“In May 1941, after a brief stay in Los Angeles, Guthrie moved the family to Washington in the Pacific Northwest on the promise of a job. A documentary, directed by Gunther von Fritsch, was being created in support of the Bonneville Power Administration’s building of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River and needed a narrator. Supported by a recommendation from Alan Lomax, the original idea was to have Guthrie narrate the film and sing songs onscreen. The original project was projected to take one year to complete but when filmmakers became worried about the implications of casting such a political figure, Guthrie’s role was minimized. He was hired instead for one month only by the Department of the Interior to write songs about the Columbia River and the building of the federal dams for the documentary’s soundtrack. While there Guthrie toured the Columbia River and the Pacific Northwest. Guthrie said he “couldn’t believe it, it’s a paradise”,[32] and was creatively inspired. In one month Guthrie wrote 26 songs, including three of his most famous: “Roll On Columbia”, “Pastures of Plenty”, and “Grand Coulee Dam”.[33] The surviving songs were eventually released as Columbia River Songs. The film was not completed and was only released in a limited form.”

And Lomax. Not clear if he was working for WPA either.

“From 1936 to 1942 Lomax was Assistant in Charge of the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress to which he and his father and numerous collaborators contributed more than ten thousand field recordings. During his lifetime, he collected folk music from the United States, Haiti, the Caribbean, Ireland, Great Britain, Spain, and Italy, assembling a treasure trove of American and international culture.”

But this is quibbling. The important thing is that the government, in whatever department, saw fit to support many artists, building the lodges at our national parks, saving our cultural heritage and creating art. So what would be today’s equivalent?

One key point here, everyone likes to discuss the financial system, governmental structures and tax codes when discussing the problem and potential solutions. I have yet to hear anyone discuss the problems with the legal system that contribute to the mess. Our legal system has spiraled out of control over the last 25 years. We need to innovate the legal system and I am not talking about tort reform. We need to make fundamental changes to the legal system. Does anyone have any idea how much money it costs to introduce a medical record (or its findings and impressions into evidence). Thousands of dollars. Many of the rules of evidence were designed for circumstances that existed several hundred years ago. The computer has enabled civil lawyers to drown opponents in paper, essentially foreclosing indigent civil litigants access to the courts. I could go on and on but the legal system should not avoid the comprehensive re-structuring that government and the financial system will undergo.

Portland, where I live, is touted as a creative class center and is brimming with comic book artists, musicians, writers, etc. Yet people are constantly bemoaning that we spend less public money on the arts than the national average.

When Mitterand was President of France they spent a few billion francs on the arts in Paris, resulting in among other things the(IMHO)second rate Gare D’Orsay and Picasso Museums.

I think as important as the WPA was, what was critical was who the artists were and how much freedom they had. Someone had the imagination to hire a hillbilly guitar picker to memorialize Bonneville Dam and to give a weird academic the freedom to roam the backroads with his old reel to reel.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to money for arts and would love to see more. But I don’t think we should be distracted into using numbers as the only way we keep score. The quality of the artists and their freedom will ultimately be more important.

As far as new media, I don’t even have an iPhone. But I’d be interested in what Kwende has to say.