A Lesson in Art Appreciation

  More than a month ago GMA aired a video that not only shocked me but once I took in more details on the internet, absolutely outraged me. If you have just watched it above this entry I will explain briefly that a woman took her child into the art gallery portion of Overland Park Museum in Kansas then proceeded to sit down and let her child run all over the museum with some other woman’s kid until he ended up pulling down a sculpture worth $132,000 narrowly escaping getting crushed himself. She proceeded to saunter over where her child had moved away from what he’d done. When she finally made it over to where her child appeared to be in shock, but okay, he ran away from her!

     The gallery had it all on videotape, obviously, and she originally told them she would pay for the damages until she found out what it was worth! She sent GMA her own homemade video at a later time stating that she felt the museum was negligent in displaying a piece of art so expensive where children were allowed to visit! Then she said she was sure that her child could’ve been killed. I’ve looked at this from all sides, including what the artist must think of a woman who lets her child roam around in an art gallery, unsupervised and being quite capable of creating this kind of damage. (Parents, especially mothers, do know this about their children whether they’re willing to admit it or not.) Not once did she mention anything about the artist or the destruction of his work. In case someone may be rather misinformed (or perhaps uninitiated), I will say that when you go into an art gallery or salon you are looking at somebody’s hard work and also their property. If you have no respect for that, you shouldn’t be there. Most museums are not a child’s playground and I don’t consider this occasion a normal way for children to behave themselves anywhere, personally.

     My first reaction was this and I have not changed my mind yet: Why was she not directly supervising her child at close range? Are we all to believe that she didn’t know he was capable of doing this? These are the same questions that the art gallery officials must have asked because they charged her with negligence in supervising her child. She adamantly denies what is as plain as the video itself. By taking this stance she has inexcusably taught her child two things. One is showing no respect for other people’s property. Were they at home? Somebody’s house? The mall? (And would that make a difference?) The second thing she has taught him is not to take responsibility for one’s actions. That’s why he ran away from her!

     Since that time the museum settled this through their respective insurance companies so hopefully the artist has been compensated financially. There are two points I want to make in conclusion, however. First is the damaged art which can’t ever really be replaced. That art is the artist’s baby, Ms Negligence and it’s been destroyed. A price tag on it can’t replace it. Value of art is intrinsic and extrinsic and is not truly meant to be replicated. If the artist tries to recreate the piece of art it will be different. That may not mean anything to you but it will eventually to the artist. Second, if you can’t see value in the art destroyed as something reserved by the person who created it then I would suggest that you keep yourself and your child away from the places where fine art is displayed. Either that or start teaching your child how to act when you’re not at home. You’ll probably be spending more time in a doctor’s office, anyway, until and unless you start taking some responsibility for what he does. A child lives what he learns. 

Oh, if he only had a brain...

   Max Boot, a columnist for the Washington Post, recently put in a bid in his column to explain briefly why he has officially switched his party affiliation from republicanism to being a democrat with conservative leanings. He explained very succinctly his reasons in his article how Trump has disillusioned his far-back reaching political leanings to the time when Lincoln was in office! It doesn’t get more GOP than that, you know and I’m sure his forthcoming book, “The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right” explains in further detail about his background and why he is certain he has made the right decision.

     I have noted a few things Boot mentioned which I feel are more than potent reasons why Trump should not remain in the presidential office. These were: constant rampant conflicts of interest, the alienation of America’s allies (a big issue to me) and last but not least- the appeasement of dictators. He wrote more than a few words about the unconscionable decision to separate undocumented immigrants from their children upon arrest and deportation of the adults. I agreed with everything Boot wrote and would add something of great interest to the general public. (More about that at the conclusion…)

     The fact that Trump does not speak for the majority of Americans wishes is all too obvious. If marches are any indication he should be ashamed of his record of angering nearly every American in the U.S. This man cannot even agree and be civil with our long time and more recent allies. When Putin tells me they didn’t do it I’d believe him over Trump any day. This Russian president has been quite clear and direct about it but has not offered any help in finding the true perpetrators but that is probably because Trump’s bullishness and outrageous accusations put his back up and I can tell that Putin doesn’t like that- but does anybody like being treated that way? 

     As far as Jong Un is concerned- Yes, Jong Un is his first name and Kim is the last - I would challenge Trump to make a return visit to North Korea to see if any denuclearization is taking place. There are those who doubt it and even Trump’s returning words about the deal sounded dubious. They had no way of speaking directly to each other but when I watched them interact on T.V. the body and facial language told a story all its own. Talk about mutual lack of respect! Anyone who has lived under it though, would tell you that this is the general deportment of dictators- or would-be dictators, at any rate!

     In the same paper from last week I found a small item which will interest those who have been separated from their children or those who are concerned about this issue. In Hanover, New Hampshire a mother bear was captured a little over two weeks ago and relocated by Fish and Game Department officials after people apparently complained that she and her four cubs were raiding trash bins and bird feeders around the Dartmouth College area. Instead of transporting her cubs, as well, they decided to take them to a center that keeps orphaned animals!

     When they released the mother bear close to the Canadian border they had her tagged with a tracking collar and they have discovered that she is on the move and has traveled 70 miles, so far, and moving in the direction of her previous location- most likely trying to find the cubs she was separated from. Mr Timmons, the bear project leader for the area told the Valley News that he expected her to return and is now feeling a bit guilty for following the local, state and federal laws concerning bears!

