Being Thankful

This Thanksgiving I’m going to do something different, I’m going to give thanks for not only the people in my life, but those that shaped my life and were a part of it, no matter how short.

In some circles I am known as the Grief Lady, the one to speak to and find out if you’re really normal and not just slipping away somehow, the lady that will not judge and empathize with your pain. I would gladly trade that title with anyone most of the time, but then I wouldn’t have known how to deal with so many deaths and may have missed meeting new people. You see after so much loss, something changes and it’s usually you. You become a new person, someone different from the person that was the granddaughter, daughter, cousin, wife, or close friend, you are now. You become the person that is left to find how to be someone without that person you loved.

One thing is certain, you never, ever “get over it”. Every holiday brings renewed pain and looking at that new person in the mirror can be frightening. You long for what was, and for the love that is no longer a phone call away. Tears well up and you just know they will never stop and fear the pain will be as sharp as the day of the funeral. Your fears trap you for a time and you retreat to that unknowing fog that was the only comfort for a while. You watch others plan their holidays with anger in your heart that you have been robbed that same warmth they share with their family. Then, by chance, you find something to make you smile, something that you can remember with a little smile and can move forward again. You can make plans that may seem odd to others, but logical to you to celebrate.

So this year I am doing that, I am remembering those special people, and taking a little time to let you remember them too. Here is my list and feel free to add to the list some of the wonderful people that you wish to thank.

Grandmother & Grandfather – Barbara and John Mikula, Leona and Fred Wilck and Grandfather Henry VonEngeln
Mother & Father – Delores and John Mikula, Charles Rauh Sr.
Aunts and Uncles – Henry & Loraine Brandt, Larry Wilck, Whitey Mikula, Lou Mikula
Cousins – Connie Brandt
Husband – Charles Rauh Jr.
Friends – Judy and Mike Housler, Rich Zwierchowski, Judy Divers, Trip, Gigi, Rose
And finally, my beloved animals, each one unique and giving me something to love and share the many tears. – Scooter, Tina, Sandy, Skipper, Tap, Dieter, Nicky, Daisy, Earl, Susie, Peach, Pumpkin, and Emale.

Crossing the Line

My art history class has given me another great question to blog about, here it is:

Nudity in art—when does it become pornographic? The human nude, especially female, as we have seen, is a time honored subject in art. Many devoutly Christian artists view the human body as God’s most supreme creation (in the Bible, it is written that man is made in the image of God). Some artists have centered their whole careers around the nude. In art school, students are still required to draw the nude from life. Surprisingly, some viewers still object to nudity in art. When does nudity cease to be beauty; why do people object to nudity, feeling that the viewing of it prurient? What is the difference between “nude” and “naked”?

This is a difficult question. Naked is meant to be prurient, Nude is meant to be artistic. Both still mean that the people have no clothes. But why do we not notice that the nude in art is also meant to be provocative, enticing and all art is to stir emotion, is this not what pornography does? We then go back to what is unhealthy for us as a people. A recent episode of Mad Men had used what was considered pornographic covers of magazines but they looked amazingly wholesome by today’s standard. The Vargas girls were definitely enticing depictions of women and were created for Playboy Magazine, yet the view of them as art is overwhelming. French postcards in the 1920’s, showing women scantily clothed, were considered pornographic, but are mild again by today’s standard. Acrobatic movements by women in silent films were considered pornographic in nature.

We are sexual by nature and when we are naked we expose ourselves and become vulnerable to each other. We are also judgmental, tending to have intense opinions on every subject. Something that has always been said about the internet is that we all sit “nekkid “behind the keyboard. We are faceless and left to a person’s imagination, but we allow ourselves to be vulnerable at that point and often use little or no judgment on each other. This is also the philosophical question about “What is Beauty?” To know beauty do we need to know ugly? Our young girls starve themselves to become what they consider beautiful and our children are unhealthy weights being fed the conditioning of a free society. America has not yet left its puritanical age, where all things must be pure in the mind or we fall short of the grace of God. During the Reformation even the Catholic Church painted fig leaves over the nudity of the bodies in the Sistine Chapel in response to the judgment of the people. Other cultures do not take this position and are not ashamed of the body making all viewing of the unclothed body profane as we do here.

In art, the study of the human form was always meant to glorify ourselves and keep the record of what we considered beauty. The curving line of a woman’s back along her thigh is a sensual line that can be seen abstractly as much as the phallic symbol of an obelisk. We still talk in code that has sexual innuendo placed on words that never before had that connotation. What does the word “gay” mean today? Our fantasy creatures today in video have the same strong sexual lines that those of the ancients did when depicted in sculpture or painting. It appears our strongest emotion is sexual. Today whether or not you clothe the body you still convey the sexual tension by gesture or proximity. When does it cross the line and become pornographic and not art? When the judgment of the viewer crosses the value line they have set for themselves and can see or feel an emotion that the artist may or may not have been trying to evoke.