Greetings!

Exciting news happening in Alajuelita these days!

Christmas season (and winds) if officially here, and with that Genesis Construction is starting to enter what, to put it in simple, unworthy terms, could be called our ¨high season¨

We just sent off a team from Parkview, Illinois that did a lot of work at the children`s feeding center but also laid most of the bases for a house for Noylin. We at CCA are very excited for that house, because the girls of that family hold a special place in the heart of many of our members and supporters. Not that we favorites or anything like that, but we have been searching for a solution for that family and are glad to finally be making some progress!

Today Larry and Carole Pribel arrive in town, and then after them we have the rest of the team from East 91st Church (except for a couple of guys who snuck in on Saturday). All in all they are about 40 people!!! While here they will do many things, one of which is, praise God, build a house for one of our aforementioned families, Doña Xiomarra del Socorro. A women truly in need of help. We are anxious to get that build underway and look forward to the blessings and challenges that God will sure put before our path on the way. Please pray for all those involved with the build and the going-on´s these coming days, as well as safety, health and provision for the impending team.

Immediately after sending off the team from East 91st, we have a team of Lutherans (or the ¨Luteranos¨ if you are Chuck) coming in to help us out with ANOTHER house! How blessed are we, and how much shall God bless the people of Jazmin this December! I have not been informed if the family for which the Lutherans will build has been confirmed, it was slated to be Maria de Lopez (See next step, pt. 2) but she has actually moved out of Jazmin, hopefully to a better area and a better life.

Hope all is well,

Merry Christmas, and God bless you all! (especially if you are reading this blog that means you are awesome!)

Soren

Sorry about the language, this is not my video, just ignore it.

Happy Black Friday!!!!! If you are not from the U.S., it is just like Boxing Day in Canada.

For the Maze, I can’t really explain it so here’s the map.

Step 1: Go to the Ski Village

Step 2: Click the Red Button

Step3: Click the Red Button to show the Map.

The Map will look like this:

How to get the Yeti Costume:

Step1: You will need to find the end of the maze

Step 2: Go inside and it will look like this

Step 3: Walk over to the Big Bin That Says Prize

How to Get the Blue Pom Pom Toque:

Go to the Ski Hill

Click on the Big Bin That Says Free

This should come up, Click “Yes” and you now have this item.

New Sleds

Snow And Sports Catalog Cheats:

Click the Green Penguin’s Face for the Green Hockey Jersey

Click The Lime Green Penguin’s Face for the Green Goalie Gear

Click the word Ice in Ice Skating for the White Pom Poms

Chapter 100: The Pequod, of Nantucket, meets the Samuel Enderby, of London
I saw the Moby Dick exhibit at at the CCA Wattis Institute today. Loved the Rockwell Kent illustrations.
Here’s my Chapter 93: The Castaway.

I wrote this essay for the artists Bik Van Der Pol (http://www.bikvanderpol.net/) in connection with their recent exhibition at the CCA, Glasgow.

MICHAEL STONE: INVOKING THE GHOSTS OF GULLIVER

In the UK, we are used to the popular derision of contemporary art practice – if tabloids relish the opportunity for incredulous puns about the antics of crackpot artists, elsewhere  commentators deplore the loss of virtuosity and pronounce discomfort at the thought that someone somewhere might be taking us all for (an expensive) ride: the Emperor’s new clothes are (not) on show. There is something liberating in the fact that the popular consciousness allows for “crackpot” art, even if that is only in derision. But what does it mean for someone like Michael Stone, a convicted loyalist terrorist, to claim his action in throwing a rucksack packed with assorted weaponry into Stormont was “performance art’?

