Sunrise, Tuesday, 3 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Southwest Mountains, from U.S. Route 29 North, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

From the precinct polling place, as we were setting up for the day’s voting.

Sunset, Thursday, 15 October 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Rain and 46°F.

Yesterday Bob Leweke, morning host on regional NPR station WMRA, introduced the weather forecast this way: “For the next few days we have a 100% chance of dreary.” It’s a little bit difficult to gauge the situation now from here, but late this afternoon as I drove along the Southwest Mountains the clouds were only a few hundred feet above the ground.

Usually at times like this, in painting I look for the light, even if another observer of the sunset would probably say it wasn’t really there at all. Either that, or go with the darkness. An example of that approach that I like is the next-to-last sunset in the few paintings I’ve been able to photograph so far from 1997 – November 6th, from down by the railroad tracks in Charlottesville, near the University of Virginia Medical Center.

Actually, now that I look again at that painting, and yesterday’s, I realize what’s happening is both the light and the dark.

While I’m referencing WMRA, I’d like to recommend a fine blog by their super-producer Martha Woodroof, who is, among many other things, one of the best writer-reporters anywhere. You’ll sometimes hear her stories on national NPR. I’ve recently added a standing link to Martha’s blog at the side of this page.

On the 12th, Martha’s post started out with the furor over Rush Limbaugh’s efforts to buy the NFL’s St. Louis Rams. This got her into the subject not simply of Limbaugh’s controversial status but his popularity as a commentator. 

I had hoped our romance with polarization had ended on election day, but it appears that it hasn’t – if, that is, Rush Limbaugh’s ratings are any way to take the national pulse. And I don’t mean to pick on Limbaugh. He’s just such a clear-cut example of the kind of figurehead ranters we Americans spend our time listening to.

We elected President Obama in what appears to have been a brief flirtation with the concept of consensus and civility. Yet how impatient we have become with his efforts at consensus-building, his incessant information-gathering, his unfailing politeness in response to rudeness.

Is consensus-building just too much work for us as a culture? Is arguing and fighting about getting what we want, when we want it, too ingrained in us to allow serious consideration of reasonable compromise? Could it be that we are actually more comfortable, as a culture, wading through the wake of polarization left by The Decider et al.? Can we change our political conversation to one of consensus-building without being willing to change our own conversational tastes?

I had heard Martha talk before about the need for civil discourse and debate but hadn’t thought much about it, perhaps because I don’t feel all that civil myself on many hot-button topics. In other words, I didn’t see how things could really be any different. But something in her column jumped a spark for me.

I remembered reading not long ago how Nixon-Agnew (with the speechwriting help of Pat Buchanan) launched a successful ‘wedge’ strategy that has been expanded, developed and refined to this day – and they did this in part by personifying political positions. Some positions belonged to effete disloyal hippies – and others to patriotic true Americans of the silent majority. From that period, and increasingly during the traumas wrought by the previous administration, political positions, political opinions, have become no longer something we THINK, but something we ARE. We can’t talk to each other anymore because we’re not just talking about debatable topics of interest ‘out there’ (outside of ourselves), we’re protecting our very identities, ‘in here’ ... the whole thing was made very personal and we take it personally. When political controversy arises, many of us can hardly breathe, much less settle down and have a reasonable debate. As much as we may not think we agree with the personification of politics, many of us suffer from its consequences and its ongoing influence.

Sunset, Tuesday, 29 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

A little postscript to yesterday’s entry about persimmons can be found here.

Autumn light. The air was so clear, earlier today, trees on the nearby Southwest Mountains looked individually articulated with a leather punch. On approach they changed from a uniform blue-green to every variation of green and yellow-green, sharply defined cloud shadows passing quickly through the mountain hollows. Green is now that flat opaque shade of early fall – a dead green, perhaps, but no less welcome for that – autumn’s commemorative green, warm, persisting, in no big hurry to fade.

Sunset (Eastern View), Friday, 21 August 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

I was looking at the sunset when I decided to turn around and paint the opposite horizon, facing approximately southeast, toward the Southwest Mountains.

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It has recently come to my attention – no, correction – it comes to my attention every morning – that quite a few people happen on this site while searching for the Daily Sun of South Africa. It has finally occurred to me to look into this entity with the similar name and see what we may or may not have in common.

According to www.southafricainfo, Daily Sun is

the first South African tabloid aimed at the black working class. Initially met with disdain by the established press, its huge sales – and the fact that it has made new newspaper readers out of millions of South Africans – have earned it some respect. In the few years since its launch ... the Daily Sun has become the largest daily newspaper in South Africa.

The BBC, in ‘This World’ in 2006, began its story on the paper this way:

With its gory front pages, South Africa’s Daily Sun has become a national, though controversial, phenomenon. This World follows events in its newsroom in the run up to its 1,000th edition.

“So she's saying ‘my boyfriend ate my grandson’?” asks Deon du Plessis, the white part-owner of sub-Saharan Africa's biggest selling daily newspaper.

It is the afternoon news conference, and Deon's team is discussing the next day’s front page story. “That's what she's saying,” affirms Themba Khumale, the black editor.

It is Deon, as usual, who comes up with the headline. “O.K., ‘Boyfriend Ate My Baby’!”

Welcome to the extreme world of South Africa’s Daily Sun. ... The working class black man is the target reader ... He is known in the office as the man in blue overalls.

According to Karin Brulliard in the Washington Post in November 2008: 

A man killed by a swarm of killer bees. Marijuana muffins for sale in the townships. A notorious car thief nabbed by cops. A dead snake and two bottles of medicinal plants called muthi, found by a woman at the threshold of her preschool.

“That's a good one. Probably Page 3, actually,” publisher Deon du Plessis grunted on a recent morning to the editors of the Daily Sun tabloid, which the next day would cry: ‘EVIL MESSAGE OF THE MUTHI SNAKE!’

Du Plessis, a brash, hulking white Afrikaner, was presiding over another morning meeting at the largest newspaper in sub-Saharan Africa, pondering what would make its 5 million or so readers chatter most during their tea break at work.

It is a readership du Plessis knows well – not because he is part of it, but because he has cornered it since founding the Daily Sun six years ago and becoming one of South Africa's most successful and controversial media figures.

The Daily Sun reader, he says, is “the guy in the blue overalls”: a skilled black South African worker who is saving for a Toyota and owns a home in his township. He wants very much to know when police catch criminals, when evil spirits might be lurking and when mattresses are on sale.

Sorry for the overlap or repetition, but it’s good stuff and, besides, stumbling on this may be a rare chance for the guys in blue overalls or ladies in blue suits to know what the world is saying about their paper.

Here’s the difficulty. It appears the Daily Sun does not have a website – possibly one reason people click on the Google link to this blog, because they’re always looking and it’s just not there (or here). On the southafricainfo site, they assure us that we can click on the logo of the newspapers they describe and get to their websites – and for each of the others you can – but there is no active link for the Daily Sun. Apparently du Plessis is the world’s one newspaper publisher not concerned about the web.

In any case, people of South Africa, welcome to the Daily Sun Times. We have, among many other things, the real sun in common. And I might add that I too am saving for a Toyota, very much want to know when evil spirits might be lurking, and, truly, hope to soon be looking for mattresses on sale.

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This big sky is for a bird named Chip.

Noon, Friday, 7 August 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

The view was from today’s walk with Flint, on a section of jeep trail we (Laura and I) call the Power Line Road. (Not sure what Flint calls it.) View is toward the Southwest Mountains, which here means toward the south-southeast. Notes on my sketch feature ‘steamy’.

Full Moon and Jupiter, Thursday, 6 August 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

This was just before midnight. The Southwest Mountains would normally be visible under a bright moon, but dense fog over the Rivanna River in the distance completely obscured them.