard time getting out of the area because rain or snow have closed access to the roads east. Their wedding was marred by cold, windy weather and now on their ten anniversary they had to stay inside their hotel accommodations rather than lying on the beach due to cold and rain and snow, which is also blocking their way home. They called us this afternoon. It took them six hours to get as far as Palm Springs. They were resting in another hotel and were planning to head home early tomorrow morning. Talk about the best-laid plans of mice and men?
The weather here is about the same as southern California. We have had heavy rain, snow in various locations, especially in the mountains, and it hailed when Sue went to the store on Oracle Road. And it is very cold. The weather lady is predicting it will be freezing tonight.
Sue went to visit Larry Masters in UMC hospital this afternoon. He called yesterday to inform her he had a stroke and would she please come see him. She did go and came home depressed because he is in such a complete fog about what happened and they wouldn’t leave him go outside for a smoke, so he kept mumbling I should die—“there is no end to my misery.” On and on the story rolls. I worry about Sue in this mess. What can she possibly owe this guy to put up with his foggy bottom?
Origin of an idea
2012_3_23 Origins of an Idea: Rewrite from 6/16/1991
The Hieroglyphic Theater began to germinate in my imagination 22 years ago this month. I remember it like it was yesterday. Suzie and I arrived in Eugene the first week of June, 1969, and once we got settled, first in a small apartment for six weeks, and then in the house on 34th Street, which just happened to have a room that was more than adequate as a studio. While Sue went to summer school I got busy on my drawing board. Through that summer I did a batch of pen-and-ink drawings using the image of the black ball/pearl, which went back to the vision I had had in July 1968, in Las Vegas. I am referring to the experience I call THE INFERNO, the main transformative experience of my life. Most of that early series of drawings were exploratory in nature; indeed, when we went back to Las Vegas the following August I left a pile of drawings I regard as rejects, learning experience at best but not worth keeping. (In 1976 I received quite a shock when we went back to Eugene to visit friends and I discovered that Mike Keenan had salvaged 15 drawings and they were all on his walls at home, and they looked better than I thought they should.)
I remember how excited I was to be exploring a new and personal symbol. When we left Las Vegas I had hoped the move would accelerate my desire to find a fresh approach to my drawing, to get beyond the social narrative and satirical bent I had leaned on for the past five years. I was in search of a more metaphoric approach to imagery, with a different narrative, something that took account of the spiritualization I had experienced through THE INFERNO and Kundalini. I was after something original and I thought the best ticket to achieve that was using the black sphere of vision.
Altogether I probably did some 40 or 50 drawings before that show I had at Oregon State in late November. Probably the most successful drawing of that period was “The Alchemist,” which is owned by Stan Nishimura, an ex-student of mine. Although an enigmatic image, it had a clarity of form and expressive strengthen I found encouraging, which was lacking in many other drawings that I saw as hybrid images of uncertain identity. In fact, the years 1969 to 1973 were a time of working through many ideas that were interesting but lacked focus and cohesion. But by 1974 I had hit my stride and felt I was the master of a personal style and an original narrative. That time frame can be looked upon as my ‘axial period’ as artist and a man.
I drew my first true triple-decker hieroglyph in February 1970. It resulted from a moment of pure inspiration. The idea came to me while I was reading Oration on the Dignity of Man by Renaissance writer-scholar Pico della Mirandola, one of the foremost humanists of his day. I knew about Pico from a Renaissance class I had taught my first year at UNLV, 1965-1966. It was his commentary about the nature on man and his place in the universe according to the ancient wisdom and Pico deeply admired it. Man was seen as “the daemonic intermediate creature” that God placed between the angels above and the beasts below, hence a three level arrangement. Man’s estate was to be “the interpreter of nature” and “to elevate himself above the dung-heap of the inferior world.” Those few words provided me with a moment of illumination: I saw immense possibilities in the triple-decker ontology. An angel in that first hieroglyph represented the ABOVE, and in many future ones a Mandala would represent the highest spirituality, as I understood it. The beasts BELOW were Man’s animal nature and I represent it with a large tapir in that first hieroglyph; but also it represented “hyle,” the material world as such. (Hyle was Greek for “matter.”) Man and his mental abilities existed and flourished in the middle zone, which was elevate from the material zone and in the first hieroglyph I represented it with a self-portrait. I later referred to that level as PSYCHE; it represented a step up, so the speak, but was still short of the full cognizance of the third and highest level, SPIRITUS MUNDI, a world I had glimpsed and tasted and held as the highest attainment possible.
“The Eternal Return” is the name I gave to that first official hieroglyph. The black sphere in it became a black sun; it is near the angel who is dropping his seed on an egg. From this point on I called the series THE HIEROGLYPHIC THEATER that idea coming from Frances Yates book Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, a book I ran into by accident in a Eugene bookstore. One of the great interests to the Humanists was emblem poetry, and as a result they eagerly studied Egyptian hieroglyphs, as symbols with religious meaning. Hieroglyphs were seen as a deep way of stating hidden truths related to a sacred universe. I view them the same way.
My kind of cartoon-like images, or “magic realism” as one reviewer put it, has been misunderstood at times as ‘mere’ cartoons, a low art that doesn’t belong in a gallery or museum. In contrast, Robert Hughes has called Robert Crumb “the Breughel of the 20th century.” There are many other examples: Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Lindner, Mel Ramos, Red Grooms, and Wayne Thiebaud. There is also a whole tribe of illustrators for Graphic Novels that are doing great work, although still on the margins of “fine art.” One could also say the William Blake and Max Beckmann also used cartoon-like figures, and both certainly are in plenty of museums. As Jack Burnham has said of Marcel Duchamp: “The aim of every skilled Hermitic artist is not to lie, but to veil his message in themes so obscure or universal that the possibility of a true identity is never apparent to the public.” I am a mythmaker who operates behind a mask. I am a cartoon striving to be a hieroglyph.
One of the drawings I considered for the cover of Bridge in the Fog more or less sums up my current usage of the hieroglyphic idea. The inspiration for the idea came from a picture of a clown that I found in John Towsen’s wonderful study of the clown tradition through history that represented the Grimaldi Tradition of the 18th century. Towsen’s writes, “Grimaldi was to pantomime comedy what Keaton and Chaplin were to silent film comedy, the genius of whose hands ‘low’ comedy became art.” In other words, the Grimaldi clown was more comic trickster than romantic or magical Harlequin. The figure I worked around was a typical clown with white face, puffy sleeves and pantaloons pants, with a mandala of sorts on his chest. In his hands he has a pig in his raised right hand and fish in his lower left hand. In my version the figure is strutting across a runway with a more absurd and fanciful get-up and make-up, and in his right hand rather than a pig he holds a thunder bolt, like Zeus or Thor might, and in his lowered left hand he holds a fish. Rather than a God figure I offer a lowly clown in praise of folly of man’s earthly estate, as a more fitting image of who and what we are. Still, he has resources. The thunderbolt in his raised right hand indicates some heaven-sent powers are at his deposal, if he but uses them. A current of creativity is always available if we but plug into it. Conversely, he holds a fish in the lowered left hand, for the fish lives in the depths and they must be visited every bit as much as a piece of heaven must be grabbed. So despite his inherent absurdity, the clown’s reach is high, low and deep. The comic trickster is no fool. And of course the black sphere sits near the clown, drawing him like a magnet, high, deep, and low.
In my own case the fish spit out a black pearl during my dark night of the soul. There is a gnostic poem that comes to mind with the mention of a pearl. In The Hymn of the Pearl a seeker goes down into Egypt (the unconscious) to bring back the ‘One Pearl’ (the unifying power) that lies in the middle of the sea, which is encircled by a snorting serpent (Kundalini), thus letting the seeker put on “the robe of glory,” which had been lost (rebirth or redemption.) In Hans Jonas’ fine book The Gnostic Religion writes that in the glossary of gnostic symbolism, ‘pearl’ is one of the standing metaphor for the ‘soul.’ To whit, pearls are hidden with the shell of an animal, which no doubt adds to the lore and lure of the pearl.
The final note to this short essay about the evolution of the black sphere and the three-decker universe is what I discovered in an Egyptian art history course I sat in on with Professor Stein the second semester 1972. He showed a slide one day of the Serekh Motif, a cartouche with an emblem that blew me away when I saw it. It was a cartouche that was common on much of the sacred architecture of the early dynasties, a kind of symbolic cornerstone of Egyptian religious identity. There were three levels with a vertical format. The bottom level was a pillared hall that spatially went deep inside, so there was a three-dimensional feel to the image. In the middle level there was a snake, a cobra, and at the top was a large falcon, a representation of the God Horus. I saw the thing as sheer poetry expressing the essential spirituality of the Egyptian metaphysical understanding of the world. The hall of pillars represented the world of space and time; the snake reveals the Egyptian awareness of “Serpent Power” (kundalini) or world of psyche; and the Falcon/Horus, the high God of the Egyptian pantheon. And of course there are other traditional arrangements of three levels or parts, like, for example, body-soul-spirit; hyle-psyche-pnuema; heaven-earth-underworld or hell. The triple division of spaces provided me with a framework to play in and to give value to each register and to the harmony and reciprocity between them.
