Convergence Wyoming: Historic preservation not just for Earth anymore.

Milford Wayne Donaldson, California’s state historic preservation officer, will be a featured speaker at the Convergence Wyoming 2011 in Cody Oct. 6-8. He will speak about some of the finer points of historic preservation. And its most otherworldly ones. In 2010, Donaldson successfully sought historic preservation status for the Apollo 11 moon landing sites.

The reasoning behind the first-of-its-kind designation was simple: Scores of California companies worked on the Apollo mission, and much of their handiwork remains of major historical value to the state, regardless of where it is now or what it was for used for then.

“It has a significance that goes way further than whether it came from a quarter million miles away or not,” Mr. Donaldson said. “They are all parts of the event.” 

While Apollo 11 was indeed a landmark mission — during which Neil A. Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon and he and Buzz Aldrin apparently ditched their boots — it wasn’t exactly tidy. Worried about the weight of their landing capsule, the harried lunar explorers left behind tons of trash, including empty food bags, electrical equipment and, yes, several receptacles meant for bodily waste. 

There is also a collection of artifacts of historical note and emotion: Mr. Armstrong’s footprint, for example, and an American flag. Apollo 11 also left behind a mission patch from Apollo 1, in which three astronauts died in a fire, and a message from world leaders. 

And while some of the garbage might seem like, well, garbage, California is just one of several states seeking protection for the items in the face of possible lunar missions by other nations as well as a budding space tourism industry. 

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Mr. Donaldson said he hoped his commission’s vote might help goad the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization into placing the landing site on the World Heritage List, an international compilation of famed landmarks. 

“I think there’s a threat from private companies,” Mr. Donaldson said. “And with today’s technology, they could probably pinpoint this.” 

That said, Mr. Donaldson admitted that there were no “space cops” available to safeguard the state’s newest historical resource. But, like the Apollo astronauts themselves, he seemed optimistic that Friday’s vote might lead to bigger and better things. 

“Hopefully,” he said, “this will take off.”

Register for Convergence Wyoming at http://www.convergencewyoming.com/register-today/. Article source: New York Times

Roy's a Liberal who sings funny songs about conservatives

Roy Zimmerman was born in San Francisco and still lives in the Bay Area. He could dwell forever in this cone of Liberalism. Yet something inside keeps urging him to get out and meet "Real People," those salt-of-the-earth types that conservatives love, in theory.

A bunch of us Real People went out to see Roy in concert Thursday night at the UU Church of Cheyenne. Some of you may not think of Unitarians as real people or UU as a real religion. We rarely hear about the Cheyenne Unitarians waging holy war against, say, the Sunni wing of the Unitarians over in Laramie.

Despite their namby-pamby ways, UU seems to thrive and put on great programs at their midtown church.

Roy Zimmerman's concert was one of those programs.

Roy wanders the country, seeking out pockets of Liberals to sing to. His plan is to play in all 50 states before the 2012 elections. He did the same thing before the 2008 elections, missing only Hawaii (too far away), Alaska (too cold) and New Mexico (didn't know it was in the United States). He won't make the same mistake again. This time, he started in Alaska, came to Wyoming and this weekend is in Colorado. You probably didn't know this, but Colorado Springs has a UU Church and Roy will play there Sunday. The American Taliban which make up most of the religious in Colorado Springs will not be amused.

One of the funniest songs from Thursday's Cheyenne concert was "The Abstinence Song."

"Abstain with me baby
Abstain with me all night long."

He sang it in a strained voice, as if attempting to keep his devilish desires in check. He also sang "The Bible Tells Me So," which recalls all the great marriages in the Old Testament. You know, King Solomon and his 700 wives and 300 concubines.Another great song is "My Conservative Girlfriend." He used to sing this with Anne Coulter in mind. Now he sings it to Michelle Bachmann.

"Moammar Ghaddafi gives us a glimpse of what a Michele Bachmann presidency would be like," he said as a prelude to the song.

Amen.

You can't visit Wyoming without bringing up the specter of Dick Cheney. And lo, he is quite spectrous. And his new book is out so his Satanic Majesty is all over the news.

Roy sang his "Chickenhawk Song," spelling out the litany of all those draft-dodging warmongers (like Cheney) who were only too happy to send your sons and daughters to die in Iraq and Afghanistan. Possibly the most touching song of the night was the ballad about being the "Last Man to Die in Afghanistan."

