GOD DAMN AMERICA

GOD DAMN AMERICA – ESPECIALLY PENNSYLVANIA
By Greg Palast
Sunday, March 23, 2008, Forest City, PA ]

The kids were snoozing so I drove along the back roads skirting the Lackawanna River on a dawn hunt for black coffee and a newspaper.

I think even Norman Rockwell would have found this place too sticky sweet, too postcard: the weathered barns, the fallow fields perfectly snow-frosted; red, white and blue flags already up on the clapboard farmhouses and the white-washed church in the valley already full for Easter prayers.

At a gas station, I scored the paper and coffee, spilled some on the front page – the closest thing I’ve got to a religious ritual – then parked in front of a row of insanely pretty salt-box houses shining like mad teeth on the river bank.

One was missing a pick-up in the driveway; its screen door was left half-open, and there was a letter taped to the window. The Sheriff’s Notice of eviction. Another foreclosure.

God damn America.

I know that’s what Obama’s spiritual guide would say.

But why? It seems likes He’s already done a pretty good job of damning these United States.

And He seems to have really taken it out on this corner of Pennsylvania.

The gargantuan Bethlehem steel works have dwindled to a few robot-operated mills controlled from Mumbai, India. The only remainders of nearby Carbondale’s mining industry are in display cases at the ageing Coal Inn. But you could still get out by selling your home to ski tourists from New York – until this year when mortgage markets turned cancerous.

That leaves Forest City’s one industry, lumbering – which we can kiss goodbye since a recent ruling by the NAFTA board which allows the import of cheap Canadian wood.

Some local kid has made the paper having been thrown, helmet first, into the volcano called Iraq. The Scranton Times-Tribune, two pages after the photo of a priest blessing a bowl of who knows what, noted that three soldiers killed in yesterday’s bombing are, “pushing the death toll in the five-year conflict to nearly 4,000” – which is true if you don’t count Iraqi dead. But Someone must be counting them. (From way up in heaven, I wonder if we look like a nation of Christians – or an empire of Romans.)

Phil Ochs, before he killed himself, wrote,

“This is a land full of power and glory,
Beauty that words cannot recall.
But her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom.
Her glory shall rest on us all.”

Whatever.

It’s a difficult place to be an atheist, in this America, surfeited as it is on every vista with signs of His overwhelming grace and His exasperated wrath. It’s as if the Lord Himself is just as confused and frustrated and disappointed as the rest of us by blessings so abused.

There’s one consolation. He has apparently granted Pennsylvanians the privilege, come April 22, of choosing which Democrat will lose in November.

Which may not mean much to Sandy Ryder on whom the spirit of Easter has landed like a ton of bricks. Sandy, says the flyer tacked up at the Bingham diner, was, “Recently diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer.” She’s a “Single mother of two – Tony and Brandon – and Grandmother of one – Jason.”

And there they were in a photocopied portrait, the earnest elder son and little Jason to her right, the young slacker (Tony? Brandon?) slouched to her left. The town’s hawking a benefit for Sandy, $10 at the door, “including Food and Beverage” and a “Chinese auction.”

(I’ll bet Al Qaeda could pick up some recruits here – if Osama would offer health insurance.)

Whatever. This is, after all, Holy Week, which marks the anniversary of the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, the day the giant oil corporation soaked 1,200 miles of Alaska’s coast with crude sludge. March 24 marks 19 years since the grounding and 19 years since Exxon’s promise to compensate the ruined fishermen. You should watch the 19-year-old video-tape of Exxon’s man in Alaska. I especially like the part where he tells the fishermen, “You have had some good luck – and you don’t realize it."

I know some of the fishermen on the TV footage, like the Anderson family, Eyak Natives. I can tell you, the Eyak don’t feel so lucky, still waiting for the Supreme Court to act on Exxon’s latest stall on payment. They’ve seen plenty of Sheriff’s Notices these past 19 years.

So Happy Easter.

George Bush tells us he’s, “feeling just fine.” And we should be glad for him, I suppose.

Bush ends his most belligerent speeches by saying, “God bless America.”

So, why hasn’t He?