The Hieroglyphic Theater began to germinate in my imagination 22 years ago this month. I remember it like it was yesterday. Suzie and I arrived in Eugene the first week of June, 1969, and once we got settled, first in a small apartment for six weeks, and then in the house on 34th Street, which just happened to have a room that was more than adequate as a studio. While Sue went to summer school I got busy on my drawing board. Through that summer I did a batch of pen-and-ink drawings using the image of the black ball/pearl, which went back to the vision I had had in July 1968, in Las Vegas. I am referring to the experience I call THE INFERNO, the main transformative experience of my life. Most of that early series of drawings were exploratory in nature; indeed, when we went back to Las Vegas the following August I left a pile of drawings I regard as rejects, learning experience at best but not worth keeping. (In 1976 I received quite a shock when we went back to Eugene to visit friends and I discovered that Mike Keenan had salvaged 15 drawings and they were all on his walls at home, and they looked better than I thought they should.)
I remember how excited I was to be exploring a new and personal symbol. When we left Las Vegas I had hoped the move would accelerate my desire to find a fresh approach to my drawing, to get beyond the social narrative and satirical bent I had leaned on for the past five years. I was in search of a more metaphoric approach to imagery, with a different narrative, something that took account of the spiritualization I had experienced through THE INFERNO and Kundalini. I was after something original and I thought the best ticket to achieve that was using the black sphere of vision.
Altogether I probably did some 40 or 50 drawings before that show I had at Oregon State in late November. Probably the most successful drawing of that period was “The Alchemist,” which is owned by Stan Nishimura, an ex-student of mine. Although an enigmatic image, it had a clarity of form and expressive strengthen I found encouraging, which was lacking in many other drawings that I saw as hybrid images of uncertain identity. In fact, the years 1969 to 1973 were a time of working through many ideas that were interesting but lacked focus and cohesion. But by 1974 I had hit my stride and felt I was the master of a personal style and an original narrative. That time frame can be looked upon as my ‘axial period’ as artist and a man.
I drew my first true triple-decker hieroglyph in February 1970. It resulted from a moment of pure inspiration. The idea came to me while I was reading Oration on the Dignity of Man by Renaissance writer-scholar Pico della Mirandola, one of the foremost humanists of his day. I knew about Pico from a Renaissance class I had taught my first year at UNLV, 1965-1966. It was his commentary about the nature on man and his place in the universe according to the ancient wisdom and Pico deeply admired it. Man was seen as “the daemonic intermediate creature” that God placed between the angels above and the beasts below, hence a three level arrangement. Man’s estate was to be “the interpreter of nature” and “to elevate himself above the dung-heap of the inferior world.” Those few words provided me with a moment of illumination: I saw immense possibilities in the triple-decker ontology. An angel in that first hieroglyph represented the ABOVE, and in many future ones a Mandala would represent the highest spirituality, as I understood it. The beasts BELOW were Man’s animal nature and I represent it with a large tapir in that first hieroglyph; but also it represented “hyle,” the material world as such. (Hyle was Greek for “matter.”) Man and his mental abilities existed and flourished in the middle zone, which was elevate from the material zone and in the first hieroglyph I represented it with a self-portrait. I later referred to that level as PSYCHE; it represented a step up, so the speak, but was still short of the full cognizance of the third and highest level, SPIRITUS MUNDI, a world I had glimpsed and tasted and held as the highest attainment possible.
“The Eternal Return” is the name I gave to that first official hieroglyph. The black sphere in it became a black sun; it is near the angel who is dropping his seed on an egg. From this point on I called the series THE HIEROGLYPHIC THEATER that idea coming from Frances Yates book Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, a book I ran into by accident in a Eugene bookstore. One of the great interests to the Humanists was emblem poetry, and as a result they eagerly studied Egyptian hieroglyphs, as symbols with religious meaning. Hieroglyphs were seen as a deep way of stating hidden truths related to a sacred universe. I view them the same way.
My kind of cartoon-like images, or “magic realism” as one reviewer put it, has been misunderstood at times as ‘mere’ cartoons, a low art that doesn’t belong in a gallery or museum. In contrast, Robert Hughes has called Robert Crumb “the Breughel of the 20th century.” There are many other examples: Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Lindner, Mel Ramos, Red Grooms, and Wayne Thiebaud. There is also a whole tribe of illustrators for Graphic Novels that are doing great work, although still on the margins of “fine art.” One could also say the William Blake and Max Beckmann also used cartoon-like figures, and both certainly are in plenty of museums. As Jack Burnham has said of Marcel Duchamp: “The aim of every skilled Hermitic artist is not to lie, but to veil his message in themes so obscure or universal that the possibility of a true identity is never apparent to the public.” I am a mythmaker who operates behind a mask. I am a cartoon striving to be a hieroglyph.
One of the drawings I considered for the cover of Bridge in the Fog more or less sums up my current usage of the hieroglyphic idea. The inspiration for the idea came from a picture of a clown that I found in John Towsen’s wonderful study of the clown tradition through history that represented the Grimaldi Tradition of the 18th century. Towsen’s writes, “Grimaldi was to pantomime comedy what Keaton and Chaplin were to silent film comedy, the genius of whose hands ‘low’ comedy became art.” In other words, the Grimaldi clown was more comic trickster than romantic or magical Harlequin. The figure I worked around was a typical clown with white face, puffy sleeves and pantaloons pants, with a mandala of sorts on his chest. In his hands he has a pig in his raised right hand and fish in his lower left hand. In my version the figure is strutting across a runway with a more absurd and fanciful get-up and make-up, and in his right hand rather than a pig he holds a thunder bolt, like Zeus or Thor might, and in his lowered left hand he holds a fish. Rather than a God figure I offer a lowly clown in praise of folly of man’s earthly estate, as a more fitting image of who and what we are. Still, he has resources. The thunderbolt in his raised right hand indicates some heaven-sent powers are at his deposal, if he but uses them. A current of creativity is always available if we but plug into it. Conversely, he holds a fish in the lowered left hand, for the fish lives in the depths and they must be visited every bit as much as a piece of heaven must be grabbed. So despite his inherent absurdity, the clown’s reach is high, low and deep. The comic trickster is no fool. And of course the black sphere sits near the clown, drawing him like a magnet, high, deep, and low.
In my own case the fish spit out a black pearl during my dark night of the soul. There is a gnostic poem that comes to mind with the mention of a pearl. In The Hymn of the Pearl a seeker goes down into Egypt (the unconscious) to bring back the ‘One Pearl’ (the unifying power) that lies in the middle of the sea, which is encircled by a snorting serpent (Kundalini), thus letting the seeker put on “the robe of glory,” which had been lost (rebirth or redemption.) In Hans Jonas’ fine book The Gnostic Religion writes that in the glossary of gnostic symbolism, ‘pearl’ is one of the standing metaphor for the ‘soul.’ To whit, pearls are hidden with the shell of an animal, which no doubt adds to the lore and lure of the pearl.
The final note to this short essay about the evolution of the black sphere and the three-decker universe is what I discovered in an Egyptian art history course I sat in on with Professor Stein the second semester 1972. He showed a slide one day of the Serekh Motif, a cartouche with an emblem that blew me away when I saw it. It was a cartouche that was common on much of the sacred architecture of the early dynasties, a kind of symbolic cornerstone of Egyptian religious identity. There were three levels with a vertical format. The bottom level was a pillared hall that spatially went deep inside, so there was a three-dimensional feel to the image. In the middle level there was a snake, a cobra, and at the top was a large falcon, a representation of the God Horus. I saw the thing as sheer poetry expressing the essential spirituality of the Egyptian metaphysical understanding of the world. The hall of pillars represented the world of space and time; the snake reveals the Egyptian awareness of “Serpent Power” (kundalini) or world of psyche; and the Falcon/Horus, the high God of the Egyptian pantheon. And of course there are other traditional arrangements of three levels or parts, like, for example, body-soul-spirit; hyle-psyche-pnuema; heaven-earth-underworld or hell. The triple division of spaces provided me with a framework to play in and to give value to each register and to the harmony and reciprocity between them.
Dear Mary Ellen,
Dear Mary Ellen,
I went to bed at 11:30 last night and woke up to pee at 12:45 AM. I laid there for the next hour thinking about you and composing a email to you. Finally I got out of bed, put the coffee on and here I am at my computer.
