In the Soup: Retired CSU professor John Calderazzo reads in the library

Poetry books arrived this week. The first was “In the Soup,” the second book of poetry by John Calderazzo. John lives in the foothills outside the tiny town of Bellevue, Colorado just north of Fort Collins and Colorado State University. John taught literary nonfiction during his time in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at CSU. He was one of my faculty mentors and I enlisted his expertise as a literary fellowship juror during my time at the Wyoming Arts Council. He still writes and teaches in that genre but explores poetry in retirement.

John writes of many topics but travel is a big one. He is a world traveler so writes about trips to Peru and other overseas locations. His U.S.-based poems are set on Flattop Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park, Elk Mountain in Wyoming, and Santa Cruz Island in California.  He dedicates some to friends and colleagues. “Kraken” is dedicated to Richard Jacobi, whom I knew in Casper, Wyo. John hears from Richard and his wife, retired University of Wyoming professor Vicki Lindner, about recent falls which, at a certain age, leads to complications, something this person of a certain age knows only too well. After watching a video of his Peru nephew’s toddler son falling over as he tried to walk, John  writes: “I sense what’s reaching out for him—gravity, the Kraken,/tentacled monster of the deep—already taking/his measure.”

The natural world has always featured heavily in John’s writing. In “Gathering Voltage,” he’s in the mountains again, this time in a summer lightning storm. He and his brother-in-law crouch as a bolt hits nearby and he feels “the fatal breath of the sky.” On another day, he rides his mountain bike in a storm: “Shivering as I fly, I sense a lightning/bolt moving into position, gathering/voltage, checking its GPS, its terrible/book of names.”

The author is not always in the wilderness. Sometimes, “The Retired Professor Reads in the Library.” He’s researching a travel essay and is in the aisle with his books and “old-time reporter’s notebooks.” He moves aside to let a student pass and wonders if the young man just sees “Him again—the old guy.” Thing is, he’s “as happy as I was at 10, freed from class to roam the school library.” I know the feeling, the old guy with his walker, crowding the aisle, as he reads a book pulled from the shelves but not sitting instead at one of the tables reserved for the elderly. If asked, I might tell you that some of the glory in the library is being there in the crowded aisle with my friends, the books.

"The Darker Moods of My Father" took me back to my own youth in the 1960s and '70s. He contemplates his father's "darker moods" and his rants on Vietnam and antiwar protesters and "priests drunk on holy water." Meanwhile, the writer remembers "this thing/that wanted to cannon me into jungle mud/since I'd turned eighteen." The poem ends with a revelation about his parents, about how his mother cautioned her husband about going too far with his his diatribes and the father looks sheepish, "knowing he'd gone too far, back in those days/when it was still possible to go too far." Suddenly we're back in 2025, when every day is a lesson on going too far.

John’s book is published by Middle Creek Publishing and Audio: The Literature of Human Ecology. A fine-looking book, printed in a large and very readable sans-serif type. The publisher is based in Pueblo Mountain Road in Beulah, Colorado, which is located between Pueblo and the mountains. I mention this because there are many fine small publishers tucked into many small places. My old friend Nancy Curtis runs High Plains Press from her ranch near Glendo, Wyoming, just a few miles off I-25 down a rutted dirt road that can turn into gumbo during a heavy rain. Anhinga Press has two co-directors in Tallahassee but founder Rick Campbell supervises from his windswept outpost on the Gulf of Mexico (MEXICO!).

One more thing. Some small presses receive support through their local and state arts agencies or some get National Endowment for the Arts publishing grants. I should say they used to get grants but not anymore from the battered NEA and not anymore in Florida where the Governor is on a scorched-earth campaign against the arts and the liberal arts education.

A sad state of affairs. My career was based on connecting local arts groups and publishers to government funding which they had to match 1-to-1. Most of the time, the government dollar was matched many times over. The U.S. government is now in the hands of a wrecking crew that wants to demolish poetry and prose, arts and education. They want to destroy everything I hold dear.

John Calderazzo writes about everything I want to preserve and protect.

Author Michael Connelly delves into Florida experience for next streaming series

Michael Connelly, best-selling author and UF and Independent Florida Alligator alum is now writing about his days as a reporter in Daytona Beach in the 1980s. He’s also writing about his time covering crime in Fort Lauderdale which includes forays into the South Florida cocaine wars.

I met Connelly in the first part of this century at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival. I came to town for the Wyoming Arts Council to meet with colleagues at WESTAF, our regional arts organization. Now Creative West, it keeps track of the MAGA attacks on the arts funding world through its Action Center. 

I waited in a long line to meet Connelly at the L.A. Bookfest at UCLA and he signed two books because I wore my Gators cap. The Gator connection led him to take a book tour detour to Wyoming a few years later and many fans turned out.

The first Connelly novel I read was "The Poet" (1996) because it was a mystery about poetry (I thought) and it's set among the two Denver newspapers I once worked for. From 1978-82, I was writing in-depth articles about prep football, college hockey, and the Coors Classic cycling race. After that, I was managing editor and columnist for Up the Creek weekly which had its origins covering rec softball leagues and wet T-shirt contests at Glendale singles bars. I still have clips if you’re looking for something to read about the halcyon days of the 80s.  

In The Poet, Jack McEvoy is a crime reporter for The Rocky. When his twin brother Sean, a Denver homicide detective, is murdered. McEvoy pursues the story. He finds  his brother’s murder was staged, and uncovers a pedophile ring which leads to other murders committee by a serial killer known as The Poet because he features Poe in his killings. I was impressed. I read more and now have quite a collection. The book won 1997 awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. 

When I moved to Denver in 1978, the RMN and Post were battling for readers. The Post won the fight.  

When I met Connelly in L.A., I asked if he ever made it to Wyoming. His answer, as I suspected, was no. I asked if he might take a 100-mile detour from his next Denver book stop if we could find funding for a presentation, reading, and book signing in Cheyenne, Wyoming’s oft-neglected capital city. He put me in touch with his agent and the YMCA Writers Voice chapter wrote a grant and brought him to town. An SRO crowd came to the Y’s meeting room where an arts exhibit arranged by my wife Chris was on display. A great time was had by all. Barnes & Noble sold a lot of books.

That meeting room is now forever empty. The Cheyenne Family YMCA closed its doors for good yesterday. No more swimming pool. No more creaky weight machines. No more Writers Voice.

I send whatever I can to arts organizations in Wyoming, Florida, and elsewhere. I will report on some of those entities in the coming months. The anti-arts savagery shown by Trump and his minions have taken a big bite out of the creative industry. Not surprising since arts and arts education were prime targets of Project 2025.

