At Home On Piety Hill

Anonymous middle daughter* and younger sister of artist Sam Salisbury, traveled to London recently to visit the Alison Jacques Gallery, where Salisbury’s latest creations will reportedly be shown in the near future.

Anonymous middle daughter has a few of the artist’s works in her home, including this older drawing:

* Identity shielded from trolls and weirdos under the blogStalker Protection Act of 2005.

I was scanning the AM radio the other day and heard what I thought was Lisa Douglas, of Green Acres fame, talking about a blog she was launching with the help of some of her Hollywood friends. After a few moments, waiting to hear how Lisa lined up so many luminaries to address such topics as “life in Hootersville,” “cosmeteticals” and “hotscakes,” the host of the AM radio show broke in to give out the URL to Arianna Huffington’s new blog, Arianna Online!

Boy, did I feel like a dope. I could have sworn it was Eva Gabor in character as Lisa. Well, I went on to listen to Arianna bubbling on about her vision for a progressive blog to rival Drudge (which I never thought of as a blog), featuring Walter Cronkite, Warren Beatty, Gwyneth Paltrow and other policy experts. I have visited her blog a couple of times now… It is nicely laid out, but as far as I can see, it is a collection of her old columns… perhaps the other voices are buried somewhere, but I can’t find them for the life of me.

Arianna Online has been roundly panned and I am left to wonder who concocted the idea of putting Arianna, Walter Cronkite or Gary Hart forward as the “new face” of progressive populism. I’m guessing it was the same saavy political strategist who came up with the idea of “getting out the youth vote” in 2004 by touring John Kerry around the country with the “big-hair 80’s” crooner Bon Jovi and fellow Jersey rocker Bruce Springsteen; hardly the kind of guys to appeal to twenty-something voters listening to drum-n-bass, hard trance, hip-hop or even the Killers.

Well, we’ll have to see how it pans out. For now, I’ll spend my time reading Sadico Junction for society and women’s issues, culturezoo for (what else) opinions on culture, average joe for business news and, of course, NC Media Watch for Russ’ wonderful in-depth examination of local politics.

Denise got a little taste of retirement life today, when she took a floating holiday off and crisscrossed the town to browse at some estate sales. I think she’s found her second career. The highlights were these wonderful Christmas decorations and cards. My favorite? Why, the Silky Chenille Wreath With Santa Plaque, of course. It lights up!

Not to be outdone, Mike A., Pat B. and I took a trip down to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store on Fulton Avenue in Sacramento. Denise and I have found some real treasures there. As providence would have it, they were celebrating the premier of Revenge of the Sith by featuring this authentic Princess Leia bedroom set:

And, yes, those are neon pink lights in the headboard, footboard and vanity mirror.

P.S. There isn’t more to read.

Native Nevada City artist, Sam Salisbury, is gearing up for his first gallery shows in Europe. It looks like he will be heading over to London in July and then, off to Belgium. For more information…

Sam has some new work up on the web at artnet. And, you can also find news about recent shows at marcjancou.com under emerging artists and exhibitions. I will also post any news here.

New Survey Finds Huge Gap Between Press and Public on Many Issues
By Joe Strupp
Published: May 15, 2005 9:30 PM ET

NEW YORK A new survey to be released Monday reveals a wide gap on many media issues between a group of journalists and the general public.

I was surprised to learn that only…

Six in ten among the public feel the media show bias in reporting the news…

Those of us who are in recovery as members of VOICES (Victims Of Inferior California Education System) know that polls can be skewed by the way questions are asked, so we go to the hard statistics to find out just how biased journalists really are:

Asked who they voted for in the past election, the journalists reported picking Kerry over Bush by 68% to 25%. In this sample of 300 journalists, from both newspapers and TV, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 3 to 1–but about half claim to be Independent. As in previous polls, a majority (53%) called their political orientation “moderate,” versus 28% liberal and 10% conservative.”

These professional prevaricators can’t even admit they are Bush-loathing progressives.

