Abstraction

Last year, Barack Obama selected Ed Ruscha's "I Think I'll" to hang in the living quarters of the White House. Looking at this painting again, the words now look like they're floating in a bloody ocean or maybe it's one of the circles of hell.

This is a photo of Barack Obama flying in Marine One along the gulf coast of Louisiana last week.

President, first lady catch performance of 'Thurgood' at Kennedy Center

By Associated Press

June 11, 2010 | 5:08 p.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and the first lady are watching a sold-out play about a former Supreme Court justice at the Kennedy Center.

The president and Michelle Obama were seen in the president's box at the Kennedy Center, where they are taking in a performance of "Thurgood," a play about Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Marshall was the first black justice on the court. He is being played by actor Laurence Fishburne in the one-man show.

As a reminder, Obama's Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan clerked for Thurgood Marshall. Just last week, CBS News found legal memos from her time as Justice Thurgood Marshall’s law clerk that show her sympathetic to abortion and desegregation, and having sympathies towards alternative marriages.

Iceland Passes Gay Marriage Law

From Reuters:

"Iceland, the only country in the world to have an openly gay head of state, passed a law on Friday allowing same-sex partners to get married in a vote which met with no political resistance...The Althingi parliament voted 49 to zero to change the wording of marriage legislation to include matrimony between "man and man, woman and woman," in addition to unions between men and women."

The decision was unanimous.

New York Times Editorial Calls Marriage "A Basic Civil Right"

In the NYT today:

"The testimony made abundantly clear that excluding same-sex couples from marriage exacts a grievous toll on gay people and their families. Domestic partnerships are a woefully inadequate substitute."

Martha Graham's Political Dance Project

From The Washington Post, a look back at the political statements in dance from the 1920s and 30s.

"Few choreographers today put politics onstage. In this post-postmodern era, the field has shied away from the provocations of the AIDS works of the 1980s and early 1990s, which was perhaps the last time dance wrapped itself around an issue."

Wendy Perron in Dance magazine asks, "Any way you slice it, the source of Graham’s theatrical fury is a source for contemplation…and for wondering, Where is that energy today? What female choreographer will bring us that kind of vehemence?"