iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 10/03/2026

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VoH... Orville Peck - Queen of the Rodeo (2020) #music

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 28/01/2026

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWKS... #music

Through the winter’s ice and cold
Down Nicollet Avenue
A city aflame fought fire and ice
‘Neath an occupier’s boots
King Trump’s private army from the DHS
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes
Against smoke and rubber bullets
By the dawn’s early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

Trump’s federal thugs beat up on
His face and his chest
Then we heard the gunshots
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow, dead
Their claim was self defense, sir
Just don’t believe your eyes
It’s our blood and bones
And these whistles and phones
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Crying through the bloody mist
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

Now they say they’re here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight

In chants of ICE out now
Our city’s heart and soul persists
Through broken glass and bloody tears
On the streets of Minneapolis

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 13/11/2025

By '61, Rita Letendre was at a turning point. Emerging from the Automatistes & moving beyond gestural abstraction, she embraced bold, structured forms that defined her mature style. Jour d’été (1961) has been in private hands until this auction. #art #auction cowleyabbott.ca/artwork/AW50...

By 1961, Rita Letendre was at a pivotal point in her career. Having emerged from the circle of Automatistes and having exhibited in their last group show in 1955 in Montreal, Letendre quickly moved from gestural, painterly abstraction toward the bold, structured forms that would define her mature style. During this period she was beginning to receive serious national attention. She had just presented solo exhibitions in Montreal and Toronto and had been included in important group shows like "The Non-Figurative Artists of Montreal" at the National Gallery of Canada in 1956 and "The Biennial Exhibition of Canadian Painting" in 1961. Letendre’s paintings from this time, including "Jour d’été", 1961, feature dense, highly textured impasto and sweeping, explosive strokes of colour in reds, blacks, and whites. In this instance, the artist has added accents of cheerful lime green, perhaps in reference to the title, translating to “Summer Day”.

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 05/11/2025

On that morning I wrote: "America makes a mad rush toward a world that reinforces that corporations are people and actual people are expendable." Of course, I had been saying that for years.

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 03/06/2025

The Champ passed away 9 years ago today. Read the image alt text about the day he fell asleep on my shoulder. #thechamp #muhammadali #boxing

I know the exact day Muhammad Ali fell asleep on my shoulder.

April 25, 1986. I was working at the Louisville Courier-Journal when three men walked into the lobby. One set down a box. One moved slower than the others—but he commanded the room.

The Champ was here. We weren’t going anywhere.

Ali had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s a couple years earlier. He was living in Louisville. His marriage was ending. Another hard chapter. But he was still Muhammad Ali—with a need to talk, or what some would call a need to witness. He settled on the big couch. I moved fast. I won’t say I shoved anyone to sit beside him, but I won’t say I didn’t.

Ali talked. We listened. I say “we,” but I only remember me—next to Muhammad-freaking-Ali.

My father grew up in Louisville. I grew up with stories of “Clay,” the Olympic champion, The Louisville Lip. Ali came into my life when he stood against the Vietnam War. I was just a kid, but I respected that he had everything to lose—and still risked it.

I never loved boxing. But I always watched Ali. You know how he moved—floating, stinging. When he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, it felt especially cruel.

That day, I listened. I missed some of it—his speech was slurred, and I wasn’t religious. Then, in a pause, Ali slowly rested his head on my shoulder. Just... leaned in and slept. I didn’t move. One of his aides eventually reached over, gently squeezed his shoulder, and said, “Champ.” Ali picked up right where he left off.

The aide had set down a box. Ali signed a copy of Prayer and Al-Islam for me. I moved aside as the lobby filled. The Champ was in his element—explaining, entertaining. The crowd was his ring now.

Later, the aide told me the medication sometimes made Ali drowsy. But Ali needed to be with people.

Not nearly as much as the people needed to be with Muhammad.

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 21/04/2025

@choiden.bsky.social Do you have these in your collection?

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 15/04/2025

Here are the numbers for the award for the first 30 months. (Data collected by J. Welch.) #docsavage

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 04/04/2025

Frances Langford was born 112 years ago today. Known for "I'm in the Mood for Love," radio, film, and her extensive USO work. She passed away in 2005. Lakeland, FL's central promenade was named after her in 1946 and rededicated in 2013. #film #radio #franceslangford #USO

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 27/03/2025

Why was Doc Savage called "The Man of Bronze?" Short answer: because of his skin. And why was his skin "bronze?" We need to go back to the source: #docsavage #pulp #adventure #johnnanovic #lesterdent #manofbronze

Why "Bronze?"
A Flearunner recently asked
"Why does Doc have bronzed skin -- canonically?"