I hear from poet and performer M.L. Liebler in Detroit that “all of our programs getting money from the NEA has collapsed.” Medical research funding has also been hit: “All research on cancer has been halted.”

Sad days for poets, writers, and historians in Washington, D.C.

A. Friend (not a real name) told me that she and her husband are traveling to Washington, D.C., this week to see the National Museum of African-American History. They want to visit it before the Trump people purge the exhibits and dismantle the building. A. Friend is not a Trump voter, not even a person undergoing what MAGA calls Trump Derangement Syndrome or TDS. She and her husband are just regular folks who visit museums and art galleries and historic sites during their travels. Over the years, she has sent me postcards from sites I never knew existed and I am the richer for it. 

Trump's Nitwits have already purged some of the exhibits from this museum. They have never met a museum they didn't suspect of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or DIE which is an ironic acronym on its face. MAGA terms it DEI because, well IED was taken (Boom!) and IDE was too close to "Beware the Ides of March" which sounds too Shakespearean which might remind Idiocrats of a college English class they were forced to take in 1997. 

I wish A. Friend and her husband Godspeed and good luck. Make sure to take your REAL ID with you just in case there is an ICE sweep on the National Mall.

More bad news from D.C.: Trump's goons have eliminated the National Endowment for the Arts Literary Program and canned its staff including Director Amy Stolls whom I have worked with. The administration had already rescinded grants to literary magazines and presses whose only crime was admitting to DIE. 

I am going to list them here because I have read some of their books and they might not have existed with the writer's non-profit publisher, often hanging on by a shoestring. Here are the names:   Alice James Books, Aunt Lute Books, BOA Editions, the Center for the Art of Translation, Deep Vellum, Four Way Books, Hub City Writers Project, Open Letter Books, Milkweed Editions, Nightboat Books, Red Hen Press, and Transit Books as well as such literary magazines Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, n+1, the Paris Review, and Zyzzyva.

I have read books from many of these presses. I will mention one. Brian Turner's first book of poetry was published by Alice James Books. Poet, essayist, and professor Turner won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award for his debut collection, Here, Bullet, the first of many awards and honors received for this collection of poems about his experience as a soldier in the Iraq War. His honors since include a Lannan Literary Fellowship and NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship. His second collection, shortlisted for the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize, is Phantom Noise, also published by Alice James Books on New Gloucester, Maine, a teeming metropolis filled with radical outfits such as the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community, Pineland Farms, and the New Gloucester Fair. And one publisher. 

Brian's bio a pretty standard description of a contemporary American poet. But what's that part about the Iraq War? Oh yeah, Turner is a U.S. Army veteran, and was an infantry team leader for a year in the Iraq War beginning November 2003, with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. In 1999 and 2000 he was with the historic 10th Mountain Division, deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

"Here, Bullet" knocked me out. The title poem will tell you more about war's realities than any non-fiction book. Go to the Alice James web site and buy the book. Better yet, buy all of his books and e-books which include individual poems. 

During my time as literature program specialist at the Wyoming Arts Council, I brought Brian to our fall 2012 writing conference in Casper to read from his work and congratulate the writers he had chosen for the WAC's literary fellowships. Later, he joined two other veteran writers on a panel to discuss the role of soldier/poet in "Active Duty, Active Voices," featured Iraq War veterans and writers Brian Turner and Luis Carlos Montalván. The panel was moderated by Casper College professor and military veteran Patrick Amelotte. Montalvan suffered from severe PTSD and wrote the wonderful memoir "Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him." He brought Tuesday with him to Casper that October weekend. I worked with the state's military coordinator to bring other service dogs and their handlers to the conference to demonstrate what they do. 

I wish I could just end this blog with another Liberal's complaint about our current situation. But I have a sad story to tell. In December 2016, the 43-year-old Montalvan was found dead in an El Paso hotel room. He had left his dog Tuesday with a friend. He killed himself and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Delivering the eulogy was Democratic Sen. Al Franken. Montalvan had persuaded Franken to sponsor legislation expanding the military dog program which passed a different Congress during different times. 

During his time in Casper, Montalvan said his favorite poem growing up conservative Cuban in South Florida was "Invictus." You know the one. It celebrates bravery. William Ernest Hanley wrote it and it's always been a favorite to memorize because it rhymes and is in iambic tetrameter. Montalvan memorized it. It ends this way: "I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul."

Rest in peace, Captain.

Part XIV: The Way Mike Worked -- How the Contract with America bit the NEA on the ass

The story resumes...

It's been a few weeks, but today I get back to my series "The Way Mike Worked," based on the Smithsonian-sponsored exhibit "The Way We Worked," featured in the Cheyenne library this fall. I've been busy with my novel and some free-lance writing assignments. These later chapters of my saga also take some research, as they deal with my time as an arts bureaucrat at the Wyoming Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. I lived the first four decades of my life clueless about the world of arts administration. For the ensuing 27 years, I lived and worked in that world. I'm still active as a volunteer. My hope is that we all will get a chance to promote the arts in our communities. Taking an active role in creativity may save us all. It may not, but we will have a much better time along the way.

On that day in D.C., I witnessed history.

On Tuesday, September 27, 1994, Rep. Newt Gingrich assembled 300 Republican candidates for a photo op in front of the U.S. Capitol. The occasion was the signing of the Contract with America, a document designed by Newt that featured 10 bills that Republicans hoped to pass once the 1994 Mid-term Red Wave led to a Republican majority.

I was just starting my second year in D.C. and still a new hand at inside-the-beltway politics. Did I have a gut feeling that Gingrich's contract would change my life? Not really. Curiosity moved me. That, and a request from my National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) boss that it would be good to keep an eye on Gingrich and his pals as we closed in on the November mid-term election.

That day, I skipped my usual Metro Station stop that led to a two-block walk to NEA offices in the Old Post Office, now a Trump Hotel. I rode all the way to Union Station to take in the event. Republicans had been promoting the gathering for weeks and I was curious. I also had a feeling that it would affect my stint at the NEA. Newt had waged war on Democratic Party policies since his election to Congress in 1979. He had been active in the culture wars, a vanguard in the Religious Right's fight against the NEA, NEH, sacrilegious art, naked art, hip-hop -- any creative strain within 1990s America that threatened The Word in the Bible and U.S. supremacy in the secular world. Not exactly the opening salvo in the struggle but one that would steer politics right into the Trump era.

In late September, D.C.'s oppressive summer bubble of heat and humidity was just beginning to release its grip. But that day at the Capitol, a Republican fever dream was being born in Newt's image.

