The happy, young lady portrayed here was just 24 and actively exercising her human right of free speech on the 4th of July on a closed and barricaded stretch of freeway, when she was run over and killed by a 27 year old man in a white Jaguar, who entered the roadway by going the wrong way down an exit ramp. This is what a friend of hers posted on social media the next day.
The driver has been charged. Another young woman was left in critical condition with multiple injuries, as well.
This painting is acrylic on 24″ x 24″ gallery wrapped, stretched canvas. The edges are painted red, and it is titled, dated, and signed on the bottom, so no framing is needed.
Price: $200 plus postage
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It is cliche’ to say that John Prine (October 10, 1946 – April 7, 2020) was an “American treasure”. I regard him as a treasure to humanity. He would reject all of these special accolades and just say he was trying to do his best to be human. That’s what made him so wonderful. We have lost him, along with a myriad of other, wonderful and talented people, to COVID-19, so far, in 2020. His last song was “I Remember Everything.” It was recorded from quarantine.
John Prine was a champion for social justice, equality, and tolerance. He managed to do this with a sense of humour; never letting any bitterness or resentment show. He survived throat cancer and had to learn how to sing (an octave lower) all over again, and kept on going!
When I heard the song above on WXPN, the other morning, I sat in the driveway and wept for the loss we had experienced as a people, a nation, and a world. Rest in power, John Prine!
The painting is black and white acrylic on 24′ X 24′” gallery wrapped canvas. The edges are painted red, so no framing is needed. I signed and dated it on the bottom edge, so as to not interfere with the portrait.
Ernesto Che Guevara was born on June 14, 1928. (My birthday in June 14, 1955.) His early life is documented in the book and movie: The Motorcycle Diaries, about his travels from one end of South America to the other on a motorcycle. This trip was formative in his education as a revolutionary. He became a medical doctor first. In 1955, Fidel Castro’s brother Raul introduced them, and he joined the revolution in Cuba. On June 2, 1959, he married Aleida March. After he witnessed what Dulles’ CIA did to dismantle the popularly elected socialist governments of Guatemala and Honduras, he persuaded Harvard educated Fidel Castro that he would need to maintain a benign dictatorship to resist the dirty tricks and subversion of the American government with their interference in other nations’ elections.Perhaps our chickens are coming home to roost.
In 1965, then he joined the revolution in Kinshasa, Congo. In 1966, he joined the revolution in Bolivia. He was captured by the CIA on October 8, 1967, and summarily executed the next day. So much for human rights and due process and The Geneva Convention.
Che was a passionate man. He was in the fight for love of the people, not for personal gain or some dogmatic or idealized view of proving a point. I am sick to death of the communist, socialist and anarchist groups in the US who are full of history nerds and armchair philosophers who don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. Che gave his life in service to nations. Because of what he did, thousands, perhaps millions of people were given a shot at life who otherwise would not have done.
“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”
“Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” – both by El Che
There was nothing ridiculous about Che’s love for the common people and his passionate struggle to liberate them.
Painting is 24″ x 18″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $150 plus postage
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On Tuesday morning, I had a vivid dream that I remembered when I woke up. In my dream I was in a town on a slope much like Manayunk. Someone told me to go to the Catholic Church. I walked a couple of blocks to an old, Romanesque church. When I entered, it was more like a warehouse, no pews, no altar, no windows. There were tables and shelves full of books on the left side of the building. The right side was empty. There were several customers in old, worn clothes, browsing and rooting through the piles and a few shelves of books. An older, portly priest was in charge. Every book I picked up had only drawings in it. I finally chose a hardcover, cloth bound book with this drawing of a worker’s face on the front. It had no words in it. Only action filled, angular drawings filled the tall pages. The priest saw that I was interested. He told me I could take it for as long as I wanted it; just return it when I was done.
So, yesterday, I painted the cover from memory on canvas. In my dream I could see the grain of the fabric. It was off-white and had defects and was smudged. To replicate this, I varnished part of a drop cloth canvas, painted the parts that were brown, titled it in French with my name as the author, then varnished it again. It is of minor importance what language the title is, since there are no words in the book. It is titled Soulèvement du Prolétariat: un roman graphique or Proletariat Uprising: a graphic novel in English.
I pasted it on the wall with clay based paste. It remains water soluble forever. This way I can remove it with warm water without damaging it or the wall. (In case it sells) It is part of my Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2019 project.
Now I just have to draw or paint the story for the pages and get it published.
The painting is acrylic on 15″ x 25.5″ canvas.
Price: $100reduced to $25 plus postage.
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The 21st image of hope is that of an incarcerated police officer. Police officers in the US have been murdering Black men and at the rate of 2 per day since the end of the Civil War without any consequences. They have been killing Native Americans at almost the same rate, with impunity. It is “Shoot first. Ask questions never.” Police even execute Black men who are handcuffed in the back of police cars, in front of their children, who have done nothing wrong, and face no consequences. The Bible is full of warnings of judgment against a society who does not punish the wrongdoer, or who does not avenge those who oppress those of low degree. America claims to be a land of freedom and rights. This is NOT what people of color see, which is the majority of the world. It is not what anyone who knows the facts see, either.
I painted the bars red, as if dripping with the blood of the innocents. It would be horrible to see a violent backlash against police and a complete breakdown of the social order. But that is what the police and the courts are bringing us to, if they do not execute just judgment. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
For those who concocted “Blue Lives Matter” I have this to say: it is pure racism! There is no such thing as a blue life! People choose to be police officers. Multiple incidents have borne the lie of that. There was an off-duty Black police officer who was approached by officers. He was carrying in an open carry state. He had a permit. He was doing nothing illegal, were he White or Black. An officer opened fire on him. Another officer recognized him and told the other one to stop. He refused to stop, because he was Black! So all blue lives matter for is preferential treatment, if they happen to also be White.
It needs to end!
This is #21 in my images of hope for Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2018
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
Price: $20 plus postage
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The 18th image of hope in the Fun-A-Day series represents a liberal education. Liberal does not represent a political position. It is the classical meaning of liberating, as in “liberal arts”. As a society, we have trashed these and turned universities into trade schools and turned students into cogs and “human capital”, i.e., wage slaves, in the capitalist system. Corporations fund research in universities to no benefit of students. Students still end up in debt for life, with no recourse, even through bankruptcy. Today, students graduate from Ivy League schools without being able to construct or even properly read a complex English sentence. They pay their money. They get their job tickets. Trump graduated from University of Pennsylvania.
A liberal education doesn’t so much teach someone what to think or give them facts, but teaches them how to think; what questions to ask; how to research to find facts and truth.
Yet there are talented and intelligent people who are not given opportunities because they could not afford to go to college. Appropriate higher education should be available and free to everyone who qualifies for it, if we truly believe in equality, and want to advance as a people, and want to solve humanity’s problems. Degrees should not be job tickets, nor is education limited to institutions. Lincoln never graduated college. He read the law. Pres. Carter was home schooled. He is a nuclear physicist.
