Found Art and Annual Report

Art Ranger's yearly digestive bisquits, here they come.  What the Happy newyears time slot conjures up is that to be human and present in today's world, we mark time in strange ways, some people wearing tiny hats with tight elastic strings.  But somehow we must attempt to clear the decks. Year end Clearance is to consider the inventory and deficits, inside and out.

Wrestled from Restless thoughts left on Postit Notes..

To live here in america, (in various formats and platforms) we keep on watching the badgood tv movie of ourselves unfold. We sift through the clutter and try to make sense of (at least ) our own lives. We try to know where to put everything old, new, and vastly inbetween.  In our relationships, our identities, our social interweavings, our communities, our country.

Last week it caught her eye, an article with this headline:  "U.S. Mint testing new metals to make coins cheaper:  http://www.mercedsunstar.com. Come to find out, it costs more than two cents to make a penny and more than 11 cents to produce and distribute a nickel. "The quandary is how to make coins more cheaply without sparing our change's quality and durability, or altering its size and appearance." There is a 400 page report describing two years of trial and error recipes, concluding that none of them met the ideal.

"nonsense dies" used to practice. ie Martha Washington wearing that hat

This "quandary" seems a fitting metaphor for our so called "fiscal cliff" impasse/ crevasse/ morass.  Which is where people are trying to get more of something for less, and where people are not taking into account the true costs of our actions. In chemistry, metals boil down to their essential elements. We are using more and more and more of things that are actually finite.  Certainly by now a penny physically costs more to make than the concept of its "worth".  The true cost of a penny, if we took stock of the huge environmental impact of metals mining on the planet, would amount to so much more than 2 cents. We are (so like) subsidizing even our money in this country like we do the corn.  The "Fed" is feeding it. While we the people are, of course hemoraging it.

Where the workingest ones are staggering with the heavy-lourdes-double-mucho-pesado weight of it all (and often simultaneously consuming vast amounts of cheap high fructose corn-fed diets with their own costs down the road).

While the latest exorbitant financial sponge creature morphs; the jowly hedge fund manager or credit default obfuscation swap debt suckers uppers of america still run the show (insider trading duh) sitting on fancy desk chairs with high blood pressurized mouse clicks. They are betting and hedging while lobbying and lining and stacking their pockets courtesy of their own private banking system.  All policies still in place for their own self- perpetuation, certainly not for true costs, true value or any greater good.

Yep, they got us a fiscal cliff allright, a chilly winter one with a deja vu of dangerously bad playground manners.  That is Art Ranger's 2 cents.  Well, she's ranting again! Now stop that.  Phew!

 Insert soothing interlude with cucumber slices over eyelids

As a form of radical activity, in honor of our image-celebrating tradition, we are now going to have a year-end collection of some faves from our correspondents during the 2012 earth rotation, blogging season:

from Michelle Aranda's Nevada City series:  http://artranger.blogspot.com/2012_04_01_archive.html

 This one from Richard Piscuscas

from Los Angeles

who also brought us this:

 
 And two from Bonnie Hotz practicing her craft outside Salinas

Who ya gonna call? (from down south somewhere)

And so have yourselves a sweet new year while simply acknowledging what you are looking at:

Gull head, from Jim Lindenthal in Pacific Grove

The Art Ranger will be very glad, as usual, to receive your images and thoughts about daily existence in 2013.  Afterall, it's going to be an odd year so please don't hold back :)  Send love to FAF@homelandinspiration.org