Both Sue and I were hit hard your phone call. I guess neither one of us expected that verdict on you illness. Afterwards Sue cried and I sat outside on the patio silent and grim-faced. We both stared into nothingness. Life can indeed be cruel. You would think all the good service you have rendered to your mother and to your siblings who did not have to carry the load you carried with diligence and unconditional love, that your store of good karma would fill a Wisconsin silo by now, and part of that storage would be a long life and a chance eventually to travel, like we had talked about a few times, as reward for services over time. But things don’t always happen like they should. Instead of an active life in your sixties and seventies, a time of harvest for you, the dice got rolled and came up cancer at 53, which seemed to come on like a whirlwind, in a very short period of time. However, your accepting attitude impressed both Sue and I; and considering what the oncologist told you, it is better to look the disease straight in the eye and get to know it and forget about this hokum about fighting it.
Age makes no difference to whoever rolls the dice. I am 23 years down the road from you and your parents and my mother lived to grand old age, although maybe “grand” is stretching the truth. I check the obits in the local paper and it always surprises me how death strikes all ages willy-nilly, although the majority is usually the elder citizen. In short, it is best to be ready at all times, have your bags packed and your ticket punched. For some reason I think of the moment of death as the time to “grab the tiger by the tail” and hold on to see where it takes you. Why a tiger? Well, I have had several powerful dreams featuring tigers and my favorite poem is William Blake’s “Tiger, tiger, burning bright/in the Forest of the Night.” I also like D.H. Lawrence’s several renditions of a poem he calls “Build your Ship of Death” for your “longest journey” to your “wonder-goal.” I have read those poems over and over through time, as a kind of rehearsal for my own death, which at my age will come sooner rather than later. They remind me we are on our ‘little journey” now which is but prelude to the longer journey to what I think of as “the other side.”
Remember that we love you and you are constantly in out thoughts.
Jerry and Sue
I went to bed at 11:30 last night and woke up to pee at 12:45 AM. I laid there for the next hour thinking about you and composing a email to you. Finally I got out of bed, put the coffee on and here I am at my computer.
Both Sue and I were hit hard your phone call. I guess neither one of us expected that verdict on you illness. Afterwards Sue cried and I sat outside on the patio silent and grim-faced. We both stared into nothingness. Life can indeed be cruel. You would think all the good service you have rendered to your mother and to your siblings who did not have to carry the load you carried with diligence and unconditional love, that your store of good karma would fill a Wisconsin silo by now, and part of that storage would be a long life and a chance eventually to travel, like we had talked about a few times, as reward for services over time. But things don’t always happen like they should. Instead of an active life in your sixties and seventies, a time of harvest for you, the dice got rolled and came up cancer at 53, which seemed to come on like a whirlwind, in a very short period of time. However, your accepting attitude impressed both Sue and I; and considering what the oncologist told you, it is better to look the disease straight in the eye and get to know it and forget about this hokum about fighting it.
Age makes no difference to whoever rolls the dice. I am 23 years down the road from you and your parents and my mother lived to grand old age, although maybe “grand” is stretching the truth. I check the obits in the local paper and it always surprises me how death strikes all ages willy-nilly, although the majority is usually the elder citizen. In short, it is best to be ready at all times, have your bags packed and your ticket punched. For some reason I think of the moment of death as the time to “grab the tiger by the tail” and hold on to see where it takes you. Why a tiger? Well, I have had several powerful dreams featuring tigers and my favorite poem is William Blake’s “Tiger, tiger, burning bright/in the Forest of the Night.” I also like D.H. Lawrence’s several renditions of a poem he calls “Build your Ship of Death” for your “longest journey” to your “wonder-goal.” I have read those poems over and over through time, as a kind of rehearsal for my own death, which at my age will come sooner rather than later. They remind me we are on our ‘little journey” now which is but prelude to the longer journey to what I think of as “the other side.”
Remember that we love you and you are constantly in out thoughts.
Jerry and Sue
Monday, February 27, 2012
Dear Paul and Ron
Inbox
x
Paul Fako 9:58 AM (1 hour ago)
Heard from Sue on Sat that you were in the hosp again since thursday and flyi...
Jerry Pfaffl
10:47 AM (13 minutes ago)
to Paul, bcc: Ron
I was so bad last Wednesday morning it took me 40 minutes to get out of my recliner--I kid you not. I had ignore warning signs of swollen feet at my peril. I couldn't walk and I was totally depleted of energy. I looked like a gray ghost by the time I got to the ER. Went through battery of tests; at first they they thought it was a blood clot but in time they reverted to the obvious: CHF (Congested Heart Failure) / emphysema=the Battle Royal between my pumping heart and fluid going to the lungs; it is the main field of engagement between the two major organs and lungs keep getting ahead lately. However with steroids and a nebulizer I bounced back in a hurry, and of course I'll pay a price for the help later; but when it is a life and death situation the choice is simple, unless you want to to die.That was tempting but I have book to finish. After I managed to walk up and down the corridors at the hospital Saturday and when my color had returned I was able to leave by ten o'clock Sunday morning. I even slept in my new bed, the first time in eight months. Of course I was so beat I could have slept on a bed of nails last night.
This experience was very complicated, with several doctors, multiple tests, an exotic change of meds, some curious sidebar incidents, like a tech telling me her life story, like me being the crank with a 20 yr twit who wanted me to go by the book. ( I was classed as a red sock person, one likely to fall, so I had to wait for help to walk eight feet to the bathroom. At times I got impatient to wait to piss and skipped protocol, which set off an alarm in the bed. The older nurses were loose on this point but this young twit had a cow every time I did it. When I called the main desk for help I started calling myself "Red Socks 429," with 429 being my room number. You get bored and want to play with the aides who are young and more vulnerable.) I put in a request already for the medical record of the four days I was in "lock-up." I need to straighten out exactly what happened and how I should prepare for the next one--or find out how to avoid it.
Sorry to hear you were under the weather. At least you are mobile. Be thankful for that!
Click here to Reply or Forward
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Paul Fako 9:58 AM (1 hour ago)
Heard from Sue on Sat that you were in the hosp again since thursday and flyi...
Jerry Pfaffl
10:47 AM (13 minutes ago)
to Paul, bcc: Ron
I was so bad last Wednesday morning it took me 40 minutes to get out of my recliner--I kid you not. I had ignore warning signs of swollen feet at my peril. I couldn't walk and I was totally depleted of energy. I looked like a gray ghost by the time I got to the ER. Went through battery of tests; at first they they thought it was a blood clot but in time they reverted to the obvious: CHF (Congested Heart Failure) / emphysema=the Battle Royal between my pumping heart and fluid going to the lungs; it is the main field of engagement between the two major organs and lungs keep getting ahead lately. However with steroids and a nebulizer I bounced back in a hurry, and of course I'll pay a price for the help later; but when it is a life and death situation the choice is simple, unless you want to to die.That was tempting but I have book to finish. After I managed to walk up and down the corridors at the hospital Saturday and when my color had returned I was able to leave by ten o'clock Sunday morning. I even slept in my new bed, the first time in eight months. Of course I was so beat I could have slept on a bed of nails last night.
This experience was very complicated, with several doctors, multiple tests, an exotic change of meds, some curious sidebar incidents, like a tech telling me her life story, like me being the crank with a 20 yr twit who wanted me to go by the book. ( I was classed as a red sock person, one likely to fall, so I had to wait for help to walk eight feet to the bathroom. At times I got impatient to wait to piss and skipped protocol, which set off an alarm in the bed. The older nurses were loose on this point but this young twit had a cow every time I did it. When I called the main desk for help I started calling myself "Red Socks 429," with 429 being my room number. You get bored and want to play with the aides who are young and more vulnerable.) I put in a request already for the medical record of the four days I was in "lock-up." I need to straighten out exactly what happened and how I should prepare for the next one--or find out how to avoid it.
Sorry to hear you were under the weather. At least you are mobile. Be thankful for that!
Click here to Reply or Forward
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Coming Apart
Newsletter: Coming Apart
David Brooks of the NYT is constantly on a chase for explanations of our social structure that won’t make the upper crust look bad. His latest find to do that is Charles Murray’s new study called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, a book that at bottom wants to blame the “welfare state” for beginning the process of “coming apart.” Since Murray makes no bones about being a conservative sociologist I have to take his thinking with a grain of salt, especially his contention that the cultural divide between the two white communities--what Brooks calls the upper-tribe, which represents 20% of the white population, and the lower-tribe, which represents 30% of the same population--that the divide between them is cultural more than economic, and stagnant wages, a decline in manufacturing, rampant joblessness, and divisive inequality have little to do with the separation of tribes or classes. Brooks doesn’t want to use the word “class, “ but I don’t see “tribe” as a great improvement or more descriptive somehow. No matter how you cut the pie, it’s still round.
