2 posts tagged “imho”
I thought about this all day yesterday.... and while I feel for those who lost loved ones in this attack on the US 6 years ago, my gawd... 6 years later why are we are still empowering the people who did it? I am serious. I have no problem with people remembering, or mourning... but when we parade the family and friends of those killed on every talk show and nationally broadcast news cast, crying and moaning and reliving the events of the day and their anguish year after year.... we giving more power to the people who did this horrible thing year after year. When does this stop? Not the remembering, or honoring... I am all for that, but by the friends and neighbors of people who lost people, for the people who lost people, in ways that do not reinforce for Al Qaeda that they accomplished what they set out to do. IMHO we need to stop the public anguish displays that feed these ungodly heathens more of the very pain they sought to cause when they took the planes under their control... they managed to get more than a small dose of American anguish with their brutal actions, the pay off has become a 6 year reward for them so far and there is no end in sight.
You would think the families would refuse to give more power to the barbaric victimization of their loved ones in this way, (Al Qaeda sees American suffering as justification for what they did), but there they are... participants in the yearly glorifying the deed and the terror, even if that is not their intention. I get that they want their loved ones remembered, and the firefighters and cops who gave their lives trying to save people deserve to be honored, every damn day...but next year I hope someone has the smarts to not feed these killing bastards more American anguish, they do not deserve it, not one minute of it. Hell, I'd even get behind a internationally broadcast public multi- denomination religious service in open defiance of these bastards, an "in your face" glorification of everything they claim to hate.... men and women together, equal.... and most of all UNITED. A billion person "screw you". That's what I'd like to see next year on 9-11, not a single tear, no anguish.... Americans , of all colors and religions honoring the dead and our heros, working together to manifest justice finally being delivered by a higher power for the dead and saying screw you to Bin Laden and to Al Qaeda in general.
Someone at work told me I would feel differently if I had lost someone I loved that day. No I would not, I know this in my heart. I would miss them, I would remember them every day the rest of my life, I would love them for who they were and and I would even feel anguish at their absence, but I would not parade my pain around publicly and continue to reward the bastards who killed them without thinking twice about it, no I would NOT. I might help raise money to create a memorial, or I might create a scholarship in their name, in my darkest moments I might even gather others who lost loved ones to raise money to hire mercenaries to go over and do what the US government has not been able to do.... but I would do everything in my power to NOT reward them with yearly doses of the very anguish they sought to create that day. I do not believe those lost would want anyone to do this, especially those who took a stand on the plane that crashed into the field so it never reached it's target.. THOSE people were fighters, hell bent on taking every drop of power away from these jackasses that they could and I think they would be appalled at Americans handing them our grief on a silver platter year and year to lap up. Yes I do!
Al Qaeda doesn't need to attack us again, we relive the original terror every year, on every station, in living color....every detail of it. ...and we mourn and wail, and we give them the very thing they are hungry for.... our suffering.
One of my cats talks, I think I have mentioned this before...Booger, she tries to anyway, constantly, like she is tattling on the other cats or on Keegan. She uses changing facial expressions, tilts her head while making a varying noise that comes from deep within her little kitty soul. She follows me everywhere, talking to me the whole way.... the only thing I have ever understood her saying is she does say "hello", I say this to her all the time... so maybe she is mimicking me, or maybe she is just part parrot. Anyway she loves music, mostly world music. Today she became obsessed with one song in particular, this version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. She laid across my shoulders with her little butt on one shoulder, and her head on my other shoulder, hugging my neck...comfy for her, not so much for me. She fell asleep (smiling) as it played. When it finished she started talking and nudging my face, so I played it again to get her to settle down. 6 replays later I told her that was enough, and she snorted kitty snot on me and got down, she has been snubbing me ever since. I think she needs her own Ipod....
The quiltart list has been discussing the Gees Bend Quilts, and "what amazing art they are", a discussion that started largely due to the pending lawsuit over them. I have to admit I personally have never gotten the art world fury over them. I see make-do utility pieces when I look at them, rustic folk art of sorts, it's just not my thing, never has been. Okay, some of the newer quilts border on amazingly artistic considering no formal art education has ever been an option for these women, but this is covered by a handful of the ones I have seen pics of. Most of them are scrap quilts and they are not very attractive, but when they were made, their makers were not shooting for attractive they wanted to be warm, they were for utility purposes and not for hanging in galleries. They are out of balance, raw, very primitive in appearance, out of sync. Folk art, maybe...historical perhaps, amazing textile art... IMHO, no. Maybe I am missing something, it's been known to happen.
I have mixed feelings about the lawsuit against Matt Arnett (who claims
to have invested several million of his own money promoting these
quilters and their quilts). Some of the quilters believe they did not
get their fair share of the profits from the sales of their work, and
maybe they didn't. I do not know what he promised them in the
beginning, and I don;t think any of them expected the fame they found.
But Arnett was not the first person to promote them so they could make
more money from their work. Father Francis X. Walter found them in 1965
selling their quilts for $10 each and he helped them to form the
Freedom Quilting Bee. He was short on money but he found friends to
help him get the quilts to auction, he helped them to get their
community center built and in the late 60's through his efforts an
artist named Sara Stine came in to help teach the quilters the
principles of design. Arnett came along much later, when sales were
again dwindling because they could not compete with cheap machine-made
quilts. It appears on the surface to me that it was indeed Arnett's
investment of his own time ( 10 years worth of promoting) and his money
pushed them over the top and into the limelight. Part of the quilters
have no issue with the share they got, but some now feel cheated after
10 years of singing his praises. This might lead some people to assume
that some level of ungratefulness is a part of the lawsuit even if he
did take advantage of them on some level, (if indeed he had millions
invested out of his own pocket, I'm not sure the courts will say he did
anything wrong by trying to recover his investment), that is for the
courts to decide I suppose. I don't know that a true accounting of
money in and money out will be possible, nor am I convinced that
justice can be found by a handful of uneducated black women taking on a
wealthy white art dealer in the south no matter what. With so many
quilters are worrying about the money I feel no need to.
Frankly, what I REALLY wonder about is the quilters and community of Gees Bend and their sense of self and community, once extremely close, dependent on each other for their survival, now bickering amongst themselves. Those who have sold more quilts perhaps suddenly thinking themselves more worthy of praise than their neighbors, new money coming in from outside, a change to more modern fabrics... a silent, slow, and deadly sway from what the quilts of Gees Bend were in the beginning... and before we know it, what they were, no longer exists. The women are changed, the community is changed, the quilts are changing and what was, is no longer. Although I certainly do not begrudge these women the advantages of an easier life, or their just do.... I think that sometimes things need to be left alone, so they can just be... ya know? Sometimes the act of being found is the same thing that makes unique, untarnished things (or people), slip away into history and be lost forever.
I do believe that if any of the quilters felt the need to sue anyone it should have been over something much more important in the big picture than mere money, it should have been over robbing them of their history. Gee's Bend has lost something very important in the process of everyone making money and the world discovering and watching these quilters... it appears to me Gee's Bend has lost it's soul.... and I cannot help wondering just what is that kind of loss worth these days anyway...
