Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

David Grant, President and CEO

The phrase “above politics” sounds good, but is it possible?

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately as Dodge has been crafting new guidelines, not to substantially change what we do but to better articulate how the various efforts Dodge supports fit together.

We want to champion and help foster a more creative and sustainable New Jersey.  As a broad vision, that feels above politics to me.  But as soon as we or any of the non-profit organizations we support make a specific move, or advocate any change, large or small, I realize it isn’t.

I am interested in how people think about this question, and how they handle it.  I had a visitor early this week, a young man seeking support for a book he is writing on the new ways his generation approaches the problem of climate change.  He talked about “thought and action to bring about societal change.”  I asked him, “societal change towards what end?” and he paused as if surprised by the question.  I could imagine him thinking, “Isn’t it obvious?”

My sympathies were entirely with him, but meanwhile I was thinking someone might use the same language to suggest that what really needs changing is all this impertinent questioning of the status quo and the American way.

The next day I sat down with the leader of a national environmental organization who told me about forging bipartisan support around a question regarding the use of public lands.  I said, “How did you do that?” thinking maybe somehow he had crafted an overarching vision that united people “above politics.”

He said, “We sat down with everybody personally, one by one, over the course of a year.  In each case we sent someone who was like them in background, and we convinced them it was in their own best interests to support this.”

So it was political to the core.  Again, I wonder how the civic sector in general and foundations in particular best function in advocating for change when the goal is to unite people around a vision for the future and balance individual interests with communitarian values.  How do you go about it?

I heard Bill Moyers speak last night at a gathering in New York City, and he gave me a phrase that I appreciate.  Having acknowledged the sobering data about a world in peril on multiple fronts, and having told a story about a vicious attack on him for simply having a particular guest on his show, he said we have to counter “the pessimism of the intellect with the optimism of the will.”

“The optimism of the will.”  Maybe the answer is not to waste too much time trying to be “above politics,” but rather know what you believe in and just keep going, acknowledging politics, sometimes using politics, more often persisting in spite of politics.

I’d love some help with this.  What do YOU do?

Michelle Knapik, Program Director

The highly successful, model urban farm owned and operated by Lorraine Gibbons of Garden State Urban Farms (formerly Brick City Urban Farms) at the corner of Washington and Spruce Streets in Newark is in search of a new plot of land for next year’s growing season.

As of October 15th, the land will be back on track for a planned housing development, but oh what positive impacts the farm has had as an interim use on this once vacant land. It has beautified this central intersection, provided produce to a neighborhood that has little access to fresh foods, trained and employed residents, donated food to a local soup kitchen, launched an urban CSA (community supported agriculture) started contract farming relationships with several local restaurants, and built community, government and businesses relationships in Newark and across the state. (more…)

In a small departure from our YouTube Festival videos, today we’re pleased to feature Bridget Talone, our  Poetry Festival Assistant from September 2005 to August 2008. Bridget  worked for both the 2006 and the 2008 Festivals, and she is currently an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers Workshop.

Ordeal and What Comes After/MFA Mid-Life Crisis

In an interview with the Paris Review, the poet John Berryman said: “I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he’s in business.”

While that point of view flirts with fetishizing suffering (Berryman goes on to say that he hopes to be “nearly crucified”), I believe Berryman’s quote speaks to the question that catches up to most writers at one time or another: Why write?

For writers who feel they have lived through what Berryman calls ‘an ordeal,’ that question is moot. Why write? Because they feel they have to. Anxiety over—or at least delayed.

Starting out, this was certainly true for me. I was a life-long reader (of just about anything) but only began to write poetry in high school, when my father was struggling with a cancer diagnosis and a host of other issues that accompanied it for him. I wrote in order to express my most painful and unsayable thoughts and feelings—to make some sense out of his, and my own, suffering. I wrote (in the words of artist & sculptor Louise Bourgeois) because my emotions were “inappropriate to my size.” I needed to engage with them outside of my body—on the page—where I had the chance to play with the forces that threatened to overwhelm me in real life. To make what was painful into something I could be proud of—something beautiful.

Now, two years after my father’s passing, and one year after starting graduate school, I find myself asking ‘why do I write now?’ And how? The distress that I experienced while my father was ill, and the grief I felt over his passing have become manageable parts of my life. They will always be with me, but they are no longer as urgent, as total, as they once were.

While I have made peace with this personally, my experience as a writer has been shaken by this change. I used to know what I was going to write about—it was almost as though I had no choice. Now I feel like I am being dishonest if I attempt to write the same poems I was writing even a year ago. Yet, I have rarely approached writing this way—as a choice and a practice.

Graduate school is, in a lot of ways, an interesting place to deal with this question. On one hand, there is a pressure to produce (at least) a poem a week and, ultimately, a manuscript (hopefully with some coherence). This could, if one was not careful, lead to a sort of spitting out of poems—sticking with a subject because it is large enough that one could conceivably write a book around it. Or, to look at things more positively, it could enforce the idea that writing, just like any task ones sets out to do well, takes practice and determination. It even encourages developing a routine. (I am a night writer/morning reviser. And lately, a morning writer.)

I like to think that, while an MFA program can be a place to hyper-focus on your own methods & shortcomings as a writer, it can also be a place to be refreshed. It is a place to learn about and write back to different methods and traditions. To meet writers who came to poetry for a variety of reasons and who continue to write for reasons you may never have guessed. It’s a place for conversations about art and, above all, it is a place where you have to/get to read like crazy.

For me, the recently terrifying question of Why Do I Write & How is best answered after reading—when the terror has dissipated and is replaced with pleasure. I write poetry because poetry moves me. It shocks and shakes me. It reminds me, in the best way, that I am alive and part of a world full of people. It reminds me of the urgency of that we all share, whether we are currently suffering through an ordeal or not.

For more of Bridget’s work, take a look at her poem “Expecting Honey“ at Tin House.

Laura Aden Packer, Arts Program Director

My husband, Mark and I returned not too long ago from a glorious two-week vacation in northwestern Maine, where we stayed on a beautiful, pristine body of water with the unlikely name of Mooselookmeguntic Lake. Or perhaps the name is not so improbable as there are more MOOSE per square mile inhabiting this part of the state than human beings. And these animals are both majestic and “giguntic”.

Actually, I have no idea how this lake got its name, but this place is a gateway to an astonishingly beautiful, and vast country of 4,000 foot mountains, enormous lakes, raging rivers and abundant wildlife. The last (or first) section of the Appalachian Trail (AT) winds through the unbroken forests of pine, maple and birch in this area, and encountering “through hikers” (those who attempt to hike the whole length of the trail from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park, Maine) is as likely as seeing those gangly, four-legged creatures.

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By Wendy Liscow, Program Officer

Last week I wrote about the importance of recognizing and instilling public value for the arts. So how do we do this? Are there things you are doing as an organization or as an individual that are helping people recognize the importance of the arts in their lives?

Cultural institutions often approach the task of creating value by working to engage people in an experience that goes beyond the basic activity of witnessing the final product of a creative process. They look for ways to deepen the practice of viewing a play, dance, music event, or exhibition by finding unique ways to connect to the lives of their patrons. This requires ingenuity and thinking outside the standard marketing tactics box.

For example, over the past three years, the George Street Playhouse has been connecting their audiences to theatre through an innovative Book Club Package that converts the theatre viewing experience into a three-step engagement. Through a “Reading, Talking, Seeing” process they enhance a book discussion group’s ability to transform the solitary reading practice into a communal activity that takes the words off the page and live onto the stage. And, as an enthusiastic book club member, I am willing to bet it will be even more fun! (more…)