Peter Pan moment

Two years. Two years since I last posted here- I just noticed that this morning. What happened?? I asked myself.

Well...
I tried to swear off politics after the 2008 elections, for one thing. I used to enjoy listening to news on the radio, and it never failed to give me something to rail about, but over the past ten years, news radio has increasingly morphed into political talk radio, and in spite of the fact that politics is sometimes news, the larger fact remains that not all politics is news, and not all news is politics. Programmers just like it because it is constant conflict, and conflict sells.

I also got a little self-conscious after writing so much about religion. I have a lot of religious friends, and that's sometimes tough for me: I do have strong feelings, and I do express them ...exuberantly sometimes... because I like to think and communicate my thoughts. I don't feel that I should have to apologize, but at the same time I really, honestly, don't want to offend. I have many relatives and friends who walk peacefully and quietly on what they believe is Jesus's path, and I respect them for that. I do not take issue with them. What stopped me was that I let myself worry about whether those people would or would not see the difference I saw, between them and, say, Pope Benedict or Rev. Hypocrite at the stadium 'service' every sunday. I suppose I worry too much. Socrates said 'the unexamined life is not worth living,' and I agree wholeheartedly, but I find that it is possible to be too reflective.

All that aside, it's just been a tremendously busy period for me. I've designed sets for three musicals (Seussical, Bye Bye Birdie, and She Loves Me), three plays (Our Town, You Can't Take It With You, and Antigone), and traveled to Kansas, California, Tokyo, and Disneyland. I've silk-screened t-shirts and paper, cut- and printed four or five different wood- or lino-blocks (I'm not even sure how many) and several mixed-media projects as well. I taught myself Photoshop, and have completed gobs of different original projects for several different clients. And that's to say nothing of all the drawing and calligraphy and carpentry and photography and sewing etc... it's hard to remember all at once. Wow, I rock!

True to form though, I've neglected a part of myself. and the yard, hello? Partially by not writing here, and partially by using work as an excuse to sequester myself away. I don't mind being alone, sometimes I like it, but too much is just bad for me in the long run. Self-expression is healthy.

Who

Two very interesting takes on crisis: look on the bright side VS this is not OK. Really, these are great reads. One author details the year after she got laid off and decided to buck the system. The other talks about how positive thinking may have affected the progress of 'her' cancer. Fascinating contrasts.


* * *

Who's in charge here? I mean in America. President Obama invites the heads of the country's six biggest banks to a lunch ...and they blow him off- More Important Things To Do and all that.

Now consider that American-employed mercenaries are apparently immune to prosecution.

Do a little math. Mercenaries work for security companies. Banks like security. They employ huge numbers of security agents. That's right: mercenaries. Now, who's in charge here?

Security should be left to the commons, the people's government.

* * *

Yeah, yeah: I'm a nut. You just go on thinking that.

* * *

This is something I've been trying to say for a long time. Paul Krugman writes about the latest media frenzy: the deficit. He makes some very insightful points, but if you don't read between the lines, you're missing the force of his argument. Ask yourself: who determines what's news? Someone is calling those shots- 'will we report on Republican obstructionism in the Senate, or will we instead call attention to ...something we conveniently ignored under a different administration?' It makes a big difference.

Democracy will not survive an uninformed electorate.