The Way of the Living Gogh; The Unexamined Life

Welcome to the first issue of The Way of the Living Gogh, a magazine serving the Curators and followers of Artistic Faith in the New York area. We're got all kinds of great stories for you in this month's issue, including an interview with a representative of the Highest Curators of the Guggenheim Dynasty, a report on the miraculous healing of Sister Sperber on a visit to the Bilbaocropolis (which the Council warns us hasn't yet been authenticated!) and some awesome new prayers for artistic contemplation. And the best news of all?membership is up 35 percent! So truly, Brothers and Sisters, it seems that at last Americans everywhere are hearing our message of spiritual hope, peace, love and the Artists' Way. But as I always say?that doesn't mean we should stop telling everyone we know about all the cool things that our founding fathers, Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Van Gogh, did for us. So, please, keep spreading the word. We have so much to give. And the more you give, the more you save. So, let's just keep giving. For Gogh's sake.

?Brother Melamid III

Thought for the Day

Gogh said, "There is nothing in this room with closed shutters." Let's just think about that for a moment.

?The Way of the Gogh, Book XVI, vs. 11

Notice

The next meeting of the High Council of Spiritual Curators for the Church of the Living Gogh will be held on April 1 (so no jokes please, Curators!). Order of business is now available from Sister Rosemary at the Canal St. offices and we hope we don't need to remind Council members this time that you must collect your copy yourself!

Ear Ye! Ear Ye!

Brother Komar confirmed last week that there was absolutely no truth to the rumors that he was involved in a transaction to recover the severed ear of the Gogh. The rumor, circulated on artnet.com, stated that Brother Komar had received a call from a little-known black market dealer calling himself "The Lieutenant," who claimed to have access to the preserved Ear of the Gogh.

Brother Komar called the rumors "as mad as a white canvas," but went on to propose an immediate resolution regarding the place of relics within the faith of the Church of the Living Gogh. He has pointed out in an open memo to members of the Committee that this issue is in no way dealt with in the core text, The Way of the Gogh, and that an encyclical should be published forthwith to mark out guidelines for future reference.

Rembrandt Honor May Be Out of Order.

Downtown Appointee Nixed By Council

An emergency meeting of the High Council of Spiritual Curators was called last week to assess the nomination of artistic healer William Graham for the Rembrandt Order of Eternal Light. Graham was first nominated by the downtown splinter group, The Way of the Latter Day Artists, for his light-therapy work on cancer patients. The Council met for 12 consecutive hours before deciding that more proof of the healing powers of Graham was necessary before a verdict could be reached.

How Are You Doing "The Easel"?

Brother Roving of the Brooklyn Mission has issued a plea to all followers regarding the sign of "The Easel" performed ritually after the completion of artistic meditation. Brother Roving has discovered that the gesture is similar to that used in International Sign Language to depict a moving schoolbus, and that this is causing some confusion among the hearing-impaired children of P.S. 147. It is therefore essential that you don't forget to crook your index finger while making the sign! As Brother Roving joked, "We don't want people thinking we're in the bus business!" What a funny guy!

A Parable Picnic

Brother Adam of the Museum of Modern Art has announced that the spring study picnic in the garden of the Museum will be held this year on April 17. The subject under discussion will be "The Parable of the Lost Friend of the Museum: How Return From Arrears Was Rewarded." In a true-to-life reflection of the events of the parable, all attendees will receive a free, 782-page hardback book in return for the admission price of $35! Speakers will include Sister Wendy, author of Why Me, Gogh?; Brother Utrecht, author of The Way of the Easel and Brother Ewing of the Institute of Artistic Healing. Call (212) 749-9776 to book now!

Pollock and Prayer

As many of you are aware, Sister Katya has been working on an exciting illustrated children's picture book dealing with the teachings of Pollock entitled, Pollock and Prayer: The Paint Drops That Landed on the Canvas and the Paint Drops That Got Away. Sister Katya will present the first reading of the book at the Downtown Branch on Sunday, March 31, at 2 p.m. Congratulations, Katya!

Komar & Melamid first met at a Moscow morgue in 1965. Amy Douthett is a freelance writer. All three live in New York City.

The Unexamined Life by Kathy Wollard The late astronomer Carl Sagan saw an America in which control of our service and information economy and its technological power was understood by only a handful of people, in which "no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues": a country where the vast majority of people, unable to knowledgeably question authority, "slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."

