WONDERINGS

I spend too much time on Facebook.  really.. the tone there is all about the very iffy state of the union and how to try to fix it and to send postcards to #45 with "you're fired" or such message on them.   I see reposted memes that, to me, are sometimes offensive, but I realize that for some folks, proselytizing their 'faith' is important to them.  The least forgiving I have found are those who pray to Jesus. No..not the guy who makes the vegetables grow, the other guy.. I want to make a snarky remark but it's really inappropriate and the son of one old friend of mine who is over the edge with 'faith' that is supposed to be loving and kind is anything but.  

Of course, I am supposed to be tolerant and forgiving and put up with saccharine comments, chalking it up to whatever beliefs one person or another may cling to. 

I'm not the brightest guy in the world.. many would go further to my not being very bright at all,  I suppose.. but.. I'm trying to figure out how continuing to use the name of the 45 president and posting his photo and repeating stupid rumors does anything but continue to promote the stuff that is obviously just silly.  I've been called "childish" by a formerly very good and formerly trusted friend who condemns me for this attitude of not wanting anything at all to do with this guy whose basic essence is abhorrent to me.  I don't want his face poulluting my home.  I don't want to hear his name as it offends me.  But.. we continue to promote him.

I met a woman yesterday who said that she had 'gotten used to' the Neutered Sprite logo

that the national Board of SAGAFTRA spent over $150,000.00 just to have it created. It's kitch design.  It's awful.  It has little to do with what actors and other professional performers do. But, she's "gotten used to it."  A board member told me that we would never know the names of the board members who voted it up, though the voting record in the US Democracy with senators and congress members allows us to see if they have our best interests at heart.   

The point.. if we 'get used to' the stupid logo that represents SAGAFTRA and this woman whom I met who is now 'okay' with it.. even likes it.. then, if we allow ourselves on the broad spectrum to get used to #45 and his ridiculous antics that spew out in.. for God's sake.. tweeting!  the least intelligent form of communication.   if we finally resolve to say 'okay' to that crap... the nation becomes more dumb.  You and I sigh because there is little we can do besides join in the You're Fired campaign that will not show up on the TV news even if a million cards are delivered to where ever the mail to the White House really goes..  then, fascism may creep ever so silently into our ailing democracy and like the old couple cooked to death in their over heated hot tub with a couple of glasses of wine... 

it's curtains for us: US:  The USA!

The handful of friends who read this are in the same boat.  We allowed this debacle to happen somehow and now we pay the gilt plated piper.  I am so embarrassed to be a citizen of the United States right now.  And,  I'm ashamed that all we can do is call this person.. this #45...  bad names and repeat his idiotic utterances when, in fact, we may be circling the drain.. CTD..  

Boy, this is a sad state of affairs and I should just stop..  but. 

no I'll just stop.. 

michael sheehan

March 14, 2017

Glendale, California

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SHADOW

GROUND HOG DAY..  2017

I wonder what really makes a classic movie.. or a classic person?  Bill Murray's film. and lovely Andie MacDowell: easy to love!  A classic to me. 

We live in psychotic times. I have one friend whom I can rely on for reason. That helps.  To get beyond the craziness will take time and effort. When we feel attacked, disoriented, betrayed, gaining our balance takes time.   

I am disinclined to join a march or sign an on line petition.  I'm not much for big crowds, though seeing the streets of DTLA filled with folks was really cool!

I think of patriots like Tom Paine and Patrick Henry with their speeches full of fire.  How they rose to become the historic guys they became was by some design and desire.  The Chicago Seven and the Berrigan Brothers.. Angela Davis.. Tom Hayden? Those are the first names that come to mind .. folks who rose to attention and sparked... at least a bit.. outrage at the Vietnam War. 

Wiring?  Age?  The Age of Aquarius? hah.. Harmony and Understanding..

Overcoming the stress of seeing #45 ride roughshod with a smirk over the quality of life that we have enjoyed with Obama and reasonable  administrators?  It's a challenge.

Is it our western ethic that shoots us in the foot? My attention to my TV with the sound off just got interrupted by a car chase headed up the Golden State Freeway from downtown Los Angeles. Stolen car.  Like silly dogs the cops chase this Honda through moderate traffic at a high rate of speed.  They endanger hundreds of lives .. rabid and on the trail of this guy who stole a friggin' car.  They chase the guy into East LA, then into a residential neighborhood where lots of cars or folks can be damaged.  There's a cop with a spike strip waiting! How did he know? Finally, they make him stop.  You can see the adrenaline pumping as one cop searches the guy and angrily throws something on the back of one of the cruisers.    

