Back to the States

Posted on by Thor

The temperatures in Paris France were dropping fast. Even with gloves on, my sketches were getting a bit shaky.  I had to leave my hotel near the Eiffel Tower very early to meet my Uber driver for a ride to the airport. I had success navigating Paris with the Metro and considered taking it to the airport, but the maps were not super clear on which stop I needed at the end of the line. I also was concerned about possible wait times as I switched trains at several stations. I’m glad I took Uber because it gave me a chance to look at the landscape as we drove out of the city.

I was rather sad to leave Europe because I knew I would be returning to strip malls and a fascist government. I documented an World War from 80 years ago but war was most certainly likely to break out again. The American president considered himself a war time president during the worst of the pandemic. He will only truly feel masculine when he is using the military against Americans and against nations of his choosing.

I thought I was documenting the worst possible fascist regime by sketching WWII sites my father passed through and liberated in Germany, but Germany learned its lessons from America which has always been racist and had no problem putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps at the start of WWII. Germans put people who were not Aryan enough into concentration camps. America is now following suit by randomly picking up people off the streets who do not look American enough. Children are being used as  bait to seize and imprison parents in the detention centers.

It started to snow as we drove towards the Charles de Gaulle Airport. It was the first now I had seen in my three months sketching the movements through Europe of the 75th Infantry Division. I am sure my father, 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken had visited Paris on leave from Camp Cleveland which he helped run. My father left Europe on about August 1, 1945, on a boat to America. He had been in Europe for 1 year, 3 months and 18 days. I originally wanted to stay in Europe sketching for the same duration, but the Schengen rule only allowed me 3 months to complete my sketch project. I had to rush through the 70 or so cities in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany at a much faster pace with my tiny French rental car.

You can tell a lot about a country by how people drive. Driving in Paris was of course hectic, but country driving was a delight. Belgium and the Netherlands both felt relaxed. Trucks drove below the speed limit, and all the other drivers were very polite. When I drove the speed limit, I would always find myself passing most of the traffic. Germany on the other hand is much like America in that all the drivers seem to be in a furious rush to get to the next stop light. Germans tail gate even closer than Americans do. They would rather drive though you than around. I had no desire to have a German officer stop me for driving too fast so I stuck to the speed limit. I started singing a little jingle every time there was a German on my butt. Every German I met who saw my rental car always commented on the French license plate. It looks just like a German license plate but with a tiny F instead of a tiny G. It might have been a mistake to drive the whole trip in a French car.

I also have a baseball cap that has the American 75th Infantry logo on it. In France people love the Americans for their help liberating their country from German occupation. The cap helped me fit in with WWII reenactors and others who appreciate the accomplishments of the greatest generation during WWII. People in Belgium and the Netherlands also appreciated seeing the emblem from 80 years ago. When I crossed the Rhine River into Germany, I stopped wearing the 75th Infantry Division hat, replacing it with a simple black cap.

At the time of my flight back to America the government had been shut down and air traffic controllers were not being paid. I was almost certain that flight would be delayed. I had no choice, my 3 months in Europe were up. Other than the exhausting wait going through customs the flights ran on schedule. All 6 of the sketchbooks I had filled were in my backpack along with multiple books about Stalag VI-A the POW camp that the 75th Infantry Division helped liberate. I am still translating the German book about Stalag VI-A too learn all about the camp which would have opened my father’s eyes to the horrors of how people are treated as subhuman and starved to death for the sake of a fascist Aryan ideal. I have no doubt that what he witnessed would have molded his world view for the rest of his life. If he were still alive, I would have so many questions.

Pandemic Film: Demonically Selfish

Posted on by Thor

This shot shows a selfish Uber passenger knowingly coughing on her driver. The incident was caught on his dashboard camera. The painting is close to how it happened but the visualization of her breath and spatter is missing since I haven’t composited it into the shot yet in After Effects. In most of the shots in the film, breath and spatter are two elements that are animated. The vicious gas expands and the spatter flies through the air as aerosols do. In her case the breath is bright pink. people are selfish and gross.

In some ways social media has helped spread the virus through misinformation and promoting mass gatherings despite the ongoing pandemic. I find it ironic that the CDC just held a superspreader conference to gloat about their victory over the virus. 35 attendees are infected so far. They will get the best possible health care because the CDC doesn’t need it to become more of a public relations train wreck.

Coughing Karen

Posted on by Thor

The LA Times reported that just after noon on March 7, 2021,Uber driver, Subhakar Khadka picked up three women in San Francisco California. On woman was not wearing a mask so he had to end the ride after two blocks. It is Uber policy that all passenger must wear a mask.

In a dashboard camera video widely circulated on social media, the woman coughs on the driver and curses his mask-wearing.

“And I’ve got corona!” one of the other passengers says while pulling down her face covering.

Then the mask less woman grabbed his phone which he was able to recover. She then ripped of his mask. destroying it in the process. After the women exited the car, one of them pepper-sprayed Khadka through an open window before fleeing, police said. The driver, a Nepali immigrant, told KPIX-TV that he thought he was targeted because of his race.

The Karen has been banned from the Uber app, a company spokesperson said in a statement. Lyft also barred the woman from its app, according to a tweet from the company. The maskless passenger and the other woman who lowered her mask to threaten the driver have been arrested in Las Vegas police on March 9, 2021 on suspicion of assault and battery, assault with a caustic chemical, conspiracy, and a violation of state health and safety codes. The Karen tried to defend her actions wearing a pink bra and panties on twitter.

Uber offered the driver $20 to try and clean the pepper spray out of his car’s upholstery. Cyan Banister, an activist and entrepreneur who was an early investor in Uber, started a GoFundMe account for Khadka. The fund had reached more than $94,645 in pledges as of March 14, 2021.

In a statement, the San Francisco police departments said, “We take this conduct very seriously in San Francisco, and we’re committed to ensuring that justice is done in this case.”

T-Rex outside Union Station Kansas City

Posted on by Thor

I decided to take a trip to visit the Nelson Atkins Art Museum in Kansas City. I took the free trolley to its southern terminus at Union Station. Outside the station was a T-Rex sculpture. Tourists would stop to take selfies with the dinosaur. The Kansas City Science Center was inside the station and dinosaurs were on display. Look at the muscular legs on that dinosaur. Visible in the background of the sketch is the tower of the World War I Museum.

There was another exhibit of small gauge railroad displays which filled a large back room in the station with quirky and odd towns with railroad trains circulating the circumference. Some displays were of idealized small towns but others had dinosaurs wandering the streets and or mermaids and penguins in the waterways. One village was made entirely of Legos. It was an odd assortment of worlds.

From the station there was still a several mile trip to the museum. I decided to try and rent an electric scooter. These scooters are scattered throughout downtown Kansas City. You rent it and then just leave it wherever when you are done with it. To rent it you scan the URL code with your phone. I found three scooters across the street from the station. It took half an hour to get all the info into my phone. The scooter was like a skate board with handlebars. It was fun to use to start reaching 15 miles per hour. There was a bit of a learning curve, to figure out how to balance on it. After about a mile, I was up to speed.

Then I started scooting up a hill. Now in Florida there are no hills, so I wasn’t surprised that the scooter started to struggle going up the hill. I had to start pushing off with my foot to get to the top of the hill. Why was I paying for an electric scooter that didn’t have enough power to get up a hill? I came to the conclusion that the scooter battery had died. I left it parked at the top of the hill and started walking the rest of the way to the museum.

The remaining walk turned out to be much longer than I suspected. I walked through the full length of several long parks and through a ritzy neighborhood. I was exhausted by the time I got to the museum. Then I hiked every hall of the museum to see all the art. By the end of the day I had a severe case of museum burn. There were several Vincent Van Gogh paintings, and quite a few Thomas Hart Benton paintings. It was an impressive collection.

I decided I could not walk all the way back downtown, so I used Uber for the very first time. It was nice to finally relax in the back seat seeing all the neighborhoods I had just explored on foot. Pam and I used the scooters again another night to explore all the murals that are scattered around Kansas City. Pam showed me how to check the battery level before we rented the scooters and they lasted the duration as we explored up and down the alleys.