A Decade of Dementia

 It's not like I'm taking pot shots at old guys, tho' Biden and Trump 2 were both a year older than I am now when they were sworn in, and both could claim to be the oldest president in history at their swearing in. Rather, I'm thinking about the mental clarity of both these men who held, or are holding, arguably the most powerful office on the globe.

Wikipedia tells us that:

Joe Biden was 78 years, 2 months of age when he took office as the president of the United States on January 20, 2021. At the time, he became both the oldest person to be inaugurated as U.S. president and the oldest sitting president in U.S. history.

and:

Donald Trump was 70 years old when he was first inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States on January 20, 2017. At the time, he was the oldest person to assume the presidency. Upon his return to office on January 20, 2025, at age 78, he became the oldest president to be inaugurated.

In dog years, these guys were 546 years old when they took office. And partisans in each party would argue they were both dogs. But that is not really my concern. As I said my concern is mental clarity.

I am not proposing membership in Mensa for either. Both were elected, as is sadly the unifying criterion in American politics, because of fealty to the party line. But I am concerned about how my fellow septuagenarians handled or are handling the pressures and responsibilities of the job.

President Biden focused on economic recovery, infrastructure investment, and climate action. All consistent issues of focus for the Democratic party. His public persona was often called into question by his detractors as slow and unfocused. And there is some video evidence that could be used to support that contention. However, another perspective is that he is better seen as a favorite uncle or a gentlemanly grandfather. Not as quick or as sharp as he once was, but still a gentle man, kindly and soft spoken.

President Trump, in his current persona - which makes for a legitimate comparison chronologically - cannot be seen as gentle, soft-spoken or kind. He is aggressive, combative, and given to confrontational language. And there are those who see that as appropriate. Obviously, I am not among them. But these are not the characteristics that most concern me. Rather, I am most concerned with his seeming lack of consistency and mental clarity.

He has demonstrated an unsettling ability to shift focus. He spoke often about his legacy as a peace-maker, and his belief that he was deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet apparently sees no contradiction between that stance and his military adventures in Iran and what he prefers to call the Gulf of America. This perspective is more indicative of the attitude that prompted him to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War. Yet he is loathe to define the current conflict in the Middle East a war, instead asking for 200 billion dollars to fund a “major conflict operation” or “excursion;” an incredible boondoggle that exacerbates raising gas and aviation fuel costs, crippling everyday driving and air travel for millions. All this seems to prolong a pointless military adventure for which he provides varying motivations and an indefinite termination date.

He remains firmly opposed to those who dare to stray from his worldview, instructing the department - still known as the Department of Justice - to file a variety of suits against individuals and organizations he sees as antagonists. He seems to appoint people to positions of power in his administration who have no professional credentials. The recent case of Robert F Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is germane: A federal judge temporarily blocked federal health officials from advising cutting the number of vaccines recommended for every child, and said Kennedy, who does not have a medical degree (MD), nor is he a doctor, physician, or formally trained scientist, likely violated federal procedures in revamping a key vaccine advisory committee. More recently the President has pushed to make the former owner of a plumbing business and home maintenance talk show host, head of the Department of Homeland Security.

He has also recently instructed the DOJ to investigate ActBlue a Democratic fund raising organization, and continues to file suits contesting his loss in the 2020 presidential election. The President also seemingly spends hours at night texting on his personal online platform, Truth Social, railing against these and other supposed antagonists. Equally concerning are his televised appearances - from the longest ramblingState of the Union Address in history, to spontaneous interactions with the press in hallways or on Air Force One - where any question can result in a verbal attack on the questioner or a diatribe against the "fake news" of mainstream media. All while commissioning a couple of gold commemorative coins depicting himself. Similar baubles cost between $1500 and $11,000.

These are not the behaviors of a man in tight control of his faculties. They reflect, rather, patterns of behavior that, were we to observe them in our own family members, would prompt us to seek advice from mental health professionals as to how we might best deal with these obvious signs of dementia.

Checking in From Dreamland

I continue to be fascinated by dreams, their capricious nature and the tantalizing possibilities of what we might discern from their engaging theater.

A recent one has remained with me in part for it's seeming deviation from what I have come to expect from these nocturnal visitations. In a way it mirrored a common dramatic disappointment. You may have experienced it. You have scraped together the current absurd cost of a big name performance - parallel to say, what, a live version of Burton and Taylor's in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, whatever that might be. You arrive at the theater, scurry inside, find your seats and open the playbill only to find the dreaded little slip of paper saying; "Tonight tonight Martha will be played by Beatrice Whosit and George will be played by Bartholomew Whatsome. You know the feeling. The understudies, striving mightily, are competent but you sense that they too feel the disappointment of the audience.

This dream was sort of like that. It was a narrative of no great import, but the casting was bizarre. I, naturally, played myself - well, my 30-40ish self, untroubled by the current twinges and lapses of memory that are my current companions. I am married, somewhat strangely, to a woman I had dated semi-seriously my freshman year of college. We had met at one of those "freshman mixers" that small liberal arts colleges were wont to provide. Apparently things had moved on from there. She had avoided multiple decades and still looked like her freshman self.

The story continued in that strange vein. We were debating the advisability of her parents - played by the parents of my oldest friend; who I had just visited in DC - adopting "our" dog, played by the Cockapoo mix I had while teaching in Wisconsin in the late 1970s. I do not recall the resolution, if there was one. Rather I simply awoke saying "Whoa! That was very, very, strange!"

