"Journey Stories" Opens at the Buchanan Center for the Arts.

Over a year ago Larisa Good, director of the Warren County Public Library and Susan Twomey, director of the Buchanan Center for the Arts wrote a successful grant to get a Smithsonian Institution Exhibition titled “Journey Stories.” On Saturday, January 30th, 2010, the exhibition opened to a standing room only crowd of over 120 people.

"Journey Stories” is part of the Museum on Main Street project of the Smithsonian Institution and the Federation of State Humanities Councils. The project creates special exhibitions for communities under 30,000 population and the Monmouth stop is one of only six locations in the state of Illinois where it can be seen. The show will run at the Buchanan Center for the Arts on the main square of Monmouth, IL from January 30-March 14. More information can be found at the BCA web site or the Warren County Public Library web site.

The main exhibit is comprised of six multi-fold panels that combine text, pictures, objects, and sound. Around the perimeter local venues contribute displays keyed to the development of their own communities. There is no charge for admission and visitors can proceed on their own or get a brief docent led introduction. Either way the story of how transportation contributed to the development of the United States is freshly displayed. The specific focus is on people and their mobility through time both around the continent and on the socio/economic scale. You will see and hear how their personal stories helped create the country and the society we have today.

The Monmouth opening was headlined by three distinguished guests. Mr. William Withuhn, the Smithsonian Curator of the Exhibition, came all the way from Washington DC. to participate. His presentation covered the genesis of the "Journey Stories" project and emphacized the major national trends of immigration and westward expansion. Prof. Dennis Crimin, an Illinois Humanities Council state scholars for the Main Street project, talked about how state and local populations reflected national trends. Pat Miller, the Executive Director ofthe Illinois Heritage Association, was also in attendance and conducted two docent training sessions. All of the guests publicly congratulated the Monmouth organizers for their mounting of the local components of the exhibit and the planning of the month long series of programs that will accompany it. We will cover some of those programs in later articles.

Pictured above in front of one of the exhibit panels are Dennis Crimin, Illinois State Road Scholar, Larisa Good, Director of the Warren County Library, Susan Twomey, Executive Director of the Buchanan Center for the Arts, and William Withuhn, of the Smithsonian Insitution's Museum of Natural History.

More pictures of the opening can be seen and even ordered at my Flickr site.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83918664@N00/?saved=1

The State of the Onion

Last evening the members of congress proved conclusively that they were capable of multiple pop ups and pop downs--though Republicans clearly have somewhat stiffer knees than Democrats. If only our legislator's ability to move horizontally through problems were as good or as frequent as their vertical leaps to applaud. The Democrats, with a huge majority on paper, remain so fractured that movement appears impossible. In spite of their protestations to the contrary, the Republicans seem committed to the proposition that blocking all movement is the best way to inherit another chance to do nothing after the next election. Everyone agrees we have problems yet nobody will give anybody an inch toward solving them for fear that the inch will give a political leg up. The guaranteed loser in all of this is the people.

Given the perks of long term public office and our campaign finance practices, it is no surprise that the prime interest of elected officials is their own re-election. A sinecure tends to outweigh considerations of what might be good for or help the country. Every congressman has a good health care plan. If you don't just tough it out. Every congressman has a golden parachute retirement plan. If you don't just tough it out. Every congressman has folks coming in to see him/her daily who want to give them money. If you don't, maybe you ought to go into politics.

Hmmmmm!

Musing for therapy

It's been a long slow slog since Thanksgiving. The weather here has been putrid; my wife has had health problems; Haiti has been destroyed, and the political and economic climate continues to fester. Nothing seems to function on a macro level.

You turn to micro local accomplishments to keep your sanity. Yesterday I managed to get a new under the counter light installed in the kitchen and fix a drawer in the study that had a broken track. Both of these items had been waiting for completion for some time. Now they can be filed in the completed bin. There is something nice about the relaxed exhalation that accompanies the end of a small task long posponed.

We heard a fine lecture on Martin Luther King by Joe Angotti (a former NBC news VP) at the college. Strange how the old clips of the Cicero riots of 1968 seemed to have the same people in them as those who populate some of the "Tea Party" rallies. They haven't aged a bit or maybe their kids have simply taken up the cause. King was a commie and provocateur who did not know his place they shouted; the new guy is labeled a Socialist, not even an American, and a consorter with terrorists. The common thread then and now seems to be a virulent uncompromising hatred of the man himself as much as his racial identity. These folks don't just seem to believe that the path of their enemy is wrong or that he is mistaken; they find malevolence in his intent.

To cool down we had a glass of wine with the Blums at the Barnstormer while listening to the duo called Surprizingly Hip. Apparently we got too cool because today we are totally iced in with the lights flickering forebodingly every once in a while. Started The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Andrew McCall-Smith. That is always good for the equilibrium. Small and local with spot on observations about life and love on almost every page. McCall-Smith is a retired medical doctor. I wonder if he were a banker would he have titled the book the Unbearable Tightness of Loans.

A Practical Citizen Response to Air Safety

What can the flying public do to protect themselves from terrorists aside from making sure that their flight carries at least one Dutchman? Given what I can read about the personality profiles of potential bombers, it would appear that a good suggestion would be for all passenger to make decided efforts to converse with others in the departure lounge and especially all seatmates as you are settling in for your flight. Folks who appear to be traveling alone and do not respond openly with pleasantries, names, family details, destinations, or at least a smile and a vigorous head nod should be reported to the cabin crew as borderline suspicious and candidates for further checking on whether they are they coming from Yemen with a one way ticket purchased with cash or traveling on a two year visa but checking no luggage. Granted some perfectly innocent folks (like the fellow who really was sick in the bathroom) might be wrongly flagged, but on balance more simple greasing of the social contract with fellow travelers could be a reasonable and practical citizen response to an increasingly intolerable situation even if it doesn't catch terrorists. At the least you have tried to be pleasant within the trying confines of today's air travel. In the best case you might expose the nervousness of someone who has every reason to be hostile, uncommunicative, uncomfortable, or ill. In the end it is an immediately proactive strategy and is probably more efficacious than expecting congress or the government to solve the problem.

IMHO
jdy

Merry Christmas Friends

Christmas 2009

It is always surprising to re-discover each December just how much the delivery process of these letters has changed over the years. We have moved from the mimeograph, to the ditto, to the old dot matrix printer, and now to ink jets with color pictures. It occurs to me that with blogging, facebooking (Yes, you can find me on Facebook), and twittering, you can now receive a continuous updated Christmas Newsletter on a daily basis. Whoopee! Through the wonder of modern technology the occasional seasonal bore can now be with you non-stop. If that’s not progress what is?

Now on to important things. Aren’t you glad that all those corporations, banks, and stores have reduced their costly paperwork expenses by passing them on to you? Have you ever wondered if there is ever a day when mattresses are not on sale? And a special one for my son and my sister Nancy, how come there isn’t a mouse flavored cat food?

We have had a crazy sort of year. It began with a glorious Elderhostel cruise that took us down the west coast of Costa Rica and through the Panama Canal. For a rundown with pictures, visit the January and February blog entries. Other trips in the winter and early spring took us to visit my sister and her husband and the Kents in South Carolina and my cousin Lin and her husband in Tucson. Summer saw us in Minneapolis to visit my son David, my cousin again, our old friends the Barkses, and some former students. On the way back from the Twin Cities we also stopped to see former Monmouth colleagues George and Cindy Waltershausen, who have retired to a farm in Wisconsin.

Later in the summer the trips got shorter. We took daughter Amy and the grandchildren to Chicago and went to watch grandson TJ play baseball. The biggest event of the latter part of the year was travel to Beloit College where Jan and I celebrated our 50th class reunion. We proudly received our golden hoods, renewed old friendships, and even made some new ones. Fifty years on we still feel thankful for the education we got at Beloit College. Below Jim gets his hood and Jan chats with a member of the class
of 1939 who was a classmate of my uncle John De Young.

The downer of the year came in the last few weeks. Jan had a heart irregularity over Thanksgiving that put her in the hospital for two days. Luckily a cardiac catheterization showed no major blockages and she was sent home to rest and recuperate without a stent or any major surgery. We have resolved to pass on Thanksgiving from now on as my own heart attack and bypass occurred over Thanksgiving in 1995. Jan’s health blip has put on hold some of our more ambitious plans to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary on December 19th, but we have received the best of all anniversary presents in the doctor’s diagnosis.

The rest of the family continues to move on in spite of the lingering recession doldrums. David remains in Minneapolis in the Honeywell IT department. They have had some furlough days, but things seem steady. Amy and Todd are still in Cedar Rapids. Amy has a 2nd grade class this year and Todd continues to work in landscaping (and right now snow plowing) while waiting for the construction industry to move back into gear. Grandson #2 (Mikel) is all boy all energy all of the time. He reminds us a bit of his mother at that age. Grandson #1 (TJ) is now almost 14 and seems to grow another foot taller every time we see him. He has been getting a lot of rebounds lately as you might be able to tell in the picture below. Below that is the happy couple going through the Panama Canal.

So here we are once more wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We’ll close with a holiday eating tip from our good friend Carol Reese. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. If you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they're serving rum balls.

With hope for a Greener and more Peaceful planet in 2010, we are still

Jim and Jan De Young
jdeyoung@maplecity.com or http://stirringthepudding.blogspot.com/

Healthy Mistrust Still the Best Protection

In a world fueled with righteous and self righteous anger the art of assassination by internet bullet has reached epidemic proportions. Few days go by when my e-mail box does not contain some kind of vituerative comment for or against something or somebody. The other day I received a typical one that claimed that President Obama has proposed a bill that would force veterans to buy private insurance in order to be treated for their war injuries.

