5.3.2024 --- In Our Times Weekly Digest
This week includes some good news about a cat. And the usual.
5.3.2024 Headline: In Taiwan, an Ancient Deity Draws Young Soul-Searchers Photo: Lam Yik Fei About this photo: Many of those on the pilgrimage for Mazu,Goddess of the Sea, were in their 20s and teens. What a glorious, exuberant show of faith and hope. Religion may be the opiate of the masses, but I can’t see anything wrong with worshipping the Goddess of the Sea, especially in such dark times as these.
5.2.2024 Headline: Torrential Rains Leave at Least 29 Dead and More Missing in Brazil Photo: Anselmo Cunha About this photo: I tried doing this as a quick sketch; I like the result, though it doesn’t really look like what it is, a wide street and surrounding buildings flooded by a river of brown-red water.
5.2.24 Headline: Arrests Are Made as Police Begin to Take Down U.C.L.A. Encampment Photo: Etienne Laurent About this photo: A photo from one college campus out of 80+ in the U.S. where protestors risk suspension and arrest in order to voice their alarm at the on-going genocide in Gaza. President Biden says this week that “Dissent must never lead to disorder.” Can civil disobedience be orderly yet effective? Was there not disorder in the protests of the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the movement for queer rights? Where would we be today without that disorder?
5.2.2024 Headline: Turkey Halts Trade With Israel As Relations Deteriorate Photo: Hatem Khaled About this photo: At a hospital in Rafa, Gaza. The cut-line says the patient (not shown in my interpretation) is “receiving treatment” but doesn’t note the treatment is administered by a serious young man in a hoody that says “T-POWER” along the side. A relative or friend willing to stand in as IV pole, who should be shooting hoops or making out on a beach? The patient is a Palestinian man who was released to the hospital after being detained by Israeli military. I didn’t paint him; he’s been through enough already.
4.29.2024 Headline: Conflict in Israel and Gaza, in Photos Photo: Agence France-Presse About this photo: After an Israeli bombardment on Nuseirat in Central Gaza April 29. As news stories have been diverted to the protests in the U.S., this is a stark reminder that the assault on the Palestinians continues, and Israeli hostages are still held by Hamas. The original photo showed two women, four children. This girl caught my attention the most, about 13 years old, on the cusp of adolescence. Is she holding her ear because it was damaged by the blast? A smaller girl’s cheeks are soaked, but I don’t yet know how to paint tears covering a child’s face.
4.29.2024 Headline: Stowaway Cat Gets From Utah to California in Amazon Returns Package Photo: Carrie Clark About this photo: Galena The Cat, still looking somewhat alarmed after her return to Carrie Clark. Lesson: Cats like boxes. And tend to cheer us up
The Palestinian boy holding the Iv bag stopped me in the tracks of my mundane morning
What an amazing treat, a balm for the soul, in these days of struggling to process the news. I want to hang them ALL on my wall. Thank you Sarah