They say if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.  Case in point is the national do-not-call list that prevents telemarketers from calling people who don’t wish to be bothered.  It sounded like a great idea, and at first the calls did stop.  But over time the telemarketers have found ways around the restrictions.  Currently they call saying they aren’t selling anything, just taking a survey.  But it’s always more than that; they’re just using a new approach to entice a person into making a “donation” in place of a sale.

So I’ve grown suspicious of surveys whether they come by phone, mail or over the Internet.  As a result, when asked to complete a survey last month about the Albion Area Arts Council, I wasn’t very enthusiastic.  But, a few days before the deadline Lori and I filled it out.  It asked a lot of questions about where our money comes from and where it goes, and only later did I figure out why we were being asked: across the country the arts are once again under attack by politicians of a certain stripe, and a national effort is being mounted to defend the importance of the arts.

For example, Kansas, which normally occupies its time dithering over whether or not to teach evolution, recently ended all state support for the arts.  Never mind the figures indicating that every government dollar spent supporting the arts generates $7.78 in increased tax revenue – today a penny saved is better than a dollar earned.

Despite largely representing only the investor class, it seems fewer and fewer politicians today can grasp the concept of an investment.  In April, for instance, Congress cut all funding for America’s Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) districts – Boone County has benefited from the work of PrairieLand RC&D for the past ten years or so, but helping rural areas now means nothing in Washington.  Touted by Tea Partiers as essential to balancing the federal budget, Congress saved $50.7 million (a miniscule percentage of the $3.83 trillion federal budget) by sacrificing the estimated $500 million those RC&D dollars would have generated through development projects.

Similar, though less successful, efforts were aimed at eliminating federal funding for the arts.

The value of the arts was easy to see last week when nearly 70 young people from as far away as Lincoln and even California auditioned for the Arts Council’s annual Missoula Children’s Theatre production.  Those chosen worked remarkably hard all week learning the show, not because they had to but because they wanted to.  I watched little kids skip up to the school doors with big smiles on their faces – they were excited for the chance to sing and act their hearts out. I saw friendships forged and maybe even lives changed as the seeds of self expression were planted in dozens of young hearts.

And it wasn’t just the kids participating whose lives were touched; one little boy who wore boots with cherries on them came every day with his mom to watch his sister rehearse.  Thursday, the first day the full set was up, he stopped and stared at it in delight.  After a moment he said to his mother, “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”

The positive impacts of programs that connect kids with the arts are so great they can sometimes seem too good to be true.  But their promise, unlike that of the do-not-call list, is real.  And since kids can’t vote, it’s up to us adults to make sure that funding for the arts doesn’t go the way of funding for our RC&Ds…

Why do people make music?  That’s a question I asked elementary students during Michael Fitzsimmons’ residencies in Albion, Newman Grove and St. Edward last week.  “Because it’s fun,” was a frequent answer.  But one little girl said, “because it’s another way we communicate with each other.”

Human beings communicate in many ways, but sound is fundamental.  Babies hear sounds while still in the womb.  We speak, we sing, we laugh and we cry, sharing what we’re thinking and feeling with sounds.

Some experts suspect humans sang before they spoke.  Poetry, which bridges the gap between sung verse and the spoken word, was much more common in the past, especially when literacy was rare.  Rhymes make remembering things easier.  A teacher in St. Edward even mentioned that she uses rhymes in helping her students learn.

Poetry – which until the mid-nineteenth century always rhymed — is not a precise means of conveying ideas.  Today, in a highly technological society, prose is the preferred means of communication.  Poetry, after all, is much more subject to interpretation – and thus misunderstanding – than prose.

But that’s the beauty of poetry – the reader or listener is an active participant.  He or she projects his or her own experiences onto the poem.  Poetry is evocative and capable of expressing multiple meanings at the same time.

And this seems to be the way humans respond to communications.  No matter how hard we try to make prose as clear as possible, it’s still easy for people to misinterpret and misunderstand.

I sometimes see this when working with the state ethics commission.  We go over and over the wording of state statutes and then try to apply them as the Legislature intended.  But sometimes legislators think we’re completely off-base.  What people think they’re saying and what other people are reading or hearing are seldom exactly the same.

Since we do color what we read and hear based on our experience and temperament, poetry is a more natural means of communication than prose often is.  The human mind is not a computer and thus is capable of communicating in a variety of different ways, as the girl in St. Edward understood.

It was great to sit in a circle of 30 to 40 young people all playing their newly-constructed drums together.  It’s easy to learn to play a drum – you just hit it.  But playing drums with three dozen other people isn’t so easy.  Everyone has to play at the same speed, play either the same or complimentary rhythms, and start and stop at the same time.

Michael Fitzsimmons taught the students to do this quickly.  The key was for everyone to pay attention to everyone else (thus the need to sit in a circle).  Musical, verbal and visual cues were necessary for everyone to stay together.  So everyone had to pay attention to everyone else.

Michael mentioned that in many other societies’ people gather in the evenings to drum and dance together.  Since everyone interacts, social ties are strengthened.

And that seemed to be the case last week.  Nearly 300 people of all ages gathered for Michael’s concert to hear children from four schools play as one.  It had an effect – there was a feeling of joy in the gym.  And when the students who had worked with Michael were finished soloing, young people erupted from the audience, coming forward spontaneously to play on a set of conga drums.

Why do we make music?  Because it’s our nature to connect with one another in ways that extend beyond words…