Search Results for: show your soul posters

9 February

The Show Your Soul Campaign, Back Out Friday To Main Street And Beyond

by Jon Katz
The Show Your Soul Campaign

Friday, Maria and I return to the streets of our town and some nearby towns to put up her “Show Your Soul” posters, an artist’s statement to the world about how to live in times of discord and anger and argument. Maria made a “Show Your Soul” quilt last week which she was reluctant to sell, but did.

This is her art, and she can explain better than me what it means. She is getting a flood of requests to purchase the posters – she will sell that at cost – and will deal with the posters when the returns from India in several weeks. She can’t deal with it now, she leaves for Kolkata on Sunday.

I am excited to be the driver and helper for this project. To me, the poster is the antithesis of rage and argument, or paranoia and hysteria and polarization. “Show Your Soul” to me means to live by example, not rage, to live your life with love and compassion, to support what you believe is good in your own individual way.

To this end, and at her own expense, Maria put her art out there and moved her feet. Real politics are not generally done in Facebook arguments, but out in the real and physical world.

That is what she is doing through her art, it is what I am doing through my writing, life and photography. For both of us, our politics are out lives, we live by example, not argument. This is what these beautiful posters – featuring one of Maria’s favorite goddesses – are about. You can follow this story on her blog. More tomorrow. We hit the other side of Main Street and beyond..

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8 February

Show Your Soul: A Public Statement

by Jon Katz
Show Your Soul

Artists in cities have always put their art – posters, murals, graffiti – up on urban walls, but not so often in the country. Maria created soe “Show Your Soul” posters, inspired by a goddess in a quilt she recently sold. For me, the poster suggests that it is better to show our souls than to argue and hate.

I think it is a commentary about the divisiveness and anger that has infected our political system and divided us so badly. It is not political in the sense of being an argument or taking sides, it is political in the sense of being a statement that people will have to figure out for themselves. I think it is gift to others.

We went into town and walked five or six blocks along Main Street, Maria had her posters and her staple gun. Art like that gets people to think, because it makes no political statement or argument, rather it asks people to think and to show their true souls.

I was a lovely walk, and we’ll go back to Main Street and some other places tomorrow to put up some posters. When Maria returns from India in a few weeks, she plans to offer some of these posters for sale. She has a lot of requests for them already, but can’t get to it right now.

This is not something we have done before, all the more reason to like doing it.

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8 February

Show Your Soul – Going Up In Our Town Today Everywhere

by Jon Katz
Show Your Soul

Something very new for Maria (me too), Maria had these “Show Your Soul” posters made up and this afternoon we are going to distribute them around our town and in this area. They are in response to the anger and divisiveness in the country, her own personal statement. Maria and I are both committed to living by example, not by argument. She  explains it further on her blog.

She wants to hang them up in public places and spaces, I’m going along to drive.

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My Blog
10 December

“Filtering The Effluvia:”Becoming Who I Am: Revelation, I Want To Create Better Art, And Finally Accept My Vocation

by Jon Katz

We came home today to a pouring rain that will turn into heavy snow in the morning. We are excited to be home.

The weekend brought a neat new motel ($89 for the night), the discovery of a new and excellent Korean Restaurant, and a powerful musical production that offers gifted young blacks a chance to speak about their culture and the impact Step Dancing has had on their college lives.

Watching some dancers and singers last night in Massachusetts, I heard one of the singers say during a Q&A afterward that he loved the production because “I want to create better art.” This rang a big bell in my head.” He was so sure, so young, of his life mission.  It took me decades.

I turned to Maria when we got back to the motel and said this is what I want; this is why I am radically altering the comments page on my blog. ” I want what that dancer wanted: to improve my art, writing, and photography. Next to you, that is where my heart and soul are.”

Maria started to cry; I wanted to cry. I’ll save it for meditation.

Thanks to my faithful readers for recognizing the idea; they know it will make me better, happier, and more comfortable.

I’m re-structuring the blog comments with Mannix Marketing to limit the blog posts to readers I know who will or already have committed themselves to being civil and thoughtful.

Three things contributed to this compelling realization about what I want to do in life: Maria, a therapist, my blog, and my photography all led me to accept that making art that touches people is what I want to do.

I don’t want to spend my time arguing with people, drowning in their often silly corrections, or being shamed by people who have no idea what  Dyslexia is or how it affects the writing of a prolific daily blog.

This is not anybody’s problem but mine. The rude and intrusive social media messaging – believe me, it’s not just me – is an ugly distraction, and I won’t accept it in my life any longer.

