August 1994

Ira:     Around the time of 1992 general election I was watching a nature documentary.  There was a scene in which a still living salmon, after having spawned, lay beached on a sandbar, while an opportunistic Raven plucked out its eye. 

    We were the phallic fish, the Raven, the lobbyists and the money grubbing politicians that had eaten the heart out of our system, leaving us bound and at the mercy of the merciless.

     When I was a boy,  what passes for legal political contributions today, would make the front page as bribery.  Like a dead fish something stinks.

Corliss:     Corruption is a part of nature's life cycle, yet nowhere in nature will you find behavior like man's cruelty to his fellow man.  The stench of this moral decay touches us all.

Commentary from exhibition at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California.