Drawing the Line

I'm completely in favor of legislation like this. Cruelty to animals in order to create "art" is unacceptable; in fact, cruelty to animals and ART are antithetical to each other. Perhaps some serial killers see their acts as art. That doesn't make it so.

This past year an artist named Guillermo Vargas placed and tied up a starving dog in his "exhibit."

Here is a video with some pictures. Outrageous. One has to wonder about the people passively observing the animal as part of this demented spectacle. It's always the question--who's worse, the sinners of OMISSION, or the sinners of COMMISSION.

My First Cat Show

I've loved cats my whole life, but have never been to a cat show. This past weekend was my first trip to one. One of my students was showing Abyssinian Cats in a show in Joplin, Missouri and invited me to come. We went as a family with an ulterior motive in mind, however. My husband dreams of owning a Maine Coon for the sake of having something that gargantuan around the house. He wanted to check out their size as a breed in person.

It is certainly a surreal subculture, to be sure. I loved seeing all the cat breeds, but I enjoyed watching the people as well. The judging was bizarre. I'm not entirely clear on how cats are judged. They have always seemed to be judging me and other humans. It was strange seeing them on the other end of the stick. There were several Maine Coon cats and my husband definitely got a definite idea of the size of a Maine Coon. There was one winning cat named "Rusty Nail" who was only 14 months old and as big as the length of his owner's torso. Maine Coons are not considered full grown until they are 4 years old! Can you imagine?! He was a sight and very beautiful and with a good temperament. His owner said they make great companion animals. I'm sure we'll get one someday.

New Family Member

A couple of months ago, a feral cat had kittens on our property. After separating them at weaning time and socializing them for a couple of weeks, I ran into the reality of the animal welfare system in Northwest Arkansas. The shelters are overflowing because people still have a rural mentality in a rapidly developing suburban/urban area. Animals are abandoned, not spayed or neutered, and treated in the cruelest of ways. And, unfortunately, there isn't a lot of support, funds, policies, and laws to help them all so a great deal of them are euthanized.

So, we took on the task of trying to adopt out the four kittens ourselves. The shelters were so crowded that they were beginning to euthanize kittens and puppies and begged foster "parents" to take in some of the kittens and puppies. I spoke to one such foster parent who had 40 kittens alone in her garage and was trying to adopt those out. That is the sad nature of the glut of unwanted animals in this area, and with attitudes like this, it is no surprise.

I took action. I drove them to my hometown, St. Louis, where there is NOT a glut of unwanted animals, but kittens like these are in demand. I took them to a veterinary clinic I know of and they adopted them out in less than a week. I decided after much deliberation that I would take one myself and introduced a new family member to my house of two elderly cats. My husband, his son, and I all had the same favorite kitten and were initially calling our new kitten "Adventure Boy" because he liked challenging himself. I've have a cat named Solomon and my husband's name is Jeremiah, so in keeping with a Biblical name, we're now calling this new member of our family Samson. It seems a fitting name for Adventure Boy, since Samson slayed a lion and ate honey from the carcass, cavorted with prostitutes, married twice outside his tribe, broke ropes that bound him, slayed 3000 men with the jawbone of a donkey, carried heavy city gates on his back, and eventually pushed an entire temple down with his bare hands (Judges 13 - 16).

Doesn't he seem like he could push a temple down?
Well, maybe not right now....

A Poem:The Duck, by Ogden Nash

In seventh grade, we made a poetry journal. We had to collect a percentage of poems from other poets and write some of our own as well. This poem by Ogden Nash is one I remember fondly. Maybe at some point, I'll try to find that poetry journal and publish some of my original poems in my seventh grade mind here on my blog.

Nora's Back!

Amanda Baggs Breaks the Silence

I saw this on CNN this past weekend. While it is not technically about the subject of art, it is a wonderful story I had to share. Amanda Baggs is a woman with autism who communicates through a computer keyboard and a voice generator. She even makes her own videos and has a website. She calls her website a "non-site" and has some pretty entertaining and compelling FAQs on it.

She seems to be on the same page as I am as it regards to the "medicalization of deviance." CNN is definitely not.

"At its core, autism is a developmental disorder of communication. There is no cure. No one knows the precise causes, but recent science points towards a genetic component with a possible environmental trigger."

If something is different, we have to figure out what's wrong. Why is that? Perhaps Autism is a yet not understood form of kinesthetic or synesthetic communication that we can't decipher. Sure, their functioning in THIS WORLD is impaired, but what about in other "worlds" or other groups. Some have an uncanny knack with understanding and communicating with animals. Shouldn't that be considered a superpower? *

She made a video called "In My Language" in which she gives us a glimpse into what her world is like. Frankly, it's almost mystical and definitely artful.



* Read Dr. Temple Grandin's statement on thinking in pictures. She has a form of autism and has been able to understand cattle and developed innovations in farming and slaughter that calm the animals as well as applied the knowledge to changing environments to calm autistic children.