Tag Archives: artists

SABO: GUERILLA ART AT ITS FINEST

sabo on zuckerberg and schumerStreet Artist Sabo has earned genuine folk hero status with his guerilla art projects that he sets up in public, often under the cover of darkness, in various cities. Daylight unveils his masterpieces of dissent. Sabo takes on the subjects that too many faux iconoclasts are afraid to handle, most recently the corporate fascist Mark “Skippy” Zuckerberg.

The guerilla artist simultaneously broached the way that Zuckerberg’s ties to just one political party are a clear conflict of interest (Chuck Schumer’s daughter works there as just one example of dozens) and should call for regulation of Facebook as a public utility. The baby-faced Techno-Tyrant Zuck has a well-deserved name for politically motivated,  one-way enforcement of Facebook/ Fakebook’s supposed “Community Standards.”

Sabo on HillarySince ANY Facebook user can block anybody or anything they want, such heavy-handed interference with the free exchange of ideas is as unnecessary as it is ugly. (Personally I left Facebook years ago since it’s like being trapped in the suburban barbecue from hell.)

Scandals about Facebook’s violation of users’ privacy have provided even more reason to be suspicious of the organization. Go to Gab.ai or Steemit.com or any of the other sites out there. They aren’t yet the obnoxious corporate cesspool that Facebook has long been. Continue reading

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Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion

KID RUSSELL: GUNSLINGER TURNED ARTIST

** I’M IN THE MIDDLE OF A CRISIS INVOLVING A LOVED ONE. THIS BLOG POST WAS PRE-WRITTEN. 

Kid Russell

Self-portrait by Kid Russell

Frontierado is Friday, August 5th! My most popular Frontierado articles over the years have been the ones about neglected gunslingers of the American West. Here is another neglected western figure whose life was at least as interesting as those of the bigger names.

KID RUSSELL – How cool is it that an authentic, acclaimed international artist spent some of his younger years wandering the Wild West, even earning the nickname Kid Russell? Charles Marion “Kid” Russell was born in 1864 in St Louis, Missouri. As with Klondike Kate Rockwell, most of this figure’s life story is outside the purview of this article.

Since Frontierado is about the myth of the Old West I’ll focus on the legends about Kid Russell’s wild, wandering younger years full of guns, ranches, saloons, cattle drives, bordellos and sketches drawn on any nearby flat surface, sketches that showed the nascent talent that would one day make Russell world-famous.  

Charles Marion RussellWhen he was age 16 Charles’ well-to-do parents gave up trying to force him to continue his schooling and let him move to Montana, where, clad in a brand-new buckskin outfit, he worked on a friend’s sheep ranch north of Helena. It took skill with a gun and a true survival instinct to live through encounters with rustlers, hostile cattlemen and their hired gunmen but Charles, already being called Kid Russell, thrived and felt more at home in this rough and tumble lifestyle than among his family’s hoity-toity friends in St Louis high society.     Continue reading

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Filed under FRONTIERADO

TWO MORE NEGLECTED GUNSLINGERS

Painting by Charles Marion Russell aka Kid Russell

Painting by Charles Marion Russell aka Kid Russell

HAPPY FRONTIERADO! The joyous day is here at last so let’s enjoy our meals of buffalo meat, Tumbleweed Pizzas, Southwest Fried Rice, corn on the cob, Cactus Salad, mashed potatoes and Western Spaghetti ! Later we can wash down some Deuces Wilds (Red or Black) and Cactus Jacks while playing Frontierado Poker or watching Silverado.

My most popular Frontierado articles over the years have been the ones about neglected gunslingers of the American West. Here are another man and woman whose lives were at least as interesting as those of the bigger names.

Self-portrait by Kid Russell

Self-portrait by Kid Russell

KID RUSSELL – How cool is it that an authentic, acclaimed international artist spent some of his younger years wandering the Wild West, even earning the nickname Kid Russell? Charles Marion “Kid” Russell was born in 1864 in St Louis, Missouri. As with Klondike Kate Rockwell, most of this figure’s life story is outside the purview of this article.

Since Frontierado is about the myth of the Old West I’ll focus on the legends about Kid Russell’s wild, wandering younger years full of guns, ranches, saloons, cattle drives, bordellos and sketches drawn on any nearby flat surface, sketches that showed the nascent talent that would one day make Russell world-famous.  

Charles Marion RussellWhen he was age 16 Charles’ well-to-do parents gave up trying to force him to continue his schooling and let him move to Montana, where, clad in a brand-new buckskin outfit, he worked on a friend’s sheep ranch north of Helena. It took skill with a gun and a true survival instinct to live through encounters with rustlers, hostile cattlemen and their hired gunmen but Charles, already being called Kid Russell, thrived and felt more at home in this rough and tumble lifestyle than among his family’s hoity-toity friends in St Louis high society.     Continue reading

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Filed under FRONTIERADO