February 2012
3 posts
5 tags
The Jazz Baroness Helps Keep It Real
Finished this book recently, which fills in a fascinating hole in jazz history. In fact, while reading this post, play this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKvVKsJ8sk4&feature=player_detailpage. For those of you who are Thelonious Monk fans , you may be familiar with his famous piece ” Pannonica.” Turns out it was written in honor of Pannonica “Nica” Rothschild de...
2 tags
Stolen, Found, Stolen
Here’s the next episode of last week’s nail biter of a post: Greg and Deb get their two newspaper boxes stolen! Not quite a federal offense. Getting anything stolen , no matter how seemingly inconsequential, can be unnerving though. Plus, as our readers may know, we love our papers, dinosaurs that we are. They’re tactile, offer an amazing amt. of info without searching all...
6 tags
Dinasaur Data
I admit I’m a dinosaur. I love reading the Daily Local News and The Philadelphia Inquirer daily, and I say to all the newspaper putdown artists that you don’t know the story from the headlines, you gotta read the backstory. Some of my favorite writers are journalists because it’s a calling. They do a great civic service and they’re not obviously not in it for the...
January 2012
5 posts
5 tags
Who Really Increased the National Debt?
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When a Weasel has Sex with a Vulture
When a weasel has sex with a vulture, they give birth to a mittnewtrick. This offspring is a prime example of the 1% that has profited from greedy, underhanded and opaque dirty dealings. Vanguard founder Jack Bogle has said that we used to invest in stocks that we believed in instead of speculating and profiting from churning trades every milli-second. Now look where we are.
We just heard...
5 tags
Dragon Slayer Heroine
More about Deb and Greg’s sex life. Oh wait, let’s move on to something blacker, like an outstanding Goth slayer girl who got it goin on, Lisbeth Salander, the now-world famous main character in the Steig Larson trilogy. http://www.stieglarsson.com/Millennium-series. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo book started a bit slow and then became a literary locomotive. ...
7 tags
Dragon Slayer Heroine
7 tags
From STEM to STEAM
Downingtown STEM to STEAM
Before places like Downingtown STEM Academy had their feet firmly planted in the ground and had become the well-oiled machine that their creators imagined, along comes STEAM to blows its roof off—literally and figuratively. The STEM Academy will be adding on a separate wing for the arts. While STEM stands for Science...
December 2011
3 posts
7 tags
Occupy eARTh - 6/19/12 in Wagontown
Come Occupy eARTh on May 19th, 2012 from 1 to 5pm at eARTh —the Kates/Layton art center.
This idea is an inspiration mash-up inspired by…
The Occupy Wall St. Movement,
The flashmobs and pop-ups of now
The T.E.D. Movement*
The United States of Mind dialogues we performed in the ’90s
Fringe Festival
Burning Man
The 2oth Century Movements of free speech, anti-war, civil...
7 tags
A Tale of Two Steel Towns
This past weekend, we attended two diverse small town events that really imparted the flavor of each place. On Saturday night, we accepted an invitation from longtime community organizer and main street manager Barry Cassidy, to watch the festival from his office just adjacent to the Firebird site. This is the 8th year of this unique event, which refers to the mythical phoenix that was...
7 tags
Coatesville Christmas Parade, 2011
We volunteered for the parade this year, helping the C’ville policeman on a sequeway —who got good-naturedly teased all day as “mall cop” direct traffic at the end of the route. It was a front row seat and a great time. Deb loved her stylin’ holiday-themed striped vest, getting hugged by the Phillie Phanatic, digging on the cheerleader and dance routines, and...
November 2011
4 posts
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Occupy Philly Moves on to Greener Grassroots
Greg and I had a business trip to Center City on Monday, the day after the supposed deadline for Occupy Philly to vacate the Dilworth Plaza. The police had used restraint (vs. bringing out the pepper spray brigade as in CA). A group had already packed up and left, but there were still a good number of people, tents, and signs around (love the signs—thought provoking, funny, nasty,...
5 tags
Penn State + Coatesville = Grief
What the heck does the Penn State sex scandal have to do with Coatesville? Penn State has been a very successful and well-off system. Coatesville—my hometown— is this poor, down on its luck city. The link between the two places is that they both afford their sports programs a cult-like status. State-of-the-art facilities at the expense of academics. In Coatesville, there is...
