The Willingness To Change [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

We will have a bumper crop of tomatoes this year. The heat, the humidity, the ample rain have provided the perfect tomato growing conditions.

Keep in mind that I am not an expert on tomato growing conditions. I have no knowledge and limited experience growing tomatoes so when I assert that we have perfect-tomato-growing-conditions I am being hyperbolic. I really don’t know. I am borrowing statements from 20 who is a seasoned grower of tomatoes. I do know and can write with certainty that our tomato plants are a’ poppin’. They are climbing to the sky. They are out of control.

What is it in us that needs to be right, with or without knowledge of the subject? Or at least appear to be? I suppose it is not a trait unique to our time but is a characteristic common in human beings. What is it in us that needs our opinions and judgments to masquerade as facts?

We live in the age of rabid confirmation bias. We seek easy reinforcement of what we believe-to-be-true while soundly rejecting any fact or mountain-of-data that contradicts what we believe. Every day we witness leaders make up what they want to be true, what they want us to believe. They ask us not to believe our eyes and many – too many – comply. Firmly planted into lazy minds is the phrase, “Fake News”.

For instance, elections in these United States are – and have always been – safe. Actual incidents of corruption or fraud in our elections are so minuscule that they are statistically zero. You’d never know that if you listened to the current occupant of the White House, the Speaker of the House or the maga republicans who currently clamor to pass a bill that will rob people of color and women of the right to vote. They commit fraud in the name of fraud prevention – and their base eats it like candy. People-who-want-to-believe-what-they-want-to-believe so participate in the destruction of the very system they claim to defend.

It would only take a moment to check the verity of their belief. That, to me, is the ultimate tragedy of our times: we’d rather defend a lie than confront a truth. We’d rather vehemently insist on our righteous belief, arguing over the existence of the iceberg in our path rather than turn the Titanic in time. As we are discovering, as becomes clearer every day in this kakistocracy, the USA is not unsinkable.

And it would only take a minute. And some courage. And some commitment to fact.

In 2020 we saw the insurrection with our own eyes. People died. In the wind-up to the insurrection we heard the loser-of-the-election call the Georgia secretary of state asking to “find” enough ballots to overturn the election. The loser spent months sowing the seeds of doubt in our elections, whipping his followers into a frenzy, readying them for violence because he knew he would lose. We are now, in 2026, witnessing a repeat performance, only this time it is more dangerous. We are everyday inundated with the false claim that our elections are fraudulent – and witnessing the republican party pretend that it is so. They act “as if”. It is a stage-performance with very real consequences that could include the end of our democracy.

Just a little commitment to fact. And some courage.

We must all face the fact that we cannot survive in a nation of dueling “facts”. The white nationalist fantasy of pure blood is – a fantasy. We are a diverse nation that strives for equity and inclusion. We are a nation of laws and not a nation of tyrant kings. Voter fraud is concocted by fraudsters who intend to usurp power from the hands of the people so they might forever live above the law.

If these republicans are successful in their attempted coup, they will successfully flip every statement I just wrote. We will be a nation subject to the rage of white supremacists, an authoritarian nation with the power firmly in the hands of the few, their crimes never subject to the law. We will be a democracy in memory only.

Truth takes just a few minutes to verify. And some courage. And the willingness to change when the facts do not support belief. Truth requires the ethical fortitude to call a lie a lie. Just a little commitment to fact.

read Kerri’s blog post about TOMATOES

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Complete Verity [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Edward Hopper might have painted this scene. A lone person sitting on the bench would have sealed the deal. Everyday American moments of isolation made beautiful by light, line and perspective.

Edward Hopper would have wanted to paint Jack Smith sitting across the table from Nicolle Wallace during their recent interview. An American man isolated by his integrity. A few times during the interview, given the chance to complain or judge, he opted instead to elevate others. Rather than focus on the corruption he said he’d rather spend his time uplifting the true heroes of our nation, the people who honor their oaths and hold firm to their dedication to public service. People who seek facts and value truth rather than clamor for the spotlight. He would rather throw light onto the people holding the line of equal justice for all in our nation of laws.

