The Death of Publishing Or For That Matter, Of Language And Culture As We Know It?

By in large subways are silent places with all eyes on
their smart phones. Books? Newspapers? Nary a one.

   I just returned from a trip to China. While many Americans, including our President, may think China is backward and far behind us, I found that in fact they are, in many ways far more advanced.       

 This struck me soon after I arrived. Traveling with my host on the subway I witnessed this scene: every single person, young and old, was looking at a smart phone, with all the younger ones hooked up with some form of headphone.

   This was a very different scene from my first experience on a subway in New York City in 1967.         In 1967 I don't think any city in the west of the Mississippi had a subway. I know growing up in Portland, OR I took the bus everywhere. However, I know Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles and even San Francisco depended or cars or buses. Not a subway in sight.

   I was surprised to see that just about every rider had a newspaper or a book, something to read and again other than the noise of the train, cars were also pretty much silent. Papers then had huge readerships, some published before the morning commute and again for the afternoon commute. There was no instant news ... and yet,  the world survived.

Riders read newspapers or book and were certainly
 betterdressed in the "good old days"

   As a journalism major in college, I don't think anyone could have foreseen the changes that were about to take place. In the 60's newspapers nationwide were making the shift from letterpress printing to offset. They quickly evolved from typing metal slugs each with a letter on them to what was called cold type where the printed type was glued to a paper sheet with hot wax and each page photographed. Next came desktop publishing that get rid of just about everything physical in setting type to manipulating it on a computer screen. In some places it happened faster than others. In Oklahoma it started in the 60's, in Los Angles it was the 90's. After years of using the same basic printing format change came, and quickly. No more cutting your fingers with Exacto blades and burning fingers with hot wax guns, desktop publishing was a godsend.

Chinese have newsstands but I never saw
anyone reading something from here.

   Watching riders in Tianjin and Beijing it suddenly dawned on me what was causing the collapse of the publishing industry. I can remember the first Kindles, small, lightweight tablets that could hold up to 1500 nooks. They were all black and white but wasn't that the color of a book, except for its cover? Since every book since 1983 has been typeset digitally it was a wonderful way to save costs ... no printing, no distribution, no remainders to be returned. It was clean and digitally simple. The problem was they tried to charge the same price as if the book was printed. It took awhile but finally digital versions were sold cheaper and sales continued to rise until ... they didn't. 

The malls that are open are huge, multi 

story with each floor themed for food,

kids wear, clothing, etc. Signage is huge

as the hanging ads here are.

Amazon and publishers are beginning to see shifts in this scenario. Real, printed book sales started to rise again in 2016 wiping out the loss of  printed sales. Like the revival of LP (long play) records, customers seem to like and want to touch and hold the real thing again.

   However, not only are they not buying books or newspapers, they are not going to the mall either. While we saw many in China, most quite new, I would say that up to half are shuttered. One huge mall, once a thriving, bustling place was surrounded by a wall and abandoned. Even my friend admitted that he purchased most items online. Often it was cheaper and they, just like here, delivered to your door. 

The Chinese government wasted no time getting its new
leaders front and center before their citizens. I can't even
began to imagine such signage in my condo complex.

   

So, as I discovered, it isn't that people aren't reading, they are reading a way not much considered or understood 10 years ago. It has taken, at least the newspaper industry, several decades to figure out that the medium is the message. Their business was news and selling ads. Readers, they are finding out, will read, just digitally, not the way they had planned. The cost savings over tangible media should have invigorated the industry rather than killed it. Those that understood have thrived.

   Printing still is a big business in China. There are government signs everywhere, such as this signage inside my hosts condo complex. The government is visible everywhere, often in ways and places most western citizens would not tolerate. Passing this nearly every day for three weeks, it dawned on me that it wouldn't be imaginable in the US. Politicians might want it, the citizens, never. I'm  convinced one of China's biggest printing buyers is their government!

Even the local vendor gets into the act ... printed stickers
and an electronic sign overhead!

Ask and you shall receive!
Your message painted for you in real time.

            

However, no matter where you go, or at least in Beijing, Tianjin and yes, Hong Kong, signs are everywhere. Huge, colorful and often electric, every business seems to be covered with Chinese characters vying for your attentions that are so befuddling to westerners. However, it is also poetic and you see painted posters in every store, museum, in or on every business. You could have a local calligrapher paint you a special New Years wish or prayers or there are areas where hundreds of vendors sell everything you need for the forthcoming Chinese New Year.

   

Setting up of stalls that sell 2018 decorations for Year of the Dog Chinese New Years celebrations.

   We stumbled on an outdoor plaza nearby the condo that was in the process of setting up for the February Chinese New Years festivities. Talk about design. To see the intricate lazer cut paper items, once cut by hand, is to see absolutely amazing and sadly, disposable art. 2018 is the year of the dog so many of the decorations reflect that. However, that is not all you can purchase and a wide variety of hopes and prayers for health, wealth and well-being adorned the stalls. Even better, most of the paper cuttings are on "bright" red paper, a favorite, that are meant to be displayed until next year. My friend said that this decorating was extremely popular in Tianjin, not so much in Beijing.

Many streets feature signs, electric signs and lanterns

   But the signage doesn't stop there. Every street with vendors on it uses distinctive signage. While I couldn't read a word, their characters are artistic and are worthy and are often found as art in galleries, museums and such. If I saw one, I saw 20 different vendors selling the paper to practice calligraphy as well as brushes and inks. It is a hobby many retired citizens practice.

   Signs tend to be over the top both in size and how how they were displayed. Our trip to the 798 Arts District in Beijing had many galleries filled with traditional as well as modern art. One huge outdoor mural intrigued everyone who came across it and resembled something more likely to be found in the west. And like artists in the west, Chinese artists, or at least some, were exploring a kind of renegade art that could be at seen in any American avant grade home. We wandered around all afternoon but both agreed, Shenzhen was more fun. There you saw the artist at work, the raw materials for sale and prices that were considerably cheeper.

Mural in the 798 Arts District

   What I am trying to say and show here is that we are already changing, changing in ways that we had not foreseen and the process is not completed yet. Possibly there will always a need  for print and digital because already, historians and archivists are finding that they can't open files that were digitally saved 20 years ago. Even the CD that involved into the DVD has gone through many metamorphic

changes and new discs can't be played on old machines. If a printed book is carefully preserved it can be read for decades to come ... if the language still exists. So along with digital comes greater and greater standardization of languages. While I knew that every airline pilot in the world talks to the tower and each other in English, did you know that ship captains do as well? Is the day coming where even this culturally defined custom is replaced, where languages become fewer? While the Tower of Babel may have separated us, will the age of digital bring us back together again? We are in the midst of a revolution of expression and I don't think anyone knows where it will take us.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!

Service That ISN'T Service Anymore

  We've all heard this line ... often over and over again for 5, 10, 15 even up to 45 minutes when you make the mistake of calling a company about a problem, even your doctor ... "Please hold. Your call is very important to us. However, we are experiencing a larger call volume than usual. Please hold. We will take your call in the order it was received. Thank you for your patience." Then after say, 10 - 15 minutes of waiting comes this line, "All our representatives are still busy helping other callers. Your call is important to us, please leave a number so that we can return your call shortly." And, they never, ever do. 

   Even worse is how they now try to shuffle you off to the Internet where 1: you can't even get on the internet; that's why you're calling Time Warner, or 2: what you need is on the 5th screen hidden deep down on an Internet page that is longer than anything that can be published in tiny type buried in another line and you simply can't find it. Been there too?

   This folks is design ... design to discourage. In the past I have finally given up and literally gone to the place I needed to contact in less time than the time I spent holding. They are startled at that and often fall all over themselves to get you, by now irate and angry, out the door.

Unlike Ernestine on LAUGH-IN, this operator put you through.

   Service has never been as poor as it is today (well it was pretty awful before the wall fell in eastern Europe too). I have been to service centers, Spectrum, even the doctor's office, heard the phone ring and one of two things happen; they stop helping you to get the call and then are on that call 5 minutes, or more often, ignore the call and do what they were doing. 

   When I was a kid, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth in the 1950's, someone always answered the phone and you were transferred to the person you needed, if they were there. If not, a message was taken. In the 60's and 70's you checked out of the office and when you returned a sheaf of pink slips had messages of those who had called when you were out. They expected you to call back, too. And we did.

   Today robots answer phones and most of those messages are clearly ignored. A pink message slip makes you feel guilty, ignoring a blinking light or even not bothering to check your messages seems to be the standard of the day. I found, before I retired, that I had to do two jobs: my job and their's bugging them to do what I had wanted. To be fair, in the drive for profits and CEO salaries, companies do everything they can to save a penny so fewer employees do double or triple the work than was expected of them 50 years ago. If a real person answers the phone, I praise them and their company for caring enough to help me without having to wait. Time is my money too!

   In fact, the more companies talk about how important YOU are on TV, the radio, the Internet and printed advertising, the worse the problem has become. In fact, for many of them, including our government ... city, county, state, federal, service has gotten far, FAR worse.

   A case in point was today in my condo complex in Palm Springs. Last year after the old management company was kicked out for mismanagement the HOA board choose Desert Resort Management, a division of Associa, as their new management company. They found many, many problems inherited from the old management company but while I was still a renter, who had no vote or voice, there were many questions about the new company. At HOA meetings I could attend as an owner the DRM representative spent her time on her cell phone and rarely had the information asked for a month or two before. This year the problem became worse. The first one was replaced. Suddenly we had another representative, then another, and last month another. Late Friday afternoon board members, I am now one, were emailed a note that took more than a day for me to receive, that we were going to get yet another representative. 

