Taxes, taxes, taxes. All you hear about lately is taxes, and especially today. So I probably shouldn’t belabor the point. But I can’t resist. I ran into a friend today who looked a little disheveled, and his reasoning was, “Yeah, you know, I’m… I haven’t showered and… taxes”. Point taken. Even two days ago, the lines at the post office were approaching absurd as crunch time began. On CNN news this morning, they actually had a bit about which city is statistically the latest on filing their taxes: San Francisco. (And then the newscaster chided them for being procrastinators) Maybe it’s because San Fran is a city of liberals and artists, who have a history of poor relations with the tax system? Well that’s one way to make a stand, I guess.

Another is to hold a rally or a protest. The LGBT is sponsoring “reenactments” of the Boston Tea Party in cities across the country, including, of course, San Francisco, to protest “taxation without representation by same-sex married couples”. Which basically means that married homosexual couples are being forced to file as individuals, which has prompted the LGBT to demand “Equal Taxes. Equal Rights.”

Being that tax day has been part of our capitalist calendar for almost a century, it’s amazing how April 15th still manages to sneak up on people. Especially with the easy access to filing taxes electronically, why are people still rushing to the post office at the last minute? I had another friend (an artist) who thought he had a genius business plan one year: buying books of stamps ahead of time and standing outside the post office on April 15th to sell them to all the procrastinators.

Well, Tax day sure brings out the creativity in people, not to mention the righteousness. The debates over who should and shouldn’t pay, what’s fair and unfair are enough to make your head spin. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer, so I guess we’ll all just have to march and blunder our way through this mid-April day for the time being.

Happy Tax Day!

* photo credit: Matt Aiello *

I love these maps. I first came across the Brooklyn version on another well-versed arts and culture blog, 3daintydelights.com, and like a good sleuth, followed its trail back to the designer’s website. Her name is Jenny Beorkrem and her company is called Ork Posters (“ork” is taken from part of her name). Her story, like Raoul with his t-shirts, is another one of attempting to simply fill a void: Ms. Beorkrem was looking for a Chicago neighborhood poster that wouldn’t “cramp her style” and when nothing fit the bill, she decided to just make one of her own. Why not, right?

The posters are screen prints, which is made by pressing ink through a stencil over a very fine mesh screen. This has the effect of making the product look less exact, a little more DIY and renegade, which has, apparently, become a popular aesthetic. She uses recycled materials, not to mention, donates 2% of her profits to both a local and international not-for-profit each year.

Ms. Beorkrem, in her ripe mid-20s, lives in Chicago, but has designed maps of 13 cities in North America. Although the idea for the company came from a simple, personal desire, she has started to see a deeper impact and influence that the posters can have on society. As she explained in an interview with Speak Up (a division of UnderConsideration.com): “Where we live is a large part of our identity, but I think a lot of us limit our sense of community, who we’ll identify with, sympathize with, do business with, converse with, to our close surroundings, or our neighborhoods. Hopefully the posters serve as a visual reminder that there’s more out there. We’re part of something larger than what we see every day between work and home. And, now more than ever, we have to take that, even far beyond city limits, into consideration when we make choices in our lives.”

It already worked on me: I was surprised, in looking at the map of New York City, that Manhattan was rendered as just a tiny little sliver tucked in amongst the looming size of the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. It always seems like Manhattan is the center of everything, the most important part of the puzzle, and yet in reality, it can’t hold a candle to the immensity of the other boroughs (except Staten Island, of course). A little perspective does us all good!

* photo credit: www.orkposters.com *

Two years ago, a man from Cameroon, East Africa, stepped foot on American land with only $25 in his pocket and a desire to learn all that he could about the people, culture, philosophies and work ethics of the great people here in the United States. His name is Romeo, and, yes, he is a lover, but his passions are for life, for knowledge and for the human spirit.

He has a striking charisma when he speaks; it feels like he is inspiring a crowd, and that his thoughts and ideas are coming from a greater, deeper place of understanding. He is an observer of life, a tireless student and a hard-worker, who in his own words “goes like the wind”, effortlessly and ceaselessly.

He has been doing crew work for trade shows touring the country, and recently moved to Maryland to pursue his love of woodworking and furniture-making. His goal is to return to Cameroon armed with the skills and knowledge to build up his community there. He believes in teaching life skills rather than funding communities from the outside because he feels it is more important to give people the tools themselves to be independent and strong. Ultimately, he would like to start a school for about 200 children, to start them on the right foot with an excellent education. The people in Cameroon send him emails weekly to hear his stories and seek his advice; he seems to be the hope of his community.

But he may be traveling for a while, yet, to see all that the world has to offer and bring the strengths and great ideas of all cultures back to his community. He wants to go to Asia next (since everything in America is made in Asia) to be “at the source of creativity”.

And yet for a man so ambitious and wise, it is amazing and inspiring to witness his zeal for life and all its unknowns, of which there are plenty for him. Until last week, he had never even heard of a banana split! Now there’s a great piece of American life he can bring back to Cameroon!