Days of Art and Politics

(by Linda)

I don't know how people have a life and a blog at the same time. It's not that we haven't been up to anything blog-worthy since July, we just haven't had the time or inclination to write about it at the end of a long day. We talk about blogging--in the car from one event to another, we'll talk about how we'd blog the day, if we were blogging it, but then we get home, turn on the TV to wind down, and forget about blogging.

But we're still committed to doing a blog about the "real" Dallas we know and love, so here's some catch-up from the summer.

When we look back at the summer of 2009, we'll remember it as our summer of art and politics.

Our summer days were full of health care rallies for Move On and Organizing for America; health care reform is something I've been pushing for ever since I handed over a rent-sized premium to an insurance company and wondered why we have such an inefficient middleman between us and our doctors. Since then, I've been asking people why we can't pay for health care collectively, like we pay for utilities and other things we use--like streets and the fire department.

So we've been going to rallies, and have actually met some of the angry teabaggers on the other side of the argument. Individually, they're not bad people, they just don't have the facts, so I feel kind of sorry for them. I wrote a funny account of one event for Daily Kos, but you'll have to email me for the link, 'cause I wrote it under a "nom de blog" and I don't share my pseudonynms with just anybody! If you want to read it, and if I know who you are, I'll send the link. It's long, like most things I write. For those short on time, I'll share an LOLCat that I created to illustrate the moment when James lost his patience with one of the teabaggers:

(Of course, James didn't really call anybody names, just got kind of loud while explaining how insurance companies hire marketing firms to come up with scary terms like "death panel," which are filtered through right-wing talk radio and TV to the general public).

Our summer nights were filled with parties for all the judicial candidates we supported in 2006, who are up for re-election in 2010; to clear our heads from politics, we enjoyed art openings at Mary Tomás Studio Gallery, Daniel Padilla Gallery, Art Spirit and others. We celebrated the International Day of Peace in Bishop Arts (link goes to my photo album on Flickr).

The highlight of my summer of art and politics was meeting Peter Max at an opening of his work at Samuel Lynne Gallery. I don't have a picture of us together, 'cause he doesn't let anyone but his own photographer take pictures of him, and I was too shy to ask the photographer to take a picture of me with Peter Max. But I did get his autograph, and I had the chance to tell him how much I enjoy his work, and delivered a statement I'd been rehearsing in my head ever since I heard he was coming to town. It went something like this: "I just wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed your work over the years; my elementary school had a great art program and we studied pop art, and we all wanted to be Peter Max. Your style is so vibrant and positive with bold primary colors, and it pointed to a hopeful future. I really thought I would grow up in a world without all the problems we have today. The artists had it right, and the politicians got it wrong."

Somewhere in the middle of this statement, he reached out and stroked my cheek! It was a rainy day, and I thought, "Gee, I must have gotten a rain drop on my face, and he's probably fixing my makeup!" I naturally thought that he, being an artist, was trying to smooth out some imperfection he saw. But when I told James about it later, he said that Peter Max stroked his cheek, too! James said it was probably his non-verbal way of saying "thank you." How cool is that?

Since I couldn't take any pictures inside the gallery, I commemorated the event by taking this picture of the advertising poster through the gallery window, where you can see the drops of rain. The picture looks especially cool if you click to enlarge it.

Before we knew it, summer was blending into autumn, and we realized how much time had passed by looking at our old blog posts and thinking, "Has it really been three months since we entered a blog post." Time flies, as they say, when you're having fun, and we certainly do have fun wherever we go and whatever we do.