It’s not easy to look at Rick McCarty’s art work, currently on display on the second floor of the Liberal Arts Center. Deborah Burdick, McCarty’s friend and “art mentor,” says we should look anyway.

McCarty, who died August 23 at age 61, was a Mount Vernon, Indiana, native and a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. Tormented by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), he began to draw at age 48 in an attempt to heal his wounds through art. Burdick, a trained artist, met McCarty soon after he began to draw.

“Rick wanted people to know about Vietnam,” she said. “His art speaks so eloquently. You want to know what happened? Just look carefully at it and allow yourself to feel.”

McCarty’s work can be categorized within the genre of Outsider art – art created by people who have no formal art training and live on the fringes of society. Outsider art is often a means of self-expression featuring reoccurring motifs.

The USI display includes interpretive information identifying McCarty’s motifs.

In addition to local and national exhibitions, his work was viewed by 50,000 people who visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall display in Evansville in 1999 and has been used in schools.

His drawings are now preserved in the permanent collections of the National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago and the Connolly Library at LaSalle University in Philadelphia and are available to view in their online digital collections:

LaSalle University digital collection

National Veterans Art Museum digital collection

His self-published book, The Loss of Innocence, is an illustrated epic poem about a three-day fire fight in which McCarty lost several friends.

“It is an astounding piece of work,” wrote fellow Vietnam veteran and artist R. Louis Posner in a letter to McCarty. “My opinion is that it is a national treasure.”

A copy of The Loss of Innocence is in the University Archives.

McCarty’s work will be on display at USI through October 30.

HealthSouth Deaconess Rehabilitation Hospital will join rehabilitation providers across the nation September 17-21 in celebration of National Rehabilitation Week. HealthSouth will be recognizing its Patients, Nurses and Therapists and the significant role they play in the rehabilitation process in our community. The week, the hospital will be bussing with various events and activities at the hospital. The community is invited and encouraged to visit our hospital during this week for food, fun, and entertainment!

Barbara Butler, CEO states, “National Rehabilitation Week provides a great opportunity for our hospital to honor how much each of our patients have accomplished since their injury or illness. We invite the community to join in our celebrations and to learn of the successes that rehab brings to patients at our hospital every day.”

All Week
A display in the front lobby will be updated each day with a “Gold Medal” achievement. These will include Joint Commission Certifications in Stroke and Brain Injury as well as a Top 10 Ranking
out of 100 HealthSouth Hospitals nationwide.

Monday, Sept. 17
A Patient Party/Open House will be held at 1:30pm – 3:00pm in our therapy gym with refreshments.

Tuesday, Sept. 18
A Patient Reunion Luncheon will be held from 11:30am-1:00pm for patients that have “graduated” from HealthSouth in the past year. An RSVP is required at 812-437-6131. We will an “open microphone” to encourage patients and therapists to share happy/sad/funny stories about their rehab and recovery.

Wednesday, Sept. 19
The highlight of the week is the Rehab Olympics!!
12 teams of 4 people from the community will compete for Gold medals and all will hope to avoid the last place
award of the Golden Bed Pan!
This event will take place at 12:30pm-1:30pm on the east lawn outside HealthSouth. Physical, Occupational, and Speech therapy have planned activities for our teams that will create awareness of a
particular disability.

Thursday and Friday are dedicated to employees and celebrating within the hospital, however, tours and an “open house” policy will be in place the entire week from 8:00am-4:00pm.

Mesker Park Zoo & Botanic Garden is pleased to announce the hiring of a new Development Director. This announcement will be made at a press conference on Tuesday, September 18 at 1:30 in the Zoo’s Entry Plaza. A press release will be issued during tomorrow’s press conference.

Excerpts:

“The Whopper to End All Whoppers is President Obama’s claim that his tax plan will pay down the country’s staggering $16 trillion national debt.

Not merely balance the budget. The Democrat who has piled up $5 trillion in new debt in less than four years and can’t get a single lawmaker of his own party to vote for his budget blueprint says he’ll pay down the debt, something that requires a budget surplus.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the budget deficit for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 will be $1.1 trillion.

“I will use the money we’re no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work,” Obama said during his nomination acceptance speech at this month’s Democratic National Convention.

“I believe the only way to create an economy built to last is to strengthen the middle class, asking the wealthy to pay a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way,” the president says in one of his most widely aired campaign TV ads, titled “The Choice.” The spot includes text for added emphasis. “The President’s Plan: Pay Down Our Debt.”

Where in the world are the “Pants on Fire” and “Four Pinocchios” ratings?

Obama says we can get there by making the wealthy “pay a little more.” “Millionaires and billionaires” will cover the bill, he says. But his plan, as represented, doesn’t even come close.

The president wants to sunset the Bush tax cuts for individuals earning at least $200,000 and households earning at least $250,000, but keep the lower rates for everyone else. He also wants to reduce the deductions available to those households, raising their income taxes even higher. He proposes increases in the capital gains and dividends tax rates on top of the 3.8 percent Medicare tax on investment income that’s part of ObamaCare. All those tax increases combined will yield an estimated $140 billion per year in new federal revenue, getting the president almost 13 percent toward a balanced budget.

Ah, but we’re forgetting all those vile millionaires and billionaires, the biggest targets of Obama’s class-warfare rhetoric. For them, Obama has proposed the “Buffett Rule,” named for guilt-ridden billionaire Warren Buffett and his desire to flush more of his fortune down the federal latrine. The Buffett Rule would require everyone with an adjusted gross income of at least $1 million to pay at least a 30 percent tax rate. Surely, that will get us a budget surplus.

Wrong. It’s a political gimmick. The Buffett Rule would generate less than $5 billion per year in federal tax revenue, assuming the Bush tax cuts expire. If the Bush tax cuts were extended, the Buffett Rule would add about $16 billion in new revenue.

The Obama lie is that we can tax our way out of the current budget deficit, tax our way out of debt, maintain spending levels and meet future obligations.

It’s economically impossible.

In theory, we could declare a national household income limit of $200,000, keeping current tax rates in place but ordering the IRS to seize every dollar anyone makes beyond that amount. On paper, that would produce an additional $1.2 trillion in federal tax revenue. Budget surplus, here we come!”

Link to full article in Las Vegas Review Journal

http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/the-biggest-lie-of-campaign-2012-169941296.html

The City County Observer has obtained copies of letters from the Evansville Rescue Mission and the Human Rights Commission regarding the discrimination actions taken by the HRC against the Rescue Mission. We make both available to our readers without edit, opinion, or bias.

Letter from Rescue Mission to Human Rights Commission

ERC_Aug_22_2012_letter_to_HRC

Dismissal Letter by HRC

ERC_dismissal_letter