I know what I want to do, and I plan on doing it.

I’m grateful to that gifted singer last night for setting me straight. Very little in my life is more satisfying than improving and sharing my art with people who notice. I’ve learned what is essential in life and what isn’t. Having a blog and being open doesn’t mean I have to be a toilet bowl for broken people; it means the freedom to do the best possible work and improve it.

No regular or civil blog reader will be put on any list or blocked from posting. The pompous and the peckerhead will have to go somewhere else. I reject the self-serving (unhinged people) idea that writing openly on my blog gives people the right to be cruel and dishonest about me and my work and life.

I am worth more than that and entitled to more than that. So are you.

My readers have been urging me to do this for some time now, but I am working to know them and learning to trust them rather than shut them out. There is some advice I need, and some I don’t. Yes, I’m complicated. Sorry.

Today, I begin pruning and blocking the rude, the addicted correctors, the people who can’t handle a Dyslexic blogger, or who are pompous, polluted by politics, hateful, or cruel and have nothing purposeful to do.

Blog Reader Amy W. calls this decision “filtering the effluvia.” I loved that. The definition of the word is “unpleasant smell or exhalation, as of gaseous waste or decaying matter.” This perfectly captures the people who exploit the Internet’s freedom to hurt others and violate their space.

That wipes out a massive chunk of the people on social media, which has gotten much worse since 2016.

Even when disagreeing, my readers are never malicious, judgmental, invasive, or rude. That’s how I know they are regular readers.

They don’t have to do anything to remain on the blog. I believe the Web people can set it up so that regular readers or posters can post whenever they want. We’ll take care of the others and make them disappear or cut off.

This may take a few weeks, given the holiday season. Still, it was a significant revelation, a thunderbolt last night, to finally come to terms with what will fulfill the dream of a safe and calming place to go every morning, every day, to feel grounded and hopeful in our tumultuous world.

I got a score or more of messages, all thanking me for doing this. I get it.

I know this is better for me; I am coming to understand it is better for all of you of good hearts as well. This change is not about disagreement.  I love to argue, as is obvious. The problem is contempt, lies, and cruelty. Civil conflict is fun and suitable for all of us. I can skip the lies and death threats.

You’ll see the results immediately. You will not see another hostile, rude, or cruel message on my blog posts as of right now. I can do this manually until Mannix can change the software when they get to it. I don’t want to wait.

We had a sweet time at the Mass MoCA Museum in North Adams, Mass; last night, we went to see Maxine Lyle’s new work, Step Show: The Musical, a two-act theatrical product, hoping to get to Broadway. The musical is a two-act theatrical production with the famed dance program Jacob’s Pillow. It is a work in progress that showcases the African-American step dance and its significant role in Black college life.

The dancing and singing were both powerful and deeply touching.

I see now – my readers are most often way ahead of me – that I am accepting my Vocation as an artist; my heart and soul are yearning to be a better writer and photographer. I am working on both things all of the time. There is no happening other than death that will make me stop wanting to be better.

I want to focus on making my blog a creative, successful, and uplifting place. I’m very close. The blog is the home of the Peaceable Kingdom, two people whose vocations are now clear and which we are both working hard to fulfill, and of Zip, the dogs, and our beautiful animals.

I’ve been working towards my vocation for some time now. Behind this understanding of Vocation is a truth my ego doesn’t want to hear because it threatens the very ego itself – making money and being powerful.

Almost everyone I know has a life different from the one they want, from the true self. I was one of them.

Every poet, artist, or writer knows this: there is a vast difference between what I was taught, how I put up so many protective masks, and self-serving fiction and ran from my true self. It’s time to let my life speak for itself while I still have a life. This has brought me great happiness, not money.

“It takes time and hard experience to sense the difference between the two, ” writes Henri Nouwin, “to sense that running beneath the experience I call my life, there is a deeper and truer life waiting to be acknowledged. That fact alone makes listening to your life a difficult counsel to follow. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that from our first days in  school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take all  our clues about living from the people and power around us.”

I’ve learned in my spiritual searching that the idea of a “vocation” is not just for religious people seeking God. It’s for everyone who has a dream, wishes to be creative, wants to live a creative life, and listens to their heart and soul.  It means living up to the promise of my life, not surrendering to a culture that workshops only money and this curious idea about security.

I am fortunate to live with an artist who understands and lives this idea alongside me. She has helped to turn my life around just be existing.

Because I started broken and troubled, it has taken me a long time to get there. I was often distracted and derailed by opening up my life and writing about it. Many people responded to this and were very clearly threatened by it. Instead of sympathizing, it too often got angry. I took the bait.