Murray attempts to turn the accepted idea of class differences upside down. For example: the notion that working class people, those that Sarah Palin likes to call “ordinary Americans,” are the backbone of our core American values, like faith, hard work, honesty, and marriage. Murray calls these our “founding virtues.” In contrast the upper crust was viewed as secular, skeptical, irreligious, often divorced, dishonest and a bit decadent. In the early sixties the two groups lived cheek by jowl, not so far apart as they are today. The old interaction is totally absent. So how are those “founding virtues” doing today? Lets look at what Murray discovered. Having a child out of wedlock is now a rare occurrence in the upper-tribe, whereas in the lower-tribe 45% have kids outside of marriage, and, not too surprising, marriage is less frequent or tends to be unstable. And remember we are talking about only the white population. It appears lower-tribe probity and core strength isn’t what it used to be. In the upper-tribe, after a flirtation with countercultural values in the sixties and seventies, has righted the ship and the folks in the 20% group are now going to church, divorcing less and maintaining the centrality of marriage and smart child-rearing, display civic concern, believe in the value of education, working hard, and live in enclaves of considerable stability. Their communities are no longer contiguous with the 30%. They live in gated communities or in suburbs filled with the like-minded.. The homes of the well off cost ten times what they had cost in the sixties. They live in isolation from the poor and middle class. And the separation is quite deliberate. One critic called it “self-segregation.” Birds of a feather flock together. It’s a cliché but its still true. The cultural habits of the elite class would be unrecognizable to the lower tribe—to mainstream America. They eat differently, they play with more expensive toys, have more expensive cars, like a different brand of entertainment, and live in clusters in what Murray calls “super Zip Codes, surrounded by huge lawns and neighbored by other rich. They are separated not only by culture but by geography.”
What is really coming apart is the lower tribe. Murray thinks the bonds of community, and the founding virtues that support the bonds, are frayed and in decline. Many men are working just part time and those once called “bums” are no longer scorned like in the past. It appears that he is suggesting that there is a degrading process going on among the 30%, as they seem to be falling into the same “sociological underclass” that we usually associate with African-Americans and other ethnic subsets. While the poor in the rest of the world are emerging from living on a dollar a day, the 30% are going backwards, experiencing the early stages of Ghettoization. Murray’s conservatism is revealed when he blames the “welfare state” and government bureaucracy’s habit of allocating funds inefficiently. (What about Medicare, sir!) There are few people being coddled by a welfare system these days, unless you consider food stamps a luxury and unemployment insurance a waste of money during hard times. Murray pays little attention to the inequality gap between the tribes, keeping to his premise of cultural differences, paying little heed to the economic factors which are obviously huge and causative.
Brooks comments about the lower tribe: “ Members work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.” He softballs an answer to the great divide: persons from the upper tribe should interact with their brethren on the lower level, something along the lines of the old Vista program. National Service is easy to suggest, but hard to bring off, especially with the current Congress.
Bradford Wilcox of the Wall Street Journal reviewed Coming Apart and concluded “policy makers and business leaders need to shore up the economic foundation of working and middle class life.” That’s a good place to start.
David Brooks of the NYT is constantly on a chase for explanations of our social structure that won’t make the upper crust look bad. His latest find to do that is Charles Murray’s new study called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, a book that at bottom wants to blame the “welfare state” for beginning the process of “coming apart.” Since Murray makes no bones about being a conservative sociologist I have to take his thinking with a grain of salt, especially his contention that the cultural divide between the two white communities--what Brooks calls the upper-tribe, which represents 20% of the white population, and the lower-tribe, which represents 30% of the same population--that the divide between them is cultural more than economic, and stagnant wages, a decline in manufacturing, rampant joblessness, and divisive inequality have little to do with the separation of tribes or classes. Brooks doesn’t want to use the word “class, “ but I don’t see “tribe” as a great improvement or more descriptive somehow. No matter how you cut the pie, it’s still round.
Murray attempts to turn the accepted idea of class differences upside down. For example: the notion that working class people, those that Sarah Palin likes to call “ordinary Americans,” are the backbone of our core American values, like faith, hard work, honesty, and marriage. Murray calls these our “founding virtues.” In contrast the upper crust was viewed as secular, skeptical, irreligious, often divorced, dishonest and a bit decadent. In the early sixties the two groups lived cheek by jowl, not so far apart as they are today. The old interaction is totally absent. So how are those “founding virtues” doing today? Lets look at what Murray discovered. Having a child out of wedlock is now a rare occurrence in the upper-tribe, whereas in the lower-tribe 45% have kids outside of marriage, and, not too surprising, marriage is less frequent or tends to be unstable. And remember we are talking about only the white population. It appears lower-tribe probity and core strength isn’t what it used to be. In the upper-tribe, after a flirtation with countercultural values in the sixties and seventies, has righted the ship and the folks in the 20% group are now going to church, divorcing less and maintaining the centrality of marriage and smart child-rearing, display civic concern, believe in the value of education, working hard, and live in enclaves of considerable stability. Their communities are no longer contiguous with the 30%. They live in gated communities or in suburbs filled with the like-minded.. The homes of the well off cost ten times what they had cost in the sixties. They live in isolation from the poor and middle class. And the separation is quite deliberate. One critic called it “self-segregation.” Birds of a feather flock together. It’s a cliché but its still true. The cultural habits of the elite class would be unrecognizable to the lower tribe—to mainstream America. They eat differently, they play with more expensive toys, have more expensive cars, like a different brand of entertainment, and live in clusters in what Murray calls “super Zip Codes, surrounded by huge lawns and neighbored by other rich. They are separated not only by culture but by geography.”
What is really coming apart is the lower tribe. Murray thinks the bonds of community, and the founding virtues that support the bonds, are frayed and in decline. Many men are working just part time and those once called “bums” are no longer scorned like in the past. It appears that he is suggesting that there is a degrading process going on among the 30%, as they seem to be falling into the same “sociological underclass” that we usually associate with African-Americans and other ethnic subsets. While the poor in the rest of the world are emerging from living on a dollar a day, the 30% are going backwards, experiencing the early stages of Ghettoization. Murray’s conservatism is revealed when he blames the “welfare state” and government bureaucracy’s habit of allocating funds inefficiently. (What about Medicare, sir!) There are few people being coddled by a welfare system these days, unless you consider food stamps a luxury and unemployment insurance a waste of money during hard times. Murray pays little attention to the inequality gap between the tribes, keeping to his premise of cultural differences, paying little heed to the economic factors which are obviously huge and causative.
Brooks comments about the lower tribe: “ Members work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.” He softballs an answer to the great divide: persons from the upper tribe should interact with their brethren on the lower level, something along the lines of the old Vista program. National Service is easy to suggest, but hard to bring off, especially with the current Congress.
Bradford Wilcox of the Wall Street Journal reviewed Coming Apart and concluded “policy makers and business leaders need to shore up the economic foundation of working and middle class life.” That’s a good place to start.
The Price of Grandeur
Newsletter: The Price of Grandeur
There’s a lot of talk going around right now about Steve Jobs outsourcing of Apple products to firms on mainland China, to employers who work their employees like slaves, to the extent of exhaustion and injury, to satisfy Jobs’ need for speed at low cost. In China when one employee falters there’s always another to take his of her place. And they specialize in getting things done in a hurry, so the product can be put on the market for hoopla and sale. (In the fourth quarter of 2011 Apple sold 37 million iPhones (128% over sales for 2010), 15.43 million iPads (110% better than the previous year), and 5.3 million iMacs (a 26% increase over 2010). Apple’s profit in the fourth quarter was $13 billion, their best ever, if I remember correctly.)
To gain some perspective on this question of the price of grandeur, let me make a couple of comparisons. Pushing human energy to the limit of endurance has been done many times throughout history and often the results have been spectacular and long lasting. The Taj Mahal for example, an extraordinary marvel of architectural beauty and engineering. No one would argue with the exquisite quality of it as a work of art. It was built in the middle of the 17th century in India, in honor of the deceased wife of the Mogul Emperor. So what did it take to build this magnificent memorial and an everlasting token of the emperor’s love for his wife? Twenty thousand laborers were forced to work day and night for twenty years. A ramp ten miles long had to be built just to move materials up to the 187-foot-high dome. The budget had no bottom line, nor was any value put on man-hours put into the project. God knows how many workers fell by the wayside in this herculean effort. As Steve Jobs guided his products from design through marketing, it was said that the Emperor Shah Jahan played a major part in overseeing the design and building of the Taj Mahal. Both can be seen as autocratic rulers who got results.
A Chinese admiral by the name of Zheng He supervised the building of a fleet of 317 ships constructed of the finest woods available; indeed, it took three hundred acres of forest to build one ship that was four masted and four times longer than Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria. Zheng’s flagship had nine masts, four decks, and was as long a football field; and altogether the ships could carry 28, 000 men and ample supplies, including live animals. One ship was just for drinking water. Columbus’s three ships carried 150 sailors and were puny in size by comparison. This awesome fleet set sail 87 years before Columbus embarked on his journey to the New World; moreover, it made seven separate voyages through the waters of the Indian Ocean, East Africa, the Middle East, and around south Asia, showing the inhabitants of the region the reach and power of the Ming dynasty. It is said Zheng died on the seventh voyage. Nothing in Europe at the time compares with this fleet and its range of travel. Size mattered, money did not, and once again little is know what kind of manpower was used to build the fleet, to maintain it, and to sail it. But in China there is never a lack of bodies and helping hands.
Steve Jobs is taking a lot of heat posthumously over the outsourcing and the apparent rough and sometimes inhumane treatment of the Chinese employees. Jobs was out to change the world and made no apology for his decisions as a capitalist, which helped him to realize his goal with his game-changing “fleet” of products. His decisions from the business point of view only made sense and brought about great results, namely, huge profits and enormous influence in the technological realm. However, from the viewpoint of a moral imperative we can be critical of his decisions and methods. His actions seem elitist and uncaring, lacking in compassion. The Pope and the Dali Lama would lecture him on that point. On the other hand no one can argue with the man’s genius or the fineness of Apple’s line of products, which are indeed changing the world. Do we have to take the dark with the light; is that an inevitable part of the deal? Does his brilliance balance with the cruel element in his business acumen? Or is there some kind of middle path that could be adopted? Do we marvel at the Taj Mahal less because we know the workers were forced to do the work? Does that taint its exquisite beauty? And do we stop admiring Zheng He’s fleet and all that it took to create it when we think of all the laborers that exhausted themselves in the construction of something way ahead of its time? How do we measure the price of grandeur?
There’s a lot of talk going around right now about Steve Jobs outsourcing of Apple products to firms on mainland China, to employers who work their employees like slaves, to the extent of exhaustion and injury, to satisfy Jobs’ need for speed at low cost. In China when one employee falters there’s always another to take his of her place. And they specialize in getting things done in a hurry, so the product can be put on the market for hoopla and sale. (In the fourth quarter of 2011 Apple sold 37 million iPhones (128% over sales for 2010), 15.43 million iPads (110% better than the previous year), and 5.3 million iMacs (a 26% increase over 2010). Apple’s profit in the fourth quarter was $13 billion, their best ever, if I remember correctly.)
To gain some perspective on this question of the price of grandeur, let me make a couple of comparisons. Pushing human energy to the limit of endurance has been done many times throughout history and often the results have been spectacular and long lasting. The Taj Mahal for example, an extraordinary marvel of architectural beauty and engineering. No one would argue with the exquisite quality of it as a work of art. It was built in the middle of the 17th century in India, in honor of the deceased wife of the Mogul Emperor. So what did it take to build this magnificent memorial and an everlasting token of the emperor’s love for his wife? Twenty thousand laborers were forced to work day and night for twenty years. A ramp ten miles long had to be built just to move materials up to the 187-foot-high dome. The budget had no bottom line, nor was any value put on man-hours put into the project. God knows how many workers fell by the wayside in this herculean effort. As Steve Jobs guided his products from design through marketing, it was said that the Emperor Shah Jahan played a major part in overseeing the design and building of the Taj Mahal. Both can be seen as autocratic rulers who got results.
A Chinese admiral by the name of Zheng He supervised the building of a fleet of 317 ships constructed of the finest woods available; indeed, it took three hundred acres of forest to build one ship that was four masted and four times longer than Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria. Zheng’s flagship had nine masts, four decks, and was as long a football field; and altogether the ships could carry 28, 000 men and ample supplies, including live animals. One ship was just for drinking water. Columbus’s three ships carried 150 sailors and were puny in size by comparison. This awesome fleet set sail 87 years before Columbus embarked on his journey to the New World; moreover, it made seven separate voyages through the waters of the Indian Ocean, East Africa, the Middle East, and around south Asia, showing the inhabitants of the region the reach and power of the Ming dynasty. It is said Zheng died on the seventh voyage. Nothing in Europe at the time compares with this fleet and its range of travel. Size mattered, money did not, and once again little is know what kind of manpower was used to build the fleet, to maintain it, and to sail it. But in China there is never a lack of bodies and helping hands.
Steve Jobs is taking a lot of heat posthumously over the outsourcing and the apparent rough and sometimes inhumane treatment of the Chinese employees. Jobs was out to change the world and made no apology for his decisions as a capitalist, which helped him to realize his goal with his game-changing “fleet” of products. His decisions from the business point of view only made sense and brought about great results, namely, huge profits and enormous influence in the technological realm. However, from the viewpoint of a moral imperative we can be critical of his decisions and methods. His actions seem elitist and uncaring, lacking in compassion. The Pope and the Dali Lama would lecture him on that point. On the other hand no one can argue with the man’s genius or the fineness of Apple’s line of products, which are indeed changing the world. Do we have to take the dark with the light; is that an inevitable part of the deal? Does his brilliance balance with the cruel element in his business acumen? Or is there some kind of middle path that could be adopted? Do we marvel at the Taj Mahal less because we know the workers were forced to do the work? Does that taint its exquisite beauty? And do we stop admiring Zheng He’s fleet and all that it took to create it when we think of all the laborers that exhausted themselves in the construction of something way ahead of its time? How do we measure the price of grandeur?
Phony baloney
Newsletter: Phony baloney
The current dust-up over the birth control issue is a farce, when in fact 28 states already comply with the mandate, including catholic institutions, and it is clear to everyone with their head screwed on tight that 99% of women, including Catholic women, have chosen to ignore the bishops and the church’s teaching on contraception, to practice birth control at some time in their life. Rarely do you nowadays see broods like Bobby Kennedy had or like Rick Santorum has, that darling of reactionary religionists. Both my parents came from a family of seven kids. Birth control in the early 20th century meant, more times than not, no more sex. My wife’s grandmother told her husband after birthing three kids that was it; there was no more sex for 45 years. (Could that really happen?) And they weren’t catholic. The right wing has pounced on this issue of contraception as a way to cast aspersions on President Obama who they have been trying to tag as the anti-Christ, to go along with his illegitimacy as a citizen, the fact he’s really a Muslim, a big government Socialist, and last but not least, a repellent black man in a white man’s office. It is a phony baloney issue being used to fling more mud at a hated figure, nothing but a trumped up gimmick. It also serves to put the Bishops in a hostile relationship with American women, proving once more that the Catholic hierarchy is more interested in dogma and dominance than women’s welfare. Pundits worry that the president will lose the Catholic voters. Not to worry; the better part of the deal is the women he’s pleased and won over to his cause.
Gawd, I am so sick of this mud-slinging primary season, and to think we aren’t even close to the main event later this year. I can’t stand Santorum’s whole schtick: the pious Boy Scout with seven kids peddling a rancid brand of warmed-over religiosity based in the 1950’s Good Housekeeping seal of approval. To hear him carry on makes me believe he is living on another planet. But it looks like he is leaving Newt in the dust, as Romney’s super-pac annihilated him in Florida. It only cost $15 million to do the job. Santorum’s eager embrace of socially conservative issues may make him the choice of the like-minded base of the party, but they are, I am convinced, of tertiary value to Democrats and independents in the big cities of America. They have a more secular cast of mind and they don’t care who marries who or what one’s sexual orientation is. Those issues are no longer wedge issues for the Right, like they used to be. Attitudes have switch sides. Most folks are concerned with practical matters, namely, jobs, jobs, jobs, and holding on to their houses. Pseudo-issues like the church and birth control barely register on their meter of importance. Those issues are the stuff of beltway beanbag played for political points, where relevance has long since been abandoned. Be serious! Let’s face it; Republicans are off their heads, too gone into politics to think sensibly about anything. They have ears like Dumbo, a nose to rival Pinocchio, and staffs composed of the seven dwarfs. They have surrendered all sense to one goal: defeating Obama—a tactic that has their nose to the grindstone, a narrow focus which has handicapped their vision. They are little more than extensions of the will of a small clutch of billionaires who are trying to buy the seat in the oval office. And I fear, they may succeed, as Obama’s support is not what it was like in 2008.
