Saturday, September 29, 2012

Destruction of Gardens: Who is in Charge of You?

This is one more of the million things that are Too Much.
http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/newsrelease/13169

"City of Toronto Workers Destroy Free Community Food Garden Amid Growing Food Crisis --
Occupy Gardens plants in Queens Park destroyed without harvesting food--by Jacob Kearey-Moreland

An Occupy Gardens supporter was passing by Queens Park on her way to work when she saw workers taking down the gardens. She took these photos. Occupy Gardens was going to harvest the food tomorrow for their "Autumn Jam: A Harvest Party"
Parks Director Richard Ubbens to remove all live plants and food from the People's Peas Garden in Queens Park. They were ordered to take the plants and food to the dump and lay sod overtop of this most beautiful free community food garden, without warning, without a chance to remove the rare heirloom plant species or harvest the food..."  
     

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Life and Death for Birds

This little bird must have flown into a window on the porch--she was stunned. I put her in a safe place surrounded by nyger seed and water drops. She shivered and was falling asleep so i stroked her and hummed a few bars...After about 30 minutes she reacted strongly to me and flew away!
Goldfinches are here for awhile longer. The males are bright yellow.




These vultures keep the roads clean of dead possums, racoons, and other misfortunates. I'm told that people throwing junk food out of their cars cause animals to come to the side of the raod and get hit more...
sigh...
more vultures HERE





Fix our football

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Slavery Still Exists.

It's called Human Trafficking.
Today the Freedom Alliance (K-State) is hosting a RUN in manhattan city park. I am here with my table full of goodies, and baddies: all sorts of materials that deal with the insane state in the world today where women and children and men too are trafficked: bought and sold, enslaved into sexual torture and more.
       Human trafficking: HERE and our own story HERE

The day is crisp, a perfect fall morning.
First day of autumn.
The runners are all being given bananas and water.

EXODUS CRY --- info@exoduscry.com--- is here with a wonderful table full of books and tshirts. They created the film, NEFARIOUS, which exposes the injustice of human trafficking.
Whether you are aware or not, there is a global-level crisis of human slavery.
 www.nefariousdocumentary.com

It looks like the majority of the runners today are young folk. at least 70 or 80 are around the18- 20-year-old mark.
The students who put this together are running on adrenaline today, not having slept last night.
They are such wonderful "kids"-- focused on helping others and unable to get the horror of this atrocity--ongoing atrocity-- out of their heads.

"If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large..."  william wilberforce

OK they just sent the runners off.
I am going to tidy up my display and have a little lay in the sunshine.


Too much sadness.
 
 
Who is your brother? Are you your sister's keeper??
more here. and HERE and also HERE


 

Friday, September 21, 2012

The End of the Line?

Google will no longer allow certain editing options with this old, original template that i use on my blog.
So,  i either have to pick a new fancy template--- which i have no idea how my three years' worth of posts will appear---or consider ending this blog and starting another.

I have considered for some time starting a new blog. This one is its own little self.
I like it.
But i am changing too.
So you may have noticed i am posting far less than usual.
My readership is at an all time high, but the earlier posts are as popular as the current ones anyway...





Yeah, my diamond shoes are a bit tight.

OXOXO


Sunday, September 16, 2012

Subconscious Oscillations: The Constant Mind

The Art! is up!
From Sept. 17-28, Master of Fine Arts candidates will be presenting recent work in a collective show titled "Subconscious Oscillations: The Constant Mind" in the Chapman Gallery in Willard Hall. 
The show will be a myriad of work featuring contemporary and traditional mediums, including painting, printmaking, photography and sculpture. A closing reception will be from 5-7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28. The show is free and open to the public. These two are not on display, as they are mine from 200 years ago...

Woman Beheads Rapist

...then throws his head at the feet of  "the men sitting in the coffee house on the square. 'Here is the head of the man who played with my honor.'  She threw Gider's head to the ground, the witnesses said. Video from Turkish broadcaster DHA, which arrived on the scene before the authorities, showed Gider's head on the ground."
Story HERE

excerpt:

"A woman in Turkey is awaiting trial after beheading a man who she says raped her repeatedly for months and is the father of her unborn child. Her lawyer says the woman killed the man to protect her honor.
Nevin Yildirim, a 26-year-old mother of two, lives in a small village in southwestern Turkey. She said the man, Nurettin Gider, began the attacks a few days after her husband left in January for a seasonal job in another town, according to a source close to the case.

Yildirim said Gider threatened her with a gun and said he would kill her children, ages 2 and 6, if she made any noise, according to the source. That was the first of repeated rapes over the next eight months, the source said.
At one point, Yildirim said, Gider sneaked into her house while she was asleep and took pictures of her, the source said. One of the pictures shows her pregnant body. Gider threatened to publish the pictures if she didn't obey him, the source said.
In small villages like hers, honor is held above all else, and women carry the burden of honor for their families. Pictures like those would have been devastating for Yildirim and her family and could have posed a danger.

On August 28, at least five months pregnant by a man who she said continued to rape her, Yildirim said she decided she had had enough. Gider was climbing up the back wall of her house. "I knew he was going to rape me again," she said at her preliminary hearing August 30.
She said she grabbed her father-in-law's rifle that was hanging on the wall and she shot him. He tried to draw his gun and she fired again.
"I chased him," she said. "He fell on the ground. He started cussing. I shot his sexual organ this time. He became quiet. I knew he was dead. I then cut his head off."
Witnesses described Yildirim walking into the village square, carrying the man's head by his hair, blood dripping on the ground..."

http://marysbeagooddogblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/talk-about-rape-in-public.html

women and sharia law HERE
http://marysbeagooddogblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/my-tax-dollars-pay-for-egyptian-war-on.html

 

http://marysbeagooddogblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/rape-is-national-and-global-problem_21.html

Government Lies.

Remember when you first learned the government lied to you?  It may have been during vietNam, or before. It may have been during watergate. It is probably more in the smaller everyday things than those news events. 
It may be Now
as those in power do not tell you about the DIRE financial nuclear-sized hole we are in.
Main problem is for some time now, the press has not been on the side of the people, but instead seems to be employed by those who grip power. Without an aggressively inquisitive press, we are done for.
Question: Do you think the government Stopped Lying to you?
Do you think that over the past 2-3 decades the government became MORE ethical, transparent?
 

Friday, September 14, 2012

Mandala 1645 from India

click on pic to enlarge
This gift was given to the museum in 1955
from http://ceireavne.blogspot.com/2012/09/rule-5-written-september-13-2012.html


Rule #5, written September 13, 2012


Could he see us, then might Adam's heart break,
As it did for Abel's death and Cain's lies;
Under his watch, love was a blessed prize,
Not a bloody trophy by force to take.
With wool-covered eyes, we choose not to wake
From contorted dreams full of grisly cries,
Our pains driving love toward wretched demise,
Yet true lovers live for their beloved's sake.
You sons of Adam, live up to his name,
Adore Eve's daughters, for but love makes right,
Salving withering wounds and bruises of shame,
That our souls be winged rather than lame.
    In your hearts and minds, be the death of night,
    For it was to love that to Earth we came.



Eulogy, written April 24, 2012

I remember what it was like
to be eaten alive.
The feeling, the sound,
and the scent
still linger in my thoughts.

Recall he was an amalgam:
each and every tepid doubt,
countless tumultuous hatreds,
the negative mentality
born into one haughty flesh.

The air carried sad sounds:
a starved beast's malicious growl,
metallic teeth gnashing fiercely,
bones both snapping and splintering sickly,
a demure treble—
the spilling of pulp at my feet.

Don't forget about Anxiety,
the insatiate flesh-eater,
or the texture
of his soft neck
beneath constricting fingers.

Run Against Slavery: KSU Freedom Alliance

Join Us??