Stone was jailed in 1989 for killing 3 men, and injuring dozens more, in a sectarian attack on mourners attending a funeral at Milltown cemetery, North Belfast, 2 years previously. Sentenced to a total of 684 years, he was released in 2000 from HMP Maze under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, by which time he had taken up painting as a hobby. In the years between his release and his Stormont re-arrest, he occupied himself as an artist, whose paintings fetched between a few hundred and a few thousand pounds per work. In 2001, the Engine Room gallery in Belfast hosted an exhibition of Stone’s work, the Belfast Telegraph noting that “he seems genuinely committed to an artistic career” and (approvingly) that “There is no suggestion that he is involved in any of the rackets – drugs, prostitution, protection – that have become a career for so many of the other men released early under the Good Friday Agreement”. Even though Stone sometimes tackled contentious subjects in his paintings without engendering much effect, gun-touting poses he re-enacted for photographs in 2004 were condemned, and the Stormont action – apparently titled “Never Say Never” – had Stone jailed and branded a lunatic. If prisoners are encouraged to pursue an interest in art while incarcerated, as Stone was, are we to impose limits on how that interest manifests itself, or impose restrictions on the subject matter they can tackle? Stone was very much isolated, (the volatile, misunderstood artist of Romantic construction), but if we want art to converge with social practice, are there caveats to that? How far does art encroach on criminality?

In some respects Stone’s story resonates with the experience of one of Scotland’s ex-con cause celebres, Jimmy Boyle. Styled by himself (and others), as “’Scotland’s Most Violent Man”, “ the most notorious criminal in Scotland, a violent product of the Glasgow slums”, Boyle was a celebrity inmate and hardman serving a life sentence for the murder of a renown gangster, William “Babs” Rooney. Art therapy at HMP Barlinnie led to an apparently Damascene conversion, and, in 1976, while he was still in prison, he was commissioned by the Craigmillar Festival Society to design a large recumbent sculpture -“Gulliver”- for them. The Craigmillar Festival Society was pioneering in many ways, not least in its genesis amongst a group of local women exasperated with municipal indifference to the area and its people. In the 1970s, its profile as a model promoting the efficacy of community arts initiatives was international. Without doubt, this worked in Boyle’s favour, and on release, he enjoyed a high profile and reportedly high earnings as an artist. His transformation from lawless gangland enforcer to well-heeled, well-behaved sculptor is something of a civic and national proverb. We see the city in the man: we see the social and political value of art in its redemptive powers to integrate the disenfranchised individual with the powers of his own expression, in uniting the divided self and more than this, we see evidence of an economic miracle. These days – with notable contemporaneity  – Boyle appears in newspaper interviews as a multi-millionaire property developer, doing up riads in Marrakesh, while current cultural policy promotes the arts as almost failsafe engines for recession-proof growth, making Boyle something of a poster boy for the benefits of exploiting “creative skills”.

Boyle generates the type of expressive work that formed the bedrock of art therapy in its infancy and is still, in some contexts, pursued as an irrefutable good. It conforms to a model of practice long regarded as defunct in art schools – if it is good enough to provide respite from those personal or social problems identified by mental health or regeneration committees, it is not really good enough for professional art education (even if those so educated administer or deliver the therapy). Consequently, like Jack Vettriano, Fife’s self-taught king of stiffly nostalgic soft-core noir, the outmoded Boyle has been blindsided by the critical art establishment; his success has more to do with his notoriety than his significance as an artist.  Reciprocally, Boyle has dismissed contemporary art, emblematically marking “Sensation” “the biggest pile of rubbish” he’d ever seen, and making claims that he will not sell to Saatchi: “Because I don’t like what he does and can afford not to.” “Not selling to Saatchi” has become a well -rehearsed cliché even amongst currents of the contemporary mainstream, as if it were some guarantee of artistic integrity, of concern with “higher” imperatives than those of the market. So where does this take Stone, who not only claims he has sold to Saatchi, but whose declared forays into performance and re-enactment are much more in keeping with the general trends in the academy, in the museums, in critical analysis and the market? Can his action be determined “art”? Is he precluded from performance practice because he has not earned a degree? Because of his criminal record, and the specific nature of that criminal record? He has a demonstrable commitment to artistic practice, what does this count for? Are we to admit that there are, after all, objective standards by which art succeeds or fails? Are such standards moral, ethical or political, assuming they are not formal?

