New Work for a New Gallery

I am pleased to announce that some of my new work is moving West to Park City, Utah. The Meyer Gallery, established in 1965 in Park City and located in the former First Bank of Utah Building, will be receiving this week nine works in my Running Stitch series. Here are a few of them. (Click on the image to get a bigger view.)

Mario's Song, 2012, mixed media (including pieces from record albums) plus tacks and
encaustic on panel, 14" x 14" x 1.5"

Carmen's Eyes, same description and size as above.

You can see that I really got into the naming from record albums thing. Of course these works also include book parts, painted paper and cardboard, treated metal and who knows what-all.

Artur's Ivories, 2012, mixed media with tacks and encaustic on panel, 12" x 12"

Nicholas's Stories, 2012, materials same as above, also 12" x 12"

I am also sending some larger works that I have shown in this blog previously, and here are a couple more:

Rubbery Stripes, 2012, painted paper and cardboard, rubber, treated metal,
book parts,pieces from record albums, tacks and
encaustic on panel, 24" x 24" x 1.5"

Divided Stripes, 2012, painted paper and cardboard, rubber, treated metal,
book parts,tacks and encaustic on panel, 24" x 24" x 1.5"

That last one may look familiar if you've been paying attention. I have reworked an older piece and made it brand new. Isn't that just what artists do?

So if your're out there in Utah for the summer activities such as hiking, swimming and other water sports, resorting at the three big resorts there, visiting or whatever, I hope you will stop by Meyer Gallery and take a look. Here's a link to Park City that tells about some of the attractions. You may know it as the site of the Sundance Film Festival and of major skiing and snowboarding activity. It's also home to the Kimball Art Center which will be constructing a major new building, as seen below:

The new Kimball Art Center, as designed by competition winners, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)

In case you can't quite imagine how this unusual structure would fit in, here's a rendering of the building in situ with the rest of Main Street:

I hope that my work will make a contribution to the other fine work shown by Meyer Gallery and that collectors will throng to purchase it - but of course!

What You Missed

Uh-oh! A month has passed without a post. Good thing that writing this blog is not a paid position or my salary would be docked.

Here's what you missed in the meantime: (You can click to enlarge images.)


1) New Work

Duet, 2012, Mixed media with encaustic on panel, 36" x 36"

Shifting Red, 2012, mixed media with encaustic on panel, 24" x 24"

Shifting Blue, 2012, mixed media with encaustic on panel, 24" x 24"

With these pieces, I'm trying something a little new - a sense of movement in color and value to indicate the passage of light or journey from one side of the piece to the other. You may hear more about this work in the near future.


2) Kirby gets sick and has surgery

Kirby with his usual smiling face

Facebook people have heard all about this, but for those who spend their time more wisely, our younger Yellow Lab, Kirby, - age 7 1/2 - suddenly began having difficulty walking, going up stairs and movement in general. His condition worsened rapidly to the point where he could barely walk. Our veterinarian discovered that he had a loss of sensation in his rear legs. She suspected that his condition related to a spinal problem. We had tests run to rule out other illnesses but nothing showed up in them or in x-rays. We were referred to the neurology team at the world-renowned Angell Animal Medical Center (formerly known as Angell Memorial) in Jamaica Plain (Boston). (Here's the link to Angell via the Boston MSPCA, with which it's allied http://www.mspca.org/ .)

Dr. Avril Arendse, board certified veterinary neurologist and neurosurgeon
on the neurology team at Angell Animal Medical Center

We met the wonderful Dr. Arendse this past Monday with Kirby. After she had examined him and had him perform a few tests, she correctly suspected that he had a compression problem in his cervical spine (the top of the spine in the neck area). Here's a description below of what happens to a dog with this problem. I hope you will read this so if it happens to your dog, you will be aware of what's going on.
(This info is from http://www.ehow.com/about_5110444_spinal-disc-problems-dogs.html )

Signs will vary depending on the location of the problem.
With cervical (or neck) disc disease, sudden onset of neck pain is usually the first sign that something is wrong. As the discs in this region can affect a dog's front and back legs, clumsiness or an inability to walk also indicate presence of the disease. One or both sides of the body may be affected. A lower back disc injury can present only in the hind legs.

Neurological function is lost in a particular order and the dog owner should seek veterinary help immediately for the greatest chance of recovery. In the first stage, the dog loses its ability to locate its limbs. Next, the dog will lose its ability to move its legs and, finally, it will lose the ability to feel its legs.

