Today’s online Persuasion magazine carries my thoughts on “The Tangled Legacy of JFK and the Cultural Cold War: America Needs a New Public Policy for the Arts.” You can read it here. Bottom-line, I write: “If, logically, American arts policy today should focus on greatly increasing government support at every level, never has this prospect seemed less likely. Now, too, is … [Read more...] about The Tangled Legacy of JFK and the Cultural Cold War: America Needs a New Public Policy for the Arts
The Answer Is “Blowin’ in the Wind”
In my most recent NPR “More than Music” show – “’Blowin’ in the Wind’ – Music and American Identity” -- the conductor JoAnn Falletta asks, “‘How can we grow as human beings without the arts?” She continues: “If you don’t learn through the arts as a child, you can’t open yourself up easily. I read once when I was very young that the arts help us deal with our mortality. … [Read more...] about The Answer Is “Blowin’ in the Wind”
Ives and the Erosion of the American Arts
In celebration (yet again) of the Ives Sesquicentenary, I write for the online digital magazine Persuasion: “Of the crises today afflicting the fractured American experience, the least acknowledged and understood is an erosion of the American arts correlating with eroding cultural memory. Never before have Americans elected a president as divorced from historical … [Read more...] about Ives and the Erosion of the American Arts
Abraham Lincoln, Ragtime, and Charles Ives on NPR
Excerpts from my most recent “More than Music” show on NPR: “Finding the Common Good – Charles Ives at 150”: Ives is a self-made Connecticut Yankee, born in 1874, who’s all about seeking common purpose, common sentiment, common good. So at a moment when our nation seems to be coming apart, Ives speaks to us about the things that hold us together – … [Read more...] about Abraham Lincoln, Ragtime, and Charles Ives on NPR
Remembering Teddy
Teddy died last Sunday after a short, swift illness, probably cancer. He was eleven years old. My seminal Teddy memory: in the kitchen, during his early adulthood, I off-handedly said: “Mommy’s coming.” Teddy quivered with an anticipatory elation that consumed every particle of his being. This was my first experience of his bewildering linguistic acumen, and of an … [Read more...] about Remembering Teddy