To me, backing off from the chase may make the car thief slow down; you track him with a helicopter and maybe recover the car undamaged as well as having saved life and property by not exacerbating the issue.  The chase is dangerous! The thief should be caught, but not at the expense of the loss of one life. Not at the expense of damage to unsuspecting and innocent others.  I think that the cops enjoy the chase, like we did on the playground in elementary school: the chase for the sake of the chase! 

I see this all the time:  TV programming interrupted for a car chase. BREAKING NEWS..  as though someone sitting at home watching The Price is Right should be immediately informed!   It's entertainment! We get off on this crap.  Maybe this circus with #45 is part of that?  It was wild rhetoric that got him elected, not reason.  Pure manipulation.  He just got into it with Schartzenegger, the new host of his TV show, blaming Arnold for the Celebrity Apprentice tanking in the ratings. Arnold shot back that they should trade jobs!  (Arnold is not native born, so that can't happen.)  Of course, the reason the show tanks is because people stop watching because to watch is to support #45.  He may be making as much or more than $10K a week from being a producer on the show. 

I digress. Hopefully, our USA will survive.  And, if nukes are employed, folks in the middle of the country may be safe!  Or safer?  as the gun nuts become Road Warriors!  Yikes.. Have you seen or read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road?" 

The best I am willing to do is make a few calls or send snailmail.  I have little faith that leaders listen, having seen a mini-version of this attitude with my long time membership in the Screen Actors Guild.  Our leaders in the union have marginal regard for the ideas of the membership.   

One old pal wants to shame us to political action.  Tom Pain did that in The Crisis, too.. "Sunshine Patriots and Summer Soldiers.." My response is that knowing one's limits is something that we should examine carefully.   Stepping up to be cannon fodder is a bad idea.  Knowing how best to be of service is what we each must do.  Lead? Follow? or just keep out of the way?

February 2, 2017.. 

Bunny, Bunny one day late. 

michael sheehan

HOME ON THE RANGE.

January 29, 2017

My window to the outside world turns mostly on the stuff I read on Facebook.  Television news is in the mix and the mixture of the two is disturbing.  Rather than spouting off about the current surreal situation that is happening to the United States on FB where the choir is mostly in harmony, I'm going to spout off here and hope it goes a little further. 

It's about disparaging words.  "Home, home on the range.. where never is heard a disparaging word.."

Of course, the skies really are cloudy all day with the pall of unimaginable events unfolding daily, but I'm hoping to calm the waters by asking that we use more simple terms to refer to the president. Disparaging words tend to rile up his supporters.   

I think that sounding off about what's going on is a good idea. Gatherings to show our support of the good stuff that should be happening are very important.   Taking it to the streets, to me, should also be to mourn for our democracy.   Seeing thousands of folks with candles or even just standing as we did years ago and singing "All we are saying.. is give peace a chance." 
Silence speaks volumes, too. 

Anger is our fire.  Reason finds a way to keep it in check enough to stay peaceful.   

How can those of us in the popular vote majority find ways to embrace moderate others who may now be seeing the error of this election? Disparaging #45 with angry words stokes the fires of those who support him.  It's like insulting someone's mother.  

I truly believe that we may be wired to be predisposed one way or another: right or left.  Of course, upbringing and education may bend our wires, and some folks get bent all the way right or left.  That may account for the division in our country.. wiring and education or lack of it.  Bottom line is that there must be people who are not driven all the way red or blue. How can we find that purple zone to save us from ourselves?

I've written to Senator John McCain with the hope that the recent meme I've seen that disparages torture may mean that he sees what is happening and may be able to draw other Republicans to stop the madness that is currently ripping our Republic to shreds. 

Can letters to senators make a difference?  All I can do is to make an effort.  This from politico.com:

Sen. John McCain on Wednesday vowed to stand against reported efforts by President Donald Trump to ease limits on the treatment of suspected terrorists in U.S. custody, reminding Trump that Congress has passed an anti-torture law.
“The president can sign whatever executive orders he likes,” McCain said in a statement responding to a New York Times report that Trump has drafted an executive order paving the way for the return of George W. Bush-era detainee treatment standards. “But the law is the law. We are not bringing back torture in the United States of America.”

