Christmas Vacation Beauty

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by Brett Rogers, 12/31/2009 9:19:13 PM
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Caribbean

We went to the Caribbean on a cruise, my first time ever on a cruise or out of the country, to help my in-laws celebrate their 50th anniversary. Here's a picture of Tamara with her sisters and her parents.

We had a great time. I took the opportunity to paint again.

As I said in a recent post, my painting skills somehow meandered away. One day, I had found my way to into a San Juan midtown cafe.

The people there were fascinating. I watched one man chase his child around the town square playfully, adopting several different characters as he did. He would have made a great actor. His daughter giggled as she skipped away from him each time.

So I painted as I sat there. Normally in my day, I take and make myriad phone calls, write code, care for my dogs and the house, and life is generally busy. I haven't painted for a long time. It was obvious that I'm way out of practice.

I had to relearn it all. How to see what's really there, how to draw, how to mix paint, how to apply the brush... I came to it with many assumptions. I didn't paint in hued sections, but instead painted shutters and slats. It was a lazy effort.

In Margaritaville, I sat poolside and felt more like I was doing the right things. Not really happy with the result, but a step in the right direction. I painted from the back to the front, I studied the color before I mixed and applied it...

The effort was smarter.

Ironically, my best efforts were done on the ship itself, when I woke up in the morning and went to Lido deck. I sat at a table and painted the ketchup and mustard that were on the table. Different days, the ketchup first and the mustard on the last day of the cruise.

I did the ketchup with a 1" filbert brush and with Amsterdam (Van Gogh) acrylics. I didn't like the paints. Too watery for me. You can see that in the streaks of the lighter areas of the bottle. If you look at these areas, you can just about see the exact shape and form of the bristles on the brush.

Then the mustard. By this stage of the cruise, I no longer saw the subject of the painting as what I knew it to be, but as shapes and colors. As I worked it, I did it more like I should.

Still had problems, but the methods were sound.

I live as two different people. The artist in me is a more likable, more people-friendly guy. He's well aware of his flaws, doesn't really think about politics, and sees things in the world around him that exist in the moment.

The businessman / programmer in me is inward, driven, protective of his family. He's well aware of his strengths, connects remote dots together, intakes massive amounts of detail and facts, and doesn't really notice the immediate world around him.

The artist in me loved the cruise. It was nice to get some air. I'll work to see if I can paint more frequently, perhaps even daily. I'm better as a united whole.

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by Brett Rogers, 12/31/2009 6:46:19 PM
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2010 Action Plan

I have a mailing list of about 600 local tea party folks. I sent this to them yesterday.

If Obama and the Democrats continue to get their way, the new year will bring you more national debt, higher unemployment, increased government in your life, endless legislation and regulation...

I know that you don't want to allow that to happen. Fight back effectively and make a difference in 2010:

1) Find a Constitution-loving candidate for office that you can support and commit your family to volunteer for that candidate two to three hours per week from now until the election this coming November. Dad, Mom, kids... heck, have your dog wear signs in a parade. Be creative and find a way for everyone to get involved.

2) Give money monthly to support your candidate of choice. Elections take cash. Cash is your First Amendment in action. Cash given to the right candidates protects your freedom. We pay for Netflix every month. We pay for cable. We pay for dinner out - whether at McDonald's or Olive Garden. What is freedom worth to you? Ours is a representative government, and if you're not financially supporting those who will represent you - at least once a month - then you will lose your freedom to those who persist in the fight to take away your rights.

3) Attend a Constitutional seminar this year. I attended one put on by SOAR that was taught by an instructor from the National Center for Constitutional Studies. That day, 150 people walked into the seminar somewhat ignorant of our Constitution and by the evening, they walked out knowing it better than the so-called Constitutional Law professor now in the White House. It was the best $25 that I spent all year. We ought to have one running every month through 2010.

4) Spend your time with freedom-loving patriots. Everyone who fights socialist politicians are our friends and they deserve our support and alliance. No matter what their religion, background, status, career... the fight for freedom is a fight that can only be fought together. Allies don't have to be perfect. You just need to be able to work together toward a common goal, and that goal is freedom. Find a local group. Or start one of your own. Let me know if you need some direction - I'll be glad to help you get plugged in.

2010 can be the most patriotic year in the last century, or it can be the year that America slid away. Our children deserve the most free America we can pass on to them. Join me in making firm resolutions in this new year to be the most effective that we can be.

