by Marty Coleman | Dec 10, 2012 | Christmas, Gift Giving Notes - 2012 |
This is my gift to you – a week of notes on Gift Giving. Aren’t you happy?
Trauma Giving
It’s so simple it only needs one sentence. Don’t be a stingy jerk at Christmas or Hannukah. Ok, maybe a few more sentences. That doesn’t mean you give a lot. It means what you give you give willingly, with joy and enthusiasm. If you complain about the cost of something, especially to the person you are giving it to, then DON’T FREAKING BUY IT in the first place! If you complain about how hard it was to find something, how they better enjoy it, how you hope they appreciate all the terrible trauma you went to to get it…then you are ruining the gift giving. Just shut up and give it to them with a smile. You can tell them all about the near death experience of your Christmas shopping in your memoirs or when you are in couples counseling, but don’t do it Christmas morning.
Gracious Giving
The attitude of gracious gift giving is what your loved ones will remember and learn from, not the gift itself (unless you give them an encyclopedia, then they will probably learn from the gift as well). Of course, to get to gracious giving you might want to stay within your means and give gifts you enjoyed getting, finding, making, buying, discovering for that particular person. Just a thought.
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Drawing and quote by Marty Coleman, who never drew a violin before (that he can remember).
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Interesting Gift Giving fact of the day
People with longer last names give more gifts at Christmas
(source: The Goods – the blog of uncommon goods)
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 7, 2012 | Where's The Evidence? - 2012 |
Under the circumstances, you need no proof to know today is day #4 of Evidence Week!
The question is, what does this evidence prove?
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Drawing and question by Marty Coleman, for whom trout is his favorite meal.
Quote by Henry David Thoreau, who knows what this means but is dead.
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 6, 2012 | Bodyless Ghirl Ghosts - 2012-2013 |
Chapter 1 – Urgent Care
They had made themselves up for a night on the town but when Margie came down with red dots on her face they got worried. They went to the bar and by the time they finished their first drink Beth and Bonzai also had red dots. They went to Urgent Care and the doctor saw all eight of them. He was nervous because he had never had eight people, much less eight bodyless girl ghosts, in one examination room at the same time. It was crowded and they all had on a lot of perfume. Daphne was a bit drunk and tried to kiss him but smacked the needle dispensing box instead. He diagnosed Ghost Measles and sent them to the pharmacy to get medicine.
Chapter 1 -Phloating at the Pharmacy
Prudence had the biggest balloon (girl ghosts travel by balloon when they are going out in big groups) so they went with her to the pharmacy. It was deserted except for an old guy reading women’s magazines, which they thought was creepy. They had to wait 15 minutes for the medicine so 4 of them floated aimlessly while 4 of them went back to the magazine rack. Being bodyless they have no hands so they just hung around behind the old guy and looked at the French Vogue he was perusing from behind his back. They liked the editorial of the man and woman wearing masks and underwear.
Chapter 1 – Quarantine
The pharmacist told them that ghost measles was reaching epidemic proportions and that they should leave the city if they could to avoid infecting other ghosts. The decided to go to Jordona’s grandgirlghost’s summer home at the lake and wait there. Luckily for them Prudence’s balloon did not pop until they were almost there. This is a drawing of them floating down from the balloon and landing right at the front porch of the house. They stayed there for 8 days and it all went fine except for Penelope’s melt down over running out of mascara.
The End
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Drawing and Short Short Story by Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 5, 2012 | Where's The Evidence? - 2012 |
I am feeling day #3 of Evidence Week bubbling up from the primordial ooze!
Rational/Irrational
My wife, Linda, once told me of a certain fear she had. I tried to explain rationally and logically why she shouldn’t have that fear. She looked at me in exasperation and said, ‘Marty, it’s not a RATIONAL fear, you can’t talk me out of it using rational ideas.’ And I was done. There was only one thing to do and that was to let her know I felt for her in that situation and give her assurance I would help her deal with the fear when I could.
Sailing on the Ship of Illogic
Whether it’s big issues about God & heaven or small issues about fear of bugs, we all have areas where our thinking and the actions that come from those feelings are not rational or logical. They aren’t based on evidence. We all need to be empathetic in understanding how universal it is to behave irrationally.
The Wrong Brag
But knowing that we sometimes aren’t Mr. Spock doesn’t mean we should revel in our irrationality. At least for me, I work hard to minimize that irrationality in my life. I don’t brag about or declare how proud I am of my ignorance of science, mechanics and engineering. I am humbled by it and want to learn more about it. And I make a concerted effort to do so. I make better and wiser choices as a result and I am safer and happier as well.
The List Within
But the main problem with willfully ignoring evidence isn’t that we might not comprehend how electricity works (which I barely understand to this day). It means we are very likely to be held hostage by superstition and fear in many, many areas of our lives. And those can lead to danger and violence, discrimination and bigotry. The list is so long.
Are you afraid of the evidence? Why so?
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who is not.
Quote by Sam Harris, who also is not.
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 4, 2012 | Where's The Evidence? - 2012 |
I know it’s extraordinary, but today is only day #2 of Evidence Week!