The results of this major poll, conducted by the University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy, were released the same day that we learned that a sensational piece in the tabloid, Newsweek, was the cause of deadly riots in Afghanistan. I’ve got a new bumper-sticker designed for my truck. It’s not very original, I admit, but at least it’s closer to the facts than that other bumper-sticker we see around town on Subaru Outbacks, Volvos or vehicles manufactured by similarly altruistic, globally-conscious corporations, which place social/economic justice over profits.

Is it any wonder the public feels disconnected from the media? But, let’s get serious for a moment. It would be one thing if these poll numbers represented just another story about the hapless, closeted, archaic press and their certain demise. But, the data suggests that they are dragging the First Amendment into oblivion along with them, with their arrogant, irresponsible and incompetent betrayal of the public trust.

Look at these disturbing statistics from the same poll:

• 43% of the public says the press has too much freedom
• just 14% of the public can name “freedom of the press” as a guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
• 22% say the government should be allowed to censor the press
• half of the young people [high schoolers] said they thought newspapers should not be able to publish stories without government approval
• newspaper relevance in the average American’s news diet appears to have slipped, with 61% of non-journalists using television as their main new source, and only 20% citing newspapers

Perhaps the greatest indicator of the failure of the press to understand what’s happening to them, is the fact that:

8 in 10 journalists said they read blogs, while less than 1 in 10 others do so. Still, a majority of the news pros do not believe bloggers deserve to be called journalists…

And:

…even though 85% believe bloggers should enjoy First Amendment protections, 75% say bloggers are not real journalists because they don’t adhere to “commonly held ethical standards.”

Would those be the same “ethical standards” that the editors at Newsweek employed in their publication of the Q’uran desecration fable? And, does this mean that the 15% who don’t believe bloggers should “enjoy First Amendment protections” think bloggers should somehow be silenced? Oh, wait a minute… that extremist 15% must be made up of the 10% who identified themselves as “conservative” and the other 5% are probably libertarians, who lied and said they were “independents.” After all, we know progressives or liberals wouldn’t try to limit anyone’s speech.

Why do I blog? There are a number of reasons, I suppose.

I was updating my Quotable Christian site and came across a quote which answers that question and may give you some insight into why I do whatever I do:

Our calling is to enjoy God as well as glorify Him. Real fulfillment relates to the purpose for which we were made, to be in reference to God, to be in personal relationship with Him, to be fulfilled by Him, and thus to have an affirmation of life. Christianity should never give any onlooker the right to conclude that Christianity believes in the negation of life. Christianity is able to make a real affirmation because we affirm that it is possible to be in personal relationship to the personal God who is there and who is the final environment of all He created. All else but God is dependent, but being in the image of God, man can be in personal relationship to that which is ultimate and has always been. We can be fulfilled in the highest level of our personality and in all the parts and portions of life… There is nothing Platonic in Christianity… The whole man is to be fulfilled; there is to be an affirmation of life that is filled with joy.

Francis A. Schaeffer

Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 26

It’s been a couple of tough weeks and it’s great to be back in front of the Powerbook, typing away. I became inundated with work a couple of weeks ago and then got that horrendous “cold virus from heck” that had everyone’s noses rubbed raw and grumpy as all get out.

I’ve been testing out the “Blog This!” feature and found lots of silly articles to capture, but I was too pooped to post. So, there was a bit of a log jam, if you will, of posts (get it? posts? like fence posts? logs?) But, not today… not this weekend… No! I feel alive again! Read! Feast! Surfeit yourselves on this cornucopia of global news, off-beat opinion and just plain ol’ silliness! Of course, I will sneak in a few serious pieces, too.

I began my first in-depth study of The Apocalypse this week and I think I have some insights and revelations of my own, concerning the identity of the Antichrist and the Beast of Revelation 13.

