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Writer Wendell Berry says the University of Kentucky’s decision to name a new dorm the Wildcat Coal Lodge “puts an end to his association with the school.”
From the Herald-Leader:
“The University’s president and board have solemnized an alliance with the coal industry, in return for a large monetary ‘gift,’ granting to the benefactors, in effect, a co-sponsorship of the University’s basketball team,” Berry wrote in the typewritten letter. “That — added to the ‘Top 20′ project and the president’s exclusive ‘focus’ on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — puts an end to my willingness to be associated in any way officially with the University.”
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Berry, among the most revered of Kentucky writers and a former recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, told the university “it is now obviously wrong, unjust and unfair, for your space and work to be encumbered by a collection of papers that I no longer can consider donating to the University.”
The papers, which measure 60 cubic feet in volume and would fill about 100 boxes, remain at UK while Berry negotiates their transfer to the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort. He said the papers include letters he has received over the years, drafts of various books and corrected proofs.
Berry, 75, said UK’s push to become a “Top 20″ research university has caused it to stray from its land-grant university obligation to address Kentucky’s problems.
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In a statement, UK spokesman Jimmy Stanton said the university was disappointed by Berry’s decision to pull his personal papers, particularly because UK has purchased a significant portion of his works, which are in the UK libraries archives’ permanent collection.
“We do regret that our students and researchers who wish to study his life and works will now be unable to access all of his previously donated works in one archive that contains the papers of many of Kentucky’s greatest writers,” Stanton said.
UK President Lee T. Todd Jr. was made aware of Berry’s letter, but UK archives director Deirdre Scaggs responded to Berry on behalf of the university in late January.
“Our commitment to you was demonstrated by our purchase of a significant portion of your collection,” Scaggs wrote on Jan. 20. “… By your recent decision, UK Libraries suffers an irreplaceable loss, but it is the students and researchers who will now pay the price.”
At a time when various 527s are preparing to run ads in the Kentucky Senate race, the Democratic National Committee has come out swinging. A new video from the DNC hits Republican Candidate Rand Paul, along with Representatives Joe Barton, Michelle Bachman and Eric Cantor, on their comments about the gulf oil spill and the BP escrow account.
The Conservative 527 group American Crossroads started out campaigning against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada, but leaders were planning to extend their efforts to other races in other states, including the Rand Paul/Jack Conway contest in Kentucky. The only problem? A recent tax filing shows that the group raised a paltry $200 last month. Plus, the group was conceived by Karl Rove, and Politico reports that Democratic groups are using Rove’s presence and the group’s mission to raise money to fight GOP candidates.
“Karl Rove’s American Crossroads group just announced on Friday that it is turning the full force of its fundraising machine against no fewer than eleven Democratic candidates,” warned a Sunday fundraising email from J.B. Poersch, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “The DSCC is counting on every one of our grassroots supporters to defeat Republicans and defend President Obama in November. We can’t win without your help.”
But the lackluster fundraising numbers aren’t a sign that 527s on both sides won’t be flooding the airwaves in Kentucky. American Crossroads started raising money in March and has over $1 million in the bank, with larger donations expected.
American Crossroads president Steven Law sounded undiscouraged by the puny May fundraising haul, all of which came from small un-itemized donations.
“We spent our first six weeks building a structure that our donors want to see in place, and now we are at the stage where the checks will begin catching up with increased commitments,” said Law. Though he wouldn’t disclose specific fundraising figures for June, he said “the checks are starting to roll in and we are on track to have a solid financial report for June.”
The government’s mission to expand broadband access to rural areas could hit a bump in some areas. There are parts of the country where internet access is scarce and where residents don’t need or can’t afford computers. Before technology can benefit these areas, parts of the population will need to learn how to use computers.