Three Scandinavian Women
Have you ever proclaimed something has happened for which you have no evidence to back it up? It can be pretty disconcerting since you know it happened you just can’t prove it. I have story from high school about 3 Scandinavian women on a boat in a cove where we were water skiing that is pretty darn extraordinary. But the climax of the story happened with no one else around, no one else to corroborate the events (except the Scandinavian Women and they were long gone the next day). So, I can tell the story and I know it’s true, but listeners have no way of verifying it. There is no evidence.
The Religious Moment
This is especially true of religious moments. Where is the evidence that what it is you have gone through came from God, Satan or some other spirit being or force? How do you prove such a thing? The truth is you can’t prove it. You take it on faith that it came from that source and people choose to believe your story on faith as well. If they don’t believe whatever it is you went through came from God then they are still most likely going to believe that YOU believe it came from God.
The Pudding
There really is only one way to even get close to proving something like that is real. If you say your mind has been illuminated by God and as a result you have a new way of thinking about something, then your behavior is the proof. The key is to realize that SAYING you have made the change is not the proof. All the talk in the world about a conversion to a new way of thinking and understanding is not the conversion. That is just a description of the conversion. The true conversion is in the action. As a matter of fact, the real conversion doesn’t even start until the action starts. True change takes place and becomes permanent when it is practiced. Talking about it isn’t practice. Practice is practice.
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who wonders what ever happened to them
Quote by Carl Sagan, who was a billion time smarter than I am.
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 3, 2012 | Where's The Evidence? - 2012 |
Don’t fear, it’s only day #1 of Evidence Week!
Evidence-based Fear
What do you fear? Is it based on evidence? For example, I fear getting shot in the heart by a bullet because the evidence shows that people getting shot in the heart will almost certainly die. If I am in a situation where that looks like it might happen, you can damn well be sure I will be both afraid and will do everything I can to not let it occur. However, I do not fear Friday the 13th, black cats, walking under ladders, breaking mirrors or spilling salt. Why? Because there is no evidence that those things hurt anyone in any more proportion than any other day, color of cat, walking anywhere else, breaking or spilling anything else. Those who believe they are dangerous are believing a superstition, meaning something that has a tradition, but no evidence, as being a bad thing.
Superstition-based Fear
Yesterday at the church we attend the Pastor asked a woman to come up to the alter and read an email she had sent him a few months prior. The woman had written it in response to a sermon he had given. In the email she told the story of living a fear-based life. Her fear was directly connected to her overhearing a conversation when she was very young between her father and her pastor. A man in the church who had voiced his disagreement with the Pastor’s direction for the congregation had been in a terrible automobile accident. He was mortally injured but suffered greatly before he actually died. The pastor was overheard by the young woman telling her father that it was probably a good thing that he had died, and it was also a good thing he had suffered before his death because it indicated he was being punished for being outside the will of God. This led the young girl to live her entire life with that fear of God punishing and hurting her or others if she did not obey exactly what the church told her to do and be. She had written the email to our church’s pastor to let him know how liberating it was to hear him rebut that idea and instead replace it with a vision of God being loving and caring and not out to crush and hurt her or others over theological or any other differences.
This is a perfect example of the acronym of fear. She was captive to False Evidence Appearing Real because she listened to an authority whom she trusted and she wasn’t old enough to understand cause and effect, science, biology, and other evidence-based areas of life that argue against that vicious, superstitious and self-serving way of seeing the events in life.
What do you fear?
Is there good evidence that makes the fear valid?
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Drawing by Marty Coleman
Quote by Neale Donald Walsch, American Author of a book series, ‘Conversations with God’.
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 1, 2012 | Art, Artists I Love, Roger Brown |
Hey Everyone, it’s wintertime again and that means I am going to restart my ‘Artist’s I Love’ Series. I will do an artist each weekend or so for a while. Let me know if you have a favorite artist, it might jog my memory and I’ll want to include them too!
If you want to see last year’s series, check it out under ‘Artist’s I Love‘.
Roger Brown Exhibition – 1981 – Catalog cover
First up for this year is Roger Brown. I first saw his work while I was a student in Graduate School at San Jose State University. I don’t remember the exact circumstances but I saw a show of his work and it blew me away. He combines humor, social commentary, great painting (and other media) techniques, fantastic color and spot on compositions. He is inventive, creative, always moving forward in exploring the possibilities of art.
I got this catalog from a Roger Brown exhibition that I did NOT attend. I was at a museum that had a few pieces of his and saw this catalog in the museum bookstore and had to have it. It’s been opened a LOT since I got it 30+ years ago, as you can tell by what shape it is in. He’s been one of my favorite artists ever since.
The Entry of Christ into Chicago in 1976 – Roger Brown
This image might be his most famous piece and it’s indicative of his imagery, high contrast and stylized into flattened patterns with repetitive elements. The subject matter is both contemporary and historical, which is also typical of many of his images. But there is a decided anti-religious feel to the piece, as if it is a tacky city-sponsored event.