Obama was quoted with no attribution as saying, "Look, it's an all volunteer force, ... Nobody made these guys go to war. They had to have known and accepted the risks. Now they whine about bearing the costs of their choice? It doesn't compute. I thought these were people who were proud to sacrifice for their country, I wasn't asking for blood, just money. With the country facing the worst financial crisis in its history, I'd have thought that the patriotic thing to do would be to try to help reduce the nation's deficit. I guess I underestimated the selfishness of some of my fellow Americans."

Does this sound like something any politician of any stripe would say about veterans who will some day come to the polls with a vote? Even Obama is not that far out of touch. Does this sound like Obama's tone and language even if you ignore the content? We won't even go into the irony factor that Obama ,whose health care plans have been attacked by the charge that they would destroy private insurance and substitute government insurance, would probably not want to sponsor a law to force people into private plans.

Uhg! Enter the academic who has spent forty years teaching Communications and feels he is still fighting a losing battle with media responsibility and attribution . Luckily the web does offer some self correction modules. If you put some phrases from the original e-mail into Google, it will lead you to a site called Fact Check.org You can do this yourself. At http://www.factcheck.org/2009/05/would-obama-have-soldiers-pay-for-own-war-injuries/ you will find a step by step account of how this story developed. It is an all too common pattern. Someone’s satirical comments, that were clear in the original context, begin to morph through continuously less accurate repetitions into blatant falsehoods. It’s the old rumor game we all used to play at parties, but magnified by millions of unchallenged forwarded internet messages.

This is not new just as electronic junk mail advertising (SPAM) is not new. The solution is not new either. “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers and magazines” and especially don’t believe everything you see on a television or computer screen. Use some caution. Evaluate the source if one is apparent and if there is no attribution, be extremely suspcious of any charges or conclusions.

Thanks for listening this morning.

November Arts Advocacy Bulletin

I participated in a conference call for arts advocates on behalf of the Illinois Theatre Association on October 22, 2009. It was set up by Arts Alliance Illinois and featured input from legislators, lobbyists, and Mr. Terry Scrogum, Executive Director of the Illinois Arts Council. Mostly it was bad news. Illinois arts funding has declined by an average of 49% this year and next year may be even grimmer. At a total of 7.8 million dollars this is the lowest Illinois dollar amount investment in the arts since 1988.

Our state legislators have now left Springfield until after the February primary elections effectively putting off dealing with any of the state’s many budget problems (including the arts) for another three months. This is not good, but it does mean that your state representatives may be more accessible in and around their home districts. If you will go to the web site below and enter your zip code, you can get contact information for your specific state legislators. I would ask you phone their office or send a letter to them. Tell them that you are a constituent, mention any local arts affiliations you have, and mention that you are a member of the Illinois Theatre Association. Ask them to support some restoration of funding for the Arts Council and to support coherent tax reform for the state of Illinois. http://capwiz.com/artsusa/il/state/main/?state=IL

Here is another way to stand up and be counted. If you represent an Illinois arts organization, participate in the Cultural Data Project. “If you can’t count it, it doesn’t count” is a common watchword in Springfield. Visit www.ilculturaldata.org for more information on the Cultural Data Project.

Do you live in the Peoria area? Rocco Landesman, the new chairman of the NEA will be visiting Peoria in November as a part of his “Art Works Tour of America.” He did not start his tenure too well when he wondered after his appointment whether there was any theatre in Peoria, but he has since recovered from his gaffe and is now scheduled to see Eastlight Theatre's production of "Rent." while in town. I would love to hear how his visit went. This would be a good use of our new ITA Facebook group. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?filter=app_2361831622#/group.php?gid=207088680374&ref=ts


Are you looking to volunteer for the arts or to find a volunteer project for your arts group to participate in? Try this site and plug in your state, area, city, or zip code. Wow! You may even stumble on something that pays. http://www.allforgood.org/search#q=arts&num=10&start=1&vol_loc=Illinois&timeperiod=everything&cache=1


There is at least some good news on the national arts scene. The U.S. Congress Approved 12.5 million dollars in budget Increases for the Arts and Humanities Endowments on October 29th. The final budget was decided in conference week and passed by a vote of 247–178 in the House and 72–28 in the Senate. To find out if your congressman supported the bill and to send an e-mail either congratulating or chastizing go to: http://www.capwiz.com/artsusa/issues/alert/?alertid=14261276

Wherever you might live I challenge you to consider that if you don’t give voice to the arts who will? And if you don’t act now, when will you start? A full recap of Advocacy Resources on the Illinois Arts Funding crisis is at this web site. www.box.net/shared/idt1u3sdh7.) I hope that you will use some of them.