Write the Power, No. 2 -- The Voice of Freedom

 I recently finished a second piece in the Write the Power series. This version with Frederick Douglas, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Sojourner Truth, and Public Enemy is actually the first idea I had envisioned for the theme. This one is subtitled "The Voice of Freedom" -- mixed media collage on canvas with acrylic and paint pen. I like the way the script worked out on this one, just playing around with letters.

 

Punk Rock and Beyond

Henry Thoreau's essays, Walt Whitman's poems, and Huckleberry Finn's narrative are all proto-punk -- precursors to punk rock, punk philosophy, and punk culture. In fact, when Huck declares, "All right, then, I'll go to Hell," he utters one of the most punk rock lines in all of American literature. 

That thinking, of course, requires understanding punk beyond the stereotypes of spiked hair, mosh pits, and ferocious three-chord downstrokes. Moving punk beyond the music has been asserted and explored by musicians, artists, writers, critics, and scholars almost since its inception. From Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces to Craig O'Hara's Philosophy of Punk to Greg Graffin's "Punk Manifesto," punk is as much about attitude and intent as it is about volume and pace in music.

Moving punk "beyond the music" is at the heart of the new book Punk Beyond the Music: Tracing Mutations and Manifestations of the Punk Virus from long-time punk and American culture scholar Iain Ellis of the University of Kansas. Ellis' knowledge and scholarship is vast, and the work is informative while also being immediately accessible for readers of all familiarity, or no familiarity, with punk.

Not the Summer of George

If you're a Seinfeld fan, you likely remember the episode where George received a severance package from one job in late spring and has a new job that doesn't begin until early fall. He has the entire summer off, which he declares "The Summer of George," making plans to do all the things he never has time to do. He says, "I might read a book." Instead, he purchases a Lazy Boy recliner with a built-in fridge and proceeds to waste away the summer watching television (ultimately atrophying his body so much that when he falls, he spends the rest of the time in traction -- "It was supposed to be the Summer of George!")

As educators who have always had summers off, my wife and I often joke about the Summer of George when we make plans. We ironically use the phrase because we actually do quite a bit, even as we do enjoy the time off and the much-appreciated relaxation. This summer was truly the intended "Summer of George," and I've been meaning to post about the highlights. While I've been working a lot this summer on the Walden Punk Project, there were many great adventures.

We began the summer with a week in St. Maarten, staying on the Dutch Side at the Divy Little Bay Beach Resort near the port of Philipsburg. While Aruba is our happy place, we decided to branch out a bit, and with St. Maarten, we were not disappointed. The best part of Divy is the beautiful half-moon bay that provides for excellent swimming and snorkling. More on that later. 

Following a week on the island, we returned to the Washington, DC, metro area and did some exploring around the Chesapeake Bay region. With our daughter in college and close family in DC, and our son just up the coast in New York City, we are planning a move to the East Coast, and we took advantage of the time to scout out potential areas to move. We hit Baltimore, Wilmington, Philly, the Eastern shore towns of Chestertown and Easton, and finished up in Annapolis. It was all delightful, with Baltimore and Annapolis winning our hearts.

We also spent about a week in Boston, while I attended the Annual Gathering of the Thoreau Society out in Concord, and we rounded out the summer with a week in Paris. The primary reason of the Paris trip was a trip to the Louis Vuitton Foundation for a once in a lifetime art event -- the career retrospective on David Hockney, featuring more than 400 of his works gathered from museums and private collections around the world. It was a sublime art experience, and as an added bonus, we just happened to being staying in the Montmartre neighborhood where the final stage of the Tour de France came through.

It was all and all a wonderful "Summer of George."