The first sign we had is that Kirby started walking as if he was walking on eggs and his legs would go out from under him from time to time. He had a frantic, scared look on his face. We thought it could be Lyme Disease because sometimes that shows up with these symptoms initially. By the time we brought him to the hospital, Kirby was probably in the middle of this deterioration of functioning. But as with many dogs and most Labs, he did not let on that he was in pain until it must have been excruciating. 

Kirby not only had "bulging" but rupture of a disc:

Intervertebral (between the vertebrae) discs act as spinal shock absorbers. A disc typically has two sections: a gel-filled center and an outer fibrous ring. It turns degenerative when the gelatinous material calcifies into a gritty substance that can no longer cushion vertebral movements. The disc center then becomes prone to bulge and rupture into the spinal canal, resulting in spinal pressure, pain and paralysis.

Here are the dogs that are most susceptible to such problems:

Small dog breeds with long bodies and short legs, such as dachshunds, are prone to the form of spinal disc disease referred to as "disc extrusion". Disc extrusion occurs when the disc center explodes into the spinal canal.
Large breed dogs, such as Labradors, are more prone to "disc bulging". Disc bulging occurs when the disc center protrudes into the spinal canal but does not explode.

Dr. Arendse told us that to see just where the problem was, Kirby would need an MRI and probably surgery. The outcome with other treatment such as rest and steroids does not work long run. We placed our doggie boy and ourselves in her hands, and said that we would go along with her advice. She recommended that Kirby stay overnight for the MRI on Tuesday and if the results were what she suspected, he would undergo surgery on Wednesday. This made sense because it's about a two and a half hour drive for us to Angell and he would settle in better if he just stayed at the hospital.

Kirby had surgery on Wednesday and Dr. Arendse reported that she was able to repair the problem quicker than she expected and he did very well. This is an involved surgery with a long incision from his trachea to his sternum because she had to be able to move aside his esophagus and other organs to reach the spine. This morning Dr. Arendse reported that Kirby was doing even better than anticipated and is recovering nicely. We expect to pick him up and bring him home on Saturday morning. 

The convalescent period is pretty extensive and will require us to limit his activity for four or five weeks by confining him to a small room and just allowing short walks on a harness. Whew! This was all so stressful! Of course the financial burden is a big item, but we are focusing on getting our high-energy, smiling little guy back to health. Dr. Arendse says that we can expect 100 percent recovery of all function!

Our glum chum Hercules

Meanwhile, our other dog, Hercules, who is Kirby's father, has been totally sad. He is moping around and keeps looking for his boy to appear. They were inseparable and had huge reunions if they were apart for even a few minutes so this is really not good. We know we will have to be careful to prevent the usual roughhousing when Kirby comes home.

Typical bone-chewing postures (Kirby in foreground)

3) My own physical problems

Image from sciencedaily.com via the internet

I've been having trouble with a pinched nerve in my hip plus general inflammation in my body. This is making me tired, irritable and cranky - and not inspired to write blog posts. Fortunately, I have found a very good acupuncturist in Amherst (http://amherstchinesemedicine.com/index.html) who has been treating me with needles, heat and acupressure massage. This is pretty painful, but not as painful as her suggestions that I also need to exercise regularly and restrict my diet to foods that are not so inflammatory. Here's a list of things I should avoid http://theconsciouslife.com/top-10-inflammatory-foods-to-avoid.htm among others.

Ever notice that it's always something?

Inspired By a Master

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you are probably familiar with my Big Three - Leonardo Drew, El Anatsui and Lee Bontecou. Other masters, such as Joan Mitchell, Philip Guston and Richard Diebenkorn,  also inspire me, but the Big Three appeal more to my somewhat dark and grim natural aesthetic. Above all, materiality or physicality is what resonates with me.

So, as I think any artist must, I ask myself from time to time how much I should be influenced by my inspirations. Should I try to copy their work? How much of them should rub off on my own work? Is there a point where my work becomes more about what they want to say than what I do?

Thinking L.D., 2012, found and invented materials with tacks and encaustic
on two panels, 48"H x 60"W (click to enlarge)

Here is the first piece I've made that somewhat deliberately (in my mind at least) refers to work by one of my Big Three - Leonardo Drew. If I didn't tell you that, would you have guessed? (Of course that's provided you are familiar with his work.) What I was thinking of was his work with boxes put together into a grid, such as his No. 43 of 1994, image below:

Photo of Leonardo Drew's No. 43 taken from "Existed"
(For more about Leonardo Drew, see this blog link to his show
at the DeCordova Museum.)

