More Re- Nature Theater of OK

Just came across an "Excellent" interview in Bomb by Young Jean Lee of Kelly Copper and Pavol Liška, who direct Nature Theater of Oklahoma (see my previous post here).

Another Great Chart Re- Healthcare

You'll have to click on the image to get a legible version; but basically, the turquoise lines represent countries that have universal coverage provided by public and private insurers, and the orange lines – the U.S. and Mexico – represent the countries that do NOT have universal coverage.

The US line is super-high on the left because that's how much more we spend compared to the other nations. And the US line is much lower on the right because, even though we spend so much more, our life expectancies are actually below the mean average of that in the others.

U.S. insurers have already had decades to show they could deliver better results doing it their way, and it hasn't worked.

In contrast, in many other countries, universal coverage with a public option has been working well for decades; it's a proven solution.

UPDATE: Here's a calculator to help you figure out how you'd fare under the new law as of this writing. I'd check the results under the "Senate Leadership Bill," since it seems whatever passes will more closely resemble that version. In my own case, it says I wouldn't be eligible for any subsidy, I should expect to pay nearly 13% of my before-tax income for insurance – and that doesn't count whatever I'll have to pay in deductibles, co-pays, etc. – AND there would be no cap on premium increases.

Temporary Services: "ART WORK"

The Chicago-based artists' collective, Temporary Services, has published a one-off newspaper issue on how depressed economies affect artistic process, compensation, and property, including artists' initiatives to organize in their own and others' behalf.

You can download a complete copy of the issue here or here (please share these links!) A limited number of hard copies are also being distributed at select locations across the U.S.

Contributors to the newspaper include artists, critics, writers, and educators "seeking to articulate the ways in which artists and culture-makers both respond to and deal with the economic depressions of the world," including Holland Cotter, New York Times art critic and 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism; writer/artist Gregory Shollette, contributor to Artforum and co-editor of The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life; Julia Bryan-Wilson, author of Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam Era (2009) and Work Ethic (2003); Christina Ulke, Marc Herbst, and Robby Herbst, editors for The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest; Harrell Fletcher, visual artist; Futurefarmers, a collective design studio that supports art projects, artists in residencies and research interests; Nicolas Lampert, interdisciplinary artist; Lize Mogel, interdisciplinary artist; Linda Frye Burnham, writer and founder of High Performance magazine; Scott Berzofsky and John Duda, organizers of City from Below; Cooley Windsor, author of Visit Me in California; and many more.

TS has been described as "working out of a Situationist tradition"; their projects or publications have been featured at Mass MoCA, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, the Smart Museum of Art, the Creative Time Summit, and elsewhere.

UPDATE: Additional hard copies of the issue are available for the cost of shipping, through Half Letter Press; but due to the limited supply, orders of additional copies are being limited to 10 each; so get yours soon. Also, Temporary Services' Art Work website has the issue in the now-traditional interactive format, plus additional materials that could not be included in the hard copy because of monetary or time constraints.

Political Art Month

You can now see artists' and art professionals' responses to Political Art Month so far here. They're interesting, inspiring, and funny.

Founder Gene Elder writes, "Our goal [among others] is to alert galleries across America to devote some thought and time to either political, social or religious subject matter for July." For more on P.A.M., see my previous post.

What are you planning for P.A.M.? Let Elder and the world know; send him the details at elder4tomato at yahoo dot com.

Holiday Poem

Visiting family is x-cremental
at x-mas, 'cuz that's when they're x-tra mental.

My relationship with my own parents has been enhanced by my surviving them, and I mean that in the best of all possible ways. Happy Holidays!

Hoop

Came across this while looking for material for experiments. More heartbursts at sugarmagnolia72 and Bambi.

Re- Healthcare Reform

As I understand, the current Senate bill would force us to pay up to 8% of our incomes to insurance cos. while leaving us on the hook for up to $11,900 a year in out-of-pocket medical expenses, fail to end discrimination for most people based on preexisting conditions until 2014, and fail to limit increases in insurance premiums.

Most of the vaunted 30 million additional insureds will be those who need it least – young people likely to generate more profits than costs.

Let's repeat just part of that: 30 million new MANDATED payers of insurance premiums, and NO meaningful caps on what insurers can charge us.

We're being required to pay an awful lot for very little actual benefit to most of the people most in need.

It reminds me of when conservatives argued we had to keep funding the Iraq war or we wouldn't be able to afford to bring the troops home safely.

Our troops then were, and the few sick children who might actually be benefitted by this bill are now, being held for ransom by people who can't be trusted to fulfill any promises once we've paid up.

It also looks like another instance of the conservative strategy of causing us to spend way too much on the wrong things and later screaming to high heavens that we've got nothing left to spend on the right things.

Welcome to "Pleasant" Grove

Yesterday, at the request of the Southeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce, Town East Mall security seized a tenant's entire inventory of t-shirts reading "Welcome to Pleasant Grove" under an image of a body being thrown into a car trunk – a little reminder that enclosed malls are part of the "Constitution-Free Zone," to which, one surmises, the Southeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce would like Pleasant Grove to be added.

I want one of those shirts!

More at The Dallas Morning News.

UPDATE: I got one of those shirts (thanks, Danny!) At MoeWampum.