Failure to Communicate

Detail from #15

“What we have here is a failure to communicate…” ah yes, a famous line from a famous movie. Along that vein I want to bring to your attention a missed opportunity in the promotion of our local arts scene. 

Discover Ohio is a special advertising section, all glossy pages and pictures that is found in certain magazines. I came across one over the weekend in a recent issue of Midwest Living. The focus this time was “Art of Ohio: Creative escapes for every taste.”   Now I am thinking hmmmm….art, so there MUST be some mention of our locale right?  Wrong…except for the giant juicer (Football H of F) who has a quarter page ad with an 8pt type line, third in the list that says “discover arts around every turn!”, Stark County is not to be found in any way, shape, form, picture, listing, ad or mention.

Just to be sure, I read the whole insert several times. Under the Art of Learning section, the closest venue is Akron Glass Works (good for them as my friend Jack Baker owns that studio!!) Beachwood has a listing for something too so that is sort of close. 

The Art of Design section mentions a special show at Kent State but nothing else remotely close by. Cleveland has a R and R Hall of Fame picture however as the feature image on the page.

The Art of Beauty does list the Rocky River Public Library Cowan Potter Museum. Now I lived that way for 4 years and knew nothing about it so I guess that is good to know. Lots of other listings, but nothing around here.  On to the Art of Discovery (surely I will discover something about our area?)  Nope. An aerial silks class as the Czech Cultural Center in Cleveland is my best bet for a one hour drive. I define close by as an hour drive. If I were willing to go 2 to 4 hours, I would have tons to do in Toledo, Columbus and Cincy but evidently the glaciers wiped out all relevant arts stuff in our part of the state.  Did University Circle suddenly roll away when no one was looking? Did the Akron area pile on the new blimp (correction, it is officially a zeppelin) and float off someplace? Don’t even get me started on Canton…..

The Art of Living did mention the Wooster Food Tours, started by our own Barbara Abbott, but I think it came after her original successful venture in …shhhhh…Canton. I will say that the Shakespeare Festival at Stan Hywet did get top billing on that page. Close but no Stark County are the “visit Amish country” ad and the Hollywood tour of the Mansfield Reformatory ad.  Even Youngstown has several pages. What have they got that aint’ got?  Evidently a lot.

Inside the magazine, which I shall recall from memory as it was recycled, was a map like thingy of places to stop along I-90, I-80 and some other road.  Nobody stopped in Canton. Nobody stopped at the Cleveland Museum of Art either. I suppose most of the listings and mentions had to do with some type of kickback or purchase of space or some such exchange of funds. I am finding it rare that any press comes by the common sense of what is good for the locals to know. And how do I know this? You can ask me in person. Common sense rules out that not all locals need to know that information in my little corner of the print world. Thank goodness for my blogger buddy at Artwach, the tenacity of Craig Joseph and the support of social media or nobody would even know about…………

Oh, if you have read this far, please note that Hoard Couture is only on view four more days! (Wed – Sat noon – 5). If you live in Akron, well …we did try three press releases and emails and even a snail mail! Whatever. 

  

Hey magazine insert people, if anybody happens to connect you to this, I made a list….

Massillon Museum of Art, Lincoln Theater, and Springhill….

Canton Museum of Art, Palace Theater, Journey Gallery, 2^nd April, Translations Gallery…

Akron Art Museum, Don Drumm Studios, Akron Glass Works, Zeber-Martell…

Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance Hall, Botanical Gardens, Playhouse Square….

Anybody else out there, you can just drop a few bucks in an envelope and snail it my way, I’d be happy to add you to my list! I am pretty good at drawing maps too so, a little extra and I may even doddle your logo on it.

Since when are tears funny?

