A Blog About My Own Arts and Crafts and Photography
This is my blog about my arts, crafts, and photography along with the occasional rant. If you prefer to view a portfolio of my work, check out this blog’s sister site on NeoCities. (Link will open in a new window.) And while you’re there, try your hand at playing a video game that I originally designed. đ
You can also purchase my first book, The Cash-Strapped Person’s Guide to Thriving in the Digital Age in the following formats and places:
Paperback:
eBook:
An honest Man will receive neither Money nor Praise that is not his due.
When Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2022 I thought about creating a whole bunch of memes. I ended up creating just two so far. One was this meme of Vladimir Putin that I made last year when the Wagner Group started this civil war in Russia that ultimately lasted just a few hours. The other I created just last month.
It turned out that so many other people have created incredibly awesome memes that I just don’t feel the need to create them myself. But then it turned out that there was an incident that led me to create this meme.
Here’s some background. I first heard about Russell “Texas” Bentley when he appeared in this video that went viral just days after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Here was this guy in the Russian-occupied region of Ukraine who was making pro-Russian propaganda speaking English with a Texas accent. He originally recorded his video for his own YouTube channel. Once it went viral YouTube closed down his channel and banned him. However his viral video has been preserved on Reddit and Twitter/X.
I looked this guy up online and found that a few years earlier he did this interview for Texas Monthly where I learned that he was born into a wealthy family. He became interested in communism at 12 when he read a book on Che Guevara, he was a pothead as a teen, he dropped out of high school, worked a variety of jobs, joined the U.S. army for a few years, worked a variety of jobs, moved to Minnesota, ran for the Senate as a third party candidate and lost, sold marijuana, was arrested, was convicted, was sent to jail, broke out of jail, spent the next few years as a fugitive on the lam, was caught and sent back to prison, was released, moved back to Texas, became an arborist, traveled to Cuba where he was impressed by the communism there, and listened to Russian propaganda through RT America (back when it used to broadcast in America–RT America got shut down when several cable providers dropped the channel from their lineups soon after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine). He became convinced that Ukraine was run by Nazis so he decided to travel to the Donbass region to fight for Russia in order to help “denazify” Ukraine. He appeared in this Vice News story about his fight with a Russian unit in Donetsk.
He subsequently settled in Donetsk, and married a local Donetsk woman. He also switched from fighting in a military unit to making English-language propaganda on behalf of Russia, which led to his viral video. That video led to more profiles in Western publications like Newsweek and Rolling Stone. After his video went viral he lost his YouTube channel and a few other Western social media accounts and he seemed to fade from the Western media.
But he kept up with his propaganda work. There’s his Instagram account where he had posted pictures of his life in Donetsk but he hadn’t posted there since 2019. There’s his blog, which he hadn’t updated since 2020, where you get to read about things like his belief that the COVID-19 pandemic was a manufactured crisis. There’s also his Telegram channel, which contains his more recent writings until the day before he disappeared and was announced to be dead eleven days later.
The biggest irony is that he was thrown off of Twitter nine years ago, which was long before Elon Musk purchased that platform and began to reinstate previously banned accounts. For some reason Bentley’s account wasn’t reinstated but he was allowed to create a new account just a few weeks before he was killed.
There’s even a book that Bentley wrote called The Donbass Cowboy, which was based on his own experiences fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
He went on to work for the Russian state media outlet Sputnik. It was through his propaganda work that he became a local celebrity in Donetsk where the locals called him “Texas.” Most of the Russell Bentley videos that are still up on YouTube are ones where he made guest appearances on other people’s channels. One such video was where he gave a guided tour of his new hometown of Donetsk. It was the least political of the videos that he appeared in and it showed the tragedy that such a lovely city had to be caught in such a violent war.
After that video he made went viral I remember the outcry on social media from peopleâespecially Americansâcalling him a traitor and demanding that he should be hauled back to the U.S. to be tried for treason. My attitude at the time was that while I probably disagreed with about 80% (and maybe higher) of his political beliefs, I could at least respect him because he actually put his money where his mouth was and moved to Eastern Europe and he even obtained Russian citizenship.
My opinion of Russell âTexasâ Bentley grew lower the following year when two Westerners who had been fighting for Ukraine when they were captured and imprisoned by Russia, Shaun Pinner and Cossack Gundi, alleged on Twitter/X that their captors had forced them to participate in propaganda videos that Bentley was making. Which meant that Bentley was a war criminal.
