Seen in Hudson

September 12, 2011
Seen in Hudson

For quite a while I have been enjoying the store front windows at 243 Warren St. A mysterious person has been changing the displays in these windows in response to the world outside them. Last night as Karen and I were walking home, I noticed that the windows had changed again. This time to blank white illuminated by the ever present two white lights. So, I walked across the street to take a picture. As I approached, a man walking his dog came up to the door of 243. I asked, “Are you responsible for the windows?” “Yes” came the response. So here I was, in a serendipity of the local, meeting the person responsible for these simple little statements about passing events. ( I hesitate to give his name. Perhaps he will give permission.)  Turns out that what I thought to be blank is in fact his comment on the day as...

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Idiocy in America

September 8, 2011

The recent scene of Jon Huntsman, Republican candidate for President, stating that he believed in evolution surrounding this with the parenthetical comment, “call me crazy”, sets out in stark relief how idiotic our politics and body politic are at this moment. Every other Republican running for President has disavowed evolution. Even the middling muddler from Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, could not bring himself to state a positive position on this bit of science. A 2009 Gallup poll showed that only 36% of Americans believed in Darwinism. Here we are more than 70 years after the Scopes trial and Americans continue to be enormously ignorant of the science and technology that underlies much of our day to day lives. They show no increased interest in the amazing findings of research in so many fields. This denial of fact-based thinking is tied up with the persistence of religions in their many guises....

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Job Creation – A Pliable (Fraudulent) Rhetoric in the Current Debate over Debt and Debt Ceilings

July 12, 2011

When it comes to job creation both Democrats and Republicans reflexively trot out small business as the engine of growth. These flights of breathy admiration for plucky small business owners are part of our national myth, right up there with cowboys. There probably is some truth in this myth as long as you accept the other side of the equation which includes the fact that jobs in small businesses are lower paying and less stable than those in the middle and big size companies. But to demonstrate the extent to which today’s political environment has lost any sense of consistency, we now have the Republicans saying that any tax increases on the wealthy and corporations are “job killers”. Since when have wealthy individuals created jobs? They don’t start new entrepreneurial ventures. They do buy extra vacation homes and fly to Vermont and Colorado and Switzerland more frequently in their...

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Where, Oh, Where Did Our National Debt Come From?

July 8, 2011
Where, Oh, Where Did Our National Debt Come From?

The political rhetoric of the current moment, chiefly flowing from Republicans, but barely challenged by the Democrats, describes tales of profligate over-spending by the Federal government matched with burdensome taxation. While it is true that Federal spending is higher proportionately than post-WWII norms, social programs are not the source of this over spending. One only has to look back to George Bush’s two terms to see the true sources of the debt.  War, Wars, More Wars First up are our profligate wars. A recent study at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies finds that since 2001 we have spent between $2.3 and $2.7 trillion on our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.All of these dollars are deficit dollars. George Bush did not ask for increased taxes to fund his wars. Barack Obama has not asked for increased taxes to fund his continuation of the Bush wars and now his new war in Libya....

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Seen in Hudson – June 23 to June 26, 2011

June 27, 2011
Seen in Hudson – June 23 to June 26, 2011

Wardrobe malfunction This was a busy weekend for us here in Hudson. We hung a new show, “Theaters and Theatrical” this past week in the gallery and held the opening reception Saturday evening. Following that we were off to Club Helsinki for Musty Chiffon and the Sex Magnets, headlined by local B & B owner Dini Lamot. By one of those little coincidences, Stefanie Klavens, one of the photographers in the new show, used to hang out with Dini et al back in the ’80s when they were a well-known rock band, Human Sexual Response. iPhone cameras are handy but not very good. Sunday evening, after our usual  stop for Scotch at our favorite watering hole, Swoon Kitchenbar, we went to the Hudson Opera House for a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream by the http: hudson teen theatre project. This turned out to be a wonderful, spirited production. A third sold out...

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Seen in Hudson – early to mid-June 2011

June 20, 2011
Seen in Hudson – early to mid-June 2011

A few pictures from recent walks around Hudson, mostly Warren St.                                                                      

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