The bookshelf is not full. That indicates that those who read, study and learn, will have their own books to write, to add to the “great conversation”, as Mortimer Adler called it. This is our hope for our children and our grandchildren. It has been stifled by the tuition financing system and the wicked bankers and their fascist partners in Congress, in both falsely so-called major parties. They need to go if hope is to survive.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
“Nothing but blue skies from now on!”, the song says. The first Earth Week really shook up President Richard Nixon. I was 14. I headed it up in my junior high. We actually made the evening news on our local, CBS affiliate for one of our actions. 70 of us, without any adult supervision, rode our bicycles with environmental slogans on signs on them, from Carl Sandberg Jr. High in Golden Valley to Hennepin Ave, in downtown Minneapolis with trash bags and collected litter and trash all up and down Hennepin and placed the mountain of trash in bags at the base of the flags on Nicollet Mall. Then we biked home. Now, if we were the only one, and that was all we did, it would have been cute. But it wouldn’t have impacted federal policy. But that was just the last of several actions we did that week. Hundreds of us had abandoned the buses and walked or bicycled several miles each way to school that week. We participated in a teach-in, etc. This was student organized. Thousands of schools and colleges and universities had environmental fairs and demonstrations. Nearly all regular classes across the country on almost all levels of education were replaced on Wednesday of that week with Earth Day Teach-Ins that happened in the fresh air when at all possible. This all happened before the internet, before cellphones, without paid TV commercials or magazine ads. It scared the living daylights out of Richard Milhouse Nixon. He knew the only possible way he could get re-elected was if he would address environmental issues. He created the Environmental Protection Agency. The impact of that act and the ensuing regulations on the improvement on urban air quality, reduction of lung cancer, emphysema, asthma and a number of other ailments is amazing.
Yet, there are those who would go back to the bad old days and deregulate. They think it is too expensive to have low emissions and clean air. Here is a photo of Los Angeles before and after the EPA.
Let’s hope for blue skies from now on.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
Price: $10 plus postage
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When I was a child there was a “Flesh” Crayon in my box of 64 colors. It was for an obviously pale complected person like me. Some time in the 1970s, Binney & Smith replaced the wrapper on that Crayon with “Peach”. It was the same color, only the times had changed. By the mid 1980s, I saw a box of 16 Crayons, which were all different shades. All 16 were labeled “Flesh”. The times, they had changed! By the time Obama was elected in 2008, some White folks presumed to declare that we had become “post-racial”, proving just how out of touch they were with the Black, Hispanic, and Native American experience in this country. American police murder an average of two Black men and 1 to 2 Native Americansevery day without consequence. They have been doing this every day for over 150 years. Then there are the incarceration rates, the jobless rates. The infant mortality rates, and on and on.
Then Trump appoints Nazis and KKK and openly supports them from the White House! It looks bad now. But, believe me, he is an old man and not healthy. His party and the Democrats are not healthy. A new day is coming.
We dare to hope! We want the whole box of Crayons! People are people!
Bigots can go to hell, sooner rather than later, please!
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
Price: $20reduced to $10 plus postage
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I never said hope isn’t controversial. One person’s hopes and aspirations can seem threatening to another’s view of the world or their economic grip on things. When slaves hope for freedom, their masters’ standard of living and leisure is threatened. When the Lesbian Gay Bi Transgender and Queer become visible and vocal, religious authoritarians and others who are afraid of losing their positions of authority if gender lines get blurred or gender oppression were to end get riled up. This is to hope that bullying will stop, human rights will be respected; civil rights will be extended; and we will learn to live at peace and with respect for one another.
The painting is actually the middle square set at a 45° angle.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
Price: $20reduced to $10 plus postage
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It was sometime in the second half of the 1980s. I was Mennonite Chaplain for Philadelphia Prisons. Duncan Mbogo Wangigi, the head of Regions Beyond Christian Mission was visiting our church. He had some free time. I was assigned to “entertain” him. I had the task of picking up an ex-offender from Phila. House of Corrections to take him to Liberty House, the aftercare house I helped set up in Schwenksville, PA. Duncan headed up the largest African based, Christian mission agency. He was in the US to continue his theological education. I thought this was a colossal mistake. He had finished his course work, so was doing some fundraising work for his mission agency. We drove from Montgomery County down to Center City to pick up Angel from City Hall. He wanted to get his final “Spanish” haircut before he went to the suburbs, so we went to his barber. Then we went to his mom’s house. She treated us to a fine feast. I digress.
Duncan was in shock. He had been touring all over the US and had never seen such sights. He had been in the worst parts of Africa, yet he had never been in such fear as he was with me in that car in Philadelphia. He asked if I had taken him to a different country. I told him that he knew his geography better than that. There were oceans between us and other countries or hours of land travel. He said that even in the poorest parts on Africa, people had a place to grow some vegetables or some grain. Here there was nothing! He said this was this was the worst poverty he had seen. He told me that he was going to tell all the people he would speak to after that, that they were neglecting their own Jerusalem, while helping the regions beyond.
So Hope #10 is to have a garden, to have some measure of food independence.
Painting is acrylic on 8″ x 8″ stretched canvas.
Price: $30reduced to $10 plus postage
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The US spends a huge portion of its gross domestic product on its military. Its #1 export is arms. We are the number one arms dealer in the world, including the prime seller to terrorists like Yemen, ISIS, Al Qaeda and Saudi. Of course, the US is the largest terrorist nation in the world with a military budget larger than the next ten nations combined, routine torture, preëmptive war, a congress which openly discusses terrorist tactics such as mining a civilian harbor resulting in the sinking of an ally’s ship.
We hope in guns to the point that it is impoverishing us. We say we cannot afford universal healthcare, yet we spend more than what that would cost, every year, on weapons systems that the Pentagon doesn’t even want. Three of them don’t even work! Al Qaeda was created by the CIA. ISIS was created by Congress. Sen. John McCain helped promote it! There are photos of him with the founders, and he is giving his support. It is all about selling our weapons, to keep the rich arms dealers wealthy. It has nothing to do with peace or security. So if you put your hope in guns, you will be put to shame. There are revolutionists who admire these weapons and find them attractive, because electoral politics have proven to be hopeless. Both, so-called major parties are in bed with Wall St., Big Pharma, and the military industrial complex.
So this image is a hope against hope; that we would learn to disarm, demilitarize, re-prioritize, and spend our resources to support life, instead of spending our lives supporting arms.
I positioned the AK47 and AR15 in the form of a Cross and painted them red, white and blue. Most Americans are deluded, thinking that the US was founded as a Christian country and fights for democracy and human rights. Nothing could be further from the truth. The country was founded on religious bigotry, opportunism and genocide. It has been at war continually since its founding; many times with multiple countries.
Painting is acrylic on 10″ x 10″ stretched canvas.
