The Samuel Bak Museum: Learning Center, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

    A couple of months ago I was once again in Omaha, Nebraska. This trip was more for pleasure than business, and it being such I was able to visit a few of the museums in the city. 

   The one I visited that made the biggest impression on me more than any since my first visit to the Louvre was the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center, located at 2289 South 67th street in the very heart of Omaha. 

   Samuel Bak's art is striking for far more than his skill and ability as a painter, or even his incredible capacity to project mood and sentiment on a two dimensional canvas. The sum of his physical, emotional and mental capabilities far exceed the whole, and there is a readily understandable reason for that.

   His life's experiences, what he has had to endure, survive, and finally thrive in spite of. It's flat out beyond the ken.

   Samuel Bak is a 93-year old survivor of the Holocaust. He was born in 1933 in what was then known as the city of Wilno, Poland, but had been known previous to WWI as the city of Vilnius, Lithuania, and by 1939 was again known as Vilnius, Lithuania.  

   In 1941, when the Nazi army rolled into Vilnius, he and his family were evicted from their home and ordered to live in the Vilna Ghetto, a small area in the old Jewish quarter of Vilnius. 

   Samuel had been known for his talent as an artist since early childhood, and at the age of nine while living in the Vilna Ghetto, the first exhibition of his work was produced.

   The Nazi's had quartered a reported 12,000 people into the Vilna Ghetto, an area that had formerly housed 4,000 people, with the expectation that the overcrowding would result in unsanitary living conditions that would result in easily spread diseases and illnesses that would eventually decimate the population.

   They were half right. Illness and disease did indeed kill upwards of half the inhabitants of the Vilna Ghetto, but that did not satisfy the Nazi régime. When it was determined by the Nazi leadership that only the most skilled workers would be spared to be used as slave laborers, the extermination of the remaining Jews began in earnest with a reported 3,000 Jews killed on November 5th of 1941 alone.    

   By 1943, when it was becoming apparent that the Nazis were beginning to lose the war, the last of the dwindling Jewish population in the Vilna Ghetto sensed that the end for everyone was near. Young Samuel Bak was chosen by two Jewish elders to become the guardian of the Pinkas (the official record of the Jewish community) with the hope that Young Samuel and the record would somehow survive the war.

   Samuel Bak and his mother found refuge in a Benedictine convent with the assistance of Maria Mikulska, a Catholic nun. Despite her courageous efforts however, Samuel and his mother were both soon deported to a forced labor camp, from which they eventually were able to escape and again find shelter at the Benedictine convent, where they were able to stay until the liberation of Vilnius by the Red Army in July of 1944. 

   The Jewish population of Vilnius before the Holocaust has been estimated at 60,000 to 80,000. The number that survived the war, including Samuel Bak and his mother, is placed at 250. Even today, in a city that numbers over 600,000 inhabitants, the Jewish population is less than 1,000.

    The Jerusalem of Lithuania has truly never recovered.

   That Samuel Bak and his mother survived the Holocaust is incredible. The following years, when they went from resettlement in Poland to the American-occupied zone of Germany then to Israel, is another extraordinary tale. Suffice to state that Samuel Bak learned how to survive in the very belly of the beast.

    Eventually, after art studies at both the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and the École Nationale Superieure Des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then residing for various lengths of time in Italy, France, Switzerland and Israel, Samuel Bak and his wife moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1993 and have become naturalized U.S. citizens.

   He continues to paint and educate to this day. Here are a few pictures of his works that are on display at the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center. 