   A search of the Internet on this company gives a very different picture from the one they paint. In fact they are huge, managing over 9,000 properties. They made front page news in the valley recently when one of their employees siphoned over $100,000 from a petty cash account at one of the properties they manage.

   In a continuing and startling allegation of McKesson Pharmaceuticals last night on "60 Minutes" who with the Washington Post, CBS and retired employees of the DEA discussed McKesson's fueling the opioid epidemic and the government's refusal to prosecute. Past episodes regarding malfeasance of big banks, utilities, auto companies and much more, the common answer to these problems and yes, criminal activities, including property management companies, is that they are "too big to fail." Really? Is anything so big that if it fails the world ends? I would say that with this attitude the "End of Days" is nearer than we think. In fact, I would recommend CEO's and a great many of our government employees read Gibbons THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. In fact I would posit that many, many companies are too big and should be broken up or allowed to fail. The demand of profits over people, over service, is rapidly reaching a breaking point.

In fact, we have reached the perfect storm; new board members, new and unknown representative and the holidays.

   Somewhere we as a nation have lost our way. Republicans wrap their selves in a flag spouting freedom and human rights as they give the rich more, then literally take food and medicine from the nations poor adding they are Christians. Democrats offer a vision of a world that doesn't exist anymore and when their "heroes" go amuck say they are "icons" and refuse to believe claims against them. Unfortunately I have a very different view of the gospels and they don't include either of these tenets.

   Differences of opinion have prevailed even before July 4, 1776. In fact they went on with mother England before the first sailing to the New World. Heavens, the Vice President of the United States had a dueling match with the Secretary of the Treasury and killed him. We fought a Civil War that was anything but civil, that killed 15% of the nation's population. To watch the news recently, it appears that the war there is still being fought.

   The citizens of the United States need to pause ... from the wealthiest to the poorest, as well as all government leaders, and take stock of who we as a people are. Do the words that grace the Statue of Liberty have any meaning or is that yet another casualty of freedom? What is freedom? I would note that the Constitution was written over 230 years ago while we live in a world the Founding Fathers could never, ever imagine. It doesn't hurt anyone to say thank you or to be kind. The wealthy don't need more. Health care is a right, not a priviledge. The stress of the modern world is of our owning making, yes, our own design. We need to inculcate service into our children and ourselves so that we will be willing and yes, eager, to serve others and not take more than we need. No, I am not preaching for a socialist Utopia, I am asking for common courtesy and decency.

   We designed this thing, maybe the time has come, finally, to design another.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!

   

RoboLights: Christmas Decor Like No Other!

Kenny Irwin's property on a normal day. Frank Sinatra's

first house in Palm Springs is just a block away. This is the

midst of the Movie Colony where every home is valued in

excess of $2 million. Neighbors are not pleased.

Palm Springs is known for many things ... desert weather, a getaway from the hustle and bustle of Hollywood or just about anyplace with either too much hustle or bustle and snow plows, movie stars hiding from prying eyes, innovative architects, a Gay lifestyle and so much more.

  After 16 years of trying, the denizens of the Movie Colony and city hall lost a court battle last year to shut down RoboLights, the creation of local sculpture Kenny Irwin, whose vision of Christmas, is even more bizarre than Tim Burton's NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, finally won his battle to open his property for his yearly Christmas show. 

   Not to be outdone the city now lists RoboLights as one of the city's attractions of things to do and see in Palm Springs.

   The neighbors have struck back by getting the city to forbid parking on the street the house is on and the street that takes you there. Luckily a park is a few blocks away with plenty of parking but, as the leader of our photography group said, bring a flashlight. There are no or at best few streetlights.

 

This is the entrance (one of several) view to RoboLights at dusk

   Open from 4 pm to 9:30 pm nightly its probably better to come around 5 pm or so like we did. There is still some light and you can find your way easily. While I had visited last year, we came late, had only 15 or so minutes to check the place out and since I didn't drive there made a dry run earlier in daylight to find where it was and where to park. Last year a friend from China walked around stunned, his mouth agape. We all did, truly there can't be anything like this any place in the world.

Once inside there are many paths and its easy to get lost.

   Some of it is fun, playful even, other scenes are macabre and definitely something that could give you nightmares for a week. I heard one adult wonder if maybe this wasn't for children below, maybe 16?

Save your junk! You too can become a
sculptor. One never knows.

  There are just not words to describe what awaits you here. He has put together bits and pieces of just about anything you can imagine ... pipes, circuit boards, TV's, a whole bunch of skulls, a tanker full of Pepto Bismo pink paint. Someone spotted people delivering even more junk to him behind the house. Its not as if there isn't a whole lot there already!

I don't think Disney would picture Freeze with this cast.

  

   I traipsed around this wonderland of, I guess the best description would be "land of the macabre, but as an artist you can't help but admire the total, unrelenting inventiveness, even lightheartedness of his collection and the work that went into it. After all, it covers 4 acres and he has over 1 million lights. In fact I spotted a worker there adding even more lights. Really? More lights?

Your chariot awaits

   

Where else could you see a
Gingerbread Mullah?

   Irwin has become a Muslim convert and can be spotted on his grounds dressed in traditional Mullah garb. Some areas of the display feature Arab scenes and music. I didn't see him last night but did see him last year. There are some interesting scenes though that combine a variety of holiday themes. 

Pulling Santa in a way Hugh Hefner would love.

  The Easter Bunny driving a team of reindeer, Santa on a tank with a banner that reads "Come and Get It," with a gaggle of female manikins pulling Santa in a stage coach.

   There are many beautifully lit tunnels that overlook the grounds, even the pool filled with bulls in rafts, a giant pirate ship, several snowmen and the afore mentioned Santa riding his tank.

I guess Santa is ready to shoot down Jack

Skeleton before he hi-jacks Christmas again!

    It is so, bizarre you will find your fingers are never far from you camera or cell phone. Scene after scene greets you, each one more, is the word "outrageous?" than the last. It never fails to amaze and you never stop looking.

Not your Grandmas's typical Village!!!

   And it was fun. Despite the warnings, I did sleep like a baby last night! So, you don't need to worry about that.

There just isn't anything like this anywhere.

   I think that for an artist, whether you like this kind of exhibit or not, it does show the many kinds of possibilities there are out there. Much of his creations are made from cast off things we probably get rid of each and every day. He might be on to something. I have noticed that dimensional art, art that does something is becoming more and more popular. At Spectrum last year, two of the more popular spaces included things that did something. One space had creations made from black wire that when the handle was turned came to life ... a bicycle wheels turned, a trapeze star walked across, things moved up and down. Another space had electrical creations that were fascinating to watch. No two were alike. Created by an electrical engineer, he may well have been on to something.

I can see those garages now! Where is it?

  

   I would say that if this kind of art, collages, things created from found pieces is what you want to do a visit to RoboLights is almost a command performance. He has definitely led the way into uncharted territory. You may not agree or even like what you see, but the possibilities it can open to the artistic person are immeasurable.

    If you are in Palm Springs during the Christmas season, this is a must see venue. Even during the rest of the year, some of the creations are quite visible from the street and they are lighted at night.

 Leaving, you definitely need your flashlight. There are no streetlights for blocks and the on blaze of lights is what you see from Robolights. While the neighbors might want to keep their lives and properties private, RoboLights, like Los Angeles, blazes a path to its front door! It is open daily from 4 pm to 9:30 pm. Admission is a donation and they are collecting toys for the children of Syria.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!

   

Christmas Giving Is Also A Time For Christmas Creating!

I probably started back in the day ... when education was "well rounded," you know when we had art and music and boys took shop and the girls took home economics, that I got started making things, rather than buying things for Christmas. That's not to say I and every other kid I know didn't roam the 5 & 10's buying "Evening In Paris" perfume for our mothers (or some of us did anyway) but we always had a Christmas craft in grade school. One of the best was a huge mobile we made with paper circles when I was in the 7th grade. I had my first male teacher and he seemed to enjoy art and had us create all kinds of things for each season. I can remember carrying it home, we walked in those days, praying that it wouldn't rain before I got it home in Portland, OR, where it always rains.

   My Dad died between my junior and senior high school years and to help my Mom, I volunteered to send all the Christmas cards that year. I made each and every one by hand, a tradition that I kept until a few years ago and resumed again this year. However, I went from hand to computer creating a summery of the things and places I had been to this year.

   When I started crafting in my 60's, I guess an outlet from my computer based graphic design ... using my hands, a brush and paint rather than a computer, software and a mouse, I also became aware of seasons of the year. After I had amassed quite a collection of finished goods for Christmas or Easter, especially Halloween, my daughter found and urged me to sell these things on ETSY.com. So I opened a store and did sell a few things.

   Anyone who does crafts knows from the beginning you sell your items making pennies each and every hour. I think we do it out of love of creating. I learned that it often means more to the creator and purchaser than to the person just given it. Unless you have a hobby of any sort, one that requires hours of patience to complete, people don't appreciate what it takes to make anything. They just assume everything is made by the millions and sold at any old store. While there may be 1.5 million sellers on ETSY there are also about 4-5 billion people that can connect on the Internet.

Cut fancy or not the blank wooden
ornament is well, blank! You need
a lot of imagination to turn it into
something that creates a memory.

   This year after creating my cards and printing them out, I began to work on raw wood Christmas ornaments. Since I am visiting a friend who bought and decorated a Christmas tree for the first time in his life, I felt that it was appropriate to start making ornaments for him.

   Oddly, here in the Coachella Valley it is JoAnn's rather than Michael's that seems to have the more craft friendly items to work with. There was quite a selection of items to purchase and better yet they were all 60% off retail price.

   This ornament ended up 

   with three pieces thick

   glued together.

   So, after getting a client's project done, then the Christmas card designed, its tale of the year written, then printed, cut, envelopes addressed, stuffed, stamped and finally mailed, (as well as the re-creation of two lost birdhouses) I settled down for some serious craft painting and adornment.

   Many of the ornaments were more than one layer and one side. So, I had to decide whether to paint both sides to match, think Santa or snowman, or paint and decorate one side and leave the other side painted a single, dark color. What makes it worse, like graphic design, the possibilities are literally endless. You have to pick a path and stick to it though to be honest, things do change along the way. I liked the shape and cutting of "Noel" but even

   The small rounded ornament 

  on the "O"added just the right 

   amount of depth. So did the 

   illusion of snow on all edges.

painting the "o" with metallic paint didn't jazz it up enough. Adding a small ornament to it, gave it dimension, something this piece didn't have but, I felt, needed. On the back I put the recipient and my name with the year. 

Santa is a three layered wooden creation
that is completed with a red jewel on the
top of the small tree on the left.

   Decorating a tree is one of life's little pleasures. When I was first married we were poor as church mice. We bought cheap shiny balls and found some small wooden ornaments to decorate. The balls broke over time but the wooden ones survived and brought back many memories. As you collect them over the years, looking at each one can bring back so many memories ... memories of the giver and if they've passed, the memory of them and when you received it. So, yes, when you create either for yourself or to sell or given as gifts, date and sign them. 

  Of course no Christmas Tree would be complete without a Santa, or if you are like one relative whose entire tree was nothing a collection of Santa's from around the world that had to be arranged by size ... smallest at the top and getting bigger as you moved to the bottom. It was a rare day of decorating where she didn't come out, admire the work and then move a few "Santa's" around.

Snowmen are fun to paint and offer a
surprising variety of ways to decorate.

   Another great favorite for many collectors is "Frosty, the Snowman" and there are many available from around the world. I found another three layered one that I painted on both sides using the front as a guide to paint the back. How hard is it to paint white, right? However, for a bit of a flourish, he may have had a red hat but I gave him a tartan scarf.

Snowflakes don't always have
to be white you know.

   Finally, but not least was a simple snowflake caught in a ring that I played with before deciding on what to do. I added red jewels on the outer ring, used gold paint for the snowflake with glitter paint on the spokes and a bit of brushed snow for, well, what a snowflake is! Snow!

We are not limited necessarily by what tradition is. Time has allowed creators a wide latitude for decoration. Here, because it was a friends first tree, I wanted tradition. It will be much fun explaining them to him. As time goes along there will be plenty of time to be more creative, even getting him to try decorating himself! As any crafter and artist knows, while you are in the midst of a project, you are literally in another world of time and space. You are so focused that the real world is kept at bay for awhile. And you know? I think we all could use that now and then.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!

   

Kickstarting A Dorment Artist!

If it was good once, is twice better?

   Maybe its the malaise after a too hot summer, maybe its trying to do other things, but whatever the reason, I have hardly picked up a paintbrush all year.

   First there was the moving, it was a two month ordeal to get my new home remodeled then moved. Then it was the heat ... all you do is try to keep cool and not give all your money to the electric company. I did do a few things, as usual far too complex, if sold, there would be no real monetary return for hours expended in sight. I read. I finished the huge THREE-BODY PROBLEM, trilogy. I went to Hong Kong to visit my friend and he flew from China for a visit and, as I recounted in an earlier blog, we took a fast trip to Las Vegas, and then, Amtrak to Chicago. Hours were spent creating an album of our trip. And it might be that wandering through the galleries of the Art Institute inspired me ... again. Its not hard to fall in love with art at the Art Institute with all the masterpieces they exhibit. But no, that wasn't it.

   Then, after I returned,  I got busy doing work for an old client. In some ways it was like learning to use Quark and Word and Excel all over again. If you're not in the business world anymore, at 72, you DO forget. No that wasn't it either.

   I think the impetus was my ETSY store. After months of no sales and barely any views even, I was startled last week to find an order, then two. No problem, I had the first item. I got it packaged and mailed off. The second, that was another story. While I found one, I could not find the other and I knew, or thought I knew it was here. It wasn't. Then, the next day came another. Oh oh. After tearing my condo and storage room apart I couldn't find it. It was ... gone! I hadn't sold it I know but it must be been buried from one of the two moves I made last year. I went through every drawer, every bin ... nada. It was paid for; the client expected delivery!

   So, like any good artist, I printed the photos from my ETSY store, no, I couldn't find the original photos either, then last Saturday headed first to Michael's who didn't have any left, then to JoAnn's that for some reason out here in the desert is better than any Michael's I have ever seen in California, who had them. There it was! Hallelujah!!! To be safe I bought two. I knew where one of them was, the other? Who knows. Several years ago, on a wild bent, I created three abstract birdhouses. Same sizes but with different feet and each one with a theme: squares, circles and combined. They were wild, very colorful and luckily too small for a bird to actually use. If it were bigger, they might have flown into the side and not the hole, which as you can see is heart shaped.

   How does this happen? While I had my own business and spent many hours working for it, I never liked the business side... you know the billing, invoicing and such. Then Sunday at a photo shoot with a group I joined out here in the desert, I couldn't find the group and another straggler in the group found me. It was fun to tour the vintage market looking at the same kinds of things we grew up with. She too faced my dilemma saying that every artist needs a business manager. I AGREE! I want to create not bill and count pennies. 

   That I had poor organizational skills, despite trying to do that very thing, reared it's ugly head when  a few days later two more orders appeared and, well, I had one but not the other. This time I opened every box in storage, I mean EVERY one, finding one I had never opened, but still no missing birdhouse. So yet again, it was back to the drawing board and for two days recreating what has got to be here, somewhere. So far I have not found it. I really, really need to do a deep, DEEP cleaning!

   Today, I looked at all the items for sale on my ETSY store to make sure I had them ... or at least knew where they were. I should know! Twice in a week I have torn this place apart. Enough with the late hours recreating something I had already done and can't find.

   When I started crafting and opened my store I used to do three at a time. Since I was using acrylic paints, but the time you were through with whatever step on number 3, number 1 was dry. I did that for a while and all 3 in fact have sold. Then I stopped ... what a mistake. 

   With all the frustration and demands of sold but missing items, it has jumpstarted my painting again. I starting doing Christmas ornaments for friends, and have regained the joy I had. Since there is no TV setup in the "studio" I prop up my iPad, watch a little news via an App or watch movies and such on either Netflix or Amazon. I really don't pay much attention, its just background noise ... something to break the silence.

   In fact the searching in all those tubs and boxes, I was made aware of how much I had that was not done. Birdhouses, trays, figures, boxes that were all begging to be painted. Humbly I started again with Christmas ornaments to take with me as gifts on my trip. I found a couple of unique, one-of-a-kind birdhouses I had forgotten I even had. So, finally, the push and desire is on. Maybe it is better to take a break. But I do not recommend the stress that I have been under the past week. There has to be a balance I realize, not too much work, nor too little. Anyway, it is good, REALLY good to be creating again!

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there! AND, I guarantee the items shown are really, REALLY available.

SEX, LIES & NETWORK TAPES In The 21st Century Artistic World

The poster boy of "The Casting Couch" with revelations
of sexual harassment of over 60 women over decades.

The early 21st Century seems to be a time for brutal honesty, a form of housecleaning of things long known but never talked about, or at least in polite company. I was a very naive boy regarding anything sexual and remained that way until my early 20's, maybe even later. However, even I knew about the casting couch and we would all snicker at rumors and then question how a particularly pretty but terrible actress made it big. Of course the answer was, "The Casting Couch." 

   As kids we were particularly attuned to tone of voice (if you have young children, listen up), when the adults started to whisper, like vampire bats to blood, our ears became ultra sensitive and we heard things we shouldn't have. The saving grace was we didn't understand what they were talking about at the time. There are moments, even now, for me.

   The recent revelations of the antics of producer Harvey Weinstein seemed, to me at least, the confirmation of all those snickers us boys had as we found and ogled my Dad's collection of the first Playboy Magazines. As an artist the revelations of so many men and women behaving badly who are in the arts calls to question many of the artworks I've seen over the years and dismissed. Now, in light of all this, the "MeToo" movement suddenly explains artists anger, particularly works of women, bringing their anger into focus.

   Last year the Palm Springs Art Museum had an exhibition of women Expressionists from mostly the 50's though some were earlier or later. The group I toured the exhibit with were mostly women, many Lesbians and they admired the strength and boldness of the art. Staring at it I was struck not at the boldness, but the anger. Jackson Pollack's wife, Lee Krasner's paintings started the show but there were many others and none were motherly or Mary Cassatt styles of art. There was emotion, great emotion that I was not prepared to handle.

   Sex seems to be a great modifier. My whole life I've been told that men have two heads and one of them though smaller is greater in its actions.

   First there was the scandal of priests in the Catholic Church. Revelations started in the United States and then spread around the world. Parishioners are paying the bail out from that still.

