“A recent MIT study used EEG (electroencephalography) to examine what happens in the brain when people use AI tools like ChatGPT. The results were chilling. Brain activity dropped — especially in the prefrontal and temporal lobes, the areas responsible for problem-solving, planning, memory, and language. Even after removing the AI, participants who had used it showed persistently lower brain engagement. This lingering drop — dubbed cognitive debt — is eerily similar to patterns we see in screen-saturated youth or early cognitive decline.”
— Daniel G Amen, 7/28/25
Archive for July, 2025
Wednesday, July 30th, 2025
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025
“Americans will finally learn the truth about how in 2016, intelligence was politicized and weaponized by the most powerful people in the Obama Administration to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump, subverting the will of the American people and undermining our democratic republic.”
— Tulsi Gabbard, 7/18/25
Saturday, July 12th, 2025
“Writing, like all creative forms, is a human endeavour. At its best it is pulled up from the soul and put down on the page, or the screen. We all use ‘tools’ of some kind to do this, like the keyboard I am now writing on. But AI is different. It does not help you to do your job; it does your job for you. It sucks up from the worldwide web the usings and doings and scrapings of the already-created and it rearranges them, pretending all the while that it has ‘created’ them itself. It imitates reality but can never replace it. It is, at root, a shabby, boring and actually evil thing. It is the end of art.”
— Paul Kingsnorth, 7/12/25
The art of legacy collage
Thursday, July 10th, 2025“During the last two years at the Motherhouse, I made a real effort to ‘clean out,’ and organize everything. It was truly a freeing experience! However, I still had to decide what to do with what I wanted to keep. Around this time, I had attended the funeral of a friend who had commissioned three artworks to represent her life: ‘Body, Mind, and Spirit.’ I was immediately touched by this collage idea. From then until this writing, I have been working on my collages. I had planned to do only two: ‘Home and Family’ and ‘Ministry as a Dominican.’ My artist brought forth a third, and it is a perfect fit for my life.”
— Sister Mary Otho Ballard
Below is a triptych which represents of a type of artwork that I call “Legacy Collage.” My entry about a previous example from 2016 described the scenario of a person attempting to distinguish the difference between actual family heirlooms and other items marked for eventual disposal. Inevitably, some images and memorabilia would fall into a gray area between, 
and therein lies the potential for one or more collage compositions. If creatively preserved as wall-worthy artwork, they can remain meaningful into the future.
A retired Dominican Sister of Peace saw a collage triptych at the funeral of her friend. It was a grouping that I had collaboratively assembled with my late patron. Facing a terminal condition herself, Sister had been reducing her few possessions and arranged a commission for me to make a similar creation. She had lived an extraordinary life of educational and administrative service, including an extended ministry to serve the native people of Belize, but she was physically and spiritually detaching from all of it. Because Sister had taken a vow of poverty, her devoted nephew wanted to make an enduring memorial possible, and I was honored to accept the collage assignment.
Originally there were to be two panels — the first would document her life before convent, growing up as La Monda, part of a large, farm-based family in Kentucky. The second would be about her long and diverse life as a nun. When I took stock of all the designated ingredients, it became clear that this project would also need to be a triptych. The third panel would commemorate her active preparation for eternal life.
panel 1 ~ FORMATION ~ Farm and Family
panel 2 ~ VOCATION ~ Growth and Service
panel 3 ~ ASPIRATION ~ Love and Detachment
Sister and I worked together intermittently for nearly a year, bringing her vision into being. She introduced me to the practice of “Centering Prayer.” Her presence, wisdom, and peaceful soul have had a profound effect on my heart. It’s been one of the most personally rewarding experiences I’ve had as an artist. I met Sister’s nephew last year after the finished collages were delivered, and he was remarkably generous. As Christmas approached, her condition declined, My wife and I spent some time with Sister, but she struggled with clarity. She then asked her nephew to come for a visit and for me to be there to meet with them. He and I happened to arrive at her care center about the same time, only to learn that she had passed on a half hour before.
FORMATION ~ VOCATION ~ ASPIRATION
John Andrew Dixon
three legacy collage artworks on canvas
16 x 20 inches each
private collection