Accelerating the slide is the attempt to substitute ideological pseudoscience for real science in our children's schools. Nearly 400 years ago, Galileo was sentenced to house arrest for insisting that the Earth orbited the sun. While we've come around to teaching our kids the basic facts of astronomy, education is still under an obscuring cloud when it comes to the equally basic facts of biology.

A recent Gallup poll found that nearly 70 percent of Americans favor teaching biblical "creationism" alongside evolution in schools. The Kansas Board of Education voted last year to allow local school districts to simply delete evolution from the curriculum. In Kentucky, a state whose tourism is predicated on the outcome of 60 million years of equine evolution?from 15-inch dawn horses to 16-hand thoroughbreds?the word "evolution" has been stricken from the proficiency exam curriculum guidelines. "Change over time" is the "less offensive" alternative, in one swoop reducing an entire branch of science to a politically correct hot button. Oklahoma's state textbook committee proposed last November that potentially troublesome science books be plastered with stickers describing evolution as an "unproven belief." "No one was present when life first appeared on Earth," the sticker would read. "Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact."

Treating science textbooks as if they were CDs with objectionable lyrics is bad enough. But many publishers have caved in to pressure even before it's applied, watering down references to evolution to ensure that books pass muster in whatever extremist committee that might review them. Books equal bucks; greed is the ghost in the machine of unreason. Thus, the texts of children in New York are dumbed down and gutted right along with those of their counterparts in Oklahoma.

In fact, the Oklahoma committee apparently had that outcome in mind when they proposed the sticker idea. In January, Oklahoma's attorney general advised that the stickers were legally unacceptable. Since then, the textbook committee has said that it has no choice but to outright reject books (at least five so far) that are too unequivocal about evolution. One elementary school teacher said that the stickers had been "a good compromise," since they would have given publishers time to mull over changing the stickered books by adding "other opinions" before their next printing.

But there are also hopeful developments. A number of school boards?in New Mexico, West Virginia, Ohio?have recently bucked the trend of capitulating to the religious right by deciding to strengthen references to evolution in teaching materials and tests.

But where is the support in the national political arena for school boards with integrity and courage, who must face down organized creationists and irate parents at public hearings? The President of the United States at the beginning of the 21st century should have a special responsibility to defend public school education from ideological assault, to play Galileo to Pat Robertson's pope. But the threat of lost support from the pollsters' majority and the religious right is apparently far more terrifying than the prospect of house arrest was for a lone 17th-century scientist.

When the subject of teaching evolution came up, the presidential campaign took on an especially surreal tone. With the exception of Bill Bradley, the candidates could have been poster children for the creationist movement. Ex-candidate Gary Bauer said he "rejects" evolution and wouldn't teach his children that they are "descendant from apes." Steve Forbes declared that textbook explanations of evolution are "a massive fraud." Elizabeth Dole and John McCain said the decision to teach creationism should be up to school boards. And Alan Keyes solemnly intoned that "The world was formed as Genesis described it." End of story.

What about our next president? George W. Bush, not surprisingly, believes that biblical creation should be given equal class time with evolution. Unfortunately for Gov. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled out that option in Edwards v. Aguilar in 1987, deciding that a Louisiana statute that prohibited the teaching of evolution unless creationism was also taught violated the Constitution's separation of church and state.

But Al Gore apparently never got the news, since an adviser announced last year that Gore?captain of the information superhighway, champion of scientific literacy and rapt listener as Stephen Hawking, speaking at the White House, described the workings of a very old universe?believed the decision to add creationism should be left up to local school boards. Facing an appalled outcry from scientists and educators, Gore backtracked to saying that creationism should be taught "in the context of religion courses."

To break free of this sorry mess will require, among other things, that 21st-century publishers stop functioning as 17th-century censors. And that the next president be willing to acknowledge the past?all 4.5 billion years of Earth history?if he really wants to lead us into the future. Because when it comes to our children hearing the whole astonishing story of how life evolved on our blue planet (careening around the sun at 65,000 mph), we are all under house arrest.

Kathy Wollard is an essayist and author who writes Newsday's "How Come?" column. Her most recent book, published by Workman, is How Come? Planet Earth.