Everybody else is undoubtedly embedding this, so I will too…
Category: Politics, Religion & Money
Steve Jobs
This picture was scanned from Wednesday’s Boston Globe. I’d read about the talk concerning Steve Job’s health, but this stunned me. In this layman’s view, can there be any doubt that Steve Jobs is dying?
Ozarki Iraqi
NPR had a story this morning about an Iraqi woman who married an American soldier and moved to the Ozarks. If you heard it, you know why I’m linking to it now.
Joe the Plumber Speaks!
Stop being so eloquent!
Two comments about the final debate. I think it was McCain’s best of the three, but it’s ridiculous to argue, as McCain did, that because somebody is eloquent they should be doubted.
Those Nazi Bastards
This past 3-day weekend I watched two movies. Both are about WWII — the fictional tragic romance Atonement, and The Counterfeiters, based on a true story. In this scene, the forger Salomon Sorowitsch uses his artistic talents to curry favor and improve his condition in the Mauthausen concentration camp.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/OCT/Counterfeiters.flv 448 252]
In this regard Sorowitsch paralleled Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, who survived Auschwitz by painting portraits for the Nazis, most notably the infamous Josef Mengele. Babbitt was later an artist at the Disney studio. Babbitt is still alive, and she’s trying to regain ownership of her Auschwitz paintings. In that effort she is being helped by two comic book artists — Neal Adams and Joe Kubert.
I knew an artist who escaped the Nazis. He was my drawing teacher in college. His name was Arno Maris.
Arno had been a champion gymnast in his native Holland. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was powerfully built. As I recall Arno telling me the story, after the Nazis had occupied the Netherlands, he took a row boat and, in the darkness of night, headed out into the open ocean, with no idea what would become of him. As luck would have it, he was picked up by a Merchant Marine ship, and he lived to tell the tale.
“Those Nazi bastards,” Arno would say, with great emphasis. In my mind right now I can still hear Arno talking to me, in that unmistakable Dutch accent of his, calling me “Dock-less.” Arno Maris was an excellent art instructor, and a wonderful man.