Our Troubles Can Instantly Seem Small

Please read this excellent story by Kristoff in The New York Times on the condition of women around the world.

www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?em

Enjoying the Challenge of Making Art

I'm struggling with the creation of a collograph print with color that will come from chine colle applications. In that process you apply various colored papers of appropriate weight -- instead of ink -- to provide color and texture to the image. The Totem art on this blog was created that way. This is still another approach to a less toxic printmaking technique and also quite satisfying. But it's still quite exacting and not easy to make multiples....I'm working at it and enjoying the challenge. I've created a mask that will cover one part of the image so I can apply background color without impacting the central image. Then the various papers will be positioned so that each adheres to the print paper. Here's the challenge: what kind of print paper will do best? What color ink will function with the papers? I'll post it when it's to my liking.

What is Americans for Prosperity?

Check out the Wikipedia entry for this organization. But here are some highlights from the Wikipedia entry for your information. They are the group organizing the town hall health care reform protests.

"In 2003, an internal rift between Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) and its affiliated Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation led to a split in which the latter organization was renamed as a separate organization, called Americans for Prosperity."

"Its foundation's chair and founder is David Koch of Koch Industries, which runs oil refining and pipeline companies. Another Americans for Prosperity Foundation board member is Richard Fink, a Koch executive who serves as a director of the refining subsidiary. Fink helps control AFP's purse strings. He is president of the Koch-affiliated Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which gave AFP's foundation $2.2 million from 2005-06, according to the Foundation Center."

"On February 27, 2009, in collaboration with others, the organization sponsored a Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas and Washington, D.C. Tea party protest."

"Americans for Prosperity is led by Tim Phillips, who was a former partner with Ralph Reed's Century Strategies. That organization became well-known when it was revealed in a Senate investigation that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff was laundering money through Century Strategies and Americans for Tax Reform to oppose legislation that his Indian tribe clients wanted to defeat."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Prosperity

These are Very Scary People

My husband and I attended Senator Specter's meeting which has gotten wide coverage. It was a verrrrylong drive from Greencastle to Lebanon PA. 2 hours! When we got there we were told that people who arrived as early as 7 a.m. could not get in and of course we didn't either. We were part of a group of about 120 advocates for health care reform. (I don't know how many of our kind were inside). There were a couple of hundred opponents ... many of whom had come in this very fancy bus. They were armed with preprinted signs, they had chant leaders. It was very antiObama (one lady thought it was part of getting an antiObama group started to defeat Obama in the next election.) I think that's so! There were anti abortion people, people who thought babies would be killed and old people euthanized. There was so much misinformation it was stunning.

One young man in his twenties told us he had no health care but didn't worry about his health because God was taking care of his well being. I'd bet it's the emergency room, not the church to where he'll go if he's injured or sick. It was discouraging, until we left the demonstration and met a member of Specter's staff on the street who thanked us for coming, said Specter was supporting the public option.

GRRRRRRR!

Can't get over the "brown shirt" methods of the Republicans and the right wing naysayers. I would bet that half of them need health insurance or are in danger of losing their health insurance or might any day find out that their costs are rising. But they think it's all right to break up meetings, shout people down, and even hang members of Congress in effigy. Is this the level of civil discourse that they want to teach their children? Is this the kind of community they want to live in? I notice that the quality of the online responses printed in our local paper is at about the same level: nonsensical connections, wild ideas, foolish name calling. Anything proposed by Obama or the Democrats is "socialism". Their call is to resist but never to put forth ideas that could solve the problem. Fact is: our nation is the only western industrialized nation where people go into bankruptcy because their medical bills break them.