Price: $30reduced to $10 plus postage
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This is my fourth painting in my 31 images of hope for Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2018. My wife and I have been through the wringer over the last several years. I had a series of health crises, starting in 2010. They were all related. It all started with an infection in a scratch on the back of my neck that I apparently picked up from an overly enthusiastic Thank You hug from one of the homeless men I served on the streets of Philadelphia. I have an inherited autoimmune disorder. As a result, I am allergic to multiple antibiotics and random other drugs. To make a very long story short, I ended up with a heart valve replacement, losing my business and ministry and our home. I am on disability. While I was going through that, the bank Bethann worked for for over ten years started systematically firing all of its middle-aged women. They planted a missing $100 in her drawer, sent her home, fired her; found the missing $100 after she left (exactly where they put it).
At any rate, Bethann has a job now. She was laid off from one and then found another. She has a couple of weeks off without pay for cataract surgery. I have disability. we have rent and utilities. Her work does not cover medical insurance yet. Our credit cards are tapped. We make too much to qualify for SNAP (food stamps). We can’t afford groceries or Christmas gifts or much of anything. Our local food bank, Perkasie Fish, lets us shop weekly. They have gluten-free for me. They have almond milk for kids who are lactose intolerant. They are helpful, generous and kind. they have a free thrift store we can shop at once a month. At Christmas, parents could shop for their children. What blew our minds was that we could shop for our grandchildren who were 12 and under. We expected to pick up one gift each. No. I went through and got to choose several things for each in different categories, plus bonus items for them and for us! This is hope.
I do have some concerns, having had other experiences with food banks and serving the poor. I have been to food banks where the staff fill your box for you and you have to take what they give you, and that’s it! In a neighboring town, in fact, the food bank is very institutional and demeaning. For decades of serving in prisons and on the streets, I have seen people who are doing what on the surface looks like the same activity, but when I got a little closer, I could feel the condescension. True service to the poor is not actually so much “to”. It is among and of. We are the same. We are in this together. It seems to me, the people at Perkasie Fish get this.
My other concern, goes to the fact that we are served so well, because we live in a wealthier, whiter town, than our sisters and brothers in Philadelphia, Camden, Bristol, Pottstown and Chester. There is that nasty platitude that has no basis in morality and is definitely not Christian: “Charity begins at home.” The problem with it is that people who spout it, use it to justify never expressing charity to anyone who is not like them. It takes effort, or taxation, to have us share wealth equitably to help all of our neighbors. Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrated that the neighbor was not the person who was close or convenient, but the person who was in need. The traveler who helped went out of his way to return to help.
Donate to two food banks if you can afford to. Donate cash to one in your town and one in an underserved area. Give a little hope to some families who could use it.
Painting is acrylic on 10″ x 10″ stretched canvas.
Price: $50reduced to $25 plus postage
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Comrades Skittles and Oreo are ordering us to take our positive affection opposition to fascism up another notch with this one. First, there was “CUDDLE!” Then it was “SNUGGLE!” Now it’s: “SPOON!”
Couldn’t you just see it; a couple hundred thousand couples spooning on the mall in DC, gently asking for no more imperialist wars, an end to subsidies to petroleum, full conversion to solar power, conversion to cradle-to-cradle production cycles eliminating landfills, … ? Cats can dream, can’t they?
Painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $200reduced to $50 plus postage
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Cuddling was phase one. I realize we need to work on that. Some may be asking what the difference is between cuddling and snuggling. C’mon, comrades! Are we serious about making progress and spreading love and joy? Well, then, the difference should be obvious. Snuggling involves more motion. It can be done in larger groups. Think mosh pits, only embracing. Now put that on the road to Mar-a-Lago to block one of the so-called president’s golf vacations he said he was never going to take. The international press would have fun with that, so would all of us snugglers.
“Make New Friends, Not New Refugees!”
This just came out from my fellow Minneapolitan. It expresses the sentiment of the movement:
The original is for sale now, but within a week, hopefully, I will have posters, postcards and lawn signs.
Painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $200reduced to $50 plus postage
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I have been searching for ways to use my art to positively respond to the current horror that we face in American governmental breakdown. Each day, there is a new attack; a new round of newspeak. One day it is a congresswoman proudly proclaiming that her vote giving permission to internet service providers to sell all of our browsing histories to whomever wants to buy them “protects your privacy.” The next day, Sean Spicer is giving a grimacing Park Service employee a huge, game-show, donation check for $78,000 (supposedly Trump’s 3 months’ net salary), two days after Trump’s budget cut the Park Service budget by over $1.5 billion. Fact checkers have determined that 69.1% of Trump’s statements are false. One White House reporter said in frustration, “It is hard to know what to think when you can’t tell what Trump means when he uses words.”
Yesterday, I started to paint this portrait of my cat, with a Che Guevara beret. Skittles helps keep me sane. He climbs up onto my left side and cuddles. If things get too intense, he lies on my keyboard. We have matching heart murmurs. He will get in my face and command me to “CUDDLE!” It struck me that this is what America and much of the world needs right now. I can see it now, massive cuddle-ins in front of defense contractors and fracking stations; cuddlers blocking access to United Airlines offices; cuddlers circling the Pentagon; cuddlers on the mall in DC asking for an end to military expansion and for universal healthcare.
“Make Love, not Human Services Cuts!”
HUG O’ WAR
I will not play at tug o’ war.
I’d rather play at hug o’ war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles.
And everyone wins.
– Shel Silverstein
Painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
This is from my Lily Gilding series. Before I painted daylilies, I painted with them. This is a photograph of a Backdraft Daylily, from a couple of summers back, right next to our front step. I modified it using several filters and adjustments, then cropped it just right. I call it Phoenix as it shows the persistence of new life and hope, even in the midst of entropy and crumbling bricks.
The border and frame paint are taken directly from the colors in the photo. Each time you look at it, be emboldened to hope and to work for positive change that we may rise from the ashes of our brokenness to see in each and every man, woman and child, a sister or a brother, worthy of dignity, respect, and care.
This is museum quality printed on canvas. I custom-made the frame from native PA poplar. The canvas is 24″x24″. The overall dimensions with the frame are 27″x27″x2-3/4″. The price is $450 plus shipping. (I have been told the frame is worth that alone.)
Sold.
The person who purchased it calls me every couple of months to thank me again for the beauty and brightness it has added to her home.
I can make another. I have committed to making no more than 10 total. Each are signed and numbered.
Daphne Anne Vella was born in Silema, Malta on August 26, 1964. In 1985, she married attorney Peter Caruana Galizia. They had three sons, Matthew, Andrew, and Paul. In 1990, the family moved to Bidnija in Mosta. She was a political activist, an investigative journalist, and a blogger. Matthew, also, became an investigative journalist.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was fearless and tenacious in her pursuit of truth and justice. She was arrested several times. The front door of her house was set ablaze. Another time the family dog’s throat was slit and laid across the front doorstep. Threatening notes were tacked to her front door, or faxed or emailed to her, telling her to back down on stories or her life was in danger. Her car was set on fire. She did not back down. She was routing out corruption in Malta that had (and has) international, financial and environmental consequences. Some news outlets were too intimidated to carry her stories. In 2008, she set up her own blog, Running Commentary, to be unrestrained in publishing her own stories and opinion pieces.