On this day, Newt launched a war against Democratic Party policies. Total war, akin to Sherman's March through Georgia, which Newt wrote about in one of his novels that I never read. A continuation of Nixon's Southern Strategy, which convinced Southern whites that Republicans were on God's side and Democrats had forged an evil alliance with ethnic minorities, feminists, gays, and college-educated pacifists. It wasn't just that Dem policies were misguided and needed correcting. It was that the Dems were the enemy and needed to be crushed. It was like a Newt Gingrich alternative history. Except it was real and, like the Civil War, had lasting consequences.

Newt wasn't content with writing alternative histories. He actually wanted to make history. Whatever the subject, Newt wrote a book. He's written 18 non-fiction titles. He's authored or co-authored at least a dozen fiction titles. You have to hand it to him. Hatching an idea, writing, revising, finishing, publishing and promoting -- the writer's life is not for the meek. Newt had a platform, still does if you look at the plethora of new titles. It is clear he had a vision and he could write. This one-two punch proved dangerous for the liberal agenda. It was a gift to conservatives waging the culture wars.

As Newt bragged at that 1994 event:“Today, on these steps, we offer this contract as a first step towards renewing American civilization."

What did you do in the culture wars, daddy?

I am a veteran of the culture wars. I don't have any medals and I don't brag about my service. I'm a survivor, which is something to be proud of. For 25 years, I worked to nurture the arts on the local, state, regional and national level. It was fun and heart-breaking. I'm here to tell the story.

What, exactly, are the culture wars? The most significant battle on the national front was waged over explicit photographs of nude gay men and a photo of a crucifix soaked (allegedly) in a container filled with an artist's urine. The NEA helped fund a grant that funded the Robert Mapplethorpe photo exhibit at DC.'s Corcoran Gallery. The crucifix art, "Piss Christ", won the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art "Awards for Artists," also funded by the NEA. Hysterical press coverage followed and evangelical yokels such as Sen. Jesse Helms and  Moral Majority's Jerry Falwell stirred up their followers with tales of blasphemy and obscenity and misuse of taxpayer dollars because, as you know, the national arts budget is so bloated that it puts the defense budget to shame.  

Pause for laughter.

Meanwhile, the NEA found itself in the middle of a lawsuit when it yanked fellowships of four artists for their ostensibly offensive art. All of these offending artists were linked with Satan and all of the Coastal Elites. Pres. Clinton, an evangelical from Arkansas raised by a single mother, was somehow one of those elites. The Republicans aimed to sabotage every one of his programs. This wasn't the first time a combative Congress took on the opposition's sitting president. But it led to all the battles yet to come. 

When confronted with an African-American Democrat as president (a guy who made good the hard way), Republican leaders vowed that none of his programs would become the law of the land. What they failed to obliterate then, they now put in the ruinous hands of the current benighted resident of the Oval Office. The battle will now be joined by the new Democratic majority in the House. Let's hope that the Democrats' tendency for appeasement has been replaced by a need to kick ass and take names. There are some encouraging signs, such as Rep. Pelosi taking Trump to the woodshed this week over the government shutdown.

Let's get back to Newt. His goal was to destroy the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Museum and Library Services Office (MLS), all part of the same funding bill. That was not as easy as it sounded. Newt, in fact, ran into what other conservatives have discovered over the years, that Republicans support the arts and many have children who are schooled in the arts and grow up to become artists, arts consumers, even arts patrons. They have museums and performing arts centers named after them. They weren't so sure that depriving their city's symphony/art museum/ballet of tax dollars was the proper thing to do. They appealed to their moderate Republican Congresspeople (there were moderate Republicans back then) to teach the Democrats a lesson but don't go overboard for goodness sake.

Newt was faced with a problem. How to satisfy the newly-elected rural-state rabble-rousers and their urban and suburban counterparts who had all of the money. Cuts came, as did compromises. The Right liked the fact that the 1996 federal budget cut funding for the arts almost in half and eliminated troublesome fellowships in visual and performing arts. Newt could declare victory and his colleagues could brag about their success out in the hinterlands. And get re-elected in '96.

It led to my early departure from the NEA and a return to my job in Wyoming. It also had other results that were less well-known. The survival of the literary fellowships. That's a story in itself and worth another post. But first, I have to go back 20-some years and do some research. I like research, although sometimes its tentacles grab me and won't let go..

Next chapter: Newt Gingrich, the writer's friend?

Part XIII: The Way Mike Worked -- On the road to D.C.

My eight-year-old son Kevin and I were on our third day of cross-country travel from Cheyenne, Wyo., to Washington, D.C.

I had promised Kevin three things to coax him into traveling with me in the U-Haul. No. 1, each night on the road we would stay at a motel with a pool. No. 2, we would eat every meal at McDonald's. No. 3, we would take his dog, Precious, with us.

He asked if he could drive but I said no, even though I could have used some relief behind the wheel. But I did stick to the other three promises and on this, the third day, I had a bad case of heartburn to match my driver fatigue.

We were passing through the sliver of West Virginia between Ohio and Pennsylvania when I spied a rest area and stopped. It was Labor Day weekend and one of the service clubs staffed a coffee stop. I hit the restrooms and then the coffee stand staffed by a pair of middle-aged guys. As he poured my coffee, one of the guys asked where I was headed.

"Washington, D.C.," I said. "I start a job there Monday."

He nodded, handed me the Styrofoam cup. The coffee was as hot as the afternoon. "You aren't one of those Clinton fellas, are you?"

"Afraid so." I smiled. They didn't. I heard the Deliverance banjo playing in the background. I thanked them for the coffee and retreated to look for my son. Clinton fella? I guess that I was, although far down on the list, way below the political appointees and the thousands of full-time D.C. bureaucrats and the hangers-on that accompany any new administration.  The National Endowment for the Arts was borrowing me from the State of Wyoming because, as a writer from a flyover state such as West Virginia, my higher-ups thought that I would lend a new perspective to the work of the government arts agency. I had signed up for two years with a possible two-year extension. I was part of a pool of Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) employees that made their way to D.C. every couple years. There was a surge now as V.P. Al Gore was tasked with trimming the federal work force.

Kevin and I spent one more night on the road. We could have made it to Rockville, Md., by nightfall but our new house wasn't available until the next day.  The motel had a nice pool and we could see the golden arches from our room. This Clinton fella was pretty tired and tomorrow was moving-in day. Chris and our infant daughter Annie were flying in from Denver in the afternoon. Soon we would all be together in a new house in a new town. Chris was going to stay home with Annie while Kevin went to the third grade. We would try to survive on one mid-level bureaucrat's salary in one of the most expensive suburbs on the East Coast. North Bethesda -- that's what city leaders wanted to rename our section of Rockville. The new name would probably bring higher rents and higher prices all-around. Bragging rights, too, I guess.

But that was all ahead of us in this new adventure.

