I'm with the kids....

Peace-William Strutt 1896  

In the public domain

Family Print brought from England

     I've been thinking about this William Strutt work, Peace.

    The framed print above is one of my earliest memories. It hung in the entrance hall of the three story house shared by my widowed grandmother and her sisters; a widowed aunt, and two additional aunts and their husbands. The women were English, and the two uncles were Scots. As the lone child in the lively hub, I found fascination and retreat in the print. Peace was a psychological icon and it is a lodestone.
      Seeing the Parkland kids with their direct and honest confrontation of "business as normal" has been a catharsis. A dread that our current low information, bully populism was a trap door to bad getting worse is now tempered by our children calling our BS. 
     Children mobilized, because of the slaughter of their friends, is not the back story we'd expect but it leads now to a hope. The Strutt is therapeutic. 

     Peace hypnotized me. I remember standing on a stool, staring at it, endlessly. 

     It is frequently called "And A Child Shall Lead Them" and that leads back to the kids. 

    I presume I am one of millions who hope children are  leading us now, the children of Parkland Florida and the school children of America who are walking out, marching, protesting and challenging the hypocrisy and prostitution of elected officials. They lead in naming names of house and senate members who are on the payroll of the NRA, calling out trump for rescinding an Obama administration regulation that made it more difficult for people with mental illness to get guns.

     A theological note; Strutt's painting is based on words from Isaiah, "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them."

     People have diverse interpretations of its meaning. Strutt had his own of course, depicting the verse and calling it Peace. I like that.

     But I've always favored the idea of the innocence of a child as being a model for how to live and believe. An important pronouncement for followers of Christ is to protect and revere children and to adopt a child like purity of mind and belief, "for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." 

     After each mass slaughter there is a public outcry. There was a moment when it appeared members of the House and Senate were listening. Congress was poised to tighten laws and do something constructive, but then, as always, Wayne La Pierre and his cultural terrorists go to work. Big money gets pumped into PACs and politicians, who are threatened with "primarying" if they don't do the NRA's bidding. There is an abundance of spineless, cowardly weasels to tumble to the NRA once again.

     Once more the NRA and La Pierres's finger prints are on the mass shooting. They've distorted and propagandized the Second Amendment. The NRA is really only a marketing force and lobby for the gun makers and sellers. They are a big reason why 17 more victims have been claimed and while we will likely see another Parkland, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Marysville, Rancho Tehama, Santa Monica, Virginia Tech, Red Lake, West Nickel, Northern Illinois, Umpqua Community College, Oikos University in Oakland, and this is only a partial list of just school shootings. If you wish you can compute your own list of mass shootings in total. 
      Mr. LaPierre, how many of these victims do you take responsibility for? How many more bodies do you and the NRA desire to see?
     The child in the Strutt, and the children who lost friends tell us there is a better way. We should listen and get out of their way and let them lead.

      

a pause for beauty

   See you down the trail.

OVER OUR HEADS AND LOOKING FOR A LIFELINE

3x3x3

Mother and child and mother to be and their reflections and their shadows

   In the impossible task of absorbing the shock of another mass shooting, many of us default to a worry about our kids and grandkids.

    Though we cannot grasp the agony of the survivors the mere thought escalates our concern about the world next generations will inherit.

    

       A lifetime as a journalist leaves me looking for something
beyond the loss. This time we hear coverage that draws the connection between spousal abuse and domestic violence and the shooter. In fact it is a damning link in most mass shootings.
       Will we-the collective we-the people and those we elect-finally do something?

california central coast rain season begins

    Heavy skies, morning banks of fog in valleys, cats who detest wet paws and lack of sunshine, signal a season change.

   It is a time when green begins to return.

hiding the green

    More than 90 media organizations around the planet cooperated in the latest iteration of the "Paradise Papers" and have discovered how $Trillions have been sheltered in off shore havens, mostly illegally at worst and sneakily, at best.

    Plenty of embarrassing stories and links have surfaced. We should expect some of the mighty to fall out of favor and perhaps into legal nets. We wonder how long Wilbur Ross and his top adviser will remain out of the fire since both have ties and have been profiting from a company with direct ties to the Kremlin. Ross, who was a king of predatory default practises should never have been appointed Commerce Secretary. This latest revelation is an offense to honest government.

     We wonder if the Mueller probe is looking at the business arrangements of the man child tweeter in chief. Do you think he has seen the orange lout's taxes?

speaking of the kremlin

and non-fake (that would be real) news

    We continue to learn how pervasive was and is the kremlin involvement in Facebook and Twitter. The scale of misinformation and disinformation is massive, and without precedent in modern history.

     Millions of social media users received, read, and perhaps believed lies. It has been part of the effort of Vladimir Putin to undermine US citizens' belief in American institutions and leaders. This is fact, regardless of whether or not the trump organization knew about it and/or willingly participated.

     And, the Russians continue to gnaw away.

and it happens as we euthanize traditional media

    The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University notes that between 45% to 85% of all original reporting is done by newspapers then picked up by other media. Now, factor in this fact-since 2000 20 thousand news jobs have been eliminated and revenues have dropped by some $20 Billion.

     When I retired as a news executive 10 years ago the trend had begun. The good old days are gone. Some of the problem is self inflicted. News by flavor, a horrible contribution of the sexual predator Roger Ailes, has helped to undermine believability. Deregulation of the industry turning news operations into "profit centers" did plenty of long lasting damage. The change in US lifestyle and new technology antiquated some delivery systems-afternoon newspapers-even some morning papers-the tired and frequently silly format of television news and the nature of the content itself. 

     As we look at the new information landscape and understand how many people take their information from social media and learn how contrived that is, it all points to the continuing dumbing down of the population. Poorly informed, mis-informed, and manipulated consumers make terrible choices. Our present political reality is the proof of all of that. 

      Artificial reality, altered reality, are coming in on the heels of this age of "reality" politics and we are wading into deeper trouble.

something wonderful

    Playing at an art theater near you is the extraordinary and brilliant film Loving Vincent.  It is billed as the first fully painted film and it is a marvel to see, a masterpiece in its own right.

    Take a look at the trailer here. Many artists spent thousands of hours creating something unlike anything you've seen. It is a fascinating mystery story as well.

    See you down the trail.