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Thinking Out Loud

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

 twin-tulips.gif

Twin Tulips, Spring 2005 

I find myself quite excited about the voting taking place today in Ohio and Texas.  In a New York Times article posted on their website today, I read a quote from Hillary Clinton.  In defense, ahead of time, of going on beyond today’s elections (in case she doesn’t win) she said, “We’re just beginning to draw those contrasts and those differences and that’s when voters start to zero in.” 

I’m not sure what she means.  The voters certainly have paid good attention to this process.  The Times reports that she is ahead in early polling in Pennsylvania, which holds it’s primary on April 22nd.  She was also supposedly ahead by some 20 points a few weeks ago in Texas.  She seemed assured of a victory in Ohio as well.  Somehow she keeps slipping backward as the primary day gets closer.  The differences between her and Obama are not so great on substance or policy.  The difference to me seems more in style and his is clearly more appealing as time goes on.  You can see her struggling to find something that will stick but the problem is, the more she reaches, the harsher she seems to get and that inclination to fight dirty is what I think is turning people off.  We are all so sick of the dirty tricks, the deliberate misstatements of fact, the implied slurs.

So far, Obama has tried to be above it all while Hillary has been taking a harsher tone of late.  The high point of her campaign was the “moment” as the Clinton campaign called it, when she turned to Obama and said what an honor it had been to debate him.  Then she undid all the good that moment gave her when she started complaining in her best mean-school-teacher style about some statements made in his campaign flyers that she felt were unfair.  She said he mischaracterized her health care plan.  Is there anyone left who doesn’t know what her health care plan is?  And to be so angry, so indignant.  Then there’s that “shame on you” line.  Boy, did that make me cringe.  

If anything has been a source of contrast between these two candidates it is this matter of style.  He is calm and cool and appears sincere (although some may think it’s just a show) while she has been gradually losing it.  The quick changes of nice to nasty, soft to harsh, policy wonk to sarcastic cynic have left me feeling a bit dizzy.  Call me crazy but that call to super delegates to follow their hearts may just backfire.  Or it may be unnecessary as the vote becomes obvious.  Still, it could end up after all these votes today that nothing changes, and they get to do it all again in Pennsylvania.  Like the reporters say, it doesn’t get any better than this.   

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Do We Care? I think we do.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Turners Falls HS Marching Band 

Turners Falls Marching Band in Memorial Day parade 2007  

This has been bugging me for a long time so I thought today was as good a day as any to get into it. According to Bob Schieffer, reporting on Face the Nation this morning, there have been almost 4000 American soldiers killed and over 90 thousand wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Many of the wounded have severe injuries that will affect the rest of their lives in a profound way.  

War Dead Memorial 2007

Turners Falls memorial to those lost in the war.  

As this war has dragged on and debates rage, the suggestion that Americans are not really personally engaged  the way they’ve been in the past has been put forth by some politicians.  They compare it to Vietnam with all those people in the streets.  They suggest that it’s because there is no draft and so most people who are not connected to the military simply don’t care.  The criticism has abated a bit lately.  Perhaps that’s because it might be unseemly for a politician to suggest, during a presidential election, that the people don’t really care.  Still the thought lingers, and is implied whenever people note that life here goes on as usual and the war seems not to affect the lives of everyday Americans.  Which is probably true.  I imagine, especially to a soldier coming home after a tour in Iraq, that the degree to which life here is unchanged must feel a bit of a slap in the face.

Our government has asked nothing of the average American while asking a great deal of those in the military.  The policy of the Bush administration of demanding that no pictures of coffins returning from the war be shown has contributed to the sense of isolation of military families.  Keeping these images out of the major media coverage of this war insulates the public from the consequences of war.  For reporters, covering the war in Iraq is difficult.  A significant number of  journalists have lost their lives in this war.  Their bravery is noted by the media, as well it should be, and I don’t think the media fails to cover the brave soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan but still, the thought persists that Americans don’t feel the losses as personally as they should.   

Senator Stanley Rosen addresses the crowd.

State Senator Stanley Rosenberg addressed the crowd.

I do hope that the 2006 election where those opposing the Bush war policy won a lot of races in Congress did something to show that Americans are engaged and do care.  I find here in my small town in Western Massachusetts that many people are strongly connected to the war and do care deeply about the soldiers and their families.  It was clearly on display this past Memorial Day when the people of Turners Falls showed up to honor those who fought bravely for their country.  

I thought it might be interesting to show what the town has done to honor those lost in the Iraq war.  It started with a Vietnam vet putting flags on a hill behind the town’s war memorial, one flag for each American soldier killed.  As the war went on and the deaths added up, townspeople donated time and money to help with a task that had grown beyond anything this veteran had imagined.  By the time we got to Memorial Day 2007, there were 3, 845 flags planted in the grass behind the stone memorials honoring the dead of earlier wars. 

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Even the kids got into the act. 

I find people here care and also support those families who have loved ones fighting in this war.  That does not mean they are unified in their support of the war.  A WWII veteran of 85 years told me he had serious doubts about the war.  He had been on the shores of Normandy during the invasion.  He was a true patriot.  You don’t have to be for the war to be a patriot, and you don’t have to march to make your voice heard.  In fact, what is truly different between then and now is that in 1968 we had to go out into the streets to get our voices heard.  Young men were being drafted to fight in a war they couldn’t even vote against because while they could be drafted at 18 they couldn’t vote until they were 21.  That simple change in the law, made after the war ended, made all the difference in the world.  It’s not just that we have no draft, it’s also that we don’t need to march against the war because we can vote for the people who represent our views, and thankfully, there are a great many of those willing to run for election and stand up against the powerful groups that support this war.  What we have to do is make sure we tell them what we want and let them know when we like what we do.  It’s not enough to complain when we object, we must also let those who stand for what we believe in that we are behind them.  That will empower our representative to be ever more bold in what they do.  And that will be good for us all. 