And isn’t the situation in Syria a tragic mess? It is where the “Arab spring” has run afoul due to complications that didn’t apply in North Africa and Egypt. Syria is at the nexus of several states of regional and political importance, with strands going out in several directions, to both friend and foe alike. Nation after nation have condemned what is going on in Syria where a ruthless dictator is slaughtering his own people to maintain maniacal control of the country which has been under the control of either Assad’s father or himself for 40 years. But the thirst for freedom has driven the masses to revolt, like they did elsewhere in the Arab world, but because Russia and China are backing Assad, and there are worries about Iran entering the fray, the UN feels its hands are tied. The Israelis are watching the situation too, very closely, because they are considering a raid on Iranian nuclear facilities sometime soon. Russia had an envoy in Syria last week talking reform, which is ridiculous as the Rubicon was passed months ago. Assad is not about to negotiate with people he’s branded as “terrorists,” and the rebels know all he wants is a chance to identify the opposition and wipe them out like his father did in the eighties. Like his father, Assad has no moral scruples and could care less what the rest of the world thinks. I realize that Syria isn’t Libya, but there has got to be a way to stop the slaughter. If something isn’t done soon Assad is going to obliterate Homs, man, woman and child. Over a million people live there. Somehow the Arab League and Turkey seem the key to me.
The current dust-up over the birth control issue is a farce, when in fact 28 states already comply with the mandate, including catholic institutions, and it is clear to everyone with their head screwed on tight that 99% of women, including Catholic women, have chosen to ignore the bishops and the church’s teaching on contraception, to practice birth control at some time in their life. Rarely do you nowadays see broods like Bobby Kennedy had or like Rick Santorum has, that darling of reactionary religionists. Both my parents came from a family of seven kids. Birth control in the early 20th century meant, more times than not, no more sex. My wife’s grandmother told her husband after birthing three kids that was it; there was no more sex for 45 years. (Could that really happen?) And they weren’t catholic. The right wing has pounced on this issue of contraception as a way to cast aspersions on President Obama who they have been trying to tag as the anti-Christ, to go along with his illegitimacy as a citizen, the fact he’s really a Muslim, a big government Socialist, and last but not least, a repellent black man in a white man’s office. It is a phony baloney issue being used to fling more mud at a hated figure, nothing but a trumped up gimmick. It also serves to put the Bishops in a hostile relationship with American women, proving once more that the Catholic hierarchy is more interested in dogma and dominance than women’s welfare. Pundits worry that the president will lose the Catholic voters. Not to worry; the better part of the deal is the women he’s pleased and won over to his cause.
Gawd, I am so sick of this mud-slinging primary season, and to think we aren’t even close to the main event later this year. I can’t stand Santorum’s whole schtick: the pious Boy Scout with seven kids peddling a rancid brand of warmed-over religiosity based in the 1950’s Good Housekeeping seal of approval. To hear him carry on makes me believe he is living on another planet. But it looks like he is leaving Newt in the dust, as Romney’s super-pac annihilated him in Florida. It only cost $15 million to do the job. Santorum’s eager embrace of socially conservative issues may make him the choice of the like-minded base of the party, but they are, I am convinced, of tertiary value to Democrats and independents in the big cities of America. They have a more secular cast of mind and they don’t care who marries who or what one’s sexual orientation is. Those issues are no longer wedge issues for the Right, like they used to be. Attitudes have switch sides. Most folks are concerned with practical matters, namely, jobs, jobs, jobs, and holding on to their houses. Pseudo-issues like the church and birth control barely register on their meter of importance. Those issues are the stuff of beltway beanbag played for political points, where relevance has long since been abandoned. Be serious! Let’s face it; Republicans are off their heads, too gone into politics to think sensibly about anything. They have ears like Dumbo, a nose to rival Pinocchio, and staffs composed of the seven dwarfs. They have surrendered all sense to one goal: defeating Obama—a tactic that has their nose to the grindstone, a narrow focus which has handicapped their vision. They are little more than extensions of the will of a small clutch of billionaires who are trying to buy the seat in the oval office. And I fear, they may succeed, as Obama’s support is not what it was like in 2008.
And isn’t the situation in Syria a tragic mess? It is where the “Arab spring” has run afoul due to complications that didn’t apply in North Africa and Egypt. Syria is at the nexus of several states of regional and political importance, with strands going out in several directions, to both friend and foe alike. Nation after nation have condemned what is going on in Syria where a ruthless dictator is slaughtering his own people to maintain maniacal control of the country which has been under the control of either Assad’s father or himself for 40 years. But the thirst for freedom has driven the masses to revolt, like they did elsewhere in the Arab world, but because Russia and China are backing Assad, and there are worries about Iran entering the fray, the UN feels its hands are tied. The Israelis are watching the situation too, very closely, because they are considering a raid on Iranian nuclear facilities sometime soon. Russia had an envoy in Syria last week talking reform, which is ridiculous as the Rubicon was passed months ago. Assad is not about to negotiate with people he’s branded as “terrorists,” and the rebels know all he wants is a chance to identify the opposition and wipe them out like his father did in the eighties. Like his father, Assad has no moral scruples and could care less what the rest of the world thinks. I realize that Syria isn’t Libya, but there has got to be a way to stop the slaughter. If something isn’t done soon Assad is going to obliterate Homs, man, woman and child. Over a million people live there. Somehow the Arab League and Turkey seem the key to me.
Newsletter:Aspirin between her legs
2012_2_17 Newsletter: Aspirin between her legs
It is hard to believe how adept the Republicans are at shooting themselves in the foot and how they can guess wrongly so often. The candidates and their allies in Congress have decided to reignite the culture wars of the 1990s, following the lead of Catholic bishops and other coreligionists who are up and arms about contraception—yes, birth control, believe it or not, something 99% of American women have used at some time in their life—and what they say is an assault on their religious freedom. 28 states are already abiding by the mandate to provide free birth control services even if they are hospitals with religious affiliation. Suddenly this has become an issue when Obama moved to extend the mandate. The dust-up has thrown grit in the eyes of conservatives everywhere, as if birth control was still a burning moral issue in America. Conservatives are saying it is the other half of the bad apple called contraception/ abortion, which is mixing apples and sour grapes. The two things are not equivalent. Birth control has been considered “family planning” for a long time and as such a morally permissible thing. Rick Santorum is especially hot on these issues as a social conservative; but I would remind people he was beaten in Pennsylvania by 18 points running on the same basic agenda. Why he thinks he can use it as wedge issue at this point amazes me. The drift of opinion is in another direction.
Foster Freiss, the wallet that is feeding Santorum’s campaign, brought the topic of contraception to a new level of gross hilarity and ridiculousness when he dumbfounded Andrea Mitchell yesterday by saying birth control in his day was a woman “putting an aspirin between her knees.” I happened to see him say that and I don’t recall ever seeing a veteran journalist like Mitchell be both embarrassed by a guest on her program and absolutely flabbergasted he would say something as offensive as that on national television, which he later excused as a joke, which is a common tactic with airheads on the right.
But the right doesn’t pay much attention to what isn’t on FOX NEWS and talked about by Rush and his progeny on talk radio. They are too busy looking in the mirror of the own making to put their wet finger in the wind to see how the other half might feel about things. Santorum, the bishops and the rest of the foaming-at-the-mouth coreligionists still believe that birth control and abortion and same sex marriages constitute a wedge issue the GOP can win on. I got news for them. Those things were indeed a wedge issue for the right three decades ago, but they aren’t any longer; indeed, all indicators show that the reverse is true; they will be a wedge issue for the left, women, the young and independents. Plus many Catholics don’t follow what their bishops recommend. There is a telling generation gap among Catholics. Many go their own way these days. Every poll worth its salt says the drift nowadays is in a live-and-let-live direction. Read and weep you folks on the right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The dust-up in the House yesterday was a revelation to all with the eyes to see just how blind and insular and exclusionary the Republicans are these days. They just don’t get it. Their panel to investigate contraception was five clergymen, without a woman in sight, not even a nun. The photo of these five grim black-clad men looked like the tribunal that was going to serve at the Salem witch trials. The women in congress have seen to it this photograph has gone viral. It says so much unintentionally. They’d love to put women in their place, which is not at the table with them, to return them to second class citizenship and, if you are catholic, to bondage to a religion that is badly eroded in the Northern hemisphere and currently heading toward Africa where it hopes to get a new start. Adios and good luck. If anyone doubts these facts please look up the books of Philip Jenkins, a professor of religion at Penn State University who has be studying these trends for twenty years. In particular I would recommend The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.
.
