Barefoot Design

05/13/2025

Long forgotten online portfolio recovered by my daughter, Jamie!
https://www.coroflot.com/barefootgal/Illustration

04/10/2025

This is chilling. It is a historical document discussing the lynching of ("tens of thousands") of Negros following the Civil War. Read it if you can stomach it.

Three justifications were given for the lynching of black men (and sometimes women and children):
1) to put down "riots and insurrections" (which never seemed to happen
2) to prevent the possibility of black men outvoting white men at the ballot box and Replacing white men in Southern legislature, and finally
3) because of sexual assaults of women by black men (a crime so heinous that "due process of law" was undeserved, and so readily believed by the relentless portrayal of black men as sexual monsters that black men were powerless to defend themselves against accusations. The mere accusation was enough.

I'm sharing it to point out how the justifications for lynching so strongly echo the rhetoric constantly used by President Trump to justify the detention and deportation of "illegals" .... "millions" of "criminals" "rapists" "murderers" "terrorists" and "violent gang members" which he claims he has the authority to seize and imprison without need for any criminal charges, or for the proceedings of Due Process of Law. Congress consented to rule last week that the mere accusation of gang membership or criminality or terrorism is sufficient to justify detention and deportation. This week Trump also claimed authority to revoke the legal immigration status of whoever he wishes -- now to include all persons who entered legally using President Biden's online application process, rendering their status now "illegal." Students and others have been detained and whisked away by ICE agents because Trump and his administration have proclaimed that they are here at our suffeance and so do NOT have a right to free speech or to assemble in protests or to express political opinions he finds unacceptable.

This is a malicious and methodical stripping away of Constitutional protections from some TWENTY MILLION PEOPLE.l who are defenseless against baseless accusations. Just like the tens if thousands, or millions, of black citizens that were lynched over the course of at least 70 years of American history. "Illegals" are the new "n--ers."

I spent some time arguing with some of Trump's faithful in the past few days who sincerely believe that the Rights protected by the Constitution do not apply to non-citizens.

This is frightening and fertile ground to justify violence against immigrants and deprivation of their human rights. I can too easily imagine there would be lynching by the "good citizens" of these United States if Trump were to call for them. The ground is prepared and liberally fertilized and the seeds are planted and watered.

04/10/2025

https://digital.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-gildedage%3A23615

DEAR MISS WELLS: Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practised against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from...

02/27/2025

Republican math: promising to serve up 40 pounds of mashed.potatoes at a $2000/plate donor event by stealing a 5 lb bag of spuds from a mother of 4 on SNAP benefits.

09/04/2024

Water Safari illustration and billboard

09/08/2022

Not much going on. Kids both just got past covid and are both now testing negative. I credit ventillation fans and air purifier with enabling my escape.

10/08/2021

Nothing new to report. Entire house -- and studio corner -- in complete disarray due to construction from roof repair! Spent 2 months just trying to keep artwork and materials dry!

04/24/2021

I'm I quiet mode. More to come.

07/27/2020

I'm going to pop up a comment I just made in a thread to its own topic. Because I feel the issue it raises -- the principle of "personhood," is really, really important.
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As I've said before, I am very much in favor of legal immigration. So why does Trump want to make almost all immigration "illegal?" (With exceptions for people from Europe with a LOT of investment money.)

We can make almost all "illegal immigrants" here now "legal" with the stroke of a pen. Their only "illegal" ACT is to be here beyond the duration specified in their visas, or staying here too long on vacation. A percentage also cross the border "illegally," which is a misdemeanor unless done multiple times. Is these such heinous "crimes" as to warrant the expense, the grief, and the disruption of our food production industries -- not to mention the hardening of our ever more callous collective hearts -- that deporting 8 to 10 million people will cause? These people cannot fix their own irregular status "crime" except by the extreme of destroying their own lives. We, however, can fix it by offering a path to legal status so that they can redress their "statutory crime" in a manner that doesn't amount to "cruel and unusual" and very disproportionate punishment. Continuing to deny "illegals" of any accessible path to legalizing their status accomplishes no good, for them or for the country.

What it does do is create a loophole through which "equal protection" can be withheld from maligned groups which can then be used by malignant actors as political scapegoats. And where there are non-status persons who are excluded from the full protection of the law real and serious crimes, like r**e, human trafficking, assault, extortion, wage theft and other crimes can be practiced upon them with impunity. And ALL of us then become more vulnerable to an enabled and emboldened criminal class who have honed their unrestrained skills and whetted their unpunished appetites for cruelty and injustice on unprotected persons. (This is how Hi**er turned suspicion of Jews and gypsies into classes of people who were outside the protection of the law -- by denying them citizenship status -- turning ordinary "civilized" Germans into thousands of SS troops willing to abuse and kill pretty much anyone.)

If we tolerate injustice towards persons lacking legal civil status, we tolerate injustice. And we become increasingly inured to it and ever more willing to tolerate injustice towards other members of our American, in fact our entire human, family. Because we have trained ourselves to view injustice as normal and permissible. We need only target a group which we can legally get away with being unjust toward, whichever group someone can pass a law to exclude from the full protection of the law -- transgender people, perhaps, or Muslims, or American-born citizen children of illegal immigrants.

It's not a political "they'll vote for Democrats!" thing. (Not every-dang-thing is about political war!!) It's simply a matter of recognizing and respecting the humanity of persons, of desiring to promote a just and law-respecting American culture, and of enabling our ability to actually exercise "equal protection under the law" as it is intended -- for "all persons." The very foundation of our law must be seeing all persons as legally "persons."

