Identity | The Direction of Intention

For All Humans [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 5, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

I read that Cinco de Mayo, in addition to being a celebration of Mexican heritage and culture, serves as a reminder of Mexican resistance and resilience in the face of adversity. That makes this Cinco de Mayo a uniquely potent and particularly relevant celebration. With Mexico demonized and under assault from this current administration, it is more important than ever to uplift and honor Mexican heritage. Honoring Mexico on this day serves as an act of resistance to the bully xenophobic Republican agenda.

It also serves as a reminder that this nation – in reality – is a celebration of many ethnicities. We are a cultural crossroads. That is precisely what makes America great. We need not go back to some imagined fantasy-past. Our strength in this democratic experiment is our capacity to reinvent ourselves, over and over again.

The bumper sticker reads, “Equality hurts no one.” Too true. Equality is the ideal, the guide star at the very center of the Declaration of Independence, the driving force behind our capacity to re-imagine ourselves. It is the promise that allows us to intend a nation comprised of many races and ethnicities, a people capable overcoming their small tribal imperatives to create a more perfect union. In the ideal, our differences are what unite us. Our differences are our strength. In our nation, as in nature, our diversity is – and always has been – our secret sauce. Our superpower. It is the unique source of our innovation and our capacity to adapt, change, and grow.

More importantly, equality-in-diversity is the magnetic north of our moral compass. It informs our national conscience. Human beings, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation are afforded equal protection under the law. Equal rights. Human rights. An intention to foster equal opportunity for all. A celebration of humanity in all its rich multiplicity.

We can only hope that this current Republican attempt to scrub the nation of color, to force lock-step uniformity, is the last gasp of a dying white supremacy, the final whimper of Manifest Destiny. Change – real change – is always preceded by a frightened step backwards.

Today, more than ever, it is important to celebrate the resilience and resistance of Mexico, a day of triumph over a brutal suppressor. A day of recognition of the great spirit of Mexico, one of the many deep flowing currents of courage that forms the powerful river known as the United States of America, a nation of diversity that intends equity and inclusion – for all humans.

read Kerri’s blogpost about EQUALITY

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Filed under: Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, Cinco de Mayo, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, democracy, Diversity, equality, equity, humanity, inclusion, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, multiplicity, resilience, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Our National ABOUT Page [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on May 2, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

This quote by Reynolds Price has been on my ABOUT page since I began blogging:

“A need to tell and hear stories is essential to us – second in necessity after nourishment and before love and shelter.”

Since I already know what I am about (mostly) I rarely visit my ABOUT page. I’d all but forgotten this quote was a constant presence on my blog. It is the flag I planted, as much for myself as for others, so I might always have a north star, a way to locate and find my way HOME. I carried it in my pocket long before I enshrined it on my site. I remember typing it into the little “about” box – it felt like a declaration.

Lately the quote has been poking at me. It wants further consideration. It has renewed relevance in our current circumstance.

The disparate bubbles that we occupy, MAGA and WOKE, are stories. Although the characters are different in the respective bubbles, the overriding story is the same: there is a threat to our way of life and the threat is the other bubble.

Although I believe the MAGA bubble is filled with dangerous fascism, they believe the WOKE bubble is socialism run amok. Occupants of both bubbles follow their news-of-the-day as if it was essential, true. Both narratives fuel the division. Both bubbles tell the tale of a heroic fight for good over an evil villain.

This is the third time in our history that these bubbles have formed; irreconcilable narratives housed under a greater umbrella-story, ironically called The United States of America. Robin Diangelo wrote the story of white supremacy requires black inferiority. Conversely, the struggle of equality-for-all is pitted against the story of white supremacy. It is nearly impossible to reconcile the combating sub-narratives: the Manifest Destiny story of god-given superiority (MAGA) with the All Men and Women Are Created Equal (WOKE) story. Our national narrative, our essential umbrella story, is of this struggle for identity: superiority for the few or equality for all. So, here we are.

A need to tell and hear stories is essential to us because stories are the glue that hold us together. Stories are essential because they define “belonging”. In a nation of immigrants, with a long history of bloody fighting over this question of belonging, what might it take for us to recognize that this fight is the greater story that defines us? It is the legacy we perpetuate in our grappling; it is the trace we leave in time. When will we see that the loss of freedom, the collapse of love and shelter is the cost of our shared narrative of seeming irreconcilable difference?

We’ve built our house on a volatile fault line.

