I’m glad that the President has been inaugurated for another term. Anyone who knows me realizes that my admiration for him has grown over the past few years. It can be too easy at times to expect perfect leadership from someone who holds this office. I have numerous friends who believe that the performance of George W. Bush has been a far cry from perfect, and perhaps a far cry from adequate, but it isn’t difficult for me to disagree with their assessments when “Dubya” supports so many ideas and policies to which I’ve long given my support. Am I always satisfied with his appointments and decisions? Of course not. I’m even certain he’ll do things over the next four years which won’t please me. Nevertheless, I won’t make the mistake I made with President Reagan and hold him to an unrealistic standard that, with maturity, I have lived to regret.
Liberty will come to those who love it
January 20th, 2005Critical mass
January 19th, 2005Everything is entering the studio meat grinder at once: a Chamber of Commerce Website, a new visual campaign for the Great American Brass Band Festival, major volunteer projects for the Salvation Army and Rotary Club, plus several other jobs that have spilled over from 2004.
This is when I call in my crack team of talented design assistants and issue a few soft-spoken but well-chosen directives, delegating on the fly, sending them fully motivated to do battle with every deadline… One minor problem, though. Last time I looked I didn’t have any assistants.
Deep sigh
January 18th, 2005Today’s Anacrusis story made me think of seeing Ben Shahn’s work for the first time as a callow teenager, when I took the Famous Artists School’s home-study Course for Talented Young People and discovered the concept of creating artwork in service to the advancement of social justice. The whole idea seemed so phlegmatically self-evident at the time.
Commando Bandsman
January 17th, 2005On TV today I watched some clips about preparations for the inaugural celebration and I had to laugh when I saw a drum major in camo. Oh, I get it. “Was that a drum major? Wait a second. No, I guess it’s a shrub with a bear’s rump sticking out the top.”
…continuing
January 16th, 2005Well, I think I’ve made my point to myself here. Hmmm? Perhaps I need a blog like the proverbial hole in the head. But, come to think of it, Cap’n Lice did have that missing piece of cranium where a musket ball glanced off the side of his…
On blogging
January 15th, 2005Today’s a good day to initiate this log. Actually, I have no idea what a “blog” is meant to accomplish, or whether this online journal will meet the definition of that term. I supposed a true blog requires the kind of obsessive drive that keeps the generator of posts relentlessly coming back to the keyboard, so visitors can rely on a daily stream of new entries, thoughts, and observations.
But it occurs to me that if one is a creative person, and one is blogging, then one is not doing something else, since one is blogging, and therefore not engaged in a non-blogging priority, if you follow me…
I think that true blogging would necessitate a careful process of finding the best way to balance one’s creative imperatives, keen powers of compartmentalization, and a certain level of mastery over the daily resource of limited time. But what do I know about “true blogging?”
It’s just important for me to recognize that if I’m blogging, I’m not designing, and if I’m blogging, I’m not drawing, or painting, or engraving wood, and if I’m blogging, I’m not running, cycling, or swimming, and if I’m blogging, I’m not working on my house, and if I’m blogging…