07/07/2020

Nancy Hiam Thomas
We've lost most of our rights? Since when? Seriously, what have "WE" lost?
Here's what you don't seem to get (or maybe don't want to get): Europeans conquered, owned and developed this country. They did it by profiting on the loss of liberty and land of other people's. They ensured that they had the greatest access and control of political power, financial power, and landed assets. And they ensured this control for the better part of nearly 500 years through some very not admirable means: slavery, genocide, monopoly power, political cronyism.
"Racism" is the deeply embedded belief that this power and control of the country and it's culture rightly "belongs" to a certain group of people as their birthright, because they are "naturally" superior. "Systemic," or "institutional racism" are practices, policies, rules, assumptions and conventions that help ensure that the white, "superior" race has easier access and opportunities to equality, justice, wealth, health ... all the natural rights of citizenship, while minority races have more and steeper obstacles to their well-being.
So, while it is certainly possible for minorities to believe that they, instead, are more wonderful and special, to have great pride in their own people and roots, or even to hate another race, this misses the point. Because they don't have the power to impose control over others, while the controlling, majority race, does. Racism is fundamentally about power, so to accuse the powerless of the same lust to impose it's superiority upon other groups, is quite nonsensical. So is complaining that there is a "Black History Month," when virtually the entire balance of the school year is devoted to a Euro-centric conquest worldview of history. We don't have a "White History Month" because we don't need it. It is already the overwhelmingly dominating influence. We whites don't disappear out of the history books if one specially set-aside month disappears.
Fine, be proud to be white. Nobody is saying you shouldn't be. It just doesn't give you a ticket to ride at the expense of other Americans, simply because they are not in "the IN crowd."
Are you racist? I have no idea. That is between a person and their conscience. More likely, it is a set of completely unconscious impulses based on ignorance. I don't call anyone "racist." I figure God can answer that better than I can. I can only see words, not souls. But I sure do see and hear a words of justification and baseless protests that somehow, somebody is taking away "what is OURS," like this post, that seek to justify, prettify, and perpetuate racism.

07/05/2020

I have Medicare now. Premiums are about $150/month, taken out of my SS benefits. For most of my working life, I was a self-employed free-lancer, and independent insurance coverage for myself and my three children was ALWAYS out of reach, and just became moreso. The last time I priced it (pre ACA), the premiums would have cost me 90% of my gross income. Employer-based insurance also went up and up. Every few years I would take a full-time salaried job and manage to get health care for a short while until the next recession came along and laid me off again, sending me back to free lance.
By the time ACA came into effect, I was able to get Medicare, so I've never had any direct experience with it.
Nevertheless, the patchwork landscape of plans, provider networks, sometimes qualified for public/sometimes not (sliding scales, income testing, requalifying partial coverage, penalties for failing to report changes in income), premiums, co-pays, losing insurance when you lose or change jobs, insurance companies negotiating pricing, pharmaceutical companies charging as much as they can get away with, hospitals jacking up prices in order to cover for the uninsured who can't pay, treatment regimens based on fee-for-service and what is easily billable to insurance more than what is needed ... it is insane and it is costly.
Our presumably "best healthcare in the world" is only enjoyed by a shrinking number of very well off or well-employed Americans. A growing number of Americans -- nearly half now -- on the lower rungs of the economy get less and less, or none at all.
This is insane.
In England, the people are cheering their National Health Service. England's socialized system provides excellent treatment to every citizen. No billing headaches, no shopping for coverage, no caregiver is "out-of-network," no poor people are compelled to work while sick and infectious and spreading disease because they have no health coverage. The pandemic is under control in England and they are carefully re-opening their economy. Canada has a universal public healthcare system. They have the pandemic under control. Germany has a public healthcare system. They have the pandemic under control. Almost every country in the world has a public healthcare system and has the pandemic under control. We are recklessly re-opening in states where the virus is continuing to spread at an accelerating rate. And the sickest of the sick here are those who are in poorly-paid service jobs and food production. Here in the US, the land of "we're all going to get rich," we have come to the point where we are standing back and leaving the working poor to die.
What does the Trump administration propose? Control prices a tiny bit, shrink public coverage, eliminate the ACA, and rush as many people as possible back to work ... "I will never let America become a socialist country!" Trump proudly proclaims.
This is insane. This is beyond insane. This is inhumane.

06/15/2020

The business owners are there, doing record business with walk ins. Nobody has had their businesses or streets taken away from them. This is Seattleites looking out for Seattleites. The police will get their precinct building back. But changes in policing policies will have to be made, or the consent of the people to be governed by them won't happen.

What you are seeing all over the country (which FOX et al is incapable of seeing and obtusely mis-characterizing) is the renegotiation of the social contract between the people who are governed and the institutions that need their consent to govern them.

If a public service intended to to protect and preserve peace is repeatedly failing to do so, and in fact is as often causing injury, fear and disorder, that service needs to be rehabbed, dismantled or replaced. And the people have the right to require it.

As I've said before, the American people do not respond meekly or happily to being "dominated" -- especially by outside forces. Donald Trump needs to keep his belligerent nose and his military threats out of it. All he's doing is keeping his loyal fans all fired up, fearful and angry. America as we know it is not threatened -- it is rediscovered. This is between the people and the institutions they pay to protect them and their interests.