Lynn Vincent has a couple links to the difficult story of Captain Roger Hill being pressed b/w hard and rock inside Afghanistan. She calls it “no way out.” Her article has a good overview of the story, and the Washington Post article she links to has some horrible details. The most horrific point to me is the possible or suggestion that this situation occurred because of petty friction b/w two commanding officers. That may not be true. The Washington Post reporter offers a few possibilities, but as he says, it’s hard to sympathize with those who want to punish excellent commanders who believed following protocol would only get themselves killed.

For all of my differences with the president, I’m glad he was in office for the start of the 21st century. Thank you for serving, sir. They sell memorabilia for this here.

My post on Andrew Wyeth below got me thinking about the whole business of realism in painting. And that reminded me of a story I read, years back.

A pastor I worked for occasionally got long letters (more like manifestos) from a friend who was an artist. I got to look at the letters too, if I cared to. From looking at them, I concluded that this artist was a) not as talented as he thought he was, and b) a little nuts. However, he told a story—or rather related an added sidelight to a well-known story—that I’ve never forgotten, and am inclined to believe.

The story of Diego Rivera’s mural, “Man At the Crossroads,” is pretty well known. John D. Rockefeller commissioned Rivera to paint the mural for Rockefeller Center in 1933. Rivera deviated from his original plan by adding the figure of Lenin to it, and refused to change it at Rockefeller’s request. So Rockefeller paid him for it, then covered it up and later had it demolished.

Now here’s the sidelight my pastor’s artist-friend added. He said that, because of the embarrassment of this experience, Rockefeller made a vow. “Never again,” he said, “will I allow an artist to play this kind of trick on me. This new Abstract Art is all about shapes and colors. You can’t tell what it’s saying. It would be impossible for an Abstract artist to do to me what Rivera did. Therefore, from now on I will commission only Abstract works.”

And because of Rockefeller’s stature (this artist claimed), Abstract Art became tremendously fashionable with wealthy art patrons everywhere. Thus Abstract became the dominant artistic style of the 20th Century—not because it actually gave artists greater scope to explore new frontiers of creativity, but simply because that was where the money was.

I like the story because I’ve always disliked Abstract. When I was a kid who thought he’d grow up to be (some kind of) an artist someday, I took pride in being able to draw things that actually looked like things, and resented all the excitement about cubes and smears.

But I’m asking here—is the story true? Does anybody know? Is it possible to know?

Welcome to the Forum, on the way to which a funny thing happened. Why the crowd is laughing so much, I don’t know, but maybe I’m just visualizing the threat of battle too much.

I can’t help thinking the axe-welder at the beginning did not prevail only because of a technicality. I’d like the referees to examine the tapes. Doesn’t the axe touch the other player’s head and stomach (or hypochondriac region)? Shouldn’t that have put him down a good bit?

Andrew Wyeth, who helped make realism in painting respectable again, has passed away.

He was the son of N. C. Wyeth, the brilliant book illustrator.