More Coolo NASA Travel Posters

NASA has the best travel posters!

I wrote about some of their earlier posters HERE.  Well, they're at it again - repeated graphic excellence.  Check out the new posters HERE.

NASA travel poster!

Isn't that gorgeous?  Just makes you want to buy a ticket to far star-strewn places doesn't it?  Between NASA's poster campaign and the new Star Wars films space is suddenly cool again... maybe we'll get that Mars Colony in my life time.

And now that I've set up an inevitable and not-in-my-favor comparison, let me show you some more of the protest postcards I've been designing lately.  (Protest?  Why ever?)

A handy be-kind-not-cruel card to send to legislators about immigration issues.  

A health-care issues postcard.

And, for ticked-off women who, whatever your politics, are annoyed by powerful men
Not Listening...

In my head the Statue of Liberty is starting to live quite a heroic superhero adventure.  The perfect avitar for this moment in American history.

Please, if you're writing to your congressional representative or senator and you like a postcard design, feel free to print 'em and use 'em.  Pass 'em on!  

(Print on card stock at 4 1/4" x 6" or stuff, any sized, in an envelope.)

Oh, and don't forget the artsy one - the arts need all the help they can get:

From a behind-the-curtain artist's view, all these designs are collages done with computer image / photo editing software (rather than scissors and glue) from public domain images.  Turns out, for me at least, political upset means a chance to hone my computer / art skills!  Who knew?  So, if our American Experiment slides into Authoritarian Tyranny, maybe I can at least get work as a Propaganda Poster Hack.  Who knows? 

Or they'll need artists on Mars.

And, before I lose this stickynote again, here's a gem of a topical poem I found in the NY Times written by Susan McLean:

Trump seethes at what the writers say.

He'll pull the plug on the N.E.A.

The jokes on him. Art doesn't pay.

We write our satires anyway.

Please Write Your Senator and Congressional Representative

There have been so many outrageous political happenings this week that it's hard to know where to start.  A sweeping new immigrant ban (temporary?  really?).  Cutting all funding for the arts and humanities.  Muzzling the EPA and National Park Service and many more governmental departments, while nominating leaders for them that hate those departments...  It's a blitzkrieg.

But a good place for a concerned citizen to start is by writing their congress people.

To that end I've designed a couple postcards.  Inspired by the anthem that flash-mobbed at the Washington DC Women's March...

"I Can't Keep Quiet."

MILCK and the GW Sirens at the DC Women's March

singing "I Can't Keep Quiet" 

I love the song.  It captures exactly my emotions right now - seeing America going wrong I just can't keep quiet.  I won't keep quiet.  Let's each become "a one woman riot."  

(Guys very welcome!  Crowds!)

A great illustration, by the way, of how Art can reflect and influence current events.  Just as the musical Hamilton has.  As artists we have - sometimes - real POWER.  

Inspired by the protest song, here are these postcards:

These designs are gifted to the Public Domain.

These are designed to be printed at 4 1/4" x 6", the largest size U.S. Post Office rules allow.  Please feel free to print these on card stock.  Use 'em, share 'em, most of all, mail 'em!

Write to your reps and senators with your opinions on current policy.

Or call them.  Or visit their offices, or march, or...

RESIST.

Resist

Unknown photographer, please allow this usage

Today sees the new Trump Administration taking a swing at the environment.  

You know, all those "purple mountains majesty" and "amber waves of grain."  

But... 

some of us are kinda fond of the stuff.  It being our birthright n' all.  Protest has begun.  (See above, Greenpeace protest flag.)

The new government's first steps have been to stop the EPA acting and to muzzle it and Department of the Interior - along with Human Services and still other departments.  No public communication, no tweets or texts or blogs or talking to journalists or to the public.  Wiping websites of climate and other scientific data.

But...

some brave park rangers aren't having that.  Here's their response, an alt-National Park Service twitter page.  https://twitter.com/AltNatParkSer  Here facts and science and truth still have a home on the range.


ADDENDUM:

How could we pick this leader?  As usual, Shakespeare says it best:

Inauguration Day

Well, Donald Trump gets sworn in today.

Yesterday's political-news leak was that his proposed budget cuts spending for the Arts and Humanities to $ 0.

The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports that Brian Darling, a former Heritage Foundation staffer now a Paul Ryan aide, said about this budget:

"The Trump Administration needs to reform and cut spending dramatically, and 

targeting waste like the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be a good first step ..."

Sure, every civilization up till today has created its Great Public Art - pyramids, Versailles, operas, Sistine Chapel ceiling, Bolshoi Ballet, Muppets - art that survives its era and glorifies it.  Historically, it is Art that makes a civilization remembered as great.  

Or remembered at all.

But that junk's all "waste" so why should the United States of America spend a nickel?

Sistine-Trump

public domain image messed with

ADDENDUM:
The Washington Post has a good article on the stupidity of this "budget" idea HERE.

Addendum #2:
Need the dollars and cents?  According to the NEA, the arts adds $700 billion - that's $700,000,000,000 - to the American economy every year and employs 5 million Americans.  For comparison, the oil and gas industry (as best I can figure out) employs around 2.1 million workers - less than half!

Watch a nice NEA film: