Faith Becoming Flesh: Martin Luther King Day 2013

What does it mean to take our faith into the world? To not simply proclaim it, but to follow the examples of the world’s great spiritual leaders—Christ, Buddha, Mohammed—and give flesh to our beliefs?

In the U.S. of modern history, few have exemplified such “faith in action” better than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I continue to find the national holiday in honor of King the most moving and inspiring day of the year.

And right now, on this Martin Luther King Day 2013, I’m thinking of One Billion Rising on February 14, and the National March on Washington for Gun Control next Saturday, January 26.

King’s message, like the great spiritual leaders’ before him, was “simple:” love thy neighbor, and pay particular attention to those who are poor, afflicted, and oppressed. The making of these words flesh continues to be complicated, and King’s execution of his faith was no less complex than those who came before--or than ours must be each day.

While best remembered for his civil rights victories, it is King’s much broader battle that demands our current attention. His great 1963 March on Washington, forever memorialized in his “I Have A Dream” speech, dramatized the plight of America’s poor and catalyzed President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty legislation. King supported the rights of low-wage garbage workers in Memphis; he actively protested the Vietnam War.

Johnson proposed The War on Poverty (we have this legislation to thank for federal programs such as Head Start) in response to a national poverty rate, in 1960, of just under 19%. During President Clinton’s tenure, the poverty rate reached a low of 11.3%, but by the time of the 2010 census it had climbed back to 15.1%.

In 50 years, we’ve shaved less than 4% off our national number of people living in poverty. This is 15.1% of individual U.S. citizens living on less than $11,344.

Whether or not you support the Occupy Wall Street movement (or for that matter the Arab Spring revolutions), with 1% of our population accounting for 24% of all income, we have not, as a nation, solved the problem of how to equitably distribute resources so that everyone, including children and the elderly, has enough to eat nutritiously and live warmly, safely, and healthily.

So when President Obama, in his inaugural address, connected King’s actions at Selma to those of women struggling for equality at Seneca Falls and gay people fighting for our rights and lives at Stonewall, he’s reminding us that for any of us to be free, there must be equity for all—and equity, despite our religious beliefs and faith, does not come easily. It requires action. It demands that faith be made flesh.

Just days before his assassination, King was planning a second March on Washington, and said that to create real change for America, “We are coming to demand that the government addresses itself to the problem of poverty. It is our experience that the nation doesn’t move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.”

Poverty and oppression come in many shapes and sizes, and so there are nearly limitless opportunities to join together and put our faith to work. One billion women—mothers, daughters, sisters, partners, and friends, one of every three people on our planet of seven billion—will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. One Billion Rising, the largest day of action in the history of Eve Ensler’s V-Day movement, is a promise that we will rise up with women and men worldwide to say the violence ends now. Join us at the Opera House this Valentine’s Day, Thursday, February 14, and put your faith to work on behalf of ending violence against women. Or take yourself to Washington, D.C., next Saturday, January 26, to work towards lessening gun violence in the U.S. by demanding legislation to better protect all of us from the “overkill” of a culture in which a strident insistence on individual rights often works to the detriment of our communities and the most disenfranchised among us.

Can we truly call ourselves a nation of faith when so much of our legislative and economic time is spent struggling only for our own individual well being? Not in my book. Together, we can make change, but to do so requires action in addition to belief. It requires, as all the great religions of our world proclaim, faith made flesh.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
    and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
    and her salvation like a burning torch. – Isaiah 62:1

The Power of Black

OK. Yeah. Art matters.

For most of you reading this, this is a pretty obvious statement of fact.

For me, living on Deer Isle, ME for most of the year, I've access to art (thanks to our excellent population of artists and the galleries that show them) but not museums.

Today I was reminded of how great museums are, when Judith and I spent two hours at the National Portrait Gallery here in Washington, D.C. Especially the Smithsonians --supported by our tax payer dollars, free admission. Government service to the lives of its citizens minds, hearts, and spirits at its finest.

We saw multiple great exhibits, including Annie Liebovitz's new "Pilgrimage," but the one that grabbed me by the throat was "The Black List" by African-American photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. Above you can see his portrait of Angela Davis, one of the many large format, finely detailed photographs that made us stop, stare, and tear up with emotion.

The concept for "The Black List" is important. The term "black list" has of course been used pejoratively: if you're on the black list, you're being punished. You're in deep shit.

In this exhibit, Greenfield-Sanders turns this meaning on its head. The 50 photos here are a gallery of black stars: this is a list one WANTS to be on. The individuals captured in Greenfield-Sanders portraits are some of the most accomplished, educated, respected members of American society and represent a wide variety of influence, from Toni Morrison to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Vernon Jordan.

The impact of these portraits, putting the viewer up close and personal in very intimate ways with these powerful people, is breathtaking. A range of emotions washed through me as I stood before each one, from awe to pride to a kind of homesickness for living as I once did in a community rich with African-American people and others. A kind of heart sickness for this had been tugging on me since last night, with the news of singer Whitney Houston's death.

We all need opportunities to put ourselves in the company of others, and in the company of such powerful imagery. I found myself wishing I could transport our entire tiny high school of 125 students into the center of this gallery to see this show.

And you know I'm headed to more museums during my stay here this week!

The American Prospect

Judith’s and my choice to spend our sabbatical in San Francisco, where we have family and a free place to stay in the SoMa district, has stirred up quite the economic tornado in my psyche.

For those of you familiar with San Fran, you already know that Market, which cuts a northeast to southwest diagonal through the city, was known as “The Slot” for being the location of the first underground metal cable trough in which constantly whirred the cables pulling trolleys up from the waterfront and into the city. North of The Slot is where the rich folk lived and worked and remains home to Union Square, Nob Hill, etc. South of The Slot was where the immigrant communities, the docks, the warehouses, tenement buildings, saloons and gambling halls were to be found (as well as Jack London’s birthplace). That is until the 1960 and ‘70s, when the national phenomenon of “urban renewal” grabbed San Francisco by the throat, shook it a few times, and succeeded in ripping its working class guts out of its downtown area.

Today South of The Slot is known as SoMa or South of Market, mirroring the trendy SoHo (South of Houston) neighborhood in New York City, another converted warehouse district. But what you’ll find in SoMa, instead of the gorgeous and historic cast iron warehouses-cum-expensive lofts and shops of SoHo, are newly built condo-scrapers; the blocks long Moscone Convention Center; and a large mall-like development known as the Yerba Buena Center. And mostly you’ll find high tech conventioneers (lots of ‘em); tourists; and, well, the 1% who can afford to live here.

And for a month, me and Judith.

