True Art

I volunteered recently to provide art for a book that is being published. Today, I received an email about this venture which said that, because there were so many volunteers, the publisher would do a random drawing to determine who will be included. This is so very wrong on so many levels. Poor art. She sits alone at the end of the dark bar quietly sipping her chardonnay just praying to meet someone, praying that bands of heavenly angels will descend from on high singing choirs of Some Enchanted Evening and she will be chosen as the true love to hang on that wall. But no. That is not to be. Instead, she finds herself an unwilling contestant as an ersatz Bachelorette - the Artistette! Good God, could anything be more humiliating?

I've complained bitterly on several occasions with what I consider to be HGTV's slapdash treatment of art as a second thought, color on a wall, something to draw your eye in that direction. Art is not a decoration, people. It's not a theme. Art is that face across a crowded room that drops your jaw and reels you in. Art is alive. She's the wayward child of some wayward child who would rather create beauty than earn a good living. She is the cherished prize of a vivid imagination that will not be stilled by the grind of the every day or thwarted by the lack of cash.

Art is also incredibly egotistical. She doesn't want to be second best. She doesn't want to hang on your wall unless you really intend to caress her with your eyes and let her play with your heart and soul.

There are artists in this world who every day put their soul on paper using water color, acrylic, oil, wood, concrete, spray paint - anything and everything they can find. In German prison camps, artists used burned sticks to draw on scraps of cloth and paper because the simple fact is that if you are a painter, you must paint. A painter doesn't one decide "Hmmm! I think I'll try this." An artist is compelled, not to try, but to do. Some larger universal force commands it be done.

All art asks in return is to be engaged. "Look at me, see me, FEEL me" and yes, the ultimate, "TAKE ME HOME AND NEVER, EVER PART WITH ME!"

Well, Goodbye, Dolly

She introduced herself as Dolly. Dressed in a colorful, just this side of flashy but still tasteful, skirt and sweater, she was a gorgeous. Her eyes danced with merriment and I wanted to dance with her. We were at the Mountain Light UU flea market. Mary was running things and being the ultimate OCD salesman, totally focused on 'are you spending money or not' attitude. Dolly and I rummaged around, chatting the whole time about this and that, finding fun things to laugh about.

We were looking at my paintings when she leaned over, looked around for potential eavesdroppers, and whispered to me "I was a Ziegfield Girl." "GET OUT," I screamed. She was with a younger woman who rolled her eyes and confided that I didn't have to listen to her, and suggested maybe Dolly didn't want to talk about that, but I was all ears. I couldn't get enough. You can read the biographies slamming the internet today and learn a lot. It sounded better coming from Dolly.

I've met some great people in my life. I'm not going to name them all here, but really an amazing array of famous and infamous, movie stars, celebrities, rock stars, assholes. Dolly was the most charming, the most vivacious, the most star quality I have ever seen or heard of. She went to college at 76 and graduated at 88. She was the youngest show girl ever, dropping out of school at about age 10, in a time when it was not that odd for girl to do so. She never worked a day in her life - it was always just the greatest fun - waking up and seeing what this day might bring you. Those days are gone forever now.

Well, Goodbye, Dolly. I'm so glad I met you. That laughter and sunshine you brought into my life is still rollicking along. I promise to kick up my heals today in your honor. And to laugh. (Say "Hey" to Lena for me).

Healthcare NOW

England has provided government run health care since 1948. For the most part, it seems that people like it over there. Only 8% of the population has private health insurance.

If Stephen Hawking were an American he'd be a dead nobody. He wouldn't have earned a Ph.D. in physics. He wouldn't have been able to achieve it, even if he would have been allowed. Whatever insurance he had when he diagnosed with ALS would have dumped him, sooner rather than later. Disability health care would have fought him in court. He would get medicaid and social security disability. It's doubtful his disease would have gone into remission with the disparity in and availability of treatment here, as opposed to there.

What a loss to the world that would have been. How many others have we lost? Does any one out there really want another human being to suffer and die needlessly?