Maybe you can tell us, Mr. President: Why hasn’t He?
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Greg Palast is the author of the NY Times best-selling books Armed Madhouse and Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Read his reports at www.GregPalast.com

Rockwell exhibit to travel cross-country

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071119/ap_en_ot/traveling_rockwell

Rockwell exhibit to travel cross-country
By THOMAS J. SHEERAN, Associated Press Writer
Mon Nov 19, 2007

A traveling exhibit of Norman Rockwell works opens a cross-country tour Saturday at the Akron Art Museum and highlights the beloved artist's growing acceptance by a mainstream art community that had long spurned him as too kitschy and commercialized.

The rarely circulated works from the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., include 41 oil paintings and tear sheets of more than 320 of Rockwell's nostalgic, often patriotic Saturday Evening Post magazine covers chronicling a half-century of America.

The exhibit, the first in the galleries added with the museum's soaring Coop Himmelb(l)au-designed expansion that opened in July, continues through Feb. 3.

It will travel to the Orlando Museum of Art from March 1-May 26, the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va., from Nov. 8, 2008-Feb. 1, 2009, and the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., from Nov. 14, 2009-Feb. 7, 2010.

Rockwell fans will see many of their favorites, including "The Discovery," in which a wide-eyed boy finds a Santa Claus suit in an upstairs bedroom, "No Swimming," with fleeing boys pulling on their clothes, and "Triple Self Portrait," with Rockwell looking at himself in a mirror as he paints his somewhat younger-looking portrait.

Paintings are mounted low on the wall, allowing visitors to look at many of Rockwell's characters eye-to-eye. The Saturday Evening Post covers cascade down the gallery wall, decade by decade, marking wars, holidays, romantic moments and the surprise treasures of everyday life.

"He had a way of seeing the best in us," said Rockwell museum director Laurie Norton Moffatt, who came to Akron to see the exhibit installation. "I think that shines through in his characters and his people and his storytelling scenes, which are filled with hope and optimism, that relentless optimism that is part of the American character and the American spirit."

But are down-home illustrations that appeal to Main Street really great art? The art world increasingly is coming to view Rockwell as an artist who captured America in tender, sometimes humorous moments.

"We're starting to realize that he was one of America's Old Masters and he probably represents the 20th century as well as any American artist," said Louis Zona, director of the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio.

Zona has witnessed Rockwell's box-office appeal. Last year, the Butler paid $1.6 million for its first Rockwell painting, "Lincoln the Railsplitter," a 7-foot canvas portrait, and museum attendance skyrocketed.

"It's been magic," Zona said. "I don't think I'm exaggerating when I tell you it has probably doubled our attendance. The response has just been amazing."

At the Indianapolis Museum of Art, visitors notice immediately if the staff moves its Rockwell, "The Love Song," with a swooning young woman listening as two old men play a clarinet tune.

Rockwell's appeal comes from his near-universal recognition, said Harriet G. Warkel, curator of American Art before 1945 at the Indianapolis museum. When museum visitors stand in front of a Rockwell work, "They almost do not need you to tell them the name of that artist because they can identify with him," she said.

Warkel attributes that to the connection people make with Rockwell, his characters and his story scenes. "He has a sensitivity to who people are and how they react in certain situations, and he adds this element of humor that is just instantly recognizable without making fun of people," she said.

Rockwell fans can expect to broaden their appreciation of Rockwell when they see his original works, said Mitchell Kahan, director of the Akron museum.

"People really don't know Norman Rockwell," he said. "They know reproductions of his works. They have not seen the original oil paintings and they are totally gorgeous, exquisite and magnificent. They are works of great art and taste."

Warkel said an original creates a different experience than a reproduction.

"It speaks to you in a different manner," she said. "First of all, the colors are more vibrant, there's more texture to the canvas and the artist's hand is always evident in it."

Kahan said a re-evaluation of Rockwell's talent has occurred as art experts and museum directors who had frowned on Rockwell's commissioned work for magazines and corporations have gained an appreciation for his work.

"In the mid-20th century, abstract art sort of triumphed over figurative art. After World War II, people who were doing figurative art were thought to be old fashioned," Kahan said. "Today we have a much more open-minded view about what constitutes important art."

That re-elevation has led to an accession squeeze for art museums: Some who spurned Rockwell as too kitschy now find they can't afford to buy increasingly popular Rockwell works or can't find a seller.

"It's been a very quick re-evaluation, a very quick change in attitude and many museums are left in the lurch," Kahan said.
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On the Net:

Akron Art Museum: http://www.akronartmuseum.org

Norman Rockwell Museum: http://www.nrm.org