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by Brett Rogers, 12/31/2009 9:53:56 AM
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Incompetent Boobs Abounding

I'm currently on the drive back from Florida and I've caught up with all of the news. I could say that the Incompetent-Boob-in-Chief surprises nobody on the right we certainly saw that coming from a long way off - but it's a pleasure to see the left dumping on him finally. Not that I expect it to continue, but hey - Jennifer Loven is no ordinary lefty. She's a lefty's lefty - a leader of the swooning White House press corps. With all of those international flights doing her faux journalism for the AP, I bet she's a bit worried about her safety and the safety of her pals as well.

Because now it matters, you see. It's affecting her.

And then there's Bob Herbert - another lefty's lefty. Columnist for the New York Times, ol' Bob disses on ObamaCare, noting this big problem:

The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care.

The tax would kick in on plans exceeding $23,000 annually for family coverage and $8,500 for individuals, starting in 2013. In the first year it would affect relatively few people in the middle class. But because of the steadily rising costs of health care in the U.S., more and more plans would reach the taxation threshold each year.

Within three years of its implementation, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the tax would apply to nearly 20 percent of all workers with employer-provided health coverage in the country, affecting some 31 million people. Within six years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax would reach a fifth of all households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 annually. Those families can hardly be considered very wealthy.

Some Republicans came out with strong statements in support of freedom, like this:

"Today's vote should be a major disappointment for all of us who want to see affordable health care reform. Instead of lowering health care costs, this bill will result in increased taxes, higher premiums and cuts to Medicare."

As I have said, any true reform must meet the three-fold test of reducing costs, improving health outcomes, and protecting vulnerable persons.

Good lord. We get to choose between Marxism and Marxism-lite.

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by Brett Rogers, 12/29/2009 10:24:56 PM
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Cool Artist

On the cruise, I found a cool artist whose murals decorated some of the hallways. Her name is Devita Stipek Writer and she heralds from Alaska.

Wonderful!

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by Brett Rogers, 12/27/2009 3:32:02 PM
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What I've Relearned in the Last Week

Painting is something that I've always enjoyed, and I'm a decent painter. With practice, I might become quite good, but I'll tell ya - my game sucked when I got on board the cruise.

Things I had to learn (again) and discipline myself:

1. Painting is drawing before it is anything else. If I don't get the drawing right, I don't have anything - unless I'm going for abstract, which I never do. I had to force myself to remember this truth several times, and I proved to be a slow learner. Evidently, I'd gotten myself in a big hurry about life prior to the cruise.
2. Streaky colors in my brush kill the confidence of my painting. Determine the solid color that I need, mix it well, and then paint that section. Streaks of color can be a technique, but only when it's rare and deliberate. When it happens by accident, it's not a cool effect. It's like changing font in mid-sentence. Colors that are bold and strong are confident. Streaks only weaken the work.
3. Let a section dry before going over it with a new color - otherwise it becomes streaky. See previous point... use the time to change water, study the subject harder, go for a stretch break, etc.
4. Really stop to focus on the section and forget what I'm looking at. It's never a bottle of mustard - it's just colors. Paint the colors and shapes, not the object my mind tells me that it is.

All of the work I did was plein air - no working from a photograph, just live and in person based on what was in front of me. I need an easel for that kind of painting, and I never had one. An easel sets the canvas straight, allows the eye to move very little from subject to canvas, and forces me to look at the subject more often to drop my assumptions.

The big lesson I got from this round of painting was this: first impressions are never the complete picture.

That applies to a lot of life. We seek patterns, and we love to categorize. It allows us to move more quickly. Assumptions help us - if we recognize them as assumptions. Too often, we don't. We believe that our first impression, which is really just a proud assumption, is true.

What I believe is that first impressions allow us to move intuitively in the right direction, but it's rarely the final direction. It takes fine tuning, and that only happens when we continue to look at the subject for what it is. I can take a mustard bottle and paint it in the sunlight, not touch it at all, and I guarantee that before I finish it, it's become a completely different bottle of mustard because the light changed for the movement of the sun upon it. It can't be the same painting again.

A lot of people watched me paint on the trip. The first fifteen minutes that happened, I was self-conscious. Then that feeling left me. At one point, I sat at the first table on the huge patio in Margaritaville in Grand Turk. A ton of people moved past me, several of them commenting on how I was doing. It was a cool experience.

