Kirjahaku

Bruce Lakofka was a multi-talented artist with the eye and hands of an "Old Master" who could and did paint everything he saw in his twentieth and twenty-first century world. His work was mainly representational but he could paint in any style. He was my friend for nearly fifty years. This book is his legacy. Bruce was a little known "undiscovered" artist, known only to a few experts here and there and his appreciative customers. People seeing a Bruce painting on a gallery wall showed the same reaction I've seen on the faces of people walking up to the rim of the Grand Canyon for the first time. Bruce is primarily remembered for his Native American themed oil paintings done in the 1990s such as "Spirit of the Full Moon" or "The Last Reservation" which were done in his commercial period. But for many years in his early career, he sold hundreds of large paintings direct to the public at the famous La Cienega Art Mart in Hollywood. There were mostly "happy" paintings of smiling young women, kittens, the Beatles, flower children, and pastorals. Some were more serious such as Vietnam War protestors and our soldiers in Vietnam as well as Biafram refugees. This book is for art students, scholars, and anyone interested in beautiful paintings. Bruce was a person who followed his star and served his artistic muse despite life's bumps along the way. He was a modest and religious person who believed his gifts were God-given.

Dr. Sigurd Bergman is a psychiatrist with twenty years of experience in various areas of psychiatric practice in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is also an amateur epidemiologist. As the Covid-19 pandemic rages, he keeps a diary of local events mixed with expert analysis of medical protocols for treating Covid. He compares Nevada and California death rates, predicts we will not see the end of Covid for several years, and suggests genetic testing of the fatally susceptible, in anticipation they will not respond to vaccines. Dr. Bergman discovers secrets neither the nation's top doctors nor our presidents knew. He concludes that the pandemic is more than a medical problem with viruses; it is a mental health epidemic, a psychiatric emergency, of massive proportions due to widespread individual and systemic hysteria. The 10% positive rate for Covid testing means only one person in ten has the bug and nine out of ten are suffering from mild to severe hysteria, yet no one acknowledges this. He sees the national increase in insomnia as another indicator of his diagnosis. It seems like Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes." Just as no one noticed the Emperor was nude, so no one but Bergman notices that Covid-19 is cyclical, not seasonal, coming in predictable (and ever larger) waves of two or three months. He feels that encouraging everyone, even those with no symptoms, to get tested, slowed down discovery of positives and fueled the surge, the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the foot. His conclusion: hysteria caused political leaders to needlessly shut down the economy and close schools, ended the ascending career of at least one politician, and made a scapegoat of a president. He determines that next time we must have learned from these lessons.

Do you know anywhere in America that didn't shut down one bit and make people crazy over the visiting Covid virus? There is such a place: Snowtop, Washington, where the snow meets the desert. But you can't find it on a map or on Google, like that place in Scotland in the Brigadoon countryside. Snowtop, in Winchester County, is the new Old West. They still have horses and rifles but use pickups too. They don't allow government bureaucrats into their bedrooms to tell them how many or how few children to have-or not have. This is a play about good people and zanies: Chief Joseph (Town Council); Mayor Shorty; Sally Jones, barmaid and proprietress of the Dogpatch Saloon, aka Stupifyin Jones; and Prospector Mike and his burro Hillary (not that Hillary ). And Bowser and Ole Blue-tooth, a bloodhound who knows no steak is worthy payment for tracking a Wallamootka. A Wallamootka, or wolverine, is their mascot and the engine of their eco-tourism industry. If you place an order with Mable and Herbert's Bakery and General Store, you can buy mifepristone and shotgun shells, but no bump stocks: they're wasteful. It's about rural people striving to survive a depressed world and local economy in the 21st century, and a country deadly divided along political lines. Snowtop has one Republican voter and one Democrat; all the others are Independents. It's so poor it never noticed the Recession of 2007 because it didn't know the Great Depression was over. It's a melting pot of cultures way ahead of the rest of the world in ecological savvy and in knowing how to take care of one another.