The end of public education as we know it? Or the end of cutting edge America?

Much has been said of the union protests that have spread from Wisconsin to Ohio and to Providence, RI. States and counties are under the gun to cut programs, which means that educators and the arts are some of the first programs to see the gleaming knife slice through the sodium light of the state house.

Typically Democratic presidents are good for the arts, and for education, but because the recession is limping into the black both areas are targeted for deep cuts.

Consider Detroit, who will close half of its schools, and force 60 kids into a classroom. Now I don't know about you, but 60 is a helluva lot to teach at one time. I'd have to refigure how I taught essays to even meet the needs of 60 kids per class. As for other activities? It'd have to be worksheets and scan-trons....ugh...which I loathe as a intellectual pursuit. I find them best used as classroom management tools, not as assessments of student thinking and progress.

San Diego is cutting public art grants. So are other cities and states. In Maryland, where Arts Immersion programs are used to boost test scores and student involvement in academics (a program that works, btw), is facing a cut. The program needs just over 1 million dollars to reach every child in the state, and yet it's neck is on the chopping block, which is riciculous when you consider that Maryland schools rank #1 nationally. Why shoot yourself in the proverbial foot?

Raise a generation of smart, innovative, creative minds.

According to data gathered by Lake Polls, 89% of Americans noted that Arts and Education are the two most important areas in the country's budget, necessary to bring America back to the cutting edge of the future and believe that "the arts are critical to prepare students to be competitive in the 21st century economy, which is increasingly reliant on an innovative, adaptable workforce with strong communication skills and high self-motivation."

So why, tea party members, why replublican leaders, why moderate democrats, why? Why do we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot?

Summer Poetry Reading in Rehoboth

If anyone's interested in a mid-summer run to Rehoboth's outlet malls, consider Tuesday, July 27th, and stop by the Rehoboth Beach Librar y for the summer poetry series. Besides moi, Denise Clemmons, poet and food critic for the Cape Gazette, and Sherry Chapplle, poet and professor. Excellent company. Books will be for sale afterwards. It's a quality series, and full of surprises. Garry Hanna has done a bang-up job organizing the summer series. Bring a few quarters to ward off the meter maid. Reading starts at 7:00 PM.

Out this week: Thirty Days: Best of the 30/30 Project. Featuring my poem "Love in Reverse"

Marie Gauthier of Tupelo Press selected one of my poems, "Love in Reverse" for Thirty Days : The best of the 30/30 Project Year One. It's one of a few anthologies to feature my work (cue haughty accent, spotlight, espresso, and French cigarettes). Hopefully you'll be hearing more from me over the next few months as projects near completion. Thanks for the support.

Vittorio Carli's work is punk rock #poetry

A Passion for Apathy: The Collected and Rejected Poems of Vittorio Carl i, a small press gem of punk rock poetry, carries poetic traditions in its teeth. Punk rock because of the in-your-face-anti-establishment irony and earnestness in Carli's presentation of his verse, traditional in the homage and muse tradition of poetry. He writes to and for those and that which enlarges his voice. Carli's work reads like a cross between cultural commentary/homage to persons as varied as Lawrence Welk to Woody Allen, to snapshots of socio-political unrest, which are flags of protest. My favorite is the “The Trouble with Librarians (for Andrea)” where Librarians are cast as the progenitors of closed information; they are “all closed books/with a couple of pages missing.” He's a poet, and I imagine him in some stacked room typing madly, or in transit, to and fro Chicago, scribbling on the back of brown paper bags. He works it. He's out there living poetry. Proof. My copy of t...

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