4 tags
11-11-11 I'm So Mad I could Spit
11-11-11. Veteran’s Day. Thank you, thank you, thank you, fellow veterans for your sacrifice, courage, and standing up for our whole country. To me, we’ll always be the best and the brightest. Unfortunately, most of our lives have and will be negatively impacted because of our mental, emotional and physical injuries, which in this country...
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Clear Goals of Occupy Wall Street
This new democratic movement, which is encouraging horizontal leadership, is building a new civic infrastructure. Given this fact, we’re reprinting an editorial from this past Sunday’s Inquirer written by Kevin Cox (works in communications) and Keith Cox ( his father who is information products entrepreneur).
We find it interesting to see how many commentators, pro and con,...
October 2011
7 posts
7 tags
Occupy Wall Street - Where's the Silver Bullet...
The Occupy Wall St. movement is constantly harangued about what their agenda is, or what ideas they (we) have to fix the problem. As noted in our last post, we visited Occupy Philly about 2 weeks ago, and as we were leaving, filled out a survey with 20 issue items each under local, state, and national headings, to prioritize. We were asked which problems to tackle in what order.
What...
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Occupy Philly--Report From The Front
The Occupy movement has captured Greg and my attention, bigtime. It’s about time after…
· Waiting thirty years for our own “American Autumn” (without all the blood)
· The financial meltdown trash landing on our collective backs while the perps remain largely unscathed. (see the riveting Oscar-winning docu, Inside Job for all that skinny)
· Knowing that there’d never...
It just makes you wonder...
Coming tomorrow…Impressions of Occupy Philly site.
Business, Wall St. style
5 tags
United States of Mind - Economic Democracy
The new Martin Luther King memorial in D.C.
We both consider Dr. King an inspiration. And were privileged to be alive when he led his movements for peace and justice. Greg’s mom and dad even heard him speak in West Chester in the late ’60s. He was a fearless person who spoke truth to power and became the spearhead of the ongoing historical struggle for human rights and dignity. ...
Exceptionalist American Map
I just had to post this, because I wish it wasn’t true, and maybe soon it won’t be, but for too long it have been…
The artist forgot to put in bananas for Central America. Oh Oh, and South American also provides coke as well as coffee…
5 tags
No-mad-Man
Wall St. protests now
The Teabaggers protest that their liberties are being taken away because the Obama Administration had the audacity and courage to try to provide everyone with affordable health care. Which I consider a right. But the Teabaggers consider it an invasion of their liberty, because those who refuse to provide health insurance would be fined. Boo-hoo bigtime for these...
September 2011
3 posts
10 tags
Impression of The Impressionists
The Luncheon of The Boating Party by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1881)
I recently got as a gift a fascinating book : The Private Lives of The Impressionists by Sue Roe. And it deals with just that—the real lives of artists we’ve heard about for so long from the mid and late-1800s: Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Paul Cezanne, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissaro, Mary Cassatt...
5 tags
September 11, 2011--an ongoing Remembrance
“9/11”
This is a sculpture I started in September of 2001 after the tragedies. It began small, with a stick teepee, and gradually expanded with items Deb and I would find picking up litter as we go along the road around the Reservoir during our daily morning walks. I added pieces that seemed fitting, that could be found in the wreckage of a tragedy that left behind people’s...
6 tags
Cliche-Ridden
Ye
1. It’s not what you know but who you know. That’s why our country is such a mess right now—people were advanced because it was who they knew, not what they knew. Our future will demand that it be you know or this economic ship will sink like the Titanic.
2. If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem becomes a nail. This one we equate with the...
August 2011
4 posts
2 tags
I Feel The Earth Move (under mah feet!)
Up working in the office and the room begins to shake lightly. And a slight rumble that just keeps going! What the hell?? We had just had a huge tree come down the day before, on a perfectly calm and lovely early evening as we were sitting outside after work. Craaaaacccckkk sounds for like, 2 minutes. We ran down and there it was, a huge ash, also taking down another tree, plumb across...
7 tags
"Capitalism B. Dead" - No. 1 One Album With a...
Here’s our review of this album by P.I.S.T., the angry revolutionary punk/rap/trance band, featuring the most prescient buncha of songs you’d ever want. We hate/loved it so much that instead of 4 stars, we give it 4 buckets of throw-up.
song #1: Capitalism B. Dead ( a Johnny B. Good update). Penned on meltdown Monday - October 4, 2008. A groovy beat but it still leaves you...
5 tags
The Sweet and The Sour
Put out the hummingbird feeder I got as a gift earlier this summer and is it way cool! We’d seen them here and there over the years, but always on the fly. Within 2 days we had visitors. Now they drink and then light on a sculpture nearby where you can really get a look at them. Everytime I happen to look out, someone’s sippin’ A really fun investment for not much money and...
6 tags
Art vs. Capitalism
Sanctum 4 ’ x 6’, oil on canvas , created 30 years ago by Greg Layton in front of the Eggtooth Gallery in Hatboro, MOntgomery County. All of my work deals w/ my interior world reactions to the outside world—emotional, spiritual, intelluctual, ethical, moral, and psychological. I heard an expert on the brain say that our sub -conscious is always duking it out w/ our...
July 2011
7 posts
5 tags
Money, Tits and Turning Tables
Money: it’s always talked big , but now its mouth is genormous. After the Savings and Loan scandals of the mid to late ’80s, there were more than 1000 federal prosecutions of bankers and related scoundrels (including W’s bro Neil). So why no high profile prosecutions this time around, when the damage was so much more severe? Because the fix was in early. In the fall of 2008,...
5 tags
Banging our Heads Against the Debt Ceiling
How about this debt ceiling bloviation? Prez W. raised the debt ceiling 8 times during his 8 yrs w/ nary a whimper from either party, and it’s been raised some 88 times in the last 90 yrs. All of a sudden it’s a big deal.
Why this big debate now? Because neither party has any new ideas on creating jobs, while existing jobs are hemorrhaging to overseas markets. In the last...
6 tags
Shared Sacrifice, Shared Prosperity
How do we find out way to a more utopian society and system? First, we’d need a robust democracy as our political system. Second, less worship for capitalism as our economic system. As is stands right now in a time of great hardship and increasing need, we have the Tea Party and fellow right wingers saying that the scapegoats of America’s downfall are the 98% of the people who...
4 tags
Groundhog Day in July
I have a long and sordid history with groundhogs, or dirthogs as I like to call ‘em, starting when I was growing up in then semi-rural northern Montgomery County. There was a woods bordering our yard, so there were wild animals around. Birds galore, including the incredibly beauteous but now almost extinct in the wild ring-neck pheasant, rabbits, deer, snakes, etc. And dirthogs. My...
6 tags
Small Art For The People
Art - it’s all in yer head until yer brain spits it out into the larger world. Then what? What dimensions? What tools? What materials? What designs? As a word person I like the challenge of fitting a piece to a standard: Poem, essay, 500 words or 5000 words, even dreaded deadlines. Probably the compulsive side of me. But I’ve created a lot of visual art over the decades...
4 tags
Nonprofit Hell
Deb’s Wednesday post, Topsy Turvy, was her opinion. We share the space and compose together at times—this post not being one of those times. She usually runs them by me to check for accuracies or other additions, as I do w/ her. That was my only input and I agreed w/ her points. And the comment to her post today is further evidence of topsy turvy, and is obnoxious, misdirected,...
3 tags
Great Letter in today's DLN
Check out today’s Daily Local News editorial page letter by Jason Wiley from Coatesville about the PA budget, the letter about values and loss of Girl Scout Camps, and the paper’s editorial about Marcellus Shale taxes.
http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2011/07/01/opinion/srv0000012244772.txt?viewmode=fullstory
June 2011
4 posts
Topsy Turvy Values
Well, it’s Summer and now that Grounds for Music is over Greg and I can finally enjoy it. Here’s my all-time favorite version of Gershwin’s “Summertime.” See if you like it. If you’re a little older you may remember it on the ol’ AM radio cruising around. I caught it a little later in time. Anyway, it’s the version by somewhat obscure R & B...
5 tags
Grounds for Music: The Tribes Gather on Common...
Legendary Volunteer Tribe member Rose B. has heART on her mind and a smile on her face.
C3A’s 6th annual Grounds for Music tripped the light fantastic last Saturday, attracting tribe members from all over the region to Wagontown to enjoy great live music, a gorgeous day, people-watching, food and ice cream, lush views, nifty vendors and each other. Greg and I work for months to put the...
6 tags
Grounds for Music is this Saturday!
We’ve been working for months to plan the event, and we have a new team of West Chester area people who love and/or play music around the area and all went to Henderson and/or WCU together. Relaxing vibes, beautiful vistas, many different kinds of music from folk and Celtic to jam-band and rock/blues, byo picnic or food vendors on-site and Downingtown’s Margo’s Ice Cream (and...
By George! -- He's back
George & Co. retrieving a hay bale
George Feister, our friendly neighborhood farmer, was retained by our township for another five years to farm their preserved parkland. Hooray hooray, and our parking field has already been cut by George in exchange for the hay and it’s gorgeous. Good to go for Grounds for Music on June 18th. If you recall George is the inspiration for our blog...
May 2011
2 posts
6 tags
Bully Bully
The motto handed down from my parents, my community and church was to treat people the way you wished to be treated, as in the Golden Rule. The bully stereotype has always been some big ugly cuss who wants to pick on weaklings and kick sand in their face. So flipping this adage on its head, I guess a bully wants to be bullied.
In our contemporary world, unfortunately, it’s much more...
7 tags
What I Still Like About My Hometown - Coatesville
I re-discovered all the reasons why I love and like my hometown, Coatesville , at a very sad day in Deb’s and my life. Two weeks ago we attended a viewing of a close friend of ours who we saw grow up and was one of the best volunteers/workers for the arts organization we co-founded, C3A . Even though he actually grew up in the suburbs/country of Sadsburyville, he was a Coatesville...
April 2011
5 posts
7 tags
SpringScape//MudScape 2011
SpringScape 2011 landed on eARTh last Saturday. For many years we have been staging arts events at eARTh —everybody’s ART home, aka the country club for the rest of us. Last summer we ran into Alex. We were at a West Biddle Street-sidewalk July birthday party for Deb staged by our buddy City Babe in West Chester. Alex was sauntering up the street, guitar slung overs lanky...
7 tags
Parasites Dine on The Body Politic
This
The late William Casey, CIA director under Ronald Reagan, forecast this 30 years ago: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” *
On Sunday mornings I both anticipate and dread “The Chris Mathews Show” and “Meet The Press” on TV. Everyone who knows me knows I’m a politcal wonk,...
5 tags
Hillbilly Dumpster Diver
Deb’s new-found rusty treasure
Speaking of Action in the Country, as a kid exploring the woods next to my suburban home on King’s Hwy in Caln Twp., I was fascinated by the natural and man-made objects I found. Usually some rusty old farm implement or antique glass bottle. In the early ’70s while I was working as a medic in Eisenhower’s hospital in Gettysburg (though he...
5 tags
Just Nuke it!
Melted fuel rods anyone?
I don’t know what you say, but in our house we say “nuke it!” when it’s time to microwave something. Speaking of getting nuked, what about those Fukushima Power Plants? The Japanese, who —with good reason—are crazy about earthquakes drills, were kept in the dark about safety issues in the nuclear industry - maybe a fear hangover from...
The Bluebird of Happiness Pays a Visit
Amidst stink bug domination , crazy weather, leaking nuke water, wars of various stripes, and deficit degradation, it’s the little things that salve the soul sometimes, right?
We were sitting in the living room recently, and heard the telltale sounds within the stone fireplace: a flapping of wings and notes of anxious cheeping. Another bird had flown down the chimney and was now caught...
March 2011
7 posts
7 tags
Oy Vey -- Feeling Pissed Off and Pissed On
Speaking of elimination…they’re serving up nothing but turd sandwiches at the Global Buffet. There’s the Japan turd sandwich, the Libyan turd sandwich and in descending order of sandwich distastefullness is Michelle Bachman, Rick Santorum, the governors of Maine, Wisconsin, Ohio, and what the heck, all the other newly-minted Republican govs and let’s throw in the...
7 tags
Saturday Morning - Of Love and Stinkbugs
Love and Gardening, Perfect Together!
Listening to “Sleepy Hollow” on WXPN this morning. With its mix of jazz, classical, folk and world music, it’s the perfect way to sip coffee and ease into a busy weekend. So many songs about love—what a power of life. The millions and millions of ways humans sing about it fascinates me. Here’s to love.
Hopefully you...
7 tags
Walking A Type-rope Without A Net
Ever since the 1960s and particularly the Vietnam War, I have been typecast in a way that leaves me without a safety net just like so many other (stereo)type-casted individuals in our society. Some of the top negative type-casts are: poor people (as always), the Middle Class esp. public union workers (new!) , Muslims, illegal immigrants, and people of color.
Stereotype-casting caused chaos...