Bentley was last seen in Donetsk on April 8 after an attack on the city by Kyiv forces. Bentley and his wife, Lyudmila, had gone to an office in downtown Donetsk to deal with some administrative documents. At the same time there was a Ukrainian strike in that area. Bentley decided to go in the direction of the smoke looking for anyone who needed help. When Bentley didn’t return, his wife had gone looking for him. She found his car, which had his baseball cap, his glasses, and a broken phone. Lyudmila later posted on her husband’s Telegram channel that her husband had been abducted by the 5th Brigade of the Russian Federation Armed Forces. When people suggested that Bentley was kidnapped because he was filming something that he shouldn’t be filming, Lyudmila clarified that she had experts check his broken phone and there were no photos or videos that were recently shot.
Soon messages began to surface on other Telegram channels about Bentley was taken by this Russian brigade because they thought that he was a NATO spy. Then the story of his demise at the hands of this Russian brigade began to change. At first the reports said that he was beheaded. Then the reports claimed that he had been shot in the head eight times. Then the reports said that the Russians initially gang-raped him before someone discovered that he had a Russian passport and other official documents indicating that he really wasn’t a NATO spy and one of the officers said that it was no longer possible to let Bentley go so they killed him either by being tortured to death or he was shot (depending on which report you read).
The only thing all these reports have in common is that Russell “Texas” Bentley was killed at the hands of the same Russian forces that he had fought with and actively supported with making his pro-Russian propaganda. His body has yet to be found as of this writing. It’s highly unlikely that he’s still alive because he disappeared in an active war zone. He’s been gone since April 8 and this post has gone live on May 15 so he’s been gone for over a month.
Why would the Russians turn on him? I’ve read some posts on Twitter/X claiming that he was too much of an alcoholic to be much use as a propagandist, he’s a scammer, he’s a bullshit artist. It’s possible that he may have somehow pissed the wrong person off and he paid the ultimate price for it. I’ve also read posts saying that the two breakaway republics in the Donbass region have apparently been dominated by gangsters and thugs since Russia encouraged the Donbass region to breakaway from Ukraine. It’s probable that Bentley was murdered by them because they wanted a pack of cigarettes or the cash in his wallet or something else. But right now it’s all rumor and speculation so it’s hard to know what is true and what isn’t.
There’s another possible reason. The Daily Mail has a story about him that mentions one thing about his death that I didn’t know about before. Quoting another story in The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Mail claims that Bentley had been involved with Russian ultranationalist circles and his death has made him the latest in a number of leaders of the annexation of eastern Ukraine to show up dead. The ultranationalists had felt that Russia was not moving aggressively enough in its invasion of Ukraine.
This group also included the late Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had a falling out with Vladimir Putin after he had the Wagner Group organize an attempted coup against Moscow last year that ultimately failed. Prigozhin died in a plane crash one month later. Since then a number of ultranationalists have fallen out of favor with Putin and many of them have turned up dead. Bentley was the latest ultranationalist to meet his demise.
He had indicated in interviews that he intended to spend the rest of his life in Donetsk. It looks like he got his wish.
The moral of the story of Russell “Texas” Bentley is if you’re an American or a Westerner, don’t ever fight on behalf of Russia because the Russians will turn on you for whatever reason and you could end up dead. I’ll end this post with this song that he “wrote” and performed called “Sweet Home Novorossiya,” where he basically ripped off the melody from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”
I went to The New Deal Cafe in Greenbelt, Maryland because a couple of my musician friends were playing that night. I took some photos as a way of practicing my concert photography skills. I took a picture of the first act, Jay Bellamy, who was playing his guitar.
Then I took photos of the next act, The Bachelor and the Bad Actress.
The Bachelor and the Bad Actress then did a jam session with Kill Saw Ruby, who were the next act on stage.
The evening ended with Kill Saw Ruby, who performed their brand of bluegrass music.
Get what you can, and what you get hold; ’tis the Stone that will turn all your Lead into Gold.
A few years ago I made my first-ever visit to Historic London Town and Gardens mainly because I went during Maryland Day Weekend and they were offering $1 admission. I enjoyed myself a lot while I was there.
This year I decided to go once again during Maryland Day Weekend because London Town was offering free admission this time. I also thought that it would make an interesting episode in my ongoing web series The Baltimore-Washington, DC That Tourists Rarely See. It was just as nice as my last trip with only one bad thing: The weather was cold and cloudy that day. I managed to get this nice picture of a cherry blossom tree in full bloom.
