The purpose of MJ Arts is to provide the individual as well as the professional community with the graphic tools they need to communicate their message to the world in a manner that is honest, attractive and in keeping with the timeless values that build society. Marty Jones has been a professional illustrator for over four decades and is committed to communicating a ‘sense of wonder’ to the world. Using hand-drawn and digital media, he creates images in a manner that reflects the contributions of the great illustrators of the Twentieth Century; in a format suited to the Twenty First Century.
Daunted: to lessen the courage of: [to] cow, subdue obstacles that would have daunted a man of less intrepid mind —Adeline Adams merriam-webster.com Daunted: English meaning – Cambridge Dictionary Daunted is the past tense of daunt, which means to make someone feel slightly frightened or worried about their ability to achieve something.
I keep wanting to write about the CONVICTED FELON and his atrocities… But these number in the dozens per day, and I really don’t want the atrocities to breathe. On to more important things…
A Very Particular Tree
One of the odd things about being a freelance Illustrator is being asked to spend hours and hours making an odd and seemingly overworked idea for a client. The image above was the background for a novel that focused on a more-than-human woman. Her wings had been torn off by a villain. The tree and its root system had something to do with metaphysical nature.
A very long time ago, I carried a small notebook in my back pocket, in which I would write pieces of wisdom I found in the world around me. Often small writings on posters, and in stone on buildings I visited. Sometime in this century I left the pocket notebook on a shelf and started writing words I found in a document I call Pocket Wisdom. It currently fills 207 letter-sized pages. “A French priest conducting a retreat, said: “To love anyone is to hope in him always. From the moment at which we begin to judge anyone, to limit our confidence in him, from that moment at which we identify [pigeon-hole] him, and so reduce him to that, we cease to love him, and he ceases to be able become better. We must dare to love in a world that does not know how to love. “We are to be children of the light, and we are meant to walk in the light, and we have been groping in the darkness. The creative act helps us to emerge into the light, that awful light which the disciples saw on the Mount of Transfiguration, and which the Hebrew children saw on the face of Moses when he had been talking with God on Mount Sinai. “If we are blind and foolish, so were the disciples. They simply failed to understand what the light was about—these three disciples who were closest to him. They wanted to trap Jesus, Elijah, and Moses in tabernacles, tame them, pigeon-hole and label them, as all of us human beings have continued to do ever since.” Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water
I am by nature a recluse. A recluse who has lived with the same woman for more than 49 years; one who has helped to raise three adult children, with three grandchildren. And yet, I am still a recluse. In my twenties, I began to experience and understand the notion of daring to love. It involved learning to love people I barely knew; from a book that may still be here in this house, I began to understand that Love is a Verb. Our daughter is in her 40s. She is a senior gig worker for a company that stages events—inflatables in the warm weather; now they are moving into Casino events. A few years ago, she shattered her foot in a workplace accident and worked in the following summer wearing a ‘peg leg’ a device to shift her weight to her knee rather than her foot. Her list of accomplishments is large. She recently talked about how all three of our adult children choose Extreme lives—activities that involve taking risks. My wife is extreme herself, with few limitations. She places herself with people I never would talk with. She carries $5 bills around, to give to people with cardboard signs. She was very annoying when I met her; and very much like a young woman who annoyed me at my previous university. Fortunately, my to-be wife did not kick me under the table at meals in order to get me to pay attention to her. People make odd choices. I recognized in my future wife that she was more like the person I wanted to become than I would get to, on my own. After a year, I realized that I had a calling that included her. We continue in that calling, although I have a hard time describing what the calling is. It seems to have a component of reaching out to people with what our callings permit. We had a street kid living with us early in our marriage, for a time, he was a live-in babysitter. I never heard from him after he left to move into a different environment. As the kids grew, my wife would come downtown to the government office I worked in. Mainly to ride home with me. They took the bus to where I worked. As we walked back home she talked with people I avoided. Back When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, I saw people talking to themselves all the time. Frequently arguing with themselves. In this time period, I still see people talking with people I can’t see. The Internet and digital phones… I watched “Woman in Motion” again the other night, [Paramount]. The story of how Nichelle Nichols changed the world. You may be more familiar with the name, “Lieutenant Nyota Uhura” of the Starship Enterprise. Gene Roddenberry wanted to create a galaxy where people were not segregated by skin color, place of birth and upbringing; instead, a galaxy where people could aspire to do more. From the late 1970s until 1987, Ms. Nichols and her company, Woman in Motion, were employed by NASA to recruit women and men of non-white ethnicity to enter NASA’s training program for future space missions. She cris-crossed the country speaking and engaging individuals who wanted to be more. Because of her efforts, women and men of non-white ethnicity entered the space program, particularly for the Space Shuttle program.