Message to Sen. Mike Enzi: You are no help on the Senate HELP Committee

Received this letter from my U.S. Senator Mike Enzi today. It was a response to my postcard appeal back in March to Sen. Enzi, a member of the Senate Arts Caucus, to save funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, which Trump has targeted in his draft budget. Every time I receive a Congressional response, I frame it with  drawings of the human body in the excellent big-format book, "Wall Chart of Human Anatomy," 24 charts of "3D anatomy based on the National Library of Medicine's Visible Human Project." It's a very sciencey book which is appropriate due to  the hundreds of marches for science we had last weekend. Republicans have yet to show that they have human circulatory systems. 

I received a nice note from Sen. Enzi today. It was short, but I understand, as Sen. Enzi had an action-packed week advising Wyomingites the proper attire to wear (or not to wear) to a Wyoming bar. He was specific about the attire -- a tutu -- but not specific on which bar. It could be the railroaders bar in Bill or the cowboy bar in Cheyenne or the brewpub in a barn in Ten Sleep. He told high school students in Greybull that anyone who wears a tutu into a bar in Wyoming gets what he deserves. We know he was talking about Wyoming's Larry "Sissy" Goodwin, a heterosexual Wyoming man who wears women's clothes and has been beat up several times by drunks who don't think that Wyoming men should be walking around in tutus. Sissy and I have spoken at Democratic Party and union meetings. Sissy is quite a dresser.

So Sen. Enzi has been busy apologizing and, in turn, not apologizing.

So I will forgive the abruptness of his response. But I do want to deconstruct it as it includes some strange statements. Some non-explaining explanations, if you will. Maybe even some alternative facts.

Sen. Enzi points out that he is a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. As such,

"I believe that the arts and humanities are an important part of a quality education for our children."

Who can argue with that? Children need the arts just like they need to breathe. But it's not just the children -- all of us need the arts. Republicans know that they can get into the least amount of trouble by saying they are for the children and education. If they said, "I love the arts for art's sake" at the local bar, they would be beat to a pulp. Or if they said they supported the rights of artists to artistic expression -- the same result. They might be spared if they said they supported their local arts councils which sponsor much-needed artistic performances in some of the smallest communities in the state. But then if they told the mugs at the bar that the money for these activities came from taxpayer dollars, they might object. Tax money shouldn't support the arts and artists. That's something they might say. Or this: The arts should be self-supporting. This is funny coming from a Wyoming taxpayer, who annually receives more in federal funding than they contribute.

Does anyone find it odd that the Senate has a committee called HELP? There might have been a time when Congress looked out for people's health care, public education, the rights of labor unions and the ability of seniors to support themselves after a lifetime of working. Those days are gone. If you need any proof, just take a look at the Repubs' latest healthcare legislation. None of us will get any HELP from this bill. Keep your eyes on Sen. Enzi's vote when it comes to the Senate. Let's see how much HELP he offers to his constituents. He was a foe of Obamacare and will probably gush over the latest cruel version of Trumpcare.

Here's another statement from Enzi's letter:

"In Washington, I am working to encourage people across the country to get more actively involved in the arts."

As James Baldwin once said, "I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do." This is a notable writer saying that "actions speak louder than words."

The statement that really got me riled was this one:

"As we celebrate the arts, culture, and humanities that are native to our land, we encourage our young people to learn about the past and develop their own artistic abilities."

What exactly are the "the arts, culture and humanities that are are native to our land?" You have to admit that the native artists who etched the petroglyphs were talented. Native artists to our land created beautiful baskets and pottery and jewelry. They built Mesa Verde in Colorado and the mounds in Indiana. The medicine wheel on the crest of the Big Horns.

Not sure that's what Sen. Enzi means. The man reads books and he attends arts events around the state. As a mayor, he energized the arts in Gillette. But his statement smacks of the Nativist mentality that got Trump elected. When they say native, they mean white men. White Protestants founded this nation, by God, and we are the native race. All those other cultures don't count. Witness the Arizona law that forbids schools to teach Latino culture. Are African-American art forms such as jazz and blues and hip-hop counted among the arts native to this land? Salsa dancing? Non-representational art created by New Yorkers and Coloradans and Wyomingites who may find their influences in art from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Japan, Iraq, or Ukraine?

The U.S., surprisingly enough, did not invent the arts and humanities. We come from many cultures, many lands, many religions. We all deserve to be heard and seen.

Sen. Enzi wraps up his letter with a cautionary note that "the president's budget is always just a starting point." OK, so get started and do something to ensure that arts and humanities thrive in these United States. Make a stand and say that you will no longer follow the voting patterns of the Republican right-wing kook caucus. Tell your constituents you will no longer follow Trump as he marches us off of a cliff.

HELP us!

And I leave you with this artistic image, which I thought was hilarious.

This from Wyoming Equality: LGBTQ friends and straight allies put a tutu on, we're going out!
Find a #ToLiveAndLetTutu party near you: https://goo.gl/IqdZQ6

An arts administrator retires

I enjoyed my retirement party.

Friends and coworkers gathered to see me off Friday with munchies and cake. My colleague and ace baker Rachel made the cake, a chocolate confection that melted in my mouth as I licked the frosting off of my fingers. I recommend that you look up Laramie's Red Chair Bakery on Facebook. 

It's the people. Always. You work side-by-side with humans for years and then, suddenly, they're gone, or you are, and you cease to see each other every day to compare notes, complain about the state of the world, and seek solace when life goes off the rails. A workplace is a family, with all of it wonderful and dysfunctional attributes. On retirement day (R-Day) you tend to remember the warmth and wonderfulness and forget about the stressful times. Arts workers tend to be a tight-skit subculture, possibly because we work in an arcane field and possibly because the arts draws temperamental people. Am I moody and strange? You betcha. But I am also congenial and collegial. I read recently about a group labeled extroverted introverts. They are introverts who welcome the Great Big World in short bursts, and then have to retreat to marshal their emotional forces. That's me. As a writer and reader, I require plenty of alone time. But, as an arts administrator and communicator, I have to deal with people -- in my case, everyone in the state of Wyoming. As a political animal, I am charged to do the same thing. Now sometimes, I am forced to admit to myself that "I hate the living," the phrase made famous by the woman coroner in "Men in Black." Yes, the living can be a pain. They also are a source of joy. Introverts learn how to strike a balance or we will go crazy (and sometimes do). 

How did I end up working in the arts? Glad you asked. When I attended graduate school at the ripe old age of 37, my intention was to get an M.F.A. in creative writing and teach the subject in the hallowed halls of academe. When I left the corporate PR world for grad school, my coworkers gifted me a bull whip for my students and advised me that my very un-corporate attire of tweed jackets with elbow patches would serve me well. My boss told me that it was too bad as I was leaving, as he had selected me as his next project. My boss, you see, was bored as his most recent "project" had been shown the door a few weeks earlier. Who said there was no dark humor in the corporate world?