I know, and we do have to pay for it somehow. Here's the perfect solution. Legalize pot. Strictly limit who can grow it - land and loans to the chronically unemployed will be paid back ten fold in taxes. Then there's all the job growth. Entire industries will spring up. Stores to sell, chefs to cook it up, waiters to serve it. The taxi industry will be thriving. Restaurants can have smoking rooms, thereby greatly increasing their food sales. We'd be out of debt in no time.

Wisdom Keeper

I'm writing a story that incorporates much of the ancient wisdom so prevalent in my part of the world. Ancient Native American, Celtic, African and other teachings came together here and worked to help the people survive. More than religion, these ancient customs joined people not just to one another, but to all of their ancestors through time immemorial.

I read and collected the wonderful Foxfire books produced by students in the 1970s. I still feel a sadness to know now the price so many of the children paid in the production. The teacher was honored with much recognition for his achievements, but ultimately spends the remainder of his life isolated alone in a prison cell for crimes he committed against his students. He is but one of the many sad reminders of other legacies this land of isolation and poverty foments.

For that reason, my research strayed away from those reliable sources of the old ways. Besides, I wanted older, weirder ways for my stories. I wandered into several local libraries and started conversations with the ladies there. Having been directed to a particular area with a number of potential references, I settled at a desk and began perusing.

"Excuse me," a tiny little voice whispered. I looked up, shaking myself from the delight of the reading material. It seems someone in Gilmer County once upon a time found half of a petrified woman's body. I was eager to learn what became of it, where was the other half, which half was it? I was riveted and a bit consternatious for having been interrupted.

A small, well aged woman stood before me. She had sparkling eyes. She could have passed for Betty White. In a look alike contest, I would have picked her.

"Are you the lady looking for the old stories," she asked?

"I am."

"I have some you might want. I've been collecting them my whole life and just haven't really known what to do with them. My children could care less."

As it turns out, she is what she calls the local Wisdom Keeper. Her mothers before her were the healers, the story tellers, the conjure women of days of old. From the time she could read and write, she followed her mother, grandmother and great grandmother around the mountains while they gathered, prepared, healed and conjured. Whatever they did, she wrote down in her little book. Whenever she could get them to explain the logic behind it, she wrote that down too.

"Would you like to have them?"

Holy hallelujah, would I? Shezam! I just hit the mother lode. The next day, I followed her carefully written directions to a quaint cabin. Her notebooks had been kept safe and tidy, if not a little faded and damp in placed. I am only now taking a break from my reading. Now I know what to do just in case a haint follows me home. I can call the wind. Dance in the rain and smoke it away any time I like. I know what the birds really mean when they appear to just be doing ordinary every day bird things.

For the honor of this gift, I had to agree to certain things. I am not allowed to reveal the identity of this woman to anyone ever. "Lord, God, the folks at my church would burn me at the stake if they knew I was an old conjure woman!" I can do that. I am not allowed to use any of the spells to harm any living thing - only to heal. I doubt I'll use the spells at all, since they seem primarily silly to me so far, except for the ones about sending away death and ending floods, droughts and tornadoes, which still seem a little silly, but what the hey. Also, I must find some young girl to whom I must pass on the ancient wisdom (I'm taking nominations). Finally, I must visit my new friend to let her know how my learning is going and to let her answer any questions I may have. Consider it done.

Think For Yourself

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but I can't help myself today. This week's political insanity has me reeling. What is the purpose of government anyway? Government serves the public good. In order to do that, government must deal in probabilities, not possibilities. That which is likely to happen that would harm innocent people.

It's easy to see that if a fire starts at my house, then the fire could spread to other houses. Other lives will then be put at risk. Maybe it won't. Maybe it will. Let's not wait and see. Let's all put out the fire. Government is good at that. Private enterprise is not. I don't want to be waiting next door while the fire department attempts to run the credit card. I want to be safe.

Likewise, I don't want to be walking down the street among people who are sick with horrible disease. I want them to get health care. I want them to live, be well, happy, healthy. I don't want to be waiting next door while the health care business runs the insurance and credit card. I want to be safe.

In all good altruism, I want you to be healthy. I want to be healthy. I want less stress and drama in my world. Private enterprise health care is not working. Tort reform won't fix it. Requiring me to buy into insurance run health care is not working. I don't want an insurance company telling me what health care I need. I want a physician telling me that. But I do want a ticket to the physician.