We’re just up Folsom Street (which for you may conjure up images of Folsom Prison; for me, a gay person from the 1970s, Folsom Street was known as the leather district or, er, the “meat district”) from a fine restaurant named Prospect, a second restaurant launched in 2003 by award-winning chef Nancy Oakes of Boulevard fame. San Francisco today is a foodie’s food town as many fruits, fresh produce, wines, etc. all hail from the surrounding region, and Oakes and her restaurants sit near the zenith of foodie heaven.

The trick with all of this foodie-ness (in which we of course happily partake) is, well, the amount of hunger and homelessness that immediately surrounds it. You can literally cross one block, at 5th Street on Market, and go from fancy-dressed shoppers bustling in and out of the Apple Store, Abercrombie and Fitch, Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue to sidewalks empty of any other than men in sleeping bags, blankets, and cardboard on the street.

This is not even to mention that the leather bars and baths anchoring the west end of SoMa were closed by the City in the early 1980s thanks to the AIDS epidemic. That same epidemic considerably weakened the gay component of SoMa’s working class and artist communities, eliminating some of the strongest community resistance that originally existed to the gentrification of this neighborhood.

In light of all of this, the name Prospect captured my imagination.

“Prospect” as a noun means “a. an apparent probability of advancement, success, profit, etc. b. the outlook for the future: good business prospects.” Or how about “something in view as a source of profit,” or “a potential or likely customer, client, etc.”

And then there’s the verb form of the word, also highly appropriate both historically and currently in this neighborhood: “to search or explore (a region), as for gold; to work (a mine or claim) experimentally in order to test its value.”

In other words: to be a gold digger! An optimistic gold digger: a prospector with prospects!

And that’s pretty much who surrounds us now, South of the Slot in SoMa: a lot of people with enough money to make them believe they can and will always have more. Surrounded on all sides by folks who have nothing: not homes, or warm coats, or food to eat. Soup kitchens underfunded by federal budget cuts at the same time they are being overwhelmed by the working poor: people who work full-time but at jobs that don’t pay enough for them to feed their families.

We’re on an island of prosperity kept afloat by the surrounding sea of despair. And I have to tell you, much of the time I feel I'm drowning.

Interestingly, the Latin root of “prospect” is “prospectus” which meant to foresee, to see far off, to watch for / provide for / look out for. What if an “American Prospect” on life could shift from self to other; if we could really look ahead, see the future, and want to provide and look out for each other?

The challenge is crossing The Slot.

It doesn’t sound difficult, but it is filled with whirring machinery which seem to separate these two worlds as widely as if they were on separate continents. Instead of pulling us together, the ceaseless motion of the Slot’s cable divides us--until we trip, stumble, fall into it.

Take for instance how we best know the term “prospectus” today: as “the formal legal document required by the Securities and Exchange Commission about an investment offering for sale to the public.”

So much for the long view.

Might we define an era as “The American Prospect?” Can we cross The Slot?

Why Are We 'Waiting for Superman'?

Geoffrey Canada, a fellow Bowdoin graduate, founded the Harlem Children's Zone in 1990. The Zone's goal is "to do whatever it takes to educate children and strengthen the community." In Harlem, this has meant establishing new methods to end cycles of generational poverty.

The phrase "waiting for Superman" is Canada's term for his own childhood belief that the ghetto in which he was growing up was in such crisis it could only be rescued by a superhero. He and filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (Academy Award, "An Inconvenient Truth") believe that public education in the U.S. is an a similar state of severe crisis.

Why are we "waiting for Superman" to fix our public education system, the foundation of our democracy, innovation, and U.S. leadership throughout the world--and so evidently in decline? The filmmakers hope, and ours in screening this film at the Opera House March 3, is that the powerful stories of children and their families it documents will give all of us, in each of our communities, a launching place for dialogue and action to improve our schools. The film shines a spotlight on key education reform issues and the importance of great teachers, and will hopefully not only spark conversation and action but also galvanize the community support essential to bringing about meaningful and lasting change in our public schools.

As part of the "Waiting for Superman" house party movement in which the Opera House will participate on March 3, the film's producers, Participant Media, have created a Social Action Campaign around four key initiatives: celebrating great teachers; ensuring world class standards; encouraging more great schools; and raising literacy rates. You can learn more about how to participate in any of these areas, before or after seeing the film at the Opera House, at waitingforsuperman.com/action.

Front Page News

Some of the underlying topics in our upcoming winter production of Christopher Shinn's drama, "Dying City," made the front page of the New York Times yesterday in this story of the Army missing (or ignoring?) signs of potential suicide among its overburdened corps.

Shinn's taught, three-character play takes audience members into the rippling sea of violence which runs through and impacts all of our lives--whether we are privileged, Harvard-educated New Yorkers, hard-working fishermen (or fishermen's wives), or working-class suburban California boys who sign up for the Army Reserves. We don't know exactly how one of the protagonists, Craig, died while on his second tour of duty in Iraq; but the play suggests he may have been one of the record number of military personnel since 2004 who, like Craig, are "mentally exhausted and traumatized from repeated deployments to combat zones" and have committed suicide.

But Craig is only one-third of this play. The impact of subtle and not so-subtle family and cultural violence on him, his brother Peter, and his wife Kelly is what leaves audience members, at the end of 90 minutes with no intermission, gripping the arms of our seats and asking ourselves some important questions. Who do we become in coping with the everyday violence in our own lives? Can we see and touch the fear which underlies so many of our interactions? How do we prevent it from eating us up?

"Dying City" is constructed on the metaphor of Craig's understanding of his company's mission in Baghdad: "ordered to protect themselves from violence by actively doing violence, which leads to more violence to protect themselves against: no sane person could survive these tasks." Baghdad is dying, yes, but its not the only city that is, whether in reality (see recent news reports from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico) or in this play, in which each individual is his or her own "city."

Shinn prefaces his play with by an epigram from Aeschylus--"A lie sweet in the mouth/is sour in the stomach"--but more to the point for why we're producing it at the Opera House is this statement which comes about two thirds of the way through the play: "If you really care about the truth, you can't just speak to your own tiny group, you have to figure out how to speak to the community . . . People who may not be like you but that you still have--something in common with. A basic humanity."

"Dying City" by Christopher Shinn, February 3-13, 2011. Directed by Peter Richards. Starring Juri Henley-Cohn and Therese Plaehn. An Opera House Arts' Actors Equity production at the Stonington Opera House. Click here for tickets and additional information.

Our Journeys Under Sea and Beyond

As we prepare to return home to our island after a six-week writing sabbatical, I’m fondly remembering our big summer production, “Burt Dow, Deep Water Man,” and reflecting on the power of “being away.”

Going away and coming home is a huge privilege for most of us, a by-product of the wealth and mobility of our North American culture. How then might we use this privilege to deepen our own consciousness of who we are and what our roles in this big world might be?