Now, you can see that my piece looks nothing like his, really, but thinking about his piece is what got me going. His piece has 3-dimensional boxes with rags, found objects and all kinds of stuff in them. My "boxes" are just strips of painted cardboard that frame strips tacked inside them. And my piece is ever so neat, compared to his.

A detail from Thinking L.D.

The Creative Process - Try and Try Again
Just to let you in on how the creative process went for me, I first started with "boxes" the same size throughout the panels, made just with strips of natural cardboard painted with clear encaustic. I used them to frame strips of other materials that I tacked down as usual. I ended up with something that looked like a cardboard bookcase. So I scrubbed that.

Another detail from Thinking L.D.

The second version enlarged some of the "boxes" but continued them throughout the length of the panels. I thought it still looked like too much cardboard. Then I removed rows of the "boxes" at top and bottom of the panels and put in painted strips that extend the width of each panel. I liked that because they broke up the "box" look, and it turned out that these strips were what really interested me. (After coloring in the cardboard "boxes" with oilstick, I was happier with the overall piece.)

An Unexpected Bonus - A New Direction?

Half 'n' Half, 2012, found and invented materials with encaustic and tacks, 32"H x 40.5"W

In fact I liked those painted strips so much that I decided I should make another piece using the leftovers (plus a few more). I put them on a panel and then added that to a panel I had already made in Running Stitch mode. After tweaking the R.S. panel a bit to make the two halves come together more, I was happy. (The bottom panel is one I had made myself so its measurements are a bit off from the standard. However, it turns out that I like the little bit of difference in width between the top half and the bottom half. It gives it sort of an architectural look)

Detail of painted strips from Half 'n' Half

A Moral
Don't we expect a moral from any story - or at least a good ending? Well, the moral is that whatever pings your aesthetic brain cells and gets a piece started is a good thing, but being able to see what you've got and where you're going with it is a learned response, I think. And, who knows, a move made out of desperation may be that unexpected path that takes you to artistic nirvana - or not. You'll just have to try it and see.

Blues for Etta

The whole world seems to be mourning the death today of the great Etta James. She passed away much too young and after a hard life filled with both pain and ultimate success. I own probably 12 or 15 of her CDs and play them in the studio pretty much every day. I will miss knowing that she's out there still singing.

New Work
Back at the end of December when I was planning to make two pieces for my upcoming solo show, I had an idea based on a quilt from the 1930s that I had seen in a book  You know how two ideas floating around in your mind can sometimes coincide? Well, in this case, the quilt top idea came together with the news I heard about Etta James being very ill and expected to die soon. The result was Blues for Etta, mixed media with encaustic (including record albums, sheet music, tarpaper, copper, aluminum, and tacks) on two panels, 48"H x 60"W.

Blues for Etta, 2012, details in text above (click to enlarge)

I don't know how this looks on your monitor, but on mine it's disappointing because this image doesn't convey the vibrancy of the blues and resonance of the browns. And the reflectiveness of the copper really makes the whole piece shimmer.

Here's a detail showing one of several images from CDs that I incorporated .

Recently I read Etta's bio, Rage to Survive by Etta James with David Ritz and I recommend it - not too well written, but the tale of a great spirit who emerged into the world despite overwhelming odds. Here's a link I found on The Guardian to an obituary of Etta that reprises much of her bio. It tells much of what shaped her hard life and determined approach to life that was revealed so strongly in her singing. She was a tough cookie and that came across vividly. (Read a column by my e-friend Wendy Rodrigue in Gambit, the New Orleans paper, about Etta that includes an image of my Blues for Etta!)

Recommendations of Etta's CDs
I am not a fan of Etta's earlier recordings where she shouts instead of sings, but when she came into her own later in life, she became one of the very best blues singers. Here's a good article about her from The New Yorker with some Youtube links. Unfortunately, the links are mostly from her earlier work. If you want a really good, mellow CD that I think is one of her best, try The Right Time, an excellent recording with Steve Winwood on guitar. For an album that's more jazz than blues with lovely piano accompaniment, try Time After Time, some of her best. And Matriarch of the Blues is also a good one.

Etta on Youtube
There are many videos of Etta on Youtube, some better than others, but here's a good one from Matriarch of the Blues, Bob Dylan's Gotta Serve Somebody.