There are no jobs. The money has all been stolen and most of America is scraping by on a wing and prayer. Sure, we'll make it. If we live long enough. If we don't get sick. If we don't get hit by an uninsured motorist. If we don't get apoplexy from listening to all the health care debate.

What's Your Passion?

I'm tired of this expression, this use of the word 'passion'. Whenever I'm asked "What's your passion?" I'm tempted - profoundly, deeply, shall I say it - oh yes - PASSIONATELY - inclined to respond "Well, I like a strapping young cowboy and wild crazy monkey sex in a barn with the cows and pigs watching me this time." I don't say it. But every fiber of my being cries out to do so. I want to see the shocked expressions on those faces. I want to drive home the fact that passion is not something so commonplace that everybody has one they can publicly expound upon while chatting at Starbucks.

For example, I love tulips. I would have a gazillion tulips sprouting in my yard, in vases around the house, in my car, in my hair. This is not a passion. I do not suffer, endure, stake my very life and being on tulips. Even if I did indulge my desire for everything tulip, it would only be, at best, an obsession, at worst OCD. Never would it arise to the level of a passion. Bubba Tyrone, who wistfully shares that he has a 'passion for music' is misguided - listening to everything Cher is merely an obsession.

Passion is something more. According to Merriam-Webster, passion is a state of being acted upon by external forces, it is ungovernable emotion, an intense, overmastering conviction. Passion takes to you the very heights - and depths - of all that makes life glorious and sacred. Beethoven, writing symphonies while his own ears couldn't hear the notes, had a passion. Mother Teresa, slogging through the disease and pathetic prejudice of a caste system in order to bring comfort and love to those deemed universally vile, had a passion. Anyone willing to risk suffering the depths of pain and despair to bring love and beauty to an otherwise cruel and vicious world has passion.

For those of us who are rationally compelled to anger and joy in the realms of politics, fashion, music, charity, religion, and, yes, sex, these are - for most of us - merely interests. However motivated we may feel, we rarely rise (or sink) to the extreme levels of passion. I exhort us all to delve into those various interests and to give them our all when necessary. But I must caution us all to avoid like the plague the extremes of passion - of being controlled by some uncontrollable emotion so fierce it might take all we hold dear.

I don't know how we got to the place where everyone must have a passion and is thereby compelled to discuss them over cocktails, coffee or on early morning newsertainment shows. Perhaps we just don't want to feel that we are run of the mill. We want to feel special, to highlight that which defines and motivates us. To hold ourselves out as something more than the every day, with qualities that are unique and special. In doing so, we only manage to express our similarities.

Similarities are still good things. A friend who lay dying expressed that it wasn't the glories of her life that she would miss. It wasn't the celebrity parties, the best seller lists, the hobbnobbing with the great and the wannabes. It was the every day, the little moments listening to her children fight, her husband grumble, the sunlight through the kitchen window while the coffee brewed. To which I say, touche. Go forth, people. Dare to be ordinary.

Republicans Support Abortion

Okay, I know that's a bit of a stretch, but work with me here. RNC Chairman Michael Steele is quoted as saying "Republicans oppose any new government entity overruling a doctor's decision about how to treat his or her patient." I found this quote while snarking around on GOP.com. For those who have never actually read Roe v. Wade, the ultimate basis for the Court's opinion that a woman has a right to choose to have an abortion is the right to privacy that a patient has in making important medical decisions with her physician.

This illustrates my fundamental difficulty with Republican discourse. Statements are made without thought or reason. There is a failure to follow thought to its logical conclusion. What is essentially the basis of democratic principles is turned into a rhetorical malapropism.

No one, American, Republican or Iranian wants a doctor's decision about how to treat a patient to be sacred. My doctor doesn't get to decide what is done to me. My doctor gets to tell me what the problem is and what options are available to fix it and what the likely consequences of failure to fix it will be. I get to decide how I will be treated.

Oops. No, I don't. I don't have health insurance. I don't get to decide diddly squat. A physician would likely treat me except that our government allows corporations to only guard the bottom line. Because the law requires corporations to only make money, and not engage in things like free services to the indigent, the government's policy stands between me and my physician's decisions on how I should be treated.

Damn. Does this mean I'm a Republican?