There are many interesting parallels between the propensities and systems of art and crime, not least of which is intent. Marcel Duchamp foregrounded the notion of artistic intent through the Readymade – particularly “Fountain” – proposing that a work of art could be enacted through choice (rather than manufactured through craft). Rejected from the open, avowedly non-selective, non-hierarchical exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917, Fountain was deliberately adjudicated “not art”. In 1967, interviewed on Canadian radio, Duchamp said “It’s not the visual aspect of the Readymade that matters, it’s simply the fact that it exists.… Visuality is no longer a question: the Readymade is no longer visible, so to speak. It is completely gray matter. It is no longer retinal.” This statement came at a time when his influence on a generation was well established. Though he tacitly implies that at some point in it’s conception the Readymade was necessarily visible, it was in principle an idea which merely required the service of objects for its enactment. The object forms it adopted between 1913 and 1917 are important only so far as they are conceptual facilitators: conceptual and performative practice in the 60s and 70s developed and extended the remit of the Readymade beyond the object.

Despite the Readymade’s initial and most complete realisation being in its exclusion from exhibition, presented in exhibition (from the late 1950s on), its effect in influence was to devolve the power of choice to the artist within the confines of the “White Cube”. However, just as the object form had a limited lifespan in relation to the Readymade, it seems that the “White Cube” context could be dispensible too: the gallery is only a surrogate for audience. Through enacting the Readymade, Duchamp imposed an active duty of intent on the viewer. This active duty is where the Readymade abuts with Situationist theory: Duchamp may have had to use an institutional context to effect the Readymade, but its true legacy is in the creative potential of the viewer, not the affirmation of the hegemony of gallery or museum. Situationist culture “introduces total participation…it is the organization of the directly lived moment…(in which) everyone will become an artist, i.e. a producer-consumer of total culture creation.” Some notion of “participation” has framed the development of recent cultural policy – much of the Creative Scotland Bill hangs off it. If everyone is (and can “participate” as) an artist, if active viewing is the minimum necessary foundation for establishing art, what is there to prevent Stone formulating his action as art?

It is maybe appropriate at this point to consider Joseph Beuys’s conception of “Social Sculpture/Social Architecture”. In 1980, 4 years after Boyle’s “Gulliver” was installed in a field at Craigmillar, Beuys created a blackboard diptych during the Edinburgh Festival entitled “Jimmy Boyle Days”. Quite what Beuys made of Boyle’s output is hard to determine, suffice to say that Beuys was not suggesting that everyone should paint or sculpt in pursuit of being an artist: he was concerned with developing art as a “politically productive force, coursing through each person, and shaping history… This is the concept of art that carries within itself not only the revolutionizing of the historic bourgeois concept of knowledge (materialism, positivism), but also of religious activity….” “Creativity isn’t the monopoly of artists. This is the crucial fact I’ve come to realise, and this broader concept of creativity is my concept of art. When I say everybody is an artist, I mean everybody can determine the content of life in his particular sphere, whether in painting, music, engineering, caring for the sick, the economy or whatever.”

In this sense, and bearing in mind his abolition of entry requirements to the class of “Monumental Sculpture” in Dusseldorf, Beuys moved towards rubbishing the notion that “artist” is, or should be, a specialised, professional status. Indeed, in fulfilling Beuys’s ambitions for art to become a “politically productive force”, there must be universal creative emancipation – there can be no professional status: the artist claiming such status is a Pharisee. Equally, in terms of the Situationist imperative to introduce “total participation”, there can be no qualifications, no hierarchies. Art is whatever is chosen – and enacted – by the artist, that is by anyone behaving as an artist. Significantly that includes recognising art, “active aesthetics”, (perhaps in the tradition of the flaneur, who configures urban experience in accordance with personal  narratives). Karlheniz Stockhausen was widely condemned for declaring 9/11 “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos”, but if 9/11 functioned as art for him, if his experience of 9/11 produced an aesthetic apprehension, who can deny it?