For centuries, in different cultures and traditions, journeying has had more of a mythic than an ordinary quality. Journeys are often quests to reach a mystical “holy grail.” Think King Arthur and his knights (about whom we will hear a solstice tale, “The Loathly Bride,” read by Judith at the Opera House’s holiday event December 18); Odysseus; Jonah and the Whale and thus yes . . . Burt Dow, Deep Water Man. In the ongoing tradition of Jungian analysis, these stories and dreams exemplify no less than our own journeys to develop self and perhaps most importantly, with the individual self, community and culture.

But our modern, western culture becomes less and less about self-development (in its most superficial sense, education and the aspiration to continuously improve) almost by the minute. In the U.S., we don’t want to be challenged by the fantastical, alluring mysteries of what we don’t know; we prefer to surround ourselves comfortably only with what our rational brains and senses are already familiar. This is perhaps most evident in our love of national chain stores and restaurants, which make one American place look, taste, and feel just like the next. And as Thomas Friedman recently reported in his satirical column “From WikiChina” (from an imagined Chinese perspective), Americans “travel abroad so rarely that they don’t see how far they are falling behind.”

“Jonah was unable to speak with sufficient wisdom until he had made a journey under the sea, that is, until he had explored his unconscious,” wrote famed Jungian analyst Joseph Wheelwright more than 30 years ago. What was it, I wonder, that Burt Dow and his Giggling Gull brought back to Deer Isle after evicting themselves from the belly of their own whale? Was it the artistry and creativity Burt discovered there, as he splashed paint like Pollack? McCloskey’s legend of the real man has gone on to give our community gifts for generations.

What gifts do we bring back to our communities when we return home? What will I bring home this week?

Why We All Need a Shake Up Now and Then

Sometimes having the earth move under your feet is what it takes to make healthy change.

Grassroots and urban and community development activist Jane Jacobs knew this well, and here in San Francisco there is a particularly wonderful Jacobs-style parable of such change.

We just spent the morning at the huge and bustling Saturday Farmers' Market here in San Francisco, at the beautiful Ferry Terminal building at the foot of Market Street. The market is one of the nation's largest and most acclaimed, serving a wide variety of farmers and food producers, plus approximately 25,000 customers a week.

The Ferry Terminal building, which famed columnist Herb Caen called "a famous city's most famous landmark," was opened in 1898. It was the transportation focal point for everyone coming to the city from the Gold Rush through the 1930s, when both the city's bridges, the Bay and Golden Gate, were opened to car traffic. The steel frame construction became the largest such foundation for a building over water anywhere in the world--and importantly has survived two major earthquakes, the 1906 and 1989.

What didn't survive the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake is as important to today's vibrancy of the Ferry Terminal building and its markets as what did: the double-deck Embarcadero Freeway. Built across the face of the Ferry Building in 1957 at the height of the nation's car craze, with Eisenhower's highway act and urban and transportation planners such as Robert Moses in full steam, it cast the historic building into obscurity, cutting it off from the city.

Jacobs successfully stopped Moses from building a similarly raised highway through Lower Manhattan (the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway, or LOMEX), along Broome Street, in the mid-1960s--but she never had such dramatic help from Mother Nature. Many of Moses' auto-centric designed and driven projects--the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Cross Bronx Expressway--divided and separated New York's poor neighborhoods, casting them into the gloom and filth of the expressways' shadows.

The 1989 earthquake so damaged the Embarcadero Freeway that it was completely torn down in 1991 and never rebuilt. The immediate impact on the historic Ferry Building was striking. Increased auto congestion caused the re-institution of many of the cross-bay ferries, and the building, suddenly re-connected and visible to the city, began to come back to life. The renovated building now holds 65,000 square feet of marketplace, with an additional 175,000 sf of premium 2nd and 3rd floor office space. With its unmistakeable clocktower gracing the intersection of Market Street with the Bay and the communities across it, it is once again a bustling central location for the city's residents; and one of the city's most grand and cherished landmarks.

Jane Jacobs is cheering from her grave.

In Praise of the Fierce and Newly Dead: Eve Nardone, 1929-2010

Fierce. Loyal. Passionate. Engaged.

These are the qualities that come to mind when I think of Eve Nardone, who passed away last week, the night before Thanksgiving, at the age of 81 in San Rafael, CA.

It is factually accurate to say Eve was my high school English teacher at Stonington (CT) High School in the late 1970s, but that doesn’t tell the story. Eve was the first person to believe in me as an artist, a writer, and a lesbian. She saw in that 15-year-old the person I was to become, seized that kernel of potential in her teeth and didn’t let go, shaking and hauling it through those difficult high school years when it would have been just as possible to let it go.

She was the first person I came out to.

She was fierce that way, and loyal, and I am thankful every day she was.

She came to Connecticut, and teaching English, from Europe along a route that remains mysterious to me in the way of so many of our most interesting life paths. But there was no mystery around Eve’s intelligence: her mind and speech were incisive, engaged with and passionate about culture and the world, and there were few if any subjects she deigned not to weigh in on (I just found online what may be her most recent, and last? bridge scores, from May of this year).

In addition to teaching a full load of courses, Eve had the passion and energy to mentor the yearbook for many years; to launch a Theater Club and take a full bus load of students to a Broadway show in New York City every year; to take groups of students to England, where she had spent her youth as a Czech refuge from World War II; to moonlight, as many teachers do, selling scrimshaw in a local gift shop. I rarely heard her complain of being tired (although I did hear quite a bit of grumbling about the lack of grammar in students’ writing, grumbling which I carry on, on her behalf, to this day): life fueled her. She loved to travel, to read, to go to the theater, to listen to music: and even had she not done such an excellent job teaching me how to write and understand English literature, the model she set for me in these regards was important enough.

When I first met Eve there was actually quite a bit of doubt as to whom I was to become. I’d known at 14 I was a lesbian (thanks to Jill Johnston’s Lesbian Nation and Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle) and was trying to learn to use my body through girls’ sports, a place I hoped I could fit in. But I was a trumpet-playing bookworm with sketchbooks and notepads always on my person. Sports were a language I worked hard to learn, and one that in many ways made being gay only more visible—and all of us more vulnerable. I wandered into my sophomore year of high school, during the Bicentennial year of 1976, learning to drive; disillusioned by Watergate and Vietnam; hoping for a girlfriend; a little scrappy and hotheaded; and wanting, like all adolescents, to fit in someplace. This combination lead, as it so often does, to disaster. My parents had to haul me out of jail one night when I left several large members of the Westerly, R.I. police force in disarray.

