Fall 2007
"I believe with all my heart in the power of Art to save lives." 
- Bill Bartlett
The Imagine Project
" ...don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows..." 
-Bob Dylan
" It is only with the heart that one can see rightly ; what is essential is invisible to the eye." 
-Antoine De Saint-Exupery, 
The Little Prince.
" Love thine enemies because they are the instruments of your destiny." 
-Joseph Campbell
" Nothing in War is moral. War itself is immoral." 
-Paul Tibbets 
(Enola Gay)

The Promise
23" x 23"
Gouache / oil on panel
2007

Truth be told. I am doing better. Thank you everyone. Had a full rich Summer, from Maine and marriage, to the Farnsworth show, to New York City and the miracle of love and prayer and modern medicine, to our honeymoon in Paris, to Spain and back. We feel blessed and appreciative. 
After my recent experiences, I’ve decided two things. Firstly, I’m going to “say whatever I want to say”; secondly, I’m going to be a “shameless do-gooder”. 
In the spirit of my first new directive I’d like to proclaim... that France is fantastic! OK so you can’t get a taxi. Still, the French are aware, civilized and evolved. I felt embarrassed upon our return to America. We stood in the new terminal at JFK airport , and watched overweight Americans staring blankly at the television news monitors blaring U.S. propoganda. The fact that CNN has a monopoly on TV monitors in airports around the country and has plans for more is all the proof we need that big brother is alive and well in America. Our television culture robs us of our right to think freely and independently. We are told what to think by Fox and CNN. Why do we put up with it? Reality is happening right outside the window. The sky, the clouds, the sunlight, the day. I am not proposing that we stick our heads in the sand and not pay attention to the problems in the world. It is a wild, beautiful world. SO, In any given city, one sad man breaks a law and harms someone, a million happy families go to work and school and obey the laws and are somewhat aware of how their actions effect others. One man breaks the law and all the families watch on the evening news on TV and live in fear. Our government, lies to us and invades a country half-way around the world for oil or whatever. They ask us to live in fear. Why do we have to be subjected to their version of reality as it blares from TVs in homes and at every airport gate? Airportgate. Why are all of those TV screens force fed upon us in every airport. I think that it is a scandal and needs to be investigated and listed alongside the other 200 plus scandals of the current administration. We can not continue to pretend that the Bush administration has any altruistic motives or represents the will of the American people. This administration has proven time and again at best to be incompetent and misdirected. At worst, it is malicious and involved with concious acts of deception and is decimating democracy daily. We are complicite if we don’t take a stand against it. I think that any politician who continues to support the “war” deserves to be cast out. Time is proving that our invasion of Iraq has done nothing to help the Iraqi people and in no way makes us safer at home. If anything, the invasion is a roadmap to prolonged strife. With every civilian death, we create more enemies. We are spoonfed the world through a lens of capitalism and imperialism, and we continue to follow the dictates of the administration’s folly. We are selfish and greedy and filled with fear of losing what we’ve ammased. It is this very fear that will be our undoing. In a 1964 speech before the UN, Che Guevara said, “ The bestiality of Hitler’s armies is like the bestiality of North American imperialism.”  When will we wake up?
On a recent trip back to Philly, Betsy and I were riding with a friend in a car and heard the song “Wake Up Everybody” from 1972 by Teddy Pendergrass with Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes. I remember Jimmy Carter used the song in 1976 when he ran for president. Carter was governor of Georgia when I was growing up there; and I lived around the corner from Pendergrass outside Philadelphia for many years. As we drove down East River Drive listening to the song on the oldies station, I had one of those numinous moments in which my whole life sort of folded in on itself and an overwhelming sense joy and wonder mixed with a sense of sadness and loss for things past which will never be regained. 
"Wake up everybody no more sleepin in bed
No more backward thinkin, time for thinkin ahead
The world has changed so very much
From what it used to be so
there is so much hatred war an' poverty
Wake up all the teachers time to teach a new way
Maybe then they'll listen to whatcha have to say
Cause they're the ones who's coming up and the world is in their hands
when you teach the children teach em the very best you can.

The world won't get no better if we just let it be
The world won't get no better, we gotta change it yeah, just you and me.

Wake up all the doctors make the ol' people well
They're the ones who suffer an' who catch all the hell
But they don't have so very long before the Judgement Day
So won'tcha make them happy before they pass away.
Wake up all the builders time to build a new land
I know we can do it if we all lend a hand
The only thing we have to do is put it in our mind
Surely things will work out they do it every time.


The world won't get no better if we just let it be
The world won't get no better, we gotta change the world just you and me.

Come on preachers start preaching the truth
Come on politicians stop lyin'
Come on businessmen stop cheatin'
and Stop the warin'

Everybody, every race, creed, and colour,
Everybody, we need each other
Teach the children, teach the babies"...

Teddy Pendergrass
Peace, 
Bo 
Vashon Island, Washington