That’s according to the Rural Blog:
As the government looks to bring more high-speed Internet access to rural America, computer literacy programs may be needed in some areas to increase adoption of computers, much less the Internet. Many rural communities have computer-literacy programs for adults; one that gets good reviews from its clients is in Aubrey, Tex., Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe of the Denton Record-Chronicle reports. “About 57 percent of rural Texas households have a computer with some kind of Internet access, according to 2009 data compiled by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration,” she writes. That number jumps to 63 percent when considering households that have access somewhere like a library or at work. “Across the rural United States, slightly less than half of all adults 55 and older report being able to go online.”
There’s more speculation this week that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels may be encouraged to make a bid for the White House in 2012.
Daniels is popular in the Hoosier state, and in a time when the GOP is focusing on fiscal issues, the governor’s number-crunching history (George W. Bush called Daniels “the Blade” when he was the director of the Office of Management and Budget) could work to his advantage. Business Week points out that Daniels has the knowledge and credibility to make a run, but his home-state popularity may not carry over to a national race.
A staunch conservative—he derides President Barack Obama’s stimulus package and auto bailouts as “nationalization”—Daniels admits his approach isn’t always best. He didn’t adequately prepare citizens for the toll road sale to a foreign entity and botched an attempt to privatize the welfare system by trying to force beneficiaries—who are often impoverished and technologically ignorant—to enroll online for Medicaid and food stamps. He doesn’t see government as the central investor in Indiana’s future but knows there are certain areas in which it can’t be replaced; he explains the decision to double child welfare caseworkers, for instance, because, “[you] can’t find those in the Yellow Pages.”
His aggressive use of private-sector tactics in the public sphere has rankled legislators in both parties, who at times feel they’re being treated as underlings to the smartest guy in the room. That hasn’t stopped pundits and fellow Republicans from putting Daniels’ name forward for the GOP nomination for President in 2012. He doesn’t have Sarah Palin’s rhetorical fire, and at a shade under 5′ 7″ he won’t look terribly imposing next to Tim Pawlenty or Mitt Romney. Daniels, meanwhile, has perfected a myriad of banal ways to deflect the speculation. But if numbers matter as much as he says they do, consider these: He won reelection by a hefty margin of 18 points in 2008 even as Obama carried the state. And Daniels’ current approval ratings are hovering between 60 and 70 percent, while the President’s is at 52 percent. Those just might be actionable figures.
Michael Gerson says in the Washington Post that Daniels may further face trouble with some Republicans when it comes to social issues.
Daniels’s appeal is not ideological; it is mathematical. The passions aroused by ideology, in his view, hamper the ability of political adults to deal rationally with disturbing budget numbers. But if Daniels de-emphasizes ideology, he elevates moral virtues such as thrift, realism and humility.
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There is a reason why OMB is not a typical steppingstone to high political office; the same reason that accountants generally don’t become sex symbols. But Daniels became a highly successful Indiana governor, combining a motorcycle-driving, pork-tenderloin-eating populism with courageous budget cutting, a solid record of job creation and a reputation for competence. If responsibility and austerity are now sexy, Daniels and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are centerfolds.
LEO says Daniels lacks the charisma to be at the top of the ticket, but suggests that there could be room for him somewhere.
Maybe the number crunching conservative would make for an excellent vice-presidential nominee? Think about it, President Obama barely won Indiana’s 11 electoral votes back in 2008 and Daniels’ approval ratings are over 60 percent in the Hoosier state.
The U.S. Psychotronic Association is holding a conference in Louisville next month. The group is headquartered in Louisville and is focused on “The science of mind-body-environment relationships, an interdisciplinary science concerned with the interactions of matter, energy, and consciousness.”
Our basic premise is that ESP is a natural occurrence. We seek to understand how it occurs, and to use that understanding for the benefit of mankind. USPA is not an experiential group; our orientation is towards the technical and scientific aspects of Psychotronics and its practical applications, merging the esoteric/spiritual and scientific worlds. Quantum mechanics has provided a “scientific” basis which allows the existence of psychic phenomena and unconventional energy effects. Members are on the leading edge of the new paradigms in science – theory and instrumentation. This is the physics of 2100.
I’ve heard a few people make this comparison, so here’s a clarification: While the USPA discusses energy fields and their relationship to human consciousness, it is not related to Freedom From Covert Harassment and Surveillance, which held a press conference with former Democratic mayor candidate Connie Marshall earlier this year.
This post comes to us from Arts & Humanities reporter Elizabeth Kramer.
This year’s Louisville’s Juneteenth Jamboree is set to stage it’s final performances (Thursday through Saturday) with “Passing Ceremonies” by Steve Willis. And when the curtain falls on this play so does the festival of new and emerging African-American plays come to an end. Co-founder Lorna Littleway attributes her decision to close the festival to her responsibilities to caring for her aging father, who lives in New York. But she also says that funding for ethnic specific theater has dwindled since the festival opened as more foundations and government funding agencies look to fund the arts with multiculturalism in mind, which aims to extend support to art inspired by a multitude of cultures.
British playwright Parv Bancil has criticized some of his country’s multicultural arts policies writing for undermining strong voices in Asian and black theater. He’s written that the policies “only serve to keep black and Asian arts ghettoised and, ultimately, to keep ethnic minority practitioners out of the mainstream.”
And the idea of multiculturalism goes against what African-American playwright August Wilson called for in 1997. He spoke about having a separate space and attention for African-American theater, lest it be diluted or even distorted. “We do not need colorblind casting,” he said. “We need some theaters to develop our playwrights.”
August Wilson
The Jamboree, staged by the Juneteenth Legacy Theatre, has worked toward that goal. And although the Jamboree is coming to an end, the theater company will continue some of this work in New York, where it has also worked since the company’s inception.
Meanwhile, there are other theaters in the country that are producing original plays about the African-American experience and staging existing works — from San Francisco’s Lorraine Hainsberry Theater to Midwest institutions including the Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota, and The Black Rep in St. Louis.
In Louisville, the Juneteenth Jamboree’s end does mean loss of opportunity for the city. The festival has helped give life to plays that have gone on to receive stagings from some prominent American theaters. Several years ago, the festival premiered a one-act play called “Till” about Emmett Till, who was murdered in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. That was expanded in the Play “The Ballad of Emmett Till” that ran at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and The Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles.
Juneteenth Jamboree has definitely helped elevate voices in African-American theater and given Louisville a role in the effort. And, at least for the next season, that voice will have a place in the city’s theater season. In September, the University of Louisville’s theater department will open its season with “The Colored Museum,” by Kentucky-born George C. Wolf, and explore African culture when it closes it in April with “How Orisanmi Chose His Head,” a play inspired by an ancient Nigerian tale. In January, Actors Theatre of Louisville will present August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” a production originally directed by Ron OJ Parson at Chicago’s Court Theatre that received some glowing reviews.
Denzel Washington & Viola Davis in "Fences"
Those who champion new theatrical work about the African-American experience could lament that these plays aren’t new works. But would they also lament the recognition that African-American theater got earlier this week when Wilson’s Broadway revival “Fences” won Tony awards for best revival of a play and its two stars, Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, won for best actors in a play? Would they also dismiss other stories at the Tonys that touched on the African-American experience — the awards for best musical, best original score and book that went to “Memphis,” which is about segregation and integration set in the 1950s’ American South? Or would they write off the achievement of African-American choreographer Bill T. Jones in earning his second Tony for choreography for “Fela!”?
What this bodes for the future isn’t clear. But from Louisville to New York, the work that spotlights the African-American experience on stage and recognition of those African-Americans that are shaping theater today could surely be inspiring the future playwrights to add their voices and visions to the stage. And those voices could reveal more to audiences about the vast experiences in the African-American community and, in turn, possibly give us insights into ourselves.