He didn't let Liberals off the hook. There was a satiric song about how hard it is to be a Liberal, and one about the "psychedelic relics" of the sixties. And a touching ballad about how regular people are trying to rise up against the bullshit. He reminded us that "hope" and "change" are powerful words, but there is a third one we need to remember: Struggle.

Three words: hope, struggle and change.

Roy is traveling the U.S. with his Starving Ear tour. This is his answer to the Hungry I in San Francisco, a place that featured outspoken activists of the fiftes and sixties. People like Mort Sahl, Bill Cosby, Lenny Bruce, Glenn Yarbrough and a host of others. Hungry I = Starving Ear. I get it.

Look up Roy's stuff at www.royzimmerman.com

Shape-shifting in the arts world and in Yellowstone

The world of arts funding is changing dramatically. The federal-state-local government infrastructure that began with the establishment in 1965 of the National Endowment for the Arts is morphing into something new and different. And this may be a good thing.

I work in that infrastructure, in both the state and federal level, for 20 years. I am 60. My brain and my aesthetics should be as calcified as my knees. But as is the case with many of my colleagues in arts administration, I am being challenged to look at the arts with new eyes.

I mentioned “colleagues.” I have fewer of those these days as state arts agencies are killed off by Tea Party-inspired governors and state legislatures. The Kansas Arts Commission got the ax this year. South Dakota almost disappeared. Nevada and Arizona were cut to the bone.

This budget cutting frenzy is inspired by deficits and political ideology. Wyoming has a budget surplus but our arts agency has been told to cut spending – or else. Wyoming is as red as red can be. We’re selling the crap out of coal and shale oil and natural gas (some of which is actually ancient crap) and trona and wind -- and the gubment is raking in the dough through excise taxes. One can only assume that politics trumps reality.

One could get all bent out of shape about this state of affairs. [Pause for blood-curdling scream]  Or, maybe, I can put my energy into alternatives. Change is good, right? Didn’t a presidential candidate say that long time ago in a galaxy far far away?

I will spend time on these pages exploring arts organizations and funders and artists and writers who are looking at this world in new ways.

I came across a great one today. United States Artists has been around for several years. The help artists, writers and performers raise project funding online.

The artists first must pass muster as a recipient of an award from one of USA’s partnering organizations, such as Wyoming Arts Council, Idaho Arts Commission, Lannan Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, etc.

Artist Pearl C. Hsiung, L.A. needed to raise $5,200 for her multimedia project, “Yellow Stoner: Shape-shifting in Yellowstone National Park.” Under “perks,” Hsiung promised $50 donors that she would send e-mail updates of the project. For a $100 donations, you get e-mail updates and an actual postcard sent from YNP. Donors of $250 (limited to 20) receive e-mail updates, a postcard from YNP and a limited edition, signed and numbered, hand-pulled 9x12-inch “Yellow Stoner” screen print created for this fund-raiser. Those who donate $500 (limited to 10) get all of the above, thank you credits, and a signed DVD copy of the finished video piece. The high rollers -- $1,000 donors – get all of the above plus a party.

Hsiung ended up raising 107 percent of her goal. The money pays for travel costs and renting a camera. She plans to be in Yellowstone in late August. The light will be good and many of the tourists (but not all) will be gone.

I write at length about this project for several reasons: 1. It’s innovative and interesting; 2. It’s happening in Wyoming; 3. Hsiung had to earn her artist creds though a public or private arts org to qualify for USA Projects; 4. A number of micro-lending individuals thought enough of the project to fund it.

This latter point is important. True, a kitschy postcard sent from the Old Faithful Inn is a keepsake. But the philanthropists in the $250-and-up categories get something concrete for their money. Call it an investment. That poster or video may be worth something some day. Even the thank you creds on the DVD might lead to other projects and investments in the arts world. At least you get bragging rights when Pearl shows her video and you’re listed as a free-spending arts patron.

Diego: “Thanks for the commission, Mr. Rockefeller.”

Nelson: “You’re welcome. Now tear down that commie mural.”

You may be venturing into unknown country with arts patronage.

I digress. No matter what the future holds, Hsiung wins. Her project gets funding. More people know about her and her work (including this arts administrator in Cheyenne, WY). She’s learned some valuable marketing skills.