However, there is a greater narrative available. It has been on our national ABOUT page since the beginning of our nation. It is our motto, our north star that will guide us HOME. It is printed on our currency. What might it take for us to rise above the bubbles and embrace the story at the center of our rhetorical ideal? What might we need to reconcile to live fully the nourishing story of e pluribus unum?

[this may be my favorite piece by Kerri. If you’re feeling angst or overwhelmed, do yourself a favor: take a short life-break, close your eyes and listen]

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about TRACES IN THE SKY

The Storyteller emerges from the forest.
Lucy & The Waterfox
http://www.kerrianddavid.com

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Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Story | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, e pluribus unum, equality, fascism, freedom, identity, info bubbles, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, MAGA, Manifest Destiny, Robin DiAngelo, story, studio melange, the melange, white fragility, white supremacy, woke | 1 Comment »

Mutually [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on April 30, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Objects are such only with respect to other objects, they are nodes where bridges meet. The world is a perspectival game, a play of mirrors that exist only as reflections of and in each other.” ~ Carlo Rovelli via The Marginalian, April 27, 2025

The tree stands beyond our back fence, its limbs spiral and twist, sculpted by time and the force of the winds roaring off the lake. Looking at her photograph, a silhouette against an evening blue sky, I remarked, “It’s a Jackson Pollock painting.” She looked again at her photograph through the lens of my remark, nodding.

Nature sculpts the tree that catches the photographer’s eye, her photograph invokes images of a drip painting. “…interaction is the fundamental reality of the universe, that there are no entities as such…”

We do ourselves a great disservice ignoring interconnection in service to our separation.

It’s human: we need to make sense of things so we compartmentalize. We object-ify, detaching tree from time and wind from photographer, assigning all to discrete little box-identities, placing emphasis on the noun rather than on the interplay, the intertwining verb. In our minds we stop the motion, sever interrelationship into distinct pieces, so that we might convince ourselves that we have a grasp on “reality”. In creating objective “reality” we blind ourselves to the greater mutuality.

Science dissected the world-body into parts which led to the smallest objective part, called a quantum, and discovered it’s a slippery devil, energy, that can only be described subjectively. It can only be known through its relationships. Mutuality.

I’ve yet to hear an adequate definition of the word “woke”. Maga world flings it liberally and with sharp derision to describe all manner of “progressive” ideals, yet stutters when asked what it means. It’s an umbrella term, a catch-all, like the grainy photograph of the Loch Ness monster, shaky proof of something to be feared but mostly unknown. In fox land, this Loch Ness monster is called “socialism”.

To Maga world I offer this definition of Woke: greater mutuality. Woke, like a quantum, cannot be objectified just as compassion cannot be fully defined. It can be experienced. It is an energy, connective tissue.

Woke flies the flag of equality. Woke understands that the suspension of due process for any single person is the suspension of due process for all people. Woke understands that prosperity reserved for the few means poverty for the many. Woke intends shared prosperity, an equal playing field, helping hands. “Float all boats” is a Woke ideology. Woke is not a hand-out, it is a help-up. A moral center – also known as mutuality – is Woke; we can be our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper or we can be their persecutor. Keeper or persecutor: both describe a kind of relationship.

Woke is what defines Maga just as Maga is now clarifying Woke. Maga desires separation. It strives for elevation above others; legislated privilege. Woke desires equality. It strives for a more perfect union: legislated inclusion. The promise of possibility.

We do ourselves a great disservice: we are neither red nor blue. We are not conservative nor progressive. We are not Woke or Maga. Those terms are boxes that ignore the fundamental truth of our – or any – nation. We are interconnected. We are a relationship.

Remove environmental protections and all of the air we breathe and the water we drink will be polluted. Remove election watchdogs and all of our elections will be corrupted. Remove a commitment to truth and lies will define us and pull us apart.

After all, Maga is a made-up-media term just as is Woke. They are boxes meant to give us an enemy, the illusion of separation.

Democracy is not a “thing”, an object. It is a movement, a quantum. We know it by our interactions as defined in our Constitution. We know it as a place where bridges meet. Where people from many places come together.