If everybody can be an artist (the current drive for participation underscores this); if art can be any choice, enactment or aesthetic experience – must art always be benign, therapeutic and economically productive? Are these values basic determinants of what art is? Is there a place for art to be anything else or does that necessarily take art into the ever expanding scope of illegality and criminality? Is art always “good”, “acceptable”? Stone was found guilty of attempted murder and criminal damage. In Stone’s trial, Peter Bond, an artist and senior lecturer at Central St Martins, was called as an expert witness in whose opinion Stone’s action could “come under the ambit” of performance art as long as there was no intention of using the weaponry or exploding the devices. Imputing Stone’s artistic intent depends on the planned failure of his criminal activity, what does this add – or take away from – the range of artistic practice?

Greetings friends!
After a LONG hiatus I have much to tell!!!

Most importantly through an eclectic partnership (those are the best) of the people at Purdy Motors (the CR Toyota Dealership), Blue Valley School 9th graders, CCA, Andy Valenciano and friends, and a slew of other volunteers including Chuck, Stephanie and even my dad, Torre, and sister, Ingrid we managed to finish a house for Doña Felipa and her many relatives.

It certaintly wasn´t the easiest built, seeing as the house was at the very top of the hill and due to the savage rains of late the roads were almost impossible to use. But with determined volunteers and the help of some pretty beastly Toyota pickups we were able to haul up the materials needed and build the house in a timely fashion!

It was a true victory for the Lord, and Felipa and her family were/are all so thrilled to have such a lovely, safe house now!

Thank you to all who served so tirelessly with us, you have made a real difference!!

This morning’s Tennessean included a story about the opportunities for volunteerism being created by the charter school boom in Nashville.  Specifically, the article talks about filling the Boards of these schools with community volunteers who have diverse experience.  Enter Louise Grant:

Louise Grant is the vice president of communications for Corrections Corporation of America, a company that operates prisons in Tennessee. She’s also on the board for LEAD Academy, a local charter school.  Grant said the diverse experience of LEAD’s board has been beneficial for the school while it finds its footing in Nashville.

“For me, the tie-in was natural because I work for CCA, and we are in the business of partnership corrections,” she said. “We are very, very similar to a charter school because we operate a prison and we’re responsible for the inmates, but we must meet all the standards and accountability the government expects. That was one of the values I brought: I understand how public-private partnership works.”

Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for the blessings that we have.  Even if you don’t have much, its still worth being thankful for. This is one of my favorite quotes for Thanksgiving:

“Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude.”  ~E.P. Powell

This means that if you just eat turkey, your not really taking the message of thanksgiving. It is a time of prayer and thanks and you should take it very seriously. If there’s one thing that you do on thanksgiving, and if nothing else. No matter what religon you are, sit down and pray to God and be thankful.

Have A Happy Thanksgiving From Chrissjb15

Click the Modern Chair for the Coat Rack

Click the Tiny Leaf for the Shoe Rack

Click the Table Leg for the Woodstove

Click the Snow Fort for the Fireplace

Click the Snow Fortress Wall for the Icicles

Click the Brick for the Jack’ O Lantern

Click the Window for the Cauldron

Click the Sad Jack’ O Lantern for the LCD TV

Click the Tombstone for the Goofy Jack’ O Lantern

Click the Ticket Slot for the Piano

Click the Top-Left Window for the Bowling Alley

Click the Stove Knobs for the Fridge

20. und 21 November 2009  (Eingang Kirchenstrasse)

Veranstalter: Trägerverein Franziskanerinnen Amstetten

http://www.franziskanerinnen-amstetten.at

Der Reinerlös dient der Finanzierung eines Kinderhortes für Strassenkinder in Serbien, organisiert von “Franziskaner für Mittel- und Osteuropa”.

Der Reinerlös der Hütte vom Lionsclub Amstetten wird für ein karitatives Projekt im Raum Amstetten verwendet.

Samstag, 21.November, 09:00  bis  17:00 Uhr geöffnet!

Fotos vom Freitag:

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Die Fachschule für wirtschaftliche Berufe Amstetten im Internet:

http://www.fwamstetten.ac.at

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Franz Sperl, 20.Nov. 2009

]]> http://sleet96.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/whats-new-blog-post-6/ Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:20:39 +0000 chrissjb15 http://sleet96.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/whats-new-blog-post-6/

What’s New?