With all respect to FB 'friends,'  I hope we can calm the rhetoric and start finding positive ways to get the job of saving the nation done in a more peaceful way than is erupting with some angry people now.  Keep the fire burning, but let's not burn everything to the ground.

michaelsheehan

January 29, 2017

Watch The SAG Awards!

 

THE OPTIMIST

 A black banner hangs, partially obscuring the view that I made 366 images of from December 21, 2015 until December 21, 2016. The rain is appropriate on a day that is a sad day for me. The inauguration day of the 45th president of the divided states of america.

January 20, 2017

I started this long note on FB and realized that it's rather too long to continue there.  

How long to mourn? Please message me if you would like a black arm band to wear. Nothing fancy .. just black cloth to be tied like a tourniquet to stop the hemorrhage and pay respect to the death of democracy? Hyperbole?  Probably.

If you pray, think about healing. Staunch the flow of fear. Don't hate. Don't ridicule. Don't speak or write the name. Just mourn quietly for thirty days.. or as long as seems appropriate. In the Jewish faith they call that time period Shloshim. (Thank you Google).

I found that Buddhists set aside the 7th day (January 27th), the 49th day (March 10th) and the 100th day (May 1st) to mourn. Hopefully, we shall survive, but a palpable loss is upon us.

The story of the optimistic kid is appropriate here.

On the ranch, two kids were tasked to work in the stables.  The first kid looked into the stable that was knee high in the stuff that horses leave behind.  He took a couple of pitchforks full and quit.  It was too much work. 

The second kid disappeared into the stable and dung was flying out left and right.  His dad was impressed with his hard work and stood back as the stuff kept flying like anything out of the stable.  Finally, he stopped the kid and asked him to take a break.  

Curious, he asked the kid, "Why are you going at this job with such fury?"

The kid mopped his brow and said, "With all this shit in here, there's got to be a pony!"

January 20, 2017

Michael Sheehan

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MLK. // A HERO: CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS

  June 26, 1953.  
In a much more simple time, the world had royalty and a sense of glamor that is slip sliding away.  Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell were a part of that time. It used to mean something to have one's foot and hand prints in Grauman's Chinese Theater court yard.    As we launch into a new world not unlike the final scene of Ray Bradbury's "The Sound of Thunder"  it's time to take a deep breath.  Seeing these gals helps me a little.  Thanks to Robert Patrick Playwright for this photo.

//
 
My education has been limited in the land of politics and the goings on in the world. When the dust up between Congressman John Lewis and DT erupted, I learned more about Mr. Lewis.  

It's a fact that he marched with MLK, was beaten by Alabama cops to the extreme and now, a respected member of the United State Congress, has declared that DT is not a legitimate president.  I stand with Mr. Lewis.

I've made the analogy that the Ship of State is sailing into an ocean filled with peril: icebergs.  Evidently, even an interfered with election is legitimate and from the little I've read, this may be a done deal on Friday.  Thousands will march on the following day.. a day of mourning for our formerly United States of America.  

January 21, 2017.

The call to action in the sixties that awakened Congressman Lewis and our fallen Reverend Martin Luther King must not ever be lost.  More beatings and the rolling tide of fascism may be  upon us. Days of reason may be smothered by our new technology in ignorant rants of 160 characters.   Diplomacy by tweet. How in the world did this happen?

Taking to the streets is a time honored activity.  How the country will react to a call to action must make a difference.  Even though the handful of you who read this are probably like the choir that we all sing in.. if one person knows the next steps, I hope they will take them and the United States may have a shot at being united again. 

January 16, 2016

michaelsheehan

JANUARY 15, TWOTHOUSANDSEVENTEEN

January 13, 2017 Another Debacle

January 15, 2017

Reading and writing on Facebook is preaching to the choir. Not that that is such a bad thing.. Most of us reading about art and the danged politics that has our country in turmoil as a fateful day .. the day of inauguration.. approaches..  we mostly agree that the debacle of the election is a real issue. It is viscerally an issue.  Democracy eviscerated?  Will we fall into fascism? How can this be prevented? Where are our saviors? 