Whether Maga or Woke, we will feel the loss of democracy equally just as we feel the disintegration of our values, our shared narrative, our aspiration for justice-for-all; mutually.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TREE

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Identity | Tagged: artistry, Carlo Rovelli, compassion, connective tissue, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, equality, interaction, interconnected, interplay, interrelated, intertwine, Jackson Pollock, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mutuality, objectivity, quantum, relationship, story, studio melange, subject/object, The Marginalian, the melange, woke | 1 Comment »

Teach The Moment [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on April 17, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

As I watched the curtain of grasses sway I thought they’d make an excellent set piece for a production of The Tempest. Their movement was hypnotic. I had the good fortune to design a minimal-budget-production of The Tempest several years ago and used huge pieces of driftwood and a bamboo curtain. I loved it.

The Tempest was on my mind because earlier in the day while doing some research I bumbled across the question, “Why is The Tempest a banned book?” The answer is a very sad statement about our times, the reason our nation cannot seem to mature: “The Tempest,” one of the playwright’s classics, is among the books removed, as teachers were urged to stay away from any works where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes,” the website Salon reported.

In our nation race, ethnicity and oppression are the central themes of our history: “246 years of brutal enslavement; the rape of black women for the pleasure of white men and to produce more enslaved workers; the selling off of black children; the attempted genocide of Indigenous people, Indian removal acts, and reservations; indentured servitude, lynching and mob violence; sharecropping; Chinese exclusion laws; Japanese American internment; Jim Crow laws and mandatory segregation…” (Robin Diangelo, White Fragility)

You’d think we might want to encourage teaching The Tempest and other great works so we might consider and discuss the full scope of our history. So that we might learn about ourselves. So that we might become capable of addressing and putting to rest the ugly fear – rooted in race, ethnicity and oppression – exploited for gain by the Republican party, that gave birth to the MAGA movement. It’s the Confederacy by another name.

In a nation of immigrants, you’d think it might be a first principle to teach our children about race, ethnicity, and oppression so we might learn how to reach across – and put to rest – division rather than perpetually recreate it.

The AI overview provided another related and currently more salient reason to teach The Tempest: “The main message of Shakespeare’s The Tempest is that forgiveness and reconciliation are preferable to revenge and punishment, especially when it comes to the restoration of social order and personal peace.“

If social order and personal peace are the goals, our current path of revenge and punishment will not take us there. In the play, Prospero chooses release from his island prison through the power of forgiveness and redemption rather than perpetuating his imprisonment by seeking revenge.

In this teachable moment Prospero’s choice is an analogy worth teaching: a path provided to us by a play written in 1610 by one of the greatest poets of the English language; a way out of our national-soul-imprisonment.

I suspect that is why The Tempest and other great works of literature dealing with themes-that-matter are being banned. In the minds of this administration, continued imprisonment, revenge and punishment seem to be the goals.

Angels At Our Side, 24″x48″, mixed media on board

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE GRASSES

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Identity, Transcendence | Tagged: artistry, banned books, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, ethnicity, forgiveness, history, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, oppression, race, reconciliation, Robin DiAngelo, story, studio melange, teaching, the melange, The Tempest, white fragility, William Shakespeare | 3 Comments »

The Line [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on April 14, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’ve decided that garden messages like “Be Kind” are actually sign posts marking the dividing line in these un-United States. There is – and always has been – a faction of the population that sincerely believes in equality. Kindness extends to everyone. Justice for all. There is – and always has been – a faction of the population that believes in racial superiority. Kindness is extended only to a select few. Justice for some.

The visibility of the dividing line has varied over our history depending on the faction in the power seat. When team equality-for-all is driving, the line fades. When team power-for-the-select-few is driving, the line blazes into visibility. Our short history is a tug-of-war with both sides trying to pull the other team over the line.

We are currently living in a time when the line is readily apparent, team white-male-superiority has the reins. Any mention of diversity is grounds for firing. DEI initiatives are being scrubbed from view. Segregation has been given a green light. Women’s rights are under attack. Tariffs are, of course, market manipulation to enrich the few while shifting of the tax burden onto the poorest citizens. Kindness is exclusively reserved for members of the country club.

It is, I suppose, one of the legacies of colonialism. Manifest Destiny. We are not alone in our tug-of-war but we are unique in wrapping it in ideals like “…with liberty and justice for all.” or “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” We are not alone in editing our full history but we are unique in our capacity to white-wash it as is currently the case. The Lost Cause narrative is alive and well.

This tug-of-war is the question at the heart of the experiment that is The United States of America. Can people of many races, ethnicities and religions, come together and form a society that protects the rights of all, equally, under the law? Can such a society be honest in telling of – and learning from – its full history? Can such a society extend kindness across difference to support a more perfect union? Can we actually strive for and achieve e plurbus unum?