New Work All About America

Never have I felt as American as when I have traveled outside America, and I don't think that is a unique experience. Our native country is such a part of our psyches that it just becomes reflexive, so natural that our Americanisms are unrecognized for what they are. However, I rarely use the word "America" to refer to this country, preferring "U.S." instead. "America" seems a little outdated or a word used only by politicians or advertisers. So that makes it a little surprising (to me) that my two newest works both refer in their titles to America.


Look At America

Look At America, 2011, 30" x 60", painted paper and cardboard, book parts,
patinated metal, record album pieces,  tacks, encaustic on birch panel (click to enlarge)

The title Look At America is the name of a book used in the piece and getting my titles from books used like this is a becoming a common practice for me. I posted several details from this piece last month and here's the link, but the photo above was taken by a pro who has it correctly lit and containing many more pixels than my earlier amateur shot.

Here's what I said about the piece in my post last month:

My intention with this work was to reference landscape but not really depict it. There are pieces of maps in there and the combination of green, brown and blue could be earth, trees and sky. But I didn't want it to be a literal representation of place. After all, the Running Stitch series is about memory, so perhaps this is about memory of landscape rather than landscape itself. The black sections could be roads or they could be gaps in memory (or they could just be formal elements in the painting).

I think this piece has a very complex organization but that the rhythmic black elements in the center section hold it together. As a loosely metaphorical representation of America, the piece had to represent the complexity of this country--the physical beauty and vast spaces combined with the crowding, crumbling and abusive use of so many resources (and people). On the other hand, it's not a literal representation so making it complex just allows the viewer more opportunity for discovery as well as giving me more to juggle.


This American Time

This American Time, 2011, 30" x 60", painted paper and cardboard, book parts,
patinated metal, record album pieces, tacks, encaustic on birch panel (click to enlarge)

The title for this piece came about by accident in a sense. I have begun to use advertising posters for performances along with other found cards and printed materials. From somewhere, I cut out the words "This American" and partially obscured them by cutting off the bottom of the letters. At the other side of the piece, I had put in the word "Time" in an upright position so that it could be read. When I saw these words together, they made sense as a title to me because there are a number of references to time in this piece--dates, words, texts, pieces of things that relate to specific annual events or time elapsing.

Although the emphasis on time is certainly not specifically American, I'm not alone in recognizing that we Americans are increasingly under pressure of time these days as we try to fit more and more into our lives. The burden of a busted economy and necessity to struggle financially adds to a feeling of frantic movement and spinning our wheels. Technology has eased many things but also made it more difficult to escape its siren call. How frequently do we check our email or Facebook? Can we fit in another call or text message while we are doing something else? Multi-tasking is a way of life and concentrating on the here and now has become a goal toward which we must strive rather than the expected way of dealing with life. I speak for myself in this because I find now that if I am not doing at least a couple of tasks at once, I feel a sort of emptiness along with a beckoning from other things calling for my attention.

In thinking (after the fact) about the meaning of formal elements in this work, I could envision the solid red horizontals and verticals as depicting paths through the maze of printed and painted elements. Dividing the whole into parts is a representation of time as well as space and I think these elements perform both functions. The extreme red so present everywhere is a call to action and attention. Everything is on high alert, not only according to the Bush terrorism scale, but just the way red functions psychologically for us, urging us to "Look Here Now."

But, conversely, if everything is urgent, then nothing is. That sounds like American time to me.


xxx

Coming Soon

The new red piece in the Running Stitch series.

A detail

I just took this to the photographer's tonight along with the new green piece - red and green, get it? I hope to post full views of them both later this week.

Something Different: New Work

Well, maybe not that different, but exploring the Running Stitch in a couple of different directions. I've been thinking for a while about stripes so I made a couple of smallish pieces to begin working with a couple of stripey ideas. These images are just me and my poor photography skills, not the really GOOD professional photos, but it's just to give you an idea of what I'm up to. (CLICK PIX TO ENLARGE)

Last Garden, 2011, 24" x 24",
painted cardboard, book parts, patinated copper, album cover parts, tacks, encaustic

Last Garden detail

Remnant of a Dream, 2011
painted cardboard, book parts, patinated copper, tacks, encaustic

Remnant of a Dream detail

And now here's one below that I've been thinking of for a while - a mostly black painting made with tar paper. The image below shows the piece in the laying out stage without all the tacks and encaustic. The top left part is just bare panel painted with black gesso and with the marks of the previous piece that I stripped off of it. That look is what really prompted me to make this new work.

