TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Blood Metal Trees
by Tom McLaughlin
.
Sacramento BLM Street Thug
Learns Blocking a Sheriff's Car is A Bad Idea
{ rickwells.us } ~ When BLM and other thug groups block intersections and roadways the police usually protect them and allow them to impose... their will on innocent Americans just trying to get from one place to another. If an average citizens is angered or has more important things to do than sit and look at a bunch of rude, discourteous and racist hood rats demanding attention and accommodation and attempts to drive through their ranks, the innocent motorist can expect to be taken to jail and facing charges. The shoe was on the other foot on Saturday night when cops in Sacramento were dealing with a demonstration against them for the shooting death of street thug Stephon Clarke, who had been smashing windows out of parked vehicles, ran from cops, and wound up dead. It was an otherwise fun-filled evening of vandalism that ended badly. No wonder the other criminals are upset, that could have been them just as easily... https:///blm-thug-sheriffs-car/
.
Senior minister calls Erdogan antisemite,
regrets mending ties with Turkey
by HAGAY HACOHEN
{ jpost.com } ~ Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan slammed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday... calling him ''an antisemite." "The antisemite Erdogan continues to support Hamas to act in Jerusalem," said Erdan. Who also expressed regret about voting in favor of the 2016 rapprochement agreement between Israel and Turkey, which normalized relations between the two countries following the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla incident. Speaking on Army Radio, Erdan said that "it's possible Israel should have acted against Turkey in the international arena and recognized the Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire." While Israel has a fair-sized Armenian community, which is very visible in Jerusalem, the Jewish state has not as of yet recognized the 1915-1917 massacres and deportations of Armenian-Ottoman citizens as a genocide. The issue is still taboo in modern Turkey despite growing recognition from leading historians and activists that these acts might very well be understood as a genocide....
Eye for an Eye: One of the Greatest Ideas in History
by Dennis Prager
{ prageru.com } ~ Nowadays, many people, particularly those living in Western civilization... no longer regard their society as morally superior to any other. In this video, Dennis Prager lays out how this view does not spring from intellectual rigor, but from intellectual laziness. https://www.prageru.com/videos/eye-eye-one-greatest-ideas-history.
commie-Bernie Sanders Mourns Hamas Terrorists Killed by Israel
by Daniel Greenfield
{ frontpagemag.com } ~ commie-Bernie Sanders (I - Venezuela) is very unhappy that Israel killed some Hamas terrorists... “The killing of Palestinian demonstrators by Israeli forces in Gaza is tragic. It is the right of all people to protest for a better future without a violent response,” commie-Bernie Sanders tweeted. The "demonstrators" that commie-Bernie Sanders was defending were Hamas. According to Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Hamas run Health Ministry, 15 Palestinians were killed while participating in the protest on Friday. On Saturday, the Izzadin Kassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, announced that five of the deceased Palestinians were Kassam members... Later on Saturday, however, the IDF said that 10 of the 15 Palestinians who died, including Abed al-Nabi, were a part of armed groups in Gaza...commie Sanders is a terrorist lover. https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/269771/bernie-sanders-mourns-hamas-terrorists-killed-daniel-greenfield
.
scum-Schiff Never Complained when
liar-nObama Normalized Relations with Putin
by Denise Simon
{ trevorloudon.com } ~ Remember, under the liar-nObama administration, rogue nations such as Iran and Cuba were placed as among the world’s good actors... liar-Hillary went to Russia with a ‘reset button’ and gave Moscow more authority and power in regions of major conflict. Yet it is Congressman scum-Adam Schiff and his friendly Democrat friends that are continuing to whine about Trump’s interactions with Russia or Russians. So, liar-nObama set the table on the friendly approach to Medvedev and Putin and Russian aggression around the world has more than threatened equilibrium, it is deadly. Have you wondered why Bashir al Assad has not been brought before a global tribunal for war crimes? UNITED NATIONS – Russia and China on Thursday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution referring the Syrian crisis to the International Criminal Court for investigation of possible war crimes, prompting angry responses from the proposal’s supporters who said the two countries should be ashamed... http://www.trevorloudon.com/2018/04/schiff-never-complained-when-obama-normalized-relations-with-putin/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NewZeal+%28New+Zeal+Blog%29.