Go check out her project at http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/project/yellow_stoner_shape_shifting_in_yellowstone_national_park

And if you’re wandering around Yellowstone the next couple weeks and see a young artist and cameraperson surrounded by shape shifters, you’ll know who it is. Say hi. 

U.S.A. on Fourth of July: Made in China

SF-Oakland Bay Bridge --
Made in China

This is disgusting (from buzzflash):

Did you know that some of America's infrastructure is being repaired after all?

The only catch is that major parts of the work are being done in China, meaning that many US construction workers stay unemployed.

Take for instance the massive $7.2 billion project to rebuild the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which was compromised by earthquake damage.

The New York Times reports about a surge of construction employment on American projects such as the bridge, in China:

At a sprawling manufacturing complex here, hundreds of Chinese laborers are now completing work on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Next month, the last four of more than two dozen giant steel modules - each with a roadbed segment about half the size of a football field - will be loaded onto a huge ship and transported 6,500 miles to Oakland. There, they will be assembled to fit into the eastern span of the new Bay Bridge.

The project is part of China's continual move up the global economic value chain - from cheap toys to Apple iPads to commercial jetliners - as it aims to become the world's civil engineer.
Across the United States, Chinese workers are rebuilding America, according to the Times, "In New York City alone, Chinese companies have won contracts to help renovate the subway system, refurbish the Alexander Hamilton Bridge over the Harlem River and build a new Metro-North train platform near Yankee Stadium."

While Congress dithers over a rebuild America program to employ US workers, the Chinese are getting the jobs.

Can you imagine the Brooklyn Bridge having been made in China?

It might very well have been were it constructed in 2011.

Linda hits the road with poetry in her heart and a ukelele in her hands

Sign in the window at Beyond Baroque

My friend and colleague Linda Coatney just returned from a five-day road trip with The Monk -- Detroit spoken-word poet and activist M.L. Liebler -- and Peter Lewis, one of the founders of the seminal California rock band, Moby Grape. Linda is a poet and plays the ukelele. She keeps insisting that Don Ho's favorite musical instrument is making a comeback -- Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder has an entire CD of uke tunes -- but I have my doubts.

The entourage hit a few of California's literary and music hot spots, including Beyond Baroque Literary Center in Venice Beach and the Ashkenaz Music & Dance Community Center in Berkeley. Linda chronicled the trip in a post on the Wyoming Arts Council blog. Go to http://wyomingarts.blogspot.com/2011/06/on-road-with-monk-and-moby-grape.html

Working Words: "You work, Buddy. You work."

Excerpt of a poem by Ohio's Ray McNiece from Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams from Coffee House Press:

Grandfather’s Breath (excerpt)

You work. You work, Buddy. You work.
Word of immigrant get-ahead grind I hear
huffing through me, Grandfather’s breath,
when he’d come in from Saturday’s keep-busy chores,
fending up a calloused hand to stop
me from helping him, haggard cheeks puffing
out like t-shirts hung between tenements,
doubled-over under thirty-five years a machine
repairman at the ball-bearing factory, ball-bearings
making everything run smoother -
especially torpedoes. He busted butt
for the war effort, for profiteers, for overtime pay
down-payment on a little box of his own,
himself a refugee from the European economy,
washed ashore after “The War to End All Wars.”
Cheap labour for the winners.

Detroit poet M.L. Liebler, editor of Working Words, will read and perform some of his own poems and those from the book at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Cheyenne's Atlas Theatre. Tix are $5 for adults, $3 for students, military and seniors. He will be on stage with musician Peter Lewis, one of the founding members of Ground-breaking sixties rock group Moby Grape.

Here's how M.L. described the show (from wyomingarts):

"We'll do some of the songs that are sort of more or less poetic, songs we've written together and then Peter will perform acoustically some of the Moby Grape songs from his group, some of his own original pieces. We kind of have a nice little set where we're merging some of what we do together, some of my poetry in music, some of his Moby Grape and some of his original."

Impulsive 1840s pioneers longed "to see what the next elevation hides from view"

I’m reading Will Bagley’s first volume of a projected three-part series about the West’s overland trails. It's entitled “So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848.” It's published by the excellent University of Oklahoma Press.