It is hard to believe how adept the Republicans are at shooting themselves in the foot and how they can guess wrongly so often. The candidates and their allies in Congress have decided to reignite the culture wars of the 1990s, following the lead of Catholic bishops and other coreligionists who are up and arms about contraception—yes, birth control, believe it or not, something 99% of American women have used at some time in their life—and what they say is an assault on their religious freedom. 28 states are already abiding by the mandate to provide free birth control services even if they are hospitals with religious affiliation. Suddenly this has become an issue when Obama moved to extend the mandate. The dust-up has thrown grit in the eyes of conservatives everywhere, as if birth control was still a burning moral issue in America. Conservatives are saying it is the other half of the bad apple called contraception/ abortion, which is mixing apples and sour grapes. The two things are not equivalent. Birth control has been considered “family planning” for a long time and as such a morally permissible thing. Rick Santorum is especially hot on these issues as a social conservative; but I would remind people he was beaten in Pennsylvania by 18 points running on the same basic agenda. Why he thinks he can use it as wedge issue at this point amazes me. The drift of opinion is in another direction.
Foster Freiss, the wallet that is feeding Santorum’s campaign, brought the topic of contraception to a new level of gross hilarity and ridiculousness when he dumbfounded Andrea Mitchell yesterday by saying birth control in his day was a woman “putting an aspirin between her knees.” I happened to see him say that and I don’t recall ever seeing a veteran journalist like Mitchell be both embarrassed by a guest on her program and absolutely flabbergasted he would say something as offensive as that on national television, which he later excused as a joke, which is a common tactic with airheads on the right.
But the right doesn’t pay much attention to what isn’t on FOX NEWS and talked about by Rush and his progeny on talk radio. They are too busy looking in the mirror of the own making to put their wet finger in the wind to see how the other half might feel about things. Santorum, the bishops and the rest of the foaming-at-the-mouth coreligionists still believe that birth control and abortion and same sex marriages constitute a wedge issue the GOP can win on. I got news for them. Those things were indeed a wedge issue for the right three decades ago, but they aren’t any longer; indeed, all indicators show that the reverse is true; they will be a wedge issue for the left, women, the young and independents. Plus many Catholics don’t follow what their bishops recommend. There is a telling generation gap among Catholics. Many go their own way these days. Every poll worth its salt says the drift nowadays is in a live-and-let-live direction. Read and weep you folks on the right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The dust-up in the House yesterday was a revelation to all with the eyes to see just how blind and insular and exclusionary the Republicans are these days. They just don’t get it. Their panel to investigate contraception was five clergymen, without a woman in sight, not even a nun. The photo of these five grim black-clad men looked like the tribunal that was going to serve at the Salem witch trials. The women in congress have seen to it this photograph has gone viral. It says so much unintentionally. They’d love to put women in their place, which is not at the table with them, to return them to second class citizenship and, if you are catholic, to bondage to a religion that is badly eroded in the Northern hemisphere and currently heading toward Africa where it hopes to get a new start. Adios and good luck. If anyone doubts these facts please look up the books of Philip Jenkins, a professor of religion at Penn State University who has be studying these trends for twenty years. In particular I would recommend The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.
.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Newsletter: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Newsletter: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
The original title of the Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy was Men Who Hated Women. Granted, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is catchy title and more imaginative than the original title, but the original is to the point and accurate. It is particularly true in the first novel in the series. Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading investigative journalist, a man with considerable appeal to the opposite sex, and Lizbeth Salander, a leather-clad world-classed hacker and rabid individualist who has been the victim of male outrage more than a few times in her young life, combined forces to track down a serial killer that is a member of a prominent wealthy but twisted Swedish family. This member has a pattern of kidnapping young girls, prostitutes, immigrants, runaways, and brutally torturing them before he kills them, almost like a sport, a pastime, with utter disregard for them as human beings. There’s also incest in the family and a liking for Hitler and Nazism. Larsson juxtaposes this corrupt and decadent family against the virtuous two investigators who are on the side of the angels, even if in an eccentric way. After the three movies were made for Swedish television, and were a great success, here as well as in Europe, the American director who specializes in dark, psychological dramas, David Fincher, decided to take on Dragon Tattoo, which was a year in the making and was released just before Christmas in 2011.
First let me state I have read all three novels, the first one twice, and I have seen all three Swedish movies twice. In other words, I have pretty well soaked up the narrative and the characters, and I can’t tell you how much admiration I have for Lizbeth Salander. For me she has become the paradigm for the kick-ass female, replacing the likes of Wonder Woman, mixing a fiery sense of revenge against males who have abused her, with a photographic memory, and a brilliance on the computer—an up-to-date heroine cast by talent and technology to take on the patriarchy in its many forms while remaining an ultra-independent person.
I came to Fincher’s film with an open mind. It is, cinematically, more satisfying than the TV movies. It was shot with more authority and a better eye for detail and composition, and with a dark atmosphere that approaches that of a horror film, which was fitting considering the last part of the film. There were some echoes of Seven when dealing with the photographs of the dead girls.
I thought Daniel Craig and newcomer Rooney Mara had good chemistry. Rooney has a more womanly body then Noomi Repace, the actress who plays Lizbeth in the Swedish movies; she is not so slight of frame, nor so flat chested, which struck me as a plus. The look they gave Mara is rather ghoulish: pale grey skin, as if it was against her religion to be exposed to sunlight. Mara has since been nominated for an Oscar for her performance, quite an achievement for someone who had never starred in major film. But despite all this hoopla Miss Rapace’s performance tends to pop up first when I think about the story on film. Perhaps it’s just the fact she was in all three movies and has therefore carved a deeper niche in my mind. In the final analysis I think both women did a fantastic job.
The original title of the Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy was Men Who Hated Women. Granted, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is catchy title and more imaginative than the original title, but the original is to the point and accurate. It is particularly true in the first novel in the series. Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading investigative journalist, a man with considerable appeal to the opposite sex, and Lizbeth Salander, a leather-clad world-classed hacker and rabid individualist who has been the victim of male outrage more than a few times in her young life, combined forces to track down a serial killer that is a member of a prominent wealthy but twisted Swedish family. This member has a pattern of kidnapping young girls, prostitutes, immigrants, runaways, and brutally torturing them before he kills them, almost like a sport, a pastime, with utter disregard for them as human beings. There’s also incest in the family and a liking for Hitler and Nazism. Larsson juxtaposes this corrupt and decadent family against the virtuous two investigators who are on the side of the angels, even if in an eccentric way. After the three movies were made for Swedish television, and were a great success, here as well as in Europe, the American director who specializes in dark, psychological dramas, David Fincher, decided to take on Dragon Tattoo, which was a year in the making and was released just before Christmas in 2011.
First let me state I have read all three novels, the first one twice, and I have seen all three Swedish movies twice. In other words, I have pretty well soaked up the narrative and the characters, and I can’t tell you how much admiration I have for Lizbeth Salander. For me she has become the paradigm for the kick-ass female, replacing the likes of Wonder Woman, mixing a fiery sense of revenge against males who have abused her, with a photographic memory, and a brilliance on the computer—an up-to-date heroine cast by talent and technology to take on the patriarchy in its many forms while remaining an ultra-independent person.
I came to Fincher’s film with an open mind. It is, cinematically, more satisfying than the TV movies. It was shot with more authority and a better eye for detail and composition, and with a dark atmosphere that approaches that of a horror film, which was fitting considering the last part of the film. There were some echoes of Seven when dealing with the photographs of the dead girls.
I thought Daniel Craig and newcomer Rooney Mara had good chemistry. Rooney has a more womanly body then Noomi Repace, the actress who plays Lizbeth in the Swedish movies; she is not so slight of frame, nor so flat chested, which struck me as a plus. The look they gave Mara is rather ghoulish: pale grey skin, as if it was against her religion to be exposed to sunlight. Mara has since been nominated for an Oscar for her performance, quite an achievement for someone who had never starred in major film. But despite all this hoopla Miss Rapace’s performance tends to pop up first when I think about the story on film. Perhaps it’s just the fact she was in all three movies and has therefore carved a deeper niche in my mind. In the final analysis I think both women did a fantastic job.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Lizbeth the Great
2012_1_03 Lisbeth the Great
On Dec. 31, a few hours before midnight I closed out my notebook on movies seen in 2011. For some reason it was way below my average for the last few years, which was 250 films. This year it was 216 films and/or episodes from cable serials. Almost all the cable material came from recorded programs by Mike Keenan. The first film I saw in 2011 was “I am a Born Liar,” a doc about Fellini. The last was another doc, “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.” Both were attained through Netflix.
On Jan. 1 I recorded these notes:
• J.C. Martin selected eight books of Southern Arizona authors for his section in the Sunday paper. I was not one of them. It instantly threw me into a fit of failure, a state of mind I thought I was beyond. Apparently not, which is exasperating. For one thing my disappointment could be premature.
• Fincher’s long-awaited version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” made less money than expected over its first weekend of release--$28 mil. The most likely reason for that was the type of movie it is: not exactly Christmas fare. It was released now for one reason: to be a contender in the race for the Oscars.
