Friday, May 29, 2020

"Poor Fellow, My Country..."


Protester wearing shirt reading, "God is Love" - Minneapolis, Minnesota

It's time for a pause... 

As you know if you visit here with any regularity, I try to keep my focus on my message, that it's okay to be gay and that you can be happy - something I myself didn't believe until I was nearly 40 years old.  And, if you've ever looked to the right, or clicked on my profile, then you'll also know that I'm a person of color and what's happening in our country should worry you as much as it worries me.

I know exactly and personally how we arrived here...

Just yesterday, my son and I were on our front porch and as I was teaching him how to paint our front door, two police cruisers from a suburban police department pulled up on our street and as 6 uniformed white officers emerged, I felt afraid. Surely, they weren't coming for me... they were far outside of their jurisdiction, but why the show of force?  As I tried not to look, I couldn't help watching their movements reflected in the door glass as I kept painting and talking to my son. As it turned out, they were apparently delivering some personal effects to someone at a home across the street from ours.  I still wonder about the backstory there, but it's not important to what I have to say about what's happening now.

Even when I realized that I shouldn't have felt threatened by the apparently legitimate actions of those police officers, I was afraid, afraid that just as easily, that moment in time could have turned into what I as a black man know can happen.  Maybe my son and I would have been witnesses, or maybe we'd have found ourselves in the midst of it, our lives at risk while innocently going about our own business at home.  Yes, fear is "sometimes" a lie, but for black people, most of the time it's all too real.  "We can't breathe" even when someone's knee isn't on our throat, even when we're at our own homes, even when we're doing nothing more than going about our daily lives, We can't breathe!

I warn my children all the time (just as my parents warned me), that because of the color of your skin, you will be policed differently, you'll be viewed in society with suspicion and that to have a chance of being seen as "equal" you'll actually need to be "better than."  Think about that!  I know most of you who visit this blog are not black, so you probably don't think about such things, but ask yourself this:

"When is the last time you saw the police murder an unarmed, handcuffed and restrained white person online?"

"I can't breathe!"


"Fear Eats the Soul"



Thursday, May 28, 2020

"Love And Life's Journeys..."


From the work of Chicago born photographer Richard Renaldi. Over the course of more than two decades, Richard has recorded images of himself and his partner Seth Boyd in their hotel rooms across the country and around the world for his project "Hotel Room Portraits."

I fell in love with these images from the very first time that I saw them. There is something incredibly familiar and comforting in recognizing not only the love between Richard and Seth, but also the rigors of travel and the occasional weary eyes and tiredness that we all fall prey to. Moreover, these photos reveal an intimacy and comfortableness that one finds only when two people are truly in love... They reveal "love and life's journeys."

Richard Renaldi was born in Chicago in 1968. He received his BFA in photography from New York University in 1990. Exhibitions of his photographs have been mounted in galleries and museums throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. In 2006 Renaldi's first monograph, Figure and Ground, was published by the Aperture Foundation. His second monograph, Fall River Boys, was released in 2009. Richard Renaldi is the founder and publisher of Charles Lane Press.



"Selfie Love..."


"Selfie Love" - those beautiful, grainy, out-of-focus self-pics that capture the truth of true love..."



"The Imitation Of Life..."








"The Ugly Truth About America..."



"Same Gender Loving People - No. 3775"


"Love Is Being Together..."

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.



"It's Not So Funny..."




"Same Gender Loving People - No. 3776"


"This Is Love..."

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.



"It's Not So Funny..."





"The Views To Love..."







On The Road To Love's Joyful Life



"The Truth About Love..."


For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

- Rainer Maria Rilke



"We Were Always There..."




"The Artist Corner..."


"The Temptation"
Oil on linen
Andrew Moncrief



Wednesday, May 27, 2020

"Love And Life's Journeys..."


From the work of Chicago born photographer Richard Renaldi. Over the course of more than two decades, Richard has recorded images of himself and his partner Seth Boyd in their hotel rooms across the country and around the world for his project "Hotel Room Portraits."

I fell in love with these images from the very first time that I saw them. There is something incredibly familiar and comforting in recognizing not only the love between Richard and Seth, but also the rigors of travel and the occasional weary eyes and tiredness that we all fall prey to. Moreover, these photos reveal an intimacy and comfortableness that one finds only when two people are truly in love... They reveal "love and life's journeys."

Richard Renaldi was born in Chicago in 1968. He received his BFA in photography from New York University in 1990. Exhibitions of his photographs have been mounted in galleries and museums throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. In 2006 Renaldi's first monograph, Figure and Ground, was published by the Aperture Foundation. His second monograph, Fall River Boys, was released in 2009. Richard Renaldi is the founder and publisher of Charles Lane Press.



"Selfie Love..."


"Selfie Love" - those beautiful, grainy, out-of-focus self-pics that capture the truth of true love..."



"This Made Me Smile..."




"Same Gender Loving People - No. 3774"


"Love, Home, Happiness..."

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.



"It's Not So Funny..."




"The Views To Love..."


























Max Emerson and Andrés Camilo-Hernandez
It's A Wonderful Life