America's Father abused his celebrity

   When the Bill Crosby scandal hit the news in what seems eons ago now, I think it was still considered an isolated incident of a powerful, even important actor who abused his celebrity. It appears he was saying one thing and practicing anther. While he still denies many of the accusations, where's smoke there is usually fire. You have to admire the courage of his wife. This cannot have been easy to endure.

Kevin Spacey caught diddling.

   The LGBT community became enraged and the fallout has yet to end over allegations that Kevin Spacey, one of our greatest actors, was or is at some point in his life a Gay pedophile. When the accusation hit the airwaves, he pleaded that he didn't remember that event and then, as an aside, a distraction, finally came out saying,  by the way, I'm Gay. I hate to tell Spacey this but this was hardly a well kept secret. I was told this years ago but I didn't care. He was an amazing actor. Several other actors, Neil Patrick Harris and Jim Parsons, both wonderful actors were openly Gay and appeared with their husbands in public. What made Spacey so vile was that he paired his sexual impropriety with being Gay. Excuses from the Old Vic Theatre in London, where Spacey served as artistic director for many years sound hollow. Ignorance is not bliss. They knew yet said nothing for years. Can it be that an artist will do anything to achieve success? As Edmund Burke stated in 1795, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." In hindsight it appears that good men and women have done nothing not for days, or months or even years but for centuries.

   Daily the airwaves are replete with new revelations. Charlie Rose, a host of Fox Channel hosts, Billie Bush, Senator Al Franken, the paradigm of respect for women. When does it end? Roy Moore in Alabama, a state that would rather elect a Republican sexual harasser than elect a Democrat. Then there's John Conyers another Democrat that Nancy Pelosi holds up as an icon of the party! Really? We've already endured a president that couldn't keep his pants zipped in the Oval Office and another that brazenly says that women "want it."

Ugh, hello boss! Can I help you?

To be fair, any kind   of harassment comes in many forms. Men harass women in what appears to be a rather regular basis. 

   However, there was an amazing Mike Douglas movie where his female boss harassed him in a style all too common to women. It is said men are ashamed and won't talk about it. Thinking about it, the women had good teachers; they just turned the tables is all. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Women are not alone. Men can
face the same kind of harassment

 The same can be said for men on men sexual harassment. As Spacey and others have shown, no one is immune. Not all the "MeToo's" on Facebook were women. 

   The question remains, how do we deal with this? Is it the way children are raised? Have the abused been silent too long? I know from friends abused as children that the memory is always there. A woman raped carries the memory the rest of her life. It would be much easier if harassers were like Marley from THE CHRISTMAS CAROL, dragging their sins in chains as they walked the streets, a clear sign that they needed to be avoided. 

   All we can hope is that this, ALL this, serves as a notice to men and women that such behavior will not be tolerated. That artists ... actors, artists, writers, musicians, broadcasters do not and SHOULD not have to sleep their way to success. NO ONE SHOULD! We founded a country where every man and woman was given a certain amount of freedom to become the best person they could. A lesson that many in this country seem to have yet to learn is that your Constitutional Rights end when they step on mine. In the eyes of our laws we are all to be regarded as equal, no one, and I mean NO ONE, is special. We should not live as the final sign over the barn in ANIMAL FARM that states, "Some animals are more equal than others." To that I saw BS! Yet ... we see that this is also sadly true.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!

100 Million Americans Have Hypertension AND I Know Why

 

Watching the news Monday night, first ABC News with David Muir and then CBS News with Anthony Mason, one of the headlines they both had and even featured was the latest medical report stating that over 100 million Americans suffer from hypertension. Now it should be noted that the definition of hypertension has been changed from 130 / 90 to 120 / 80 sweeping in a great many citizens who until Monday night thought they were safe.

   The "expert" doctors on both shows noted that before people start taking more medicines that lifestyle changes could also make a tremendous difference. Diet, exercise ... the same mantra that is used for just about every condition.

   However, after events that Monday, I think I know another factor that increases our blood pressure and does so each and every day in our modern world.

   I am taking a holiday trip later this year. While I ordered the tickets in early October I never received a confirmation that everything was confirmed. The sheet of paper I had even said this was not a confirmation, one would be sent shortly. It wasn't.

   Since I have had several pulmonary embolisms, one that could have been caused by a long plane flight, and have suffered other blood clots I have to prepare what I wear on the plane and "should" get up and walk about every hour. Since my flight will be about 15 hours I need an aisle seat. 

I'm not so sure about the "happiness." Efficiency is better.

   So a call to Hotwire finally got me to a human that I explained my predicament to. He looked up the itinerary number and sure enough there was my flight information. When I told him I never received the confirmation he said one was sent. I replied that I had nothing. He sent one and I received it while we were talking. (A month ago would have been better.)

   When I told him that I needed to pick my seats he said, "Oh, we don't do that. You will need to contact the carrier and pick your seats." Odd, you can do that on Expedia. I thanked him, hung up and went to the United Airlines web site.

    Dante wasn't kidding about the 7 circles of hell. United Airlines has that down to a science. After a bunch of questions that led me around and around their web site without getting anywhere, I finally found my flight information and the four flights there and back. Since I am flying from Palm Springs to San Francisco, a flight that is 90 minutes, I wasn't concerned where I sat on that flight. On the 15 hour flight I was. 

   After picking seats on the going flights the site went wonky and it throw me back to the home page. No amount of trying could get me back so finally, I found a number (trust me, a phone number is NOT stressed anymore. They don't want to talk to you.) The recordings say over and over you can do everything online, only, as you find out, you can't.

   I finally got a human after about 10  minutes of number punching and explained my plight. She was nice and offered to walk me through the process though I could tell she thought I was lame. We went through the same steps and picked seats on all my flights. Then, when she went to save my selections it wouldn't save. Her response was that they knew there was a problem and they were working on it. I should call back in an hour and it might work. Her inference was that I should stick around the house and call every now and then. I asked for the seat numbers noting them on each of my flights and then asked to speak to her supervisor. I wasn't going to sit around all day and hope that the site might work. I can say it didn't work the other three times either. Who was it? United? Delta whose flights stopped worldwide for a few days because of such computer nonsense?

   Finally her supervisor came on the line and sounded about 10. While the first person said she explained our plight, with the supervisor we started all over again. This time I knew which seats and finally he was able to pick them and confirm them while I was on the phone. Later, I did receive confirmation of this conversation. I think from the time I started and I hung up I had spent 2 hours on the phone. Just about 100 minutes too long. Do you think I was a bit stressed after this? You bet!

   Unless I am cursed and a black cloud follows me around, just about everything we do today is like this. I already recounted the experience with my iPhone X, which has taken a week and some tricks to put all the data from an older phone onto it. Hours and hours over a week to do what once took maybe an hour or two.

You don't need to go to hell. The Feds have created
the perfect preparation right here on earth!

   I have a friend that has been fighting the Feds over his Green card, already two years beyond its expiration. When we checked in September of this year, he was told that they were still only up to July for applications or renewals  from July of 2016. You can bet he is excited! He is stuck here and can't leave without a current Green card.

   When I was a kid and even a young adult you called a company, a human answered and you were transferred to the person you needed to talk to. Today a quick question turns into a 45 minute experience of punching numbers and numbing waiting all the while being told you call is sooo important to us and they will be with you shortly between bursts of staticky music. Heard that one? Or how about this one ... please hold, we are experiencing an unusually high caller volume. I called at 3 am one time and got the same message but was so pissed I held on for 45 minutes and when the guy finally answered admitted, when grilled, that they only had one person ... pretty much for the whole day. I have witnessed phone calls at desks where the employee let their answer phone pick up. And not just once either. For all we know, it could have been your call. The newest wrinkle is, "We can't come to the phone right now so please leave your name and number and we will call back as soon as possible." That's a lie too. They never call back.

   So yes, experiencing this kind of behavior all day, every day is certain to raise your blood pressure. When I worked at a manufacturer of furniture I felt that I had two jobs ... the one that paid me and the other constantly following up on orders hounding people who hadn't gotten around to it yet. The excuses I heard would fill a book. In fact, I often wondered if there was such a book of excuses because everyone seemed to know them but me.

   The other side of this same coin is, well, coins or dollars. Companies are constantly looking for ways to cut costs and human interaction is expensive. Just like big box stores, how many sales do they lose because they don't have enough employees to stock the shelves or help you?

   Our lives are also getting stressed because you never know when some nut with a gun will begin shooting at you or drive a car into you or, as we learned on 9 / 11 hijack a plane and crash it into skyscrapers. While you may not consciously think about it, be honest here ... when you're at the airport, stadium, crowded mall, concert, movie theater and now church, aren't you a bit nervous? I

Remember how carefully you packed? The TSA didn't.

remember how the underwear bomber during Christmas in 2009 changed airport check-in. Our flight to Egypt was relatively calm. However, coming home after the underwear bomber nearly brought a flight down over Detroit, a security guard at the Charles De Gaulle departure gate put his hands inside my pants and my underpants looking for a bomb. And to be honest, there were some pretty dicey looking characters on that flight. I took comfort that they too were "completely" checked.

   So yes, our lives ARE stressful and as any doctor will tell you unrelieved stress causes hypertension. We live in a world where quiet and calm are now an anomaly. The most sought after vacations are those that are those beyond the range of cell towers, Facebook and often people.

   The other option is to pursue art. Once you begin painting the world, and all it worries, fade away and you live in a world of imagination and hopefully quiet and beauty! It gives your body a break from the stress that surrounds us each and every day. Now, where IS that paintbrush ....

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!