Mood

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Salvation

More Salvation

Hurry Up

I go to my doctors appointments, listen to my Buddhist Monk, hear my children voices and see my therapist weekly yet I still think the best solution is my death. I just wish it would happen without my help. If it does my wife and children get no guilty feelings and I have not sinned. However it better hurry up. I am so very tired of living with pain, illness and guilt.

Roy DeCarava 1919-2009

Roy DeCarava 1919-2009

Roy passed to another place October 2009. He was my friend, my mentor, my teacher and a beacon of strength, courage, artistic integrity and one the greatest artist of all times. His exquisite subtlety of tones has never been duplicated. Like his saxophone playing his images are in the lower register. He played these low notes so marvelously that you did not think there could be that many shades of grey, white and black. He was a master print maker. Knowing him and working with him made me a better man and photographer. The world will miss you Roy. Even though my wife and I have lost special friend we can still see Roy’s beacon of love, strength and integrity guiding me and showing us the way.

One of the important things Roy taught me was the importance of the artist’s vision. He said, before picking up your camera you must know what vision you want to create. Once you have mastered the vision the photographic object becomes almost immaterial. Because it is transformed into your vision.

I have noticed that in almost all the obituaries published, including the New York Times, that not mention Roy DeCarava’s wife Sherry Turner DeCarava. Sherry was the glue and comfort that kept Roy on track and focus. An accomplished Art Historian and writer she wrote many of the articles and book forwards that celebrated or chronicled Roy’s life and work. She, in all the right ways, was lovely and profoundly protected of Roy.

Anger

I have been trying to find the root of the anger and passion that the Health Care bill has managed to generate. I am not talking about normal discourse, debate and disagreement Rather I am referring to the unbridled horrific anger and passion that has been causing certain individuals and groups to threaten violence and assassinations. I was close to reaching a conclusion. However a Jerome Miller has beaten me to the punch. Here is quote from Mr. Miller. The full comment can be found at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.reason21sep21,0,5381115.story

“…If Mr. Obama has become the focus of rage and fear, it is because he has come to symbolize what deeply angers and frightens many Americans: the complexities that make us feel impotent, the profound changes that are altering our world. It is hard, for example, for many of us to imagine a world in which white is not the dominant color and Christianity is just one of many respected creeds. The anger and fear that such change provokes are understandable. This does not make them any less irrational.

There is little that the president or his administration can do to allay this irrationality. Those who respond to him with visceral anger and fear are right to see him as the embodiment of the changes that enrage and terrify them. As he is the agent of change, he can do little to disarm the irrational response it often provokes. What is missing from our present political culture is an opposition that responds to the president's history-making administration with thoughtful conversation, an opposition that has the courage to eschew and explicitly criticize the rhetoric of hate and oversimplification.

Only conservatives and Republicans can provide such an opposition. The need for it is fast becoming desperate. For the vacuum created by the absence of such an opposition will not continue for long. There is a maelstrom waiting to fill it.

Astute Republican thinkers such as The New York Times' David Brooks have emphasized that the party needs to rethink itself to renew its identity. But there is already available to the Republican Party and the conservative movement an indispensable role in these historic times: They can stand up for reason and work to delegitimize the demagogy and malice that are betraying their deeply thoughtful and venerable traditions. Doing so may cost them votes; it may cost them primary elections. But it will earn them the gratitude of history.

We now need, perhaps more urgently than ever before, an opposition that is loyal, above all, to reason, as it was exercised by our founders.

Jerome Miller is professor emeritus of philosophy at Salisbury University. His e-mail is jamiller@salisbury.edu.
Copyright © 2009, The Baltimore Sun”

So What’s to complain?

I still go to he gym 2 to 3 times a week. My upper body is much stronger. My legs are worst than before. The VA says there is no hope. My Hopkins neurologist says there is nothing he can do. They will continue to deteriorate so I am doing the best I can. My personnel trainer tries to get responses from my legs and has had some success. I am able to use my thigh muscles more now and they are strong enough to pick me up. But the rest of the legs are still very slow to respond. Hover, overall I feel pretty good and energetic. My family is well there is love in me for all so what’s to complain?

A Partial List of My Interest

Here is a partial list of my interest.

Giving love, being kind, learning to love my enemies, Poets, poetry, astronomy, parenting, child rearing, my children, my wife, balance, beautiful thinking, beauty, ice cold beer, wise old men, breast, carnal knowledge, chivalry, coffee, music, constant randomness, cooking, crunchy, studying cultures, Dali, dancing, delusions of grandeur, dreaming, eloquence, emotions, estrogen, eye locks, freedom, fresh expensive sheets, geeks, getting mail, imperfections, joint laughter, kissing, lovers, laughter, touching skin, letters, life, lips, lucid dreams, hugging, metaphysics, modest and undiscovered greatnesses, open windows, family, outsider art, art, people watching, people who love, philosophy, sociology, photography, psychology, quirky features, politics, health care for all, rhythm, travel, romance, self-improvement, serendipity, sex, sharing experiences with strangers, showering in twos or more, sharing visions, silence, protests against the war, ending all wars, hips, solitude, spoken word, spontaneity, spooning, subtle sexuality, testosterone, the way night smells, smelling warm rain, uncontrollable giggle fits, used book stores, unaided laughter, vintage, wandering aimlessly, weather, Buddhism, bonding with men, good health, mental clarity, Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy, 42.