• Mark Harris wrote a great piece in the latest EW on the film. It was perhaps the best feature article I have ever read in the rag. He reminded me that Stieg Larsson’s original title for the trilogy was Men Who Hated Women. It was
• Less colorful than what the publisher thought would work better but it had the advantage of being painfully accurate.
• Harris selected eight kick-ass females from previous films that contributed to the Identity of Lisbeth Salander. I recognized five of them.
• Rooney Mara has that unusual first name from a relative, none other than Art Rooney, a previous owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
From Jan. 2:
Kai and I went to see the 10 AM showing of “Dragon Tattoo” at Foothills mall. I had read that the opening two minutes, while the credits run, was as abstract and powerful as the credits of “Seven.” It was a real blast of imagery combined with loud grunge music. It was quite a display but how it related remains problematic. It was a flashy capsulation of his blue-black style.
Lisbeth would certainly qualify as a Grunge/Goth character; she always dressed in black, down to her underwear, daring the world to criticize her, wallowing in her asocial weirdness. Rooney has a more womanly body than Noomi had, who was slight and flat chested. One could believe Michel would find her sexy under that Goth exterior. The picture of her in her ordinary persona revealed a sun-kissed bloom of a pretty girl. As Lisbeth it appears she did everything she could to avoid the sun. She came from an underground world, like Kate Beckinsale in her vampire role. Only her underworld is that of computer hackers. That pale, ghoulish look is designed to show her disdain for convention and social niceties, to put normal people off, to keep them at arm’s length. She wants to be seen as a demonic apparition. Yet, the Swedish girl’s image still dominates in my mind’s eye. In time both images will probably merge into one.
What really separates the two films is the cinematic and directorial artistry of David Fincher and a superb cast. It is a much darker film, more full of dread—even the winter scenes seem filmed in hell. If it wasn’t raining or snowing, it was nighttime. Fincher excels at that dark atmosphere.
Christopher Plummer was a real plus, especially in describing his reprobate family, which was actually worse than he thought. I’d like to see get a nomination for best Supporting actor.
On Dec. 31, a few hours before midnight I closed out my notebook on movies seen in 2011. For some reason it was way below my average for the last few years, which was 250 films. This year it was 216 films and/or episodes from cable serials. Almost all the cable material came from recorded programs by Mike Keenan. The first film I saw in 2011 was “I am a Born Liar,” a doc about Fellini. The last was another doc, “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.” Both were attained through Netflix.
On Jan. 1 I recorded these notes:
• J.C. Martin selected eight books of Southern Arizona authors for his section in the Sunday paper. I was not one of them. It instantly threw me into a fit of failure, a state of mind I thought I was beyond. Apparently not, which is exasperating. For one thing my disappointment could be premature.
• Fincher’s long-awaited version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” made less money than expected over its first weekend of release--$28 mil. The most likely reason for that was the type of movie it is: not exactly Christmas fare. It was released now for one reason: to be a contender in the race for the Oscars.
• Mark Harris wrote a great piece in the latest EW on the film. It was perhaps the best feature article I have ever read in the rag. He reminded me that Stieg Larsson’s original title for the trilogy was Men Who Hated Women. It was
• Less colorful than what the publisher thought would work better but it had the advantage of being painfully accurate.
• Harris selected eight kick-ass females from previous films that contributed to the Identity of Lisbeth Salander. I recognized five of them.
• Rooney Mara has that unusual first name from a relative, none other than Art Rooney, a previous owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
From Jan. 2:
Kai and I went to see the 10 AM showing of “Dragon Tattoo” at Foothills mall. I had read that the opening two minutes, while the credits run, was as abstract and powerful as the credits of “Seven.” It was a real blast of imagery combined with loud grunge music. It was quite a display but how it related remains problematic. It was a flashy capsulation of his blue-black style.
Lisbeth would certainly qualify as a Grunge/Goth character; she always dressed in black, down to her underwear, daring the world to criticize her, wallowing in her asocial weirdness. Rooney has a more womanly body than Noomi had, who was slight and flat chested. One could believe Michel would find her sexy under that Goth exterior. The picture of her in her ordinary persona revealed a sun-kissed bloom of a pretty girl. As Lisbeth it appears she did everything she could to avoid the sun. She came from an underground world, like Kate Beckinsale in her vampire role. Only her underworld is that of computer hackers. That pale, ghoulish look is designed to show her disdain for convention and social niceties, to put normal people off, to keep them at arm’s length. She wants to be seen as a demonic apparition. Yet, the Swedish girl’s image still dominates in my mind’s eye. In time both images will probably merge into one.
What really separates the two films is the cinematic and directorial artistry of David Fincher and a superb cast. It is a much darker film, more full of dread—even the winter scenes seem filmed in hell. If it wasn’t raining or snowing, it was nighttime. Fincher excels at that dark atmosphere.
Christopher Plummer was a real plus, especially in describing his reprobate family, which was actually worse than he thought. I’d like to see get a nomination for best Supporting actor.
A Confessional Bent
2012_1_11 A Confessional bent
Listen, I really appreciate your letter and I only wish some of my other old friends and associates would have read the book with emotion and with the thoughtfulness you gave to it. You didn’t pull any punches (“a very warped mind’) and had your reservations about my openness of mind, yet at the same time you were generous of spirit and affirmative in many of your comments about my intentions and talents.
Early in my academic career openness wasn’t a priority for me because I was an abstract painter; but for a number of different reasons I went through a profound transformation while teaching at UNLV that brought about a radical sea change to my life, necessitating a recalibration of philosophy and creative intentions. I dropped painting and began to draw in pen and ink, my favorite medium, and instead of abstractions I started turning out satirical drawings of political figures and other public personages. To my surprise I had a flair for such things. By the time I got to Tucson I was a believer in Heraclites’ credo: I SEARCH MYSELF. Or as James Joyce put it, “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” So from 1974 onward my ship has sailed in an inward direction.
One of the not-so-hidden traits of my openness of mind and heart was, to state the obvious, a confessional bent or inclination, derived no doubt from my experience as a catholic youngster in Wisconsin. I always like the feeling of dispensing with my sins and moral missteps, of shedding sins like shedding sickness, of becoming clean again, of getting another chance, and of the forgiveness of sins as the major virtue of Christianity. I always felt like a cork bobbing up out of dirty water.
Aye, from my mid thirties on experience weighed on me like sin used to and being an artist provided me with a vehicle for externalization of the assimilated material that had been “forged in the smithy of my soul.” I could wring myself out and afterwards make room for more experience that later would be ready to be poured out into an endless river of images and insights that ultimately took the shape of a circle. Eventually I developed a stable of motifs and symbols that became my visual signature. And at the center of this circle was a commitment to openness and I have long been willing to accept the risks involved with openness. I believe it was T.S, Eliot who said, Humankind cannot stand too much reality. That would be more in keeping with your stance toward your burden of experience.
Till another time,
Ciao,
Jerry P
Listen, I really appreciate your letter and I only wish some of my other old friends and associates would have read the book with emotion and with the thoughtfulness you gave to it. You didn’t pull any punches (“a very warped mind’) and had your reservations about my openness of mind, yet at the same time you were generous of spirit and affirmative in many of your comments about my intentions and talents.
Early in my academic career openness wasn’t a priority for me because I was an abstract painter; but for a number of different reasons I went through a profound transformation while teaching at UNLV that brought about a radical sea change to my life, necessitating a recalibration of philosophy and creative intentions. I dropped painting and began to draw in pen and ink, my favorite medium, and instead of abstractions I started turning out satirical drawings of political figures and other public personages. To my surprise I had a flair for such things. By the time I got to Tucson I was a believer in Heraclites’ credo: I SEARCH MYSELF. Or as James Joyce put it, “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” So from 1974 onward my ship has sailed in an inward direction.
One of the not-so-hidden traits of my openness of mind and heart was, to state the obvious, a confessional bent or inclination, derived no doubt from my experience as a catholic youngster in Wisconsin. I always like the feeling of dispensing with my sins and moral missteps, of shedding sins like shedding sickness, of becoming clean again, of getting another chance, and of the forgiveness of sins as the major virtue of Christianity. I always felt like a cork bobbing up out of dirty water.
Aye, from my mid thirties on experience weighed on me like sin used to and being an artist provided me with a vehicle for externalization of the assimilated material that had been “forged in the smithy of my soul.” I could wring myself out and afterwards make room for more experience that later would be ready to be poured out into an endless river of images and insights that ultimately took the shape of a circle. Eventually I developed a stable of motifs and symbols that became my visual signature. And at the center of this circle was a commitment to openness and I have long been willing to accept the risks involved with openness. I believe it was T.S, Eliot who said, Humankind cannot stand too much reality. That would be more in keeping with your stance toward your burden of experience.
Till another time,
Ciao,
Jerry P
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