Black One, 36" x 36", tar paper, book parts, patinated aluminum, tacks

You can see that it's really not all black because the book covers do add color, although the color doesn't look as strong in person as it does here. I am excited about making this one because it relates to previous works that I made with tar paper back in the mid-'90s. Here is one of those below:

Tar Paper Piece, mid-1990s, about 22" square, tarpaper, found wood, tacks, nut shells, paint

Of course when I look back at old work, it makes me wish that I knew then what I know now after many more years of working, thinking, experimenting and looking. That "if I only knew then" is the kind of remark my mother always used to make to me when I was growing up, but youth always has its own ideas. There's no short cut to knowledge. It has its own timetable.

Recent Work of All Sizes

If you re a regular reader, you have no doubt realized that I've been shirking my blogging duties recently. I have felt that there was not much to be said about anything. I blame this on Facebook sucking away my writing energy. Yes, yes, it's all Facebook's fault. I take no responsibility. So, since Facebook has taken it upon itself to make drastic changes in its format that no one seems able to understand or master, I feel overwhelmed by it and unable to cope. It has driven me back to blogging.

This too, too obvious title came to mind for my post, but I resisted. (The book title originally
belonged to  Thomas Hardy, of course, but I liked this image better.)

Anyway, tonight instead of Facebook, I went down the list of blogs I used to follow in pre-Facebook-Obsession days. One of those was Alexandre Masino's blog and his post was called "Oeuvre Recente" (except with an acute accent over the first "e" which Blogger won't let me put in). I loved that post title and even understood it with my limited (read, mostly nonexistent) French. It has a much more distinguished and arty feel than "Recent Work." However, I am resorting to the English translation for my post.

What my work table looks like when I'm making little pieces

Little Work
Today I finished up making 13 small pieces in the Running Stitch series. They range from 6"x6" to 22" x 10". Although I have previously made some small ones, I overpainted all the elements with encaustic so they had a much different look. These little ones were made in the standard Running Stitch way. I didn't photo all the pieces, but just had a photo from the other day when there were only eight of them.

Note that they still have their blue tape on the sides. The sides, when untaped, will all be black.

This one is my favorite (10"x8"). I love this green color of the encaustic,
a color I mixed but one that is near a new color Hylla Evans is considering making.
This piece is being gifted to the dear Binster.

What brought on this surge of littleness? -  you might ask. I have a submission in mind and am making them for that purpose.

Next on the docket are three pieces I am making for the MassArt Auction. This year, because I am represented by Arden Gallery, my work will be eligible for the live auction. That is, if they jury in one of my works. I thought it would be worth the opportunity of experiencing the live auction and the publicity for me and for Arden. We'll see what happens. If they don't want anything, shame on them and I'll have another three smallish pieces in my inventory. More about this later.

Another view of the same thing, from the other direction. Feel any different?

Big Work - In Another Medium
It all started when I happened to see a sale on big stretched canvases at a local art supply store. They were discounted 50 percent, and I thought it was a really good deal since they had a lot of 48" x 48" and larger for pretty cheap prices. The stretchers were inch and a half deep with canvas wrapped around the sides, and while they were not finest quality, they were not bad (Windsor & Newton). So I first bought six of the 48" x 48". The next week, I went back and bought six more 48" x 48" plus two 60" x 48". In the interim of purchasing the two lots, I had been invited to have a solo show next year at an art center in Springfield, and I thought these canvases would be just the thing. (Note - you can click on pix to enlarge)

Aqua Electric, 48" x 48", oil and oil pastel on canvas

Big Sea, 60" x 48", oil and oil pastel on canvas

You see, I had a hankering for working in oil paint. I really love mixing color, and while I do some of that with encaustic, it's much easier with oil. I also wanted to just paint instead of doing the constructing that I do with my encaustic work.

Sunrise, 48" x 48", oil on canvas

Sunset, 48" x 48", oil on canvas

Clouds, 48" x 48", oil on canvas

I did have fun with these. I bought a supply of some great medium that was alkyd based, sort of a semi-gel thing that came in a quart-sized can. I mixed individual colors on small paper plates and I used chip brushes that I could throw out instead of having to clean. I wanted my oil painting experience to be as much fun and as pain free as possible.

