Things to Think About

“Why are the arts vital to community?”

A Story of an Artless Community

0nce upon a time there was a very dull and alienated group of people who lived next to the Muddy River. People awoke each morning, got dressed in silence, pulled on drab clothes, ate their tasteless breakfasts, mumbled good-byes to the people in their households and then got into cars or went to the bus stop to have another unfulfilling day at work.

When they returned at night, they helped their children do their piles of bland worksheets brought home from their regimented school where they learned how to stand in rows and to recite exactly what each teacher wanted to hear. They sat down on their gray couches, watched the news on TV, vacuumed their gray carpets, prepared and ate and boring meal which had the four food groups that humans were supposed to have to stay alive. Then all of the humans' their separate living arrangements got under the covers of their gray “comforters” and went to sleep until the alarm rang and they repeated what they had done the previous day. Nothing ever changed because no one exercised their imaginations. And so it was in the artless community.

The Story of an Artful Community

Once upon a time there lived a group of warm and vivacious people who lived next to the Muddy River. Each morning people awoke to a wide variety of music from their radios. They climbed out from beneath their quilted bedding and into their multicolored clothes. Each home was different. In one, a group of musicians gathered to compose and practice music for an upcoming community event. In another home, a father helped his daughter gather her paints and brushes for the mural that she and other neighbors were painting on the blank wall of the local gas station after school. In another home, a woman was making a quick phone call before she headed off to work to organize the planting of a community sculpture/vegetable garden. Most students went to school where they learned about all of the cultures of the world and participated in theater, dance, visual art, music creative writing, chemistry auto mechanics and many other subjects that would help them become well-rounded community members. The elders of this community were often sought out to mentor children and young adults and to teach arts and crafts, songs and dances, etc. from the wide variety of backgrounds and life experiences that they collectively had. The community participated and attended many yearly events, such as plays concerts, fairs, poetry slams, the portrait painting contest, the Annual Muddy River Floating Device Contest, and the biannual “Problem Solving Think Tank of Social Ills” (made up of a panel of artists, high school students, and a variety of concerned residents). And so their lives unfolded with the arts woven throughout, adding beauty and fresh ways of communicating and bringing magic to all of them.

Around Town

The Love Warriors Strike Once More on Valentine's Day

For the fifth year, once again, beautiful hearts were found at various locations in Minneapolis. Literally hundreds of hearts, made from a variety of materials, were found at local public schools, twirling in the cold February wind. People were seen collecting them and exchanging them with each other. Ms Winnie snuck around the night before Valentine's day this year and was able to locate and do a brief interview with one of the “Love Warriors”:

Ms. Winnie - Why do you brave the cold to do this?

Love Warrior - People need love even more in the cold.

Ms. Winnie - What if people aren't in a Romantic relationship—wouldn't this huge display depress them?

Love Warrior - That is the point - this is a love message for everyone, dogs, sisters, brothers, trees…love is not limited to just heterosexual love partners—we're about celebrating all kinds of love!

Ms. Winnie - There are hundreds of hearts, who makes them and how do you find the time to make them?

Love Warrior - We make them all year long, in between other parts of our lives. And then we get together a few weeks before Valentine's day and crank 'em out. But I, of course, can’t divulge the identity of who participates.

Ms. Winnie - I can see you are busy. One last question…well two. Where are you going next and how can people get involved?

Love Warrior - We’re heading downtown to serenade workers with love songs and of course, to hand out hearts. If anyone wants to get involved, tell ’em, to just make hearts. Use dryer lint for fuzzy hearts, scrap wrapping paper, anything. Then gather their friends and strike out to hang them around town, next year on Valentine's day. There is no way we can possibly do this all ourselves. The more the merrier! Make hearts and spread love! I gotta go.

Ms. Winnie - Thank you and have fun, spreading love!

Ask Ms. Winnie

Are you confused, muddled or just need solid advice? Then just…“Ask Ms. Winnie”

Dear Ms. Winnie,
I save olive pits. I keep them in the window sill so that the sun can dry them out, because I know they may come in handy some day. My problem is my husband thinks they are “unsightly”. We have had a lot of arguments over this and I have tried putting them in the studio in the basement, but they become moldy, and although mold is esthetically beautiful, it's not healthy. Can you give me any words of wisdom to deal with my husband?
In the pits, Joleen

Dear In the pits Joleen,
Tell your husband, he chose to marry an artist and he should thank his lucky stars that all you have in the window sill is olive pits. If he wanted a “Better Homes and Gardens” wife, he shouldn't have married you! Tell him Ms. Winnie says, “Do your part for the arts and keep on eating those olives. Besides, you are doing the planet a service by reusing those pits, we all know they don't break down well in compost. Write me back it your husband is not a recycle fanatic, because then you have problems far worse then this pit problem.
Ms. Winnie

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