Speed of Life

"The world is a dangerous place...not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it" -Albert Einstein In the light of the horrific, fascist, white-supremacist violence against peaceful folks in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, I find this film produced by the US War Department during WWII to be instructive. Clips from the film are appearing on social media sites. The full film is presented here. From IMDB: "Financed and produced by the United States War Department in 1943, and shot at the Warners studio, although it was distributed through all of the major studios' film exchanges and also by National Screen Services free to the theatre exhibitors: A young, healthy American Free Mason is taken in by the message of a soap-box orator who asserts that all good jobs in the United States are being taken by the so-called minorities, domestic and foreign. He falls into a conversation with a refugee ...

by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick Ponte di Castelvecchio (Verona) 48"x36" oil on linen 2016 Last year, perched above a Renaissance era bridge in Verona, Italy, I watched a light rainfall and a swollen river rush by. The smell of rain filled the air. Swifts darted across the milky sky.  Like gauze stretched across a stage set, the mix of rain, bus exhaust, and a distant sun breaking through the mist cloaked the moment in a spell of timelessness. I thought of the late Russian emigre writer Joseph Brodsky and his idea that water is the image of time. Often on trips to Europe, I will carry a battered copy of Brodsky's verse to help inspire my ramblings. Here in the Veneto, I am reminded of Brodsky's love of Italy and Venice in particular. I turn the pages of Brodsky's Watermark and find the passage I am looking for: "I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is. Perhaps this idea was even of my own manufacture, but n...

Kseniya Simonova Kseniya Simonova - Sand Animation (Україна має талант / Ukraine's Got Talent) "Here, she recounts Germany conquering Ukraine in the second world war. She brings calm, then conflict. A couple on a bench become a woman's face; a peaceful walkway becomes a conflagration; a weeping widow morphs into an obelisk for an unknown soldier. Simonova looks like some vengeful Old Testament deity as she destroys then recreates her scenes - with deft strokes, sprinkles and sweeps she keeps the narrative going. She moves the judges to tears as she subtitles the final scene : "Ty vsegda ryadom" -- "You'll always be near." James Donaghy, The Guardian Echoes of William Kentridge's filmed drawings ... More at: Kseniya Simonova

A Marine Corps glider being towed by a power plane from Page Field, at Parris Island, S.C. photo by Alfred T. Palmer color transparency 1942 May Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. In my family it is not uncommon to miss a birthday greeting here and there. But woe to the family member who forgets November 10th. In that spirit I wish my dad a fervent, "Happy Marine Corps Birthday!"