In academe, I discovered a wonderful coterie of like-minded people with whom I could share my creative vision. I also learned how to teach in a college classroom. The bullwhip was out – drat. I was challenged by a new generation of students raised on Ronald Reagan and Mario Brothers and anime. As an extroverted introvert, I discovered people skills. I was volunteered for the university's fine arts committee. I liked hanging out with professional writers and arranging their readings and workshops. I assisted Etheridge Knight with a poetry workshop at the county slammer (Etheridge had experience in the joint). I hung out with Larry Heinemann and Gwendolyn Brooks and Joy Harjo and David Lee. I learned how to write grants, although my first attempt was a failure. I discovered that there were such things as state arts agencies and that Colorado had one. I applied for the Colorado Arts Council’s (now called Colorado Creative Industries) roster and received my first assignment, which was a gig in a school in a windswept eastern plains town. Had I remained in my home state, this would have prepared me for life in the high prairie of Wyoming. And that’s where I landed a job as arts administrator with the Wyoming Arts Council. I was unqualified, but was hired anyway, thanks to Joy Thompson, who immediately left for another job. Fortunately, my new colleagues were patient and taught me the ropes. I wrote successful grants to the National Endowment for the Arts. Two years later, I was hired for a two-year gig by the NEA. As assistant director of the literature program, I learned tons about the national arts scene, and carried that back with me to Wyoming.

What does one say about a career? It included triumphs and terrible failures. When I set off for grad school, family in tow, my one-and-only literary agent, Ray Powers, advised me to just stay at home and write. I didn’t listen. I knew myself enough to know that I would not thrive as a lonely writer tapping away at home. I struggle with depression, and life in my basement office was a recipe for disaster. I lacked confidence in my ability to make a living as a fiction writer. How would I support my family? My memories were haunted by my father and his problems as a bread-winner. Yes, he had nine children to support but he also had a wife with her own career as a nurse and hospital administrator. She always yearned to write a book about her “damn hospital,” which was part “Peyton Place” soap opera, part Paddy Chayevsky’s lunatic asylum of “The Hospital.” She died too young and never got the chance to write that book.

Did I make the right career choices? I was a newspaper reporter and editor, a PR guy, a freelance writer and an arts administrator. I remain a fiction writer. People are complicated beasts and I am no less so. I am dubious when people say they have no regrets. How can you live a long life in a complicated world and not have regrets? In the end, all fuel for the creative fire.

Soldier-writers bare "The Soul of America" -- and they're coming to Wyoming this fall

Lance Corporal Nicholas G. Ciccone by Michael D. Fay, a portrait drawn during their duty in Afghanistan. Ciccone committed suicide in 2003. Courtesy of the Art Collection, National Museum of the Marine Corps, Triangle, Virginia.

I'm constantly amazed with the creative ways that humans confront their many challenges. Not surprising that many of those responses involve the arts. The arts allow us to express our deepest emotions, such as fear, anger and love. Where would we be without the poetry of love expressed in a Shakespearean sonnet? The anger expressed in a Bob Dylan or Green Day protest song? What about the pain expressed by the warrior in "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Habibi Hlaloua," a modern dance production about choreographer and dancer Roman Baca's U.S. Marine platoon in Iraq? If they didn't exist, we would have to invent them and, amazingly enough, we are always finding new ways to do just that.

Yesterday I was reading the quarterly magazine of the National Endowment for the Arts. It's dedicated to the military and the arts. Researchers have discovered that writing or creating an artwork about a painful experience, such as trauma experienced in battle, stimulates the same part of the brain -- the right hemisphere -- that is activated with "traumatic recall." This also helps unlock the speech center in the left hemisphere that shuts down when presented with a painful memory. 

This is why veterans such as Ron Capps have found healing in creative writing, and why he went on to found the Veterans Writing Project. Capps has enlisted a slew of talented writers workshop leaders. Some are veterans (Tobias Wolff, Joe Haldeman, Brian Turner) but many are not (Bobbie Ann Mason, Mark Bowden, Marilyn Nelson). Some understanding of the battlefield is a plus, but it's more important to be an effective teacher and a writer who possesses more than the usual quota of empathy. Bobbie Ann Mason wrote a terrific novel about soldier returning home from Vietnam, "In Country." Jeff Shaara never served a day in the military but he puts his readers in the middle of the fighting at Antietam and Vicksburg and, more recently, Normandy and The Battle of the Bulge. You can see and hear some of these writers in the terrific documentary, "Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience." Brian Turner is featured in a segment "What Every Soldier Should Know."Vietnam veteran and novelist Tim O'Brien also is interviewed.

Coincidentally, Turner and O'Brien will be in Wyoming this fall. If you'd like to take a free writing workshop with O'Brien (and who wouldn't?), he will be conducting one on Friday, Oct. 5, as part of the Literary Connection at LCCC in Cheyenne. He is one of three workshop teachers that day from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. -- the others are outdoor writer John Calderazzo from Colorado State University (one of my mentors from my CSU days) and Cat M. Valente.

Turner will be featured at the Equality State Book Festival in Casper Sept. 14-15. On Friday at 1 p.m., he will be reading from his work along with the three winners of the Wyoming Arts Council's poetry fellowship competition. On Saturday at 10 a.m., he will discuss the role of the soldier-writer with fellow Iraq War veteran Luis Carlos Montalvan. The panel moderator will be veteran, poet and Casper College professor Patrick Amelotte. Turner also will be signing copies of his books, "Here, Bullet" and "Phantom Noise" throughout the weekend.

How did these writers translate their experiences into written form? Come on out to these events and find out. They're both in the vicinity, as Casper is only a few Wyoming interstate highway miles away from your Cheyenne neighborhood. 

Bob Lynch of Americans for the Arts: Mitt Romney has a "misunderstanding" of how arts funding works

Mitt Romney wants to defund the National Endowment for the Arts. Once again, he's pandering to his supporters on the Far Right. And he doesn't understand how arts funding works. 

Robert Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts, said Romney has a 'misunderstanding' of how NEA funding works, in that the funding helps stimulate state and local arts councils as well as seed the growth of small businesses. Read Lynch's entire response at Americans for the Arts News

Grist: Locally-based arts can save our towns and cities

According to Grist, the arts are being recast as a revitalization strategy for our urban areas.

Roberta Brandes Gratz, a longtime student of cities and author of The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, says that this is a refreshing approach. "Usually in the past, money went into creating big cultural venues -- that's not what nurtures the arts. These big venues are good for importing big productions, but for the arts to be of real economic value, it needs to be local."