Composition With Banana In F Minor (Between Gray & Highly Tinted)

 

   He got his hands around the throat

                    The fat bloated mid-afternoon three-cocktail-hour lunch throat

                    Of the persuaders that decided the public wanted good looks

                    Far more than they wanted quality or efficient performance

                                                   No one wanted to think anymore

                                                   Therefore they weren't

So they repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated 

             The message

                    And the message was, "This will fulfill your wants and needs"

So buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it

             Until your wallet bleeds

Andrew's style came of age 

                When the style over substance transition was engaged

While creating art for a living wage 

           He drew inspiration from the comics page

The galleries decried what he was doing was better done by Roy and Blake

       Muriel playfully suggested he should just print his own money 

                   Proclaim his love of currency is solely for arts sake

                                  He had learned the art of emotional manipulation 

                                  At the feet of the New York mad ad men

                            His muse was lucre then

                                   Floriano taught him how to screen

   

                                            When galleries declared his banknotes as worthless

                               While sipping soup he decided to try his luck in Los Angeles 

            Where his cans-vases met with disdain and he was proclaimed recusant

                               Which he relished as those words translated as original

                                            And no one was confusing him for Rembrandt

                                          A December show in Cali but still the critics squealed

                      So like a white Christmas in SoCal that show was cancelled 

                           The blow was softened however when ten canvases were sold

                   Nothing screamed success better than when the coffers swelled

           So he screened and screened and screened and screened and screened

                                                                                      Marilyn and Elvis

                And the reaction was, "This is fulfilling our wants and needs"             

     So they bought them, bought them, bought them, bought them, bought them

                                              He opened up a factory with the proceeds

                                                          He set his mind on the minimalist approach

               The dry dramatic middle class grey-three-piece wool suit approach 

               Of the seekers of the publicly acceptable but avante garde images

                     For more for the association with decadence than appreciation   

                                                  No one wanted to feel anymore

                                                                   Therefore they didn't

                                                  

 

                                                   

  

The Indicators

She never imagined the relationship could turn violent

Much like that of her parents

It crushed her when she realised that she was just like her mother

And the man she had married was so much like her father

They fought and it felt like she was reliving her childhood

Watching them fight over matters little and matters large

Neither of them capable of apologizing or expressing regret

For words screamed in anger or actions taken with bad intent

Just like her, just like him

Those promises she made that she wouldn't let it happen

She couldn't, wouldn't believe she had ended up like this

Staring into a mirror with her face (and life) a mess

The Tree Fell & Everybody Heard It

 

Last Night I Dreamed Of Snakes

 Rarely do I remember a dream this distinctly.

In the dream I was standing in a street - just off the sidewalk a foot or so, not in the center of the street.

And I was watching a large snake, maybe six feet long and about as thick as a spray paint can, crawling it's way up the sidewalk with what looked like a pastry in it's mouth - like, a maple bar or some such treat.

I watched as the snake crawled up to a patch of grass at the end of the sidewalk and joined three other snakes that were also holding pastries in their mouths.

All four of the snakes were about the same size, and they were lined up parallel to one another as if in some snake military formation.

As I looked at the snakes one of them dropped the pastry that it was holding and looked over to me and said, "These pastries are not yours, they are ours."

And that was it, the whole dream that I had last night, or at least what I recalled with an odd clarity when I woke up this morning.

The Big Storm On The Night Of August 22nd Over The Eastern Plains Of Colorado (& Western Plains Of Kansas)

   Driving northbound along a two lane county road somewhere near the Colorado / Kansas border last Saturday night, and in the distance looking west I could see a thunderstorm actively forming on the far horizon.

   As the storm was to the west and I was driving north, I decided to pull over and watch the storm as it rolled across the prairie -  it looked like it was going to be fairly big and powerful, and it might be worth trying to get a few lightning pics.

   Bolts of lighting shot from the heavy, low-lying clouds that hung over the Prairie as I got out of the car to find a good spot to take pics with my cell phone camera. It was still hot - the temp had hit the mid '80's in the afternoon, and it was still in the mid '70's when I pulled over.

   As I was primarily interested in the electrical activity of the storm and how the lightning bolts lit up the clouds (and the pitch black Kansas night) I really didn't notice anything else about the storm.

   The low rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance, and by my calculations (...one Mississippi, two Mississippi...all the way up to 70 Mississippi's, then divide by 5...) I was at least 15 miles from the storm.

     It wasn't raining where I parked, and the wind was very mild, so I did not give any thought to being caught in a downpour or anything like it. I just stood outside the car and took picture after picture, hoping to catch lightning.