Half the Sky

Strecker-Nelson Gallery: Animalia Opening

Check out the Fine Fine art at Strecker-Nelson Art Gallery Downtown:

http://www.strecker-nelsongallery.com/





  
 SNG logo w background
 PRESENTS
opening Friday, September 21


Animalia
  


Aaron Morgan Brown  

"Ala Icarus"      31.75x24.5" oil on panel
 Aaron Morgan Brown



Please join us for the:

Opening Reception for the Artists
5:00 - 8:00 PM
Friday, September 21


"Animalia" Featured Exhibitors Include:


Aaron Morgan Brown
Joel Dugan
Connie Ernatt
Barbara Waterman-Peters
Ann Piper
Kathleen Shanahan



     Joel Dugan      
"Emerge"   84x56  oil on canvas    Joel Dugan



BWatermanPeters    
"MWS Animalia (Homage)"    48x60  oil on canvas     
Barbara Waterman-Peters  



 Piper    

"Pug(nacious)" 
16x20  oil on panel  Ann Piper




Shanahan 


"Living Together in Aspen"  
30x40  mixed media
Kathleen Shanahan
     




Ernatt    

"Queen of the Meadow"  13.25x10x12.5  Bronze Assemblage 
Connie Ernatt



Strecker-Nelson Gallery
406 1/2 Poyntz 
Manhattan, KS  
785 537 2099  





































Other Exhibitors Include:

Patrick Duegaw - paintings
Christopher Gulick - mobiles
Audrey Leamon - watercolors
Nora Othic - pastels

 Gulick  
"Birdcage"      28x21x21 copper   Christopher Gulick
  


Leamon  
"Stream Place III"       29.75x37.25   watercolor     Audrey Leamon



Othic     

"Goats and Apples"     27x21   pastel on paper
Nora Othic

Duegaw  


"The Electrical Mayhem with Caulking Gun
and Construction Adhesive' Scene"
 18x47       Ink, Acrylic, Polyurethane on Wallboard
  Patrick Duegaw
  
  

and don't forget to visit our downstairs ground level -



406 Poyntz Ave
Manhattan, Kansas
 Street Level, 1st Floor 

 Recent additions to our display include works by  
Margaret Buie, Jean Terry, Elaine Lierly Jones, Kristin Goering,  
Harland Schuster, Robert Sudlow, Bill McCall, Carol McCall, 
Michael Jilg, Jane Booth, Lois Copt, Becky Johnson,  
Tom Parish, Debra Clemente, Heather Smith Jones,
and David Bahre.   
   

Pop-In to the Pop-Up !

Be a Strecker-Nelson Gallery FACEBOOK Fan

Strecker-Nelson Gallery Facebook Fan page    Sign up to be a Strecker-Nelson Gallery Fan on FACEBOOK.




Strecker-Nelson Gallery
406 1/2 Poyntz
Manhattan, KS 66502
785 537 2099 


Thursday, September 13, 2012

Justice, Rape, and Insanity

The Injustice around this crime is Head-exploding. i could print 3 stories a day but i only post one a month for our sanity.

 http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Montana-man-gets-90-days-in-jail-for-raping-2-3831502.php


"MISSOULA, Mont. - A Missoula man who pleaded guilty to raping two 14-year-old girls when he was 21 has been sentenced to 90 days in the Missoula County jail.

The Missoulian reports District Judge John Larson gave 23-year-old Shawn Lowe a 20-year prison sentence Thursday and suspended all but 90 days, which he said Lowe could serve in the county jail.

Lowe pleaded guilty in June to sexual intercourse without consent for assaults on the girls between December 2009 and August 2010. Prosecutors alleged Lowe raped one of the girls after she'd consumed 20 ounces of malt liquor and forced sex on the other girl, who he had been dating.

Larson designated Lowe as a tier 1 sex offender, meaning he is at low risk of repeating the offense.


Flint Hills Discovery Center

Manhattan, Kansas is in the Flint Hills and the home of the Flint Hills Discovery Center. I have more to post about it, but here is a great mural as you enter:


Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth


Architects and Engineers examine/explain with some clarity the known/visible evidence of how the towers fell on 9/11.
"Since a million lives have been lost" in afghanistan and iraq, and the controls imposed--like those of the homegrown terrorism act, the military commissions act, the patiot act-- are being consolidated--
we should be sure of our evidence.
This is 10 short minutes. It seemed simple and clear to me.
I would appreciate it if anyone who likes science, common sense, or detective stories can watch it and tell me what you think?
Thanks for the time.



