"Lizard" by Pedro Arizpe

When I saw this incredible graphic story by Pedro Arizpe of Portsherry, I flashed on my own childhood. I was born in New York state and went to school there through second grade. The curriculum at that time in New York valued reading and writing skills over math, which was planned to come later. But when we moved to Florida, the state approached math skills first, and I was totally lost. Having no foundation, teachers would just explain the same thing to me over and over, sometimes raising their voices as though yelling at someone who speaks a foreign language. No one bothered to assess why I could not grasp what they were trying to drill into my head. There was no foundational learning for me, I just had to jump in and pretend that, yes, of course, the answer is lizard, when what I was really screaming in my head was "How did you get LIZARD?" When you are a child, you don't know what you don't know. As an adult looking back on this, I see it clearly and I would love to go back in time and tell the entire school administration, "What the eff are you thinking? You call this is teaching? This is just creating trauma and a crisis of self-confidence."

What was most galling was that my New York-taught reading comprehension and writing skills were a few grade levels ahead of where they were in Florida and the other students in my class were embarrassingly bad at reading or writing, but no one seemed to care about that. To me, the students were bad, but for the teachers, they were where they should have been given the curriculum. Teachers saw I scored consistently high in English, but they weren't looking to those metrics for any measure of my general intelligence or understanding. As far as they were concerned, I was a sorry, slow, and maybe even special-needs learner, which of course was not the case at all. But I was treated like I was. So math class--and any extra "tutoring" I got--always ended up looking exactly like the story below...

Pedro, thank you so much for showing this so explicitly and giving it a name: INSTITUTIONAL NEGLIGENCE.

https://portsherry.com/comic/lizard/

BEAUTY: Tableaux

As an interior designer, artist, and maximalist, I truly appreciate a good tablescape or tableau. I love gazing at fascinating sculptures, natural objects, treasured personal mementoes, antiques with a story, handmade creations of beauty ... collected and displayed in a way that allows these elements to play off one another, to provide harmony or contrast.

Painting by William McClure

Collection by Pierre Le Tan, sold at Sotheby's

Tableau by Sean Anderson

Elevator landing at Kips Bay Showhouse NYC, 2023

Tableau by JF Chen

Tableau by Anna Spiro Design

Tableau by India Hicks

Tableau by John Derian

BEAUTY: Painting--Andrew Faulkner

Painter Andrew Faulkner is a neighbor, just across the Bay in Sausalito, and his work is informed by the landscape views of our Northern California coast and surrounding area. I love how the images are abstract but still retain a sense of the natural views (and light!) you would see on a hike around the area.

His work makes me flash on a lovely quote:

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
--John Muir

Top to bottom: Coastal Break; Coastal Quilt; Dune Slice; Earthy Field; Embark; Field Break; Rolling Fog; Rose Hedge Trail; Steel Bay Farm; Tide Pools

https://andrew-faulkner.com/

Collage Is Collecting

All collages by JEF

BEAUTY: Painting--J. Carino

Artist J. Carino 's exuberant use of color is a joy to see. He paints the male figure communing with nature in a way that approaches the numinous. I especially love the second image below of a man rescuing a tiny mule from flood waters...

https://www.jcarinoart.com/