This is the Gehry building, on the West Side of Manhattan, photographed by Albert Vecerka/ESTO.  I want to make a painting of it.

The lower right quadrant of a painting in progress... it came to me in a dream... the phrase"Hagia Sophia" It is the greatest church/mosque/museum in the world.  It's located in Istanbul and the architecture is amazing... as astounding as the great pyramids in its way.

When the phrase came to me in a dream, I didn't know what it was.  So I looked it up and started painting it the next morning.  This dome is 150 feet from the ground and 100 feet across.  Because of the forty windows at its base it seems to float. 

Part Two of the Abbey Road medley... Here Comes The Sun King... again this is the right hand section of the painting.

This is a painting from a week ago... a section put down on the scanner, as I don't have that digital camera yet...

U.S. ranks 96 in new peace index

Posted by Frank James at 11:43 am CDT

Chicago Tribune

In a new global ranking of the world's most peaceful countries, the U.S. ranked at 96, just beating out Iran which came in at 97. Israel came in at 119, one notch above Sudan and two notches above Iraq which, understandably, came in last on the list as world's least peaceful nation

 Download global_peace_index.pdf

According to a press statement, the new index was "initiated by Steve Killelea, global entrepreneur and Australian philanthropist, and developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Prominent endorsers of the project include HH Dalai Lama, President James Carter, Sir Richard Branson, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu."

Anyway, how could it be that the U.S. came in at 96?

The analysts at the Economist Intelligence Unit, part of the company that owns the Economist magazine, chose to assess countries based on 24 indicators for its first Global Peace Index.

The indicators, which were weighted by the importance the analysts attached to them, included the number of internal and external conflicts fought between 2000 to 2005; the number of deaths from organized internal conflict; and the number of homicides, jailed people, internal security personnel, and military transfers per 100,000 people of the population.

(The US has one of the highest percentage of people in prison.)

Iraq was ranked at 121... the worst ranking on the Global Peace Index.

Some countries were noticeably absent from the list, namely Afghanistan and North Korea. That was due to the inability to get data. Presumably, if they had been included, the U.S. would have ranked higher than both

"...when we listen, we breathe in one another's words and so this poem is about breathing each other and also communicating with one another"

Please read this interview with the writer Maxine Hong Kingston:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05252007/transcript1.html

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever give up thinking you could make a difference?

MAXINE HONG KINGSTON: Oh, yeah.

BILL MOYERS: You do?

MAXINE HONG KINGSTON: Yeah. I give up. And I feel despair. And, "What's the use. But whenever I am unhappy, and I am in despair, and everything hurts, I always go to the writing. And- and I- I just start setting down those words. And I follow the path that those words take me. And they will- and they will always take me somewhere, where- by the time that I finish a poem, or finish a story, then I am a different person.

BILL MOYERS: You know you begin your book by saying all my life I have wanted to keep soldiers safe from war. How come?

MAXINE HONG KINGSTON: This was just a childhood impulse. I was born into World War Two and all those years of my babyhood and childhood I saw my cousins in uniform come and go. They would stop at my parents' home on their way to camp or on their way to Europe or they were on their way to the Pacific. And they would stop at our house to say goodbye to us and they'd be on their way and I knew what was going on, that they were going to war, this terrible thing and I just - I wished- a safety for them. I also wish that they would not go and kill anybody. And as a child, I mean, all I could do is wish on this- stars and on my birthday cake to end the war. How am I going to do this? I took it as a personal responsibility that I had to end war. And- but all I knew how to do was make wishes.

BILL MOYERS: That must've been frustrating.

MAXINE HONG KINGSTON: Yes, until I figured out that the way to make a wish is that you use words. And, so right there was my, I guess, my first idea that it's words - they're going to keep us safe.

BILL MOYERS: Maxine Hong-Kingston, for veterans of war and veterans of peace, thank you very much.

I would tell someone who felt alone, WRITE!!!
write and write and write in a flood
get busy, clean and organize your environment
plant and tend a small garden

befriend yourself
keep practicing that
be the best friend you can be to yourself...
then practice that friendliness towards
others

I worked with diligence for five days on a difficult painting.  Sometimes found, sometimes lost -- I couldn't seem to bring about the orchestration of color and form that struck me in the beginning.... so I left it.

This one above is a section of "Stuck"

I stopped trying.

Then I made five paintings in two days.


This is a section of Let Go 1.... from the scanner


This is a section of Let Go2 from the scanner

This is a section of Let Go 3 from the scanner

This is a section of Let Go 4 from the scanner.

When I get a digital camera I'll be able to post them.