The Forever Nor’easter and Memories of a Warmer Sunnier Time

Nasty! Rain, chilly rain – wind – more rain – more wind = more wind and chilly rain! For three days, and that’s on top of the wettest summer and fall I can remember. We will have over 8 inches additional rainfall when it is all over. I’m hoping we don’t lose power. I was going to post a photograph from one of our past nor’easters, but I decided instead that I wanted to be reminded of warmer and more pleasant weather. So, I went back to a folder of photos I took last spring at Grassy Waters Preserve in Palm Beach County. Grassy Waters is actually where the city of West Palm Beach gets its city water supply, and it’s at the edge of the Florida Everglades.

It was late March, about 82 degrees with crystalline sunshine the day I took this photograph. Most of the camera enthusiasts at the preserve had monster telephoto lenses, some with little tripods to support the camera and lens. I, on the other hand, had only my trusty Sony Cyber-shot camera, and I took my usual several hundred photographs for morgue* and possible future use in drawing and other art works.

I’m not a waterfowl expert, but I believe this is a Wood Stork. I like the way his leg is motion-blurred slightly, and that stream of water trails behind his foot through the air. I feel warm and dry just looking at this sun warmed waterfowl because I remember the way I felt as I shot about 20 photographs of him/her walking through lily pads at water’s edge.

* morgue - a picture file an artist uses an aid to drawing and painting.  In my case, I take all my own pictures rather than using magazine clippings as many illustration artists do.

Gay Marriage Outlawed in Maine: Heterosexist Hate is Alive and Extremely Well in America

"God has given us this victory,” Emrich continued, “and it is very important for us to recognize that he is the one who put the energy into this campaign. So let’s not be so arrogant to forget this. It’s very appropriate to pause for a moment of prayer.” * *2

Okay, now I’m angry! First, God has nothing to do with heterosexist hatred! Second, Not only am I disappointed in my fellow Americans (once again), but also, I’m furious! Thirty-one times in Thirty-one states the citizens of this country have seen fit to vote their own brothers, sisters, sons and daughter into second-class citizenship.

How is it possible for so many to consider their progeny and family to be unworthy!

Not only did these voters VOTE NO on same sex marriage, but also, by doing so they voted against all of our lesbian and gay families.  Thus, there are a host of problems that will continue to exist for lesbian and gay families that their heterosexual counterparts do not bear. For instance, in every lesbian and gay partnership, be there children or not, the death of one partner will lead directly to the other being taxed on 50% of his/her holdings. The huge tax bill is based on the assumption that since LGBT people cannot be married, 50% of all assets, property and accounts belonged to the deceased. Thus, In my own case, should I be the survivor in a 42 year – and hopefully much longer – relationship, I will  not be allowed to inherit my own property, assets, and accounts tax free.  However, at least one third of my partner's and my joint assets are based in my family’s financial history, and another half of our joint wealth is based on my earnings as an adult. That single consequence of not being married alone has generated horrible consequences for two of our close friends as our generation ages. In both cases, the death of one partner caused the surviving partner the necessity of selling the home the couple had lived in because of the tax bill. There are worse consequences for second-class lesbian and gay families. The worst being the denial of some to sit at their partner’s side as he/she dies in a hospital bed. And, second, a father or mother may not adopt his or her own children. Thus, the parent’s accumulated assets may not be passed on to the children as in a heterosexual marriage. The list of rights heterosexual couples take for granted that are not allowed to lesbian and gay families is extremely lengthy, and I will not continue with the details here.

However, it follows that the consequence of legalized heterosexist voting in this (democratic and free?) nation is the purposeful destruction of American LGBT families! I stop just short of describing it as genocide.

I have listened to conservative and evangelical Republicans tout their family values these many years, and now I respond, WHAT VALUES? You espouse the destruction of my people’s families because of your legalized heterosexism. Religious values, you say, and I respond, WHAT VALUES? In the New Testament Jesus Christ preached tolerance and love for all. In the Old Testament Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt for less than this!

So, in my anger and frustration, I thought, what can I do to try to change the heterosexist voter’s mind? I know that there are those 10 to 15 percent that are so anchored in their fear and hate that nothing short of death will move them. I put those bigots out of mind and heart because there is nothing to be done about them.  As to the rest, I assume that meeting and knowing lesbian and gay persons will help make a difference – there are probably one or two of us somewhere in each of their families.  However, I do not see - coming out to ones family - as the panacea that the LGBT movement has thought it to be these last forty years. The idea has been that making our heterosexual families aware of our homosexuality will automatically change their minds about LGBT people. And that, as it turns out, has its limits. In fact, we still have families disown their gay and lesbian progeny, consigning them to the street. We still have heterosexual parents who punish themselves because they believe it is their fault a son or daughter is gay, though the son or daughter doesn't blame Mom or Dad for his or her God given sexuality. We still have Christians who target gay men’s funerals with demonstrations of hate. We still have hate crimes and worse, murder of lesbian and gay people as a part of our American way of life. So, what can I do to try to change some of this fear, anger, and hate into if not love, at least tolerance and understanding?

