Checkin' In
I have to get busy and spend some time this coming weekend scanning some more art pieces to post. Once I quit work I'll be able to spend a little more time on updates.
In the meantime, I'm worn totally out with weeks and weeks about the Pope and poor Terri Shiavo. The media is such an opportunist and exploitation is their operative word. They seem to know no boundaries in their greed for publicity and they shamlessly heap humiliation on others in their quest for viewers.
I was sad about Johnny Cochran. Some in my acquaintance hated him because he helped get O.J. acquitted. But Cochran did for O.J. what he did for the common man. He did not have a prosecutorial mind and I don't apologize for admiring a good defense lawyer. I would far rather a guilty man go free than for an innocent man be sent to prison or death for crimes he did not commit.
Randolph Dial (sic) was captured last week with the woman he'd run away with 10 years ago from Oklahoma State Reformatory...the assistant warden's wife. They said he kidnapped her and, upon his capture, he swore they'd slept in separate bedrooms for 10 years. Har. I was sorry they caught them. They were very much in love and for 10 years had lived a quiet and simple life, working on chicken farms to make a living. Now they're both going back to their own personal prison...he to the Oklahoma "Walls" in McAlester, and she back to her miserable life as the wife of a man she didn't love. I knew the head warden when he was at OSR and he was a wonderful, caring man who lost his job, partly because of this escape. Oklahoma Corrections was humiliated...still is...and the anger and lust for vengeance in a situation like this is all-consuming. Even the FBI is helping Oklahoma Corrections save face by saying they believe the woman had been held captive for 10 years. What a crock. And of course her husband is happily reunited with his "kidnapped" wife because his over-sized ego could never admitted she ran away with another man...worse yet, a man he had held prisoner.
My brother arrived in Iraq to spend the next year at a base 25 miles west of Baghdad. He's there, as so many civilians are, because it's good money for a year. The day after he arrived, the news announced another American civilian had been kidnapped 10 miles north of Baghdad. I said all I could say to change his mind about going, to no avail. I think, in addition to things going on in his personal life, this speaks loud and clear to the issue of the state of our economy and the growing desperation that consumes more and more of us in the working class. There is something terribly wrong when a man will put his life on the line and take a year or more out of his and his family's life because he can't make it on a regular, full time salary here in the States. The working class is getting poorer and poorer, while the ruling class gets richer and richer. The U.S. had more billionaires this year than ever before, according to a recent Forbes publication. Get this...there were FIVE Waltons who each had 18.5 BILLION dollars from the Walmart enterprises. How is it that so few have so very much, while the huge masses of working people who do the work for the Waltons and others like them, don't even have adequate health care and have to go to a war zone for a better salary?
Okay. I've had my rants for the day I guess, though I didn't even start on homophobia, religious zealots, and police brutality. Hopefully you didn't even bother to read this because it should be for my ears only. : ) I'll have some art for you next time.
In the meantime, I'm worn totally out with weeks and weeks about the Pope and poor Terri Shiavo. The media is such an opportunist and exploitation is their operative word. They seem to know no boundaries in their greed for publicity and they shamlessly heap humiliation on others in their quest for viewers.
I was sad about Johnny Cochran. Some in my acquaintance hated him because he helped get O.J. acquitted. But Cochran did for O.J. what he did for the common man. He did not have a prosecutorial mind and I don't apologize for admiring a good defense lawyer. I would far rather a guilty man go free than for an innocent man be sent to prison or death for crimes he did not commit.
Randolph Dial (sic) was captured last week with the woman he'd run away with 10 years ago from Oklahoma State Reformatory...the assistant warden's wife. They said he kidnapped her and, upon his capture, he swore they'd slept in separate bedrooms for 10 years. Har. I was sorry they caught them. They were very much in love and for 10 years had lived a quiet and simple life, working on chicken farms to make a living. Now they're both going back to their own personal prison...he to the Oklahoma "Walls" in McAlester, and she back to her miserable life as the wife of a man she didn't love. I knew the head warden when he was at OSR and he was a wonderful, caring man who lost his job, partly because of this escape. Oklahoma Corrections was humiliated...still is...and the anger and lust for vengeance in a situation like this is all-consuming. Even the FBI is helping Oklahoma Corrections save face by saying they believe the woman had been held captive for 10 years. What a crock. And of course her husband is happily reunited with his "kidnapped" wife because his over-sized ego could never admitted she ran away with another man...worse yet, a man he had held prisoner.
My brother arrived in Iraq to spend the next year at a base 25 miles west of Baghdad. He's there, as so many civilians are, because it's good money for a year. The day after he arrived, the news announced another American civilian had been kidnapped 10 miles north of Baghdad. I said all I could say to change his mind about going, to no avail. I think, in addition to things going on in his personal life, this speaks loud and clear to the issue of the state of our economy and the growing desperation that consumes more and more of us in the working class. There is something terribly wrong when a man will put his life on the line and take a year or more out of his and his family's life because he can't make it on a regular, full time salary here in the States. The working class is getting poorer and poorer, while the ruling class gets richer and richer. The U.S. had more billionaires this year than ever before, according to a recent Forbes publication. Get this...there were FIVE Waltons who each had 18.5 BILLION dollars from the Walmart enterprises. How is it that so few have so very much, while the huge masses of working people who do the work for the Waltons and others like them, don't even have adequate health care and have to go to a war zone for a better salary?
Okay. I've had my rants for the day I guess, though I didn't even start on homophobia, religious zealots, and police brutality. Hopefully you didn't even bother to read this because it should be for my ears only. : ) I'll have some art for you next time.
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