.
Blood Metal Trees
by Tom McLaughlin
{ tommclaughlin.blogspot.com } ~ One does not expect to see a stunning work of art at the town dump, but there it was — a stainless steel oak tree about fourteen feet tall. The dump attendant said nobody was sure what to do with it, so there it sat between the garage and the scrap wood pile. Knowing who made the tree I drove over to Rod Iron Designs and asked Rod Blood and his son Merton what their tree was doing at the dump.
In the Bloods' shop/studio under construction
I’ve learned that I need a couple of hours if I’m going to talk to them because they like to visit. They told me the tree was first assigned to another artist who didn’t get too far on it so the patron, now deceased, asked them to finish it. They did, and the result is astounding. The patron was quite pleased and his tree was delivered to a hillside perch near his house in Lovell. Upon his death he wanted Rod to give it to either the Town of Lovell or to Fryeburg Academy but neither entity could decide whether to accept it so there it sat at the dump.
Merton plans the next move
Metal is cold and hard, but doesn’t seem so after Rod Blood and his son Merton work it. They’re artists who use iron or steel as their medium. They’ll do utilitarian repairs if asked and that’s what Rod did for decades working for others. His creative work was a sideline until some years ago when he dove in full time as “Rod Iron Designs.” Now he and Mert have more work than they can handle at their shop near Kezar Lake in Lovell.
Outside Portland Museum of Art
Outside the Portland Museum of Art stand metal sculptures like the one above which don’t appeal to me, but indicate the museum’s interest in the genre. If neither Lovell nor Fryeburg Academy appreciated the tree, I figured maybe the museum would. I took several pictures of it and sent them to a trustee I know. He was impressed — even more so after driving over to see it. He sent the pictures to the museum’s director, Mark Bessire, who contacted me. I told him of a smaller oak tree the Maine Medical Center commissioned the Bloods to create which now stands next to the hospital’s main entrance just down Congress Street from the Museum. Bessire said he would walk over and check it out.
The tree at Maine Medical Center entrance
The trunk and branches of the small tree are stainless steel, but it’s in full foliage with each individual leaf fashioned of copper oxidized to green. The tree is only about four or five feet tall but it’s perched on a pedestal with roots grasping outcrops of feldspar and quartz the Bloods dug out of the hills of western Maine. After seeing photographs of the hospital tree at their workshop I believed I could take better ones. I tried every angle, with flash and without, but was frustrated by the sterile setting. The tree is beautiful but it’s surrounded on all sides by concrete, glass, aluminum, or brick — and not well lit either. It would look much better just inside the entrance in the main lobby.
Rod and Mert were flattered that the Portland Museum of Art was interested in the bigger tree, but not sure how to proceed if neither Lovell nor Fryeburg Academy wanted it. Rod felt the weight of his deceased patron’s wishes and his obligation to fulfill them. It was an honor thing, a duty. Shortly thereafter, however, Lovell’s Board of Selectmen finally decided the tree could be placed at the site of the former Annie Heald School in Lovell Village next to the Charlotte Hobbs Memorial Library. There it stands today.
The morning after an ice storm last January it was completely glazed over. So were the trees around it and all were backlit by the rising sun. For a few hours the metal tree was indistinguishable from its natural neighbors.
Steel tree outlined in black
More people would have been able to see and appreciate the tree if it were next to the museum in Portland's Congress Square, but I’m glad it’s in Lovell. Both its artists and its patron are from here and this is where it belongs. I would, however, question why there’s a big pile of riprap stones around its base hiding so much of the trunk. It’s not as if the tree is going to be blown down by wind. It can’t have been placed there for aesthetic reasons, can it? I hope it's not a permanent arrangement.
The rock pile doesn't work
Comments