I don’t think there is much question I represented a challenging and interesting project to Eve, and that’s OK: I’d proudly be her project again any day, and every kid should have an adult other than their parents who takes them on as their personal (and not necessarily school) project. I’m not at all sure what alerted her to my potential, but shortly after the police incident (while it seemed as though I was still wandering around the football field with a hangover) and before I knew what was happening I was an artist for our yearbook, the Pawmystonian, creating pen-and-ink sketches and drawings of our school mascot: anthropomorphized bears. I was hanging around at Eve’s house on weekends, eating frozen fried chicken with her and stumbling into my first girlfriend. I fully believed I had wrecked my life forever by my stoned brawling, but Eve pulled me through that year and into the next; now yearbook Art Editor . . . now Eve’s grammar class . . . now Theater Club . . . now house and cat-sitting for Eve . . . now Honors English . . . now yearbook Editor . . . now Eve’s nomination of me for the Mary Nania Award for Altruistic and Inspiring Leadership . . . now Bowdoin College . . . now taking the graphic arts skills I learned at the yearbook into my first newspaper job . . . now editing and writing for a national journal and small press . . . now working for the Village Voice newspaper . . . now helping to found and operate for more than 12 years a nonprofit theater serving the small New England community of—Stonington, ME.

Can you feel Eve’s hand in all of this? I do and always will. So much of what she taught me—from the difference between “which” and “that,” to how to lay out a page, to how to appreciate scotch responsibly and with pleasure, to how to think clearly, to how to easily and swiftly write clear, simple sentences, to how to take great pleasure in the act of writing—lives on in me today.

I lost touch with Eve after she retired and moved to California; she had always wanted the warmth, and to be near her children. My own writing and world-making consumed me at the time, and I let her go. I always regretted having done so, and was delighted last year when a mutual friend gave me her contact info. All too briefly, I was able to be in touch with her again, to tell her how much she meant to me. But it was too late for us to share any further experiences; she was losing her battle with cancer, and I was too far away.

Despite my sins (in what I have done, in what I have failed to do), I’ve had grace on my side: I have continued to have people in my life—mentors, friends, lovers, and colleagues—who remind me of Eve. That twinkle in her eye, slightly mischievous and always sparkling, deliberately exposing to you the fire that glowed inside of her; a twinkle you can see even in very recent photos of her. The fierceness of her loyalty once you were hers; the sharp, persistent scrawl of her red pen; the fullness with which she approached life in what she clearly understood to be a magical world.

Thank you, Eve Nardone. Thank you.

(Special thanks to Kelly Cordner for keeping me in touch with Eve; to Larry Bates for this photo; and to Eve’s daughter, Laurie, for being so kind to me during the days immediately preceding Eve’s death)

Desert Winds

There's something about dry.

My people are Yankees: i.e., east coast people and before that western Europeans.

We don't really know what to do with dry. We know humid.

The Southern California desert I'm currently writing from--Palm Springs, to be exact--is dry 354 (!) days a year. Dry and bright. Clear. The edges of the glorious date palms crisply glistening light against blue sky and brown hills.

But the dry desert brightness is only part of what fascinates about this place. Inhabited forever by the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians, who remain Palm Springs largest landowners, it is a place that reminds one daily that heaven is right here on earth (according to local legend, it received its current name when a Spanish explorer referred to it as "the palm of God's hand"). Grapefruits growing in the front yard, oranges in the back, etc. More recently for design fans it has become known as "an oasis of modernism in the desert" and some of the 1950s-60s architecture, objects, and decor are definitely swinging.

That's when the place really took off for white people--the 1950s and 1960s--when Hollywood stars suddenly discovered its proximity to Los Angeles and began to flock here in droves for drinks, golf, etc. Frank Sinatra lead the way with his "Rat Pack." Dean Martin, Cary Grant, Debbie Reynolds and yes, Dinah Shore--whose legacy remains in the annual spring golf tourney and "women's weekend," a.k.a. the largest lesbian bash in the country which bears her name--all owned homes here.

The stars got distracted and began to leave in the late 1970s at a time when Palm Springs threatened to become the Fort Lauderdale of spring break California. Now its retiree heaven and really, why not? I know we who live on Deer Isle, Maine extol the high quality of life in Maine, but during the winter its got nothing on Palm Springs. Yep, there are definitely more people and traffic here than in my very rural home; but many of us are crafty enough to avoid traffic and people when we want and need to.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Springs is that it manages, despite the excesses of second home owners and tourists, to retain a somewhat down-at-heels feel--something which makes it a sister of sorts to Deer Isle, although in truth many lobstermen make more than the average median incomes for Palm Springs. The median income for a household in the Springs was $35,973 and for a family $45,318. The per capita income for the city was $25,957. These figures obviously don't include the second home owners. About 11.2% of families and 15.1% of the population are below the poverty line. Important lesson: beware, communities, of creating economies dependent solely on the tourism/service sectors.

Bloody Bloody Populism

He's an orphan at 13 and an Indian-killing rock star soon after. And the people LOVE Andrew Jackson.

Why not? In the Public Theater's musical "Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson" now on Broadway, like any rock star Andrew is a sexy, angry, bloody mess who seeks our adoration. He urges us not to think about what he says and does, but just to love it. And we do, in all our contradictory glory: don't kill the indians, but don't let them live near us; tell the federal government to go screw itself, but wait! we want its money; etc.

We are supposed to find his adolescent rages and impulsiveness attractive, and many do in the same way Maine voters supported Paul LePage ("I'll tell President Obama to go to hell") or NY voters Carl Paladino . . . or Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh . . .

Why is Andrew so angry? "Life sucks . . . for me in particular," he sings, and doesn't it seem everyone has a chip on their shoulder these days? Unemployment is too high, taxes are too high, the cost of gas is too high, not everyone can afford a McMansion . . . it is a pretty tough life we've got going on here in these United States, but what are any of us willing to do to fix it? So we throw the bums out, be they Democrat or Republican, again and again and again because no one can really solve these problems without asking the people to do something--stop driving SUVs? stop watering our lawns and filling our swimming pools?--ourselves.

Obama would shudder at the relevance of the show's anthem to his Presidency: "And we’re gonna take this country back for people like us, who don’t just think about things.”

Because as most of us regretfully know, the problem is not in our politicians but in us, the electorate. "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" brings that point home in 90 minutes of highly entertaining irony of the type seldom seen on Broadway.

Revisiting the Bear

I walked to the edge of gray ledge just off the Appalachian Trail and there, 36 miles away on a brilliantly clear November day, was the toothy profile of New York City glittering at the end of the Hudson River.

Bear Mountain is and always has been a kind of miracle to me and many others. Opened in 1913 just a shout up the Palisades from the clanging, smoking engine of New York City it is both living evidence of the culture of philanthropy of a different time, and of the awareness, spawned by the Industrial Revolution, that people had to get beyond the noisy environs of the city and into the "great outdoors." Fully launched with a huge gift of both money and land from Mary Averell Harriman, whose husband was the President of the Union Pacific Railroad, Bear Mountain is another of the many institutions which grace our lives thanks to the philanthropy of the great industrialists and robber barons.

