The Post quoted Republican presidential candidate Mr. Buchanan as

The Post quoted Republican presidential candidate Mr. Buchanan as calling the NEA “the upholstered playpen of the arts and crafts auxiliary of the Eastern liberal establishment.”

Another critic stated that the NEA should be dismantled, adding that “we don’t have a national endowment for the rodeo or a national endowment for scuba divers.” He’s right, we don’t. We do however, have ^National Endowment for Con Artists\ Crooks and Merchants of Greed. Ht’s called the savings and loan bailout. And there are a bunch more of those endowments that cater to the greedy and the powerful. I assure you these endowments cost each of us a lot more than the 22 cents per capita we will spend in Virginia next year on the arts.

I am struck by the paradox that I experience living in this county while living in this country. Last weekend, as part of Ki Theatre’s Exchange series, I performed some of my music that was inspired by this community, by the land around it and the people within it. I was moved and encouraged by this exchange with the community to find that this land and these lives that give image to my work are in turn nourished by that work. In a small way it was like the farmer, taking from the earth and then replenishing—part of the great cycle of giving and taking that has gone on in healthy communities.

I imagine Mr. Frohnmayer must feel some of this same baffling paradox as he shuttles back and forth between his front line job in Washington, D.C. and his weekend home here in Rappahannock County.

Mr. Frohnmayer stated that he expects to work “in the private foundation legal world for the growth and enrichment of our society—for quality art, for less hate and for a generosity of spirit that allows us to live with our differences in real community.”

William Butler Yeats said it well:

i