Dissent Decree

Entries from January 18th, 2009

Mediocrity and Excellence

January 18th, 2009 · No Comments · Uncategorized

Mediocrity Mediocrity is all-inclusive and indiscriminate. Its natural home is the committee. Excellence Excellence is exclusionary and discriminating. It can only result from the capacity to say no and the willingness to do so. Michael Maurer Smith © Michael Maurer Smith 2009 

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Lit by the Sun

January 18th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized

Shaw’s Diner As the sun rose I found much to photograph, anything that stood up so the light would strike it—an almost audible clamor—at sunrise—houses, barns, fences and telephone poles, clusters of trees and dwellings, and like a sail at sea the occasional gleam of a grain elevator. I saw it but did not fully sense [...]

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Andrew Wyeth

January 16th, 2009 · No Comments · Uncategorized

Christina’s world is smaller today and so is ours. The painter Andrew Wyeth has died at age 91. He and Norman Rockwell were the artists who most influenced me as a high school student in 1968. Both men could draw beautifully and I aspired to such virtuosity. Later, as an Art student at Michigan State [...]

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Oldsmobile Desert

January 9th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Images

    As I surveyed the cement desert from the bridge on Martin Luther King boulevard, in Lansing, Michigan, I  recalled the civil rights leader’s famous words, “I have a dream.” So he did and so did the thousands of good men and women who once made Oldsmobiles here. What happened to their dreams, I wonder? © [...]

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