First, let me say that Dan (the guy to the left of Macaulay Culkin) is not the Beast, nor is his friend, Michael Jackson, the Antichrist. Of that, I’m relatively certain. However, I’m not so sure about this character, King Juan Carlos of Spain:

You see, he’s been fingered as the Man of Lawlessness by a number of “prophecy experts,” most notably Chuck Missler and Jon Courson. As a supplement to my serious study in Revelation, I began listening to tapes by these erudite Bible teachers (so-called) in order to gain insight into the strategic trends, which are preparing the world to bow to the control of this spellbinding, power hungry, dynamic, world dictator.

I found a tape of Jon Courson’s Prophecy Update for 1993 and he made a number of predictions about the things to come. Among them:

• King Juan Carlos of Spain, King of Jerusalem, is probably the Antichrist
• The generation, which began with the settlement of Israel in the land, will see the second coming of Jesus to establish His millennial kingdom in September 1999 at the Feast of Trumpets — then the millennium begins in 2000.
• Of course, you have to back up seven years for the Great Tribulation, so that means that the Rapture will occur sometime in 1993.
• The ten nations of the European Union represent the ten horns spoken of in Daniel and Revelation, even though there were 13 members in 1993 (he was able to pare that number down with some impressive mathematics). By the way, there are 26 nations in the EU now and more on the way.
• The year 2000 is the beginning of the millennium, but we don’t have to rely only on the Bible for that fact, because all the new agers and rabbis from 300 AD onward said it would happen.
• Rabbi Schneerson (April 18, 1902 - June 12, 1994) was quoted by Courson as saying that he would live to see the establishment of Messiah’s kingdom, the millennium, with his own eyes in his lifetime.

These are but a few of the nuggets of gold Mr. Courson mined out of the Scriptures for the crowd. Is it any wonder that we Christians are looked upon as a bunch of gullible half-wits, when we tell someone that Jesus died for their sins on the cross and rose from the dead, so they can live forever? That’s the problem with “crying wolf” and serving up this kind of sensationalistic slop to God’s people year after year — It may be entertaining, but Biblically illiterate Christians aren’t the only ones listening! These kinds of fairy tales get out to the general population (many times because we have passed around a tape or CD or book promoting this nonsense) and the honest inquirer is left to separate the facts of the gospel from the chaff of speculative theories and prognostications by these hucksters.

There is a way to stop these people and their creepy, cultic fascination with events that haven’t happened yet (not to mention their amnesia, when it comes to the hundreds or thousands of failed predictions they’ve made). Just say “no” to their speculation and sensationalism!

2 Timothy 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires…

But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing that they produce quarrels. 2 Timothy 2:23

2 Timothy 1:13 Retain the standard of sound words, which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.

I ran across this dispatch from the frontlines of the War on Terror, where a senior Al-Qaida lieutenant was captured, and I was immediately taken back to my childhood. One of the coolest things to ever happen on the way home from school was hearing the battle cry, “Girl Fight!” That meant hair-pulling, kicking, clawing, screaming and spirited fisticuffs, as opposed to predictable, dull punching and maneuvering when boys fought. Apparently, a girl fight will draw an enthusiastic crowd in Pakistan, too:

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online:

“Officials say that one of al-Libbi’s couriers unwittingly led the CIA and Pakistani security officials to the Libyan-born mastermind in a town close to the Afghan border. He and four close aides were hiding at a shrine on a hilltop outside Mardan, near Peshawar.

Witnesses described yesterday how armed undercover agents in burkas ambushed al-Libbi on Monday as he rode pillion [side-saddle] on a motorcycle through a graveyard. Al-Libbi, who was disguised as a woman, shot at his pursuers.

Bystanders dived for cover as a dozen people — all in black burkas — returned fire. The 42-year-old militant with a $5 million (2.6 million) price on his head fled to a nearby guesthouse shouting to staff that he was “a jihadi” and pleaded for help.

He emerged after apparently making a number of calls on his mobile phone. “He came out unarmed with his hands in the air and his head slightly bowed,” Mr Khan said. He was hooded and bundled on to a special forces helicopter then flown to an army barracks in Rawalpindi for questioning.