An impending doom is not an overstatement.  I've decided to start writing here again in the hope that someone, somewhere, a middle of the road person?, our  savior?. will find an answer that will stop this feeling of doom.  Doom..  

This dark song by Shel Silverstein came to me when I was  typing 'Doom.'  Bob Gibson and Hamilton Camp sang it in the sixties. 

"
Boom, ba-ba-boom, ba-ba-boom
Twelve riders in the gloom
Seven showed red and the rest are dead
But the first battalion's home
Boom, ba-ba-boom, ba-ba-boom
You can hear their hoofbeats boom
The drums are low and the pace is slow
But the first battalion's home
Bridge:
So run to your homes Virginia girls
Fix your hair with pins
Give them wine and kisses
But don't ask them where they've been
Boom, ba-ba-boom, ba-ba-boom
And Richmond is their tomb
There's a hundred dead at Richmond
Three hundred dead at Gettysburg
And a hundred more they never found
But the first battalion's home"

The loss of the election to the electoral vote is troubling because our country is now like the dog being wagged by its tail.  It's the "Law.."  our tradition that may have made sense in the past, but no longer does.. with Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote by over 2.5 million votes puts our country in a divided state that echoes what was happening over a hundred fifty years ago .. There was a Civil War.  

With civility the furthest thing, evidently, from the mind of the winner of the electoral college vote, fear is palpable in educated and intelligent people.  Hateful jeers that I have personally encountered by those who voted not necessarily FOR the republican, but against Hillary Clinton are base and uncalled for. But.. they may reflect what's coming from those empowered by an election that is now under more and more scrutiny .. but .. where is our savior? Where is the President? What power does he have to reach out to stop the impending doom?  Where is the Democratic Party? Where is the Supreme Court?  

I really don't like politics.  Really and truly. I keep myself ignorant from the days when I was friends with a high school hero whom I ignorantly emulated from time to time when a question of "What would Tom do?" might come up.  It was never the right choice, but I was naive.. and probably still am, but learned that lesson too late.. My hero, two years my senior,  whose wonky analogies made him feel right and his ability to lead the unsuspecting me down the garden pathway to being wrong was naive of me...  He voted for the man who would be king.  

I have reluctantly divorced him and ending a life long friendship is not an easy thing to do.  But, it's like being in the middle of a deep lake .. treading water... and not being able to get back to the boat because of the dear dear anchor around my neck.  Dropping the weight to save my life?  Well. it's a wonky analogy.  Swimming with an anchor around one's neck has its problems.

We..  all of us who seem aligned in basic thought.. need to find a way to harmony and to embrace others whom we may even despise.. though I have a feeling that 'they' are the ones who are capable of despising.. We may be naive: those of us who strive for harmony and seek to find a kernel of good in anyone with whom we may disagree just to stop the rancor.. stop the meanness.. just please stop it and come to reason of some kind.  

Thank goodness for Saturday Night Live!  This is the antithesis of my plea in that last paragraph.. because Alec Baldwin and his skewering of the president elect just feels so good.  It's like the first time you may have seen The Producers and watched Springtime for Hitler.. Mel Brooks' masterpiece of skewering .. from a Jew.. just feels good to even remember it.   

And, so..  we must find a neutral space and as ironic as this reference may be from Lyndon Johnson..  "come, let us reason together..."  

The election debacle gets officially solidified in five days. The fate of the United States hangs in the balance. This is not hyperbole.  People much more intelligent and educated than I must find a way to mitigate the damage that we have done to ourselves and to literally save our nation.  

Reaching across an aisle is difficult for most of us.. but I would welcome any idea to do something that will stop this whole thing in its tracks and reason it out not so that my side would win, necessarily,  but that the coming trainwreck that we can all see happening be brought to a grinding halt.  

What is the matter .. not with them.. but with us? How did we come to this?  Evidently, about half of the eligible voters in the United States (and I now use this term "united" loosely) did NOT vote.  There's one problem.. and the voters who supported other candidates as a protest.. Wow.. and. now, January 20, 2017, a day that will 'live in infamy' and perhaps the collapse of our American democracy?..  looms.. 

Boom ba ba Boom ba ba Boom.. 

January 15, 2017

michaelsheehan

glendale, california

 

Big PAUSE..

There is a space here for cause. 

Michael Sheehan