The damage of the troll (you don’t have to be a young geek to troll) is that they hate sincerity, honesty, or empathy. It seems to threaten their existence, their new power to hurt.

They have been taught and are being taught that compassion and love are weak, hypocritical, and the opposite of them. It isn’t personal once you get used to it – none of these people know one thing about me or care – but it certainly can feel pintimate I don’t have enough testosterone; they often got me down and left me feeling poorly about myself. I’m done with it.

I felt bad enough about myself already. After 2016, strangers suddenly appeared like a horde of mosquitoes, swarming and striking. They drive many people into secrecy and silence. They soiled the idea that respecting diverse opinions was a precious American tradition. Their Vocation is cruelty and grievance.

I can promise you I will not be one of them.

My Vocation now is to move forward with my life positively and learn how to make better art, and I am working hard on this, using my writing and photography. Honesty plays a huge role in this, and so do identity and dignity.

It’s not simple being creative; it’s not simple being a troll; it takes a lot of work to be either. The point is humanity.

It’s also a choice.

I don’t wish to be a troll or to fight with damaged and angry people. It’s a complete waste of time, energy and life.

I want to create an exceptional blog that helps comfort and touch people through tough times. I want it to include beautiful and authentic photographs and words. I want to be honest about myself. I know of enough flaws to keep me going for a long time.

I don’t want to fight with people who care nothing about me or know nothing about me.

Earlier this year, I was astonished to invite eight people who read the blog regularly to a weekly Zoom meeting with me when she made it. I wanted to reconnect with the humanity I know exists in America and on the Internet.

The first eight people who signed up are still with me, and I hope you newcomers will be with me for years. They are lovely, honest, warm, intelligent, funny and wise. It was almost magical how this first group of people became the best possible group of people to talk to every week.

How foolish of me to mistrust the people who follow, know, and support me. I am learning to trust and believe in the many good people in my life. I’ve often felt alone.  How self-destructive it is to focus on the lost and the angry. How sad to be the person who lives to harm strangers. All my young life, I fought with hostile and bullying people.

Fighting back is a tough habit to shake.

The blog readers on my Zoom have done much more for me than they perhaps know.

They are restoring my faith in humanity and helping to teach me – a notoriously willful and stubborn man – that humanity is essential and exists. We talk about everything; we differ in many ways,  and there is never a second of hostility or cruelty.

There is nothing for me in anger and cruelty. It accomplishes nothing other than the diminishment of the people messed up enough to embrace both.

We have all been manipulated into thinking the world and the country are falling apart. This is false, a horror pushed by extreme ideologies to keep us angry and hateful towards one another so we won’t turn on them. The Army Of Good reminds me almost daily that there are so many good people worldwide.

You will never see them on the news.

I’m clear now for the first time in my life. Maria was immensely relieved and pleased by this decision; she matters to me more than anyone.

I often talk to people who tell me they want to do what Maria and I did – leave our vocation and creativity to the fullest, even if it took a while and cost too much money. But almost none of these people can break free and take the plunge. That’s up to them, and I don’t judge them or tell others what to do.

But I hope some of them learn what I have learned: not to listen for guidance from everyone except from within. That’s where the answers are. Nothing in life is simple or easy, especially being cruel to people and angry about life.

I’m not going to end this way. Thanks for listening, supporting, and understanding. I think I’m a pretty good man after all.

 

 

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One Man's Truth
9 November

One Man’s Truth: All You Need To Know About Politics This Week. The Status Quo Wins, Nothing Changes! Take A Breath And Go Do Some Good

by Jon Katz

This week’s bottom line is that there is good and bad news. The good news is that things will stay pretty much the same. The bad news is that things will stay pretty much the same.

And yes, it could have been much worse. But I don’t give up my experience and my call for perspective.

I was taught to understand politics in a detached, objective, and hopefully helpful way without being sucked into the current sad whirlwind of hatred and eternal argument.

It is possible. If you spend time with politicians, it’s wise not to take them or their antics too seriously.

So I want to sum up what was important about Tuesday’selection.

First, it’s essential to understand that no significant poll or “mainstream” news organization predicted or anticipated the results of Tuesday’s election.

There is little point in paying too much attention to either.

I find that liberating. I can think for myself, and I’m stunned to say I’m right  more than they are. You probably are too. There is something wrong with that system.

Cutting sharply back on the news is also healthy and builds perspective.

First off, the country remains bitterly and almost evenly divided and deadlocked. Although it sounds like everything is changing, the truth is that nothing is changing or has changed for some years.

