number 10

My sweet fair city of Eureka Springs came in number 10 this year in the top 25 small arts cities in America behind Asheville, NC, number one and Santa Fe, NM number 2. and only slightly behind number 9,  Boulder, CO. We are about the smallest city in the competition. I'm not sure what others know about the arts, but it helps to be someplace where the arts are encouraged, and that here there is a culture of supports for the arts, for no island is an artist but to himself.

In the meantime, I have been closing in on the completion of some simple display cabinets. I've been doing the last bit of fitting of parts and beginning to sand. Photos will go off to the editors on Monday. As you will see in the photo, some sanding operations are best done by hand. It can take a few moments longer, but gets precise results when machine sanding would make a mess of things. If it takes 5 minutes and some elbow grease instead of a minute with a corded tool, who cares. The results good or bad can last beyond a hundred years.

This is Corvette weekend in Eureka Springs, so there are literally hundreds of the high powered behemoths rumbling around town. And even more motor cycles are here for the weekend, as spillover from a major motorcycle gathering in Fayetteville, AR. I guess one good thing about it all is that you can't come to Eureka Springs without getting just a little bit exposed to the arts.

Quote of the week: U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said about education:

“People who forget the arts do so at their peril. We need people who can think outside
of the box and that what the arts do. It’s a mistake to think only about STEM [science,
technology, engineering, and math] without art.”

 And I would tell Tom, that without the arts, there would be no science, technology, engineering or math.  There is a complete misunderstanding of the arts in relation to science, engineering and math. Without the exploration of materials through the arts, these other subsets of the arts would never have developed in the first place, and without children being involved in making things, there would be no further engagement in scientific exploration. The idea that the arts and sciences are different things is asinine. Make, fix, create, plant, fix dinner. That comes next.