Right now, the prevailing answer as articulated from the seat of power is “no”.

There is a different answer available on the streets.

In any case, it leaves me wondering what must happen for us as a nation to consider fully our history, to admit the truth of our tug-of-war in order to transcend it – so that we might fulfill the promise of our democracy that has the potential to enrich the lives of all the citizens, including citizens of the world.

Perhaps our current ugliness will crack open our denial and reveal the true nature of the discriminatory disease that continually ails us. Perhaps this is a step on the road to all-inclusive-kindness, power attained from giving rather than taking, serving rather than suppressing. In my idealism – and in my garden art – I can only hope so.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BE KIND

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Filed under: Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Possibility | Tagged: artistry, colonialism, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, equality, equity, history, inclusion, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, Manifest Destiny, public service, service, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Upon What We Agree [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on April 8, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Yes, I’m bein’ followed by a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow
Leapin’ and hoppin’ on a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow” Cat Stevens (Yusef), Moonshadow

All of my life I have been captivated by shadows. The ghost dancing grasses cast on the trail. The moving patterns of telephone poles and lines waving on the asphalt. The cloud shadows gliding over the hills. Kerri and I regularly stop and take photos of our shadows. “Look how long we stretch!” I adore the shadow puppets of Wayan Kulit. It is a ritual performance of universal stories meant to remind us that in this life we only see the shadows we cast upon the screen of our minds. What’s “real” is beyond our capacity.

“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” ~ Niels Bohr. The quantum physicist and the Balinese puppet master – a priest – agree. Reality is a shadow.

Yesterday we attended a Hands-Off rally. The number one statement most often uttered by people in the crowd (according to my count): “I can’t believe this is happening!” It doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t seem possible that our representatives have so easily rolled over rather than honor their oath to protect the Constitution. In their reality they play on team Republican. In our reality – we assumed in a crisis moment like this – that they would play on team United States.

Assume nothing. Reality is what we agree upon and at present there is no agreement.

Charlie is wise. Looking at the hundreds of people chanting and waving signs, he said, “When the rule of law collapses then there’s chaos. In chaos the people have no recourse but to take to the streets.”

The Constitution is the epicenter of our laws. It is the foundation stone upon which our democracy was and is constructed. When disregarded it is no more than a piece of parchment. A relic. “Everything that is real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” The Constitution has purpose and meaning only if we agree to honor it, to protect it – to adhere to the boundaries – the law – that it prescribes.

A woman in the crowd said, “It’s been less than 100 days and look at this.” The people have no recourse when our elected officials ignore their foundation stone. When they choose to serve a different reality.

About Moonshadow, Yusef wrote, “Whatever happens to you there’s always something good to look forward to.” Standing in the crowd, alive with concern and caring for the well-being of the nation, I thought, “This is good. There is hope. This is how a democracy survives.”

read Kerri’s blog about SHADOWS

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Filed under: Identity, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, CAt Stevens, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Hands Off, hope, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, law, moonshadow, Niels Bohr, reality, shadow, shadow puppets, story, studio melange, The Constitution of The United States, the melange | 1 Comment »

Barnacles And All [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on April 4, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ~ Thomas Merton

If you visited our house you’d immediately notice that Kerri’s design style is “well-worn and well-loved.” Rather than mask the wear-and-tear of age, she revels in it. Our dining room is a wonder, made beautiful by the marks left when she removed wallpaper. Rather than paint over the marks she recognized their unique beauty and showcased them. A happy accident. I stopped in my tracks the first time I walked into the dining room, asking, “How did you do that?”

I love our backdoor. The pressure of our hands on the door has overtime peeled and revealed the white underlayer beneath the black paint. It’s the story of our comings-and-goings. It is the mark of our human hands pressing on an old door that swells with the humidity and shrinks with the cold. It is our personal hand-print-petroglyph.

The beauty of age. The patterns of rust. The celebration of the flaw. Most people would scramble to cover the cracks or repair the damage. I have occasionally earned her Irish ire by repairing something she thought was aesthetically interesting. I have learned to ask.

Standing on our deck, Columbus was concerned that the exposed unsealed wood was disintegrating. “You oughta’ stain this,” he said. “It needs protecting.” I told him of the time Kerri pressure washed the deck, removing the patina of age. Even though with time the rough hewn look returned, she has yet to forgive herself for her pressure-washing-indiscretion.