I’d like to set up an on line journal where LGBT people tell their stories. I want to see published a lexicon of loss and degradation caused by this purposeful and hateful second-class citizenship imposed on part of the population because many Americans are unable and unwilling to share their constitutionally guaranteed rights with their own sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. And yes, that will portray us as victims because WE ARE VICTIMS! And, as victims we should be collectively ANGRY AT OUR FAMILIES for victimizing us! Oh, and if your own heterosexual family members disclaim any responsibility in this national disaster for lesbian and gay people, saying things like – “I didn’t vote NO against lesbian and gay marriage” or “you should have equal rights, but not marriage” – they need to understand the simple truth that “separate but equal” didn’t work for black people here in the United States, nor in South Africa! It never has worked and it doesn’t work today. They need to understand that a vote “NO ON MARRIAGE” for lesbian and gay people is a heterosexist hate vote against their own sons and daughters, brothers and sisters.

I wish I could keep some of my normal relaxed and occasionally humorous approach to life for this entry about Heterosexist hate in America. I wish that were possible.

It isn’t!

Enough said, for now.


* Miller, Kevin, and Harrison, Judy. "Gay Marriage Repealed in Maine,"Bangor Daily News. November 4, 2009. http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/128048.html. Last update, 9:29 AM EST, Saturday November 7, 2009. Viewed 9:42 AM EST. The hate statement disguised as Christian zeal was made by the Reverend Bob Emrich of Palmyra, Maine about the "No on 1" victory.

*2 The following is Jesus Christ's comment about forgiveness of those who victimized him as he hung on the cross. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). I wish I were able to be as forgiving. Unfortunately this entry shows that I'm not as close to Jesus Christ as I would like to be.

Sun, Sand & Water

 

I still marvel at having digital technology at my fingertips!  I shoot photos constantly; thousands instead of a few hundred a year.  I lug the camera with me everywhere because I need photos for my morgue (picture file for drawing and other art uses), and because I never know when a magnificent image (lighting, composition, subject) will conspire to present itself.  However, there are so many pictures that they end up accumulating in files unseen and unloved for months at a time.  Several times I have discovered special images a year or two after they were taken. 

Sun shimmering off water gives me a special sparkle, and there are hundreds of these kind of photos in my file folders.  In this particular photograph I was looking north into the Delaware Bay from the inside of Cape Henlopen.  I shot it on September nineteenth of this year, a chilly premature fall day.  The water temperature was still in the upper 70’s, and a few folks were out in the crystalline sun; shelling, fishing, crabbing, just walking.  There were no clouds in an intense almost indigo sky, the kind of conditions that crystallize everything into a moment of rare purity. 

I hope I did the light and subject proud.  Sometimes it is difficult to know these things, because my own delight in the moment clouds reason.

What exactly constitutes a hate crime?

By the time I put this entry on line the expanded Hate Crimes Bill should have been signed into law by President Obama. The necessity of that legislation is demonstrated even as the Attorney General promises conservative religious groups that he won’t prosecute them for hate speech. How is that for absurd? You can’t kill a lesbian, but you can still call her a “dyke bitch.” You can’t assault a gay man, but you can still carry a poster claiming that he deserves to die if you’re part of the Reverend Phelps absurd group of rabid Christians.

I’m a gay Christian artist, and I know God loves me, and the Reverend Phelps too! I would never think of carrying a poster at his future funeral saying he deserved to die because of the evil he has perpetuated. I am angry about his actions, and I do ask God to help me not hate the man.

At the same time, I don’t ask God for much because I know deep inside that I am blessed with so much. As a dear friend often says of such evil, “this too shall pass.”

