0911

September 11, 2022 

In bed at 10, and woke up at 3:11 from a vivid dream of participating in a panel of some sort considering the professional behavior of an employee/agent accused of bad judgment or violating or deviating from some rule or protocol in dealing with persons he encountered in his work.  Unsure of what exactly he was accused of and of what exactly was our role on the panel but the dream was very vivid and a bit disturbing or stimulating somehow.  In any case, I lay in bed until 3:40, thoughts flitting like the bait bucket minnows.  Gave up and got up but hopefully will be back in bed before dawn.  Rain expected in the next hour or two may help me get to sleep again.. . .  Nodded off on the recliner after reading the morning papers, drinking a cup of day-old coffee, ending up back in bed at 6:15 and sleeping till 8:30.

    21 years ago today I was sitting on the little sofa in my father's little living room in his little house in North Port,  in Sarasota County, Florida watching the Today Show with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, stunned by the live, 'real time' coverage of 9/11, and sensing that life was  'turning on a dime' for the United States.  My flight back to Milwaukee the following day was canceled, along with all other U.S. flights.  President Bush was also in Sarasota County, reading "The Pet Goat"  to a first-grade class in the city of Sarasota.  Bush flew from Florida to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, then to Offutt AFB in Nebraska, finally to Andrews AFB in Maryland and back to the White House.  By October, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld had invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban government and oust al Qaeda from its former safe haven.  Eighteen months later, the same crew used the fear engendered by 9/11 to invade Iraq.  The Afghan adventure was to last 20 years, buoyed by endless false claims of "progress" by our military and civilian leaders, and it would end in ignominious defeat by a 'ragtag bunch of guys with black towels on their heads,' just as the Vietnam misadventure lasted more than 20 years - from Dien Bien Phi in 1954  until 1975's videos of American helicopters lifting desperate people off roofs in Saigon, America ignominiously defeated by an army of guys in flip-flops and black pajamas.  The Iraq disaster would lead to disruption throughout the Mideast, with tens of thousands  killed, wounded, and/or fleeing their homes to seek safety.  Americans came to accept kidnappings as "renditions" and torture of prisoners as "enhanced interrogation."  We casually accepted the indefinite imprisonment of suspects at Guantanamo Bay without charges or trial.  Whatever 'soul' the U.S. government had before 9/11, it squandered much of it on Bush's "War on Terror."  Barack Obama compounded the sins by refusing to hold anyone responsible for the crimes committed by our government, just as he (and his Secretary of Treasury Tim Geitner) held no one responsible for the financial and economic collapse in 2008.  And then of course came Trump.   Thoughts one has on 9/11.

    Started working on the van Dongen yesterday, on an 18X24 inch canvas, working from a 9X11 cover print on my library art book about the Fauves.  Applied a parchment-colored background paint first, dried with a hair dryer, then the mouth/lips 14 inches from the bottom of the canvas.  Then an undercoat of flesh tone to the face area and poitrine, which turned out diner and darker than I had intended.  Salvage work maybe.  Today applied an undercoat to the green dress, and started work on the black hat - no end of confusion there: what is the hat, what is shadow, what is gray whatchamacallit?  Do I just paint a grey of varying values as a penumbra around the hat?

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    We watched Pieces of a Woman on Netflix.  Powerful acting.