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November 9, 2008 - Important Peace Makers in History
Some historians, including Sean Wilentz, author of "The Age of Reasgan," and
William E. Odom, author of "The Collapse of the Soviet Military," say that
19-year-old Mathias Rust had more to do with keeping peace in our time (at least
we didn't have a nuclear holocaust) than The Strategic Defense Initiative and
many of the other policies, programs and efforts deployed by governments. Rust
(pronounced Roost) was the West German boy who, armed with a paper petition for
peace, rented a small, single-engine Cessna 172P aircraft at Helsinki-Malmi
Airport in Finland in the morning of May 28, 1987 and flew it to Red Square in
Russia. Rust’s flight damaged the reputation of the Soviet military giving
Gorbachev the pretext he needed to remove opponents to his reforms from the
military. The breakup of the Soviet Block and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall
might not have come about in our time without an ideological 19-year-old making
a naive, bold and virtually ridiculous public plea for peace.
All you can do is try.
September 10, 2008
Russia is becoming militarily hostile again. They have raised the pay for
their soldiers and gone on the march again. How much have we taken them for
granted during these last years. They had opened up and relaxed. How many of us
initiated sister cities with them? How many of us organized student exchanges?
How many of us looked for ways to reach out to them? Isn't it the same now with
China? Are we not currently enjoying the best relations with them that we ever
have had while they are expanding their power abroad and increasing patriotism
at home? Shouldn't we be worried about the same thing with them and figure out
what we can do as individuals to reach out to them? Sister peace poles? We've
never forgotten the Statute of Liberty that France sent us. What if a small town
in the USA identified a small town in China (or Russia - it's not too late) and
began a conversation with them about their similarities and made plans to visit
each other? It might even be possible to get a grant to help with that.
August 18, 2008 - Equal Time
In June I quoted Presidential Candidate John McCain on an issue relevant to
this web site and then said it was too bad Presidential Candidate Barack Obama
wasn't present to weigh in on the subject. Last night he did, in a way. In
answer to a question asked of him by the Rev. Rick Warren at Saddleback Church
he said, “Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have
some humility” as we confront evil. Why? Because “a lot of evil has been
perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.” After all,
“just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t always mean that we’re
going to be doing good."
Do-gooders often need to be less sure of their own righteousness, more cognizant of ambiguity, and more tolerant of the right of others to think differently.
August 4, 2008
I wish I could figure out a way to routinize logging onto the live chat box
on my web site. I just spent five hours at this computer responding to email and
doing bookkeeping and such without being logged into the live chat box. I was at
my computer, but if someone visiting the web site wanted to asked a question, I
wasn't available, because I forgot to log in.
July 16, 2008
When you get a pallet load of limestone and it is all too short because you
screwed up, what do you do? Think peaceful thoughts.
July 10, 2008
It is so hard to remember to write something about it here when I am
spending my time working on something new. There is no photo to show. There is
no finished product to stand back and regard. There are only containers of
liquids, discarded rubber gloves and scraps of copper and brass laid in rows to
help me keep track of the change as I push things in one direction or the other
trying to achieve something new.
June 27, 2008
If it wouldn't invite abuse, I'd make a peace pole out of slate with chalk
hanging on a cord so that people could write their own peace messages. If it
were indoors in a protected environment where the owners wrote the messages . .
. . hmmmmmm.
I probably could make one that looked as though the peace messages were chalk, but that were permanently applied. What if I updated it? Instead of black slate, what if it looked like cement, like pavement, and appeared as though the messages were applied with that colorful pavement chalk that children use, only sealed so that it would not wash off and so new chalk could not be applied on top of it? Would that be moving in the direction of a peace pole that children would cross a park to smile at?
How long does color chalk survive in sunlight? Or how about artist's pastels? Perhaps if sealed with a something that reduces ultraviolet rays.
June 26, 2008
A pollster called. I was busy, but gave brief answers to his questions about
the upcoming presidential election. I assumed my answers would be discouraging
to anyone trying to get a fix on the electorate. Then he asked if I'd be
interested in joining a Town Hall Meeting of 150 people meeting with John
McCain. So I did that today. For the record, McCain says that if he becomes
president, this country will not torture one more person. He also says that he
will close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He says that even if they have
cleaned that place up so that not one bad thing happens there ever again, it has
become a symbol for bad things that our country did and needs to be closed
because of that. It's too bad Obama wasn't there to express his feelings on that
subject.
June 24, 2008
Last year I sold a bronze peace pole to a university. After they received it
a maintenance guy contacted me to ask what product to use to clean all that
powdery stuff off of the pole.
This year I sold copper peace pole to someone who hired an installer to plant it, a person who apparently has planted peace poles before, and who asked if they wanted him to put something on it to preserve the metal now or after the finish had washed off.
I persuaded both of them not to do anything to the finish.
Part of what is nice about the copper and the brass/bronze peace poles is the soft, powdery patina contrasting with the shiny letters. The soft, powdery nature of the patina could be lost by putting anything on it.
