Art Np2

Yes, reading "A Good Man Is Hard To Find."  There are some cool things on the internet.  Click  here.

"Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed."                                                                                                                          Khalil Gibran Is photography art?  I think it is. These pictures tell an affective story. Boy from Little Yugoslavia Serbia Children In Little Yugoslavia Bosnia Years Later Filip Horvat Photography Quotes from Brainyquotes.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

If you're interested you can take the Civil War and Reconstruction class with David Blight on  Youtube .  There are 27 video classes of about an hour each.  I'm just trying to get through the books.

These lyrics are still true.  You better look out. You know it.

Until recently I knew very little about soldiers who died in wars.  I had a vague, superficial feeling of sadness for the dead and their families, but mostly didn't think about it.  Since I've been studying the Civil War, I have less cloudy mental vision of the dead and wounded.  I've learned they were average people, like me, you, your son, husband, father, and friend. D-Day is also known as The Invasion of Normandy, or June 6, 1944,  or five or six decoy and real operational names.  France was invaded by Germany in 1940 and 1942. Allied troops sought to push Axis Germany out of France.  The Allied troops consisted of  infantry, armory, airborne, and amphibious fighting forces.  Participating countries included Britain, Canada, Poland, Australia, Norway, New Zealand, United States, and France. Some of the estimated casualties for the Allied:  U.S. 29,000 killed and 106,000 wounded or missing. Britain 11,000 killed, 54,000 wounded or missing. Canada 5,000 killed, 13,000 wou

          ITS SURPRISING HOW SOME PEOPLE IN GHANA THINK THAT VISUAL ART IS FOR POOR PERFORMING STUDENTS. THEY FORGET THAT BASIC THINGS THAT ARE USED BY THEM WHERE BROUGHT INTO EXISTENCE BY VISUAL ARTISTS.OUR CLOTHING , SHELTER ,HOUSING AND DECORATIVE  ITEMS WERE PRODUCED BY GREAT ARTIST WHO EXISTED. WHAT WOULD HAVE  HAPPENED IF THERE WERE NO HOUSES IN THE WORLD. IF NO CLOTHES EXISTED AND NO THINGS TO BEAUTIFY OURSELVES. THOSE WHO REFER TO THEIRSELVES AS SCHOLARS WASTE A LOT OF THEIR TIME BEAUTIFYING THEIR  BODIES BEFORE GOING TO WORK. THEY LOOK OUT FOR WELL DRESSED PERSONS BEFORE OFFERING THEM VACANCIES. OUR FASHION INDUSTRY IS CONTROLLED BY VERY INTELLIGENT PEOPLE WHO HAVE VERY FINE TASTE FOR BEAUTY. WE SHOULD RATHER FOCUS ON ENCOURAGING OUR CHILDREN TO STUDY ARTS. VISUAL ARTS FOCUSES ON DEVELOPING THE HEARTS , MIND AND THE HANDS.IT OFFERS A WIDE RANGE OF DIFFERENT COURSES AND VOCATIONS TO. ONE MAY CHOOSE TO STUDY LEATHER WORK,GRAPHIC DESIGN , CERAMICS AND BEAD MAKING. I STRONGLY THI

Quotes From  http://www.brainyquote.com/ In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons. Herodotus Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country. Bertrand Russell The scenes on this field would have cured anybody of war. William Tecumseh Sherman There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it. Havelock Ellis When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die. Jean-Paul Sartre

In an earlier post I wrote about the free Civil War and Reconstruction class I'm taking from Yale Open Courses.  The class is taught by Professor David Blight.  It is available on Itunes and  here. During the past few days I've tried to get through Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott.  Alcott wrote some books for adults.  Alcott told of her experiences as a volunteer nurse in 1862.  She served in Washington, D.C. and at the beginning of her term Union soldiers from the battle of Fredericksburg filled the hospital. The battle of Frederickburg took place in Virginia from December 11-15, 1862.  There were many more Union casualties than Confederate.   Wounded Soldiers outside hospital Hospital Sketches is really hard to read because the young men that Alcott took care of were full of holes, missing limbs, had parts of their heads and faces blown off, and emotionally traumatized.  Mercifully some of them died.  Yes, it was that bad.  600,000 men were killed in the war and that

Visual Art is an interesting course that helps one to explore the world of creativity. Keep a date with me, Ange, always.