        Enough already!!   I have sat on this for a while but this morning, I got mad as hell and couldn’t take it anymore. Why oh why are we humiliating our children because “we” think it is cute and funny and have to post it or send it out over the airwaves/internet? While having my coffee and reading the paper this morning with a news talk show on in the background (a NEWS talk show, not some random video/entertainment thing), I hear a child crying and adults laughing. On screen is a poor little boy, about 5, who had just learned he was going to get yet another sibling, sister number 3….he burst into tears. The two older girls jumped with glee, he pushed away a celebratory cake and wailed in frustration. THAT is funny? The hosts were laughing, the parents off camera were laughing…..no wonder your kid grows up with anger issues, why is he being humiliated like this on international news? He is hurt and upset….does that not warrant some sort of comfort and privacy? So his pops is overloaded with X’s in the chute, but that is not a national news matter…or a public one. The little kid has a right to be upset and should be consoled.  You want to shoot a video and send it to the family, fine… your right to do so, but to humiliate him for years to come? What about his rights?

     At the risk of one long run-on paragraph I have to stop and take a breath…..I could just rant and vent about this issue for pages. It seems to be everywhere, the humiliation of others so we can all have a good laugh. Any wonder that our kids have anxiety issues, don’t know right from wrong, and can’t judge what is appropriate and what is not as far as the treatment of others to name just one thing on a long list of such subjects….really….their parents need to grow up!

Yes, the video tape has caught many a perpetrator and been used to prosecute, I have no problem with that, but it is the little ones that bug me. The taping of your child finding out a gift is not what they expected after much misleading hype, tears and anger and sadness posted for all to see is not helping anyone. So Uncle Bob thinks it’s funny and tapes the reaction and posts it on his page, which goes viral, and gets picked up by some media organization. Oh look at poor little Bobby, flinging himself on the ground, wailing and screaming and crying, poor little bastard, hey pass me another beer….kid should have known I wasn’t really getting him that tractor toy….ha ha ha. Nobody in the room finds that hurtful? Don’t bother posting anymore polls about what is wrong with us, the answer is on tape.  If we keep promoting and justifying the bad, it will continue to permeate and become acceptable. Not that I like all the sunshine and saccharine of babies sleeping with their puppies…but I can scroll right past that. The tears make me stop and want to hug the poor little kid. Why didn’t one of those laughing parents hug him? He needed some support and comfort and acceptance against all those future hormonal sisters. Daddy dearest should have given him the “hey buddy, it will be okay” man talk. Maybe it was mommy dearest off camera that wanted everyone to know about her pregnancy so they would send her “likes” and gifts and cards and on and on and on….

     Hey news show…if you think tears are funny, how about equal time to show other kids in distress over things, like when they find out daddy won’t be coming home from the middle east? Tears are tears are they not? Nobody laughing in the background means it is not okay? No, it is never okay to publicly humiliate a child, or anyone, for someone else’s enjoyment. That video will live forever now….future girlfriends can find it, future rivals can find it….ha ha ha….maybe what happens after that won’t be so funny, but it may end up on the national news for all the wrong reasons anyway. Sorry folks, had to get this one off the chest because I love our kids, yours and mine and theirs and don’t think we need to make fun of them for whatever reason, publicly, privately or ever. We are supposed to love them, guide them, support them, advocate for them, correct them, and mold them….not laugh at (only with) them, humiliate them, embarrass them (unless it is a sanctioned set up to get them out of a bad situation or decision), or feed them full of crap that they are the center of the universe.  Tears such as those I had to endure this morning belong behind closed doors, not at my kitchen table for millions to see. If you have to show tears, let it be the child who sees his parent dressed in camo come out from behind the cheerleading squad….perhaps embarrassing but for a good cause. I will pass you the tissues on a silver platter for that one.

      To the poor little boy on that video, I am sorry you did not hear about a baby brother like you wanted…it was not anybody’s fault but you are too young to understand that. I wish your Daddy would have told you the news while you two were out together doing your favorite guy stuff, you deserved that much privacy and respect because they knew you would be disappointed. A five year old can’t express themselves like grownups, instead they chose to film you and laugh at you. Shame on them…and shame on me for watching it.