it's okay to lighten up now....

Beautiful flowers I saw at the Art City Austin event on April 25-26, 2009 in Austin, Texas.  Saw many, many more tents with lots of beautiful and dynamic work -- a huge variety of work, including crafts and metalwork.  

Austin is growing as an arts center as well as music center, and I'm really glad about that (because I make art and love art).

From National Geographic's Gallery: One World, One Tribe

I just thought this piece was an amazing story, a bit of real history that lept out at me.  And such a contrast to our rich democratic American society.

"To escape the firing squad, Gulag prisoners would get the portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin tattooed on their chest. Who would have dared shoot at one of Socialism's heroes? Gennadi Vassilievich had done his military service in the '50s. He had traveled all the way to the Chinese border under Stalin's order. After the collapse of Socialist ideology, Gennadi added a cross.

On the Russian bank of the Amur River, I observed him, staggering along, lost and dressed in rags. Through his half-opened shirt, I saw his tattoo. I came near him and greeted him. I detected fear in his eyes. I introduced myself and asked his name. With difficulty, as though he were scouring his memory, he announced, 'Gennadi Vassilievich,' and started to weep. Then he apologized. "You know, nobody has asked me my name in ten years. Nobody. Ever since the day I was thrown out of the plant where I worked, out of the house I lived in. I have roamed the streets for ten years.'"

Photograph and caption by Reza

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photos/reza-one-world/gulag-prisoner.html

cell phone angst and Star Trek

Okay, it's over. My digital detox "fast" which was really a modified diet of select emails to a few family members and a few friends, plus some indeterminate web surfing in lulls in the work day (horrors!) -- is over.

I've cancelled my internet account at home (my router quit and I seized the opportunity) and tried to turn my new cell phone into the ultimate social device for solace and new "connections." Ha, ha. That's a laugh. Ten million micro-hair-pulling-seconds later, after something approximating an eternity of trying to learn the menus on that cell phone, I have given up and given the Devil his due. Maybe he's the one who designed it (!!)

With that said, the cell phone looks beautiful, anyway. Like one of those Star Trek communicators. It got your attention, right? ... when Captain Kirk flipped it open and spoke into it with bold authority. That's how I imagined I looked when I flipped it open in public and... that's where it stopped. It took me so long to figure out which buttons to press to make a call. And forget it if you're trying to look up your messages or anything like real data on the phone. I don't know how many times I've pushed buttons and followed menus and toggled and back-tracked trying to find my way out... and felt like I was caught in a trap of evil design. Did I say the Devil? I mean the Evil Overlord. You know, @T&T (which is really a front for the largest religious cult in the world... and I could go on and on about this, but really, who would listen?) ..... no, I've already gone back (at least in my head) to the "good old days" of picking up my telephone handset and unthinkingly? blindly? punching in the number and hearing it ring and waiting for someone to pick up. Is there anyone out there? Anyone at all?