February 6, 2009 Pittsburgh, PA

Welcome!

This space is where I’m going to write about some of the things, mostly political things, that drive me up the wall. I make no promise that what I put here will be worth anyone’s time to read or will provide any insights of value. I’m doing this because I just want to say something about my thoughts, such as they are, in a public place, however small it may be. It is public because anyone with a browser can come here. It is also a part of my website where I can do just about anything I want. Frankly, I think this is the least important part of the site. My painting and photography and the other things collected here are more important to me than this little corner, hiding under the “Whatever” link.

I am a liberal because I think I’d be less human if I were not. I’m a former academic, salesman and pension designer who likes to make images of all sorts. You can judge for yourself how good I am with the images. I love what’s left of the steel mills around Pittsburgh. I feel ghosts there and a sense of trespass when I walk across ground upon which impossibly huge machines very recently stood and belched and banged and provided lots of good jobs and bad pollution. I get misty eyed about the mills (and a lot else now that I’m getting older). My son says I’m a dystopian romantic which sounds so impressive I’ve adopted the title, making me a dystopian romantic liberal. It’s a full time job.

I thought the Bush regime was an odious, seemingly endless, eight year nightmare. It was bad for the nation and its precious constitution. In international relations, the Bush Doctrine, that preemptive war is acceptable, even choice worthy, brought the just scorn of many nations upon us as the United States killed thousands and thousands on the basis of lies and self serving half truths. In doing so, it served our enemies with the best imaginable recruiting tool, thus negating the very security it claimed to provide. And “security” was supposed to be everything that we wanted or needed, in the name of which we should sacrifice our most cherished values, one by one, on the altar of necessity. We were invited to forget that “free men stick their necks out”; that there are some things worth preserving, come what may. And what is “security”? I remember E. E. Cummings asking that question: it is “nonunhappiness” he said. For me, it is the “feeling no pain” of the drunk, verging on unconsciousness, the functional equivalent of death: good enough to last until the real thing comes along. Whatever else may be said of this kind of “security,” there was no pretense of economic security for the American republic by the time the Marine helicopter carried citizen Bush into oblivion, even as his coconspirator, like some hideously misshapen creature from Tolkien’s world, crouched in his wheelchair and waved.

So why wait until after Bush is gone to begin to write in this manner? Well, the website is relatively new. Having the freedom that unemployment can bring, I made a site that could show my paintings and other images and revisit a water pollution project of almost four decades past; a project that has taken on new life as I return now to what is left of those same mills with my camera and find intimations of a past in the very act of disappearing, a movement in time that applies equally to both ends of the camera’s lens. Thus I’m immersed in the project in ways I hadn’t anticipated and it took on new importance, if only to me.

As the Bush presidency was inching towards its end, I was an early supporter of Barack Obama, contributed what I could afford (not much) to his campaign, was delighted when he won the nomination and thrilled when he won the election. It is my fervent hope that he will turn out to be a truly great president. But, frankly, I’m troubled by much that I’ve seen of his early performance. The days and weeks ahead are going to be hugely important. As they unfold, from time to time I’ll write about it and when I do I’ll put it here.