So from where do these mysterious entr'actes arise, slipping between our waking realities? I suppose there are at least thousands of Ph.D dissertations, articles and books presenting their various experiments, explanations and theories. And were I still toiling in the halls of the academy, I would feel obligated to address the most compelling of them before advancing my interpretation. However, having left tenure behind me decades ago, I can cut directly to the chase - i.e. what I choose to believe.

As I have mentioned before I am particularly taken with the quantum mechanics notion of "many worlds." Or as I think about it - branching realities. Briefly, whenever we make a choice in our lives - where we go to school, what career we choose, with whom we fall in love, marry, have kids with, where we choose to live - those are all the path taken. The "many worlds" are created by all the paths not taken - and alternate versions of ourselves move on along those paths, into those many worlds.

I further choose to believe that those many worlds may not be as completely separate as the theoretical physicists might have us believe. That they may occasionally leak into each other. Things like deja vu, the feeling that you have been somewhere before, did something before, met someone before - maybe those are little bit of evidence of "worlds leaking." Huh? Maybe?

And dreams! Ah, there could be the mother lode. Perhaps dreams are like a sort of "many worlds blender." Those little leaks get whirled together in a strange psychic cake mix, and, when asleep, we cook it up into a dream that seems a single experience but is in, sort of reality, a hybrid, tri-bred, multi-bred blend of all the roads - both taken and not.

And that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Sleep well!

 

One Step at a Time

 Wikipedia tells us that: "A loggia is a covered, open-air gallery featuring columns or arches - typically featuring columns or arches." My better half knows I love architectural models so she gifted me this one a few Christmases ago:

And so I made it the center focus of the image I am currently working on called Lighting the Loggias. I have finished the loggias portion of the image:

And I am pretty much OK with it.  However I now need to deal with the rest of the image:

A lot of white space there, and I don't intend to leave any. I'm thinking something with a moon and clouds. Has to be at least dusk if not night. Otherwise why have the lamp posts, right? 

Anyhow, I'll keep you posted 😅

Magical Moments

 There is a magic I do not understand. I envy it, but do not understand it.

I have been reading To The Hilt, by Dick Francis (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1996.) As usual with Francis, the plotline features thoroughbred racing, horses, jockeys and such. Which is befitting for an author who, Wikipedia tells us: "after serving in the RAF, became a full-time jump-jockey, winning over 350 races and becoming champion jockey of the British National Hunt." But in this book, racing is eclipsed by artistry. Painting to be specific.

The protagonist is Alexander Kinloch, the sort of ne'er do well son of a prominent local family. But rather than swain about the countryside as is normal for the younger sons of minor gentry, Alex has taken up residence in a rough outbuilding where he earns a respectable living as an artist. His "money stream" comes from paintings of golfers and golf courses that he markets quite profitably to country clubs in England and the States.

However, he also works quite seriously in portraiture. And Francis devotes an equally serious amount of time describing Alex's work on one particular portrait. I do recommend the novel to you. It is a nice mystery. However, I won't spoil it for you with any discussion of the plot as the magic is in the description of Alex's work on the portrait. I can find no evidence that Francis ever dabbled in painting himself, however several sources credit his wife, Mary Margaret Brenchley, as his primary researcher. If that was her role for this work, she did an incredible job.

We following Alex's work on the through the preparation of the canvas, with gesso, and multiple layers of background color - acrylic, not oil which takes too long to dry - through multiple layers of glazes, preparatory sketches, and finally scratching through the layers of paint and glaze to reveal in the lower layers an effect that reveals the various - gradually aging - faces of the subject. To which the object of the portrait eventually responds "you have made me immortal."

It's not that I am unfamiliar with mysteries that foreground painting. I am currently reading The Bellotto Connection, the 29th book in Estelle Ryan's, entertaining and informative Genevieve Lenard series which features a young woman "on the spectrum" whose special talent is discerning truth, or the lack thereof, from peoples nonverbal cues. In each novel the caper centers around the works of a particular artist. [Yeah, right? 29 different artists some of whom I must admit I'd never heard.] 

Anyhow, in those novels the paintings are often discussed (by the secondary protagonist, a reformed art thief) in detail. But those explanations tend to focus on what is on the canvas - clues and indications of how the images might aid in catching the bad guys. How the artist came to create the images is only a minor consideration.

So I was enthralled with Francis's intricate and thorough description of how Alex came to create his images. Yet I must admit to having also been somewhat chagrined. It has taken me a great deal of time and introspection to assert that my images are "art."

Not so much, the description of Alex's processes would argue. He mixes and blends hues and textures to achieve his desired result. I am restricted to paper and the predetermined colors of my - admitted extensive - collection of markers.

So, I came away from Francis's novel feeling something like a "pretender" wasting hours on images that have no purpose.

But then my natural optimism bubbled to the surface and I remembered what I used to tell my students when they were wrestling with a creative assignment. I asserted that unless they intended to "go pro," and earn their living with their art, they should never compare their own efforts to the current GOATs, or those of history. The Greatest of All Times were not only exceptionally talented, they had, most often, invested years of training at the feet of equally exceptional practitioners to learn their craft.

That was not the objective of the assignments I gave them. Rather, I wanted them to explore what in the creative process expressed their feelings, brought what was inside out, and most importantly made them feel good, made them happy.

So I decided to listen to myself and remember that what is important isn't what the image shows, what it looks like on the page. Rather the value of the creative process is what you put into the exercise. The value for those of us who live, largely, outside the business of selling art, is in what we invest in the creation of our art, and what, in return, it gives to us.