License to Kill I watched Casino Royale the other night. I haven’t watched Bond movies for a long time. I did not like the concept that someone has a License to Kill. I enjoyed Daniel Craig in Cowboys and Aliens, and I have admired Judi Dench for a long time. I will be watching Daniel Craig’s other Bond movies. The whole concept of License to Kill has taken a different slant under the current Presidency. He orders the killing of people from the air, over the water, without the least concern who is on the boat. Killing to send a message. As has gone on in Gaza for too long.
Killing ordered by the Secretary of War, without a declaration of a war, is a War Crime. German officers, after Hitler killed himself, were tried for War Crimes at Nuremberg. Think about that.
Star Trek first aired in 1966. Three years before, in Great Britain, Doctor Who began.
For those who are keeping track, there are several iterations of Star Trek and the Enterprise.Doctor Who chose a different path. When the actor playing the Doctor had to retire from the television show for health reasons, the producers and the directors had a brilliant idea. The Doctor ‘regenerates’ when the Doctor needs to change. The current #14th Doctor [Disney] is the same character, still flying in his TARDIS, with Companion[s]. The Doctor is over a thousand years old and has many changes of face and behavior. He retains his memories, but each regeneration brings changes in personality. The 13th Doctor was female. The 14th Doctor has brown skin. In an episode of the 13th Doctor, she meets another female Doctor, with brown skin.
The point? I have some financial situations to deal with, and I am stressed. Doctor Who is a frequent rest-from-stress-stop for me. During the 50th Anniversary Special, the War Doctor is introduced. The destroyer of his home world, and those attacking his home world. The man who did not act as a Doctor, the one who acted as a destroyer. The one who found redemption…We all need redemption. If you, the reader, believe that you do not need Redemption, that’s part of the problem in the world today.
I could write more about The Man Who Would Be King; there are better writers doing that, every day…
“For months, aides to Mr. Trump had worked to engineer a new system to deport immigrants rapidly to Central and South America, with little to no oversight from the courts. The strategy hinged on using an 18th-century wartime law and treating the migrants like citizens of a country at war with the United States. But the application of the rarely used Alien Enemies Act appeared to be haphazard, pulling in migrants whose relatives insisted they were not gang members. Government officials hurried to assemble documents detailing who was sent to the prison and justify the deportations in court. The process was so messy that eight women were among those flown to be incarcerated in the Salvadoran prison, an all-male facility, and had to be swiftly returned.“ Opinion | Trump’s Cabinet Members: A Rorschach Test for America – The New York Times
I entered Adulthood during the Civil Rights era. Black people attacked by White [pink—I’m an illustrator] people. Every Day. Ruby Bridges integrated an elementary school—resulting in some of the most disturbing photos I’ve seen. White Adults screaming threats at a six-year-old child, protected by four Officers.
We currently have a president who daily sends officers to deport guys/women with Tattoos to South American countries without due process. He does not care if he’s breaking laws. No one stops him. During his campaign for President, he promised Retribution. People could not imagine what Retribution would mean. A large number of the Members of Congress campaigned for him. Voters voted for him, even after his most despicable statements.
A brown-skinned woman, the Vice President, lost the election not by a mandate, but by the Electoral College. By the population of one large city in America.
Nixon was an amateur. Nixon was forced to resign.
Ruby Bridges is two years younger than I am.
She simply wanted to go to a better school, where she wouldn’t be accosted on her way to school. While she ‘integrated’ a White school, she had almost no contact with the students already at the school. Ruby, and her White teacher spent all of their time in the one classroom, and she was not permitted to interact with the White students. He teacher balanced the need to keep the room cooler by opening the windows with the abusive language from the adults outside the school. She traveled to and from school by US Marshals.
I started watching West Wing again.
I stopped when the Orange Idiot became president the first time around. The comparison became too painful.
Now, the Idiot-no-longer-Orange isn’t even trying to be anything more than a Convicted Felon.
The Peace Corps (J.F.K.’s Bold Legacy), 1966.
Story illustration for Look, June 14, 1966. Rockwell repeated the simple and powerful style used in Freedom of Worship to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Corps. During his 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy proposed the idea of a volunteer organization of trained people who would be sent to developing nations in Africa and Asia to assist villagers in educational and agricultural projects. In 1961, the program, which Kennedy hoped would promote understanding between nations, was officially instated.
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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 