I've hiked here, across the section of the AT and up the High Tor and through the Timp Pass and over Dunderhead Mountain, over the last 25 years with two of my own and several of my friends' dogs, the latest my friend Karen's 6-month old puppy, Bessie. The trails and my own past are alive for me with the golden happiness of Jessie; and the speedy alertness of Tosca (who was often just a black dot disappearing quickly over the oak leaf-strewn hills in pursuit of a deer) and her best friend Indy.

So up the familiar trail, which I've both hiked and cross country skied, to Doodletown we went, past the old reservoir and the town that the state claimed by eminent domain and existed there as recently as 1965 yet is now nothing but brush and historic markers. Out to Iona Island past the briny, reed-filled marshes. And finally down 9W back to the city, stopping for a black-and-tan at Sheeran's in Tomkins Cove before racing down the New York State Thruway and back into the city.

A perfect fall day for a former urbanite.

Don't Allow Your Fear to Vote

One person, one vote: this is the rock of our democracy. It’s therefore very important this fall not to allow your individual vote as a Citizen to be cast by your Fear.

Our two party system—and our desire to approach politics as a football game rather than “one person, one vote”--is broken. This is glaringly evident not only in the inability of our federal and state governments to get real work done that improves our lives; but in our public support for independent candidates—not one, but three qualified to be on the Maine gubernatorial ballot—and for the Tea Party movement.

When a system breaks, those who comprise and benefit from that system—in this case, the Democrats and the Republicans—are never the people to turn to to fix it.

Yet this fall, Maine’s Democrat and Republican parties would have us believe that voting for an independent candidate is in fact a vote for the opposing party. They want us to cast our vote for their candidates not because we feel they are the best, but out of fear of the other guy.

It is important for voters to recognize that strategies based on fear are always created out of weakness. Telling someone “A vote for Cutler is a vote for LePage” or vice versa is a strategy closer to bullying than to a useful political strategy, and is an indicator of the truth: the candidates selected by Democrats and Republicans in their primaries are not strong enough to win the general election. Neither LePage nor Mitchell offers policies Maine voters can honestly and whole-heartedly support. It’s a shame that the core Democrats and Republicans who held sway in their primary elections were not attentive to the state’s realities and needs for integrity and substantive change in selecting their candidates. Now they are reduced to threatening voters that our vote for an independent is in fact one for their (dreaded) opposition. If you are an independent Mainer like me, this strategy makes you never want to vote for a Democrat OR Republican ever again!

And it’s just not so. Each of us is able to evaluate the policies, histories, and proposed actions of the candidates and select the best person to be the next governor for the state of Maine. Your vote is a vote for the best candidate, period.

Of the five gubernatorial candidates, only one has put forth specific proposal after proposal for ways to fix our state’s problems and move in a different direction: Eliot Cutler. Cutler has also shown, in the last few weeks, that he is the candidate on the ascendency and the only candidate who can pull both Republican AND Democratic votes and satisfy the central demands of Maine’s voters for integrity and change. He is on the rise, and the only thing we have to defeat us from having the best governor for Maine is our fear itself.

I believe Maine voters are too tough and independent to allow ourselves to be bullied into voting for a candidate who is not the best person for the job, or to allow our fear to hold sway in the voting booth. Your vote for Eliot Cutler is a vote for the best candidate for governor. You know you want to.

On Voting in Tomorrow's Primary: An Opinionated Guide

Check it out: Maine has more candidates running for Governor than ever before. This is a good sign if you consider it a reflection of engagement, although it is probably more another sign of the current discontent with governmental status quo . . . and the bad news is that, in a recent poll, 42% of Maine's likely voters could not name ONE of the 11 candidates running! Let's get caught up on the issues today, my friends, and get ourselves to the polls tomorrow.

For those of you who have asked, I'll tell: based on my involvement with educational and economic development issues at both local and state levels, I am voting for Steve Rowe. I've had the opportunity to work with Steve and believe his vision for education as the basis of our state's future success is critically important. Steve prioritizes early childhood and creative educational programs based on research which shows what a difference these make in creating future citizens. He is a get it done leader rather than a more provocative legislator such as Libby Mitchell (and no, she doesn't get my vote just because she is a woman). After 8 years of governance by a legislator, I'm ready to move toward stronger leadership. I also believe Mitchell more than Rowe will split the vote with the indy's, including Elliot Cutler, leaving room for a Republican victory. Vote Rowe!

It is sad in this election to be losing both our region's state legislators, Hannah Pingree and Dennis Damon, to term limits. Both Pingree and Damon are true leaders unafraid to take stands and stick to them on controversial issues. Hannah has lead the way in environmental health reforms for Maine, and Dennis introduced and continues to support Maine's marriage equity legislation. We owe them both a lot of THANKS for their tireless and unswerving leadership.

The island's own Walter Kumiega is running unopposed for Pingree's seat. Walter's heart is always in the right place, and let's keep our fingers crossed he becomes more willing to deal with conflict and to provide leadership on contested issues when he reaches Augusta than he has been as co-chair of our school committee.

The primary election is important in filling Damon's state Senate seat as two Democrats seek the nomination: Jim Schatz of Blue Hill and Skip Greenlaw of . . .well, also of Blue Hill. Skip is a long-time Stonington resident who has been residing in Blue Hill over the winter but isn't copping to that, which bodes ill for any other stances requiring honesty in his candidacy. Additionally, Skip has been a leader of our local school committee for more than 20 years and the results are not good: our high school was correctly named one of the 10 worst performing in Maine earlier this year, and we have little community engagement with the local process because of Skip's off-putting leadership style. This is the record on which he is running? Can anyone say accountability? Schatz has a lot of integrity and is the kind of quiet leader who is not in it for his own ego but to get important issues done. Schatz gets my vote tomorrow.

And finally: vote NO on Question #1 tomorrow and YES for the bond issues. The bond issues are important economic development items: click here for the full text. Question #1 is another of the "People's Veto" phenomenon, an attempt to confuse the public and overthrow sound tax reform legislation our reps have already passed. Let representative democracy do its work, study the issues, debate them in public, and make informed decisions! Question #1 asks you to overturn existing tax-cut legislation--don't be confused! And what we really should be voting on is a repeal of the People's Veto legislation, so we don't have to continually set our state back with these so-called "people's" (read: special interest) referenda.

Feel free to disagree. Most importantly, get out and vote tomorrow!

Celebrating Prom--and the SATs

May is a big month for our juniors!

In Deer Isle-Stonington, May is about the junior prom. Distinct from the same archetypal event in many other locations, our island prom is a joyous community-wide event supported and attended by young and old alike; one that celebrates our juniors and their connections to family and community as well as their “coming of age.” Even as I write this, student advisors, mentors, and parents are spending long hours at school painting and building, preparing the gym (and themselves) for this annual event.