(if you can easily debunk it, have a look at this 5 minute summary of the bigger picture)


Pondering Today


leap by brian doyle
A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped.
Jennifer Brickhouse saw them falling, hand in hand.
Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows. They struck the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist in the air.
The mayor reported the mist.
A kindergarten boy who saw people falling in flames told his teacher that the birds were on fire. She ran with him on her shoulders out of the ashes.
Tiffany Keeling saw fireballs falling that she later realized were people. Jennifer Griffin saw people falling and wept as she told the story. Niko Winstral saw people free-falling backwards with their hands out, like they were parachuting. Joe Duncan on his roof on Duane Street looked up and saw people jumping. Henry Weintraub saw people "leaping as they flew out." John Carson saw six people fall, "falling over themselves, falling, they were somersaulting." Steve Miller saw people jumping from a thousand feet in the air. Kirk Kjeldsen saw people flailing on the way down, people lining up and jumping, "too many people falling." Jane Tedder saw people leaping and the sight haunts her at night. Steve Tamas counted fourteen people jumping and then he stopped counting. Stuart DeHann saw one woman's dress billowing as she fell, and he saw a shirtless man falling end over end, and he too saw the couple leaping hand in hand.



Several pedestrians were killed by people falling from the sky. A fireman was killed by a body falling from the sky.
But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the window holding hands.
I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.
Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.
No one knows who they were: husband and wife, lovers, dear friends, colleagues, strangers thrown together at the window there at the lip of hell. Maybe they didn't even reach for each other consciously, maybe it was instinctive, a reflex, as they both decided at the same time to take two running steps and jump out the shattered window, but they did reach for each other, and they held on tight, and leaped, and fell endlessly into the smoking canyon, at two hundred miles an hour, falling so far and so fast that they would have blacked out before they hit the pavement near Liberty Street so hard that there was a pink mist in the air.
Jennifer Brickhouse saw them holding hands, and Stuart DeHann saw them holding hands, and I hold onto that.
 Brian Doyle
Listen to Paul Simon sing "Sounds of Silence"


 


You take my hand,
I'll take your hand
Together we may get away
This much madness
is too much sorrow
It's impossible
to make it today.


It's a rare repost, but such as it is:
waiting for God

Memorial at Shanksville Flight 93:
  
flight 93


Engineering Ground Zero:  film
 about the construction of the memorial at the
footprint of the two towers. Watch on Nova HERE.

In the Heart of My Home has a discussion of children's books about 9/11...e.g., "The book is a gentle re-telling. Our children are surrounded every day by references to the horror that forever changed our world. They will ask what "9/11" means and they surely deserve to be answered. But, they should not see that footage and they should not be bombarded with remembrances more appropriate for grief-stricken, terrorized adults. Childhood is all too brief. Very soon, they will be old enough to learn the details of the day. For now, this book tells them a story  of hope amidst the charred ruins. A story we all need to hear..."






A worker finds a child's toy in the rubble. A photographer's film curls with heat that day. It seems to me it is the little things people have remembered.
It is hard to say what a decade is suppose to feel like; to a 40 year-old a fifth of one's life passes in the next ten years; for a ten-year old, half of their life has been shadowed by a weird reality-- that incomprehensible hatred is planning in the dark.
How shall i respond to evil?
Political use of the tragedy or the
strange fanaticism of those who celebrated the death of innocent humans i might discuss later. For me now, it is finding small stories of families, and how lives changed in wonderful ways later, as the searing pain lessened. It is clear the anniversary has provoked many to re-examine the event, such as this young man's thoughts HERE.



there are a number of sites which have posted timelines and collected the startling images:




