Thursday, February 23, 2023

A blog I wrote in November, 2015

 

The Demise of the School of the Arts

 

An old friend left us this past week.  The more than 50-year old School of the Arts held each year in Rhinelander, WI and sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is no more.  Robert E. Gard was largely responsible for starting the school.  Bob’s philosophy was—the arts are for everyone.  No matter what your income level, where you lived, or how much formal education you had.

 

 I attended classes there in the 1960s when I had the opportunity to learn from Bob Gard. I participated in a fiction writing workshop with August Derleth, and learned basic skills about writing a novel that have proved invaluable.  And much more.

 

Then in 1971, Bob Gard asked me to teach at the School of the Arts.  I did this for 32 years. It was there that I met such national writing figures as Archibald McLeash (three Pulitzer prizes), Dale Wasserman, Henry Mark Petrakis, Studs Terkel, Robert Bly and Jesse Stuart, all writers of considerable note. All of whom taught workshops.  

 

But now the School of the Arts is dead.  Many of us are mourning. 

 

Mark Lefebvre, longtime friend of Robert Gard, said this about the school’s passing:

 

Learning about the demise of the School of the Arts is hard.  I broke down and cried.  I thought of the many summers I spent with Bob at the School of the Arts.  I think of all the people whose lives were awakened. 

 

I think of the extraordinary faculty who in that very special place made real magic happen.  Bob taught me so much, most of all, how the unexpected can happen through simple belief.  I am so disappointed these days with the University of Wisconsin.  Belief is no longer part of its vocabulary.  No greater writer than Archibald MacLeish came to Rhinelander one summer.  A sophisticated guy.  He could not believe the world he had entered.  Imagine these "students" being exposed to this man who could not thank Robert E. Gard enough for putting him so close to the creative process. 

 

 Long may the banner of The School of the Arts  wave over the battlefields of ignorance!  

 

THE OLD TIMER SAYS:     The arts make a life worth living.

 

 

Friday, February 10, 2023

The Many Faces Of Snow.

 

A column from yesteryear.

 

 

Snow, for all of its inconveniences—driving challenges, shoveling, and slippery walking—also has a lot going for it.  The obvious of course is the beauty of a snowfall and the wonders of the countryside transformed from the drabness of late fall’s browns and grays to a world of white. Snow also provides an opportunity to ski and snowshoe and go sledding.  And a chance to build a snowman or a snow fort or maybe even experience a friendly snowball fight.

I did a little digging, no pun intended, into the characteristics of snow, and came up with some interesting information, at least interesting to me.

 

Snow is not always white.  It may also appear blue especially on a cold winter night when the moon is out.

 

Most of us have experienced how sound changes after a fresh snowfall.  Sound is absorbed by snow, muffling it.  But when the snow becomes hard and crusty, the opposite happens. Sound bounces off the snow’s surface and travels farther.  Of course we all know the sound packed snow makes when we walk on it, especially on cold days when it creaks and crunches, and sounds like it is protesting our presence.

 

Snow is also a great insulator.  Fresh snow is made up of from ninety to ninety-five percent air.  Many animals know about snow’s insulating qualities as they burrow into snow to keep warm.  Farmers know this as a good snow cover protects crops such as alfalfa from “winter kill.”  A good snow cover also keeps my septic system from freezing—not a good thing as it happened a few years ago when we had a stretch of below zero weather and no snow.

 

Snow also stores water.  Ten-inches of snow may equal one-inch of water.  Or ten inches of snow could contain as little as one-tenth inch of water.  It depends on whether a snowfall is enhanced by moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, or comes from the dry plains of Canada.

 

This is probably more than you wanted to know about snow, but I find it all interesting as we plow on into the new year with many more snowfalls to come.

 

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Let it snow, let it snow. Nothing much we can about it anyway.