Lutheran Ping!
Be rooted in Christ!
Posted on 07/12/2010 8:59:36 PM PDT by lightman
So I recently returned from a week at Camp Luther. Every year on this "working" vacation I tend to indulge all manner of summertime daydreams, and this year it was all about being a writer. So I bought a few magazines geared toward professional writers. It's all intriguing stuff, but I inevitably come across reminders of why I didn't go down this path in the first place-- I don't belong. Here is an example from "Poets and Writers" magazine, in a section calling for submissions to various writing contests. I'm not making this up. It is on page 75 of the July/August issue.
"Grants of up to $2,500 each are given twice yearly by the Leeway Foundation to women and transsexual, transgender, genderqueer, and Two-Spirit poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers in the Philadelphia area who need financial assistance to work on a project involving art and social change."
Among the myriad issues raised, why are women included in that list? Are they as intrinsically abnormal as genderqueer or Two-Spirit folks? And how many Two-Spirit writers of creative nonfiction working on projects involving art and social change can there be in Philadelphia? Seems to me all of them could collaborate and split the proceeds of the biannual grant for a cool grand a year at least. Until, that is, they become "the Man" responsible for the oppression of Three-Spirit creative nonfiction writers.
The ads in these magazines are mostly for low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing programs in cool places like the mountains of Vermont, but no matter how much I'd like to sign up, I just know it would be just like the Ph.D program at Case Western I was in, with a little leper colony of conservative Christian types defending their misogynistic homophobia (and now probably monopneumanormative worldview) from irritable people who need financial assistance for their projects involving art and social change.
Lutheran Ping!
Be rooted in Christ!
Obviously, a generous soul needs to endow a grant just for writers who are “conservative Christian lepers”. In fact, a little ad for such a grant, placed under the one for the genderqueers, would look kind of cute.
Would such a grant even be accepted anymore?
“Grants of up to $2,500 each are given twice yearly by the Leeway Foundation to women and transsexual, transgender, genderqueer, and Two-Spirit poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers in the Philadelphia area who need financial assistance to work on a project involving art and social change.”
I’ve taught middle-schoolers English and French, and high-schoolers Latin, and I speak German — but what language is this??? Spell check is is breaking out in red squiggly lines . . .
“project involving art and social change” OHHH! Must be National Endowment for the Arts Humanism-speak -— some of our money being used to co-opt the arts community into the propaganda efforts.
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