Align With The Dream [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Even in its decline it is beautiful. A day lily rendered prematurely old by the storms that met its blossoming. Lately, much of what captivates me is the revelation of the support structure: the fibers that give shape to the petals and leaves. They are as aesthetically pleasing as they are functionally necessary.

If you are like me, you are both surprised and not-at-all surprised at the support structure that has become visible in our national decline. The racism, the misogyny, the xenophobia exposed by the current administration and their white-male-supremacy is not an anomaly; it is a norm. Unlike the day lily, this fibrous framework is ugly.

Currently there are several books hot off the presses and even more podcast pundits outlining a plan for what we must do to make sure this never happens again. I’ve yet to read them. I hope they are filled with good ideas and even better strategies for strengthening our democracy and eliminating once and for all the potential for authoritarian takeover by the monied elite who, let’s be frank, desire the return of indentured servitude and a slave class. Superiority needs inferiority. One need only look at the Epstein Class, read Project 2025, or listen for 10 minutes to fox news to see the machinery. Freedom and justice for all is nowhere to be found in their playbook.

Systems do what they are designed to do:

The fibers of the plant reach through the stems and uplift the petal to drink in the sun. The color attracts bees and insects to spread pollen, to spread life.

Our system, as we are seeing clearly, was designed to divide. Our founders, in their division design, unwittingly laid the groundwork for our demise – unless, of course, we are capable in this moment of full exposure to transcend our design. We must answer once and for all who we mean when we say, “We the people.” Do we mean everyone? Do we mean a select few?

We have bumbled along through history attempting to have it both ways. We have repeated this cycle over and over again. If, when we say, “We the people,” we mean everyone, then an entirely new and bold structure is called for, as divergent from our current framework as an the skeletal structure of an adult differs from that of a child. A bone structure that develops into maturity.

We are, in this analogy, as is evident in the current administration, a Peter Pan nation, resistant to reality and afraid of growing up.

The cross-purpose was baked into our nation’s foundation, declaring all men are created equal while simultaneously legislating that black Americans were only 3/5ths human, that voting is a privilege extended to white-male-landholders while proudly declaring “freedom and justice for all”. It is a polarization structure that guarantees the continued algae bloom cycle of attempted autocratic takeover. It’s predictable. It is structural. It is schizophrenic.

It’s not enough to vote blue in the midterms. It’s way past time that we looked in the mirror of our history and dealt honestly with the dysfunctional structure that produces division, exactly as it was designed to produce. Superiority for the few requires a structure that guarantees inequality for the majority; inferiority-by-design. Equality demands a structure that fosters equality.

No system can endure when serving cross-purposes.

Equality is built on an entirely different armature, as beautiful as it is functionally necessary. We know how to do it. It remains to be seen if we – as a diverse community – have the will to align with the dream of equality, the dream of democracy for all that we espouse.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE DAY LILY

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

In a confluence of wonderment, local celebrations for Juneteenth, the summer solstice, and Chicago Pride all landed on the same day. And it was a gorgeous day, ideal for uplifting and honoring the most marginalized people in our society. This merging of revelry had an air of push back: as the powers-that-be might try to scrub the rich color from our history, our diversity runs deeper than skin color or sexual orientation, our desire for equality dwarfs their white supremacy. The people took to the streets to parade and sing and dance.

We took the train to Chicago to see our son perform at Pride. It was a mass of humanity, packing the streets, surrounding the stage, pulsing together to the beat. It was impossible to stand still.

In a moment I was struck with a thought: looking across the crowd, bodies of every shape, size, color and preference, rejoicing together. There was no judgement, no emphasis on difference. There was complete support for and acceptance of individuality and unique expression. People proud of their bodies and their choices. A community that has – and still has to – fight for every inch of equal rights and recognition. My thought? “This is what morality looks like.” All of those who pull verses from a bible and claim moral superiority are, in fact, interested exclusively in superiority. As we are witness to again and again, there is no morality on their pedestal.

The people dancing and sweating and reveling and making way for each other to BE WHO THEY ARE, as they are, in a world with love enough to hold an ideal called equality – and live it – they are the keepers of the promise and the light. They are a community, forged by hot prejudice, that cares for each other, protects and serves each other. They are the change, dancing together in their own little corner of the world, hoping someday those living in fear and judgment on the false safety of their pedestals, step down, join the party and learn the dance of humanity.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BE THE CHANGE

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Perhaps The Sun [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

These soft petals belie the harsh thrumming that they survived. Most of the peonies did not fare well in the wave after wave of storms. Petals on the ground, stems and leaves drooped, heavy from the rain. It was mere happenstance that this peony was a late bloomer. Unlike its fellows, it opened to the world in the aftermath. The sun returned and it stood tall and responded. A single witness to the wreckage. Compassion made it gentle.

We took a walk in between the storms. Most of the neighborhood was out, ostensibly to survey the damage but I know better. Storms bring people out. People who ordinarily do not think to stop and talk will spend hours after a storm or quake comparing notes, sharing experiences. Witnesses to the wreckage, many people in our neighborhood, people we did not know but who seemed to know us, stopped us to expressed condolences for our tree. We swapped stories. We expressed concern for each other. “Do you have power yet?” Politics were nowhere to be found. Compassion made us a community. Gentle. Caring.

When we arrived home I asked Kerri, “Why does it take a storm to bring out the best in people?” Like me, she had no answer. I’ve experienced this tiny miracle before, after 9/11, after the Northridge earthquake…many times. It is in our nature to help one another when mother nature shakes us awake.

But what of the times when we wreak havoc on each other? The same rule does not apply. The daily mass shootings divide us. Our leaders offer empty thoughts and prayers. We make war on each other; is that not an unnatural disaster worthy of bringing people to the streets? Ukraine. Palestine. The Sudan. On and on and on. Age after age. Man made disasters seem to anesthetize us or at the very least to confuse us. They evoke the opposite response: they numb us. Divide us. Instead of compassion they conjure antipathy. Madness. Is that in our nature or is it unnatural?

It seems we return to our senses when the scale of our man-made disaster takes on the scale of a storm sent by mother nature. Is it the scale of destruction that at last wakes us up? An earthquake or tornado is out of our control: is that why we soften and take to the streets to find each other? Wars and guns and supremacy-fantasies are within our control: is that why we harden and turn our backs on the pain until the wreckage is so undeniable that we are forced to say, “Enough!”? We awake, at least for a short time, from the fantasy?

Doesn’t it feel as if this nation is at long last waking up? Is it finally – finally – too much? Perhaps the sun is calling us out of the maga-fantasy-storm, to witness the wreckage, to reach out our hands and ask, “Are you okay?”

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PEONY

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Born Anew [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

A week ago they were buds about ready to burst. This week the petals are letting go. The lifespan of a peony blossom is short. I consider them the flower equivalent of the sand paintings made by Tibetan monks: upon completion of the painting, upon the fullness of the blossom, it is swept away. All things are temporary.

“The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.” ~ Alan Watts

One of the gifts of our democracy is its fluidity. It is mutable. It is a system that is built upon a foundational principle of continual change and renewal. It is alive, growing and adapting. The mechanism of renewal in democracy is the what we know as voting. The people vote for the change they desire. The people vote for the future they envision.

John Dewey wrote, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.” The people vote for change but their vote is only meaningful when they are well-informed, when know the truth of the change they are voting for. When the people’s vote is based on misinformation, gaslighting and lies, democracy is stillborn. The only purpose for the incessant lies, for misleading propaganda, is to prevent change. To prevent democracy. To assault education, to erase history, to restrict knowledge, to flood the zone with misinformation…is to make the people ignorant and gullible. It is to prevent democracy.

Autocracy requires permanence. Democracy requires changeability. We are a sand painting, made anew again and again by a diverse people who participate in the perpetual change and renewal requirement of a democracy: government that serves the people.

This other thing, white national fascism, autocracy, built upon fearmongering that demonizes immigrants, that denigrates opposing ideas, that protects the criminals and punishes the victims…is inert. It intends to restrict change. It is meant to suffocate the voice and will of the people. It gerrymanders to hold onto power. It spreads lies about the security of voting to sow doubt, to challenge and upend the voice of the people when it loses. Autocrats serve no one but themselves.

More than to restrict the blossom-vote of democracy, the autocrats intend to kill the plant, cover the space with concrete, and erect a golden statue to dear leader. Lifeless. Corrupt. A sad monument to the gods of permanence.

We have the power to stop it. Our democracy can be reborn. Educating ourselves, sifting truth from lie, fact from fantasy, and then voting en mass as if our lives and livelihoods depend upon it – because they do.

The Weeping Man, 48″x36″, mixed media

read Kerri’s blog post about PEONIES

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

It’s hard not to sift everything through the lens of current events. I mean, we are alive in the time of an AI upheaval that is at least as revolutionary to society as Guternberg’s press, all the while white-knuckling it through an attempted autocratic takeover of our democracy that Timothy Snyder calls “superpower suicide”. And we mustn’t forget climate change. How could circumstance not shade almost every decision we make?

We are living in transformational times which means we are experiencing serious upheaval. The daily ups seem higher because the daily down is without bottom.

Through social media people are sharing the sounds made by newly built data processing centers. Isn’t it ironic that the infrastructure necessary to fuel this tsunami called AI, a technology that is meant to make our lives easier, roars and thrums and not only robs communities of their peace but requires them to pay the power company for their discomfort? The price of progress? Is this a down or an up or both?

Gutenberg’s press made books available to the masses and soon transformed an illiterate populace into a literate society. The Renaissance and the Reformation would not have been possible without the press making literature and education accessible to the masses.

In his book Technopoly, Neil Postman posited that our daily glut of information would ultimately make information a form of garbage: “Because it is severed from theory, meaning, or purpose, it is incapable of answering fundamental human questions or directing coherent solutions.”

In an act of irony I asked AI to describe Neil Postman’s warning about AI: “Neil Postman warned that making information effortlessly accessible severs it from human purpose and action. He famously argued that an overwhelming glut of data creates passivity, leaving us drowning in irrelevant “disinformation” while remaining hopelessly impotent to solve real-world problems.”

Neil Postman was prophetic. His warning accurately describes our current challenge. We are drowning in irrelevance and misinformation. I cite the ballroom. We seem hopelessly impotent to solve our real-world problems but infinitely capable of creating tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. We have lost our free press and any attachment to fact or truth. I cite the current resident of the White House, the incessant gaslighting, the party that enables him and the propaganda mechanism that stuffs his lies with credence. We are easy marks since we seek information that confirms our bias rather than accurate information that might challenge our opinions and expand our knowledge.

We are told that what goes up must come down and vice versa. The question remains: Can we survive it?

read Kerri’s blogpost about IT WILL COME BACK

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The Force of Flowering [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

If you’ve been following our posts you will have noticed – as we have noticed – that we are lately schizophrenic in our writing. One day we are blistering critics of the abuses of the current administration while the next day we write about the peace and presence of our lives. Utter discontent and sublime contentment all in the same week. I doubt that we are unique in our split personality. I believe we are reflecting the split-personality that is contemporary life in these un-United States. It is my bet that you are as whiplashed by the struggle for equilibrium amidst the daily dose of chaos as we are.

What we write is supposed to come from the image at the top of the post, thoughts inspired by a photograph. Lately, however, what we write depends often upon the circumstance of the moment. For instance, last week we sat down to write and Kerri said, “Before we start I have to read you something.” What she read to me was so upsetting that I wrote a rant about what she shared – and found a way to sense-squeeze it into the photograph.

This morning we laughed at our schizophrenic writing. And, we acknowledged that it is exactly what this autocratic administration desires to create: a populace that is reactive and so under assault that it doesn’t know where to look next.

During COVID we intentionally transformed our backyard into a sanctuary. In an unsafe world we needed a place where we felt at peace. This spring, although we haven’t discussed it, we are doing it again, we are creating a sanctuary, cultivating beauty and quiet, we are creating a space where we can rejuvenate, where we can unplug from the brutality. A space to breathe.

We’ve been watching the peonies bud and are taken by the sheer force of their flowering. You can almost see the pressure building in the bud, ready to burst into blossom. It has become for me a harbinger of hope. It is the same pressure I see gathering in my friends who, like me, have had enough of the chaos and corruption. It is the same energy that fills our conversations when we talk of voting in the fall. It is the pressure-driven transformation changing reactivity into intentional positive action: the reclamation of democracy and decency and sanctuary, a safe and productive home for all.

read Kerri’s blogpost about PEONIES

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A Growing Up [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

“The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.” ~ James Baldwin

It’s always been dangerous to be a jester. It’s akin to working on electrical lines in the rain. Rarely does power like to be contradicted or hear the truth or be the target of a joke – but it is never-the-less the role of the comedian, the artist, to strip away the illusion. To tease forward the truth. Throughout time despots have tried in vain to silence the voice of the jester, the song of the composer, the vision of the painter. Hitler. Pol Pot. Stalin. Kim Jong Un. And now? Sadly, we have produced one of our own. Take heart: artists are servants of love while despots are prisoners of rage, and, in the end, love is always bigger than hate. It is possible for a period of time to silence the individual artist but the love of truth always transcends the volcano of hate. “Truth will out.” (William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice)

Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel will be making us laugh long after this rage has burned itself out.

A truth? Our nation, my nation, refuses to grow up. It turns its back on its history. It runs from its shadow. It is like the spouse of an alcoholic pretending that all is good. It is akin to a parent who abuses a teacher who dared give their child a well-deserved failing grade. Appearance is all.

Love is substance.

Proof of our Peter Pan nation lives in the White House. He has surrounded himself with a band of lost boy pirates. The despot-wanna-be is not an aberration, he and his pirates are the ultimate expression of entrenched immaturity. They are boys who swear the dog ate their homework, responsible for nothing, responsible to no one. They do not care to compete, earn or work for betterment yet desire every trophy for their shelf. They gild themselves like the ballroom. They celebrate the vapid and court superficiality. They somehow believe 19th century nonsense that whiteness makes the man. They build their clubhouse high in a tree and post a sign: No Gurls Aloud! Their skins are thin, their intentions self-serving.

It is why artists are such a threat. They see the childishness and make fun of the lost boys vapid antics.

In such an immature playpen, there is no love, there is no capacity for love: only a competition for toys. “Mine, mine, mine!”

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” ~ James Baldwin

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEART LEAF

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And We All Know It [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” ~ Mark Twain

The boats are slowly returning to the marina. The beach at Eichelman Park has been combed. Signs of summer’s onset. The Saturday Farmer’s Market moved from its winter quarters and has returned to the mall in front of the museums, running all the way to the Tap House. Signs of normalcy. The people are leaving their houses to purchase flowers and vegetables and mingle in the public square.

Yet, amidst the signs of normalcy, everything is different.

There is so much that the republicans claim to know for sure that just ain’t so. Despite what they espouse, despite what they “know for sure,” the 2020 election was not stolen. Our elections to this point in time are not and never have been rigged or corrupt. The January 6th insurrectionists are not innocent and they are not victims of the justice department. The president is not of sound mind. He is not innocent of his enumerable crimes. His cabinet is not competent.

They want us to believe what they know for sure, that this is normal – but it just ain’t so.

And now they wonder why they are in trouble. They’ve ridden a herd of lies for a decade. They ask us to not believe what we see. And now their only route to holding power is to gerrymander. While currently holding all the cards-of-power they claim to be the victims in this hot mess that they’ve enabled. Midwives to autocracy.

It’s their insistence upon the lie, even though stripped bare-to-the-bone and completely exposed, that is the most troubling. For years we’ve asked what might be a bridge too far for these lemmings in cowboy clothes, these guys and gals that swear they are cleaning the swamp and representing the common folk, all the while engorging their morbid wealth by sucking the lifeblood from the people they pretend to defend. Vampires all.

It’s what we know for sure. It is so. We can see it. And no amount of gaslight can obscure what we see. Afraid of their constituents, they cancel their town halls, they flee the capitol rather than vote to intervene in the criminal-in-chief’s latest war-of-choice.

The boats slowly return to the marina. The beach at Eichelman has been combed. Signs of normalcy in a time when nothing is really normal. This would-be-despot and his party-of-pretenders are naked and corrupt – and falling apart. And we all know it.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE BEACH

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Certain Distinctions [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

There are certain distinctions that, although simple, reveal all you need to know. For instance, we sprinkle birdseed on the top of Barney-the-piano because we enjoy watching the birds. On the other hand, my maga-neighbor maintains a bird bath near a feeder, positioned low to the ground, to lure birds as bait for his cat. I am disgusted by his cruelty. He is disgusted by my empathy.