A couple of comments about the trip:

• I left programming behind for 6 days. I needed that. Usually, I code while traveling. Not this time, and it helped me. The next year is gonna kick my ass, and I think we'll try to do this a couple of times in the next year.
• I've always wondered what I would have done in centuries past. No question now - I would have been a sailor and an explorer. I love the ocean. Staring into it, it's impossible for me to tire of it. The infusion of millions of bubbles into the blue water as the massive boat cuts through it brings this play of turquoise and white and sky blue. Fascinating. I can't count the number of times I stood on our balcony just looking into the water.
• The lives of the crew... we had fantastic people working hard to make our trip wonderful, and they succeeded. Mark, our steward, and Romel, our evening waiter, have very interesting stories. My heart goes out to them and I'm thankful to have met them.
• Politically, I'm a changed guy. The early-December conference I attended started that change, and this trip has expanded upon that. I didn't pay attention to the news of the day, but I did see that Obama's theft of health care passed the Senate. There are two directions I can go from here: I either work to make as much money as I can before it all comes down, or I double down on my political work. The answer is probably both, with the former preceding the latter. I'm convinced that the Republicans are worthless to defeat the Democrats. I thought I might try to work with them, but they're completely hapless and don't believe in preserving freedom. But you know who's even more hapless than Republican politicians? Republican voters. I worked my butt off this past year to help organize them, and I'm done trying to light a fire under their collective butts. It's a waste of time. I'm skeptical of right-leaning politicians, and even more skeptical of right-leaning voters. I have no idea how much corruption and theft in Washington it takes to get people off the couch for more than a rah-rah session, but I'll spend my free time working on other more productive things. (I've met a few real patriots, but they're very uncommon. I love them, and God bless them.) (P.S. Yes, I'm pretty torqued about politics...)

It was great way to end the year and I'll be uber-productive going into the new year. Time to kick ass for my family.

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by Brett Rogers, 12/26/2009 1:30:05 PM
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Me, Paint, and the Seven Seas

Beatcanvas... part of the reason I named the web site that was to tell my journey through art. But, then the government interceded and made life harder and threatened my kids' future...

Anyway, in about 24 hours, I'll be boarding a big boat and heading to the Bahamas. The site will be chill during that time (unless PR wants to post something while I'm gone).

During that time, no computer for me. But I brought art supplies, so hopefully I'll get some painting done.

I hope you have a great Christmas with friends and family, in spite of the government coal being issued in the form of "health care" this holiday season.

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by Brett Rogers, 12/19/2009 11:36:52 AM
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Zero Hour

Supposedly, ObamaCare passage in the Senate is right around the corner this Christmas. Harry Reid is working furiously to get it passed.

The Republicans are doing next to nothing as this goes on. It's hard to know what's in or out of the bill, and the Republicans could be doing the public a huge service by illustrating what's in the bill. If the bill is being hidden and not released, they could be working to highlight that. But as politically aware as I am, I can't tell you what the Republicans are doing. Which comes off looking like nothing.

If this passes, it will pass the House, and then get signed by the Super Genius.

Which will make repeal the number one legislative priority.

I'm tired of politics. Tired people will want to jettison the whole body politic, rather than spend the energy to parse and choose selectively.

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by Brett Rogers, 12/19/2009 7:54:32 AM
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Attention, All Super Geniuses

Straight from Harvard:

My Harvard colleagues Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna have recently conducted a comprehensive analysis of the issue. In an October study, they looked at large changes in fiscal policy in 21 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. They identified 91 episodes since 1970 in which policy moved to stimulate the economy. They then compared the policy interventions that succeeded - that is, those that were actually followed by robust growth - with those that failed.

The results are striking. Successful stimulus relies almost entirely on cuts in business and income taxes. Failed stimulus relies mostly on increases in government spending...

The best part:

A growing body of evidence suggests that traditional Keynesian nostrums might not be the best medicine.

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by Brett Rogers, 12/14/2009 8:30:33 AM
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Merry Christmas, Mr. President

America sees right through you.

23% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.

42% Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19.

Today is the second straight day that Obama's Approval Index rating has fallen to a new low.

Among those who consider fiscal policy issues the most important, just 1% Strongly Approve and 81% Strongly Disapprove.

Then there's this, which highlights the problems with socialism once again:

Desperate to calm investors, Greece's new Socialist government promised to outline emergency cuts next week. The prospect of those cuts eased pressure on its bonds on Friday after their biggest sell off in more than a decade. But they also raised the specter that Greece's economy could take longer to recover while heightening fears of civil unrest.

The Socialist government came to power in October vowing to protect state salaries and public spending, "but now it's going to have to do the opposite - they need to bring down spending," said David Riley, head of global sovereign ratings at Fitch. "This is part of the credibility problem they face - they will say they are going to tackle the budget, but will they really be able to do it?"

Socialism sucks, every time it's tried. Merry Christmas, Mr. President, you immoral jerk.

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by Brett Rogers, 12/13/2009 11:51:32 AM
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