The Old Love Letters, an original acrylic painting
10" X 13", unframed
(click on image to enlarge)
February the 29th is, as we all know, the day called leap day. It is the day which
is added to the shortest month, once every four years, to help keep our calendar in
pace with the Earth's orbit around the sun. Leap day is also the day which became
known as the day when women in our society could turn the tables on men, by offering
their own proposals of marriage. That is an idea which is becoming more sensible, as
it is now often the woman in the relationship, who has the financial power. When I was
young, there was a popular, daily comic-strip, running in most of our newspapers, called
Li'l Abner, written and illustrated by Al Capp. The setting for the strip, was the fictional
backwoods, community of Dogpatch, where everyone seemed to take pride in being
as ignorant as possible. One of the continuing story lines in the comic-strip, was the
Sadie Hawkins Day race. That was the day when the ugliest gal in town was entitled
to marry any available bachelor she could run fast enough to catch. That story became
popular fun in colleges and high-schools, with girls inviting boys to Sadie Hawkins Day
parties and dances.
Love can be fleeting, whether a love-match begins through a role reversal or through
more traditional arrangements. As Shakespeare said, "The course of true love never
runs smooth." I first posted a color variation of the little painting above, back in the
month of February in 2017, to coordinate with some of my thoughts about Valentine's
Day. The younger generations today, who are so consumed with social media, probably
consider the idea of exchanging love letters, as an ancient or ridiculously quaint form
of communication. Perhaps even the idea of painting the souvenirs of a failed romance
is too quaint to be worthy of interest.
Valentine's day in 2017 closely followed the disastrous take-over of The White House
by a criminally fraudulent business man, who would go on to become the worst president
in American history. He began his time in office with typical lies, saying that his election
was the greatest landslide in history, and that his inauguration events were attended by
the greatest crowds of people ever seen. In truth of course, he lost the popular vote
and his inaugural events were poorly attended. He then went on to choose a team
of people for his administration who were stupid enough, in many cases, to have felt
right at home in Al Capp's fictional Dogpatch. Before he ended his reign of ignorance,
with that final attempt to overthrow the government, Trump had succeeded in setting
back our individual civil and human rights, by a half century or more. Now he is
trying to leap forward to capture the White House again, so that he would have the
power to pardon himself of all of his crimes, before his criminal convictions begin
to accumulate and destroy his facade of the perfect business man.
The election season is already well underway, and the Supreme Court is now
delaying deliberations on decisions which are preventing Trump's trials from
proceeding. November will soon be here. Let us hope that some of Trump's
followers will finally see the sociopath for what he is, instead of as a victim of
some invisible political conspiracy .
If I could leap forward to next February, I hope that I would find that we
have retained an administration of genuine, public servants, who love people,
and that we successfully avoided reinstalling the tyrant who loves only himself.
Eugene P. McNerney
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