Once again, the Republican Party managed the art of  Immaculate Self-Destruction, the motto of any Donald Trump political adventure.

He is doing to his party just what he did to the 2020 campaign and his casinos, only this time, Daddy is l dead. There are, fortunately for Trump, other billionaires to bail him out.

The weird truth about Trump is that if not for him, the country would probably have a Republican President who beat Joe Biden, who was never very popular, then or now.

And if grim but savvy Mitch McConnell had chosen the candidates for Georgia and Pennsylvania, the Republicans would have taken over the government and Congress on Tuesday.

Trump was and is the very best friend the Democratic Party has had in years.

The more he denies that he lost the 2020 election, the more he loses the other ones. He has become his worst fear – a loser. I’m betting he can’t handle that.

Millions of people love Donald Trump and will always love him. May God have mercy on them; they deserve better than this. Perhaps Ron DeSantis can give them what they want.

In a year when there should have been a big sweep, Trump, his followers, and acolytes managed to scare off enough independents and ordinary voters to turn it all into a messy draw and a victory for the opposition.

In politics, you can often win by losing.

We are more divided than ever, but we are not yet suicidal as a nation.

Since Trump does not believe he can fail, even as he does, again and again,  he will be around for a while, making noise and stirring some hatred and living in his fantasy of the world.

It’s getting old, and it’s getting sad,  just like him. In 2016, he was new and excited, something different.

Now, he’s old fish, as exciting as Dragnet, a National Headache, and embarrassment, leading his party right over the cliff. DeSantis is not the winter, the excitement.

I still don’t know what being “woke” means, but DeSantis has turned it into the hottest national movement of the hour.

The Republicans will still take control of the House and have pledged to halt, disrupt or eliminate any or all of the significant initiatives or decisions the Biden Administration has made or wants to go. That won’t be possible, nor can they abandon Ukraine and expect to win the next election.

Ukraine is much more popular than they are.

The news will be upsetting, often wrong, and maybe even worse. I’m leaving it behind.

The Democrats will almost certainly retain control of the Senate, largely thanks to Donald Trump’s poor choices in two or three of his Senate endorsements.

The election of John Fetterman of Pennsylvania to the United States Senate was the single most significant race of the evening. Futterman is authentic and very appealing.

Fetterman might have been a creation of Studs Turkel or Kurt Vonnegut, his charm is not that he is smooth, beautiful, or perfect, but that is none of those things.

He is just himself, which is stunningly original in American politics, primarily when campaigning against a carpetbagger millionaire who doesn’t know the names of local supermarket chains or the football teams in your state.

Fetterman is the closest thing to the anti-Trump I could imagine.

He may be the ugliest Senator to go to Washington in modern times and, indeed, the most original – tattooed and promising to wear shorts on the U.S. Senate floor.

His campaign staff was the most innovative and agile of any I know.

From the first, he used social media to tag his opponent  (accurately) as a carpetbagger and elitist. Those claims work best when there is some truth, even if there isn’t.

Fetterman was extremely vulnerable after his stroke and his painful debate. For a week or so, he was behind in those polls. In his struggle, he seemed more heroic than crippled.

He bounced back by being honest and truthful and very, very real. We all know John Fetterman, an everyman, and if there is a message for the democrats, it is to look for real, not radical.

The second most significant happening of the evening was the end of Donald Trump as an influential leader to be dreaded.

He is essential and always dangerous, but the handwriting is on the wall.

His party can win without him but no longer with him. In politics, that’s fatal.

The other most crucial race was Governor DeSantis versus Donald Trump, already bitter rivals. It seems DeSantis is five times smarter than Trump. He has managed to be Trump while, at the same time, not being Trump at all. Quite a hat trick.

He is Trump without the Trump and the drama. Wait until Trump insists that his donors and followers choose between the two or pay the price. I’m not ready to bet on that one. And believe me,  Trump is foolish and ego-centric enough to do it.

DeSantis beat Trump’s brains out Tuesday; he did everything most of Trump’s chosen feet kissers could not do, and he won big.

DeSantis is the most popular governor in Florida’s history and the likely Republican Candidate for President. Trump endorsed him at the very last minute,  but it was irrelevant and false.

DeSantis won bigger than anybody.

Trump’s graceful response to the Governor’s victory was to call him “DeSanctimonious” and threaten him with revealing dirty details about his life if he runs against him.

DeSantis assembled the perfect coalition imaginable in America in 2022: women, suburbanites, Republicans,  Latinos, the young, and the old. Republican strategists were drooling about DeSantis all over cable and social media Wednesday.

No rational Republicans – and there are still quite a few – would choose another Trump circus and doomed national campaign over DeSantis’s intelligent, disciplined, and fabulously expensive triumph.

He had so much campaign money $90 million was left over.

Trump’s time is ending. DeSantis’s time has just begun, and he’s almost half Trump’s age.

A coalition like the one DeSantis built would carry the country, like it or not. Imagine what would have happened if Trump were that smart.

But it’s fragile in this environment, and if we are learning anything about American politics, they can change on a bitcoin. DeSantis is highly controversial and often extreme.

Now, he’s a target in a very new way. His opponents have years to peck away at him.

DeSantis’s big and perhaps only mistake is that while he is tuned into the Florida zeitgeist, he is too extreme and stiff to win the presidency against the right Democratic candidate.

Unlike Trump, a born showman, DeSantis has the personality of a telephone pole.

The right Democrat to run would not, in my opinion, be Joe Biden.

He’s older than me, and I couldn’t last a week in that job.

Biden needs to step out of the way. His time is over too.

But he is also a miracle worker, and I have to give him some credit.

To have blocked the mythical Republican “wave” against precedent and all odds amidst inflation, obstruction, war, and division is one of the premier political achievements of modern times.

There wasn’t a single pundit I know of that saw all this coming.

Polls and pundits have become almost useless in modern times.

People do not tell the truth to pollsters, which is no mystery in a bitterly divided nation where death threats often follow an honest opinion.

Still, there was a lot to feel good about Wednesday morning. The election deniers and voter thieves did not have nearly as good a night as they wanted.

The great red rave turned into a pink trickle.

Although this angry and disturbing movement really shouldn’t be a surprise. Jefferson predicted it, and so did H.L. Mencken:

“As democracy is perfected,'” wrote Mencken, “when the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and a downright moron will adorn the White House.”

The Senate too.

However infamous, he’s diminished. All you need to know about Mr. Trump this week is that Tuesday night, he hosted a lavish election celebration party at his palace, Mar-A-Lago.

He never spoke or said a word to the crowd gathered to hear his victory speech. There was nothing to say.

By this time next year, he will be spending much of his life in court, back whining on Twitter with his new friend and supporter Elon Musk (if ever two billionaires deserved one another), watching his company and fortune dwindle, not out bloviating under the lights on the campaign trail.

Look out for those DeSantis caps and posters.

Let’s keep some perspective.

The Apocalypse is not here, and neither is Armageddon. People who call themselves progressives might consider giving up on hysteria and doing some door-to-door campaigning.

Rough times are ahead; the country is slowly but surely regaining some sanity.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is not the problem or the danger. Last week, she promised some constitutes that if the Republicans take office, “Ukraine will never get another dollar.”

In the long run, or even in the short run, she is a pimple on the ass of our civic life. She is not the future. H.L. Mencken called politicians like that Boobus Americanus.

They are an integral part of our political history.

If Marjorie Taylor Greene bothers you, check out young Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, who makes Rep. Greene sound like John Adams. He said this about the Republican proposals for health care:

“Don’t get sick,” he said. “That’s right, don’t get sick. If you have insurance, don’t get sick. If you don’t have insurance, don’t get sick. If you’re sick, don’t get sick.”

A policy for the ages. What’s in the water down there?

The Boobus Americans have always been around; they will always be around. We just never paid so much attention to them before.

Everything Greene says she stands for was rejected on Tuesday. The Republic stands. Ukraine will win. If you haven’t been paying attention, they already have. The Republicans will not abandon the war any more than Vladimir Putin did.

This week again shattered the conventional wisdom we are being taught to believe.

A Revolution is going on, but it is not Donald Trump’s or Marjorie Taylor Greene’s.

Republicans supported Democrats, and Democrats supported Republicans.

Party didn’t matter as much as we were told it would, and Americans are not the bovine cows we were assured they are. People made their own choices; they made their own decisions.

For all his cynicism, Mencken loved Democracy, and I think a lot of Americans agreed with him this week:

“I believe it is better to tell the truth than a lie,” he wrote. “I believe it is better to be free than to be enslaved. And I believe it is better to know than be ignorant.”

Tuesday night suggests that more and more people understand that that is what they are voting for.

The people gave Democracy and the two-party system, and the love and compassion movement another opportunity to save themselves.

Hold your breath and pray that Democrats and Republicans will choose and elect a President who can lead us back to Church.

In the meantime, my idea is to step back,  take a deep breath and do some good.

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