Malika Zarra is a Moroccan jazz singer.

The other day I found a book of poetry at the library.  It is The Best American Poetry of 2005 . "Home to Roost" reminds me of a conversation Jake and I had this morning.  We were talking about the results of behavior.  A person cannot keep doing the wrong thing and not expect negative consequences.  We know because it has happened to us.  We know because we have observed it in the world around us.  It does not always go that way but plenty of times it does. Kay Ryan knows. "Home to Roost" The chickens are circling and blotting out the  day. The sun is  bright, but the  chickens are in  the way. Yes, the sky is dark with chickens,  dense with them. They turn and  then they turn  again. These  are the chickens you let loose one at a time and small— various breeds. Now they have  come home to roost—all the same kind at the same speed.

I learned from Wikipedia John Barth  is a novelist, essayist, short story writer born in 1930.  He lives in Maryland. Barth's short story "Toga Party" is the part of The Best American Short Stories of 2007 edited by Stephen King.  I found the book at a library sale and it is worth every penny. "Toga Party" is about the Feltons, a comfortable, retired couple who live in an gated upper-class development on the eastern shore of Maryland.   Married over forty years, life for them has been full, rich and mostly happy, but as they watch friends get sick and die, both are concerned about the future.  The Feltons know it is only a matter of short time before they too succumb to the inevitable and they are not sure what to do about it. Their friend Sam lost his wife to cancer in the past year.  Sam is doing his best to hold onto life and not display his grief and loneliness.  At eighty Sam still plays tennis with seventy-five year old Dick Felton. Sam, Dick, and Susan (

" On any given day, any of us can have the blues. We don't control fate or destiny, and we can't always control the circumstances of our lives. We don't control when, where, and why tragedy befalls us."   Aretha Franklin Quote is on  Pg. 180 of the book Aretha From These Roots .  The book was co-authored by David Ritz. And yet life is so beautiful... Oil Painting Coconuts By Mexican Artist  Frida Kahlo  in 1951.

"Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens."  Andy Rooney The Invisible Princess on Amazon

Copper Beech Tree I was in the library the other day and checked out  Now That My Father Lies Beside Me: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000 by Stanley Plumly.  The hardcover was published by in 2000 by Ecco Press , an imprint of Harper Collins.  I am always looking for poets and poetry, but I'd never heard of him.  I live in Maryland.  Stanley Plumly is the Director of Creative Writing at the University of Maryland and the Poet Laureate of Maryland.  Plumly was at a library a few miles from where I live two months ago.   These are the websites I read to find out about him.   Stanley    Plumly   Anyhow, now I temporarily possess one of his books and have found a few pieces I like and understand. There's a poem titled "Conan Doyle's Copper Beaches" on page 35 of the softcover that was published in 2001.  I read a lot of Sherlock Holmes mysteries and am familiar with  "The Adventure of The Copper Beaches"  by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  The poem compares Holme

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"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions."   Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. I found this on  Jonathan Johnson's On Art Blog  on The Guardian .  This piece is a brass head with crown.

1990's Devil In A Blue introduces the character Easy Rawlins.  In 1948 Easy or Ezekiel is an African American war veteran, factory worker from Texas who moved to Los Angeles to escape his friend Mouse. Read the book and you'll find out why.  After losing his job and needing money to pay his mortgage, Easy is solicited by a obviously malignant individual to find a white woman name of Daphney Monet.  Of course the initial search opens the door to a full blown mystery of unanswered questions, beat downs, and murder.  The 1995 movie  starred Denzel Washington as Easy, Don Cheadle as Mouse, and Jennifer Beals as Daphney.  Unfortunately there were no movies made after the first one. Mosley wrote ten more books featuring Easy Rawlins as he evolves into a full time detective.  2007's Blond Faith was to be the last book in the Rawlins series, but I hear that's not what's going to happen. I met Walter Mosley briefly when he was at the Baltimore Book Festival in September o