For me, the most heartwrenching images are those
of victims who jumped from the towers. Below is a video in tribute to them. (ponder and learn about yourself...)
Reaction to these victims was prominent in the recently released Frontline special about
Faith, God, and 9/11 (here) -[excerpts at end of post]*.
One commenter in the epilogue of this program was deeply moved by the couple who jumped from the burning tower together.
Hand in hand they jumped, and the eloquent meanings he ascribed to the act-- that they were not alone at the end, that in the face of pain and death they found each other, clasped hands, a last act of love in the face of hate--well,  although it is very hard, and has
 some stunning information-- read his short essay HERE.
September 11 had a deep impact on me. I was traveling on the East Coast at the time. I presume we all have our transformative inner experiences from this event; the anniversary has rekindled some quiet embers as it may have for you as well.
the pentagon on 911




more image collections:
http://youtu.be/z_eefRW2AMI
http://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/gallery/
http://www.september11news.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHTzb5w37Bk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAk4byX1FOw&feature=related

It is impossible to describe the consequenses.
The sadness years down the road.


As the anniversary approaches, all the media have begun tributes.
e.g., from CBS: "Never-before-seen 9/11 photos on display in NYC:
Former police detective John Botte joined a special security detail at ground zero with his camera on Sept. 11, 2001. Botte speaks about his photos, which are now on exhibit at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in NYC."  Read more of this story: HERE



More pictures and summary  HERE


*  "...yet even the non-God image can be smashed, because the outpouring of kindness, simple acts of kindness, challenged a lot of people who thought you can't really believe in anything. They felt caught up in something that was bigger than just their neighbor or themselves doing an act of kindness. They really glimpsed something different. So you could have your image of all-good God smashed or you could have your image of there being no God smashed. The door is flung open. Then the question is, can one go through the door?
Anybody who tried to go on with a religious life will sooner or later come to a point where all their pictures of God are smashed, because they're too tiny. ... This has been written about by St. John of the Cross as "the dark night of the soul." It's been written about by Terese of Avila as "the period of aridity." ... It's typical for the religious life, to be plunged into not knowing. ...
One of the hardest things about the
Sept. 11 attacks is that people were just shoved into a place of spiritual crisis.
They're suddenly at the head of the line: Do you believe in anything? Do you care about anything? Where does meaning come from? Is the abyss of love stronger than the abyss of death? Is there any resurrection? How can I bear to even imagine being trapped in that building? I cannot go down. Will I be burned up? Will I be hurled out the window? Will I jump out the window? How can the person I love -- who was incinerated, jumped out a window, thrown out a window, crashed in a plane -- how can their last minutes be redeemed? How can I bear what they've suffered? Was God with them? Was God not with them? ..."  Read more: here
and
 another
"...A third possible reason
that God is letting evil occur... God is not stopping people from exercising their free will. Think about this: If someone said that God should stop evil and suffering, then should God then stop all evil and suffering? If God only stopped some of it, then we would still be asking the same question of why it exists.
So, if we want God to stop evil and suffering, then God must stop all of it. We have no problem with this when it means stopping a catastrophe, or a murder, or a rape.
But what about when someone thinks of something evil? Evil is destructive whether it is acted out or not. Hatred and bigotry in someone’s heart is wrong. If it is wrong, and if God is to stop all evil, then God must stop that person from thinking his own thoughts.
To do that, God must remove his freedom of thought. Furthermore, which person on the earth has not thought something evil?
 God would be required, then, to stop all people from exercising their free will. This is something God has chosen not to do. Therefore, we could say that one of the reasons that God permits evil and suffering is because of man’s free will.
 Fourth, it is quite possible that God uses the suffering to do good..."


Assouline Publishing commemorates the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with Art for Heart: Remember 9/11. The book is a collection of drawings by young children; proceeds donated to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.




*  "A San Francisco husband slept through his wife's call from the World Trade Center. The tower was burning around her, and she was speaking on her mobile phone. She left her last message to him on the answering machine. A TV station played it to us, while it showed the husband standing there listening. Somehow, he was able to bear hearing it again. We heard her tell him through her sobbing that there was no escape for her. The building was on fire and there was no way down the stairs. She was calling to say goodbye. There was really only one thing for her to say, those three words that all the terrible art, the worst pop songs and movies, the most seductive lies, can somehow never cheapen. I love you.
She said it over and again before the line went dead. And that is what they were all saying down their phones, from the hijacked planes and the burning towers. There is only love, and then oblivion. Love was all they had to set against the hatred of their murderers."