     By now you’re seeing a straight correlation of what can go wrong when laws that don’t take everything into consideration suddenly has to deal with the consequences of taking action in accordance with those laws. I can tell you that a mother bear deprived of her cubs or facing down anything that would threaten them in anyway has a bear to deal with and that’s nothing to joke about or flout. Besides being inhumane I think that it is shameful that a law could do so much damage rather than help any living being. I’ll tell you this- I pity the fool who tries to keep that mother bear from getting her cubs back. Do the right thing and save yourself !  

      Let’s hope immigrants have the same type of instincts in finding their children. That’s a problem no law has any right to mess with- just ask mama bear!  

The Castle Lady

March Weirdness

This month may be almost over but everyone in Denver and/or Colorado will probably heave a sigh of relief when it is officially history. Most of last year was dry with few rain or snow storms and this year is proving no different- up until very recently. I made a trip to Home Depot on Tuesday afternoon after a fairly good overnight snow and among the items on my list I decided to once again buy some cement to finish up some work I did two years ago in summer. I had saved my Russian Olive tree early in the morning with a cleverly quick trim on an overhanging branch and I was feeling lucky- just like I should.

     At this point I should remind everybody of my rule of thumb for March: In like a lion, out like a lamb. In like a lamb, out like a lion. In Colorado this can be taken quite literally with almost no exceptions.

     As soon as I got home with new window well covers, et al the forecasts were suddenly imminent. “The weather is changing…the weather is changing…” clucked Chicken Little, the weather forecaster. I looked at the dry-as-a-bone and powdery dirt around the window wells, and what I thought was pourable concrete and laughed my head off and decided to put it off until yesterday. Big mistake.

     When I started out everything had melted off and it was difficult to tell that it had snowed the previous night. The air was chilly but that isn’t unusual for Denver. Our nights are cold in the middle of summer- which, by the way, make summer mornings very pleasant. Ahem!

     I had already prepped the window well for installation and while doing so, found that I was suddenly swimming in mud. Rain! I had put my fashionable galoshes on but decided to hold off on the second one and go in until the rain went away. It did.

     I dried out the spot that I wanted to fill in with pourable concrete. A neighbor helped me pry open the easy open container and discovered that it wasn’t pourable or even concrete putty. It was completely powder with NO ROCKS ! The latter was the good part but the former meant that I had dried out what I could’ve used and quite quickly to finish the job I had started. (It’s just a matter of getting it completely level and completely smooth!)

     The skies started graying up again which may or may not mean rain, especially in Denver. My neighbor said something accidentally ominous. “It’s supposed to rain for days you know.” I laughed and said, “In Denver anything can happen. You know how dry it’s been.” Then we both laughed. I decided to go ahead and try some of the powder with some leftover rainwater to level the area and perhaps later make more to smooth it completely over.

      I patched up all the little potholes and unevenness and went inside to clean up and get to home and hearth. In less than an hour we suddenly had one of our rarest occurrences. Il fait pluie/neige! We’ve had combined snow and rain in Denver before but this was a bona fide sludge storm. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere! Ever. Until yesterday.

     I ran out as fast as I could and covered the area with a plastic wheelbarrow but I don’t know if it prevented anything. It was supposed to set within 30 minutes so I can only hope my patches survived. I’ll let you know, of course. I’m basically recuperating from a fiasco so this could take awhile. March madness is no match for March weirdness! 

The Castle Lady

   

Google Takes Over Blogspot

     This is literally what has happened in a matter of months. I figure that the minute we were enticed to add Google Plus to these accounts we'd been had by the powers that be. It was almost concurrent to the takeover of Blogger by Google. When I saw that in the news it sounded ominous then. Now it's just a pain in the drain. The powers that be are merely the machinations of Google trying to take over the planet. I remember when they criticized Bill Gates on the same premise. All I know is that I can no longer find two of my blogs on my so-called dashboard and the one Blogspot that I did not switch over to Google Plus tries to give me access to my dashboard but absolutely refuses to stop giving me error message pages blocking access to the dashboard that tries to come up. What we have here is a failure to make an upgrade an actual upgrade and a possible conspiracy.

     All that Google Plus nonsense is for all the thumb typers anyway and their teeny, tiny P.C.s which we could crush like bugs on a windshield. You can't write much of anything that way so what do they care about blogs? If you can get one sentence out of them each hour on those things you're getting more dialogue than they will ever convey to their parents, verbally or otherwise. A tweet may be sweet but a letter is better. You can quote me on that- and you'd better! Maybe I should copyright it right here and now so my rights won't be infringed by some half-wit trying to take credit where credit isn't due.

     Can you feel the sarcasm yet ? It wouldn't be so bad if I could call someone up and read them the riot act. They must be too shy for that sort of thing so we don't even get the pleasure of being given a wrong number. Perhaps we could take the planet back if we do one thing in particular that our competition would never do in a million years. Answer the phone. What do you think ? I think our First Amendment rights are being violated. I'll find out when I post this and I hope everyone understands that freedom came with a price. Someone had to stand up and tell someone off. I hope that whoever knows what's going on reads this and then feels ashamed. It's our only hope.

 P.S. Hmmm. Back to normal heee hee hee
It pays to tell people off. Trust me.