Well, in the original Doc Savage novella
by John Nanovic and Henry Ralston
(Doc Savage - Supreme Adventurer) we have this:

"The skin was of a healthy bronze color, bespeaking of long years spent beneath tropic suns and northern skies, of an active, exhilarating life of a man of action and adventure."

Lester Dent, the primary Doc Savage author,
wrote in his notes:

"Fine and firm and perfect as skin ever was. A skin that radiates Doc's perfect health. It, too, is bronze, made so by the elements of innumerable climes. Doc's skin has the unusual quality of not reacting to the elements---that is, it don't get red in the wind, it don't sunburn."

Remind you of anyone you know?

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 15/03/2025

A special by Templeton, Cutler, & Booth... #elbowsup

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 14/03/2025

9 years ago, Vladimir Guerrero asked fans which hat should he wear on his HoF plaque. Sadly, he didn't listen to the fans. #mlb #vlad27 #expos #angels #montreal #losangeles

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 09/03/2025

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, March 2016 -- What a different world it could have been. #editorial #berniesanders #donaldtrump

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 07/03/2025

This is the original James Bama version of Doc Savage. Bantam Art Director Len Leone had his hair redone to look more like the astronauts of the early 60s. It was his decision to give Doc that odd look from that point on through Bama, Pfeiffer, Larkin, etc.

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 15/02/2025

A Canadian doesn't care for the "51st State" proposal. (Some will find the language salty.)

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 05/02/2025

Make sure you have many alternate methods of communication. Make sure your libraries (digital and paper) are vast and under your own control. Be the extinguisher when others start burning books.

May 9, 1933

To the student body of Germany:

History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them.

You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the royalties of my books for all time to the German soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love and compassion for the German people.

I acknowledge the grievous complications that have led to your intolerance; all the more do I deplore the injustice and unwisdom of passing on to unborn generations the stigma of your deeds.

Do not imagine that your barbarities to the Jews are unknown here. God sleepeth not, and He will visit His judgment upon you. Better were it for you to have a mill-stone hung around your neck and sink into the sea than to be hated and despised of all men.

Helen Keller

https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/05/09/helen-keller-nazi-letter-book-burning/

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 03/02/2025

Trump is bringing together the Francophones and the Anglophones in Quebec.

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 24/01/2025

Nanci Griffith: Down 'n' Outer www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8tQ... #USA #America #nancigriffith #homelessness #poetry

I once was a lot like you
We share a dream, I couldn't make come true
I was a child who wrote my name
Across a frosted window pane
And there are jobs that I might hold
If they'd just let me through the door
Without a shower and new clothes
That I can ill afford
Can you spare the time?
Can you spare a dime?
Can you look me in the eye?
I'm down 'n' out and I am lonely
Do you ever think of me on Sunday?
No I don't live across the water
Hey, I live right here on this corner
I'm just a bank account away from America
I won't hurt your family
I don't want a house there on your street
And I know you think that I'm
As lazy as a Hobo's sigh
Now, you call me down 'n' outer
If there's a way out
I've not found 'er
I only want to earn my piece of America
Can you spare the time?
Can you spare a dime?
Can you look me in the eye?
I'm down 'n' out and I am lonely
Do you ever think of me on Sunday?
No I don't live across the water
Hey, I live right here on this corner
I'm just a bank account away from America
I'm just a bank account away from America

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 22/01/2025

When I was young I wanted to be Jules Feiffer, but I lacked the wit and talent. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/a... #julesfeiffer #editorial #cartoonist

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 24/12/2024

Post your favorite Star Trek character. Wrong answers only.

Lucille Ball as a "woman from mars" promotional stunt person

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 28/11/2024

"Show me a picture on your phone that has your energy and isn't a selfie"

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 25/11/2024

"Do not fear the winter blowing In the hearts of men I have seen American flowers They will bloom again"

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 21/11/2024

A thought came to me this morning...

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 03/09/2023

During my years as a single dad, there were so many Christmas Days I'd be alone watching the snow fall. I'd close the shades, crank the heat to 80, and put on his music. The snow and loneliness would always pass from my mind. Thank you, Jimmy Buffett.

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Chuck Welch @chuckwelch.com · 24/08/2023

Reskeet with a hot photo of yourself, to rebalance the universe by countering the influx of Rudy Giuliani mug shots. (Not hot, but suspenders and a sax!)

Poster in suspenders and suit sans jacket playing sax while dancing in front of a backup singer.

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