And on Saturday May 1, a week before the prom, our juniors are expected to attend an event of equal importance to their futures: the Scholastic Aptitude Tests, or SATs. Because this is a relatively new event without the long communal connections of the prom, our students may not receive the same amount of active, visible encouragement and support for this event as they need to succeed.

While the SATs themselves are not new, their importance for all students—and maybe especially for those who think they may not be pursuing additional education after high school—is.

In the past only a select group of students were expected to graduate from high school with “college ready” educations, defined as the ability to successfully solve language and math problems at a certain level of proficiency. In today’s economy and job market, here on the island as much as off, ALL high school graduates need these skills: and the SATs are an important measure of how well our schools are providing students with the education they deserve to succeed after high school.

Additionally, high school students thinking they may not attend college often discover further education at a 2- or 4-year college, community college, or technical school is required to make a decent living in today’s job market. Given the impact of global economic forces on our lobster fishery, and our hopes to continually strengthen opportunities in our year-round community for our young people, we could be encouraging all of our students to aspire to some sort of further education.

And so this May, let’s be “loud and proud” in celebrating and supporting not one but TWO milestone events for our high school juniors: on May 1 the SATs, and on May 8 the prom.

"Precious" at the Opera House

Many questions can be raised about our showing of the film "Precious: based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire" at the Opera House as part of our Alt-Movie Series this week. Why show a film about inner-city tragedy and dysfunction in our rural hamlet? Why show a film which could possibly further negative stereotypes of African-Americans in the nation's whitest state, where few have access to everyday encounters with racial and ethnic minorities? Why show films which detail poverty, abuse and their effects at all?

Because "Precious" is a complicated, beautifully made film which shows the potential impacts of poverty and abuse in ALL of our communities. It is a story which must be told--as Sapphire knew when she published the book on which it is based, "Push," in 1996. “Ralph Ellison spoke of an invisible man, but girls like Precious are our invisible young women—not seen by their own people let alone white society,” says Sapphire.

The character of Claireece “Precious Jones” Sapphire created and whom director Lee Daniels, along with producers Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, faithfully renders is so deeply human and fully realized, not only in her misery but in her imaginative, thoughtful processes, that it is impossible for any but the most pessimistic and politically orthodox critics (of which there have been many, both of the book and now of the film) to not be dumb-struck with empathy and compassion for her story. As Sapphire says, her story and this film are "for all the precious girls" in all of our communities. Let's make them visible, and let's all care enough to take action--as so many do in this film, from school principals to teachers to social workers--to offer them the love they deserve and need to chart their own courses from misery.

Why STREB?

I've been cross-posting this week from NYC on our Opera House Arts' blog, Curtain Tales. If you don't already follow that, keep an eye on it for the latest words related to our work at OHA and mission, Incite Art, Create Community!

Choreographer--or I think I'd better say movement artist--Elizabeth Streb was one of three panelists on the opening plenary, facilitated by OHA's "our own" critic-in-residence Alicia Anstead, for APAP 2010. Presenting between our lugubrious new NEA chairman, Rocco Landesmann, whose comments re support for artists waxed so spurious one could only yawn; and my fellow Bowdoin College grad Paul Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky (download his app for your iPhone and become your own DJ), Streb--ice-pick thin with a stand-up shock of died black hair at 59--brought the session to life with her remarks on the importance of--well, yeah--movement.

Streb showed a video message she had created when asked if she would send a message to newly-elected President Obama last year. After some hesitation, she did it. Her message is: there is one simple solution to solving the problems you face--war in Afghanistan, an economic recession, a need to overhaul our country's health and education systems. That solution is movement. If you, Mr. President, insist that every American must jump up and down three times every morning, turn around, and throw their arms up in a giant X--slowly but surely our problems would be solved.

It's a dramatic way to make an important point: the human body is a kinetic (i.e., movement) machine, and we as Americans simply don't move enough to function as well intellectually, emotionally, economically, and politically as we need to to face the current challenges the world presents to us. And moving with consciousness through the artistic discipline of dance--and Streb might argue, especially highly physical dance of the type she practices, which can veer toward the NFL--might take us to places we never before knew to be possible.

So, people, let's do it! Stand up and jump up and down three times, now and every morning. Spin around and throw your arms up into the air in a giant X! Let's move it. The new decade is on. -- Linda

Getting Serious About Creativity in the Classroom

I've been cross-posting this week from NYC on our Opera House Arts' blog, Curtain Tales. If you don't already follow that, keep an eye on it for the latest words related to our work at OHA and mission, Incite Art, Create Community!

Following on my concept of "the whole new mind for a whole new decade" posted earlier this week, Thursday afternoon I helped to lead an Education Leaders Institute (ELI) meeting in Augusta. The focus is to create a team of innovation leaders from around the state to re-design public education--moving it from the WHAT is being taught to the HOW of students learning . . . with a focus on ensuring that creativity, imagination, and innovation are primary learning methods for the new century.

This all hooks together with OHA's Kennedy Center Partners in Education program with our local schools, which helps teachers learn to integrate artistic processes and disciplines into their classroom teaching to advance the creativity of HOW their students are learning literacy, math, and interpersonal skills.

Another key piece of this in Maine is the MLTI laptop program, which in many communities has been a huge gift for how their students are learning and taking off with the innovative skills demanded by our changing economy. Deer Isle hasn't done as well with MLTI as we might, and therefore we are including technology integration as an art form--digital media arts integration--in our Kennedy Center offerings. The importance of the MLTI program to creativity brought Apple's Jim Moulton to our Thursday ELI meeting. Jim is a fantastically innovative thinker, especially around education. Check out this piece he wrote back when he blogged for Edutopia's Spiral Notebook, "It's Time to Get Serious About Creativity in the Classroom." -- Linda

For the New Decade: A Whole New Mind

I see from my Facebook page early this morning that everyone is off to the usual new year’s resolutions: exercise and weight loss.

But what about our brains?

Some of the most interesting research and policy recommendations to emerge from the decade just past have to do not with the benefits of physical exercise, but rather with the social, political, economic and yes, personal benefits of understanding and exercising our brains.

I therefore propose we consider the value of pursuing whole new minds for this new decade.

Both brain research and first-hand documentation of the experience of stroke victims, such as brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor’s, have increasingly brought us the news that our emotions, behaviors, learning capacities—and resulting social and economic successes—are as much about choices we make, and educational opportunities we are offered, as about innate genetic or biological factors.

In short, the ways we learn to understand the world and to express ourselves are the result not of uncontrollable tissue but of the conscious development and nurturing of specific neural pathways: pathways which throughout our lives can be re-shaped and re-developed, even in old age, even after devastating brain injuries or stroke. Having trouble holding a job because you can’t control your anger? You can learn to consciously re-direct the habitual flow of neurons when you react to something, and change your seemingly uncontrollable responses. Are fears and anxiety keeping you from the family life or career you want to have? The focus of most meditative practices is to shift the locus of understanding from our task-oriented left brain to our right, which experiences connectedness and wholeness and can reduce the power of our daily anxieties.

Alert educators and parents have known for some time that intelligence and achievement are not all about biological I.Q., but rather about the stimuli the brain is offered—say, the number of words to which an infant is regularly exposed; the aspirations and expectations that are set for and by us; and the encouragement we receive for different types of behaviors. But how much of this new brain knowledge, moving us away from the old worlds of I.Q. tests, has made its way into our public policy, public schools curricula, and, more importantly, our daily lives?

For adults, integrating current knowledge of brain development into our lives and the lives of our children can take several forms.

On behalf of our children, researchers increasingly recognize that our public education systems are too “left brain” focused: our classrooms are good (sometimes) at teaching facts and basic math and literacy—all functions governed in the left hemispheres of our brains—and much less good at teaching problem solving and the type of creative and innovative thinking being demanded by the U.S.’s position in the global economy. Teaching creativity and innovation requires development of the right hemispheres of our brains: sectors most effectively developed through learning in and through artistic practices (the performing and visual arts). Best-selling writers Daniel Pink (author of the recent Drive and A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future, from where I borrowed my title) and Thomas Friedman (Hot, Flat, and Crowded) have been consistently and loudly eloquent on this subject and its importance to U.S. competitiveness in global markets: but are we working to change our local schools, and parenting, accordingly?

And with the new understanding that the brain is in fact a lifelong learner—plastic and flexible throughout our lives, “allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding,” according to professor Dr. Kathleen Taylor in a recent New York Times Education Life story—are we adults keeping our brains and communities as healthy as we might be? Research shows our more mature brains hunger for learning that is not merely about taking in more stuff, but rather that which challenges our perceptions of the world: a kind of stretching of the brain beyond its comfort zone that breaks it away from established connections, thereby encouraging the growth of new pathways. “If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections,” Dr. Taylor concludes.

Taking new routes to work; learning new languages; having conversations with those different from us as well as those who share our world views; experiencing the arts and ensuring our children do as well; meditating: these are new year’s resolutions which will, in the long term and as importantly as physical fitness, benefit our national health as well as our personal well-being. Whole new minds for the new decade.

Birds & Beatles Video

Provenances of Beauty

How do we see and understand the beauty hidden all around us--especially when both our definitions of beauty and the world itself are constantly shifting? The Foundry Theater's new performance piece, "Provenance of Beauty," takes audience members on a bus tour of the South Bronx to explore this question. During the 90-minute "tour," narrated by three voices (two recorded, one live), participants are treated to a personal, political, and often hidden history of that most downtrodden of New York City's five boroughs, the Bronx.

Did you know the Bronx was NOT named for a Dutch farmer, but rather for a Swede? Did you know that in Hunt's Point a prison barge; a water treatment plant; and a fertilizer manufacturer hold sway, shoulder to shoulder, over most of the waterfront? That in the late 1970s, the South Bronx burned at a rate of more than 10 city blocks per day for more than four years? That the "eminent" master planner Robert Moses constructed tens of thousands of low-income housing units in tall towers in the Bronx--consolidating and isolating those in poverty in ways that would forever mark this neighborhood; while simultaneously displacing more than 1500 families when building the Cross Bronx Expressway?

What the "Provenance of Beauty" shows most critically is the constant change that all of our communities undergo, and the tidal and often seemingly uncontrollable powers behind such changes. When a blighted waterfront is turned into park, are there losers as well as winners? When an abandoned piano factory is turned into high priced condos, how is a neighborhood and its population morphed? How does our particular aesthetic of what is "beautiful" or something we are able to see effect our community development and planning decisions? How do our aesthetics affect those living in poverty? And ultimately, what are the full ramifications from the process we know today as "gentification:" happening not only in the South Bronx but in many of our small, traditional, and rural communities as well? Who ultimately decides what is "beautiful"? Who wins, who loses?

A Consolidated Education

This Columbus Day Weekend, I drove from my current home in Stonington (ME) to Stonington (CT) for my 30th high school reunion. I hadn’t attended previous reunions, and catching up with my peers caused me to reflect on my 40-year old education in a consolidated public school district—an experience that may be relevant to many Maine residents as we debate how to cast our ballots on the consolidation issue in the November 3 “people’s veto” referendum.

There are obvious and maybe not so obvious similarities, as well as differences, between the two towns—Stonington, CT is a lobster fishing town with a village population of only 1,032. Like Stonington, ME on Deer Isle, there are several unique and beautiful surrounding villages with populations loyal to the shoreline geography and quality of life: a large proportion of my classmates returned there to live after college. Yet my long ago education included subjects and opportunities our island students can still only dream about, in large part because Stonington, CT was already a consolidated town and school district.

Stonington, CT’s school and municipal districts include the villages of Old Mystic, Mystic, the Borough of Stonington, and Pawcatuck, on the Rhode Island state border. These villages consolidated services and school administrations long before my memory, yet each maintains, to this day, a completely unique character: Mystic is the location of the Mystic Seaport and its preserved legacies of whaling and boat-building; Stonington Borough home to the predominantly Portuguese-American fishing fleet; Pawcatuck the poorest of the three, built on textile and other light manufacturing.

Through sixth grade I attended a “seven room schoolhouse”—one classroom for each grade—in Old Mystic. There were 15 students in my class, and the teacher-student ratio in the district is about the same today. There were multiple neighborhood K-6 elementary schools in each of the villages. These neighborhood schools sent us on to one of two middle schools, grades 7-9, one in Pawcatuck at the eastern end of the district, and one in Mystic at the western end—arch rivals in all things, of course. From there we brought our rivalries under the same roof, at Stonington High School: a 45-minute bus ride, 20 minutes by car, from my house.

This consolidation had many happy results for my own education: the district was able to pay more competitive salaries than any of the individual villages could have, and thus was able to attract and retain talented teachers. I am in Maine today because several of my very best teachers were Mainers: teachers who had relocated from their beloved home state because they could make a better living, and work in stronger school districts, while maintaining the quality of life they had in Maine. They encouraged me to attend Bowdoin College, which inspired my own deep love for, and subsequent relocation to, the Maine coast. The consolidated district was also able to support an excellent and diverse music program; great science labs; foreign language classes, including Latin; a full range of A/P courses, and, in addition to sports, co-curricular activities such as a school newspaper, which encouraged our civic engagement as well as educating our bodies and spirits.

As a volunteer in our local schools, I see that our students don’t have many of the same opportunities I had 40 years ago. It makes me want to cry: with sadness at their missed learning opportunities; and outrage at the adult decisions that cause them. So what if I had to travel 20 miles to high school? Mystic and Pawcatuck lost none of their uniqueness by not having their own high schools; and students there received a top-rate education that better prepared us to succeed in college and in life by providing more quality opportunities than Stonington, Maine’s students have access to today. The larger tax base created by consolidation makes it possible for Stonington, CT to spend almost $1,000 more per student than we spend in Stonington, ME. With Maine’s much lower property values, we don’t necessarily want to increase spending per pupil: instead, consolidation will enable us to provide increased educational opportunities by sharing and reallocating existing resources.

