FROM A BOX OF OLD "ARMED FORCES" METALS FROM VARIOUS FAMILY MEMBERS THAT "FOUGHT" FOR 'FREEDOM' DURING 20TH CENTURY WARS....

 I CERTAINLY HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT THESE 'AWARD MEDALS' THAT WERE DISPLAYED, 'PROUDLY', ON THOSE WHO SURVIVED OUR PERPETUAL WARRING....THIS ONE CLOSELY RESEMBLES THOSE THAT WERE AWARDED TO NAZI SOLDIERS, DOESN'T IT!  

"OPERATION PAPERCLIP"....ahem......make 'that' "OPERATION COVERUP"...... in the perpetual politics of Orwellian Manipulations of the minds of the Unthinking Masses........

Siegrid Debus Northcutt, aka Sigi Debus, sat an aisle away from me in 6th Grade at the new Blossomwood Elementary School's inaugural season.....A third of our Class were the children of German Scientists that were rounded up and either tried and imprisoned, or executed (or committed suicide) for 'war crimes' during the Nuremberg Trials that took place in 1945-46, after the Allied Defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan.....I, recently, looked through old 'class photos' from 1951-1963, that are in an old cigar box in my basement......and wondered 'what happened' to the German kids that came to America....especially to Huntsville.....who were unaware of their fathers/parents involvement in Nazi Germany.......Sigi, a beautiful young girl, always seemed sad and withdrawn when we were pre-adolescents....Later, after I became aware of 'The Factual, Real Story'.....I began to wonder about the unconscious aftermath of my schoolmates' having been 'raised' in the shadows of the Past......Later, studying Sociology and Psychology in High School and College, I would, often, churn memories....even 'looks' and 'actions' that I had not understood, during my naive Youth, which had been inculcated with the Propaganda Machine's Cover Stories that allowed for the 'as smoothly-as-possible' assimilation of once-criminals into the Pantheon of Great Scientists, World Leaders and Spokesmen for 'Democracy' and 'Freedom'......By '8th Grade', I wasn't 'buying' much of the bullshit....as I looked through the pages of The Weekly Reader and watched the Movietone Newsreels that were shown, every Saturday morning at the local intown movie theater, The Lyric.......Not much as changed, has it?   

SKINNING HOMO ERECTUS WITH THE CODE RAY

 One can now wear this 'skinless' body suit to an Uban Sophisticate party...I remember Heidi Klum's then-controversial 'skinless body suit'....however, put some "flesh" over it and it becomes 'indecent exposure'......So 'went' the Physical World of Man, evolving with the rag-tags of its History.....What about Ziggy Chen's motion-capture 'Collagemory', the virtual imaginings of Post-Pandemic Fashion, Multi-Sensory/Motion-Capture Couture, or of Tupac Martir's Satore Studio? Will these collaborations with Algorithms blur the Ancient Biblical Laws that determine what is 'presentable'? Intrigued by the Hi-Tech Production that was utilized for the Finale of World Of Dance....and State-of-the-Art Cinema, wherein the distinction between 'Reality' and "Imaginary Worlds" is becoming increasingly matrixed ......I am imagining that in the Software-fabricated Future, as it becomes....with the evolution of Silicon-Reality.....the evolved World, contained within vast, self-sustaining mega-computers, having long-replaced the Mess that was the Word of Homo Sapiens......."We're ready for your 'closeup' Miss. Johansson...." Put on your Helmets, it's time for "Fashion Week"......and it will be 'all in your heads'.....right, Alvin Toffler.....?

CHERYL, THEN 'BIRD'.....NOW, JOHNNY.........

 

I've not 'shown' this 2007 photograph of "Bird" Lowe, because she, grieving over the death of her only daughter, Cheryl, is not displaying a 'look' that her friends and family would like to 'remember' her by.....Now, that some time has passed, and the need for more ameliorative 'takes', I'm remembering how she replied, in an aside to me, as I held my then-ever-present camera a couple of feet away, as her good friend and neighbor commented, "You'll outlive us all, Katherine!"..... This 'look' says otherwise........She could tell 'the camera' how she felt, knowing this portraiture would outlive her laughter to please others.....We are but beings, briefly illuminated against the illusory permanence, by the light of Living......My morose thoughts this morning are fueled from having, late last night, turned 'on' the TV.....only to view the final moments of Death In Venice.... As, Gustav von Aschenbach, hair blackened with dye, expires on a beach chair as he gazes out at a metaphorical Tadzio, to the soundtrack of Mascia Predit's rendition of a Mussorgsky lullaby. Saddened, I touched an arbitrary button on the 'remote', only to be 'taken' to the final, lugubrious scene of another Bogarde film, in which Teddy "Bare", deliriously drives a coupe over a steep cliff.....and, yesterday, the first of her three sons, John Wharton Lowe III, hanged himself. Bird had anticipated this event, twenty years ago......