Thinking about Hannah Arendt

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…and what happens in the absence of genuine education, when propaganda and marketing hollow out one’s voice… [prompted by this article shared by a friend]

“The constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies.
With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”

—Hannah Arendt, German historian and philosopher (1906–1975)

Reference photo source: click here.

Crafting a Creative Story … About Me

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I mentioned in a blog post last month that I had begun a process, which I said I would elaborate on in detail at some point. Well, I’m not going to elaborate on that just yet, but I will say that one of the goals of the process is for me to be able to have something coherent to say “about me.” I will also say that I’m working with Adam James Butcher, artist and coach. So in the spirit of showing my work, when it comes to this sort of work in progresss, here’s a one minute, thirty-one second video that I did in Videoshop that represents a draft “illustrated about-me statement” that I hope to improve upon. Your feedback, as usual, is welcome. Please feel free to chime in on this or any other post.

A byproduct of this process is my ABOUT page.

Andrew has never been the same ever since

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A rite of passage, a transition ceremony of sorts! Andrew’s identity changed when he left the group of non-shoe tyers and became a member of the shoe-tyers group.

Click on image to enlarge it. Incidentally, this actually happened in the mid 1990s, a couple of years after completing my doctorate, and it encapsulated in a single episode my sociolinguistically-oriented dissertation research in a bilingual Kindergarten classroom near Washington, DC in the mid 1990s that was undergoing a reform of its mathematics curriculum. Learning is identity change. Andrew has never been the same ever since!

A guy like that with hair and a tie like that

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A guy like that with hair and a tie like that…iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, Procreate, iColorama (paper texture)

Click on image to enlarge

50 Some Odd Years

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There’s been a guitar – or two – in my life for a half a century.

On a weekend visit from college in the late sixties my big brother brought home the first guitar I had ever handled. He could tell I really liked it. A couple of years later he gave me that guitar!

These kinds of drawings are so weird. I started it with a left hand on a fretboard and no idea of how it would unfold or where it would go. It’s done now, waiting in my camera roll for me to insert it into this post; and now my heart is overflowing with emotional memories.

My brother was a central, nearly heroic figure for me throughout the first ten years of my life; actually, that hasn’t changed. Back then, by the time my periscope was up high enough for me to appreciate him as my brother, he was already making plans to go off to college; oh, and this devastated me. I remember an exchange we had one evening in the nearby church parking lot while shooting hoops. As he outlined some of the highlights of this plan, the football scholarship, the name and location of the university, and so on, I burst in tears and tried my best to put into words why this was all so unacceptable. Looking back, I knew he understood because he found a way to help me understand how I could manage without him between visits home and why it was the right move for him to make at that time in his life.

So when he gave me that guitar, he gave me a part of his heart that has been a part of my heart for fifty some odd years…and counting.

Made with Paper by Firth Three on an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil

Under Construction

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Somg 35 odd years ago in Pittsburgh, PA I learned an expression that came to mind the other day while I was stopped dead in my tracks heading west on Olive Avenue in Merced, CA. “The shortest distance between two points is under construction.” The expression has come up before on this illustroblog, click here for further details.

click on image to enlarge

I used an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil in Procreate on this.

 

Let me get this straight…

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I’ve begun a formal process, one that I’ll elaborate on in due time. Suffice it to say that this process requires some reflection, and that this illustration is an autobiographical by-product of that reflection. I won’t include any analysis of this real event in my life at this particular point, but I do hope to so as soon as I’m able to coax out a pattern or two.

This drawing was done on an iPad Pro using an Apple Pencil and Paper by Fifty Three.

Learning To Walk By Rolling With Health

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I’ve never reblogged anything, so I hope I’m doing it right. Why am I reblogging this post? I’m doing it in the names of learning and inspiration for the few special people who follow my illustroblog.

Check out my niece’s blog as she literally learns how to walk again as a writer, an adult, a person living with MS. If you’re like me, you’ll learn something about your path and how you make your way on your journey more gracefully. She’ll crack you up too; that’s kinda’ a family thing.