She revealed on Running Commentary that a prominent Maltese government minister was entangled with unsavory dealings with Panama and New Zealand. This proved to be an embarrassment and true. It was the tip of the iceberg of the Panama Papers. By the time of Daphne’s assassination, there were 48 libel suits outstanding against her. There were also threats intimidating several media outlets, some of which were dropped within hours of her death. Her work in revealing the Panama Papers eventually brought down the government of Iceland and implicated banks and government officials around the world.
On October 16, 2017, at about 3 pm, Ms. Caruana Galizia was assassinated in a car bomb attack while she was driving her leased Peugeot 108 near their home.
In May 2017 Pilatus Bank’s owner and chairman, Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, sued Daphne Caruana Galizia in an Arizona court in his own name and in the name of Pilatus Bank. The case was for $40 million in damages. Ms. Caruana Galizia was never notified about it and it was withdrawn within hours of her assassination. The prime minister has refused to commission an investigation into her death. To this date, her assassination has not been solved. She has received over two dozen posthumous awards and honors in Europe and America for her integrity, and her good and heroic quest for truth as a journalist. There is a thorough article about her story in The New Yorker.
This painting has a red edge, so like the sad, old joke about newspapers, this is “black and white and red all ’round.”
The painting is acrylic on 24″ x 24″ stretched canvas.
Price: $320 plus postage.
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Since my painting of Aaron Swartz, The Ghost in the Machine, was so well received I painted a 24″ x 24″ black and white portrait of Nina Simone. My hope is that you will find it to be as stark and as powerful as Hozier’s tribute to her and other singers in the US civil rights movement is.
Nina Simone (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003) was born in Tryon, North Carolina to a Methodist minister and a handyman and occasional preacher. She was named Eunice Kathleen Waymon. She learned how to play piano by ear when she was three. She played the piano in church as a child, but did not sing in the choir. By the time she graduated high school as valedictorian of her class, she was an accomplished classical and jazz pianist, as well as a singer. The townspeople raised money to pay for her to go to Julliard, however her family had moved to Philadelphia, so she applied to Curtis instead. They rejected her application. She felt this was due to racism. This killed her hope of being a great, black, woman, classical pianist. She started teaching music to get by. She also started to play and sing at some nightclubs. One night she decided it would help her career to change her name. She chose “Nina” which means “little girl” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actor Simone Signoret.
She wanted her singing to count for something, so she chose and wrote songs to record that addressed racism, lynching and civil and human rights. This was a risk at the time for a young, black woman in the 1950s and 60s. Her recording career spanned four decades. Her rendition of Strange Fruit is haunting.
“We never talked about men or clothes. It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution – real girls’ talk.”
Marielle Franco (27 July 1979 – 14 March 2018) was shot to death, along with her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes, on March 14 of this year, in her home district, where she served as a city councillor of the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro for the Socialism and Liberty Party from January 2017 until her death. She had just delivered a speech against police brutality and extrajudicial killings. She died of 3 shots to the head, one to the neck. The bullets used to kill them were Federal bullets. They tried to concoct a story that they had been stolen from a post office facility where they had been stored, but the Post Office would not cooperate with the Federal Government’s false story.
Marielle has been working tirelessly and cheerfully for years for the rights of the poor, ever since a close friend was killed by a stray bullet in 2000. She rose out of the favelas; and went to college and university on scholarships as a single mother. She had a daughter in 1998. She wrote her master’s thesis on taking back the favelas from the gangs. In 2007, she entered politics by working for State Representative Marcelo Freixo. She identified as bi-sexual. On the City Council, she had fought against gender violence and tried to create a day of lesbian visibility in August 2017. It failed 19-17. She was planning on marrying her long-term partner, Mônica Tereza Benício, in September 2019.
Marielle was politically savvy and knew she needed well placed friends. She became friends with Glenn Greenwald. He listed what he referred to as the “most important subjects to cover” regarding Franco’s assassination stating: “Her relentless and brave activism against the most lawless police battalions, her opposition to military intervention, and, most threateningly of all, her growing power as a black, gay woman from the favela seeking not to join Brazil’s power structure, but to subvert it.”
The Federal Police sadly proved the truth of Marielle’s last speech by so immediately assassinating her and her driver. But as Medgar Evers said, “You can kill a man, but you cannot kill an idea.” Sadly, in the era of Trump, we still need to say it: Women are equal.
Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 16″ stretched canvas.
Price: $120 plus postage.
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Ernesto Che Guevara was born on June 14, 1928. (My birthday in June 14, 1955.) His early life is documented in the book and movie: “The Motorcycle Diaries”, about his travels from one end of South America to the other on a motorcycle. This trip was formative in his education as a revolutionary. He became a medical doctor first. In 1955, Fidel Castro’s brother Raul introduced them, and he joined the revolution in Cuba. On June 2, 1959, he married Aleida March. After he witnessed what Dulles’ CIA did to dismantle the popularly elected socialist governments of Guatemala and Honduras, he persuaded Harvard educated Fidel Castro that he would need to maintain a benign dictatorship to resist the dirty tricks and subversion of the American government with their interference in other nations’ elections.Perhaps our chickens are coming home to roost.
In 1965, then he joined the revolution in Kinshasa, Congo. In 1966, he joined the revolution in Bolivia. He was captured by the CIA on October 8, 1967, and summarily executed the next day. So much for human rights and due process and The Geneva Convention.
Che was a passionate man. He was in the fight for love of the people, not for personal gain or some dogmatic or idealized view of proving a point. I am sick to death of the communist, socialist and anarchist groups in the US who are full of history nerds and armchair philosophers who don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. Che gave his life in service to nations. Because of what he did, thousands, perhaps millions of people were given a shot at life who otherwise would not have done.
“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”
“Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” – both by El Che
There was nothing ridiculous about Che’s love for the common people and his passionate struggle to liberate them.
Painting is 12″x12″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $60 plus postage
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Mumia Abu Jamal had been a great journalist for WHYY Radio 91.1 FM, the Philadelphia public radio station affiliated with NPR. He was a regular contributor to 91 Report, the local evening news, in the late 1970s. He didn’t pull any punches in his coverage of police corruption, racism and brutality. The police framed him for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. They disallowed testimony from the only impartial eyewitness. They paid a hooker, who wasn’t at the scene, to testify against Mumia. So Mumia was found guilty and given a death sentence. It has since been commuted to a life sentence, without parole. He remains the US’ most famous political prisoner.
I chose to paint him as he appeared as a young man, prior to his incarceration. You can learn more about his case from MOVE’s website.