Hopper most certainly would have been interested in painting Major Jason Watson as he was arrested on the steps of the Capitol. Isolated in his integrity, lonely in his commitment to upholding his oath to the Constitution, he held a sign, “Impeach, Convict, Remove”. A quintessential American moment. Protest. An action with real consequences for the actor. Strong lines and light. Perspective.

“Hopper created subdued drama out of commonplace subjects layered with a poetic meaning, inviting narrative interpretations. He was praised for “complete verity” in the America he portrayed.”~Wikipedia

Complete verity.

Verity: the quality or state of being true, factual, or accurate. Verity is in short supply in this republican administration.

A painter of verity. The America Hopper portrayed turns away from the noise and stares into the silent night. Hopper knew that lies are loud and mostly uninteresting. Truth is often whispered. Truth is tacit. Truth is worth honoring, dabbing brush into paint. Although the paper-cowboy-republicans might loudly proclaim exclusive ownership of the American spirit, Hopper would have no interest in them or their screeching leader.

Although the keepers of truth might appear isolated, most definitely under siege, made to look and feel alone by a raging authoritarian and his Murdoch-propaganda-fox-noise-machine, there are far more Jack Smiths, Jason Watsons, Nicolle Wallaces…out there – out here.

Jack Smith suggested that our path to reunification runs through reclamation of integrity, of attending to fact rather than losing ourselves in daily doses of ratings-driven-screeds.

Complete verity, as found on a lonely railway platform, staring into the quiet of a summer night. Waiting for the train. Strong lines. Powerful light. Perspective.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TRAIN STATION

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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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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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As Old As Aesop [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

“Isn’t it funny,” she said, “that we trust what comes out of the government of Pakistan more than we trust what comes out of our own government.”

Habitual lying destroys credibility. It is the point of Aesop’s fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. It’s a story as old as, well, Aesop, who walked the earth and told stories in the 6th century BCE.

Our current unfolding fable begs the question, “What happens when the wolf and the lying boy are one and the same?” Like the fern in our garden the story is unfurling right before our eyes. What moral lesson might Aesop have spun into our developing fable? This lying boy/wolf is certainly feasting freely upon the sheep, all the while crying, “Wolf!” – as if he himself was under attack from every quarter. Has the point all along been to blunt the villagers’ response to genuine urgent warnings? To so completely break down communal trust that the people refuse to believe what they see with their own eyes?

Of course, Aesop has a caution, a moral reminder prepared for our rescue: abuse of trust always backfires. It’s a consequence as predictable and as old as, well, Aesop. The lying boy/gluttonous wolf will have his reckoning. Yet, the villagers will suffer the greater loss. No sheep. Broken trust. A fractured community wondering how to put the pieces back together again.

Sam The Poet, 48″x48″ acrylic on canvas

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE FERN

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The Sound of Peace [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

There’s a mourning dove serenading us as we write. I love their song. They make me think of Bali. Each morning I took early meditation walks to the song of mourning doves. For me, they are the sound of peace.

Our Airbnb was on the grounds of a Catholic retreat center. After a long day of freeway driving it was a special treat to leave the known world and enter a patch of earth dedicated to quiet and reflection. Our host told us that we were welcome to walk the grounds so, after unloading our bags, we wandered the woods and slow-walked the roads. I was once again reminded how profound – and immediate – is the impact of our environment on us. Aggression evokes aggression. We meet the violence of the news-of-the-day with anger and fear. We are not as independent, not nearly as separate, as we like to believe. Environment shapes behavior. David Abram wrote that presence (a quiet mind) is nearly impossible in the incessant goal-driven noise of the USofA.

And, so, we stepped into the woods. The harried drive dropped from our shoulders, the frenetic game of freeway leap-frog dissipated. I imagined the trees breathed in our weariness and exhaled ease into our bones. We relished the vibrant colors elicited by the setting sun. We stood still and absorbed the bird song. We strolled by the nun’s residence and I wondered what a life lived in retreat might awaken.