   Mostly I only saw and got pictures of the flashes - all the bolts seemed to be either behind, above, or in the storm itself.

   There were a few single bolts every few minutes though, and I did get a few shots of those, which I discovered after I got back in the car to review the shots I had taken.

   I also discovered something else in the pictures though, something a lot less visually appealing, at least to me.

   What I was seeing, or at least thought I was seeing, was a funnel taking shape in the middle of the thunderstorm

   The intensity of the storm seemed to increase a little as I sat back in the driver's seat and reviewed the pics I had just taken, and even though I was still calculating the storm to be at least 10 to 15 miles away, I was getting a bit concerned with what I saw forming - at this point I was 100% sure it was a funnel.

   Not only was a funnel forming, the clouds appeared to getting closer to the ground, and the lightning was getting brighter with every crackling bolt.

   The bolts of lightning also started moving horizontally, becoming sheet lightning, an indication that the storm had become a severe thunderstorm - which is where tornadoes are formed.

   Not good.

   

   It was clearly time for me to skedaddle, which was made more apparent in the next few seconds as the blots of lightning started turning the night into day.

   The bolts that didn't light up the entire horizon revealed that the clouds were getting lower and lower still. Like an idiot rubbernecker passing a fender-bender, I started out driving away from the storm slowly, and all the while nervously looking back.

   I was acting like an adrenaline junkie, feeding off my own fear.

   It is bizarrely riveting watching a severe electrical storm raging full on. It took all of my will to focus on the road ahead and start driving away from what could be a potentially life-threatening dangerous situation.

   There was clearly a funnel taking shape out there, and it was getting closer to the ground with every passing second.

   The flashes were also becoming brighter and bigger - my calculations for the storms distance from me were now in the 5 to 10 miles range. This was shaping up to be almost as fear-inducing a storm as the one BWB and I drove through in '03, when we were returning to Colorado from a day trip to Alliance, Ne.

   I'm no storm chaser though, if anything, I'm a storm flee-er.

   As I drove away from the storm it started to rain, at first just with a smattering of heavy drops but within a few short minutes it began to come down hard and fast.

   It wasn't too long until the hard rain turned to pebble sized hail. 

   Visibility became an issue and soon I was literally driving by following the suddenly blurry yellow line that divided the road. I drove like that for about 10 minutes before I was clear of the rain and hail and could actually see the road. 

   It was another 10 minutes or so before my heart stopped beating like Keith Moon attacking his toms and I could breathe regularly again.

   

Reflecting Upon A Brief Relationship Between Two Financial Anarchists Who Like To Play Banjo Kazooie

He's prone to handing poor downtrodden sods a dollar

Because he's a deep believer in faith, hope, and charity

                                                  Those are the rudimentary requirements, he swore

        To living a righteous, deliberate and unrehearsed life

He's been walking the straight and particularly narrow

Ever since he heard the great and glorious word

                                      That saved him from the evils of pilates and acting

         Elevating his consciousness from banality and strife

He whistles while he works and listens to Marlowe

All the while calculating how long it would take him

                      To memorize all the lyrics on Angelic 2 The Core by Feldman

       While cutting through a frozen banana with a rusty butter knife

                                           Ooh Mao Mao

                                        Zedong Mao Mao

                               Falling asleep on the dance floor 

                                    Bicycling to Pao Pao

She's got him on at least three charges of using trigonometry

To seduce a thrice-divorced matron he met at the automat

                                             A woman of high-standing though low morals

         Who claimed to be great in geocaching but really lousy as a wife

She's been known to use caressing a well-used cheeseboard 

As a means to gathering insights while meditating

                                 Being as how it had been cleaned with potato whiskey      

         By an under-assistant barber found running down a Saharan saif

She cannot afford to be out in public without her trusty blue apple

It helps to soothe her mind when she's feeling a little saudade

                            Like a butterfly she deftly plays the hydrocrystalophone   

        Much to the delight of both the woefully wealthy and offensively rife 

                                             Ooh Mao Mao

                                         Zedong Mao Mao

                            Falling asleep on the dance floor

                                      Bicycling to Pao Pao