polerin

I'll try to have a full writeup later tonight about it, but I went to the corker town hall in the 'boro today.. It was an interesting experience, and I'm glad I got to speak.

Quick highlights (from others):

• "I want you to take back to dc that we don't want no O-Bam-ah style socialism here in Tennessee."


• "Sometimes you just gotta make it Us and Them!"


• This Cap and Trade is Slavery and economic suicide!"

I disagree with your assessment that the art in question is vile, but I'll put that aside for what I think is your actual intent with the post. You've stated that the problem with the art is that it is political and ugly. I take it that you are mixing political and social commentary into one from your wording. I'll use political in that way to keep the terms similar.

I am not sure what to do with the ugly comment, I consider much art I find very moving to be at least slightly ugly, or at least slightly painful to look at. I do not intend to mean that beauty has no place in art, or that asking art to inspire hope is not a worthy thing.

Hope itself implies change though, that there can be a better world than the one that exists now. This is political in it's very nature, as to get a better world, we have to change what we've got. To do this honestly though, hope must be grounded in reality. For things to become better, we must address what is wrong.

As a World, we need to talk about it, to understand it's dimensions and it's meaning. We discuss our hopes and our dreams, but integral to that conversation is a discussion about our fears and our disappointments.

Bloggers do this all the time, talking about what they see wrong, or right, how they hope, how they love. Sometimes they even talk about how they hate, or how their anger affects them. We only have one world, and there are a whole bunch of different people who want to live in it, and want to have a good life for them and their families. All of these interests and ideals matter very much to the people who hold them, and they search for ways to express them.

Artists are no different. They express their view of beauty, hopes and fears, they document the world around them or the world as it could be, and ask if this is how we want it to be.

It hurts that I thought I had lost years ago the idea of the America I believed in as a child, the land of hope, and love, and freedom that was gone, and had never existed. It was wonderful to be able to reach out to others as they listened, to realize that so many share my dreams of a place where love, honor, respect, and true freedom are paramount.

I cried as I realized that it might still happen at some point in the future.

There are things that you can nitpick about, there are things that I wish were a little better, but I never knew what I had missed, never had someone that I could believe wanted to do something positive, to draw us forward in a sense of community, love, and hope.

I’m fairly sure that Mr. Obama will do things I don’t like at some point, probably many things. It’s the nature of politicians. I know his policies are not what I would hold myself, but for once I’m ok with that, because my policies would not happen at all.

Here is to 4 years, and hopefully they are good ones.

Ok, so I had a really good day with photography today. I was sorta doubtful that I'd be able to get anything done in the hour left of daylight I had, and then stumbled on this absolutely intriguing spot. Abandoned industrial building right next to a bridge, under which someone obviously had made a campsite. A bed covered by a tarp, a makeshift grill from a metal drum, and political graffiti all over the place. I've only had a chance to get a few of these ready and up on the net, but they are good enough I want to actually show them here.

( Photos behind the cut )

We had a really productive weekend this week... Finally got off my butt and installed the faucet that friends gave us forever ago (and oh wow it rocks dem. <3 and thank you so much), installed a new garbage disposal when we had been without one and the right hand sink in the kitchen for 6 months, fixed a gutter, put up some lights, cleaned up the house, and did all kinds of other stuff. All around good weekend.

I'm not fan of conspiracy theories. In general they tend to provide fodder for those who poke fun at anyone who criticizes the statis-quo. For this reason, I've stayed away from things like Loose change, and away from the charges of voting fraud in the 2000 and 2004 elections. However,this article is one of the most lucid and telling pieces of journalism that I have read recently.

Please, no matter what you believe, who you voted for, or what you feel about any of the issues that were contested in that election, read this article.

One of the primary things that shattered my faith in America was the fact that I saw our politicians getting away with things over and over and over. Clinton committing perjury, Bush leading us into war with smoke and mirrors, basically every member of congress subsidized by our largest corporations.

The thing that everyone told me over and over again is that we only get what we ask for, in that we have voted these people into office, and that we haven't voted them out. The validity of this statement is somewhat questionable as it is, but when you combine it with the fact that the last two elections have had serious, serious issues with them, the statement because ridiculous even at a cursory glance.

The power of the people to select the leaders that they choose is among the most important that we possess as American citizens, and this right is being stripped from us. I don't see how anyone can think that this is a good thing regardless of what they may subscribe to politically.