I wondered what this nation might become if it honored quiet truth as much a noisy distraction…and then I let that thought go. It was a remnant of the freeway, a disturbance from another world. It called my attention away from the song of the mourning dove.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE CENTER

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The Responsibility To Truth [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

I just finished my read of John Steinbeck‘s, The Winter Of Our Discontent. If you asked me what it’s about I’d answer, “It’s the story of what happens when the responsibility to truth collapses.” It is a troubling story. It is perhaps more relevant now than when it was written.

“Responsibility to truth is a moral and intellectual obligation to seek, uphold, and communicate reality, exposing lies and maintaining integrity even when uncomfortable. It demands that individuals prioritize accuracy over popularity, ensuring that personal and public actions align with verifiable truth to combat deception and build trust.” ~ AI

We have phrases that provide cover for the abdication of responsibility to truth. Business is business. Dog eat dog. The twin gods of profit, Efficiency and Effectiveness, are not at all concerned with truth. The movement of the markets motivate our actions far faster than any impulse to truth. If truth was important to us, if we felt any obligation to it at all, The Epstein Class would already be in prison as would the current occupant of the White House. If truth mattered at all would we tolerate any of the many propaganda purveyors who daily justify, defend and spin obvious lies and grift?

In the free press truth is a casualty of ratings. Remember: business is business. If you wonder how we got to this fascist threshold look no further than the amoral anti-intellectual dedication to gain via falsehood. Democracy is concerned with the will of the people and is vibrant when built upon a shared responsibility to truth. Authoritarianism is concerned with personal gain and is built upon the exploitation of people and wild fabrication.

I took my “responsibility to truth” phrase with me on our hike. Sometimes stepping onto a trail is the equivalent of stepping out of the madness. The ick falls away. The reappearance of tender green, the emergence of new life, fills me with an undeniable truth of spring. It attaches me to the eternal and puts into perspective the momentary sickness of human political shenanigans. We make up reasons to go to war, we pull and push to gain control of “the narrative”, we hoard wealth as if there is not enough to go around, we imagine a pyramid and will kill to stand on the top or at least be interred within, our mummified bodies surrounded by heaps of gold, our faces carved into stone…and none of it has anything to do with simple truth. None of it bears an iota of responsibility to truth or integrity or basic reality. The ritual return of the buds transcends all of our illusions. The impulse to life reaches through the crocus, a ritual that precedes us by a many millennia – and will burst through the soil a thousand years after our carvings in stone and piles of gold erode and return to sand.

It’s hard to deny the truth of new buds. Our illusions of grandeur are passing. When future archeologists unearth the remnants of our civilization they will speculate about our society. Will they find us civilized? Will they find evidence of our societal collapse, our brutality and embrace of lies, our dog-eat-dog demise? Or will they discover the story of our transcendence of self, the reawakening of our obligation to future generations, our reclamation of the responsibility to truth?

read Kerri’s blogpost about BUDS

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Ready For It [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

For a bit of context it’s important to note that last week we were pummeled by ferocious winds and freezing rain, followed hard upon by a blizzard and icy cold. And then, for a few days, the temperatures rose. Stepping out the front door we were surprised to find Day Lilies poking their tiny green fingers above the ground. How is that possible?

Yesterday, driving home from the trail, Kerri said, “It feels like spring is trying hard to punch through.” During our hike the sun was warm but the breeze still carried the winter cold. Not so long ago the winter cold was dominant but yesterday the spring sun definitely took the match.

“I’m ready for it,” I responded.

I sighed with relief when I saw the tender green Day Lilies break through. This winter’s siege has been metaphoric as well as actual. ICE. Epstein. A war of choice. Nonsense tariffs. The ugly return of 19th century imperialism, the whitewash of history, the eye-rolling invocation of the man-o-sphere and equally brain-numbing summons of the return-of-the-tradwife. An icy wind. A hard brain freeze. A fantasy fit for the stunted mentality of middle-school-bullies or white nationalists (same thing).

With the sun, sense is returning. Eyes dedicated to being closed are at last blinking open. Lies are fragmenting. Truth is breaking through the crusty soil and reaching for the warm air. It is a promise, a hope, that will one-day-soon blossom, a vibrant garden of veracity. The people have had enough of winter’s nonsense.

I don’t know about you but I am ready for it.

read Kerri’s blogpost about DAY LILIES

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Low Information Nightmare [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

We took down the chimes because we knew the blizzard was coming. We watched the monster winds , sleet and snow, approach on radar. I am forever grateful to have immediate access to weather radar so I know what’s coming. It saved us once-upon-a-time when we were caught in a tornado. Just after the winds lifted our car from the ground, we huddled behind a restaurant and watched the radar for a small break in the storm so we could make a run for safety.

Last night as the blizzard buffeted the house, as we ate bananas at 3am, we talked about all the things in the world about which we know nothing. Does ice on the tracks impact how the trains run? How do they move Anselm Kiefer’s monumental paintings from his studio to a gallery? In the age of Goggle it is possible to find out how to lay bricks but would I really know how to do it until I’d studied with a master bricklayer? At what point is abstract knowledge actually useful? At what point do we know what we are talking about?

Yesterday I heard a phrase roll through the news cycle that I’m coming to detest: low information voter. It’s sanitized language and brings up a number of questions for me. The first is obvious: are we mislabeling an intentionally misinformed voter as a low information voter? I’ve watched dozens of interviews with “low information voters” who are quite capable of regurgitating pat-phrases seeded into their brains from their source of misinformation. Are they then a low information voter?

The ghost of Neil Postman whispered in my ear:

“The question is not, Does or doesn’t public schooling create a public? The question is, What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance? The answer to this question has nothing whatever to do with computers, with testing, with teacher accountability, with class size, and with the other details of managing schools. The right answer depends on two things and two things alone: the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling.” ~ Neil Postman, The End of Education

Shared narratives. An inspired reason to ask questions and to seek greater understanding. These two things actually form a feedback loop. They are fluid and not fixed: greater understanding informs and evolves shared narrative which opens new questions. You might think that shared narrative and pursuit of greater understanding would be essential concerns for our democracy but we are learning – I am learning, much to my surprise – that is not true. Our narrative is intentionally divided. The current republican party openly and intentionally demonizes learning. Low information voters are easily manipulated and a political party empty of ideas and ideals relies exclusively on a voting public that readily swallows their rubbish.

If our democracy took itself seriously, would we tolerate highly profitable sources of misinformation? Would we so easily polish “ignorance” into a shiny phrase: low information voter? If we took our democracy seriously and intended to protect it, wouldn’t “low information voting” be unacceptable since the responsibility of casting a ballot is predicated upon knowing what you are voting for?

I live in the age of Google. I can see storms coming and that informs my choices: I take down the chimes. I secure anything that the wind will destroy.

I live in the age of Google. I can -and do – in a moment fact check any assertion that comes my way. For instance, I know that the Save America Act is not what it appears to be. It is a storm coming. It does the opposite of what it purports to do. It has nothing to do with voter ID and everything to do with preventing voters from voting. It is a straw man; incidence of voter fraud in the United States is statistically zero. Do low information voters know that? This wind will destroy our democracy.

The woke folk on my side of the divide read Project 2025 and learned from the chaos and grift of the first four years of the authoritarian wannabe. We screamed, “There’s a storm coming!” The necessary information – like weather radar – was readily available. It was easy to see. Low information is, in actuality, the unwillingness to look.

What’s happening now in our nation is not a surprise. The campaign to create low information voters was -and is – successful. Eliminate education. Demonize truth as a hoax. Create “alternative” facts (legitimize lies) while labeling actual news “fake”. Split the people.

If we survive the attempted take down of our democracy, an item high on my list of things to address is the elimination of the possibility of the low information voter. One need not have a mass of information in their brain to be educated, they only need the desire to question, the dedication to discern what is true from what is dross. One need only understand the need to check the radar and act accordingly.

“Because we are imperfect souls, our knowledge is imperfect. The history of learning is an adventure in overcoming our errors. There is no sin in being wrong. The sin is in our unwillingness to examine our own beliefs, and in believing that our authorities cannot be wrong.” Neil Postman, The End of Education

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE CHIMES

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