unmarked white vans

Though not the first time while scavenging for a free-wifi connection I’ve perhaps innocently blundered through a covert operation and not potentially as damaging as the disclosure of seemingly innocuous and anodyne exercise routines, it does nonetheless to me seem rather uncreative to advertise one’s hotspot for all and sundry, even if password protected.

you’re doing fine oklahoma

I’ve been ruminating over an article from The Economist that I first came across on Super Punch but seen it syndicated elsewhere but felt a bit guilty at first for indulging poverty voyeurism, like slum tourism or ogling urban blight in the US Rust Belt, but finally did decide to share my thoughts, realising that this tragedy that has befallen the state of Oklahoma is a foretaste of the Trumpian, de Vosian hellscape that the rest of the nation has in store for it under a regime whose champions are antithetical to those institutions and values that they are charged with upholding. The state has dismantled its environmental regulations and subjugated its taxation scheme to attract fracking outfits that have not only ravaged the ecology but have left the landscape scarred and buildings and infrastructure damaged with public coffers empty and raided and no funds for repairs.
Above and beyond this acquiescence to oil barons, the state legislature is administratively embargoed from imposing new taxes to generate public revenue by falling for a political compact similar to the experiment that Colorado instituted, which left constituents soured on that libertine utopia. As a result of the collusion of these factors over a decade, the state’s education budget has stagnated and the state’s public school students are woefully underserved. Teachers’ starting salaries have remained the same for the past ten years and there’s a marked drain of talent and loyalty, and the only tool that districts have at the disposal to offset these atrocious and unattractive conditions of employment is to increasingly shift to four day academic weeks.  Ostensibly, educators might be willing to forego a living salary in exchange for an extra day off but the case is usually that teachers use the long weekends to take a second or third job at some fast food franchise or retailer who benefit from the corporate welfare of masses who'll subsidize their unnaturally low prices.  Of course, a four-day school week also has knock-on effects for working parents and probably means an extra day-care expense, without even addressing the disadvantage that it means for the students.  For businesses and families thinking of coming to precarious Oklahoma, this is a grave embarrassment and surely a major dissuasive factor.  What do you think?  Elections have consequences.

stick insect

We enjoyed seeing this collection of moths, butterflies, mantises and beetles created by Montreal-based fashion designer Raku Inoue out of seasonal foliage. This series was inspired from studying ikebana or kadō (華道, the way of flowers)—the art of floral arrangement considered one of the three classical Japanese arts of refinement along with kōdō (香道, the Way of Fragrance) or incense appreciation and chadō (茶道), the ritual of the tea ceremony, and taught the artist to respect and work with Nature, selecting bounty over beauty.

bratři v triku

Active from 1945 to 1965, influential Czech illustrator and animator Jiří Trnka was heralded as the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe for his manner of storytelling that drew on classic folktales but his distinctive stop-motion short films were allegories intended for adult audiences and a vehicle for satire.  Trnka found two partners and started an animation studio called Bratři v Triku (Brothers in Tricks) and eventually discovered his style, returning to the puppets that he used to entertain friends and family in his childhood.
Their early productions received international acclaim, recognised at the Cannes and Venice film festivals and Trnka managed to skirt the censors with messages that were mild to pointed rebukes of the Communist government. In his final years, however, Trnka’s output became more cynical and bolder in challenging the regime. His crowning achievement—and sadly his last work, dying four years later and banned as subversive after his death—was a short called Ruka (The Hand), which depicts a potter commissioned unwillingly to sculpt a likeness of the all-powerful Hand. Despite being pressured and plied awards and commendations, the potter views this as an unwelcome imposition (he’d rather be left to craft pots for his friends the flowers) turning into persecution as the Hand won’t relent. The potter escapes briefly and runs back home, tossing off his burden of medals and tries to barricade himself in his closet but as he does so, a flowerpot crashes down on his head—killing him. The Hand, afterward, holds a pompous funeral for the potter just as Trnka’s native Plzeň honoured him with a large public event. Only posthumously censored, The Hand may have been a prelude of the Prague Spring of 1968 and signal of a gradual socio-political thawing in the East.