“Kerri likes it this way,” I replied. “She doesn’t like the way it looks when it’s neat and stained.”

“Well I guess that’s the way it’s gotta be!” he smiled, knowingly.

Our house is an ever evolving work of art. A perfect home for two artists. Nothing matches yet everything goes together. It’s filled with visual and repurposed surprises. It is warm, sometimes a cocoon where we shut out the world and sometimes a place for our community to gather. It is the sanctuary where we have come to discover and appreciate ourselves, barnacles and all, while steadily growing into something we could never have imaged.

(I love this piece by Kerri)

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about RUST

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Gratitude, Identity, KS Friday | Tagged: age, appreciation, art, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, design, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, story, studio melange, the melange, Thomas Merton, two artists, worn | 4 Comments »

Follow The Cairns [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on March 26, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Cairns are trail markers. They show the way.

I want to stack a series of giant cairns for the red-hats who are lost in the land of foxy misinformation. They have lost their way. I’m reminded that in our Revolutionary War, the struggle for our independence, the forces of the crown were known as red coats. The patriots wore blue. History definitely repeats itself, at least in color identification. The red-hats are fighting for the reestablishment of the crown.

The red-hats vehemently support their wanna-be-king, a servant to the oligarchs. He intends to tax the poor to fill the coffers of the rich. His army of red-hats have not awakened to the reality that they are the targets of his taxation. They are the indentured servants of his dreams. They are the dupes in his plan.

Usury inevitably reveals itself and slaps awake even the most deluded follower (Rudy Giuliani not withstanding).

I can state this with absolute certainty: if hear one more bloated Republican bloviate that government has no meaningful role to play in our society I’m going to vomit. Think for a moment: they want the poor to carry the tax burden but be exempt themselves. While they bully universities into ignorance, annihilate public education, actively cut social services to the 90%, attack Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security…while simultaneously removing any regulation and/or oversight to their business plunder. Their north star is embarrassingly shallow: permanent tax cuts for the wealthy few. All of this, of course, requires a government to enact. It’s not the absence of government that the reds slobber for; it is a government dedicated to exploiting the many for the sake of the few. They are disingenuous at best. Sadistic is probably a more honest adjective.

It’s not government that they despise – it’s a government that serves ALL people that they wish to eradicate.

There are glimmers of hope. Our nation has a few vocal cairns emerging. Bernie Sanders and AOC are holding rallies that draw thousands: people wearing blue (metaphorically). People who believe in democracy. People who value learning above ignorance, truth above fox-fantasy. People who know that the chicken-little running around the barnyard screaming, “Socialism” or “DEI” is the puppet of wealthy elites attempting to scare the fox-hypnotized-gullible-maga-masses with scary straw men.

The blues aren’t buying a word of it. They’re following the cairns that lead to a healthy tradition of awakening the American spirit – the same spirit that gave us the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Cesar Chavez…The Constitution, the Bill of Rights…and a democracy worth fighting for.

read Kerri’s blogpost about CAIRNS

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Filed under: Awakening, Flawed Wednesday, Identity | Tagged: AOC, artistry, Bernie Sanders, Besty Ross, Boston Tea Party, cairns, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, democracy, government, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, patriot, Paul Revere, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Diversity Defines Us [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on March 25, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

We called this photograph the “Irish Rothko”. Mark Rothko was one of the great American painters of the 20th century. His paintings are in museums all over the country and around the world. It’s important in our times to recognize that he was born in Latvia. The great American painter was an immigrant.

We heard the channel to the marina was dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day so we bundled up and scurried to take advantage of a clear photo opportunity. While Kerri snapped pictures I pondered the potato famine. The marina was dyed green on this day in 2025 in the USA because 180 years ago over 2 million Irish people fled starvation to find hope in a new land. Immigrants. St. Patricks’s Day is a celebration of the promise of The United States. I’m fairly certain that the vast majority of people all over the nation drinking green beer, sporting shamrock pins and wearing Leprechaun hats were not themselves Irish. Americans of Italian, German, Scandinavian, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Nigerian, Egyptian, Indian, Turkish, Indonesian…descent, hoisted frosty green beverages. Americans, all.

We are a diverse people. Our diversity is what defines us. We regularly celebrate each other and our diversity whether we realize it our not. We are a strong weave from many origins, many races, many religions. We are weakened when we pretend that one fiber is better than another.

I suppose it’s possible to attempt to scrub any mention of DEI. It does not change the reality of the nation. It does not alter the driving imperative of the nation: amidst such a diverse populace to forge an equal, conscious and considerate society. We’ve managed to make buildings wheelchair accessible, begin addressing the disparity of pay for women, with civil rights laws we walk into the hot fire of inequality…all aspects of diversity, equity and inclusion. People with disabilities should not have barriers to workplaces. Women should not be paid less than men for equal work. People of color should not be excluded from opportunities because of the color of their skin. Gay men and women should have the same rights as heterosexual men and women.

Striving for equality makes us strong. It is the necessary ongoing conversation of our nation.Forced inequality makes us immoral, corrosive, and weak. Trying to end the conversation is spineless.

The work of equality takes courage and perseverance. As we are seeing, it is possible to issue an executive order to end the efforts of a diverse nation to forge an equitable society, it’s possible to brand those efforts as “illegal”. It is, however, impossible to stop it. Unity fashioned from rich diversity is the center of our national ideal and is the basic reality of our society. After all, it is the nation’s motto: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

It’s definitely possible to suppress people. It is possible to bully and terrorize people. It is possible to legislate a delusion. It is possible to manufacture enemies. It is possible to pretend that the people at the top of the hierarchy are somehow being victimized and blame efforts at equality as the culprit. All of that is possible. It does not change the self-deception, the corruption and lies necessary to do it.

It is the height of cowardice to scrub white the identity of this diverse nation – as this administration is attempting to do. And, if not cowardice, it is pure malfeasance. To obtain the goal of white supremacy the despot-wanna-be must make our democracy disappear – as this administration is attempting to do. The demonization of DEI is the epicenter of their ruse: Those poor old rich white guys have been so completely abused by laws protecting equality for all. Those sad despairing right-wing Christians who cannot display their nativities on government property have suffered tremendous religious persecution. Apparently, the separation of church and state should apply to everyone but them! It’s discrimination of the first order! And DEI is to blame! (It would be laughable, really, if it were not now so dangerous).

In nature, diversity is strength. In the USA, as in nature, our diversity is our strength.

Mono-cultures are vulnerable and readily eliminated. The Irish potato famine is an example of what happens when a people rely too heavily on a single crop. When it fails – as a mono-culture inevitably does – many, many people die.

We have never been a mono-culture. We will never be one. Pretending to be a white-male-mono-culture will echo nature and lead to culture collapse. No amount of legislating lies or embellishing white-victim-fantasies can – or will – change it.

read Kerri’s blogpost about IRISH ROTHKO

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Filed under: Identity, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, bully, corruption, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, Diversity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Mark Rothko, mono-culture, story, studio melange, suppression, the melange | Leave a comment »

It Is All [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on March 24, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The ordinary days have a way of lulling us into believing there isn’t any urgency to them…” ~ John Pavlovitz

These days I am more likely to appreciate my moment. I’m no longer trying to get somewhere or be someone that I am not. I have finally traded the harried drive for self-improvement, the fool’s errand to save the world, the not-so-healthy-desire-to-be-other-than-I-am, for the warm embrace of self-acceptance. I’m now less interested in attempting to hide my brokenness than I am in fully valuing the life I have been fortunate enough to live – with all of its foibles and folly.

It’s the word “urgency” that caught me in the quote. It’s an interesting choice in a thought about presence to use a word that implies “hurry” or “haste”. The imperative in each moment to fully appreciate the gift of life. Now. Not tomorrow. Not when the race is won or the bank account is full. Now. Right now. Doing the dishes. Making the bed. The haste of slowing down.

The Buddhists call this “chop wood, carry water”. The awareness of the extraordinary in the ordinary, everyday tasks.

Dogga groans at night. His muzzle grows more grey with each passing month. Sometimes at night he struggles to stand. And, because we know beyond doubt that our time with him is limited, we linger with him. We fawn on him. We want to heap all the love in our hearts on him. There are no ordinary days. There are no throw-away moments.

Limits inspire appreciation. Rolling into sight of my looming limit is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. “Listen to the birds,” she just said. We stopped writing and drank in the birdsong.

The birdsong brought to mind a favorite quote from Shakespeare:

“There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.” [Hamlet, Act 5, scene 2]

A quote about fate. Acceptance. And what is the gift of readiness? It is to be wide awake. It is all.

read Kerri’s blogpost about URGENCY