Bright Future, 60" x 48", oil and oil pastel on canvas

So outside of their having some dumb titles, I am quite happy with these pieces. They are not masterpieces but they are colorful and uncomplicated. I am hoping that my art consultant will sell them in the corporate market in the interim since I can always paint more for the show next year.

I wish I had some photos of my studio while I was painting these because it had to be turned over strictly to oil painting while I was working. It's a messy process compared to encaustic - at least the way I work, but I do enjoy it. The smell of oil paint always gets to me since that's the medium I first used.

Although you might not pick these pieces out in a crowd as genuine Natales, I think you can see the relationship to my Running Stitch work. We all have a way that we work that can't be hidden no matter which medium is used - or which size.

Finding the Real in the Midst of All That Fake Crap

Over the Top, mixed media with encaustic on panel, 30" x 30", 2011

Mona Lisa, mixed media with encaustic on panel, 30" x 30", 2011

These two new pieces are headed for Arden Gallery in Boston on Saturday if you are in the neighborhood and want to see them in person. The newest material I am using in the mix of elements is record album covers. If you click on the images to enlarge, you may see some evidence of that.

Authenticity
Last Sunday I sat in our newly-arranged dining room, which is now more like a reading/sitting lounge, and read the NY Times. I haven't done that for a while and it was great to page through all that stuff and try to find something of interest. What struck me was how many articles I saw that dealt with authenticity or The Real. I guess now all those TV reality shows have finally become reality. That is, there is nothing real any more; there are just people claiming that they are real.

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Rant alert: By the time I got to the end of this post, I was rip roaring, so if you're not in a mood for a political, anti-war rant, stop reading now and just think mild, pleasant thoughts.
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A case in point about authenticity: Stephanie Rosenbloom under "Cultural Studies" cites the following people who claim they are "authentic:" Michele Bachmann, Anderson Cooper, Sarah (Duchess of York) Ferguson, Jon Huntsman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Katie Couric, Rick ("I hate the Gays so much that I must be one") Santorum and Pope Benedict XVI.The only names missing from that list are the Kardashians, authentically fake celebrities - famous for nothing except being famous.

According to Rosenbloom's article, the problem of people claiming to be authentic, which makes them automatically inauthentic, is that they are maintaining virtual selves in their social media personae. We are all apparently split personalities because of Facebook or because we're trying to be celebrities/politicians. We all want to edit out the boring parts (the "real" parts?) and just get to the personalities and faces we want to present as our authentic selves.

Or, if we can't blame it on Facebook and Twitter, we can chalk it up to Oprah, who popularized finding your "authentic self" in the 1990s (she's gone now and can't object). If it's not that "O," then it's the other O, as in the prez. You have to know that Obama's in trouble when Maureen Dowd turns on him, as she's been doing in her columns for a while now. Last Sunday she called him the Sleeping Beauty President who only awakes when his polls take a downturn. He's a split-personality president, she says, who is divided between Energizer Barry and Enervating Barry and that confuses people (no wonder) because we never know which one we're gonna get.

This sets the stage for Rick Perry, who always comes across (this is me talking) as Worse than Bush.

He is authentically frightening. When the languid, non-combative Obama is the only figure standing between this bible-thumping, death-sentencing, climate-change-pooh-poohing, evolution-denying, swaggering, anti-intellectual and us, we are in some disastrous trouble. I thought we had dug ourselves out of the black hole of Bush-Cheney, but it's not looking good.I am authentically worried by the looming reality of this possibility. And let alone the horrific damage he can do to our country, how can I even stand listening to Lamebrain II? Don't make me have to live through this again. Pullease!!!

Post 9-11
Then there was the article about 9-11 headed "Outdone by Reality: How artists and writers struggled to find a deeper meaning--or simply turned up the volume and headed for the Jersey Shore." You see what I mean about reality shows permeating culture? Could this fake authenticity have started with the 9-11 attack? Yes, it happened and it was horrific, but look how many politicians took advantage of it -- starting with Bush and Juliani? And then Bush-Cheney started the unending wars that have bankrupted our country and killed and wounded so many thousands. Meanwhile, we all go on with our lives and pretend those wars are not happening. No, it's not Vietnam all over again because there is no draft. There are no marches in the streets, no protests except for a few "nuts", there is no civilian pressure to end the wars. In fact, it's the reverse. People worry that if the Defense Department cuts back, they will lose jobs manufacturing arms and materiels. Those wars could go on forever just like 1984. Who can deal with the reality of all this?

I have to stop reading the paper.