It sat on the new non-fiction shelf at the library. When I saw it, I said, “We need another book on the Western migration?” I opened the book as was glad to see that Bagley acknowledged his predecessors, noting that “some of America’s best writers have told this tale.” We know the names: John Unruh, Francis Parkman, Mark Twain, Washington Irving, A.B. Guthrie, Fawn Brodie, Vardis Fisher, Wallace Stegner, Alvin M. Josephy. And so on.

I’ve read a number of the fictional accounts of the trails, notably A.B. Guthrie’s “The Way West.” As is true for most Americans, I learned my “Way West” history from movies, such as the huge 1962 Cinerama epic, “How the West Was Won.” Many, many movies have been based on the subject, including my favorite, “Blazing Saddles.” And yes, I know this is a lampoon of classic western films and bears no resemblance to the West’s true story. Except for the farting-around-the-campfire scene. So very real.

I’ve read only snippets of non-fiction accounts. That’s now changing.

I was hooked from the first sentence of Will Bagley’s preface: “All peoples have a myth, and as Americans we love our legends but often loathe our history.” A good line to keep in mind during times of revisionist history-making. South Carolinians recently celebrated the sesquicentennial of the Civil War secession in Charleston with a formal ball. Slavery wasn’t mentioned. But all the white folks at the ball looked marvelous.

Conservatives love their mythic West. We saw this most recently in the Wyoming Legislature’s enshrining a new “Code of the West” based on mythic cowboy lore. We Liberals also have our myths. Beginning in the 1960s, we fell all over ourselves romanticizing “the noble savage” and turning it into an icon of popular culture. Native Americans are admirable in many ways. But they are humans, too, and share the same failings as their Anglo brothers and sisters.

Bagley’s dogged research led him to the conclusion that the true story is more exciting than any myth we might conjure. I agree. What makes regular people pull up stakes, pile their goods in a wagon and trek 1,500 1,800 miles from Independence, Mo., to Oregon's Willamette Valley? I’d often wondered. I’m not the first to speculate that it was wanderlust or even ADHD (see my short-short fiction piece, “How the West was Won”). But the definitive answer doesn’t seem to exist. Bagley scrolls through the reasons and makes a great case that it was many things. Some were looking for land and other new opportunities. Others were fleeing the wretched, malarial climate of the Mississippi River Valley. Others were just moving on.

He sums it up this way:

Men often went West to escape debt, the law or family responsibilities. Yet what sets apart the pioneers of the 1840s was that they were generally very ordinary people who undertook an extraordinary task. Many of them were impatient and curious. “Emigrants are generally too impatient, and over-drive their teams, and cattle,” William Ide noted. “They often neglect the concerns of the present, in consequence of great anticipations of the future – they long to see what the next elevation hides from their view.”

Impulsivity and hyperactivity and curiosity. Traits held by so many Westerners.

I can’t wait to get back to Bagley’s book. It’s a long journey, but I have just the right sort of doggedness to see it through.

Staged reading and music part of Autry's fifth anniversary screening of "Brokeback Mountain"

Cross-posted from the wyomingarts blog:

The Autry in L.A. describes itself as "California’s only museum and cultural center dedicated to the history, art, and stories of the American West. Located in Griffith Park, the Autry features special exhibitions, lively programs, and hands-on activities for kids." While the Autry isn't exactly commuting distance from Wyoming, it is interesting to note that one-time Wyoming resident Annie Proulx wrote the story that started it all. "Brokeback Mountain" was in her collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories, with color illustrations (in the hardcover first edition) by noted Denver artist William Matthews. Annie also shared the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for the film, now celebrating the fifth anniversary of its release. According to Variety mag, New York's City Opera had plans for a "Brokeback Mountain" opera until the 2008 economic collapse -- and the departure of its artistic director -- caused it to shelve the project.

Art blossoms all over Georgia -- and in airports all over U.S.

"Dogwood," a sculpture by John Portman in downtown Atlanta. I think this a dogwood blossom in bronze I(although I couldn't determine the medium). These blossoms light up the Georgia spring which usually occurs in late March. In Wyoming, the calendar may say spring but the landscape cries snow and cold. The Atlanta airport has a fantastic public art program. Walking the concourse like walking the corridors of a museum. Art, history and science displays.

Here's another airport that really values art: