Ceil Cohen is one hip chick! She did not hesitate to meet with me when asked. She is one Go GETTER! What Ceil does not mention in her interview is that when she first went to get that job at the PR firm in KC or Wichita (don’t recall exactly) the owner told her that he hired only college graduates. So what did she do? She went back to college, got her degree, got that job and then a few years later opened her own PR firm and directly competed with her former employer’s firm. THAT IS THE AMERICAN DREAM!!!!!! Ceil as well as Dr. Lee from mid-November (Ohio) are my favorite examples of the American Dream to date. I know there are many more out there but those stories put an instant smile on my face and make 8 hour days of driving thru snow a bit easier. Thank you AMERICA for bolstering my spirits and keeping me smiling!!!!
Posted by: questions4america | December 14, 2009
TAKE A PAGE FROM CEIL’S BOOK PEOPLE!
Posted in Uncategorized
ospiti » Porcasi Gaetano
artist
Gaetano Porcasi is a Sicilian artist and school art teacher. His paintings are considered unique not only for their social and political commitment but also for the technique and choice of typical Mediterranean colours from which a strong and deep Sicilitudine (Sicilian mood) emerges. The 2003 itinerant exhibition Portella della Ginestra Massacre is a good example: in 1947 a group of Sicilian farmers was shot and killed in Portella by the outlaw Salvatore Giuliano and his men under orders from the local Mafia mobsters and big landowners in order to stop the farmers’ attempts to occupy and plant uncultivated local land. His historical paintings which denounce the violence and oppression of the Mafia find their counterpart in his paintings which depict sunny Sicilian landscapes rich in lemon, orange and olive trees, in prickly pear, agave and broom plants. They show the wealth of a land that has been kissed by God but downtrodden by man. In painting the sky of his native Sicily Gaetano uses several different hues of blue and it’s from this sky that his pictorial journey starts. In his paintings the history of Sicily, which has always been marked by its farmers’ sweat and blood and by their struggles for freedom and democracy, finds its pictorial expression in the fusion of the red flags of the workers with the Italian flag in a sort of Italian and Mediterranean epopea. The red flags and the Italian flag stand out against the blue sky that changes its hues according to the events, the seasons, the deeds and the moods that are painted on the canvas. The luxuriant nature of Sicily with its beautiful, sunny, Mediterranean landscapes seems to remain the silent, unchangeable and unchanged witness to events and the passing of time. Here people are only accidenti, they aren’t makers of their own life. Thus Gaetano makes a clear-cut metaphysical distinction between a benign, merciful nature and Man who breaks the natural harmony to satisfy his wild, unbridled ambition and selfishness and who becomes the perpetrator of violence and crime. Gaetano is also an active environmentalist and his fight against all forms of pollution has already cost him a lot of aggravation.
By: CRITICO D'ARTE SICILIANO on January 13, 2010
at 6:03 pm