Of Art, Treasures, and a Silenced Bigot

The gang and I went to see Donna Summer at Wolftrap last night. It was a BLAST. She sang all the old hits like "MacArthur Park", "On the Radio", "Hot Stuff", and "No More Tears".

We also went to see the Treasures of the Afghan National Museum exhibit at the NGA. It was fascinating to see pieces from Alexander's time to the very recent past. A sad addition to the collection was photographs of the destroyed Bamiyan Buddha statues. The film in the exhibit showed heroic Afghanis protecting other artifacts by hiding them from the Taliban.
It is a warning to society when those in power start destroying art and cultural artifacts. It is only the beginning with worse things to come. We saw that when the Nazis started destroying art, burning books and deeming music and cultural artifacts as subversive. We saw that when the Soviets sent many authors and artists into hiding or worse, to Siberia. We saw that when the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan statues. Those statues stood there for hundreds of years and were gone in an instant.


In other news, Jesse Helms died this week. He was a no-good segregationist bigot. Good riddance, I say. I remember his filthy vitriol during the Clinton impeachment trials. I remember his grandstanding in the committees he led and his sheer refusal to work with the Democrats. I remember him vilifying the National Endowment for the Arts and ranting and raving against artists he didn't like. Like I said in the previous paragraph, the trash-heap of history is full of people like him. They say real change comes one funeral at a time. Change is on its way.