Ellen Blanchette, Sunday, March 2, 2008

 

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Looking through the fog

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Foggy Sundown

 

The air was warm yesterday, looking strange and  mysterious as mist coming off the snow created a kind of fog that wouldn’t clear even in midday.  It stayed through the rain in late afternoon and remained to day’s end as seen in the photograph above.

The fog also drifted into the corners of the mind as we listened to the latest challenge from the Hillary Clinton camp against Barack Obama that he somehow plagiarized the words of Deval Patrick, the new governor of my state, Massachusetts.  I’m not sure what part of Obama’s words could be considered plagiarism since his statement was mostly well know quotes of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and others.  The part that Hillary is calling plagiarism is when he says, “Just words?”  I’m not sure where anyone could call this plagiarism but the attempt to impugn Obama’s character is in itself both desperate and counter-productive.  In highlighting the similarity between these two black leaders whose words inspired their followers, Hillary Clinton in fact suggests to me that she stole this strategy from Deval Patrick’s challenger.  

If Patrick was using this defense, “just words?” during his run for the governorship, then obviously his critics were saying the same thing about him that Hillary has been saying about Obama, that he is all talk, that his words are hollow meaningless things because there is nothing behind them.  The challenge suggests he lacks the experience to back up those words with action.  

There may be something to Hillary’s position, it’s hard to tell really.  The charge of plagiarism on this truly silly point, however, suggests to me that she has nothing to show to support this position. 

Obama says words do matter and clearly, his supporters agree. 

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Stepping out with art

Monday, August 27, 2007

Rowe Pond in Fog
Mill Pond in Fog, Rowe, Mass. — May 2005 by Ellen Blanchette

I want to thank everyone for their kind words. Your support means so much to me. It is surprisingly difficult to step out into the world with your art. I don’t think most people realize that. All my fellow artists here do, and that has been so helpful to me. When we make art, whether it is painting, photography, writing, any of the arts that are done alone, it is a personal and ultimately very private process. Taking it out of the realm of a private pleasure and sharing art with the world, that seems to require a certain kind of courage. I can be very bold and sometimes even loud in my opinions yet with much of my artwork, it’s been something I’ve kept to myself. It has been so helpful to me to get to know other artists in my community, giving me a group of people to whom I could turn with questions but also getting to hear their own struggle to find their way in a world that claims to appreciate art while really offering very little actual support to artists in the development of their own businesses.

I want to acknowledge here Amy Shapiro and the Franklin County Community Development Corporation in Greenfield, Mass. for offering the business course for artists last year. I wouldn’t be doing any of this without the knowledge and gift of community that program gave to me. Suporting the development of arts in the community has become a central concept here in Franklin County. Other communities around the country are also beginning to see the value of investing in the creative economy.

Thanks to all of you for your kind words here. I especially want to thank Diane Clancy for her work on the development of this website, and her continued encouragement. And patience. This is a process I look forward to sharing with all of you.

I hope you continue to enjoy this site and make your comments.

Ellen Blanchette

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Daffodil Hill

Friday, August 24, 2007

I was looking through my photographs, trying to decide what I would like to share with you, and found this one from 2003 from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. This hill was planted with daffodils in October of 2001 after 1.5 million bulbs were donated to New York City as a memorial to those lost in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Daffodil Hill

The donations were made by Hans van Waardernburg, a Dutch bulb grower, and the Dutch Consulate, plus various other growers here and abroad, as a gift to the city. The idea was to provide something uplifting, a memorial to those who died that would endure over the years and remind us all, every year, of both the endurance and sacrifice of the people of New York City. Volunteers from all over came together in the fall to plant the thousands of bulbs throughout the city in parks and communities, and in the spring they bloomed. Still grieving, the people of the city were indeed uplifted and comforted by the sight of these bright yellow flowers appearing everywhere, along city streets, in boxes outside Fifth Avenue shops, and in the city’s many parks and gardens.

Paul & Dave at daffodil hill

This photo is from a visit to BBG in 2003 with my son and his friend. I had moved out of the city by then, to Western Massachusetts where I live now. Coming back to BBG was definitely coming home to me. I had worked as a volunteer in the Herbarium for several years and loved watching the garden change with the seasons. Most people go for the festivals or events but working there gave me an opportunity to see it all through the winter and early spring before the visitors arrived. And what I saw was a garden that offered something new all year round, with grasses that turned into huge fans of white plumes along the frozen lily ponds, and mallard ducks that made their winter home there, sitting in that little bit of water in the otherwise frozen stream that flowed from the pond in the Japanese garden. If you visit this site often you will likely see more of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens as I spent a lot of time taking pictures there. It is a true treasure.

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Hello world!

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Welcome to my new blog! I am so looking forward to sharing my photos and thoughts with you. I hope you’ll feel free to exchange ideas with me and say what you think in a frank and courteous manner. I’ll be sharing a variety of photos and some stories to go with them. And I’ll occasionally get into writing about things I care about in the world, life, and yes, politics. I will try to be objective and informative about what I say. Thoughtful reflection on the issues of the day is something I think is lacking in our public dialogue, so I hope to find a way to encourage that here. Thanks.

— Ellen Blanchette

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