Mary Perry, now ninety-seven years old, went to art school at the age of 15 in 1923. In New York City she attended the Art Students League and the Traphagen School of Fashion and Design. She was one of 40 women sculptors on the New York City Federal Arts Project (Commonly referred to as the WPA) At that time, in the 1930's, she began to do social-protest art which has been her life long interest. On the Federal Arts Project , besides doing her own sculpture, she also taught children sculpture at the Harlem Art Center and the East Side House. Later she assisted the sculptor Cesare Stea on a sculpture for West Point.

During the 1930's and 1940's, she exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum, Carnegie Hall, New York University, Rockefeller Center, The Roerich Musuem, The New School for Social Reseach, Radio City, Independence Hall, and such galleries as the ACA Gallery and the Municipal Gallery in New York City.

After moving with her husband and child to the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1950's, she exhibited during the 50's and 60's in San Francisco galleries, Telegraph Hill, East West, Greta Willliams, and the Artists Cooperative, and in Oakland at the Oakland Museum. At Dominican College in San Rafael, California she had a solo show on her response to the Vietnam War. In 1968 she had her own gallery in San Rafael, California.

In the 70's and 80's, she had shows in California including Benicia, Sausalito, and in San Francisco at the Commonwealth Club. Mary has lived in the Rogue Valley since 1992, her work has been shown at the Grants Pass Museum, The Rogue Valley Art Gallery, The Jega Gallery, Garos, and the Art Space Gallery near Tillamook , Oregon. In February 2006 her social- protest work was shown at the Thorndike Gallery on the Southern Oregon University campus.

In 2001 " Art and Antiques Magazine," had an essay on her Federal Arts Project experiences. Her art papers are in the Smithsonian, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, and at Sonoma State University in their collection on women artists.

An award winner at both the Metropolitan and Oakland Museum for her sculpture, she was also an award winner for her painting from Mill Valley which honored her with their Spirit of Mill Valley Award.

On November 7, 2001, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Arts for Transit program unveiled a mammoth tile mosaic by African American artist Jacob Lawrence in the Tunes Square subway station.

Long-time readers of my commentaries will know that I do not subscribe to the liberal notion that our main problems in the Middle East derive from our blundering in without really understanding the peoples and cultures of the region – any more than I believe that the situation in Iraq right now derives from our lack of understanding that “Shi’a and Sunni have been killing each other for 14 centuries in Iraq.”

A student once asked me: “If Latin America has always had so many good writers, why is it so poor?” The answer is multiple. First one would have to problematize a little something that seems obvious: what do we mean when we talk about poverty? What do we mean when we talk about success?

When Daisy died in June, 1979 I was at Yaddo, the Artists Retreat, in Saratoga Springs, NY; called to the phone by Eloise Spicer and returned to the dinner table without comment, the poet, June Jordan approached and said "across your face is the sign of death, who died?"

It’s winter in the United States, and in most places seasonably cold. Perspiration on the brow of Miss Liberty in New York City at 70 degrees last week reminds us that global warming is in our faces, deceptively so, as Big Apple residents gleefully cavorted in Central Park wearing shorts and smugly quipping that the East Coast was somehow cheating Old Man Winter out of his annual freeze-fest.

As capitalist formula based mass production came to dominate all areas of life, including fiction, films, TV, recorded music and the majority of "live" concerts and plays, many artists ended up like Yossarian in Catch-22, that is, seeking to escape from the machine.

Recently the New York Times published an article by Richard A. Shweder (11/27/2006) a professor at the University of Chicago. Shweder's article is an attack on the Enlightenment tradition and indirectly gives a boost to the antiscientific and superstitious ultra-right political environment in the US.

THE Cuban ecclesiastical authorities met in the Pastoral Forum of the Cuban Episcopal Cathedral in Havana in order to respond to provocative and offensive statements to the Cuban government and the Cuban Council of Churches by Jitka Klubaloba, general secretary of the Ecumenical Council of Churches of the Czech Republic, and signed a statement condemning her utterances.

The initial 6,000 print run of a 112-page book of 86 shocking color illustrations by Colombian artist Fernando Botero depicting the torture of Iraqi prisoners titled Abu Ghraib is selling well in the United States and will be reprinted, a spokesman for Prestel Publishing here said.

Internet harassment of Democratic or progressive political activists is a seriously problem that seems to be growing in scale and scope. Many Internet active Democrats have long been aware of organized harassment campaigns from large groups of Far Right Wing Republican cyber terrorists.

Humanity’s “beacon of hope” is unraveling at its moral seams faster than George Bush can say nucular. 230 years ago, disciples of the Enlightenment shattered the shackles of colonial oppression and inaugurated their conception of a haven for humanity.

Jane Wyatt died a few days ago at the age of 96. The obituaries dealt with her Hollywood and television career, particularly her role in the 1950s as Margaret Anderson in the quintessential television sitcom celebrating middle class family life, "Father Knows Best."

Most homes are not lacking in ways they can be healthier for family and kinder to the environment. For one, indoor air quality is a serious problem affecting millions of homes. Studies show that air within homes can be more seriously polluted than the air outdoors--even in the largest and most industrialized cities. 

Health advocates have worried for decades that exposure to frequencies emanating from these many sources might be harmful. And the ubiquity of such technology today--especially considering the quantum leap in cell phone usage in recent years--only makes such concerns that much more pressing.

For more than a century, home canning has been a popular way to preserve and enjoy homegrown fruits and vegetables, not to mention fresh-caught seafood and other delicacies.

On Tuesday, September 5th, at least three things will change.  Congress will finish vacationing and return to its long and difficult task of destroying the world.

THE US State Department is extremely worried that the ideological hegemony it had enjoyed following the days of Cold War is being gradually eroded in the wake of the exposures regarding Abu Ghraib prison tortures, the Guantanamo Bay prison, and the invasion of Iraq in general.

As a socialist, I favor university intellectuals finding a way to relate to working people, especially rank-and-file labor organizations. At the least, intellectuals might be involved in community organizations – but as learners as much as teachers.

Racism is "the belief that one 'racial group' is inferior to another and the practices of the dominant group to maintain the inferior position of the dominated group. Often defined as a combination of power, prejudice and discrimination."