Another downside is that I ended up spending only an hour and a half at the place. I arrived late mainly because there was construction on the closest road to the place so I had to drive further and take a further route to get there, which was a total pain. I managed to film what I wanted to film, which was okay. I uploaded my latest episode on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
You can also watch a playlist of previous episodes in my ongoing series below.
I’ve been taking drop-in art workshops that are being offered on Saturday afternoons at The Space in Greenbelt, Maryland. I decided to do something experimental where I did art using a mix of markers and construction paper. So here is my piece, which I call The Purple Cow.
I made the cow using purple and brown construction paper that I drew then cut out using scissors. I used a brown marker for the hooves, nostrils, eyes, and the hairy details on the cow’s tail. I used green construction paper for the ground. I was going to use construction paper using the sky but I couldn’t find any blue paper so I ended up coloring the sky with a blue marker. For the flowers and butterflies, I used pink and yellow construction paper with paper punchers then glued them on the ground. I liked the results and others who were in that workshop like it as well.
Doing this mostly paper collage is such a throwback to the kind of art that I used to do as a child, such as Indian Chief and Owl Collage. It felt like I was reliving my childhood art class in school, which was pretty cool. Taking art classes is one of the few positive memories I have of my school years so I don’t mind at all.
Click here to learn about the origins of this.
To be proud of Knowledge, is to be blind with Light.
Ten years ago I was seeing a therapist to help me deal with the fallout from my ex-husband suddenly leaving me for a friend of ours who have struggled with severe mental health issues for years. Near her offices was this house that was literally shaped like a castle called Rossdhu Gate. It was originally built as a gatehouse to a castle by a wealthy couple who would later lose everything in the Great Depression. The castle was initially converted to a nightclub that failed then it was converted again to an apartment building. The castle was ultimately torn down and the gatehouse is the only thing that remains from it.
I took some photos of the exterior when I learned that the place was for sale for the price of $1,375,000.
You can see some more photos I shot that day right here.
I took some more photos soon afterwards when a recent snowstorm came through the area. The snow made the castle look even more enchanting.
You can see some more photos I shot that day right here.
During that second visit I noticed that the gatehouse had been sold. Now it’s on the market once again for the current price of $1,795,000. I haven’t driven by that area in a number of years since I’m no longer in therapy but that castle gatehouse is an amazing place to see in person. If I had the money, I would seriously consider buying it. If you think that the pictures I took were gorgeous, you should see the outside in person. It’s just like you’ve literally stepped into a fairy tale.
If you have the money and are interested in the opportunity to live in your own castle, click here. That link also includes detailed photos of the interior of the house as well as closer photos of the outside than what I shot (because that is what I was able to get without breaking any trespassing laws).
This year is an election year once again. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is someone who has been through more than his share of troubles despite the fact that he was once very effective as an environmental lawyer. He has struggled with drug problems and was a compulsive womanizer who once kept a diary about his conquests.
He became controversial when he began to pivot from being concerned about the environment to becoming an anti-vaxxer who claims that vaccines are dangerous. Now he has become even more controversial. Initially he decided to run as a Democrat against Joe Biden in the primaries in an effort to defeat Biden. But then he decided to withdraw from the Democratic primary and launch a campaign for president as an independent. Kennedy has said that Joe Biden is a much worse threat to democracy than Donald Trump. Critics say that Kennedyâs run could split the anti-Trump coalition enough to ensure a Donald Trump victory in November. Yet a recent NBC News poll shows Robert F. Kennedy Jr.âs candidacy hurting Donald Trump more than Joe Biden.
In spite of all that, most of the members of RFK Jr.âs own extended family have all announced that they will be backing Joe Biden for president this year.
Despite the turmoil surrounding Kennedy’s campaign, he has attracted some adherents who are willing to support him. I found this vehicle pulling a trailer that has “Vote Kennedy For President 2024” parked in a local parking lot
Five years ago I took a crocheting workshop at The Space where we all used this pattern called Cute Chick Amigurumi. Here is what I made.
Later that year I entered it in the Retro Town Fair that was held as part of the Greenbelt Labor Day Festival. My little chick had won a first place ribbon in the Needlework category.
Since then that cute chick had been sitting in my home. I was decluttering my home when I finally decided that it was time to give someone else a chance to enjoy my chick amigurumi. Since I made my decision shortly before Easter, I decided to put my chick in a Little Free Art Library Library box that’s located just down the street from where I live.
Here’s the Chick Amigurumi in its new home.
I also took photos of the other tiny artworks that were available for anyone to take.
And here is one final snapshot of my Chick Amigurumi.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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