Blogroll

Arts attendance declines — again and even more

It’s another of those news items supporters of arts and literature dread. “American audiences for the arts are getting older, and their numbers are declining,” according to a new report from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Although one in three adults reported visiting an art museum or gallery or attending at least one performing […]

A bailout that rests in our own hands

Chris Hedges has never been known to pull punches or really sugarcoat his view of things. In fact, he engages in equal opportunity critique, as evidenced by a couple of his books, When Atheism Becomes Religion: America’s New Fundamentalists (originally titled I Don’t Believe in Atheists) and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War […]

Are we seeing the devolution of the written word?

It’s the latest ubiquitous story topic throughout dead tree and electronic media and THE thing everybody absolutely must use or be left in the dust. “Tweeeting” on Twitter.

I don’t — and won’t — “tweet.” While I know it’s ill-advised to be critical of something you’ve never used, I simply fail to see how my […]

The “new” generation gap continues to seethe

When I first saw it last week, I thought I had misread parts of it. “It” was a blog post by a columnist for Canada’s National Press titled “Watching boomers in turmoil is worth a recession.” Unfortunately, my eyes hadn’t tricked me.

In the post, Colby Cosh found “a special delight” in the crumbling world […]

How to combat the announcer gap

Because the National Endowment for the Arts believes the number of working writers and authors in South Dakota dropped from 222 in 1990 to 190 in 2000, the NYT book blog asks, “Who is killing the writers of South Dakota?” But perhaps the real question is, “Who’s killing the announcers of South Dakota?”

According to […]