The Individual Guide

Peace in the Middle East - whoa that is a toughie.

You have millennia of sheople being led around by the nose while abusing their mothers and daughters on both (or all eight or nine) sides of the issue and then there is all that oil that corpserists backing the US are in need of.

I suspect there needs to be real ecumenicism and the religions must be forced (which will require Bush or someone also admitting all religions say the same things) to say so. And then it will take years of re-programming before the land so full of holes and ass-holes begins to deserve any recognition as a Holy Land rather than a playground for Holy Empires.

Then I would suggest that we use Free Energy or alternative energy sources and begin making it clear there is an abundance of energy all around us. If we had to we could simply get Helium III from the moon for some purposes that the Tesla (Newman, Farnsworth, Fleischmann-Pons, Solar, Bearden and Vacuum etc) energy did not find application suitable to match the requirements. This would diffuse the arbitrageurs who love unrest more than a little and be detrimental to the oil cartels (Bushco).

Finally and most unlikely if people continue to believe the history they are taught in school - We must remove special status for people who hide behind corporate or national veils. It was only recently that corporations were given superior rights to any individual. At the same time we must reduce national interests while increasing local autonomy. The futurists like Toffler have been right about this happening in Europe but they could have explained why the plan set in motion in the 19th Century would lead to the EEC.

This same plan might be necessary if Nations are to continue in their present sovereign (derived from Kings who were said to be Divine) status. I would hope that will not happen but it is apparent in the words of Woolsey and Bennett that it is the plan. It is in fact the way that Kissinger Associates have laid out the NSS document that George II calls a War on Terra.

On the other hand if people started learning the Hegelian Dialectic of history - then real change could occur. Then standing armies would be outlawed and women would be free. How can people be educated about all the lies of Nations and leaders and yet still have some hope for mankind?”

Author of Diverse Druids
Columnist for The ES Press Magazine
Guest ‘expert’ at World-Mysteries.com
Activist for ecumenicism

“MURALS”
( A brief excerpt from our book )

The abstract notion of ’society’, much touted by politicians, is, of course, a shibboleth. Society is the sum total of human relationships especially those we designate as “role-playing”. Man is a social being and his life is by definition contextual. How he relates to himself, his work, his friends, his past, his present, his future, his family and the world in general determines his life and defines him. From the wastelands of the social pariah to the media touted ‘pillar of the establishment’ is a broad spectrum indeed. It is a spectrum explored by satirists in general and by many of the major playwrights. Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”, for example, is essentially an expose of the craziness of man as a social being. The theatre deals expressly with all aspects of social relationships. Is theatrical expression political? How can it not?

Painting deals with context quite consciously. Context is as much a theme of Manet’s ‘Dejeuner Sur L’herbe’ as it is of Beckett’s “En Attendant Godot”. It is as much exemplified in Picasso’s Guernica as it is in the work of Magritte and De Chirico. All art is social. All art is therefore political in essence. Whether it becomes overtly political or covertly political has as much to do with context, as it has to do with the artist himself. A portrait of Hitler would be a revered object in a Neo-Nazi’s lair but in a Jewish synagogue it would be something else entirely, if indeed it managed to hang there for more than ten seconds. Just as a man can attain immediate notoriety by streaking in the wrong place at the right time so careerists in the art world manipulate context in order to win maximum attention for themselves. Advertisers too like Benetton have not been slow to learn the trick. Therefore, to label certain artists as ‘political’ is simply to say they are ‘overtly’ political in the same way as a pickpocket is conspicuously a thief while the retailer who overcharges for his merchandise is merely a ‘respected businessman’. Both are playing the same game. The word is not the thing.

How we relate to things will have a lot to say about the choices we make. After all, bigotry itself and its extreme manifestation racism, is at heart a relationship problem. The antithesis of the ugly and the beautiful is primarily a contextual problem whose parameters are always shifting. Consequently, modern art critics, bereft of any normative frame of reference in our time are all at sea as to what constitutes ‘good’ art and what ‘bad’. Wily businessmen like Saatchi and Saatchi and unscrupulous curators everywhere are ever ready to capitalize on their ignorance and on the befuddlement of the public in general.

Since the ’scandalous’ arrival of Duchamp’s urinal the use of context has become a favorite weapon in the artist’s armatorium. From that point of view there is really nothing new about Hirst’s work. Surrealism, as a movement outside of its psychological pretensions, was pragmatically an investigation into context. In the era of New Age thinking, of course, and technological “advancement” all this seems like old hat these days but in their time these cultural statements were radical in the extreme.

In the case of The Bogside Artists the context was given. We were born into it. The site we chose to paint our murals, The Bogside, was a familiar part of our habitat. It was a daily fact of our existence, where we had lived and played, our history. It was drenched in blood. This by itself would, paradoxically and despite the blunderbuss abuse of our critics, make our work very reflective of where modern art is headed at the moment. For, it has long been an embarrassing fact to many curators that the gallery itself provides a false context for the viewing of art. The gallery in effect becomes a mediator between the viewer for whom the work was made and the artist himself. This leads to a reification of the work and a corresponding alienation of the work, the artist and his public. Art galleries therefore look wistfully at community art and the work of muralists like ourselves. They establish ‘Outreach Programs’ in the hope of redressing the balance. Performance artists, let us not forget, came into being explicitly to fill this gap.

With public art the modus operandi of the careerist artist whose will is to challenge the viewer on the presupposition that the viewer is actually blind and stupid, would nakedly contradict the context in which the mural artist seeks to live. The muralist’s first remit is to communicate; else he would not have chosen a public site in the first place. He is willingly addressing public context, public mind, public belief, public perceptions in all their variety and contradictions. He is not appealing to the dilettante or the culture vulture. He is a rebel, painting with passion because he knows that true art is poetry and poetry is not the proper arena for careerism, which rightfully belongs to the market place and its chicanery. He is appealing, first and foremost, to the man in the street, on the assumption that the man in the street is not completely blind and no crazier than the artists who address him. This is the context in which the muralist places himself. It can be thin ice to walk upon, as the experiences of The Bogside Artists will readily testify; because it involves the whole social context. There are political currents to avoid and tribal rapids to negotiate. We seek to honor the context we have been given; not to abuse it in the name of an infantile delusion of license masquerading as ‘freedom’ which alone characterizes much of what passes for so-called ‘contemporary art’.

About the Author

William Kelly is one of The Bogside Artists. He is author of Murals. More info about the artists can be got at;
www.bogsideartists.com

You elect your local trustees, be they for your village, your schools or your library. For most people, the closest contact they ever have with their elected officials is at the ballot box. Maybe you saw an ad on a neighbor’s lawn and the picture looked good, so you voted for that candidate. Or maybe you actually do know the candidate personally and you like him/her. So you check the box to vote him/her into office.

I happen to be an elected member of the Nippersink Library District board of trustees. The reason I am there is that I’ve always loved my local library; I’ve always found it to be a warm place (or cool in the summer) where I can pick up the local newspaper and read it - relatively undisturbed. Or I can peruse the latest novels. I can also borrow DVD’s and audio books to keep me company when I’m in my car. And I felt that I needed to become involved in my community. I’m always amazed at the number of different things you can do at the library. So I ran for the office and won (unopposed, I should add).

I have also attended village and school board meetings. But that was always when I had a burning opinion to relay to the boards. For instance, in 1999 the village of Richmond was scheduled to vote on whether a parcel of land next to my property should be annexed and rezoned. I was against it. So were a whole bunch of other citizens in Richmond who attended that meeting. The village board passed the annexation over our objections, or, it seemed to me, to spite our objections.

I had similar experiences with our school boards. No matter how many people showed up for a particular meeting, we always felt that the school board trustees turned a deaf ear on our appeals. Or as the grade school superintendent said, “We agree to disagree!” Well, hot damn!

Earlier this month (July 2002) the Richmond Zoning Board agreed to recommend the annexation and rezoning of a hotly contested piece of property to the village board. Two citizens, Rommy Lopat and John Drummond, took it upon themselves to hire a few high-priced attorneys and city planners. They attempted to give the village board a different perspective about the annexation than what the board was hearing from the developer the Village President and the Zoning Board President.

This was a beautiful thing to watch. Fifty or so village residents filled the meeting room and they were allowed to express their opinions. The result was that the board voted to delay their decision until September so that they might be allowed to review the information that was presented.

At first I was elated. Then reality set in. I began to realize that to fight power you need power. Money equals power. What if Rommy Lopat and John Drummond could not afford to bring in expert witnesses? I think the citizens would have been quickly rolled over and buried. This is the way, I realized, that government works. You must have power to be heard.

The awful truth is that I leave the meetings feeling that we had just done battle with the opposition. We always lost. I felt that the outcome was predetermined, that the board attitude is a bit condescending. I do believe that, generally, boards feel they have a duty to the public to help the public, but I think they also think that we citizens are uneducated and bothersome, like mosquitoes which must be squashed to be quieted.

Maybe your local boards DO listen to you. Maybe Richmond’s boards are the rare exception. But I think not. I think that most boards around the entire country reflect the attitudes of the Richmond boards: the citizens are nuisances to be endured because the law says they must endure us.

Why are the boards so adversarial in nature? Does it have to be that way? Do we not, as taxpaying citizens, deserve to be listened to CAREFULLY and HONESTLY?

It’s time to stand up and be counted, folks. Do go to your local board meetings, if only to show them that you are watching!

Greg Cryns is the founder of http://www.mchenryonline.com
McHenry Online.com He is also a local newspaper correspondent.