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.

Rural states will be hurt the most with arts cutbacks

Kansas

Wyoming

From today's article, "Arts outposts stung by cuts in state aid," in the New York Times:

...much of America’s artistic activity does not happen in major recital halls and theaters; instead it occurs in places like Lucas [KS], population 407, where the cultural attractions include S. P. Dinsmoor’s Garden of Eden historic folk art site and where smaller arts organizations are highly dependent on state grants. 

This is also true in Wyoming. The big differences between Wyoming and Kansas?

Well, Wyoming has a population of 550,000 while Kansas tips the people scale at 2,853,000 -- about five times the Equality State count.

Kansas is flat while Wyoming is anything but. Wyoming is more white than Kansas -- 91 percent to 83 percent. Way above the 50-state average of 72 percent.

One other thing. Wyoming funds the arts a lot better than does Kansas.

Wyoming Arts Council budget: $2.1 million ($1.3 million from the state legislature)

Kansas Arts Commission budget: zero.

Why the difference. Well, the Know Nothings on the Radical Christian Right have a firmer hold on Kansas than on Wyoming. Yes, we have kooky Tea Party types in our legislature. This most recent legislative session told us that. But we can't hold a candle to Kansas.

As do most states, Kansas has a split personality. You have your city liberals and your rural conservatives. But worse -- the state's southern half is part of the Bible Belt. Not only are they conservative. They're bat-shit crazy as is the case with so many on the literalist Radical Christian Right. Remember the battles over evolution (science) vs. creationism in the curriculum.

No Bible Belt in Wyoming. O.K., we have the LDS influence in southwest Wyoming. The most radical Right of the 2010 GOP gubernatorial candidates was Ron Micheli from Uinta County. He's indicative of the very conservative leanings of the state's LDS population.

Here's an irony for you though. Our neighbor Utah, home of the international LDS conglomerate, has the nation's oldest state arts agency, established in 1899. Wonderful ballet and symphony and arts education programs in the Beehive State. But most of the politics is conservative, even reactionary. State firearm anyone?

Wyoming, as a rule, has a live-and-let-live attitude. Not always -- Judy Shepard, Matt's mom, could attest to that. When conflicts arise over art and the funding of art, the battle can get pretty brutal. The Grand Poobahs of the state's oil and gas industry were none too pleased recently with Chris Drury's public installation at UW. Entitled "What Goes Around Comes Around," it illustrates the link between the burning of coal and forest pine beetle infestations caused by global warming. The controversy over the work began with an incendiary piece in the Casper Star-Tribune, raged around the blogs for a day or two, and then died. Perhaps our state's leaders were away fishing in the Wind Rivers or wrapped up in Cheyenne Frontier Days. The fooferaw died out and now Drury's sculpture is drawing lots of visitors.

The biodegradable piece, part of the UW Art Museum's outdoor sculpture project, was partially funded by a grant from the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund.

During these crazy times, Wyoming will not be immune from Radical Right attacks on art and arts funding. All gubment programs and all creativity will come under attack from these Know Nothings.

This leaves me with one final question: WTF is wrong with Kansas? With a little editing, this could be a book title.

UW prof Christine M. Porter receives huge grant to build sustainable community food systems

The following comes from a University of Wyoming press release. I'm going to reprint the whole darn thing not only because this is such a cool project but also because it is spring and getting close to planting season and I'm in a pretty good mood.

A University of Wyoming professor is leading a $5-million, multi-state project to build community food systems that nourish populations in both current and future generations.

Christine M. Porter, assistant professor in the College of Health Sciences Division of Kinesiology and Health, leads the five-year "Food Dignity: Action Research on Engaging Food Insecure Communities and Universities in Building Sustainable Community Food Systems," project. It is funded by the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Competitive Grant program.

This is the largest USDA grant the university has received, says Bill Gern, UW vice president for research and economic development. Porter’s project has three facets: extension, research and education.

The project's extension portion includes five community food initiatives. Each will create a local steering committee to disperse small grants that invest in citizen solutions to their own food system issues.

Two of the initiatives are in Wyoming -- Gayle Woodsum of Action Resources International is organizing the Albany County project and Virginia Sutter of Blue Mountain Associates, Inc. will lead the Wind River Indian Reservation initiative. The others are Dig Deep Farms and Produce in Alameda County, Calif.; Whole Community Project of Cornell Cooperative Extension, Tompkins County, N.Y.; and East New York Farms!, Brooklyn, N.Y.

The research focuses on developing case studies of what each community has already done and during the next five years will make clear what factors influence their successes and failures as they work to create sustainable community food systems that provide ample and appropriate food for all, Porter says.

The education portion aims to create new cross-disciplinary undergraduate minors in sustainable food systems to prepare UW and Cornell University graduate students to engage in this work.

"At UW, the team developing the minor is considering nesting this within a more generic sustainability program of study," Porter says.

She says the project comes at a crucial time in today's economy.

"We are close to peak oil and peak soil, are enduring the greatest wealth and income inequality in decades, and somewhat ironically, face soaring rates of both food insecurity and obesity," Porter says.

While there is no single cure-all for these problems, Porter and her team view community food system development as a core part of the solution.

"We'll never compete with China in making plastic buckets or tennis shoes," she says, "But we can grow, process and sell our own food. The more we localize food systems, the more local jobs we create and the fresher our food is when it reaches our plates."

She also says research shows that medium-sized producers are more productive than industrial-scale farms and also tend to be more attentive to ecological and community sustainability.

While finishing her doctoral degree work, Porter says AFRI had a call for proposals to foster food security and local economic development through a blend of research, extension and education.

That pushed her to "dream bigger than I ever would have before dared." She assembled a team of more than two dozen top-notch community food practitioners and UW and Cornell University representatives for the "Food Dignity" proposal.

Many UW faculty, staff and students are involved in the project, including Urszula Norton, Kent Becker, Bill Gribb, Cole Ehmke, Deborah Paulson, Jill Lovato, Cheryl Geiger, Leslie Darnall and Peggy McCrackin. 

For more information about the project, contact Darnall at (307) 766-2141, email ldarnall@uwyo.edu or visit the website at www.fooddignity.org .

Photo: Alexa Naschold admires cabbage at a community garden. Her mother, Christine M. Porter, UW Department of Kinesiology and Health assistant professor, received a $5 million grant for a multi-state sustainable community food project study. (Photo by Christine Porter)