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Sunday, November 1, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
An Avoidable Death in Stamford CT
Since The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post rejected this I thought I would post it here.
Preface: I realize that there are multiple victims in this incident and my heart goes out to the families of everyone involved: Charla Nash who apparently lost her face and is in critical condition after being attacked and Sandra Herold, a widow who lost her daughter previously and now Travis her chimpanzee. She will have to live with this incident for the rest of her life while her friend lays in a hospital bed disfigured. I don’t mean to disrespect or downplay the severity of the injury, or the physical and psychological pain but I am compelled to comment on what I feel should have and could have been avoided.
The Associated Press reported that Sandra Herold said that “Travis couldn't have been more my son than if I gave birth to him," and rejected criticism that chimpanzees are inappropriate pets. Well maybe she will now realize that a chimpanzee is not a pet. A chimpanzee is a wild animal. Just because an animal is smart enough to channel surf, use the toilet and drink wine from a glass does not mean that he should. It is not love to keep a wild animal in a cage and dress or treat it like a human…it is cruel. She said that he was like her son well guess what lady, he was not. It is in a chimpanzees DNA to dominate and become aggressive as they reach their teenage years and when they are in the wild they are able to be competitive and behave the way their DNA dictates. There is a reason that they live in the wild and not among us. Even though Travis was not in his natural environment his instinct took over. A chimpanzee is five times stronger than a human which is why the injures are so severe. This idea that it is cute to have a wild or exotic pet is ridiculous.
If a person thinks it is cute to force a chimp to parody a human existence then my suggestion is we strip them naked and force them to live in the forest among the chimps savaging for food and assimilating into their society. Maybe you think that they would become Tarzan of the apes, well this is not fiction this is reality and to remove a person out of there natural environment and force them to be something that they could not be would make them insane. No doubt their natural instincts would kick in and they would try to emulate a human existence and a chimp giving them leaves would help no less then the Xanax in Travis’s tea.
Herold says that she loved Travis and that he was her son but I must question, would you stab your son or tell a cop to shoot him? I am sure that I could never understand what was truly happening and what was going through her head but don’t think that you were his mother and don’t think that he thought of you as his mother because you were not. Travis was a chimpanzee, a pan troglodyte. Not a human, not your son.
It appears that chimpanzees are very important to the advertising world in Travis’ case he sold pants for Old Navy. I don’t expect corporate America to end their abuse of these animals anytime soon, but at a bare minimum we need a law that sends these animals into a sanctuary for their retirement and not to a situation in which they are not allowed to act like chimps. We should also force these companies to pay for their retirement. I am sure the mark up on the pants Travis sold allows for some kind of chimpanzee pension.
I just hope that Travis and chimpanzees in general do not get a bad name for this. The chimp is an intelligent, loving animal that belongs among its own kind in the wild away from the complication of human interaction and human society and certainly never as a pet.
Travis, rest in peace. I for one am sorry you never got a chance to be a chimp.
Read the whole story below
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/connecticut/ny-bc-ct--chimpanzeeattack0218feb18,0,224327.story?page=1
Preface: I realize that there are multiple victims in this incident and my heart goes out to the families of everyone involved: Charla Nash who apparently lost her face and is in critical condition after being attacked and Sandra Herold, a widow who lost her daughter previously and now Travis her chimpanzee. She will have to live with this incident for the rest of her life while her friend lays in a hospital bed disfigured. I don’t mean to disrespect or downplay the severity of the injury, or the physical and psychological pain but I am compelled to comment on what I feel should have and could have been avoided.
The Associated Press reported that Sandra Herold said that “Travis couldn't have been more my son than if I gave birth to him," and rejected criticism that chimpanzees are inappropriate pets. Well maybe she will now realize that a chimpanzee is not a pet. A chimpanzee is a wild animal. Just because an animal is smart enough to channel surf, use the toilet and drink wine from a glass does not mean that he should. It is not love to keep a wild animal in a cage and dress or treat it like a human…it is cruel. She said that he was like her son well guess what lady, he was not. It is in a chimpanzees DNA to dominate and become aggressive as they reach their teenage years and when they are in the wild they are able to be competitive and behave the way their DNA dictates. There is a reason that they live in the wild and not among us. Even though Travis was not in his natural environment his instinct took over. A chimpanzee is five times stronger than a human which is why the injures are so severe. This idea that it is cute to have a wild or exotic pet is ridiculous.
If a person thinks it is cute to force a chimp to parody a human existence then my suggestion is we strip them naked and force them to live in the forest among the chimps savaging for food and assimilating into their society. Maybe you think that they would become Tarzan of the apes, well this is not fiction this is reality and to remove a person out of there natural environment and force them to be something that they could not be would make them insane. No doubt their natural instincts would kick in and they would try to emulate a human existence and a chimp giving them leaves would help no less then the Xanax in Travis’s tea.
Herold says that she loved Travis and that he was her son but I must question, would you stab your son or tell a cop to shoot him? I am sure that I could never understand what was truly happening and what was going through her head but don’t think that you were his mother and don’t think that he thought of you as his mother because you were not. Travis was a chimpanzee, a pan troglodyte. Not a human, not your son.
It appears that chimpanzees are very important to the advertising world in Travis’ case he sold pants for Old Navy. I don’t expect corporate America to end their abuse of these animals anytime soon, but at a bare minimum we need a law that sends these animals into a sanctuary for their retirement and not to a situation in which they are not allowed to act like chimps. We should also force these companies to pay for their retirement. I am sure the mark up on the pants Travis sold allows for some kind of chimpanzee pension.
I just hope that Travis and chimpanzees in general do not get a bad name for this. The chimp is an intelligent, loving animal that belongs among its own kind in the wild away from the complication of human interaction and human society and certainly never as a pet.
Travis, rest in peace. I for one am sorry you never got a chance to be a chimp.
Read the whole story below
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/connecticut/ny-bc-ct--chimpanzeeattack0218feb18,0,224327.story?page=1
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Inauguration day
When my daughter gets older I will sit her down and explain to her the differences between the America I was born into and the one we now live in. I will tell her about this time in our history and how America came together to recognize and embrace a new version of itself. I look forward to her future and to her growing mind. And I am confident that she can be anything she wants to be and will have all of the opportunities for freedom and prosperity now that we as a people have recognized our differences and are beginning to accept our common bond as one people. As PRESIDENT OBAMA said “because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”
Yesterday was filled with many images that will stay in my heart and mind for a lifetime. But none made me smile and warmed my heart more that the image of George Bush getting into the helicopter (Executive One) and fly away forever. I believe that Bush's policies set back this country so far that it will take a generation to fix… but a new generation of Americans have spoken. It is still time for optimism but more importantly it is time for action. To quote PRESIDENT OBAMA again “Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.”
“Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Friday night Skecthes
Friday night I met up with a group of Alumni from graduate school and participated in a four-hour life drawing session. It was nice to get the opportunity to draw from the model. Life drawing is probably the most important thing an artist can do. It is like lifting weights for the eyes. Some artists tend to spend hours and hours on a single pose working to perfect the image. I found that the shorter the pose the more your eye is focusing on the subject; my mind and eye tend to wander when given a long pose. The images that I am showing here were all five-minute poses, meaning that the model changed her pose every five minutes. This causes me to draw fast and focus on the design and composition of the page as well as the anatomy, value scale and contours of the subject. This is the equivalent of bench pressing less weight but doing more reps.
All of these images were drawn in my moleskin sketchbook with a bic flare pen. I then used water to do the washes smudging the ink from the line before it dried.
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