What I’m Blogging

It’s the birthday of the artist Pablo Picasso, born in Malaga, Spain (1881). He was a kind of artistic chameleon. Whenever he admired another artist’s work, he would imitate it, master it, and turn it into something new. Some critics called him a mere imitator, with no real style of his own. But Picasso said, “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” He also said, “When there’s anything to steal, I steal.”

…he never once painted an abstract picture…

He had trouble getting out of bed in the morning, and usually spent the afternoon conversing with friends. It was at night that he did most of his work, usually in the dark, except for two spotlights shining directly on his canvas. He didn’t use a palate—he just had the cans of paint sitting on the floor, and he would dip the brushes right in and then wipe the excess off on newspapers. He stood up while he painted, often for three or four hours at a time. Then once in awhile he’d take an hour off to go sit on the other end of the room in a wicker armchair and stare at his painting, analyzing his work.

Picasso became the most famous artist in the world. No artist before him had such a large mass audience in his own lifetime. And no other artist has ever dominated so many different fields. Picasso painted, drew, sculpted, worked with pottery, sheet metal printmaking, and collage. Though he’s considered the father of modern art, he never once painted an abstract picture. All his works are representations of things that existed in the world.

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

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It’s the birthday of the man who created Batman: Bob Kane, born in the Bronx (1916). He’s one of the few boys in American history ever encouraged by his father to become a cartoonist. His father worked as an engraver for a newspaper, and he learned that cartoonists were being paid quite well. He knew his son had a talent for drawing, so he told young Bob to work on cartoons. By the time he was 16, Bob Kane was selling his work for $5 a page.

Batman is the alter-ego of multimillionaire Bruce Wayne and one of the few superheroes in the history of comic books who doesn’t have any special powers.

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Further “Bat” reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

When I was languishing away at the dreaded International Greed Enablement Corp, I couldn’t believe the things that that company did. Things to further the bottom line, things that squeezed every ounce of “value” out of their employees. Things that revealed them to have not one iota of concern for anything other than the the almighty dollar. I thought they were unique in this regard, and then I read this book.

Bakan, Joel. 2004. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Penguin Books. ISBN 0670889768.

What I liked about this book: It’s a well thought out and explained essay on the origin, growth and function of the corporation as an institution. It is also a warning that, if left unchecked, the corporate form will seek to maximize it’s influence and profits at the expense of the public good and the ruin of democratic institutions.

What I disliked about this book: It was far too short…

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It was on this day in 1987, the U.S. Senate rejected the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork on a vote of 58 to 42. It was one of the most controversial nomination hearings in history.

…they objected to a nominee for political reasons…

In the first hundred years of the American republic, the Senate took its role in the process of selecting Supreme Court justices very seriously. Between 1794 and 1892, 81 nominees were sent to the Senate and 22 failed to make it onto the court. Senators did not hesitate to say that they objected to a nominee for political reasons.

But after 1894, as the power of the presidency grew, the Senate started approving nearly every nominee that came down the pike. Between 1894 and 1968, only one nominee was rejected by the Senate, John J. Parker of North Carolina. He was nominated by Herbert Hoover.

Robert Bork, a distinguished legal scholar was nominated by President Reagan to lead the conservative revolution on the court. And in his confirmation hearings, Bork decided to enter the debate about his ideas head-on and openly discuss his originalist views of the Constitution and his belief that there was no right to privacy.

In the years since he was voted down, in 1987, no nominee to the court has openly debated with senators about legal philosophy the way Bork did. Most nominees have refused to answer at least some of the questions asked of them, and no nominee has been rejected since.

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Further judicial reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It’s the birthday of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in Devonshire, England (1772). His father died when he was ten. He went off to boarding school and hated it there. He went to college in Cambridge and dropped out to join the army. He thought of coming to America, to Pennsylvania to start a utopian village along the Susquehanna River with the poet Robert Southey, a place where people would cut down trees as they discussed metaphysics.

…about a sailor who brings a curse upon his ship…

But he never came to Pennsylvania. Instead, he married and moved to a little house in the country and became a friend of the poet William Wordsworth. He and Wordsworth took long walks together, and on one walk, one winter evening, Coleridge came up with the idea for “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” about a sailor who brings a curse upon his ship after he kills an albatross. It became his best-known poem.

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK