Dear State Farm

Hi Jeff:

I'd be most grateful if you'd take me off your mailing list. I have used State Farm in the past for my insurance needs, but would never consider doing so again. The fact that State Farm uses its profits to support the social-engineering neo-fascists at ALEC is bad enough, but my previous experience with State Farm in Kansas was so abysmal that my opinion of the company couldn't be lower. Of course it's quite possible that your own office runs smoothly, since basing anything on what happens in Kansas is probably unfair. I swear some of the people working in the Lawrence office had webbed feet. But your national TV commercials are horrible too, so... you know... let's save time and paper.

Best regards ~ Kat

I Don't Know Much About Art (but I know I don't like it)

Well-known for being on the cutting-edge of intellectual innovation, Kansas is about to become the only state in the Union without an Arts Commission. Governor Brownback says we don't need one and, despite resistance from members of his own party, he seems determined to make sure we don't have one.

Those opposing Brownback's actions have largely based their arguments on fiscal considerations. The tacit assumption appears to be that Brownback is motivated by budgetary concerns. Consequently, many of the Governor's opponents have noted how much revenue the Arts Commission generates (through taxable wages, matching federal funds, and so on).

This completely misses the point. The money "saved" by abolishing the Kansas Arts Commission is a fraction of one percent of the projected budget shortfall. The issue is that Governor Brownback doesn't like art.

He doesn't like Darwin either and I doubt he is fond of Stephen Hawking.

But he loves Jesus.

Historically, of course, simultaneously loving Jesus and supporting artists worked quite well. This is one of the areas that I apparently missed in high school so I am vague on the details, but from what I can gather Christianity inspired some really spectacular paintings and ceilings and whatnot [1]. And since this appears to be the only positive contribution Christianity has made to civilization in the last couple of thousand years one might expect modern-day Christians to embrace it.

[1] Source: Stewie Griffin, Family Guy.

Given how much the Christian PR department is in need of someone who is handy with watercolors, one might hope Brownback would at least support a bit of painting. The last leaflet I received from the local Baptists, for example, is absolutely woeful. It took me several minutes to realize that the pale, flaxen-haired girl in the nightdress was supposed to be Jesus. I suppose one might allow some artistic license, but I find it hard to accept that the Son of God got his hands on a bottle of SPF-45 while wandering around the desert. Furthermore, the sheep in the background are completely out of perspective and would be the size of elephants.

And the funny thing is, many of the people currently benefiting from the Kansas Arts Commission are precisely those who are likely to paint sheep (or at least cows) grazing in a pasture, and to be on speaking-terms with Jesus.

This is where I can break my usual blogging practice of making up facts and draw on my personal experience of leading a creative writing workshop at Lawrence Arts Center. The participants spanned the spectrum from a nervous teenager looking for a friendlier environment than high school to share his prose to a delightful woman in her eighties who read her stories in a purring Gone-with-the-wind drawl. Other courses were similarly populated. A beaming guy who had recently retired from Jiffy-Lube covered in clay after successfully making his fifteenth ashtray. A bespectacled dental hygienist delighted when she finally mastered "Yellow Submarine" on the guitar.

It's conceivable (perhaps likely) that Brownback is completely unaware of the realities of publicly-funded arts programs in the state he governs, and that he assumes recipients are primarily taking photographs of people peeing on each other. I suspect, however, that there is a deeper ideological issue.

I got sick a couple of months ago and having tired of a "River Monsters" marathon tuned in to a program about missing Gospels. Apparently there are loads of these things, but someone called Irenaeus with a similar political agenda to Brownback decided that they were wrong and burned them.

A conservative theologian was asked whether, just perhaps, these additional texts might hold some useful information about Jesus and God and all the other stuff that Gospels tend to cover.

The theologian beamed menacingly.

"Everything I need is in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John! What more could I possibly want?"

I briefly sat bolt upright on the futon before collapsing in a drizzle of mucus.

This man claims to be a scholar. And yet he has no need of additional information because everything he needs is in the Bible.

I wondered how in the hell he got tenure and dozed off.

In my dream I was Governor Brownback sitting at a big oak desk holding an ornate fountain pen. To my right there was a large Bible. In front of me were pieces of paper, each with a single word: "ART, SCIENCE, MUSIC, LITERATURE."

On each piece of paper I crossed out the word and wrote underneath: "NOT NEEDED."

The Playground Bully: Addendum

Flower power, man. Pwn3d. 31Hz.

The Playground Bully

When I was ten years old a family move meant that I joined a new school. As is the custom in London, my status as the "new boy" combined with spectacles meant that I was the natural target of the playground bully. Given that the school employed individuals whose primary responsibility was to prevent such activities, it puzzles me how, two or three times a week, I would spend "playtime" having my hair pulled and arms twisted into pretzel-like configurations.

But the English are a confusing people, particularly when one has the benefit of looking back at that Sceptered (septic?) Isle from the left side of The Pond. Their capacity to talk about the weather is particularly remarkable for the simple reason that, in England, there isn't any. Not real weather. It's true that, every now and then, a "heatwave" will scorch London as the temperatures rocket into the 80s for a week. And crippling winter storms will dump a couple of inches of snow on The Smoke thereby rendering all travel by road, rail, sleigh and foot totally impossible. But for three hundred and twenty days or so every year you will not be far wrong if you predict the weather to be upper 50s and overcast.

In North East Kansas we have weather. And the winter of 2009/10 is going to go down in my personal record books as one of the nastiest five months ever. The weather is a sensible topic of conversation here not only because there is some, but because it changes so rapidly. Most winters will include brutally frigid episodes, but usually we get a few weeks relief with warm days and clear skies. Not this time. Week after week the temperatures stuck rigidly below average by twenty degrees. On the rare occasions when the slate-grey sky gave way to sunshine, it got colder still. I stopped counting the number of winter storm warnings and the total snowfall accumulation in mid-January. It was around that time I went to bed.

Last week the flowers began to bloom. Crocuses, early dwarf irises, and the daffodils just about ready to open their petals on the Vernal equinox when...



Yes, I know the snow will melt. And while half my daffodils appear to have been wiped out I specifically plant a second wave extra deep for situations like this. There will still be a radiant yellow explosion in my yard welcoming the longer days.

But it seems to me that Winter was making a point. The playground bully was walking away, but noticing that his victim was rising unsteadily from the ground, he stopped, looked over his shoulder, and sneered. And then the playground bully kicked his victim in the balls to underline his timeless promise.

"I'll be back in November."