Painting is 12″x12″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $80 plus postage
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Mohandas K. Gandhi (Oct. 2, 1869 – Jan.30, 1948) became known as the Mahatma or the “Great Soul” due to his wisdom in leading the people of India in non-violent resistance against British colonial rule in the 1930s and 40s. Gandhi was a great teacher. He wrote many books to train the people for the inner discipline necessary for non-violent civil disobedience. He drew on the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jesus Christ, and Mohammed. He was regarded as deeply spiritual, yet he professed faith in no deity or particular religion, saying: “My uniform experience has informed me that there is no other God than Truth.”
It was through Gandhi’s correspondence with two different actors in the resistance to Hitler that I first connected with him; that was Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany and Simone Weil in France. This led me to read his biography and most of his works. I had to learn a fair amount of Hindi to understand them. I came to truly revere the man and fully embrace his philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience.
“I object to violence because, when it appears to do good, it is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage.
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R. Buckminster Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) has been one of my heroes since I first learned of him when he designed the US exhibit for the 1967 World Expo in Montreal. I was twelve and I read several articles by him and about him. I learned about ephemeralism and synergism and the dymaxion globe and geodesic domes. Most importantly I learned to question authority. All the major and minor powers were and are squandering the resources of the world on war-making. If they would just wake up, they could realize if they spent all those resources on housing, feeding and caring for people, there would be abundance enough to share, and no need to go to war for anything. If we put our minds to “living lightly” on the earth, instead of bleeding her dry, there is plenty to go around for everyone.
Bucky Fuller was trained as an architect. He was known as an author, a systems engineer, an inventor, a philosopher, a scientist, a genius. He didn’t like being called an inventor, though he held dozens of patents. He felt he merely uncovered what was always there, or rearranged existing basic machines. This didn’t seem like a big deal to him, even if he were the first to do it in a certain way to solve a certain problem. He was always working to solve problems. He developed a discipline to rapidly get to REM sleep so he only required two 1 hour naps every day, allowing him 22 waking hours to work.
I painted this based on a photo of Buckminster as a young man, because it was at age 28, when his 4 year-old daughter died of complications of polio that he went through a crisis of depression. He came out of it with a commitment to search for ways to make the world a better place, with an emphasis on affordable housing. He felt his daughter’s death was partly to blame on the poor, damp apartment they were living in.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”
“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty.
But when I’ve finished, if the solution isn’t beautiful, I know it’s wrong.”
“Man knows so much and does so little.”
“The minute you begin to do what you really want to do,
it’s really a different kind of life.”
“Either war is obsolete or men are.”
R. Buckminster Fuller
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $80 plus postage.
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Mavis Staples is another voice of the civil rights movement. She, along with Arcade Fire, was the first to record a song of resistance to the so-called president Trump, releasing it one day before his inauguration.
It is a song in the prophetic tradition, speaking from the viewpoint of God, as a warning. It can also be understood as the inscription on the wall of the Minnesota state house says: “Vox Populi Vox Dei.” “The Voice of the People is the Voice of God.”
Mavis Staples is no stranger to powerfully speaking truth to the people. She was with her dad, Roebuck Staples, who everyone called “Pops” when he wrote “Freedom Highway” for Martin Luther King, Jr., to start the Freedom March. I painted Mavis on the river stage at the XPoNential Music Festival in July 2016, in Camden, NJ, with the Philadelphia skyline in the background. The festival happened the weekend after the GOP National Convention. Another performer had made the mistake of watching it. Being the sensitive soul that he was, it was more than he could take. He had a full-blown meltdown on stage, and gave a half hour expletive filled rant, instead of performing his set. Well, Mavis took the stage Sunday afternoon and said something along the line of: “Times are looking bad. It’s been a rough week, but I’m here to make you feel good! I’m not promising you it’s going to last, but while I’m up here, you’re going to feel good!” And she said, “Now we’re going to sing a song that we used to sing with Pops and Dr. King in dark times to get to better times.” She started singing, “If You’re Ready (Come Go With Me)”, with some added lyrics that sounded like a socialist platform. I was listening on the radio, because I was grounded, due to complications from my heart-valve replacement surgery. I was in tears of joy. Later in the set, she recalled Pops writing of Freedom Highway, then performed it. I should say, she led it. She was really doing her job as a minstrel and prophet and poet in dark times; enthusiastically bringing hope against all odds, and pointing the way upward. She said she started singing with her sisters in 1966 and wasn’t done yet. at age 77. She’s still going strong, speaking out, and lifting spirits.
Pops passed away in 2000, at age 86. I painted him in this painting (in gray tones), because he was ‘larger than life’ in that concert, in the songs, and in the heart of Mavis.
Painting is 20″ x 16″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $200 plus postage
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The first time we saw Pete Seeger, we were so close that to him that we were literally within spitting distance. He was giving a free concert at Penn’s Landing under the old fiberglass pavilion. I believe it was 1981. Bethann and I went there with our friends Frank and Colleen. We arrived just in time for the concert to start. The place was full. Everyone was seated on blankets spread out on the concrete floor of the pavilion leaving a ten foot space in front of the stage. Frank sees the space and says, “Look, they left room for us right up front!” and proceeds to the front, lays down the blanket and sets us up. We were front and center. Once Pete got going, we were, indeed, blessed with his saliva. It was a great experience, nonetheless. When tugboats came up the river they blew their horns to salute Mr. Seeger, as they knew he was giving a concert there that day. He was famous for his love of rivers and boats. He promoted environmentalism and spearheaded the clean-up and restoration of the Hudson River.
I was to hear Pete Seeger perform live on three more occasions in the 1980s, all of them demonstrations that I was taking part in, in Washington, DC. He was famous for his union organizing songs and work with the Weavers. There is too much to be said about such a full and long life for one little blog post. He lived over 94 years (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014). He published a magazine of sheet music of folk music and protest songs. He was a communist and blacklisted for it, during the McCarthy era. There is a petition to name the new Tappan Zee Bridge in New York after him. Read more about him here.
Painting is 18″ x 14″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $200 plus postage
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Odetta Holmes was born December 31, 1930, in Birmingham, Alabama. She is one of those rare personages who went through life known by only her first name: Odetta. Martin Luther King, Jr. called her “the queen of American folk music!” She sang folk, blues and spirituals. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin and Mavis Staples all claimed her as a major formation influence for their music. She started performing publicly at age 13. Her last performance was October 25, 2008. She was invited to perform at Barack Obama’s inauguration, but, sadly, she passed away of heart disease on December 2, 2008.
I painted her as part of my “Personal Heroes” series, because she never just sang for her supper. She sang for a higher purpose. She was always seeking to break new ground, to make progress. She has been called the “voice of the civil rights movement.” I’m sure that is hyperbole. Surely that title needs to be shared with the Staples, the Weavers, Paul Robeson and many others. But she was not just pushing for civil rights; she promoted human rights and economic justice. She considered herself to be “just one foot soldier in the army.” Nonetheless, President Clinton awarded her the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Medal of Honor. She performed all over the world, and received many honors. This did not change her message. This is an iconic pose for her. She has a determined look on her face and she is pointing upwards. Her whole life was dedicated to using the gifts she was given: her beautiful voice, sharp mind and determined spirit, to get us all to move onward and upward!
