At 90, he lost his life's work to rioters. Undaunted, he's starting over.

My friend, photographer Oleg Volk, alerted me to a tragedy that struck artist Ari Munzer in Minneapolis during the riots there last week.  Oleg says, "Back in 1996-97, he was my college advisor, one of two people who saved my educational career. He and I have been friends ever since."

A Minneapolis newspaper reports:

Wearing circular spectacles and suspenders that held up his loose trousers on his bony frame, 90-year-old artist Aribert Munzner stood outside his studio at the Ivy Arts Building in Minneapolis, watching friends, colleagues, former students and strangers carry out paint supplies and soggy cardboard boxes.

The boxes contained more than 60 years of work, damaged in a single night.

In the early hours of May 29, the roof of the Ivy — a 120-year-old building on S. 27th Avenue that once fabricated ornamental iron and now is home to more than 70 artist studios and small businesses — was ignited by sparks from the nearby Hexagon Bar, set ablaze in riots after the death of George Floyd.

Munzner, who goes by "Ari," explained the incident as if it were a scene from a comic book:

"One: Fire torch. Two: Big fire, spark, 150-year-old roof, wooden. Big fire. Fire people come, put out the fire. Big hole in roof. 1,000 gallons of beautiful Mississippi water came thundering down and I was at ground zero," he said, with an accent that sounded like a mix of New York, German and Irish.

. . .

Munzner is grappling with the loss of his many artworks, but his outlook on change is more fluid.

"I'm starting again because that's what I've been doing all my life," he said.

He was only 7 when his Jewish family fled Hitler's Germany in 1937 for Baghdad, where they had a family friend. In their new home, he learned Arabic from a Lebanese Jesuit priest. But when British forces invaded Iraq in 1941 to depose its Nazi-leaning regime, the family took off again, this time to New York City.

Munzner has eidetic memory, also known as photographic memory — "I don't have the ability to play with words — they jump like squirrels," he joked — so when he came to America he taught himself English by reading comic books.

"I learned how to say 'WOW' and 'BANG!' " he said, making explosive motions with his hands. "Superman and Captain Marvel told me how to be an American."

He came to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1955 for a short-term gig. Now he is an MCAD professor emeritus.

"We didn't have GPS back in '55, so I never found my way back to New York," he joked. "I ended up — gladly, actually — in the Upper Midwest."

There's more at the link.

Here's a video about Ari's work, recorded last year in his now-destroyed studio.

Ari's daughter Tamara has started a fundraiser to help her father recover what he can and rebuild his studio.  She writes:

Although money cannot replace any of the finished work or work in progress that was completely destroyed, money can help with the significant costs of damage remediation, replacing materials and tools, and moving into a new space.

Ari is still assessing the full extent of the water and smoke damage.

It's already clear that as part of the damage remediation, many of the finished works will need to be reframed and rematted. The costs of that will be high, his initial estimate is $10K-$20K for that alone.

Many supplies and materials were completely destroyed, as were some of his tools and equipment. The replacement costs could be up to $5K-$10K.

There will be costs associated with temporary storage,  moving, and setting up a new studio space. It will be difficult to find suitable space that is as affordable as his previous studio, where he was a longtime tenant with favorable terms.

All funds raised will go directly to him to be used to defray the costs of damage remediation, and of establishing a new studio space. Any amount from you is welcome at any time.

Ari's Work
Another way to support Ari, as always, is through acquiring his work. His web site, http://www.aribertmunzner.com/, documents much of his lifetime output, and includes a list of all currently available major and minor work. We will be updating those pages over the coming weeks and months as the damage assessment and remediation process unfolds; in the meantime, please do contact him to ask about any specific works that interest you.

Again, more at the link.

Because Ari is Oleg's friend, and I'd trust Oleg with my life if necessary, I'm motivated to donate in his support.  I'm even more motivated by my admiration for a man of 90 years of age who's prepared to "suck it up" and face the challenge of starting over.  I hope I could be as courageous and optimistic if that happened to me so late in life - but I doubt it.  The man's a marvel.

I'd like to invite readers who feel sympathy for the victims of the riots, to join me in supporting Ari.  Let's help to salvage at least some good out of the evil that was done in Minneapolis last week.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 10

There's quite a haul from the past week.

I love the pun in this next one.

More next week.




Peter

When the sheep bleat in unison, you know it's a cluster-flock

If there's one thing the series of crises in 2020 has illustrated, it's that the mainstream media and mainstream politicians in the United States are almost all being manipulated.  Few, if any, of their voices are genuinely independent.  Most of them - darn near all of them - manifest a controlling hand behind them, spreading a common message, demanding that everyone walk in lockstep to the beat of the same drummer.  Individuality, critical thinking and independent responses are not just discouraged, but regarded as social, political and psychic heresy - and heretics are to be cast out, shunned, cut off from society.

In saying this, please bear in mind that I'm neither Republican nor Democrat.  I vote for the person, not the party, and on principle, not on party platform.  I neither support nor condemn the President or any other politician.  I look at their policies, their performance in office, and (very important to me) their integrity as an individual.  I weigh those factors against each other and against the politician's opponent, and make my decision based on which better embodies and/or upholds the principles I stand for.  I won't be told who to support, or brainwashed into voting in lockstep with the wishes of the political class.

Unfortunately, that's intolerable in today's America.  If you, or I, or anybody, dares to think for ourself, we're a threat.  We have to be bludgeoned and dragooned into letting others do the thinking for us.  Facts and independent judgment no longer matter.  Both sides of the political spectrum demand such unthinking loyalty, but it's far more vocal and outspoken on the left than on the right.

