Lake Anna prepares

For the annual mum festival, color palette of available chrysanthemums for sale is its own rainbow of color.

This year's theme is hot air balloons.

Workers prepare the displays for Saturday and Sunday.

Around Lake Anna there are other things to see. The swans have been relocated. Other birds can be seen.

"Martha, who did you get to fix the teevee reception?"

Glenn Ashby "Jeep" Davis was Barberton's 1956 & 1960 Olympic gold medalist hurdler and sprinter.

Duck hunting, NRA approved.

Decency, Karma approved

The sign was printed for Joe, works with Kamala; not for demented, deranged, demonic Donny.

summer becomes autumn

Alex Senna. Small Giants. Cleveland. 2024.

Arly is a four year old Dachshund, and she is very approachable, and willing to pose for fotos. Upper Edgewater.

Some dogs are not enthusiastic to see a man with a camera. Mount Vernon Ohio.

A lovely home rose caught in full bloom, 21 September.

#prayersfrommaria Avon Ohio. New location, and better land at Jaycox & Middleton.

a run with companion on Wendy Park bridge on Whiskey Island Cleveland

While walking Karma on her sniffari, we saw National Alliance on Mental Health on a walk. They did a big loop from Lower to Upper Edgewater Park Cleveland.

  

another Tim Misny advert

James Thurber on his hometown, "Columbus is a town in which almost anything is likely to happen and in which almost everything has". This was on a gazebo, across a former residence. (lighting poor)

when a lie becomes a confession

Vance let the cat out of the bag, “I will lie to get the media to talk about what i want them to talk about”.  The most Republican thing ever said.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do”. ~ (current alias, JD Vance) Republican nominee for Vice-President. 2024.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”.  ~ Exodus xx. 16.

That commandment speaks to a grievous form of lying, lying to do harm to person(s), malicious perhaps to death. Vance is a US senator from Ohio. He slanders his fellow Ohioans with repeated lies, that they kill and eat wildfowl, and neighbours' pets. The particular people he attacks are émigrés from Haiti living in Springfield, and Dayton. He gets bonus lies in that they are black people from the Caribbean, Kamala Harris' father came from Jamaica in the Caribbean.

“…But let us not forget that violence does not and cannot exist by itself: It is invariably intertwined with the lie. They are linked in the most intimate, most organic and profound fashion: Violence cannot conceal itself behind anything except lies, and lies have nothing to maintain them save violence. Anyone who has once proclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose the lie as his principle. At birth, violence acts openly and even takes pride in itself. But as soon as it gains strength and becomes firmly established, it begins to sense the air around it growing thinner; it can no longer exist without veiling itself in a mist of lies, without concealing itself behind the sugary words of falsehood. No longer does violence always and necessarily lunge straight for your throat; more often than not it demands of its subjects only that they pledge allegiance to lies, that they participate in falsehood...”. ~ from Aleksandr Isajevič Solzhenitsyn Nobel Lecture. 1970.  

“Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe”. ~ Lev Nikolajevič Tolstoj. Resurrection. 1899.

Il pubblico usa il gesso per creare arte

One of the great things, one occasionally sees at Cleveland Museum of Arts are the chalkies in September. One needs to view from a specific spot to get the best effect of the forced perspective. Here is a visual trick with three dimensional chalk art, trompe-l'œil, meaning deceives the eye. The French know tromp is a deceiver.

This drawing was small and beautiful, a male hooded oriole.

There were oak trees dropping nuts. Someone gathered them.

Georges de La Tour. The Tears of St. Peter/Repentant St. Peter. Cleveland. 1645. 

His work was neglected for centuries, he was a tenebrist after the Dutch Caravaggisti. La Tour's subjects were religious, and often revisited. His tendency was to have the figures rounder, and bit more simple rather than sharply defined. The original sits in the museum meters away. The original cockerel is facing the other way, and not so judgemental. The New Testament tells us Peter would deny Jesus three times before the cock crowed. The legend attached was that Peter was always with a cockerel. Also, this is why the bird is on a weather vane.

James Earl Jones has recently died. An artist left a chalk portrait.

I guess the same artist drew Stephen John Nedoroscik, an American Olympian gymnast who specialises in the pommel horse. In past years, i have seen other athletes [click for Baker] limned by the same hand.

Sláva Ukrayíni

Year by year, the selections both vary and stay stay similar. There were many anime cartoon characters, which i can not identify. In years past there had been many Disney characters, less so this year. Snoopy on his doghouse, with and without Woodstock was popular. There were fewer copies of master paintings, a bunch of family dogs, a few birds, even more fish, fewer Hallowe'en images, a few chapter and verse citations, and few political themes. This one is on the bloody horror of assault weapons (euphemism for mass killing civilian version of military semi-automatic rifles).

Early Sunday morning two drawings considering Palestine, and the slaughter of thousands of children in Gaza.

Woman holding the shrouded body of a child.

A little later on Sunday morning, a crew came with materials, and tools to censor the political art.

Palestine censored, blacked out.