We had the great honor and joy to be able to hear her perform live at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 2001. (We had received complimentary tickets.) I was thrilled!
Painting is 12″ x 24″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $200 plus postage
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When one “Bings” Karl Marx, the first thing that comes up is: “Scientist – Karl Marx was a German-born scientist, philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist.” One thing is for certain, a lot of misinformation has been circulated about him and what he taught, in capitalist countries. The first word in the description is the most important, however, and, in the end, science always wins, because it is reality. Science does not play favorites, does not discriminate on who your relatives were or how rich your parents were. Thermonuclear war will kill you just as dead whether you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth or in a mud hut. Global warming will flood you, starve you, burn you, impoverish, kill you, no matter how many billions of dollars you amass. Science is science. Facts are facts. Alt-nothing! It’s time to share! It’s simple justice! It’s human survival. It’s better for all of us. It’s more secure and happier for all of us.
Yes. Marx is a hero of mine. But, if he had not written what he had, someone else would have. It was inevitable. It is science. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” He was a Marxist, also. That’s why the government killed him.
There is a new Socialist movement growing. Capitalism has failed fantastically. The masses, especially the disenfranchised, educated young people are rising up to claim their place and their fair share of the fruit of their forebears investment in infrastructure and technology for the common good.
The painting is acrylic on 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas.
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This painting is the latest in my “Heroes” series and my first with two people together. It is based on the famous photograph taken of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as they were preparing for their triumphal march into Havana in 1959 to take control of the central government after the corrupt Batista regime, along with their US carpet-baggers had fled. Castro managed to not only hold the country together, but transform it into the most stable, egalitarian, healthy country in the western hemisphere for over 50 years, despite over 600 American CIA assassination attempts, a draconian trade embargo, a failed, US led invasion. He eliminated childhood hunger, homelessness and rampant gambling. He instituted universal, free healthcare and free education through university. Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate and longer life expectancy than the US despite spending 1/5 as much on medicine. They send more doctors around the world to help developing nations and in crisis situations than the US does, though they are relatively tiny.
Fidel Castro said, “Capitalism is using its money. We socialists are throwing it away!” What he meant by that is that they weren’t using it to make more money. They were spending it on the people. All the profits from the factories and industries went to the people. There has been scarcity in Cuba, but no one has gone hungry. No one has gone uneducated. They have the highest literacy rate in the hemisphere at 99%. No one has gone without top-notch medical care. It is a medical tourism destination! The scarcity is because of the lack of trade because of the bullying of the US. In the US, when business is bad, the ones who work the hardest are the first to suffer! Not so in Cuba! Furthermore, Fidel wanted to have a free and open democracy. Honduras had tried that. They elected a socialist. Our CIA, under Dulles, went and overthrew him, and reinstalled fascism. So Che persuaded Fidel to maintain a benign dictatorship.
Fidel Castro was born on August 13, 1926 and died on November 25, 2016, proving once and for all that the best revenge is a long life.
Ernesto Che Guevara was born on June 14, 1928. (My birthday is June 14, 1955.) His early life is documented in the book and movie: “The Motorcycle Diaries”, about his travels from one end of South America to the other on a motorcycle. This trip was formative in his education as a revolutionary. He became a medical doctor first. In 1955, Fidel’s brother Raul introduced them, and he joined the revolution in Cuba. On June 2, 1959, he married Aleida March. He stayed in Cuba until 1965; then he joined the revolution in Kinshasa, Congo. In 1966, he joined the revolution in Bolivia. He was captured by the CIA on October 8, 1967, and summarily executed the next day. So much for human rights and due process and Geneva Convention.
These two are unlikely heroes of mine, since I am a pacifist. As Winston Churchill said, “Consistency is the bugbear of small minds!” The result of what they did cannot be questioned. They improved the lives of millions of people and literally made hundreds of thousands more lives happen. Vision, combined with action, blended with stubborn love for common people. Heroes indeed!
“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”
“Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” – both by El Che
Painting is acrylic on 24″ x 18″ stretched canvas.
Price: $150 plus postage
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On February 9, 2014, I posted an article featuring Bob Marley on the website for The King’s Jubilee entitled One Love. That site is down now, since TKJ went out of existence a couple of years ago, after my health failed and the church abandoned me. It was written when I was still a believer of sorts. It still makes sense, if one just substitutes Love for God. After all, “God love is” according to the Bible. Bob Marley was one of my heroes, not because of his music, although I love that. It is because of his life of peace and simple generosity.
“The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.”
“The people who are trying to make this world worse are not taking the day off. Why should I?” – Bob Marley
Painting is acrylic on 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas.
Price: $150 plus postage
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Martin Luther King, Jr. was not just a civil rights leader working to elevate the estate of people of color in the US. He was a prophetic voice for human rights and dignity and economic equality. His image has been sanitized and his socialist rhetoric is ignored to co-opt his legacy to make him acceptable as a national hero. His birthday has been turned into a national day of servitude where students are compelled to pick up litter in parks or paint restrooms in poorly funded public schools. We must keep the young people busy lest they actually read his words or watch the three hours of extant newsreel footage of him, which would reveal the horrors he and his comrades endured just to be allowed to vote, or to stay at the same motels as their oppressors.
The federal government tolerated King as long as his focus remained on “colored folks issues.” He shifted his focus, however, once it became clear to him that poverty and the disparity between rich and poor were inextricably connected to racial hatred and discrimination. The CIA had him assassinated as he was in Memphis to support a union action, on April 4, 1968.
And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalist economy. – MLK
So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxury to the classes. – MLK
Painting is acrylic on 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas.
Price: $200 plus postage
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Dorothy Day lived from November 8, 1897 to November 29, 1980. She lived with Lionel Moise, by whom she became pregnant. He persuaded her to get an abortion. She married Berkeley Tobey and was divorced a year later. She did give birth to a daughter, Tamar Teresa, by her common law husband, Forster Batterham, a biologist and anarchist, in 1926. They parted ways in 1929, after her conversion to Catholicism. She was a journalist and an activist for socialist causes and women’s suffrage. She was jailed on several occasions and engaged in a hunger strike after being arrested for demonstrating in front of the White House in 1917. She converted to Catholicism in 1927. This did not put a damper on her zeal to help the poor or to secure rights for the disenfranchised.
Dorothy established a Christian hospitality commune and started publishing the Catholic Worker in New York City. This started the Catholic Worker movement, which now has over 125 hospitality houses for the homeless and poor in the US and overseas. She advocated that every Christian household should maintain an extra room to provide hospitality to the poor. She is famous for saying: “When I feed the poor they call me a saint. when I ask why they are poor they call me a communist!” She also told people to not call her a saint. She understood, as I learned early on, that when people call you a ‘saint’ or ‘radical’, it is just a way of excusing themselves from taking similar actions to serve the poor.
Pope Francis included her in a short list of exemplary Americans, together with Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thomas Merton, in his address before the United States Congress.
“Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”
“Men are beginning to realize that they are not individuals but persons in society, that man alone is weak and adrift, that he must seek strength in common action.”
“Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.”
Painting is acrylic on 20″ x 16″ stretched canvas.
Price: $200 plus postage
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Sister Mary Elizabeth Hanssens was the only woman to ever take me out for a meal other than my wife. It was at a time when we were both working as volunteers in the Philadelphia prisons and jails, and we were both facing major problems that demanded resolution. She helped me over the hurdles to start the only tutoring program for the Women’s Detention Facility. I encouraged her to pursue leaving the convent in order to serve homeless and battered women.
She took a year of discernment away from the convent before being excused from her vows by the Pope. During that year, she resumed her education to become an attorney. She then bought a cheap row house in an at risk neighborhood, took in battered women, and joined the Habeas Corpus Task Force in the Philadelphia public defenders’ office. She helped countless poor and homeless people, especially women. Mary died at age 58, on November 4, 2010. She left behind her parents, siblings and two cats.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage
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Mohandas K. Gandhi (Oct. 2, 1869 – Jan.30, 1948) became known as the Mahatma or the “Great Soul” due to his wisdom in leading the people of India in non-violent resistance against British colonial rule in the 1930s and 40s. Gandhi was a great teacher. He wrote many books to train the people for the inner discipline necessary for non-violent civil disobedience. He drew on the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jesus Christ, and Mohammed. He was regarded as deeply spiritual, yet he professed faith in no deity or particular religion, saying: “My uniform experience has informed me that there is no other God than Truth.”
Many claim that his path of non-violent civil disobedience ultimately failed to liberate India, since they resorted to violent revolution. The truth of the matter, however, is that it is unlikely they would have had the cohesion and discipline to do that as a unified people had he not trained them in civil disobedience first. His teachings were instrumental in instructing MartinLuther King, Jr., Simone Weil, and Dietrich Bonhoffer, thus, he impacted US civil rights, and the French and German resistance.
It was through Gandhi’s correspondence with two different actors in the resistance to Hitler that I first connected with him; that was Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany and Simone Weil in France. This led me to read his biography and most of his works. I had to learn a fair amount of Hindi to understand them. I came to truly revere the man and fully embrace his philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience.
“I object to violence because, when it appears to do good, it is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
Painting is acrylic on 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas.
Price: $200
This was a gift to my friend Ray Acker on the occasion of his ordination to the priesthood in the Antiochian Orthodox Church, as Fr. Herman. I wrote the words of Gandhi, above, on the back of the canvas frame:
“My uniform experience has informed me that there is no other God than Truth.”
She was born in Kovno, Russian Empire, now Kaunas, Lithuania, on June 27, 1869, and died in Toronto, Canada, on May 14, 1970, having been exiled from the US. It was over thirty years ago when I read Emma Goldman’s memoir. She connected me to such a cast of great actors and thinkers in the world: Lenin, Margaret Sanger, Simone Weil, Mahatma Gandhi, John Reed, Sasha Berkman, Peggy Guggenheim, Jackson Pollock, Peter Kropotkin, and others. She was pivotal in my maturing to be a more compassionate person, and eventually a Socialist.
You can read her Wikipedia entry to get just a smidgen of the activities she was involved in and the lives she touched. She had been abused and misused by men all her life, starting with her father, yet she loved a few men and was loyal to a fault in her lifetime.
I set out to attempt to paint Emma smiling. I could not find a single extant photograph of her smiling, yet her most famous quote is when she said to V.I. Lenin: “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution!” This was when she arrived in Russia shortly after the Bolshevik revolution and wanted to celebrate, but Lenin told her, “Dancing is bourgeois!” I have been sitting across the room (about 11′ feet away) at eye level with Emma. She stares piercingly. She is both solid as a rock and on the verge of a flood of tears. This effect is quite accidental or subconscious on my part but it is quite haunting; and appropriate considering the abuse she had endured.
Painting is acrylic on 11″ x 14″ stretched canvas.
Price: $120 plus postage
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Amber Evans was a youth worker, youth justice advocate, and activist in Columbus, Ohio. She was passionate about her work and touched many lives. Like so many of us who deal with the disenfranchised, the poor, the oppressed, the cast-offs of society, she had a hard time just coming home from work. She grew increasingly depressed and isolated from others. She disappeared on January 28, 2019. Many speculated about possible foul play from any of the authorities she could have offended in her many outspoken protests and petitions. It came out during the search for her that she had left her boyfriend a couple of days before she disappeared, after they had an argument when he urged her to get counseling.
Her body was recovered from the Scioto River on March 23, 2019, and identified the next day. It was then revealed that she had texted her family and boyfriend a cryptic message about leaving on the day she disappeared. They assumed this was her suicide note. She was 28. Some doubt has been cast on this, and further investigation is still ongoing. Her mother even helped produce a documentary movie presenting possible evidence of foul play. So we do not know if she took her own life or if she was martyred.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage.
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I never learned Pops’ name. Everyone just called him Pops. He was happier than any man had a right to be who was living homeless in the parks or under the bridges. I wondered if he was simple-minded, truly spiritually disciplined, or was just born happy. Scientists tell us that people’s happiness centers in their brains develop differently in the womb. At any rate, he took the lessons his mama taught him seriously! If he couldn’t say something nice, he wouldn’t say anything at all. He wasn’t homeless for being lazy. He was always busy. He had a big shopping cart. He used it to collect recyclables to turn in for cash.
He would go around to the renovation and demolition sites and ask for any of the metal they would part with. Many times the union men would have him go in and do some of the particularly dirty work, up in the vents, etc., in exchange for some of the metal and all the wire. They usually didn’t get much, if anything for the wire, unless it was stripped. Pops would recycle all the aluminum, steel, copper and tin. He would keep the wire. He also snagged cords from the blinds on these jobs. Pops would then painstakingly strip the used, copper, electrical wire. He would then wind it into crosses. He used the salvaged cord from the blinds to tie necklaces for them. He always wore one and had several more on his person. He was in the habit of giving these cross necklaces away. He would say, “Just trust Jesus” or “Jesus loves you” and offer you a cross. If you told him he had already given you one, no matter, please accept another.
Over the years, Pops offered me four crosses. I passed three of them onto others. Pops eventually did succumb to the dementia that comes with Alzheimer’s. He spent his last year or so living on the street in a large crate with a loving community of four other men living in adjacent shipping crates under a parking ramp bridge. These men looked after him with sensitivity and love rarely seen in nursing homes with all the amenities. They knew just how to deal with him when he was present and when he ‘went off’. It was tragic, yet also beautiful, to witness. Pops was reaping loving care in the roughest of circumstances from the most unlikely caregivers after sowing a lifetime of simple love and cheer.
I have to say, though, to witness this in the USA in 2002, and to have no way to intervene to get him to a properly heated space with proper treatment, because we as a people lack the compassion to muster the political will to provide universal, easy to access healthcare as a basic human right, was heartbreaking.