AP Raises Hell About Shepard Fairey and Obama HOPE Poster

*2

‘Shepard continues to stand by his statement from last Friday," said Fairey's spokesman, Jay Strell. "He has apologized and taken responsibility for his actions. The more important question is why the AP continues to spend enormous financial resources attacking Shepard and diverting the debate from the central question in this case, which is whether he transformed the ... image into a work of art, which he has.” ’ *

The AP’s argument is specious! Fairey’s poster alters the original photograph significantly no matter which photograph he used. I’m using the poster image as part of this journal entry as a one-time use for intellectual and literary purposes. If the AP has its way, nobody - be they artist, photographer, writer, musician, any person, anywhere - will be able to use a borrowed, not for profit image to illustrate a written argument ever again. As an artist writing an on line journal, I’m horrified, because should the AP win with this diversionary argument, I would find it extremely difficult to use a borrowed image to illustrate any article written about another artist, historical or contemporary. It is absolutely necessary that artists be able to use images by others as aids to their own work – as long as such images are greatly altered by individual creativity - in order to produce the artwork! Should we not be allowed to do so, we will all lose the most vital argumentative reporting resource, and recording devise our culture has to offer.

* Italie, Hillel, “AP Says Artist Made up Story About Poster.” Comast.net, http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-entertainment/20091020/US.AP.Poster.Artist/, from the Associated Press. Viewed Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 9:51 EDT.

*2 This work is copyrighted and unlicensed. It does not fall into one of the blanket acceptable non-free content categories listed at Wikipedia:Non-free content#Images or Wikipedia:Non-free content#Audio clips. However, it is believed that the use of this work in the articles "Shepard Fairey" and "Barack Obama "HOPE" poster":
To illustrate the subject in question
Where no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information
On the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation ([1]),

Fairey, Shepard, Obama “Hope” poster, Wikimedia Foundation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_Fairey. Viewed Wednesday, October 21, 2009, 9:39 EDT at
Original Source: (Barack Obama "Hope" poster originally by Shepard Fairey. == Licensing == {{Non-free use rationale | Description = Obama "Hope" poster. | Source = Campaign. | Article = Barack Obama "HOPE" poster

This is a not for profit article arguing against the AP’s attack of Shepard Fairey for his not for profit use of an AP photographic image that was significantly altered in order to produce the HOPE poster.

Cape May Diamonds

My partner and I often traveled to Cape May, New Jersey from Lancaster, Pennsylvania before we found Rehoboth Beach, Delaware was closer.  We still occasionally take the Cape May, Lewes Ferry across Delaware Bay to visit Cape May.  Among the many attractions there - wonderful old Victorian beach architecture, the beaches, restaurants, and the tip of the cape itself - are these Cape May Diamonds.  They are smooth, round quartz stones of many hues that have washed down the Delaware River from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania mountains finally to be deposited on Cape May beaches.  We have collected boxes of these over the years, and I have soap dishes filled with them in our bathrooms.  Last week I had a long distance conversation with a Facebook friend, that involved the stones, and I promised to put this 1990’s pastel drawing of the stones on Facebook.  And, lazy me, I  thought, why shouldn't it be here as well.  The pastel drawing is 24” by 32” though the stones are really quite small.  They are perfect set in jewelry, and many local craft persons create jewelry using them.

Art Practice as a Form of Meditation

Japanese calligraphers and artists see their work as part of a life unifying force that includes their art practice, and meditation.

I know that I have a special God given talent, though I’m not a Picasso.  However, I have no talent for placing the product of that talent in the public eye.  I’m not good at being in the right place at the right time, and I don’t always play well with others.  I’m not good at strategy, though I find life to be a bit like a chess game.  I don’t mean to be difficult, but I am sometimes.  I’m not mysterious, and I don’t have a gimmick.  My personality isn’t scintillating, though I’ve been accused of approaching gallery owners with too much of it. Thus, I have found operating in the Art World to be difficult.  Though I almost had my 15 minutes of fame, I never have been quite able to pull the entire package together.  Sometimes I allow myself to dwell on that lack of charismatic magnetism and importance to my contemporaries in the art world, and then I become congested, depressed and blocked.  It has been frustrating to say the least, and I must be vigilant in order to prevent playing the part of the victim.

Never the less, on a good day - when the color flows smoothly, I solve drawing problems efficiently, and the connections between brain, arm fingers and the various tools are strong and sound – the Art World, indeed the entire world goes away, and I am suspended in time and space.  In short, working becomes like praying.  I believe my best pastels though thoroughly couched in realism convey that sense of peace and almost other-worldliness.  The montages on the other hand are so tied up in the issues of this life and world that they do not speak of any prayer.  Never the less, I do meditate while creating them, whether I want to or not, and hours can be lost in peaceful manipulation of color shape and form in that other space that my computer provides.  So, my work in the studio is special.  It provides the locus for simultaneously shedding the concerns of this world and for rebirth.  No, not only special, but hallowed because it is a gift from God.

Watch out for future entries on the topic “The Spiritual in Art Practice.”