Sidetracked Charley

Have a Seat A Facebook friend of long standing asked me today where was my outrage for the people of St. Petersburg on Monday. Monday? This week? Yes. I was running to Raton, racing the approaching spring storm in an effort to reclaim some of the normalcy of my life as an artist. I had four photographs to enter in an annual show. I wanted to support a non-profit gallery in a country which wants to unfund all art programs. I also desperately needed some windshield time (i.e. down time).  I am suffering from compassion fatigue: indifference to charitable appeals on behalf of those who are suffering, experienced as a result of the frequency or number of such appeals. Also called vicarious traumatization by the American Institute of Stress.   Yes, I am not in the counseling field but I am living in the dark days of the USA, and maybe the world at large. I confess to pulling in my empathy antenna just so I can continue to cope. Cope with my business, my resistance t...

National Day of Resistance on the day before the Trump Inaugural. And the 21st is the Women's March on DC and about 300 other sites around the world. Imagine that.  And yet divisions run so deep even in the midst of what appears to be a united front against the Republican agenda and the illegitimate president elect.  Now suddenly we have to show our bonafides to those who have been on the battle lines longer. Johnny and Joan come lately's are being called Lexus Liberals by some. Let me make a couple things clear: 1) I don't own a Lexus. A 1989 GMC 4 x 4 occupies my driveway, 2) I have fought for one cause or the other since I was in college and demonstrated for the Free Speech movement and after that the Civil rights and ERA and end the war in Vietnam and end the draft, 3)Equal rights for women is my heart cause but I have also researched and written about water issues and the stripping our schools of the arts. And in the midst of all that I have fought a brain i...