Cross Pops made for me
When I was chrismated in 1999 in the Orthodox Church, my godfather, Alex Smerkanich, gave me a very nice, shiny, real gold cross, on a gold chain. I lost it, one dark, winter night, while serving the homeless at 18th and Vine. So I had Pops cross blessed on the holy table at St. Philip’s and I started wearing that instead; in memory of Pops and for all my homeless brothers and sisters. When I started to tear out the wiring to rewire our house, I saved the old wire. I strip it and I make crosses like Pops did and give them away, for people to remember Pops and his simplicity; to remember all my homeless brothers and sisters; to work to end homelessness; to work for universal healthcare. It’s pro-life!
I painted Pops from memory. I made him younger than I ever saw him to reflect his childlike faith and unsinkable optimism. Yet I included his white hair and long white beard to reflect what a gift of wisdom this was. I made a small cross out of salvaged doorbell wire and fastened it to the canvas on the necklace.
Painting is 11″x14″ acrylic on stretched canvas. Price: $100 plus postage
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Kenneth Cobbs challenged me and instructed me like few other persons in my life in such a brief time. I can count on one hand the people who have had this kind of impact in this short a time, and they all seem to totally, irretrievably disappear. At least Kenny left me with a couple of books of his poetry, including one poem about me. It is not particularly complimentary toward me. I was alarmed when I read it. Kenny and I discussed it. He stuck to his guns and defended it. This was how he felt. It cut me to the quick. I was grateful for the critique and thanked him for his honesty. I asked his forgiveness, for that was not how I wanted to come off or how I intended our ministry to be perceived. At the time, I published it in The King’s Jubilee newsletter as a confessional, with an appeal to help, please, let’s all do better.
Kenny had given me two booklets of his poetry that he had typed up. He managed to photocopy several copies and staple and fold them. He would sell them for $5 each to raise a little cash. I made some copies for him. I told him I would retype and reset the booklets in nicer fonts, with full color covers. I did this. He never showed up to retrieve them or the money for the copies that I sold for him. I never saw him again. I contacted the nuns who he said he was visiting that week. they had not heard from him. I left my phone number. I have searched for him every couple of years, since, to no avail. That was in 1998. I keep hoping that he chose to disappear and become a Buddhist monk somewhere. He was an intense person, wise beyond his years, yet I fear the world was too rough for him. He had been part of the MOVE family and had not recovered from the terrorism inflicted by the city, and the lies and machinations to frame Mumia Abu Jamal for killing a cop; after Mumia dared to report sympathetically about MOVE.
Kenny took me down a peg. I was glad for it. He did it with honesty, in the spirit of true brotherhood and love. I have gone back again and again to our conversations and his critiques to see how I measure up “according to the Kenny scale.” If he knew, he would laugh so loud!
I painted this from emotional memory. My counselor and I talked about this painting. This is the first time I have obscured a part of a face. I think this is because both of us were blocked in some major ways. He was dealing with PTSD from Mayor Goode’s bombing of West Phila. I was a recovering fundamentalist; had been abused by clergy, yet still playing the clergy game. Kenny’s right eyebrow is raised. This was done subconsciously on my part, but it makes perfect sense. Whenever I think of Kenny, I think of our conversations and his piercing, unflinching criticism. It is rare that I can find someone who can give as good as he gets. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” (Prov. 27:6) I measure my progress on stepping down from my “god complex” and getting over being a “white knight” on the “Kenny Scale”. This is the raised eyebrow and slightly more open right eye. The background color of orange and shirt as bright red were chosen because of the MOVE fire on Mother’s Day, 1985. My missing front tooth is from that night, as well. But that’s another story.
Acrylic painting on 11″x14″ stretched canvas.
Price: $130 plus Postage
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Or, in my case, for the first time. I spent most of my time as a child with adults, or at least older children. I would help my older sister with her homework. My brother took me to college when I was 13, got me drunk; and I still held my own in theological discussions with the divinity graduate students into the wee hours of the morning. I still remember the discussion nearly 50 years later! I was born old! This was not the case for Nebraska.
Even though Nebraska had had a pretty hard knock life so far, he remained childlike, cheerful, confident; just a downright happy guy and a joy to be around! We hosted Nebraska (yes, that is his real, first name) for a weekend in our home, while he was staying at Liberty House prison aftercare program in Schwenksville, PA, in 1986. I was Mennonite Chaplain and Volunteer Director with Liberty Ministries at the time and had helped reorganize the aftercare program there, after it had closed in Phila. Nebraska was one of the early residents. He was just 20, and had already been in prison. He had been raised in the foster care system. Who knows if he actually committed a crime? He was a dark skinned, black youth. He was irrepressibly cheerful. That is enough to get one locked up in any number of towns and neighborhoods in Pennsylvania.
We had a great time with Nebraska. The one memory that sticks out is our trip to Ikea. We all went to Ikea together, all seven of us: Bethann and I, our four daughters and Nebraska. Now Bethann and I were about 30. The girls were 9 and under. In the store, we got a little spread out, but we could see each other. One or another of the girls would exclaim, “Mommy, come see!” or “Daddy, come see!” when they saw something they liked. Then Nebraska exclaimed, “Mommy! Mommy! Come see!” loud enough for the whole floor to hear, and they all watched Bethann answer. We have been tickled by that scene every time we have recalled it, in the 30 years since!
We don’t know what happened to Nebraska after that weekend. I was so busy overseeing over 500 volunteers in eight different jails and prisons and starting several tutoring and other programs. We never saw him again in prison or in aftercare, or on the street, so I’m taking that as a good sign. But I don’t know.
This I do know. Nebraska was not a throwaway. He was not a ‘taker’. He was, and hopefully still is, a beautiful human being, and our brother someplace.
This painting is acrylic on an 11″x14″ stretched canvas.
Price: $90 plus shipping.
Fill out the form below so we can arrange payment and delivery. I take Paypal, so all credit cards are accepted.
“Other People’s Children” is a totally different approach to pro-life. It looks at adults whom the world has thrown away and sees the absolute beauty and value the world missed. The term “pro-life” has been hijacked by the anti-abortion mob, who are anything but. I celebrate my friends, true loved ones, whom the so-called “pro-life” crowd cast aside as ‘takers’ because of their disabilities, gender, color or economic standing. I am painting their portraits to go along with their stories. Some are from my weak memory. I have very few photos.
I tried to capture the essence of Rosalie, a woman I met in the Women’s Detention Facility in 1985. We became lifelong friends. She was irrepressible. She attached herself to me immediately. We were both about 30, just a month apart in age, worlds apart in backgrounds. She died of leukemia on the street in 2008, when we were about 53. This is just a poor cartoon representing her. It really looks nothing like her aside from the freckles, frizzy red hair and big smile, but does capture some of the emotional impact of her coming toward me for the first time in the House of Corrections, more than 30 years ago now.
I miss her.
The painting is 16″x12″ acrylic on canvas. It stands quite well on its own: a provocative conversation starter.
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