2024 Miscellany #14

Carl Jara's annual sand sculpture at Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds for Oktoberfest.

shark bike rack Berea, O.

across from a Cleveland scrapyard

Misny in costume again

Clement Vallandigham was the leader of the Copperheads, Peace Democrats, against Lincoln and the Union. He gave a speech in Mount Vernon in 1863. He was a southern sympathiser, and was pro-slavery. He was arrested by the army, sent south, and escaped to Canada. He planned against the Union. He wanted Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to form a confederacy.

After the war, he returned to practice law. He shot himself, in court, to demonstrate his client did not pull a gun, and kill a man in a saloon. Vallandigham died the next day, after saying something about predestination. His father was a Presbyterian minister. He won the case, his client went free.

Saw these two signs in Mount Vernon. Supra on a man's lawn, and infra in his window. He said, he had a pretty good response from people. Knox County is heavily Republican.

art at Kenyon College

             

Paul Manship. Indian Hunter and Pronghorn Antelope. Gambier O. 1917, poured 2001.

Another one is outside Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This work has two figures separated in space, and in action. The moment in time depicted is after the bowman shoots his arrow into the flesh of his prey.

                The arrow is visible in its strike.

Carl Emil Milles. Five Angel Musicians. Gambier O. 2003.

This was also cast and poured many years after the artist's death. Since the figures are nekkid, some people were piqued. Currently, Kenyon College is commemorating their 200th year since founding. Kenyon was the first private college in Ohio. It was meant to educate the Episcopal clergy. There is not a seminary there now. For some time it was the seat of the Ohio Episcopal Protestant diocese. There is a museum for contemporary art on campus, and several outdoor sculptures.

Charles J. Connick made stained glass windows for the grand dining hall on Kenyon's campus in 1928. He also produced a multi-scened doubled lintel window in the church, and two multi-scened windows in the tower of Peirce Hall, which has the dining room.

Connick has many windows looking down on students eating. Some are triples, some more. Connick himself was well read, and wrote well himself. Each window has medallions of American and British writers, and their works. Some windows have quotations, some have additional figures away from the central point of interest. This one includes Melville's Moby, and Thoreau's Walden. Some students have wanted to read all the works portrayed.

Charles J. Connick. The Merchant of Venice. 1928.

 There are a few of Shakespeare's plays. The Merchant of Venice has the Scales of Justice above it.

William Blake's Tiger is one of the popular representations.

Thomas Hardy with St. George

John Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes has a bloodhound.

return to Kenyon

Now, Aaron was the elder brother of Moses. Holy Spirit has up front a window of Moses [click]. At the entrance there is one of Aaron, it is not great glass. One is visible in a straight, long line from the other. Aaron was Moses' elder brother. Here he is dressed as a priest, a Levite, a kohen. The breastplate has a stone for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Immediately i was fascinated about two things: the face, and the oversize bare feet.

When i saw Aaron's eyes and moustaches, it reminded me of this portrait of Vlad Dracula. Now about the feet:

And he said: Come not nigh hither, put off the shoes from thy feet: for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. — Exodus iii. 5.

The priests in Old Testament times ministered in the Tabernacle, and in the Temple were barefoot.

along Hough Avenue Cleveland

There is pride and anger in being Black in America. Everyone deserves a sense of pride in being a person. Anger comes when one's humanity is denied, or attacked. In urban America it is on display.

In front of an art gallery is this portrait of a black pawn. Can the viewer represent this for a Black American? In a chess game pawns are least valued, and least cried over. Bob Dylan wrote the song, "Only A Pawn In Their Game", about the assassination of Medgar Evers.

Behind the pawn, there is a wide mural. This is part of it, a stylized version of a faro. Egypt is in Africa, but it is not Black Africa.

Cleveland had race riots in 1966. When Los Angeles had riots in 1992, some people called it an uprising. Here in a revision of history the word uprising is used. This sign was unveiled a few days ago [5 September].

This sign is an acknowledgement after 58 years of an event that shaped the future of Cleveland. If it had not come then, over a particular event; then it would have came after another particular event. The tension had been building for a long time, and not just in Cleveland. It was nation wide. Civic boosters do not like to bring such events to mind. For those living around Cleveland at the time, they fully knew of the riots. There was a divide on how people felt, largely on the basis of one's race: vandalism or an explosion of frustration that still lingers. It has been almost fully the passing of two generations. Only now it is possible to speak cooly about it?

Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old. He was shot dead by vigilante George Zimmerman on 26 February 2012. The system had no interest in the case, until it became public. The next year Zimmerman was acquitted. In between the matter was a cause célèbre between the races. Black males are killed at a unusually high rate, often by police. White people with conservative [euphemism] views reflexively support the killer. In this case, Zimmerman was not a law officer. Much of the black citizenry feel attacked by the system.

After the verdict, President Obama said, "...You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son.  Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.  And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away. ..."

Naturally, Obama was attacked for his comments. Republicans, racists, white people with perpetual grievances were on automatic pilot. Obama was subject to racism as supposedly the most powerful man in the world. The boy carrying canned ice tea, and a bag of candy resisted Zimmerman. Zimmerman shot him dead. Here on Hough, Martin is showed with his last purchase.