47

Seems to be something going on lately with this number. For example.

Don’t Turn Back the Dawn – 2012 Campaign Poster – New Edition

New, improved edition of the poster, available through Imagekind or RedBubble.

Don’t Turn Back the Dawn – 2012 Campaign Poster

Just released today, January 20th, exactly one year before next inauguration day, this poster features my painting of the Washington, D.C., sunrise from Barack Obama’s inauguration. Available in a variety of sizes, framed or unframed. Also carried on RedBubble.

The Higher Ceiling (Sunset, Saturday, 30 July 2011)

William Theodore Van Doren, THE HIGHER CEILING (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

Sunset, Wednesday, 2 December 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

I’m sure there are plenty of other bloggers who have to fix a chainsaw in the pouring rain while composing an entry and watching the sunset in order to post a daily painting. We could form a professional association. The name doesn’t really matter, as long as it makes the acronym M E N T A L.

I’ve been catching up with an old friend who was a significant person in my life, and she wrote something I found quite striking. We were both once strict “laissez-faire libertarians,” part of a group that, at the time, would have objected to being labeled ‘conservative’. However, conservative is what we were, when you get down to it; some in our old cohort have even since slithered on over into that grotto called neoconservatism.

In any event, her comment was somehow the most accessible explanation I’ve seen for why a person would mature into a liberal.

I have moved way across the spectrum since the early days of knowing you and today would shamelessly describe myself as a tax-and-spend liberal. One of my biggest frustrations is with the reluctance of the American people to devote themselves and their money to creating a more robust community and to assuring a more satisfying life experience for others sharing the planet at the very same moment in time.

Simple humanity and common sense.

Sunset, Thursday, 22 October 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Fifth Street Extended/Old Lynchburg Road, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Tonight I was in training for election officers who will be working Tuesday, November 3rd. Some readers may remember my report of June 9th, after our previous election – perhaps the most widely read post in the history of this site so far, and certainly the post most visited from within the Commonwealth of Virginia. My story may have had some effect: Will Harvey, secretary of the board of elections, issued a pointed caution against political conversation by election officers in the polling place, even when voters are not present, noting that “debates could erupt” and disrupt or prejudice the electoral process.

On the way down to the training, I was thinking about how our government works, and watching the sky the whole time, vaguely wondering how its government works – the sky and the universe it tends to symbolize. Is it anarchy, some sort of democracy of the elements, or, as so many believe, an absolute monarchy?

Personally, I’m leaning toward a league of devas. I don’t think I’d mind if they took over here as well.