In other words, if you’re thinking of building a huge symphony hall or museum, forget it. You are much better off nurturing local artists, arts councils, and smaller performance and exhibit venues. Libraries too. And don’t forget about your writers.

Read entire article at http://www.grist.org/cities/2011-11-03-can-save-the-arts-struggling-cities

Casper comes together to decide on "art space" details

When I was at the Casper College Literary Conference last month, I dropped by the Sunshine Apartments’ construction site across from the Nicolaysen Art Museum. This is one of the more interesting projects in the state. A years-long struggle over removing a slumlord’s run-down property has culminated in a community-wide effort to build affordable “green” housing with arts and education as its centerpiece.

The Nicolaysen Art Museum, in partnership with the Wyoming Community Development Authority, the city of Casper and Grimshaw Investments, received a $50,000 NEA grant to build an “art space” into the Sunshine II Apartments on the corner of Beech Street and Collins Drive.  

Now all the partners are coming together to decide the scope of the project. On Thursday, Oct. 27, 5:30-7 p.m., the public is invited to a town hall forum, “Creating Communities Through Art and Housing,” in the Nic lobby.

At Thursday’s forum, those attending will meet the three artist groups who were selected as finalists from 86 who submitted requests for credentials to a selection panel in the summer. The finalists are the pair of Gail Simpson and Aristotle Georgiades of Actual Size Artworks, Stoughton, Wis.; Sulkang Zhao of New York; and Matthew Dehaemers of Kansas City, Kan.

From yesterday's Casper Star-Tribune:

WCDA Director David Haney said roughly 30 days after the site visit and forum, the finalists will have mock-ups ready of their idea for Casper, based in part on the feedback they receive at the forum. 

“We want something interactive, multigenerational, something that reflects Wyoming culture and Casper’s character. We want it to be practical and educational and reflect sustainability. We don’t want something that isn’t going to reflect Wyoming values. Beyond that, we don’t know what we want, and that’s the purpose of Thursday,” Haney said. 

Those in attendance will be welcome to ask questions of the artist finalists as well as the project partners.

Interesting that so many entities have worked together to change this blighted piece of downtown real estate. It's only fitting that the public is being invited to decide on the next step. Casper's downtown seems to be changing faster than Cheyenne's. New streetscapes are already being built, and traffic rerouted. The Nic is one of the state's best art museums. But the affordable housing units and their art space tied it into the neighborhood. It works the other way too -- people who live in the development will be tied into the Nic and the city's arts community. That's how it should be. 

There some public/private efforts to turn Cheyenne's Hynds Building into a live/work space for artists. That would be a welcome addition to downtown. The big challenge is how to tie it all together -- live/work spaces. galleries, museums, retailers, performing venues, parking, etc. The community will have to meet on this just as they're doing in Casper. 

For more on this issue, go to Casper Star-Tribune Community News editor Sally Ann Shurmur’s blog at trib.com/dishin

Read more on the Oct. 27 meeting: http://trib.com/news/local/casper/nicolaysen-museum-hosts-town-hall-on-public-art-project/article_728ec980-dd09-513b-8e50-c85bf0da6710.html#ixzz1bsQIYqX9

What did you do in the arts wars, daddy?

Today I celebrate my 20th anniversary as a Wyoming resident. I was a relatively young man embarking on a new career in arts administration. In 1991, I didn't really know what that entailed. I was just happy to be working as the literature program manager at the Wyoming Arts Council.

Some people get degrees in arts administration. Many more wander blindly into the field through their arts pursuits. I'm in the latter camp. In pursuit of an M.F.A. in creative writing, I discovered that the arts need administering. Poet (and past Colorado poet laureate) Mary Crow asked if I'd be interested in serving on a committee for the CSU Fine Arts Series. Mary was very persuasive. I agreed.

Next thing I knew, I was attending even more meetings when all I really cared about was my fiction writing. But a few months into it, I found myself having lunch with Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks and escorting the legendary Ethridge Knight to a workshop at the Larimer County Jail. I drove to DIA and picked up National Book Award winner Larry Heinemann and spent the day picking his brain about "Paco's Story" and his experiences in Vietnam. Over the next two years, the writers came in quick succession: Linda Hogan, Maya Angelou, Russell Martin and David Lee. Lee, a CSU grad and one-time Utah Poet Laureate, wanted to see his old campus so I took him on a tour. We were both surprised that my T.A. office was right next door to what once had been the dorm room of a girlfriend.

I was a bit star-struck in the literary sense. But what most impressed me was that part of the university's mission was bringing fantastic writers, dancers, musicians and visual artists to campus to provide students personal contact with some of the best creative minds of our day. The Fine Arts Series was funded through taxpayer dollars and student fees. And many volunteer hours. While so many university pursuits seem oriented around sports, it was encouraging to see that the same sort of dedication was directed at the arts. The arts were important. They needed administering and I might just be the person to do that.

My first grant application went down in flames. That just incited my Irish stubbornness and I studied the tenets of good grant-writing. My second grant application was rejected. I began to realize that there was an arts infrastructure. I contacted the Colorado Council on the Arts. They freely gave their advice. And I also heard that there was a program that provided grants for artists and writers in schools. I signed up. But before I could do my first residency in rural eastern Colorado, I applied for -- and was hired for -- the position as lit guy at the Wyoming Arts Council.

Twenty years later, I still like my job. I now supervise all grants and fellowships to individual artists. I learn something new every day. There are days when I butt heads with a disgruntled visual artist or writer or performer. They care deeply about their work, as do I.

The arts can be a battleground.

The arts mean creativity. Our current Tea Party-dominated politics reject government involvement in the "frivolities" of the arts. The Tea Party represents selfishness and fear. The arts represent creativity and hope and the future. And a righteous anger at the politics of the past.

That's why I do what I do. Creativity and hope. I want to leave a better Cheyenne, a more vital Wyoming, and a better world for the next generation.

Rep. Cynthia Lummis votes against further cuts to the NEA

Stunned Wyoming arts advocates passed this along to me so I'm sharing it with you:

House Votes against NEA Funding Cuts; Strong Comeback for Arts Advocacy  

July 29, 2011

From: Thomas L. Birch, Legislative Counsel, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies 

The vote in the House of Representatives on July 28 demonstrated a strong victory for arts advocates intent on gaining legislative support for federal arts funding. The amendment offered by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), a freshman in Congress and a member of the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), would have reduced 2012 appropriations for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to $125 million from the level of $135 million proposed in the bill approved by the House Appropriations Committee. Walberg sponsored a similar amendment last February to bring 2011 NEA funds down to $125 million. That amendment passed by a vote of 217-209. Yesterday's vote, recorded at 181-240, defeated the Walberg amendment. 

This time around, the voting patterns noticeably shifted. Even some of our champions in Congress were surprised at the size of the winning vote. In February, 22 Republicans joined all but three Democrats in voting against the arts funding cut. This week, all Democrats and 55 Republicans voted together to defeat the move to reduce the NEA funds. Conservative Republicans teamed up with moderates from their own party to carry the vote. Almost half the Republicans voting in support of the NEA's budget and against the Walberg amendment are, like Walberg, freshmen in Congress and RSC members. 

Clearly, forces combined to win that outcome. The advocacy of NASAA's members was strong and engaged. Personal contacts carried the day. Our colleagues in other arts organizations were equally involved through their grass-roots networks. Our bipartisan champions in Congress stood visibly against the proposed funding cut. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), chair of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, had pledged earlier to oppose attempts on the House floor to cut the NEA budget. He was true to his word and his Democratic colleague on the subcommittee, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), was eloquent on the floor in defense of federal arts funding. The co-chairs of the Congressional Arts Caucus played major roles during the floor debate. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) organized floor speeches with her colleagues to speak against the Walberg amendment. Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA) whipped votes against the amendment from among his Republican colleagues. 

Here are the 55 Republicans who voted to hold the line on cuts to the NEA, opposing the Walberg amendment. Each of them deserves special thanks. Please let your representatives know how much you appreciate their position in support of the NEA budget and the important role the funding plays in your state. 

Republicans voting against the Walberg amendment:  

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Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming. 

The House of Representatives plans to continue meeting through the weekend to finish work on the Interior Appropriations Bill—and to produce a plan for raising the debt ceiling—but their work is done on the arts appropriations.  

Many thanks again to all of you for your effective advocacy in turning around an important vote on the way to realizing the best possible budget for the NEA in 2012. Please take a moment to express your thanks to your own representatives who stood up in support of funding for the arts.

Thank you, Rep. Lummis. Don't get to say that very often.

NEA"s "Our Town" grants supports creativity in our towns

Artist's rendering of Casper's Sunshine II development that will include an arts space for resident and neighbors

Here's a whole lot of creative placemaking that will be supported by almost $7 million in "Our Town" grants from the National Endowment for the Arts: http://www.arts.gov/grants/recent/11grants/Our-Town.html

One of those is a $50,000 grant for Casper to develop a public art space alongside the 26-unit Sunshine Apartments II development now under construction. The site is across from the Nicolaysen Art Museum and just west of where the now-demolished KC Apartments were located. Some of you may remember the rundown KC Apartments as a slumlord-run blight on the neighborhood that mercifully was closed down by the city and then demolished.    

The new Sunshine II low-income development feature LEED-certified buildings and now an arts space. 

Project organizers envision the space as a gathering spot for apartment residents and the surrounding community. The museum also intends to create educational and outreach programs for the site. 

“It’s part and parcel with a whole mindset or plan for downtown Casper on how to integrate arts with our everyday lives,” said museum Curator Lisa Hatchadoorian. 

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Hatchadoorian isn’t aware of any other public art spaces in Wyoming tied to low-income housing. Organizers hope their project will encourage similar efforts in other parts of the state.

“It’s a community-building experience,” she said. “A lot of times, when you have a public art space where people can interact, it just brings everyone ... it makes the community more available to each other. It just makes a better place to live.”

Read more: http://trib.com/news/local/casper/article_b59063b2-7991-51f2-8698-204d1b7b01fc.html#ixzz1RxrMkUst

Another one of the NEA's "Our Town" grants goes to a neat "arts incubator" project just down the road from Cheyenne in Fort Collins, Colo.:

To support the creation of the Rocky Mountain Regional Arts Incubator (RMRAI) in the historic Carnegie building in downtown Fort Collins. The RMRAI will offer students and professionals a multitude of services to assist them in creating, redefining, and sustaining their creative careers in the new economy, including educational courses, internships, continuing education for practicing artists, and gallery and performance spaces.

The project is a collaboration among the non-profit Beet Street, the City of Fort Collins Cultural Services Department and the Colorado State University School of the Arts. The incubator will be located in the Carnegie Building in the city's Library Park.

The Beet Street web site doesn't say, but the org's name probably trades on Fort Collins' aggie reputation, namely its years as a center of sugar beet production. CSU got its start as Colorado A&M, home of a fantastic veterinary school and lots of farming and ranching courses. That's what the big "A" up on the mountain stands for. CSU grew into a place where the arts shared a campus with the aggie arts. What's interesting is that the university (my alma mater) now is investing heavily in green technology and sustainable agriculture, putting the A&M back into the name in new and interesting ways.

Two upcoming arts & justice events in Denver

These listings come from the "Open Letter," the weekly newsletter of Denver's Capitol Heights Presbyterian/10:30 Catholic Community and edited by Monte Clark. The 10:30 CC was my family's church when we lived in Denver. My son was baptized there. An incredible group of people (many of them community organizers) pray on both sides of the pew. The newsletter features two great arts-oriented events coming up in September:

“CATHOLIC LITERARY IMAGINATION: WHAT WOULD JESUS VIEW?” LECTURER AND AUTHOR – HOPKINS POETRY CONFERENCE on Thursday, September 17, 7 p.m. at St. John Francis Regis Chapel. Featuring Dr. Ron Hansen. Dr. Hansen was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and educated at Creighton University, the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, and at Stanford University, where he held a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship. He has received fellowships from the Michigan Society of Fellows, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Lyndhurst Foundation, and was presented with an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Professor Hansen has taught fiction and screenwriting at such institutions as Stanford, Michigan, Cornell, Iowa, Arizona, and is now the Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University in California. His novels include "Mariette In Ecstasy" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by that Coward Robert Ford."

PLEASE COME OUT AND SUPPORT THE ROMERO THEATER TROUPE as we work to return Labor Day to the people. We will perform Voices From the Worker's Struggle, a series of scenes from American Labor History, past and present, including several traditional labor folk songs. Our show begins on Labor Day, September 7, at 6 p.m. at the Lincoln Park Amphitheater, 11th and Osage, next to the swimming pool. Seating is limited, so it's first-come, first-served. This will be the final public presentation in Denver of what has been a two-year journey of bringing the history of the Workers' Struggle to the community through Organic Theater. This is a free show. The People's Labor Day begins at Lincoln Park at 2 p.m. with free food open to the community. The afternoon's events include poetry, music, and children's games. All are welcome. The United Food and Commercial Workers and Jobs With Justice are co-sponsoring this exciting event. For more information, check out the website at http://www.romerotroupe.org/

Remembering Sen. Ted Kennedy

I sent my condolences to the Kennedy family:

I met Sen. Edward Kennedy on the deck of the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy during a NROTC midshipman cruise in summer of 1970. Among the 5,000 other sailors and marines on the carrier, I had the honor of greeting him and shaking his hand as we steamed into Boston Harbor. When I worked in D.C. during the Clinton years, I had an opportunity to meet and talk to the Senator about the importance of the National Endowment for the Arts (where I worked). He was a champion for the arts and creativity. He championed all of those who sought justice. I've followed his career all of these years and supported many of the causes that he championed. I intend to honor his final battle for health care reform by continued advocacy for Pres. Obama's plans. My family and I in Wyoming send our most sincere condolences to his family.