‘Talk Show’ – Roger Brown
He frequently uses suburban scenes, most often with the banality of that world appearing to be the message. At the same time he uses it so much that I have always go the feeling that he knows and actually has affection for that world, even while leveling a sort of frustrated critique on it.
‘Devil’s Surprise’ – Roger Brown
‘Jim and Tammy Show’ – Roger Brown
As is obvious, he has no love lost for organized religion in this painting. The surprise that the churchgoers are the ones in hell probably has a lot to do with his being from the south and having been raised with that baptist fundamentalism all around him. His tacky, paperdoll cut out view of Jim and Tammy Bakker, preachers who fell from grace in the 90s, also give that message.
‘Post Modern Res Erection’ – Roger Brown
He has also played around (pun intended) with making light of America’s sexual obsessions, which isn’t unrelated to our religious ones.
‘Family Tree Mourning’ – Roger Brown
His social commentary wasn’t restricted to just two of the taboo dinner subjects, religion and sex, he dealt with the third as well, politics. Here he connects all our wars up until that time into a gigantic national family tree. He obviously felt that war had come out of and had overwhelmed the goodness of our founding.
He did a number of fine art prints and in this case made sure the viewer knew it was a print by saying so right on it. I like that cheekiness.
‘Twin Towers’ – Roger Brown – 1977
Brown delved into 3D work in his later career while not actually straying very far from his thematic and visual focus. This is obviously done much closer to the construction of the World Trade Center than it’s destruction, but it has a very moving feel to it, with the emphasis on the silhouettes in each window busy doing their work.
Here are just a few more I think are of interest.
‘Crater’ – Roger Brown
“City Expanding’ – Roger Brown
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If you like his work you can read more about him at:
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Fall/Winter 2016
Winter/Spring 2015
Summer 2014
Winter 2012/2013
Winter 2011/2012
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by Marty Coleman | Nov 30, 2012 | Secret Jesus - 2012 |
I am crushin’ on the fact I finished 5 fun drawings this week about Secret Jesus. Here’s number 5.
Jesus and Puberty
So now we reach the obvious final question about Jesus’ lost teenage years. Did Jesus ever have a crush, fall in love, have a girlfriend and even perhaps ever marry? The stories of Jesus in the Bible and elsewhere say nothing specific about these things. But I know this: if Jesus was real, meaning a real human, then I assume he went through what humans go through when they reach certain ages. What that means to me is that when Jesus reached puberty and beyond he had the same feelings most other boys have and that is a new found attraction to girls.
Crushing Jesus
If Jesus had a crush and later maybe a girlfriend or two, it is safe to assume he also had break ups. Some might have been his choice, others might have been the choice of the girl. I can hear it now, “I am so sorry Jesus, but there is just TOO MUCH PRESSURE dating the savior of the whole world. I have to break up with you.”
Feeling What We Feel
But seriously, what this means is, once again, Jesus felt what we feel. If he was a real human, then he went through what we go through. Isn’t that why we pay attention to him and his teachings, because we know that he knows and understands?
Do you follow Jesus and his teachings? What caused you to do so?
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who follows sometimes.
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by Marty Coleman | Nov 29, 2012 | Secret Jesus - 2012 |
I am not afraid to tell you, it’s day 4 of Secret Jesus week!
Jesus Takes a Trip
Jesus had to have gone places on his own when he became an older teen. Maybe to visit his relatives, maybe to sell something his father and his shop at created, maybe to get supplies. No doubt new and interesting experiences awaited him on these journeys. There were likely moments of fear and confusion about what to do next as well.
Facing the unknown
One of the most heroic elements about Jesus was his willingness to face his fears head on. He had to have learned that he grew up, don’t you think? Whether it was learning from his parents or learning while out on his own, it’s the same thing we all have been through. We can’t learn if we are curled up into a ball, afraid to move and grow. It might be scary, it might be dangerous, but if it is the path you know you need to go down, then you need to face those things, and you can.
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who has faced a few storms.
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by Marty Coleman | Nov 28, 2012 | Secret Jesus - 2012 |
Don’t get depressed about it, but we are over half way done with Secret Jesus week!
Jesus Funk
Do you think Jesus ever got depressed? We know he struggled quite a bit as an adult, and for good reason. But what about as a teenager? I can imagine him feeling blue, lonely, confused, even depressed about things, like most teens do at one time or another. Maybe he was feeling unappreciated, or misunderstood by his siblings or parents. Maybe everyone else had something important to do for a big holiday but for whatever reason he didn’t and that led to him feeling left out.
Who is Real?
If Jesus is real, if he is capable of complete understanding, complete mercy and compassion, then it isn’t due to his academic genius or his theological brilliance. There were plenty of people high in both those categories during his day. It is due to his empathy, his knowing what it is humans go through. If he didn’t experience it himself, (which in truth it’s likely he didn’t experience every single feeling and emotion ever known to man) then he at least was able to discern and feel it when other people were going through something. And he learned from it. Not just how to be empathetic but how to move past the feeling into a new and better place.
That’s the Jesus I like and relate to. That is the Jesus I admire and want to be more like as I continue to grow.
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who is glad he isn’t the Pope.
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