Apologies. I’ve been studying up on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for another project, so I am drowning in key words. I feel a little fragmented this morning. I will get back to the poetry soon.
A history lesson. The topic is the mural in Maine. The issue is the erasure of the American Dream. Maybe it costs too much? If we cannot see a thing, we may not dare to try it. A 2008 mural, painted by Maine artist, Judy Taylor, was commissioned by the Maine Department of Labor to celebrate labor, and it was paid for by Federal tax dollars. The mural now sits in a warehouse awaiting a less prominent location.
There is, of course, an interesting irony in the locale, not to mention the insult to Frances Perkins, a Maine native and first woman to be named a Cabinet Secretary and the longest serving Secretary of Labor. The story is that Governor LePage is trying to make the state more welcoming to business, so a mural was removed from the Department of Labor. Well, at least art has not lost its power to offend.
The mural might have experienced only its Warholian 15 minutes of fame had it not been for the war against workers that rages daily in America. Which part of history do you want students to know? So much information comes to us through colliding bits of information these days…This morning on CNN, Dr. Elizabeth Cohen discussed CAT Scan over-exposures to children in hospital emergency rooms, and Christine Romans remarked how ironic it was that we now “understood” measurements of radiation exposure, but we wouldn’t have known about millisevert had it not been for the incident in Japan…SEO Alert--Transcript key word: Be Weary [sic] of Multiple Cat Scans.
Yes, we are. Weary. But, during the 1950s, we knew what a millisevert was when we went to school. We knew which foods to eat or stay away from. We knew the shelter position. What kind of critical thinking succeeded that knowledge? A half century of implementing nuclear power solutions, an arms race, and Homer Simpson, nuclear plant worker. Our knowledge is constantly fragmenting. A fact swims up and is drowned by a wave of other facts. How do we know what is important? What skills do children need to become educated citizens in the world? Should they learn that a Governor can sacrifice the First Amendment to the whims of business? Cherry tree politics.
Fragmentation can be a wonderful thing when it exposes the structure of a complicated world. The dissonant chords of Dave Brubeck’s jazz experiment, Some Day My Prince Will Come, or William Carlos Williams’ exquisite poem, The Descent, or Don MacLean's deliciously allusive soup in The Day the Music Died, or, yes, the structured panels of Judy Taylor's labor-celebrating mural. A good education will show us how to read between the lines and savor.
Helter Skelter. We remember, or we do not. Word has come that Lindsay Lohan may play Sharon Tate in an upcoming film about the murderer, Charles Manson, "Eyes of a Dreamer." There is some entertainment value in that, I suppose. But I also think that we need to think as if our lives depended on it. If we disappear our arts, our values go disappear along with them. Anyone can make a line. A caring society understands when it needs to be crossed.
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