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I filled out a survey for California College of the Arts and in return they gave me access to a simple application called LifeMap, which I’ve been enjoying quite a bit. I really like the fact that the application doesn’t prescribe that one orders their life linearly, since that wouldn’t work for me at all. You can also change both the transparency of the different blocks and of course their size. I like that importance isn’t measured only along one dimension and that those two dimensions aren’t fully described, though I would love for there to be a way to allow the map to evolve over time.

Doing the map allowed me to clarify a number of things about myself. For one thing, it allows me to see that so many of the things I do are interconnected, such that I lead my life pretty holistically rather than in segments. It was also good for me to think about the relative importance of each of my activities. For instance, I think of being an educator more as a conduit for a lot of the things I love to do, and it’s vital that way, but that I’m ultimately more invested in creation. Choreography is just as important to me as criticism, and creative writing is somewhat in the background right now. And Feldenkrais is huge! I like that it’s represented as this translucent, ethereal element that permeates all aspects of my life. This of course is an evolving map. I think I’ll come back to the application periodically and change it around according to my particular life needs. I’m looking forward to that.

The application is unfortunately only available to art school graduates. A cursory look online doesn’t reveal anything equivalent, but it’s probably just as easy to do it for yourself on pen and paper. I think it’s a really useful activity.

The sky turns ominously dark, the wind gets bone piercingly chilly, the chatter of raindrops hitting against pavements turns strangely hypnotizing, my iTunes playlist is mutated into a series of slow slushy ballads,  my mood gets lugubriously melancholy, and directs my thoughts to “Gloom Avenue”.

At “Gloom Avenue”, I think of all the things that I should not even be thinking. I cannot help it, it gushes into my mind so brutally that tears form at the edge of my eye sometimes, threatening to surge out like the roaring waves of a ferocious Tsunami unleashing its tremendous power but then forcefully tamed by the puissance of determination and will.If that is the case, perhaps I have long forgotten how it feels to literally cry your heart out.

I’ve been thinking hard and long about wanting to give up on something this very year because I realized that I’m not an individual who works extremely well with Standard Operating Procedures or Rules and Regulations. I feel so restricted, so confined, so limited,as if I am a lump of clay, awaiting to be moulded into what ‘they’ want me to be – a “Standard Operating -insert-” kind of thing.

I was sure I knew what was paved ahead of me before I even penned down my choice, but why am I only starting to regret it now when I’m not allowed to take any steps backwards or make any changes. There are times when I was dead on to submit my application to quit, but then again, could not bear to, did not dare to, chickened out, all my efforts of whatever I had done will be washed down the drain into obscurity.

It is now even a chore for me to get up and find the motivation to attend activities faithfully like I once did with all the enthusiasm, everything that needs to be done seems so useless, mundane and not beneficial all of a sudden.

Where do I go from here? This is not where I intended to be.
How do I refuel the fading flame of passion to keep it alive?

I need an answer.

Hi, Penguins I have decided to work on the site today, and that work has produces 2 new pages. The first new one is http://chrissjb15.wordpress.com/beta-pengins-ive-met/ it talks about all the famous penguins that I have met so far.

The second new page I’ve made is  http://chrissjb15.wordpress.com/support-emails/ . It is where you go to leave and general question for me to email club penguin support. It is also for any questions I might have that you might too.

How To Buy The Amulet:

Step1: Go To The Martial Artworks Catalog in the Ninja Hideout

Step2: Click On “Buy”

Step3: Click The ummmm I don’t know what you call that……. Ninja Thingy

Step4: The Doorway will Come up, when it does, walk through it

Step6:

You are now in the fire ninja hideout

There are no hidden items in the catalog

But There is a hidden room,

Step1: Go to the stage

Step2: Have friends, one of them wearing a bug costume, stand on the X’s, it should start glowing like this

Step3: it will roll away and it will look like this

How To Get The Hidden Pin:

Step 1: Go to the Hidden Room

Go to The Hidden Room

Step2: Stand on the X’s

Step3:   It will start to glow

Step5: it will open and you now have the pin if you walk to it