STILL SPINNING

Every morning, the old mother, who looks like the original Madonna, wakes up off her floor mat and goes out to the garden to pick up fallen leaves. No one asked her. No one thanks her or mentions it. It's just what old mothers do to help the family.

She's helped the family for 60 adult years, sending her beloved teenage son to the other side of the planet, so he could have a better life. Sending her beloved daughter to the other side of the planet, so she could have a better life. The illusion of freedom and happiness sometimes becomes real. Life without hope is always real.

This is what mothers were born to do, in Hollywood Golden Age movies and the rest of the truly impoverished world...sacrifice. Men don't know what it means, at its deepest mother-level, although too many may work at jobs that steal their spirits or fight in wars that steal their lives.

A moment of pleasure, together with the luck or misfortune of a brainless frantic sperm connecting with a patient waiting egg, often leads to a lifetime of disappointment, intolerable pain that is tolerated, or magnificent creativity that rewards a species which doesn't notice or deserve it.

Now, the mother makes traditional coffee for the sleeping man who will awaken soon to nod or say a few words, then go on about his man's business, whatever that may be.

Somehow, the pieces come together to form human existence. Another generation goes by. More leaves are picked up, more coffee made, more wars fought, more art created, more children released to their fates, more loneliness and momentary love.

There is beauty in the absurd and sad. Laughter and play may make it all worthwhile, but who is to judge. Another handful of leaves just floated from heaven to earth. Another coffee bean sprouted.

(Painting by 陳守玉)

JOSS WEDON, DIRECTOR

GRADUATES:  Action is more important than words....but words are more important than nothing.  Here are 13 minutes of funny, serious, true words than can help you, if you occasionally think of them.

The two professor-administrators at the front, who probably invited him, get his dark entertaining humor and agree. The professor in the back is probably bored and thinks he's a jerk.  You can make your own decision.  (The English is clear and non-academic.)

The problem is that at graduation ceremonies, students are thinking about partying, their dates, supportive and non-supportive families, no job, the terrifyng future, being hot or cold, holding on to their caps in the wind, eating, texting, boredom, and having a good night's sleep, hopefully with someone.

Still, the Graduation Speech Ritual is one of civilization's more useful inventions, too often unused.

http://www.upworthy.com/behold-the-bluntest-funniest-and-deadliest-graduation-speech-in-the-history-of-the-known-universe?g=2&c=upw1

CULTURAL DIFFERENCE

Pakistan is America's ally.

http://www.upworthy.com/watch-a-brave-little-girl-take-on-her-rapists-her-village-and-her-culture-2?g=2&c=upw1

POLITICAL ART CAN BE GOOD ART

ARTISTS: Self-promotion is not wrong and doesn't pollute art...if you have something worthwhile to promote.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/arts/design/ai-weiwei-dioramas-depict-his-imprisonment.html

EXPLORATION OF THE UNIVERSE

佾選的健康生活

STRAIGHT MARRIAGE / GAY MARRIAGE

Does the fact that on average married people are happier mean that we should promote marriage?

ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL / ALTERNATIVE LIFE

The diverse human struggle to live a happier, more meaningful life radiates hope.....

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/26/magazine/26look-lagos.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130526&_r=0

CHICKEN & EGG

LOCUST

NATURE IS WISE

Graham McGeorge

ART and art

GREAT ART uses many different, constantly changing, carefully chosen and carefully crafted techniques (art language) in a single painting, to reveal deeper levels of thought and feeling....

MINOR ART discovers one or two new techniques and maintains them obsessively -- afraid to break through the surface, lose control, make mistakes, do failed paintings, or lose temporal reputations and sales. This very human, but anti-creative fear can be seen in a single painting, a series of paintings, or throughout an entire career....

There is nothing wrong with minor art. It can give us great immediate visual pleasure, make us laugh, feel a simple non-challenging emotion, and make our boring ugly environment more interesting or pretty....

But minor and great art are not interchangeable, and should not be mistaken for each other by art lovers, critics, museums, buyers, art teachers, art students, or other serious artists. The actual fate of our civilization and the human spirit depend on knowing, admitting, and celebrating the difference.

REALITY TV LIFE

I watch "The Voice," "American Idol," "Undercover Boss," etc....for the pain and tears, not for the talent. Like in sports, I don't care who wins, as long as everyone appears to grow. If they reveal themselves, I feel less alone. Death is less scary if we all die, even at different rates. Thank you cynical exploitative producers for allowing us to share each other's suffering, so our own is less unique and intense....I mean it.

Vivienne Flesher

More:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/opinion/sunday/bruni-show-us-your-woe.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130519

BAZ

The thrill of pure visual cinema, giving much deeper, long-lasting aesthetic echoes than Disneyland. Nothing much to do with the book as great written literature, but who cares (except suffering English teachers, who shouldn't watch screen adaptations of anything written). Not useful for subtle people. But thrilling for introverted depressed viewers who still feel the magic of cinema, without CGI sadism. DiCaprio can act, even though he was too pretty as a boy. Rap music slaps Fitzgerald in the face, but he may enjoy being slapped. If you hated "Moulin Rouge," don't see this. If you loved "Moulin Rouge," see it. There's only 2 kinds

AMERICA'S LEAST-VISITED PARK

  

Aniakchak National Preserve, Alaska...19 visitors in 2012

FLAPPERS

Women were allowed to own and drive cars in the 1920s and 1930s. They could go dancing, have fun, have sex, explore life, make their own decisions, and live independently....

Then World War 2 came, and women worked physically hard in factories building guns, tanks, boats, and planes for America's (male) Armed Forces....

Then Peace came, and women were sent back into the home to do dishes, clean, cook, and take care of babies.

Now woman can serve in the Armed Forces, where they are often raped like Comfort Women. They can also go into battle and get killed equally with men.

Progress.

TO ARTISTS . . . . .

GREAT TAIWAN ARTISTS

Painter Chen Cheng-po (陳澄波, 1895–1947)

Chou Tzu-chao, Yilan

Doctor (2003)--film by Chung Mong-hong (鍾孟宏)

Chen Cheng-po (1936)

Parking--("Fourth Portrait," 2010)--film by Chung Mong-hong (鍾孟宏) 

WRITHING CALLIGRAPHY

WOMAN MEDIA EXPLORER & ADVENTURER

Barbara Walters, the best (and most famous) television news interviewer, who broke through the concrete wall that did not allow women in TV news (except sexy weather "girls"), who has been on TV continously since 1961, announced her retirement by HER choice, in 2014.....She has been an indelible part of the American cultural experience for 52 years, since I was a boy. Barbara could get anyone to talk openly and truthfully on camera, even cry, because they trusted her. (Documentary filmmakers, journalists, and writers take note!) She interviewed EVERY U.S. President, major world leader, and superstar in entertainment and the arts....Her retirement is a major emotional and professional loss, as she is irreplaceable.

Barbara Walters, age 83, looks 63, sharp as 23.

Fidel Castro personally drove Barbara around Havana in his Jeep.

MOM'S DAY

SEMINOLES - NATIVE AMERICANS

NECESSARY KNOWLEDGE

LATTE

Kazuki-Yamamoto

WILL

RAY HARRYHAUSEN

Ray Harryhausen, a nice man, legend of creative, hand-made, non-digital special effects in movies, died. Age 92. He learned from Willis O'Brien, and added art, humor, and warmth to his mentor's visual inventions. Low-cost, humanly imperfect, Ray's effects made the films accessible to kids and adult audiences in way that perfect photo-realism can never do....

Now that film, film pioneers, and hand-hewn story-telling are virtually extinct, it is sad, but fitting, that Ray goes on to have fun in imperfect Heaven. He leaves new scientific technology to more greedy, less talented, and certainly less charming Hollywood feature videogame entrepreneurs.

ASPIRIN WON'T FIX OUR HEADACHE

Three young women who were kidnapped in their teens, then imprisoned inside a house and raped for 10 years by three brothers (then in their 20's), were freed.

Many people want to castrate them.  But castration might be a big relief. 

Besides understandably reacting Biblically with hatred and vengeance, society must painfully delve into its own deepest twisted secret pits of hell....These 3 men had parents. They went to school. They worked. They had friends. They had neighbors..... 

What failed in our system? Unless we have the courage to confront that, and change, such traumatic events will repeat over and over. As they do now.

BUDDHA'S GIFT

EARTH

                                                                

China

SEMINOLE

AMERICA 2013 . . .

ACTIONS LEFT UNDONE

There are two specific, practical, moral things our nation can do within this year: relieve poverty and bring Americans into a sane, relatively fair economic balance. We all know it will not be done. But it is possible to do in reality. Therefore, the responsibility and blame is on the politicians of both parties, the citizens who accept and vote for them, as well as our own personal lack of compassion and courage....Writing this, I don't feel superior. I feel equal in human hypocrisy, weakness, guilt, fear, awareness, and lack of redemptive positive action.