Miggleman & Leicester

“Sometimes its not what you need to remember, but what you need to learn.”

Emerson MIggleman, from his Second tribute speech for Wallace “Wally” Leicester at his Fifth Retirement Dinner

Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place.”

Cornerstone Speech Alexander H.Stephens Vice President of the Confederate States of America Savannah, Georgia, 1861

Toledo Ohio, 1969 Model Cities funded pre school.in the Old West End.

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Cornerstone Speech Alexander H.Stephens Vice President of the Confederate States of America Savannah, Georgia, 1861

Model Cities office 1969 This couple had just arrived from  Appalachia in an old car full of dirty clothes and fast food packages strewn around the backseat.. They had not eaten for some time—don’t remember—and they were not really going to Toledo, they just ran out of gas and money.

After the war, Stephens was imprisoned until October 1865. The following year, the Georgia legislature elected Stephens to the United States Senate, but the Senate declined to seat him due to his role in the Civil War. He won election to the House of Representatives in 1873 and held that office until 1882, when he resigned from Congress to become governor of Georgia. Stephens served as governor until his death in March 1883.

From Wikipedia

;On Tuesday (12-07-2021) a bi-partisan group of Japanese lawmakers visited Yasukuni Shrine, regarded as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism by its Asian neighbors, for the first time in more than two years. The group of 99 politicians, headed by Hidehisa Otsuji of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, visited the Tokyo shrine in the morning to pay respects to the country’s war dead. Otsuji is a former vice president of the House of Councilors.

This photograph (from Reuters) successfully communicates multiple levels of important political and human feelings about this issue.

The stone torii at Yasakuni Jinja visually feels authoritative .with a softness — “fatherly authoritative.”

People come for may different reasons. It was founded to commemorate the Japanese national spirit by honoring military achievements. Following WWII some Japanese high level military and political individuals found guilty of War Crimes against the Chinese and Koreans who were sentenced to prison or executed, have their remains “enshrined/interred” at Yasukuni Jinja.

Preparing an Ikebana Exhibition at Yasukuni Jinja. Shrines and temples are not so much places where people come to worship as places where people come together to do community social things. In Japan temples and shrines are often involved with daily community activities, even if its only taking the daily shortcut through the temple grounds on your way to work.

Shinto priest approaching, visitors leaving

Alameda Creek

Light misconverswayshuns with my self

I walk along Alameda Creek mos’ every day, usually about 3-4 miles Its just down the street, its free, and I can fit it in whenever I want. I can listen to podcasts or I can have a conversation with myself. Sometimes I will walk with other people I meet, or have met.

The good thing about walking with others is that we talk and I don’t think about, or have conversation with my self—or whichever self I happen to be then.

Along Alameda Creek people are different, how they look for example. Many people have purchased clothes specifically for jogging, .walking or bike riding along the trail. Some are members of a group and have same shirts with the name of the group , some are please to advertise, for free, for the manufacturer of the clothing.

Nylon, a synthetic fiber made of polymers, doesn’t break down easily and accounts for about 10% of the debris in the ocean. .Plastic products are non-biodegradable and an last as long as 40 to 50 years without being broken down.

Humans generally do not dwell on what life was like in history. We don’t experience it, and we are daily further and further removed from it.

Consider all the “things” we have in our every day life that did not exist 200 years ago, much less 35,000 years much less 300,000 years ago, i.e. the beginning of Homo Sapiens. Tools reflect this and you can learn a lot from working with old tools

Still humans are basically doing the same things, aren’t we?

Eating, sleeping sheltering, traveling, raising chldren, .pooping & peeing. and . . . working .

Look at what wealth has brought to us. . . .

But just who is this “us”?

Last year there was a 60% increase in the sales of $500,000,000 yachts . . .US??? and still billions in poverty

We humans are all here born on this earth, each of us has a birthright claim to this earth. The Universe is 13.8 billion years old, . one life @75 years, or about 0.00000000057% of the time.

Here we are, on a big rock zooming through space, we don”t know from where we came, no idea where we are going —and just focus onour0.00000000057%. its expanding and we just along for the ride, as short as it may be.

Consider the billions of human lives which have been lost to the greed of a few individuals—There is more than enough to ensure that no one on Earth is in poverty, no one lacks education or basic health care, yet so many very wealthy perceive those that do not have wealth as their enemy. while they could so easily be bought off by the very wealthy for so little — just some basic food, education and health care.

EndPapers

Bart gives a hand to himself—Bart Simpson was a character in Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locusts.

The show was reminder how much fun people can have with satirical social comment and how much work it takes to be convincingly stupid.

Hand 手

Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes your head so red?
You’ve a short time for to be here
An’ a long time to be dead

Appalachian folk song

Box Art, a la Joseph Cornell by Winifred Baker Russell, She gave this to me when I was art school living in Cambridge about 1973-74 while on her way to a new job and a new life in LA as curator of a museum, a position she had been working for and rightfully earned, since graduating college. Shortly afterward way, too shortly, one rainy night she was in an automobile accident and died..She was an amazing person. and after moving cross country in a tiny little car, I still have this piece of “recycled ”art.