Write your memories and condolences at http://tedkennedy.org/pages/share_memories.

Fearmongering Religious Right again targets National Endowment for the Arts

Bill Berkowitz reports in Talk To Action that the Religious Right is once again going after the National Endowment for the Arts:

It used to be that the mere mention of the National Endowment for the Arts would immediately draw fire from the right. In the 1990s, "Defund the NEA" became a rallying cry that was regularly heard in the halls of Congress. Direct mail packages, designed by conservative public relations pros and delivered directly to your mailbox by the U.S. Postal Service, claimed that the agency supported anti-Christian and pornographic art projects. Demonizing the NEA was a fundraising tool that kept giving and giving and giving.

Over the past decade, however, in part because the agency appeared to consciously distance itself from funding controversial art projects, and in part because the Christian Right moved on to other issues (abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration), fighting funding for the NEA was no longer at the top of their agenda.

Concern over how President Barack Obama's stimulus money is being used is again focusing attention on the NEA. A July 30 Fox News report www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/29/stimulus-funds-art-houses-showing-pervert-revues-underground-pornography/) pointed out that some stimulus money (the Recovery and Reinvestment Act) earmarked for the NEA, wound up stimulating an NEA-funded "pornographic" film project, a long-running pansexual performance series, and a dance production featuring naked dancers.

Arts groups and arts funders used to run scared when the Religious Right engaged in its Know-Nothing diatribes. But we're beyond that nonsense. Ralph Reed and the rest of these fearmongering self-righteous nincompoops showed their true colors during the George W. Bush era, when they thought they owned the world and every American's soul. These buffoons have nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with fear and hatred. We are afraid no more. Go crawl back into your holes!

Read entire Talk to Action article at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/8/9/125211/1420

Twists and turns in arts-funding story

In the Feb. 15 New York Times, reporter Robin Pogrebin chronicled the odd story of how the $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts managed to stay in Pres. Obama’s economic recovery bill. Not a pretty story, but it does illustrate some of the horse-trading that goes on in Congress. And the importance of government funding for the arts.

Here are excerpts of the story interspersed with my commentary based on 17-plus years as an arts worker, including a two-year stint at the NEA:

There was a whiplash quality to the action surrounding the arts money. As the week wore on, things weren’t looking good. Although a House version of the bill had included the $50 million, the Senate version approved no arts money at all. The Senate even voted 73 to 24 on Feb. 6 for an amendment ruling out stimulus money for museums, arts centers and theaters. And some conservative Republicans had denounced the arts as bonbons for a leftist elite with no place in an emergency stimulus bill.

The challenge for culture boosters in Congress was to convince a House-Senate conference committee that the arts provide jobs as other industries do, while also encouraging tourism and spending in general.

"We had the facts on our side," said Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a New York Democrat who is co-chairwoman of the Congressional Arts Caucus. "If we’re trying to stimulate the economy, and get money into the Treasury, nothing does that better than art."

A 2007 Americans for the Arts report, Arts & Economic Prosperity III: The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts and Culture Organizations and Their Audiences, contained the following economic stats:

Nationally, the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity every year -- 63.1 billion in spending by organizations and an additional $103.1 billion in event-related spending by their audiences. It included 5.7 million full-time equivalent jobs, $104.2 billion in household income, $7.9 billion in local government tax revenues, $9.1 billion in state government tax revenues and $12.6 billion in federal income tax revenues.

That's a lot of simoleons. Big numbers cause Congress to sit up and listen. It also helps that arts supporters were contacting their reps and senators. People like you and me and our close personal friend, Robert Redford.

In his conversation last week with Ms. Pelosi, a California Democrat, [Robert] Redford said he drew on his film experience to argue for the arts as an economic engine. "Ticket takers or electricians or actors — all the people connected with the arts are at risk just like everybody else is," he said in an interview. He said he also reminded Ms. Pelosi that his Sundance Film Festival brings more than $60 million to Park City, Utah, each year.

You have to wonder why Utah's entire D.C. delegation voted against the stimulus bill. Sen. Hatch has not always been a friend to the arts, but he's had his moments. Sen. Bennett is a longtime arts supporter. But both are Republicans. They were only taking orders from their leadership, as were Wyoming's Sen. Enzi and Sen. Barrasso.

Did you know that Utah has the nation's oldest arts council? That's a fact. Arts are huge in the state, especially in Salt Lake City, with its symphony and ballet companies and Mormon Tabernacle Choir and public art programs and museums and... The list goes on and on. And earlier this year, the Utah Arts Council got rid of its folklorists as it faced budget cuts. One would think the stimulus funds for highways and airports and building renovation would have appealed to Utah's delegation. After all, you need all those things so people can get to the arts.

As the details of the final bill were being hammered out, tens of thousands of arts advocates around the country were calling and e-mailing legislators... The tide turned. In addition to preserving the $50 million allocation, the final bill eliminated part of the Senate amendment that would have excluded museums, theaters and arts centers from any recovery money.

That Senate amendment, proposed by Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, had grouped museums, theaters and arts centers with implied frivolities like casinos and golf courses.

During debates on the bill, some Republicans had labeled the arts "highbrow" and "a luxury" that was populated with leftist artists and arts supporters. It was reminiscent of the so-called "Culture Wars" of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a few NEA-funded projects casued an uproar and became a rallying cry for Jerry Falweel, Pat Robertson, and his fellow travelers in the Religious Right.

But even that battle had shades of gray. The NEA's budget was cut in half following Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" and Republican victory in the 1994 elections. Newwt got his way and almost all of the fellowship programs for individual artists were eliminated. All but the ones in creative writing, as various high-profile writers and Hollywood types appealed to Mr. Gingrich's vision of himself as a writer. He is a writer, of speculative fiction and history. So the creative writing fellowships were spared on the turn of an artistic ego and a few well-placed words.

Here's a few final words from the NYT article:

In arguing for the $50 million in arts money on the House floor on Friday, Rep. Obey made similar points. Arts workers, he said, have 12.5 percent unemployment: "Are you suggesting that somehow if you work in that field, it isn’t real when you lose your job, your mortgage or your health insurance? We’re trying to treat people who work in the arts the same way as anybody else.