A Dose of Cute and a Soapbox

Today while I was driving, I ran into my friend Ian from Tailcreek Kennels. He told me he had a couple of new additions to their family and invited me for a puppy break. I did a 180 and followed him.

Fortunately I had my camera.

Here's a dose of cute for you.

This is the coy miss Cinder. She is 10 months old and is a little shy of cameras at first.

And here are the new kids, Mabel, the smallest is 8 weeks old. And Knox is 10 weeks.

Here's big daddy Chuma. I just love his wrinkly face.

Oh, Cinder has come out to say hi.  She gave me a kiss. She reminds me of Cricket a little.

Here's big boy Knox, tumbling over to play with Mabel.

I think this is Mabel, chewing my finger with her little puppy teeth. What a sweetie.

Big Knox again, with a purposeful stride....

to tackle Mabel for some playtime.

Then it was back across the valley for me.

Here's the dead snake's latest resting place (until I fling it back outside into the dead grass).

That book is great by the way. It has a lot of good reproductions of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson. I've lately been reading a lot about Thomson, and I just finished "Northern Light" by Roy MacGregor which is an investigation into Thomson's death.

In school we were taught that Thomson "drowned mysteriously" in Algonquin Park. MacGregor's book investigates that claim, and shows it is most likely that he was murdered, and the cause of his death was incompetently dealt with by all the authorities involved. I doubt if that would happen now, but in those days (in 1917) things were run by old boys and all kinds of patriarchal attitudes got in the way. It was such a tragedy that Canada lost a brilliant artist because of someone's rage, and that he wasn't allowed to live out his career and talent, nor was he even mourned properly. He was dismissed by history, except insofar as he made art collectors wealthy by a manufactured mystique based on a mysterious and premature death.

The art business is corrupt. Time and again you hear of starving artists and wealthy collectors as if that is the order of nature. I think artists ought not to sell their works, but lease them and retain 50% of the value for themselves and their estates over each transaction.

My dead snake therefore represents the Art Establishment leaching out (or leeching more likely) money to the middleman from the ones who most deserve remuneration, the creators themselves.  Maybe I should sell its juxtaposition and call myself a "conceptual artist".  (That's snarkasm).

xoxo