“The Zuckerberg admission has much larger implications than anyone has yet admitted. It provides a first official and confirmed peek into the greatest scandal of our times, the global silencing of critics at all levels of society, resulting in manipulating election outcomes, a distorted public culture, the marginalization of dissent, the overriding of all free speech protections, and gaslighting as a way of life of government in our times.”
Archive for the ‘Words’ Category
Tuesday, July 30th, 2024
“The evidence was in plain sight. The question for historians is ‘Who knew the fix was in?’ And equally importantly, how could these powers behind the throne unseat Joe Biden the candidate and still leave the nation in the hands of Joe Biden the president for another six months?
That dangerous proposition is why we can’t wait for history’s verdict, and why it is imperative for journalists to dig down immediately and unravel the plot that sought to undermine not just Biden but America’s democracy and left us weaker and wounded on the international stage.
You can bet the mainstream media won’t take up the challenge. They have bought wholeheartedly into the narrative that Biden is an American hero for resigning his campaign, so it will depend on a fearless outsider like Sy Hersh or Bari Weiss to get to the truth. Let’s hope they get to it before Election Day.”— Frank Miele
Thursday, July 11th, 2024
“So, for multiple reasons, Murthy is probably the worst speech decision in American history. In the face of the most sweeping censorship in American history, the decision fails to recognize either the realities of the censorship or the constitutional barriers to it. In practical terms, the decision invites continuing federal censorship on social media platforms. It thereby nearly guarantees that yet another election cycle will be compromised by government censorship and condemns a hitherto free society to the specter of mental servitude.”
— Philip Hamburger
Monday, April 29th, 2024
“For each thorn, there’s a rosebud… For each twilight – a dawn… For each trial – the strength to carry on, For each storm cloud — a rainbow… For each shadow — the sun… For each parting — sweet memories when sorrow is done.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wednesday, December 13th, 2023
“Indeed, it is perhaps the notion of possessiveness that characterizes the fundamental problem of the human being. True freedom involves a kind of self-dispossession, and a letting go of the attachment to the ‘mine-ness’ of one’s actions… We need to be ‘still,’ to empty ourselves of worldly distractions and illusory attachments, to be able to ‘hear’ and come to understand the Word that is eternally communicated by the Father in the ground. In this sense, it is not as though God is absent in us and then becomes present due to some action of ours that we undertake of our own initiative. Rather, for Eckhart, our task as human beings is to come to be able to listen to — and thereby apprehend — the Word that is eternally and always poured out into us.”
— Amber Griffioen, on Meister Eckhart, 5/1/23
Saturday, August 12th, 2023
“We know that for most healthy people, Omicron is nothing more than a cold and for the young is usually a very mild cold and often asymptomatic. To use a gene-therapy-technology-based vaccine with a high-risk profile and uncharacterized long-term effects against a mild variant is the height of scientific ignorance and arrogance. It is time to stop.”
— Robert W Malone MD MS, Lies My Gov’t Told Me: And the Better Future Coming (Children’s Health Defense)
Tuesday, March 28th, 2023
“Many people (and physicians) rely on the CDC and NIH to guide them in healthcare and wellness decisions. It is way past time that these organizations step up to the plate and do their job and stop relying on the unscientific biases of highly influential bureaucrats. That job being to protect the health of the public. Not advancing the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and its shareholders.”
— Robert W Malone MD
Lies My Gov’t Told Me: And the Better Future Coming
Sunday, August 21st, 2022
“The buffoonish January 6 riot at the Capitol is often cited as proof of the insurrectionary right-wing movement. But the one-day riotous embarrassment never turned up any armed revolutionaries or plots to overthrow the government. In contrast, Antifa and BLM rioters were no one-day buffoons. They systematically organized a series of destructive and deadly riots across the country for over four months in the summer of 2020. The lethal toll of their work was over 35 dead, $2 billion in property losses, and hundreds of police officers injured.”
— Victor Davis Hanson, 8/19/22
March Ex(clusion) — thirty-first day
Thursday, March 31st, 2022“What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery!”
– Mark Twain
March is going out like a lion — no big surprise there. Meanwhile, the March Ex(clusion) is declared OVER. It has unwrapped itself in a way that I never could have predicted. This whole thing originated as a time-management experiment designed to re-calibrate a design practice that I didn’t realize was fated for demise, in transition to my true calling. 
I’m an artist now, belatedly but wholeheartedly, as I dreamed I’d be since childhood. The March ritual has become an internal, near-sacramental custom — more difficult to describe than ever. But that’s not the point of it. The 31-day string of blog posts is just a way to modulate my attention span and, perhaps, to crystalize as relics a few word clusters with the potential to re-animate various worthy insights at a later time. Would that I had the talent and capacity to write down the many intangible illuminations that peppered this month! That’s not my gift, any more than the ability to devise winning basketball plays under pressure (like my godfather) or to compose organ music in solitude (like my grandfather). Spring (who has sprung) points me to the open air. I am better prepared to answer her summons with another March under my belt (and, before long, to enter my eighth decade). April, here I come.
Today’s sight bite— His severe yet compassionate visage, with the ever-present verdigris patina, —c-l-i-c-k— that man on the Danville obelisk, seeming to acknowledge and endorse the success of a ritual that I’ve conducted in some guise for 16 years.
March Ex(clusion) — twenty-ninth day
Tuesday, March 29th, 2022“Nothing, indeed, is so characteristic of Tolstoy as the painstaking attention he paid to his works. Even at a time when he was beginning to regard art as an evil, he remained the great artist who was never satisfied and in his search of unattainable perfection did not hesitate to criticize the best of his works.”
– David Magarshack
Sometimes I just want to hit my forehead against the double-brick facade of the Town House. After spending many hours over several days writing and refining a comprehensive artist statement for a major competition (with plenty of back-and-forth collaborative tension between Dana and me), I discover that a what I’d thought was a limitation of 5000 words was instead an clearly specified 5000-character maximum. AAUGHH!
Today’s sight bite— The tiny brown bird with speckled breast and long tail, fidgeting on my newly clipped bush.—c-l-i-c-k— An edgy wren, lady thrush, or juvenile sparrow? My ignorance is disclosed…
March Ex(clusion) — twenty-fourth day
Thursday, March 24th, 2022“He was a Dutch mouse, and lived in a windmill with a little girl named Marsha. The windmill belonged to Marsha’s father and mother, but Mr. Poof belonged to Marsha.”
– Rena & John Jacob Niles, Mr. Poof’s Discovery
I’m marveling at Wesley’s masterful graphic illustrations for Larkspur’s newest title. There was a time when Gray was “holding auditions” for a backup engraver. I’m proud to say that I was someone who got a tryout, but Joanne earned the gig (and soundly, too). If Bates can bang out 18 wood blocks for one tale, surely I can create nearly that quantity of collage miniatures by June. (Does that guy over there walking toward April have a starting gun in his hand?)
Today’s sight bite— The image of a mouse, printed with superb artisanship, —c-l-i-c-k— emblematic of a literary partnership that I’ve had the great fortune to observe with intimacy, awe, and gratitude.
March Ex(clusion) — twenty-third day
Thursday, March 24th, 2022“To plead the possibility of the merely possible, losing in the process all right to insist on the desirability of what would be better, is finally to lose even the possible.”
– Wendell Berry, That Distant Land
Spent most of the day on the Hoover job, and I realize how rusty my graphic production skills have become. I’m also fully aware of my meager attainment in the starting-vegetable-plants department, compared to how James has perfected his pre-garden methods. Faced with big decisions about my deadline for the Berea Learnshops (which were canceled two summers in a row because of infection concerns) and the Al Smith application. If you think about it, life is a four-period ball game. After coming of age, I spent the second quarter as a design professional and the third making a transition to collage artist. Well, I’m getting closer to entering the fourth quarter. Shouldn’t I have figured out by now what the essence of that will be about? (It has a heckuva lot more to do with the natural world. I know that much.)
Today’s sight bite— n o n e
March Ex(clusion) — twenty-first day
Monday, March 21st, 2022“The universe rewards hustle.”
– Joe Rogan
Spring done sprang out there, but Dana and I had to spend most of our day putting the finishing touches on “Collage as: Painting in Papers,” my article submission for Contemporary Collage Magazine. Writing something decent always requires that I ask for her help. Mediocre is all I can manage on my own. As I mentioned to Marty, nothing at all might result from this, or it could be one of the most important things ever to come my way as an artist (probably something in between those two extremes). Man, did I want to be outside today! I’ll save that anticipation for tomorrow.
Today’s sight bite— n o n e
March Ex(clusion) — twelfth day
Saturday, March 12th, 2022“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”
– James Madison, Federalist Papers
It’s getting more difficult to navigate a course of balanced influences, now that everything is so charged with persuasion, hyper-slant, duplicitous rhetoric, or outright psychological manipulation. I’m reading the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book by Thomas E. Ricks about the educational context of four key Framers (not inaccurately sized up as a somewhat revisionist take on how literary writings of the classical world shaped the men who invented the American Republic). I’m monitoring the daily editorial media of populist partisans, as well as alternative analysis (from Tyler Durden to Jimmy Dore). I skim the top stories put out by the Corporate Media. I partake of regular Peterson and Rogan doses. I follow The Marginalian. I watched Oliver Stone’s informative documentary called Ukraine on Fire. Trying to avoid becoming part of somebody’s self-serving agenda can feel like a full-time job!
Today’s sight bite— n o n e
March Ex(clusion) — third day
Thursday, March 3rd, 2022“A man is never such an egoist as at moments of spiritual exaltation, when it seems to him that there is nothing in the world more splendid and fascinating than himself.”
– Leo Tolstoy, The Cossacks
Last night’s documentary provides a burst of self assurance for today’s outlook. I decided to create a miniature for the local Tiny Art fundraiser — a “prime-the-pumper” that fits my current momentum in the studio, with no lasting significance intended. On the other hand, after having seen my show in Lexington, Danny handed a copy of The Cloud of Unknowing to me, out the window of his truck. “This is going to sound over the top, but it’s just the way it is,” he said, a whiff of diesel exhaust hanging in the unseasonably warm air. “I’m loaning this book to you for ten years.” Something suggests that it may be one of the most important things to happen during this interval of my life.
Today’s sight bite— Luminous, high-altitude popcorn clouds sailing above vessels of deep purple-gray, —c-l-i-c-k— as Apollo’s blazing chariot plunges beyond the edge of the world.
Monday, January 31st, 2022
“The term ‘disinformation’ is reserved for those who question liberal pieties, not for those devoted to affirming them. That is the real functional definition of “disinformation” and of its little cousin, ‘misinformation.’ It is not possible to disagree with liberals or see the world differently than they see it. The only two choices are unthinking submission to their dogma or acting as an agent of “disinformation.’ Dissent does not exist to them; any deviation from their worldview is inherently dangerous — to the point that it cannot be heard… Leading Democratic Party politicians have repeatedly subpoenaed social media executives and explicitly threatened them with legal and regulatory reprisals if they do not censor more aggressively — a likely violation of the First Amendment given decades of case law ruling that state officials are barred from coercing private actors to censor for them, in ways the Constitution prohibits them from doing directly.”
— Glenn Greenwald, 1/29/22
Friday, January 8th, 2021
“What China actually is (and where the USA is headed or has already arrived) is a form of oligarchic fascism. The capitalist market’s fine as long as it’s my capitalistic market and you’re a member of my party. Communist Party, Democratic Party, what difference does it make? As long as it’s one party and we’re in charge.”
— Roger L Simon, The Epoch Times
Sunday, December 20th, 2020
“I of course am thoroughly convinced of the value of self-knowledge, but is there any use in recommending such insight, when the wisest of men throughout the ages have preached the need of it without success?”
— C G Jung, 1949
Thursday, December 10th, 2020
“Never again will a single story be told as though it were the only one.”
Wednesday, August 5th, 2020
“To straddle that fundamental duality is to be balanced: to have one foot firmly planted in order and security, and the other in chaos, possibility, growth and adventure. When life suddenly reveals itself as intense, gripping and meaningful; when time passes and you’re so engrossed in what you’re doing you don’t notice — it is there and then that you are located precisely on the border between order and chaos… Order is not enough. You can’t just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned. Nonetheless, chaos can be too much. You can’t long tolerate being swamped and overwhelmed beyond your capacity to cope, while you are learning what you still need to know. Thus, you need to place one foot in what you have mastered and understood and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering. Then you have positioned yourself where the terror of existence is under control and you are secure, but where you are also alert and engaged. That is where there is something new to master and some way that you can be improved. That is where meaning is to be found.”
— Jordan B Peterson — 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos