Excepting Departures

 

We feel that we own our souls

And own our strengths and voices

We say these things are ours

Not allowing for simple debts and choices

 

Our wit and nerve and fiber

Our love and longings and laughter

Candor countenance and composure

The stuff of lending but not keeping after

 

While framing our temporary talents

We rarely noted the places

Our rental charms and confidences

And clevernesses each derived

 

Our children now have smiles

First ours we shared and then

Our every talent and height and wiles

Each in turn were given them

 

They seem to not glance our way

As they are using these muscles

This busy brains, their guileless winks

To provide time with memories now

 

But now our own failing lenders

Accept frailty losing situated salience

And constitution while we are spending

The same gifts that they have lost

 

While we say we are grateful

Our superseding gratitude

Is glossy spilled ahead over ours

And what we got we give

 

But now we stop and consider

The indignities of age, claiming

Strength wit quickness and charm

Unsteadied legs and useless arms

 

Names relapse and abandon

Creators of those very names

Who in failing fall silent in turns

Subtly sinking unyielding into the quiet

 

It seems with their spirits given us

We hoped we could simply send these on

While we could not keep them both

Todays and tomorrows both are gone

 

 

As strong, as sharp, as verbose

As loud, as dominate, as fast

As ever an arm lifted a child

Can’t they be left any of that

 

Must every syllable be passed on

Do we require in greedy aspect

To devour everything they were

Vindictive libraries with fines so great

 

As we return and confirm our debts

We find diminished lenders

We reach but cannot grasp

Brief ascension prevents ending

 

Thomas was right to demand

No silences into good nights

Except it is what we are given as we

Accept our own departures

 

I take issue with a your point

Dear Anonymous Relative of Mine:

Had a discussion about a Rachel Maddow interview with Tim Phillips that I posted. Don’t know this gal but found the interview worthwhile. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#32323918

Okay. I’ll try to address this as briefly as possible. But it won’t be very brief… Sorry.

“Meh, it was an angled interview to begin with.

To say that it was an angled interview, I gather, implies a TV journalist has a editorial position, which seems true. Especially since she goes out of her way to put it in that context at the beginning of the interaction. If, however you’re implying that it wasn’t fair, I’m not certain what rhetorical devices you’re referencing that seem to put her at some advantage. Presumably, it was taped live and there was apparently no editing after the fact. Unlike many similar programs that have a strong editorial flavor, I can’t imagine anyone saying that the Phillips was not given a chance to speak.

The other guy knew that going in and just didn’t care about it.

“The other guy,” Tim Phillips, is individual who for many years has made his living doing political spin. This is not necessarily a negative career path, but it puts them in an entirely different camp when it comes to television interviews. There are boatloads of liberal and conservative mouthpieces out there. Some of them honest and some of them not so honest, and in a land where we value free speech, they have their place. But, it is hard to believe that Phillips is going on there for altruistic purposes. He’s no dummy, as they say. As a spokesperson he can stand toe-to-toe with whomever. So, one might assume that he did “care about it” and was there for a purpose. In short, he is a professional.

The really interesting bit is that for some reason this is news… why is this news? What’s the point behind it?

Whether one agrees with the presuppositions of an argument or not, it strikes me as unreasonable to feel at these charges are not somehow newsworthy. I am fully aware of how often Lindsey Lohan gets drunk, of Britney Spears’ parenting skills, and the Paris Hilton’s abilities as a young bride. These things are not newsworthy. However, allegations that free speech in multiple town hall meetings—called by one’s political representatives—are being railroaded through the orchestration of corporate-sponsored public-relations groups is of great interest to many Americans who see this as an odd twist, and the ever twisting discussion of the freedom of speech.

The Magna Carta indicated that freedom of speech was a pretty big deal in 1215; the French sort of dropped the ball when they celebrated free speech during the French Revolution and then killed lots of people, and of course there was a group of white guys who decided to make it not the second or the third, but the first amendment to the United States Constitution. Noam Chomsky, noted linguist, smart guy, old crank said something along the lines of… freedom of speech means the freedom for others to say what you don’t like. Which really most of these guys alluded to.

If the allegations are wrong and these town hall meetings are all being interrupted, shouted down, and broken up by individuals who have all spontaneously adopted identical practices and methods then clearly Rachel Maddow has no ground to stand on. But for a liberal television editorialist I would be rather surprised if she didn’t:

a.) Feel that this was newsworthy and

b.) Arrive at the conclusion that this isn’t wholly spontaneous.

And you will definitely have your own opinion on this, but I believe will be hard to support the idea that this is not news.

 

When you start asking these questions the answers all point to the same thing… smoke screen.

Now at this point in your argument, I’m afraid that you lose me. I have heard the turn of phrase used by different groups recently. But it’s an odd expression. Because as a metaphor it seems to state that the discussion is being obfuscated somehow by an unrelated element. At least that is what I take the idiom, a smokescreen, to mean. Whether the conclusion that matter how has drawn is accurate or not, debating the organic nature of the argument seems a reasonable question.

And this may not be a very good analogy. But when unions were trying to form in individual coal plants across the country, strikebreakers were bussed in from different areas as the big guns with a company. The thought was, locals may not be too mean to locals. However, professionals with bats would make short work of noncommittal strikers. Bussing in these strikebreakers, and these were not the only people trying to stop the strike, change the complexion of the interaction dramatically. Whether you believe this is happening or not it’s an important argument.

Reason being, if the representative is trying to have a meeting with his/her own constituents and even five people are there trying to use abrasive tactics to derail a conversation then it changes the climate, the candor, and the culture. When Marshall McLuhan said that the media is the message he had a point.

If certain media can get the public to buy into a mob style accusation technique then they won’t see what’s really going on in the other hand.

Once again, I won’t say your point is indefensible, but it does strike me as a non sequitur. There are media outlets that are notably conservative. There are media outlets that are notably liberal. There are even some media outlets that tend to be down the middle. We all understand that. News outlets don’t have to fabricate items to create information that is appropriate for their demographic. All they need do is hire people who are themselves conservative or liberal or what have you. I don’t know that this is good or bad but it is historically so, and certainly true now.

In fact, if it’s spun just right they will welcome whatever suggested solution by said media as gospel truth without personally analyzing it themselves.

I gather this is the “masses-are-asses” argument that is hard to completely disregard, but is also the logic in having a more representative form of government than truly democratic. And, to be honest, I’m not certain where I come down on this argument. However, if it is true for geese it is true for ganders. Furthermore if your argument is that people are easily led, that does seem to be the argument that Rachel Maddow is advancing as well. In both cases I see it as a discussion of the human condition, rather than a commentary on worthwhile journalism.

The facts back up the president of the company in question in this case.

Without trying to be exhaustive here, I will mention that the facts, in so far as we are discussing factual information and not interpretations of the same, don’t seem to back up either group. Her claim seem to be that having multiple fronts, like Patients United Now, or Patients First, for the mother ship called Americans for Prosperity, which has ties to many corporations is disingenuous at best and hypocritical at worst. His response is “yes we take money from them, and we welcome more. Our goals and mission are not influenced by those who give us cash.” Neither of these people seems to be debating these facts. This is public knowledge because these kind of institutions must report their cash stream and affiliations.

She points out that in their literature they refer to themselves as “patients like us,” which seen this rather misleading since this is not being written by a group of hospital patients who got together because they were a little steamed, rather it’s being written by a heavily funded media juggernaut that is run by some very shrewd individuals.

She goes on to point out that there is a noticeable gap in online resume. Which item, he does not argue. Once again it seems the facts presented are not in question. He worked with Century Strategies and they admittedly targeted “faith based “communities to lobby for energy deregulation. This does not strike me as a small oversight. Further you will note this person does not say that these facts that she presents are untrue. So, once again the facts are not a question. Further since she is offering them up one could assume that they support her claims. Whether one feels that they do or not.

(On a personal note, I feel that lobbyists, while Democratic, are perhaps one of the most negative eventualities of our system. I also feel that if an energy group feels that they will get support from any “community of faith” that while it is legal to lobby their group it is morally bankrupt. Further, as a Christian, regardless of one’s belief in global warming, I find being lobbied by these groups nauseating.)

At this point he calls this “gotcha politics,” which is a catchphrase that has some legs, but in an admittedly adversarial interview, to call foul that she is asking tough questions, without debunking her facts seems a bit timid. It is not politics, it is journalism. Asking fellow media dude hard questions seems like neither, gotcha nor politics. She asks if he feels that she is being unfair. Unlike many in the trade she asks that and he concurs that she is not when pressed.

Even science says if anything is a reality today it’s global cooling rather then warming… which ironically would be combated by becoming “less green.” Not that I’m for a push for more green house gasses, but yet the media would die before admitting fault.”

Well, OK. I’m not tracking very well here. But if you’re saying that the “media” are some kind of ideological bastion I don’t share your opinion.

Here is my logic:

1. Media in America is corporate.
2. Corporations exist to make profit.
3. To make profit media outlets require customers.
4. Therefore media is driven by demographic targets.
5. Conversely an unknown hidden agenda of unity to philosophy seems unlikely

Founding fathers:

These is no universal agreement as to who these guys (gals) were. Who is in and who is out. Further they were not all that similar one to the other in motivation to participate in revolution, in religion or in their opinions on the role of government. Every time I hear the term “founding fathers,” I think I am hearing from someone who has not read what these folks (whoever they include)

If you read early American history… and by this I I’ll reference Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, the biography of Benjamin Franklin, (there are several that are worthwhile), his Excellency: George Washington by Eliis, Thomas Jefferson ( I don’t remember the author), John Adams by McCullough, and you’ll see without exception how consistently vindictive, outspoken, and libelous the “founding fathers” were. At intervals Washington was above the fray but it’s truly remarkable how these individuals and the newly founded Free Press attacked each other. And they did so using pseudonyms more often than not.(This is not considered out of bounds at that time. They disagreed and seemed to dislike each other more than not. Just like everyone else.

Sincerely kevin

Stats about Healthcare

• The United States spends six times more per capita on the administration of the health care system than its peer Western European nations.¹⁴
  
• Health care spending is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense.³
  
• Although nearly 46 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, and those countries provide health insurance to all their citizens.³
  
• Health care spending accounted for
  
  • 17 percent of the GDP in America
    
  • 10.9 percent of the in Switzerland,
    
  • 10.7 percent in Germany,
    
  • 9.7 percent in Canada
    
  • 9.5 percent in France
    
• According to a recent report, the United States has $480 billion in excess spending each year in comparison to Western European nations that have universal health insurance coverage. The costs are mainly associated with excess administrative costs and poorer quality of care.¹⁴
  
• National surveys show that the primary reason people are uninsured is the high cost of health insurance coverage.²
  
• A recent study by Harvard University researchers found that the average out-of-pocket medical debt for those who filed for bankruptcy was $12,000.
  
• The study noted that 68 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance.
  
• 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses.⁹ 
  
• Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.
  
• A new survey shows that more than 25 percent said that housing problems resulted from medical debt, including the inability to make rent or mortgage payments and the development of bad credit ratings.¹⁰
  
• About 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs. ¹¹
  

 Sources:

1. Keehan, S. et al. “Health Spending Projections Through 2017, Health Affairs Web Exclusive W146: 21 February 2008.
   
2. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Employee Health Benefits: 2008 Annual Survey. September 2008.
   
3. California Health Care Foundation. Health Care Costs 101 — 2005. 02 March 2005.
   
4. Pear, R., “U.S. Health Care Spending Reaches All-Time High: 15% of GDP.” The New York Times, 9 January 2004, 3.
   
5. McKinsey and Company. The McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter, “Will Health Benefit Costs Eclipse Profits,” September, 2004.
   
6. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Employee Health Benefits: 2008 Annual Survey. September 2008.
   
7. Agency for Heathcare Research and Quality. Out-of-Pocket Expenditures on Health Care and Insurance Premiums Among the Non-elderly Population, 2003, March 2006.
   
8. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The Uninsured: A Primer, Key Facts About Americans without Health Insurance. 2004. 10 November 2004http://www.kff.org/uninsured/
   
9. Himmelstein, D, E. Warren, D. Thorne, and S. Woolhander, “Illness and Injury as Contributors to Bankruptcy, ” Health Affairs Web Exclusive W5-63, 02 February , 2005.
   
10. The Access Project. Home Sick: How Medical Debt Undermines Housing Security. Boston, MA, November 2005.
    
11. Robertson, C.T., et al. “Get Sick, Get Out: The Medical Causes of Home Mortgage Foreclosures,” Health Matrix, 2008
    
12. Selzer and Company Inc. Department of Public Health 2005 Survey of Iowa Consumers, September 2005.
    
13. Fidelity Investments, Press Release, 06 March 2006.
    
14. McKinsey Global Institute. Accounting for the Cost in the United States. January 2007
    

http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

Dear every single person in America:

Like many I’m following the debate on potential changes in our health care system in United States. I feel strongly about this as I feel all Americans should.

When I’m talking to my son, who is 17, about why this is such a big deal I find it very difficult to convince him that all of these methods for paying for hospitalization are important. Yet I remember distinctly as a man in my 20’s who had just started working for the state as a teacher, actually being amused by the requisite insurance lecturers we had to happen at the beginning of every

Every year there would be innumerable meetings that we were required to attend. We would need to sit in for an hour or so to listen to some insurance representative. This person would tell us what our deductible was depending on the plan we chose, what our benefits would be in the event of some debilitating illness, how much our families would reap if indeed we were killed in a terrible hunting accident. Through these meetings I remember fighting off gallows humor as one grievous possibility after another was itemized by this insurance rep.

The only thing that prevented me from sharing my glib disregard for these meetings was how serious all of the older (and by older I mean late 40’s and 50’s) instructors took all of this. They paid attention with a grim dedication that I took to be part of their teacherly attention to detail. Now I’m in my 40’s and I have seen parents, friends, and siblings bump into his serious health issues I have lost quite a bit of my grin when it comes to details of paying for all kinds of hospitalization and medication.

Talking to my children about what we reference as Disney, circle-of-life issues we will consistently discuss the relationship between prey and predator. That way my young daughters, who are reasonably dismayed by the attack and dismemberment of certain types of animals, might have a more grounded philosophy in their opinions of carnivores. If the National Geographic special that one is watching is about lions, and the Lions are slowly starving to death during a lean season, it’s very easy to feel sorry for the lion. If the special is focused on the tenuous life of an antelope or gazelle then it’s very easy for us to feel sorry for the prey and resent the predator. All of these lectures end with a single question: how many gazelles die of old age? The answer, of course, is none. As they lose a step they get eaten.

So lately I’ve been thinking about health care for those in the United States who need it I have been asking myself the same question. Well, okay, not exactly the same question. But I have been asking how many of us go through life without needing serious medical attention? The answer, none. Just like antelope and gazelle our time is going to come. We will at some point require serious medical care.

This has made me evangelical on the issue of government-funded health care. And before I get very far into this conversation I will point out that some might argue if the government, and when I say government I suppose I should say “government” pays for something, really that means we are paying for something. And I’m okay with that. If a hobo has broken his leg, or a NFL star has broken his leg or of migrant laborer has broken his leg we need to get that looked at. So, yes the government is us. We need to pay for health care.

If every single American requires coverage at some point and logically why would we ask for businesses to underwrite that? As we have all become far too familiar lately, businesses are in the business of making money for stockholders. That’s why they call it business. Unapologetically businesses are concerned about stockholder profit. One can argue that there are green companies out there, that there are rainbow-sunshine factories, that there are really nice businesses, and so on all day long. But when one observes what has taken place over the last year in our country with businesses gambling so that their executives can become fabulously a wealthy, it’s hard to imagine that we live in a country where those same corrupt individuals will try to create a safety net for people who are not advancing their bottom line. And if you’re advancing their bottom line today, you probably won’t be helping very much tomorrow or the day after tomorrow anyway.

Furthermore, insurance companies are businesses themselves. No great insight here. But still, insurance companies exist as independent businesses whose primary goal isn’t even longevity. They exist in a world of American enterprise where short-run profits dominate the mindset of every BMW-driving executive in the company. One can argue that insurance companies are really a delightful concept of shared responsibility and so on. But that Pollyanna perspective on why a business exists does not reflect at all what we know to be true and what we’ve seen over the past year and before.

Insurance companies, while not the devil, are not the devil only because they don’t care. The devil cares. He has an evil laugh, he has an evil grin, and he takes joy in your suffering and pain.

The opposite of caring isn’t cruelty the opposite of caring is the absence of care. Insurance companies don’t. Really. Suffer or be well, a corporation does not have a smile. They don’t have a corporate conscience. They can’t be evil because they are amoral money-making structures who really can’t care if you live or die. Corporations are legal fictions. They can be sued as individuals. They can be constructed. They can merge. They can be taken over. They can go bankrupt. But they don’t exist as people. And, unlike the devil, they don’t give a damn if you suffer and die.

So my first point is that we all need health care. My second point is insurance companies have a mandate that does not address that need. Governments are these odd structures we’ve created to take care of things like building castle walls around the village, paving highways to promote commerce and enterprise, and funding officers to take care of bad guys. I believe we all agree that we want to keep out the Huns, have nice highways, and prevent criminals from raping our wives and stealing our valuables.

But we live in a time where the bad guys don’t do as much damage as STDs, and lung cancer, and carcinoma sarcoma, and the list is truly endless. When health care was about mending broken legs and taking out appendixes, while we were birthing our own babies and burying our own dead it was a different world that we live in now. Now we have this gigantic industry that is profoundly inefficient in this country that we rely on for life and death. It is time for our government, as inept as it may very well be, to create some efficiencies that will allow us to all get effective and low-cost coverage for the host of plagues that will someday chase us down in the field and eat us up. We are all gazelle the lions that will someday catch us aren’t morticians, and they aren’t doctors but they are bill collectors.

David Barton says to read a book… 01

Captivity and identity: Ishmael comments

 http://books.google.com/books?id=83p-OMrNalYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Some years ago I bought my son a dog, a big black chow, whose name I want to share right now because that is what you put at the end of the sentence where you introduce something. Nonetheless, when I purchased the dog I intentionally decided not to name her so that my son could have the pleasure of naming her himself. However, I got the dog about two weeks before he, Toby was to arrive in Montana. It is remarkably difficult not to assign a name to any animal. Of course we’re probably worse at that than many because our family names our cars names our bikes, names for lots of things. We are a very anthropomorphic family. Although not the point of this particular paper, I will tell you that he named the pup, Pip.
I just started the book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. So far it deals extensively with the concepts of identity and captivity. Identity is an important idea. We are a species that names things. At many levels we can’t not name things because our ability to conceive and think is tied so closely to our language. Language of course is naming. Naming is identifying.

We have identities as individuals: I am Kevin. We have identity as families: We are the Kvalvik’s. We have identity as a culture: we are Americans. We have lots of tribalism beneath that level though. And the concept of tribe is the concept of identity. But tribes can be loosely identified, like say redheads. Or tribes can be tightly identified like, say, Mormons. And we can shift between tribes, wherein we may love Porsches through our 20s, and migrate to some other affection and club in our 30s and 40s. All this to say that identity is a very complicated, shifting concept.

Another concept that might seem unrelated is called American exceptionalism. This is a fascinating turn of phrase that references a self assigned national privilege. That while we recognize many countries have many strengths and weaknesses. America doesn’t fall into the same grading system as everyone else. While it’s “all good and well for other countries to abide by certain rules, we are America, doggone it and we are not going to be shown how to do things by other countries.”

Yet if our identity is tied wholly to being American, or Baptist, or as an educator, or a man (as opposed to woman), or Republican, or what have you; rather than adding to one’s identity it seems that it actually lessens it. It forces one to be drawn with a broader brush. The more labels that one can assign to themselves. Or to which they may be assigned, the less specific and truly idiosyncratic an individual will tend to be, well maybe not “be” but seem to be. Is it possible that as we age we don’t seem more cartoonish or two-dimensional, but rather we become more cartoonish or two-dimensional?

Our identity as Americans, if tied to a series of clichés, does not seem to make us better Americans but rather makes us a parodies of Americans.

Ishmael teaching humans about captivity.

Identity as described in Quinn’s book, Ishmael, is defined with a passing reference to Nazi Germany. The point he makes, which is made often, is that while the Jews were certainly captives, the general populace was captive. One could not choose to NOT be a good Nazi. To not be a good Nazi or to fight them was to be deceased in amny cases. This is not a license for people to do nothing. But it is important to consider that your actions define your identity and your identity defines the type of captivity you choose, or is chosen for you. You get the idea. So I take from the book so far the illustration that one’s identity rather than describing their likely actions, describes instead their likely obligations. Obligations as captives. In our culture we are obligated to work, obey laws, pay taxes, dress before we go out the door and an almost limitless collection of reasonable to the wholly arbitrary conventions of our time and place within the culture in which we exist.

 

We are captives. Our freedoms are select, our obligations are as well. We can no more deny our time and place than we can decide to go to work without our pants on, or decide that we want to start putting our trash out in the front lawn.. One might feel that they have these choices, but will be subscribed to the places where our culture assigns those with no sense of cultural obligation: No sense of identity as assigned.

More as I proceed through the text…

kevin kvalvik

 

Michael as a Pirate

If you don’t know him, Mike is the better brother. He was the best until Ed died. Then we became comparative, not superlative. We both did. Well I almost lost my comparative last week. Mike had a stroke and brain bleed. I don’t know much about medicine except for what I see on “House.” Those illnesses are always interesting and the doctors are always only interested in them as a complement to their personal stories. I suppose I am as shallow as they are, as I see all of this through my own filter and how it affects me. And it affects me bad. You don’t have to know much medicine, or watch much television medicine to figure that a brain bleed joins two words together that you don’t want sitting next to each other. As for strokes, I knew/know that Anne Bancroft was all messed up for a long time and then everyone said how great she recovered, but you could always tell.

So I drove to see mike and feared the worst. I suppose the worst is drooling incoherence. It was not the worst. It was vastly better than the worst, although I understand he almost died. He is sitting  up under his own power in the required hospital wheelchair, with half of him wholly on board using the same gestures, being as sharp as ever and listening with the intelligence for which he is known. The other side is inactive, asleep. You can’t tell of course, but it’s like a dentist’s visit gone awry. He is fully numb on his left and when he speaks you can tell. He feeds himself making a mess for which he would have been mortified last week, and which he disregards this week.

We talk. I try to let him speak at first and nod indicating I hear him. But, truth is I understand precious little right away. Short sentences I get. But anything longer gets lost on me and I still nod. He tells me not to. He understands that he is largely not understandable. When Anna, my niece is there I talk to her mostly so that she can respond and she keeps up his side of the conversation. Mike, neither stupid nor bothered by this, only adds that she should expand on some topics. He tells her to say more. She is a tad timid and is not as verbose as her dad.  No one is verbose as her dad. So as she takes the task of being his general respondent he allows that she does voice the family catching up vocabulary. My kids could speak for me on the word streams of family gossip. But mike always shares the long version and Anna not.

He wears out after an hour or two and starts drifting off. He has the stamina of a little old man and looks a bit like a pirate speaking out of one side of his mouth, and sounds like a very drunk pirate. But all of those ungenerous observations aside he is wholly Michael. He is sharp, impatient, completely patient, kind, abrupt, funny, serious, demanding, self effacing, loving and eager to get back to the next thing on his lengthy and demanding personal agenda. While easy to exhaust, and visually frustrated he is clearly not feeling sorry for Michael. He still has an enormous amount to do. He has a job to do, five kids, to get finished with and out of the house, he has that car to work on, those thirty three books to read, and a demanding wife to accommodate. In short he is a busy man who will take this in stride. This may sound foolishly hopeful, as Anne Bancroft was messed up and Mike is messed up. But I know Michael.

He will be that patient on House who defies the doctors, insults the staff and changes their lives. He will. That’s is who he is. Until he finishes he will get no kind words from me. He is my older brother, who has picked on me mercilessly for years. I will call him names and taunt him and tell him I expect him to hold up his end of the deal. He is the better brother. Let’s see him act like it.

Christ said “take up your bed and walk.” Not lie there and be a weenie. So, Mike, let’s see what you made of. Get up, get better, kick my butt.

Writing and Donald Miller

Introduction to Writing with Donald Miller from Brian Mosley on Vimeo.

Spaghetti Farmers from History

 

For MacKensie: the Pasta Queen.

Valentines Day: Serious Implications

 

it’s viral for a good reason…

Be careful out there.

Early Shepard Fairey

…then there’s the truly unfortunate photo op that Thomas Dewey had with life magazine, casting into doubt that his work with the press was as deft as previously thought.

 

This was forever immortalized by his campaign poster that was subsequently tagged on the governor’s residence in three colored paint.