This is an irreconcilable difference. It is also a good shorthand metaphor for the contrast between maga and woke.

I visit this contrast every day as I try to understand the news-of-the-day. There can be no other explanation for the horrors of ICE, for the protection of the Epstein Class, for the bombing of fishing boats, for the dismantling of USAID, the incessant lies, the tax breaks for billionaires at the expense of Medicaid, SNAP and affordable healthcare…than this: cruelty is the republican drug. Like my neighbor who snickers every time his cat kills a bird, this confederacy of dunces gets a high with every atrocity.

And, to be clear, they are disgusted by democratic-woke-empathy just as we are disgusted by their maga-cruelty.

Here’s the problem: democracies are by their nature and definition empathetic. A government of, by and for the people is predicated upon the care and concern of elected leaders for their constituents. Service to the betterment of others. A capitalist republic such as ours cannot last when cruelty is in the driver’s seat. It collapses when elected leaders prioritize personal gain above the needs of the people they were elected to serve.

Autocracies, by definition, thrive upon the exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. No brutality is too malicious. They applaud the “double-tap,” they cheer their leader’s swagger-brag that”A whole civilization will die tonight.” They protect the pedophiles and turn their backs on the victims.

It’s an irreconcilable difference. If you remain confused about what you believe. all you need do is ask yourself, “What is my reason for feeding the birds?” And then vote for what you believe.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BIRDS

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Our Actions Will Tell [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Throughout my sordid past I was witness to the development of several mission statements. Serious and well-meaning teams of people wrestled with the questions of Who Are We and What Do We Do. The task was to generate lofty yet succinct statements of purpose and values. The statements were aspirational and mostly forgotten the day after the exercise of producing them. If actions were identified, they were rarely executed because a basic reality was ignored: the mission and purpose of a business is to make profit. Strip away the good intention and the bottom line remains the king. The moment the bottom line is threatened: all statements of value, all well articulated purposes are suspended.

If the purpose of a business is profit then the purpose of a not-for-profit is service. Clarity hits the not-for-profit when the cost of the service rises or the income streams run dry: will the service get lost in the immediate imperative to fund raise? Not-for-profit boards are famous for smothering their service organizations by attempting to make them “run like a business” which, essentially makes them lose sight of their purpose.

Study the difference between the rhetoric and the actions. To see the truth, look beyond the rhetoric. Study the actions. To be useful, rhetoric must acknowledge and align with actions.

Governments are service organizations. Democracies serve the needs of the people. Autocracies, on the other hand, are businesses that attend to the bottom line of the few. Currently we call our nation a democracy but one need only look to the actions of our leaders to suss out the truth. In this moment we are an autocracy. We are a service organization (a democracy) attempting to run like a business (an autocracy).

Our nation has some beautiful rhetoric. Our history has been a tug-of-war between those who believe in the service of Democracy and those who exploit the rhetoric for personal gain (autocrats). We either live “liberty and justice for all” or we do not. We are either a nation of laws or we are not. The question before us right now is, “What do we actually believe?”

Study the actions of the current administration and the ruling of the Supremes and the answer is clear: we are a white nationalist business that exploits the many for the profit of the few. To them, the Constitution is pleasant rhetoric but threatens the bottom line.

Study the actions of the people taking to the streets to protest the assault on our rights and the elimination of services and the answer is clear: we are a democracy. We are what we believe. We are what we espouse. To the people, the Constitution is a living roadmap of actions, a blueprint of service.

The disjoint between the people and the current leadership brings us around to a question that’s plagued us since our inception: Is “We-the-people” all inclusive or an exclusive club for the few? Will the voters choose their politicians (democracy) or will the politicians choose their voters (autocracy)?

The tug-of-war has rarely been this apparent.

Our actions in the next few months – and be very clear that a vote is an action – just as a gerrymander is an action – the gutting of voter’s rights is an action – protests are actions…our actions will tell all.*

*If we actually manage to have a free and fair election given the gutting of the Voter’s Rights Act, the aggressive gerrymander, the sycophantic republican congress, the rampant dark money, the corruption of the Supremes…If for some reason you remain confused about what’s happening in this nation, take a moment, look beyond the rhetoric and study the actions.

read Kerri’s blog about WE ARE WHAT WE BELIEVE

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