The finish does not wash off. It changes, but it is supposed
to. The rain takes decades to bring out the blues, but only a few years to bring
out reds in copper and the greens in bronze. I bring out a lot of blues up front
so that some of that still will be there as the rain does the rest. That is the
plan.
I’ve got a five-year-old copper peace pole and a seven-year-old copper peace
pole in my yard to which I have done nothing since I made them. They are doing
what they are supposed to be doing. I switched to a new kind of bronze recently
(it actually is brass), but a year later it is living up to expectations as
well. Recently someone from the college (where the maintenance guy wanted to
clean off the powdery patina) told me how much she loves the finish on
their bronze peace pole a year later.
Mostly what I hear from people when they first see their copper or bronze peace poles is that the photos on the web site do not do them justice and that they are better than expected. I’m not sure why some other people think I would ship something that is so unfinished that it needs to be cleaned or preserved.
June 23, 2008
Would anyone want a copper peace pole that was lightweight enough to hang on a
wall? It could be the same width and have the same cap, but be shorter and made
of much, much lighter metal.
I played again with the idea of a transparent peace pole on which the letters are frosted. The letters sort of glow when light hits them. It would be for indoor installation, or for hanging from a ceiling, or, if I made it a relief, for hanging on a wall. But I doubt anyone wants such things. So when I have another thought about these concepts, usually I explore them for a while and then set them aside without creating anything I could offer on this site.
June 13, 2008
The shippers surprised me again - new parameters on length. For years I have
been making peace poles 9.5 feet tall because that kept them under the length
that caused shipping charges to jump. All of a sudden 9.5 feet causes the jump. They
might as well be 10.5 feet long. And the shipping costs have been so volatile
that I'm not even quoting on them now. It's just included on some poles now.
Whatever it ends up costing, I'll pay it. Not including the wooden crate it was
almost $400 for the last peace pole. Up from $80 a few years ago. With the way
copper and other metals are escalating in price too, will anybody be able to
afford these?
June 12, 2008 In the news
According to the National Endowment for the Arts, the number of professional
artists (writers, architects, floral designers, dancers, etc.) in the United
States is greater than the number of people in the military. Considering that
there have been times when every able-bodied person in a certain age range was
overseas fighting, and nearly everyone else was contributing to the war effort
in one way or another, one has to find hope in it when the state of the world is
such that a country needs more artists than soldiers.
June 11, 2008
Today the fact that I never like my peace poles weighs on me to the point of
making it a struggle to work. And I don't know what to do about it. When is art
good enough? Da Vinci carried the Mona Lisa around with him as he worked on it
for 16 years. Then he died. If people didn't have deadlines for their peace
poles I might do the same. Actually, there is one that I was so unhappy with
that I put it aside made a second one to ship. The first one has stood in my
yard for five years. When I tell people that it is a reject, they ask what is
wrong with it. It appears to be fine to them. Well, patina improves with time.
It is better than it was. In another decade or two, I might be able to tolerate
it myself.
When I worked in another field, I was not dissatisfied with my work. But that wasn't art. Art is different. When I make a peace pole that causes the people of the world to say "Oh, now I see" and lay down their weapons and hold each other's hands and love each other, then maybe I'll think that that one peace pole might not have turned out so badly.
In the meantime, it is such a trial to work so much longer and harder on these than the prices justify and still be unhappy with the result. Today it is causing paralysis.
I keep thinking that I should write less and photograph more in this blog. So here is one I worked on today - well, worked on packaging it for shipping anyway (when I was able to rise above paralysis). You wouldn't think that would take so many hours. But I don't even like the way peace poles in a certain size range have been packaged. Over a certain size and I build wooden crates for them. Under a certain size can be shipped in cardboard (wooden crates are too expensive for this size). But I don't have room for cardboard box-making tools and cardboard storage, so I pay the shipper to box those, and the way he does it allows an occasional cap to get bent. I'm working on how to prevent that. The above pole has been wrapped and rewrapped and stared at and thought about and all I'm working on is packaging.
June
1, 2008
Long ago I stopped having a business card. It seemed that every time I got
one the information changed soon thereafter. I could go several years without
one, finally get one, and as soon as I did something would change making it
obsolete. So I've never made one identifying me as someone who makes peace
poles. I've made flyers and such before, but not a business card. But someone
who is happy with her peace pole asked me to send her a stack of my cards so
that she can pass them to people she believes will be interested. So I made this
one.
Does this mean my email address or my phone is about to change? Am I tempting fate?
* * *
Index of Blog Archive
(in chronological order.)
Artist's Blog Archive 1
Artist's Blog Archive 2
Artist's Blog Archive 3
Artist's Blog Archive 4
Artist's Blog Archive 5
Artist's Blog Archive 6
Artist's Blog Archive 7
Artist's Blog Archive 8
Artist's Blog Archive 9