Oh boy, sometimes I think the world is chasing my tail.

I live on the south side of the Neponset River. Once Wampanoag fishing grounds, this area is dramatically separated by water from the big city of Boston on the northern side.

If I had a bow and arrow (the bow is in for repairs) I could shoot straight across the Neponset and reach the place where Senator Ted Kennedy lies in repose at this moment. Of course, I would never do that. I did take the train and bus to the JFK Library, though, and signed one of the condolence books for the Kennedy family.

Tonight, President Obama will land a few miles away.
Tomorrow, all the living former Presidents (ugh, wish a couple of 'em would stay in Maine) and half the US Congress will be here. This is a BIG DEAL in my neck of the woods!

Please wish our neighborhoods a peaceful, smooth passage through this weekend, as the whole world descends on our doorsteps. It's gonna be crawling with media people of all types and tons of heavy security guys. Maybe good for business (cynically speaking) but it looks like quite a hub-bub from where I'm standing.

I'll report more later......

Ah. Oak Bluffs in August. The horses are flying, the boats buzzing in and out of the tiny harbor and folks are congregating at the Inkwell. 

Many times, as I made my way around the Island on the vital missions required to maintain a year-round family, there, I'd meet some famous person or other. The etiquette
that I had been taught to practice in those circumstances- as acquired from my late father and mother-in-law, both Natives- was to politely smile and look away.

There was one occasion of a celebrity invasion, however, that was particularly memorable. It was the year that the celebrities seemed to outnumber the regular summer people. The Clintons had arrived.

My heart goes out to people who are annoyed by delays in their passage through five corners while awaiting secret service clearance (possible Obama motorcade on the way) and who don't actually get a close-up view of the First Family.

I had the opportunity to shake the hand of Bill Clinton and that of Hillary Rodham Clinton. That was a powerful two-fer as celebrity encounters go.  Make the most of your visit to the Island by purchasing the required "badge" of honor, my handcrafted Obama pins.

Get 'em here, get 'em now while they're hot. Only 75 original pins, total. I'll never make any more, either. 

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Excellent depiction of consumption as an all consuming force.

As I rode my bicycle some 7 miles today, through local neighborhood backstreets, on the way to help out a disabled friend with her household chores (yes, I really am that good) I saw so much stuff out on the curbs for trash pick-up, I thought, "Wow. All this stuff could furnish a small third world village rather lavishly. And it's all getting trashed, here, instead."

There were lots of chairs- in good condition- bookshelves, rugs, patio furniture, gas grills, electronics, baskets, china, even a gaming table that was so attractive to me I almost wished I had a motor vehicle to tote it home. In front of every suburban home there were piles and piles of used stuff.

This is a weekly occurrence in my neighborhood. I suspect that it happens almost everywhere in the USA, all the time, too. Made me think about how the value we place upon our stuff creeps over and influences the value we place upon each other, as human beings. When people treat people worse than they treat their "disposable" stuff we are all screwed. I see this happening everyday. Do you? Let's change these wasteful patterns of consumption- the "valued one day/ devalued the next day" mindset- applied to both people and things, right now. Thanks.

Well, this is a hard bump in the pavement. Unexpected, unkind and the sort of thing that can throw you over the handlebars.  Testing has never been so fierce.

Don't exactly know what to think about Michael Jackson's untimely demise. Sad. That's the feeling, at least.  Empathy for the close one's of the departed.  Welcome to those who arrive.

A mockingbird is doing his inspired repertoire, all soul and rhythm, outside my window right now.  A dead baby skunk was discovered a little earlier.  A Pretty polecat, sleek black and white.  Even and still in June's filmy, foggy light.

Nature has broken my heart.  She has given me wings, too.

We shall fly.

Love

 

Used to be "art director" of a little free, Providence entertainment paper- called the NewPaper- back in the eighties.  Worked with a guy who was the live music reviewer, Bob Angell, whose highest praise consisted of a short, wind-up commentary punctuated with the term "'nuff said".  

NIFF has said mo' than 'nuff. This year's Newport International Film Festival, on rosa rugosa scented Aquidneck Island in early June, presented films of every genre in sweet old real movie theatres around the Newport waterfront.  

Lucky must be my middle name (or karma, perhaps) because I happened to win a pair of all access Platinum Passes to this shindig. Would have penciled it in, anyway.  The beauty is manifold. My benefactor was the Boston Phoenix, the very paper that bought out the old Providence NewPaper (so legend has it) shorty after l left my art dictatatorship post.

Well, to make a beautiful story so short you have to read it twice, I promised the organizers and volunteers of this gift of great elegance that I would write something nice about NIFF.

This exhausted pen handler must sleep first. 'Nuff said about Niff for tonight!

The loveliest thing about winning platinum passes to the Newport International Film Festival (Thank you, Boston Phoenix) is the variety of choices. 

Now, this whole thing has been fate.  Right.  Planning and fate. No, not quite.

Movie making is a complex endeavor.  Film Festivals, where everybody's movies get screened, that's a whole 'nother animal. It's like coordinating cats and dogs. Better put, it's as hard as managing an excellent Blues band.  

Glad to participate this year.  Yup. just another lucky American.

The good citizens of Boston can sleep more soundly at night now knowing that the well nourished (on their dimes) constabulary has busted a world famous Art Criminal accused of despoiling their pristine, fair city.

I realize that this is old news, nothing to get all angsty about or even a reason to start stocking up your personal bomb shelters. Rather an anti-climactic tempest in a bean-pot, actually. Boston gets very boring in the winter. All those murders and gay-bashings and kickings of bums in the Public Garden are like so many losses by a favorite sports team after awhile. They are easy to ignore. What REALLY makes a difference, in terms of keeping the streets safe for Boston's ignorant, bullying fascists, is the arrest of an artist on his way to a reception at the Institute of Contemporary Art. I can hear the cheers of the city's infamous mobs of beer guzzling, fat and lazy, bald white men now: "Go right at him, boys!"

Mr. Fairey has a full head of hair. He is cute, in a masculine but boyish way. He's a graduate of RISD. He has that awful name. "TAKE THAT, YA FUCKIN' FAIREY!!!!Booo-YAH!"

This police crack-down is just what the dingy, grimy, ugly city needs right now.
It's much more inspiring and intimidating than the ususal round up of city councilors stuffing cash in their cleavage (or down their trousers, depending on the gender of the civil servant in question).

Murderers, rapists, diddling priests, diddling cops, diddling sports coaches: You're all in the clear now. The real public enemy and perp #1 has been cuffed and printed (no pun intended, Mr. Fairey) held in a smelly, cold cell and, no doubt,  learned his lesson this time. "AHHT? We don't need ya stinkin' AHHT in this SMAAHT city!"  Smart. Hmmmm. If public tagging of private walls was so much of a nuisance BEFORE Mr. Faireys arrest, I can safely predict that a backlash is in the works as I type this.

Any kid with a cheap printer and a can of spray paint can do this stuff and not get caught. Perhaps by the end of this icy winter we shall see graffitti tags on every ugly public surface. I, for one, would be amused and entertained by this sort of free art event. The city really needs a make-over. Why pay artists with our tax dollars when they will gladly do the work for nothing?   Keep lookin' out, Bostonians. It could get mighty colorful around here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LU-32tRxLk

http://www.avaaz.org/en/million_messages_to_obama/97.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

Thanks.