Maine only recently passed legislation requiring the consolidation of school districts; yet Question 3 on the November 3 ballot asks us if we want to repeal this law. While the law isn’t perfect (what law is?), its concept is right on, designed to reduce our rural state’s top-heavy school management (does paying a school superintendent a six-figure salary to oversee a district which includes less than 700 students, as we do in Deer Isle-Stonington, Sedgwick, and Brooklin, make sense to anyone?) and to shift those resources to improving the quality of education for our students. Those districts which have focused efforts on using this legislation to share resources and improve educational quality are successfully creating additional opportunities for their students. It’s past time to give our Stonington, ME students the same opportunities I had in Stonington, CT 40 years ago. Vote “NO” on Question 3.

Navigating the cross-currents of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and equal rights for all

I was baptized, raised, and confirmed a Catholic, and to this day, despite a wide range of experience with other world faiths, including a deep engagement with Buddhism, the Catholic liturgy and mass is the spiritual practice I consider my own.

I’ve had to make peace with contradictions between the actions of the Church hierarchy and my faith, my spiritual, and my political beliefs for most of my life, from the Church’s historical atrocities to its modern strictures against ordaining women. The majority of my friends and family long ago gave up this moral wrestling. And while I have deep respect for individuals’ personal moral choices, I have no tolerance for religious organizations such as the Catholic Church using their pulpits and funds to impose such choices on others in our secular democracy—particularly when the results seek to restrict and/or discriminate against the human rights of others.

I have been “married” to my partner, Judith Jerome, for more than 10 years—in the eyes of our loving god, our families, friends, colleagues, and communities. Under Maine state law, we are registered as domestic partners. Yet because the concept and term “marriage” is so intricately woven into the state and federal legal structures which confer rights and benefits upon couples, the creation of domestic partner and civil union laws are not enough to ensure our equal rights with heterosexual couples: the law must be changed to allow us to marry.

Legislation passed last spring by our elected Maine legislature, and signed by our governor, makes this change, lifting years of discrimination against gay people. At the same time, the legislation is very precise, as it should be, in not forcing the Catholic Church or any other religious denomination to conduct such marriages if they do not wish to.

Yet this Sunday, at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea where I am warmly accepted as a member by my fellow congregants, I had to prematurely leave the service when the priest began urging the assembled to attend a rally in Augusta next weekend to “defend” marriage against this pending legislation. Once home, I learned from the news that the Maine diocese is holding a second collection in masses statewide next Sunday to help fund the political effort to veto this legislation. Lobbying from the pulpit around a specific piece of legislation at best breaks the guidelines of the church’s federal, tax-exempt status; and at worst crosses the important and fragile line between spiritual ministry and political organizing. For many of us, the intersection of our faith; freedom of speech; and engaged citizenship can be much like a confluence of rivers, ever moving, and we count on our spiritual leaders’ sensitivity to this. As with previous issues, the political fight over the definition of “marriage” makes obvious moral contradictions between the spiritual tenets of Christianity and the worldly actions of many of its churches.

As a Catholic—who was brought up to believe in and to act upon “love thy neighbor as thyself” as the primary moral rule—I find these actions by the Maine church hierarchy, in opposition to my basic human right to be treated equally in love, to be heartbreaking. Participating in my Catholic heritage is always challenging, and such actions make it impossible for me to be at home in my own church.

As a citizen, I am outraged by the muscle the Maine diocese has opted to exercise in the political realm. To my fellow Catholics whom I love, and who I know love me: let the Church know this is not right. Don’t give to that second collection next weekend, and let your priests know you are affronted by their politicking from the pulpit. As Jesus himself taught us, sometimes being the best christian means standing up to church leadership. As history has repeatedly shown, they, like us, are only human, and just as fallible.

And for the rest of us: let’s affirm that love and respect are our guiding principles, and be sure to keep our country moving toward equal rights for all by getting to the polls in November and voting NO on 1, which seeks to overturn the new Maine law allowing same-sex couples to marry. For more information on how you can support this effort, go to www.protectmaineequality.org.

Maine is Setting New Graduation Requirements: and the Arts MUST be fully part of them

Here we go again: our state legislature is hard at work trying to "dumb down" our state high school graduation requirements.

There are 8 learning standards defined in the Maine Learning Results, yet a new piece of legislation, LD 1325, An Act Regarding Curriculum Requirements, calls for students to "fully meet" standards in some of these areas and only to "partially meet" them in other areas--including the Visual and Performing Arts.

This kind of requirement officially devalues the arts in state law--and ignores broad-based research which proves that students perform better across the board when they learn in and through the arts.

It's important for our students'--and, by extension, our state's economic and cultural--futures that we let our legislators know our students need to FULLY MEET standards in all 8 learning areas: including the Visual and Performing Arts. All Maine students must have equal access to rigorous instruction by highly qualified teachers and their learning must be appropriately assessed. Students must be required to fully meet those essential standards in all 8 areas! For the Visual and Performing Arts, this means students would be required to receive instruction in 2 of the 4 visual and performing arts disciplines--not too much to ask for a well-rounded education, is it? The arts education community is willing and ready to work with the Dept of Education and local districts to find effective ways to make this work within the realities of the school day schedule.

So if you can, gather in Augusta at the Cross State Office Building Room 201 by 1PM THIS MONDAY, MAY 11.

If you are unable to attend the hearing: you can contact members of the
Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs
Senator Justin L. Alfond (D-Cumberland), Chair
justin@justinalfond.com

Senator Elizabeth M. Schneider (D-Penobscot)
http://www.mainesenate.org/schneider/index.htm

Senator Carol Weston (R-Waldo)
cweston@fairpoint.net

Representative Patricia B. Sutherland (D-Chapman), Chair
psutherland@sutherlandweston.com

Representative Edward D. Finch (D-Fairfield)
RepEd.Finch@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Alan M. Casavant (D-Biddeford)
RepAlan.Casavant@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Richard V. Wagner (D-Lewiston)
RepRichard.Wagner@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Stephen D. Lovejoy (D-Portland)
steve.lovejoy@myfairpoint.net

Representative Mary Pennell Nelson (D-Falmouth)
RepMary.Nelson@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Helen Rankin (D-Hiram)
RepHelen.Rankin@legislature.maine.gov

Representative David E. Richardson (R-Carmel)*
RepDavid.Richardson@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Howard E. McFadden (R-Dennysville)
RepHoward.McFadden@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Peter B. Johnson (R-Greenville)
RepPete.Johnson@legislature.maine.gov