Blogging and the Arts

So it's Wednesday, and as I promised I'm going to take a look at art on the blogosphere. I decided to do this last week after coming across an amazing site called deviantART.com. If you are a visual arts person and need to see what is happening in the field of visual representations this is a great starting place. The site is dedicated to what I consider the true nature of art, the view from outside the box. The title of the site does not refer to the subject matter of the art therein contained but to the freedom of expression of the artists being represented. From a frugal point of view, the only expense of going to this museum of art/artists is in finding yourself so entranced as to lose sight of the rest of your day.

So with this site reminding me of what an enormous canvas the blogosphere is, I started educating myself as to what is out there by, of course, searching the Google. First stop, just because I am always in the market, was Barney Davey's Art Print Issues blog. A quick scan down his lead article Prosperity or Posterity, Can Today's Artist Have Them Both? led me to EE, apparently the prime training ground for today's fledgling internet art crowd and home of a free online art resource for all art lovers and artists. I am so happy to be travelling this route. It confirms for me the very real possibility that you get what you give in the blog world. And this site is about offering training, discussions, links, and above all, support to each and every visitor. Take a look at this post if you don't believe me.

From this blog it was not difficult to reach one of the more complete of the online art stores, absolutearts.com. I could wander around in there all day but I wont. Mainly because the U.S. Open tennis just came back on and I love to watch it too.

Money, Salaries, and Politics

When I was a teen, between my junior year and senoritis, I got a job working for a carpet cleaner that paid $1 an hour. For six straight weeks I worked 40 hours a week and collected a paycheck every Friday. That first Friday was heaven and then hell. I decided to take my girl friend out for dinner. Borrowed Dad's car, filled the tank for $4, and picked her up for dinner and then what the heck a movie after. But first, cause this was a special occasion, I decided I might as well spring for flowers, $2 bought a dozen roses. Add candy, $1. Now I was set. When we got to the restaurant, I let her pick out the dinner. Pizza, $5, cokes, $1, salad, $1, pasta, $4, and finally the tip, $1. A second pizza, I was a hungry lad, and suddenly I was looking at my last $10 bill. Yes, you're right, I had already brought up the movie and had thought about going to the Car Hop, our local late night hangout, after. But not on $10. You may know how embarrassing it is for a kid admit to his limited means but until you've done it with a girl you are really trying to impress you don't know what hell is. Do you suppose this explains how some guy came up with the idea for credit cards?



Barbara Ehrenreich has a lot to say about the financial condition of America's middle class in her book, Bait and Switch, that's why her name on this article at AlterNet got my eye.



It seems that everywhere you look these days you'll find apologists, pundits, and just plain folk trying analyze and deconstruct this financial mess our economy is in. The blame game is big. But so are the new solutions that are being proposed as democracies are starting to try and take back control of the capitalist economies that they should be working with and not for. This article by Robert Reich from Foreign Policy magazine got me to thinking.

The Man with the $20 Bill

John Halsted didn't need to glance down as he walked. It was already a life time habit to keep his eyes on the road. Not that he was hangdog in his attitude toward the world but watchful. So as soon as he saw it, he simply completed his next step with his foot on top of what he thought at first was a dollar but quickly learned was a twenty.

He also didn't need to put a cap on the expected spurt of happiness he felt as he continued his walking while casually looking to see if anyone was suddenly hurrying towards him to claim their loss. Happiness just sort of died out in John on its own. Like the time he had met May down at the pier and then they'd gotten into a fight over where to sit. He'd learned not to expect much in the overjoyed department.

Still, it was a twenty dollar bill and it was all his. Now to plan the day.

Politics . . .and the money

One of the things that has really come to the fore this year as the politicians clamor for our vote is the war of words that is constantly being waged. I thought of this this morning as I was reading the following article from Alternet. George Monbiot is a British author who's credentials are in the economics of politics. In this article about the economic theory that underpins the free market philosophy currently being used in most economies in the world he is discussing the cumulative effect of the neoliberalists on the flow of the world's wealth. Neoliberlism that's what has supposedly set us free. Only the us in that sentence isn't you or I Pogo so much as it is them - the ultra rich, the ones who own everything, control everything and still want more. And now here we are caught up in the political wars while the candidates raise obscene amounts of money so they can product place themselves in our voting minds and continue the reign of the oligarchs who own this philosophy.

Middle Class pay

I'm middle class and proud of it. Actually, I was raised as a service brat who grew up working on a farm during the summers. I don't recall ever thinking about what economic class I was in, my family was in. We just lived. On the farm, there was always food and clothing. I didn't see the work it took to maintain it all and survive the seasons. Still, it just was. The same thing was true at home during the school year. We always had more than enough, lived in a new home, and had the wherewithal to let me work part time if I wanted to not because I had to. I grew up expecting to go to college. And it was there that I began to learn about the very real disparities in our society. The thing is that I still thought of the information as being about someone else.

Now of course, I can see it because the distance between the classes has grown so much.

The History of Money

My own history of money starts back when I was six and one of my older friends started a shoeshine service for the military housing complex we lived in. For 10 cents, we would pick-up the shoes, take them to a central location, his backyard, and clean and spit-shine the lot. After which, he would deliver them and collect the money. Each of us workers made 4 cents a pair. So early on I learned to earn my money and work independently.

Apparently, the first use of paper money was in China. During the Chinese Song Dynasty (AD 960-1279) not only did the government produce the world's first known paper-printed money, or banknote (see Jiaozi and Huizi), but paper money bestowed as gifts to deserving government officials were wrapped in special paper envelopes. I guess we have a lot to thank the Chinese for beside spaghetti.


Another interesting aspect of money is how it grew from being something of value, like gold, silver, diamonds, to represent something of value. This aspect of money and, of course the banks that hoard it, is explained more than well in this essay by John Maudlin called the Leverage of Money. I came upon him when I was researching the preachings of our current money gurus Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump. Keep your money moving, working, earning and we will all be all right they say. Do you suppose that's what President Bush is thinking as he tries to resolve the sub-prime lending disaster?

More or less Paper

As I look around my office, the calendar on the wall catches my eye, it is just above a monthly list of things to do and beside a world map. Stikkies, post cards, even a promissory note from T's sister are all pinned to the wall in front of my eyes. And that's just one wall. Behind me along the far wall are two book shelves that groan with the weight of favorite titles or needed reference works. The floor carries its share too. Three boxes: work to be filed, work to be entered into the computer, or work to be kept out for quick reference purposes sit along one side of a four drawer file cabinet that hold most of my past story ideas/journals or reference news articles. The closet stores its treasures too - Six boxes of past year's tax docs on the floor, and two boxes of business records on the shelf. And yet here I sit musing about the possibility of going paperless.


Maybe I need to define the term. By paperless I don't mean to go totally without paper just use less paper. Online dictionary, Wikipedia provides an excellent reference for understanding the immensity of the problem in this discussion of the pros and cons of recycling. Meanwhile, our changing world and culture may provide unexpected answers like the story in today's L A Times about the new line of clothing that Crocs Inc., you know the ugly plastic shoe people that inspired one of Bill Maher's New Rules last week, is bringing out. In both men and women's style, a form of the same resin material it uses for the shoes will be used to move them from a niche shoemaker to a (I love this line) "lifestyle brand". Who knows maybe this material will become the new paper.