The Federalist sums this up with regard to the mainstream media.

It seems no great event or upheaval in our national life can pass now without the media lying to our faces about it.

They lied about the Trump campaign colluding with Russia in 2016. They lied about the Mueller probe and Brett Kavanaugh and former national security adviser Mike Flynn. They lied about Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president and the impeachment farce that ensued. They lied about the coronavirus and the lockdowns and the White House response. And now they’re lying about the riots.

In recent days we’ve heard a steady drumbeat of lies, distortions, and disingenuousness from the mainstream media about almost every aspect of the unrest now gripping American cities. The deceit is almost too pervasive and amorphous to describe, but I’m going to try anyway.

Over the weekend we were told, for example, that the looting and violence was being instigated not by left-wing anarchists and antifa groups but by the media’s favorite villains: white supremacists. CNN, whose Atlanta offices were vandalized Friday, went on and on—without a shred of evidence to back it up—about how white supremacists might be infiltrating the protests and stirring up trouble. The New York Times, in a report that even quoted a senior police official in New York City saying outside anarchist groups were coordinating mayhem before the protests began, nevertheless veered into a long aside about how far-right “accelerationists” were hoping the unrest would bring about a long-sought second civil war.

By Monday, no one was talking about the white supremacist agitators anymore. The media had moved on to better, more plausible lies.

. . .

[Repeated incidents illustrate] a broader pattern of opposition to Trump that the media has maintained for years, that whatever might be happening in the country, whether a global pandemic or mass rioting, the most important part of the story is always that Trump is behaving badly—that he’s lying, misleading, undermining democratic norms, tweeting mean things, whatever. Nothing, not even nationwide riots, are more important than pushing that narrative.

You see the media’s obsession with this narrative everywhere, no matter what the actual facts of a story might be ... After Trump’s Monday night walk through Lafayette Park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, the media breathlessly reported stories about violent Park Police clearing peaceful protestors with tear gas. After nearly 24 hours of endless tweets, articles, and cable news stories claiming protestors were tear-gassed for Trump’s “photo op,” the Park Police information officer disproved all prior reports confirming, “No tear gas was used by USPP officers or other assisting law enforcement partners.”

One could go on and on with examples like this. Get on Twitter right now and you’re bound to find fresh examples posting every hour as reporters and pundits lie about events that are unfolding in real time.

There's more at the link.

The way the mainstream media march in lockstep, to the bidding of their corporate and political masters, was very well illustrated in 2018 when Sinclair Broadcast Group (a conservative-leading corporation) made its many TV stations read the identical manifesto on air, making a mockery of their "editorial independence".  (Yes, this was right-wing, rather than left-wing - as I said, the problem exists on both sides of the political spectrum.)  See and hear for yourself.

The resulting mashup made headlines, and rightly so - but those headlines failed to point out that precisely the same thing was, and is, being done by opponents of the President.  The problem is universal.

This reality is very clearly illustrated in recent mainstream media news headlines and reports of the rioting.  Almost every one circles back to lay the blame for the unrest at the President's feet, despite the fact that he, personally, had nothing whatsoever to do with it.  The news media are taking their marching orders from their puppet-masters, both directly through private channels and through sites such as Common Dreams, Think Progress, etc.  They're also influenced by discussion among activists on sites such as Democratic Underground.  The pattern is very clear.  Look at the "leads" and "talking points" being generated on those Web sites, and you'll see them reflected in news reports and opinion pieces in the mainstream media within hours - sometimes within minutes.  The same goes for public response to those reports.  Those commenting on them all too often parrot the "party line" rather than display independent thought.  Everybody has to be "on message".  Anyone straying from the "party line" - such as the New York Times publishing Republican Senator Tom Cotton's views on the riots - is rapidly cut down to size by savage criticism, and forced back into line.

Fortunately, this simplifies our response.  When we see almost every mainstream media report saying the same thing, and blaming the same people;  when we hear almost every politician parroting the same talking points;  when we can't hear the still, small voice of reason over the clamor bidding us not to think, but simply to believe and do as we're told . . . then we know we're being misled and manipulated.

The cure is to ignore all those influences, get the facts for ourselves - and yes, that can be hard work sometimes, digging through the dross to find the few nuggets of truth available - and then make up our own minds.  Only by doing so can we be the responsible citizens this country so desperately needs right now.

We should also cherish the few objective voices that still exist in the media.  There are a few.  I personally have come to value the reporting of John Solomon and Sharyl Attkisson.  Both try to be as honest and objective as possible.  They don't mince their words or pull their punches, and they take on both sides of the political spectrum as and when necessary.  That's all too rare these days.  (I also value the opinion of Tucker Carlson, who's not a reporter but a commenter on the news.  He's conservative, but by no means lockstep Republican, and has criticized both left and right in his analyses.  YMMV about his opinions, of course.)

Let's conclude with Sharyl Attkisson telling us "how astroturf, or fake grassroots movements funded by political, corporate, or other special interests, very effectively manipulate and distort media messages".  It's a very good talk, and worth your time, IMHO.

Consider how such influences are currently at work in the news media, and how they're portraying our current crises. They're doing their best to shape and guide our thoughts, rather than allow or encourage us to think for ourselves. Caveat emptor.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 9

A harvest from the past seven days.

More next week.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 8

Another weekly roundup.

And this one isn't funny, just infuriating because it's true.

Peter