October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

By JASON ASHLEY WRIGHT World Scene Writer
Published: 9/15/2011  2:25 AM
Last Modified: 9/15/2011  3:22 AM
reproduced from the Tulsa World

When Elian Hurtado found out she had breast cancer, she first thought of her children.
She sat in the doctor's parking lot, called a friend of hers and asked if she knew an attorney.
"I thought, 'I have to make an appointment because I need to do a will for my kids,' " she recalled.
But Hurtado wasn't resigned to the worst-case scenario. Instead, she educated herself and, above all, stayed positive.
"Breast cancer isn't a death sentence," said the 30-something mother of three, who was diagnosed in November 2008.
Now, Hurtado is cancer-free and a survivor, who will be among the thousands of women gathering downtown Saturday for the annual Komen Tulsa Race for the Cure.
She was too sick to attend the event in 2009, but she did in 2010, walking with her family and a couple of friends.
"That day, I turned the switch from breast cancer patient to a survivor because everyone who was there survived," said Hurtado, who "gets chills" when she thinks about the overwhelmingly positive experience she had at the last Komen Race for the Cure.

Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/scene/article.aspx?subjectid=425&articleid=20110915_43_D1_CUTLIN403929

Imagination

 

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. -José Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art (1925) Artists Imagine... It's a fact. They have to.    It's inherent in the functionality of an artist.  Artists that don't imagine are like un-wet water or sound without hearing (Zen).       Surprisingly... there are a lot of similarities between faith and art.. -Artists have faith.. on some level.. that something can be known. (and communicated).   Even the absurdity of Nihilistic art has faith that nothing matters.       -People of (genuine) faith.. use their imagination as part of the faith process...  though admitting that makes us terribly uncomfortable... (we'd rather believe our experiences to be uncluttered of subjectivity).. we want them to be accepted as provable as the parting of waters.. or as certain as science. -Artists visualize and imagine a thing... and then by way of metaphor or symbol.. (even if representationally) act to create. -All peoples of faith imagine.. the supernatural world...  What God looks like... Divinity.. etc..    ..and by way of life as a metaphor.. act to recreate that life in the world.. (theoretically.. for the better..)...  It's really very existential.     Both artists and people of faith deal with the expression of reality and truth.  Both experience inspiration..  subjectively and intimately.  Both struggle to get that inspiration out... into the "real".. "objective".. world... (whatever that means). Both deal with the paradoxes and the absurdities of modern life.  Both struggle to communicate..... especially in a modern world... Lastly...  unless you're famous... or workin for "the man".  There's little.. to no money in both art and faith. Tulsa.. home of the original TV evangelists... workin for the other "Man" notwithstanding... That Can Change!  Support Local Art!!

Support Local Art

Welcome musicians, poets, actors, dancers, storytellers, etc... The stage is yours for the next 30 minutes!

Did you know tonight is Open Stage Tulsa at The Crystal Pistol? Support local Musicians, poets, actors, dancers, storytellers, etc at the Crystal Pistol Saloon tonight beginning at 8pm.

Imagine

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
Maybe some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one.

John Lennon
Imagine (#3).



The song's central theme was inspired by Cloud Piece, a three-line instructional poem that appeared in Yoko Ono's 1964 book Grapefruit. The words were reproduced on the back cover of the Imagine album.[5]

In a 1980 interview with David Sheff for Playboy magazine, Lennon remarks on the message of "Imagine":

Sheff: On a new album, you close with "Hard Times Are Over (For a While)". Why?

Lennon: It's not a new message: "Give Peace a Chance"—we're not being unreasonable. Just saying "give it a chance." With "Imagine" we're asking, "can you imagine a world without countries or religions?" It's the same message over and over. And it's positive.[6]

Ono indicated that the lyrical content of "Imagine" was "just what John believed—that we are all one country, one world, one people. He wanted to get that idea out."[4]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_(song)

Superstars

There had been a thin... silver.. rosary with small wooden beads hanging from my rearview mirror once.  Now there was just a blank place in the space where it used to live.   

I took it down a few years ago. 

I'm not catholic...  Traditionally Im an evangelical.   


evangelicals dont trust rosary's

It was a gift from my uncle.  I use to keep it as a visible symbol of real humanity to me (among other things).

Imaginatively.. rosaries and the creative process go hand in hand..  though we don't often think of it that way.  (Some do).  Evidently Andy Warhol was one who made the connection...

A closet churchy. (That's one of the most recent acknowledgments from researchers and biographers).  The suggestion is that Andy Warhol with his Byzantine Catholic family background, secretly kept a home altar.. a crucifix.. and a catholic prayer book on his bedside table... as it's also affirmed by Warhol's brother and the Pastor of a church near "The Factory" (his art studio) that the artist visited the church "almost daily"... usually coming in the mid-afternoon.. lighting a candle.. and praying for about 15 minutes before leaving back out into the fame and pop art culture of Andy Warhol's New York City.  (1.  See link to article below). 


If you were to take the artist and his art at face value... the two images would seem paradoxical or controversial at best.  He hung mostly with "disreputable characters".. transvestites... and misfits.. friending them and also making use of them in his art.  (His "Superstars")..

But that's the problem with the face-value treatment of the modern world.  There's always something more under the surface.. something that lives in both places.. doesn't quite match the visual.. the things we're shown.. the things.. sometimes.. we choose to see.

Andy Warhol hung with his superstars because they were two of a kind.. both.. "characters".. living in a pop-artificial world.. keeping the common secret underneath.. of course.. that misfits are people too.

The most powerful thing a person can give is the recognition of another's humanity... that's why I think its interesting that Warhol could have been a churchy.. (though it appears to have been very private to him).. because hanging with the misfits was very Jesus-like. Something religious people don't often get. 

1.
http://spacecollective.org/Reckon/3347/Andy-Warhols-Secret