Lee Love on mon 30 dec 02
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From:
> Lee, because you are in Japan, I don't know how closely you were able to
> follow these events,
I can follow pretty closely. I have my computer set up and I recieve
about a half dozen public news radio stations, from America and around the world
that I listen to every day. I have speakers set up and speakerwire run so I
can listen in any room in the house and in the studio. And Betcha' I read
the full BlackBox NYTimes article before you (before it was posted to this
list.) :^) ( I am currently on Oshogatsu (New Year's) holiday, so I have time
to do text searches. )
Some distance from my own society gives me clarity about what is
actually happening there. I don't think people back home realized how their
news is filtered and hand fed to them. It is really troublesome. People
outside of America sometimes wonder if the Giant hasn't gone a little nuts.
I worry because I love my country.
> but I have a feeling that Mel is correct in his statement.
That one person's "art" might have been the single-handed cause of the
cutting of the funding for the NEA? This is mixing up "cause and effect." If
you examine the history, it is easy to show that this is not true. The
climate for culture in our society has been changing in the last 25 or 30 years.
This "artist" and his actions were only an excuse.
I never mentioned partisan politics. I think the Republicans and
Democrats are pretty much hard to tell apart these days: Republicats!
What we have in an America is a strong shift in values in the culture as a
whole. This world view is being promoted throughout the world. It is part
of what causes our difficulties in the world. But we are blind to how the rest
of the world sees us. Completely blind.
> WITH PUBLIC MONEY UNDER THE HEAT OF THE THEN CURRENT POLITICAL CLIMATE.
This is always strange to me: our focus on a few pennies given to some
crappy artists while we drop billions on "hardware" for our "favorite"
institutions without flinching. An if you are critical about _THESE_
expenditures, you are deemed "unpatriotic."
It is all about values. A culture's values can be seen where
it spends its money. This is not too complex to understand. Pardon me for
saying "The Emperor Has on Clothes."
> Lee, many taxpayers seemed to agree, and at one point, there was
> consideration in congress to stop the funding for the NEA. While that wasn't
> (entirely) successful, I believe that funding was cut and that the programs
> that got cut were those for individual artists.
Here in Japan, many little towns have their own museums. The are both
publicly and privately funded. Here in Mashiko, a small town of 25,000
people, we have two major ceramic museums and a fine woodblock print museum.
The town on the otherside of the mountains, Kasama (where the first Mashiko
potters come from) is not much bigger than Mashiko, and they have a grand
pottery park that includes a Prefectural museum and a large educational center.
I believe these are mostly funded by local government. It helps one
believe that decentralization is positive and local economy is good.
--
Lee In Mashiko, Japan Ikiru@hachiko.com
"The first thing we must begin to teach our children (and learn ourselves) is
that we cannot spend and consume endlessly. We have got to learn to save and
conserve."
Quote from: "Thoughts in the Presence of Fear" by Wendell Berry
Full article: http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~ikiru/sustain.html
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