What the hell? The U.S. Congress doesn't want to support PBS? What happened to defending art? Whatever happened to seeing the beauty in a book?

Do people hold against you the things it takes to be an artist? Do they think you slip in caricature, some stupid stereotype, like the time I saw The Cranberries play a free concert from Ireland on the Mall and the DC suits reaction when they had to stop playing for some kind of technical difficulties was 'did they run out of drugs, ha ha ha.' (A favorite guitar got stolen in the confusion. An electrical storm approaching, if I remember.)

A piece of art is a sturdy thing, but the matter of whether it will be appreciated in its own time, or ever, is a far more fragile matter. It's a huge stroke of luck, in fact, when anything new gets noticed. It takes the normal editor of a book review to be away on vacation in sleepy days of summer for an On the Road to be praised, 'avatar of the Beat Generation.'

PBS, faulted as all things are, is good at least in saying 'hey, here's something to care about, here's something worthy of attention.' And maybe that is its main function. Let us learn about Lou Gehrig, an artist in his own way, a sensitive chap who, much to one's surprise could go back and be reduced to tears in the dugout, feeling insecure, and the story of how his own iron horse body cracked, as we all crack. Imagine, smiling calm easy-going kind Gehrig, the Pride of the Yankees being multi-dimensional, a sweet story for public television.

PBS will have an author talk about history. Wow. Shelby Foote evoking a hot summer day, 'every Southern boy knows what it was like to be there...' Gettysburg. Over the TV, the way the word Gettysburg is spoken when it means a lot to someone, someone who gets history.

It's like instead of a cop on every corner of America, there should be a nice person, who says, 'hey, be sensitive, be kind.' Or, 'hey, how's everything going?' just to bring a little cheer. Some kind person not preaching anything, on some sort of government stipend checking in on people's hearts and feelings. "No, you don't need to go buy more stuff, more crap you don't need, you just need to save your money and take care of yourself, exercise and eat well. Hey, what's your blood type? Shouldn't be eating that, it will give you arthritis, but you'll learn, gently. We're not here to mess with you."

That's how a great work follows us around. Ulysses, for instance. As if to say, "hey, it's okay you think a lot and carry on with all sorts of untidy things in your mind." The Greeks idea was that we're all heroes just for getting through a day and not falling apart. The great heroic journey of the everyday, just as T.S. Eliot memorializes our common thoughts and existences in "Preludes." Hey, pat on the back, you made it. You survived Cyclops and ship-chopping rocks( and Tuesday Wine Tasting and Wednesday Jazz at Bistrot Lepic--author's note) and Sirens singing and suitors, everything gone to hell... all enough to cause a nervous breakdown at the mere mention of it all. The Greeks were aware, as if suddenly, that we, the species, had minds, minds full of energy talking to us, spinning us a story of life, quite towering over any piddling little attempt any particular pundit based commercial filled network offering could offer us, even if they blabbed from here on 'til infinity.

Thank God, every now and then a calm person comes along in our history. A Lincoln, a man strong enough to withstand his own inner repeating nervous breakdowns, to sort of smile at them, wake up from them, see this nest of individuals needs a mothering touch.

Oh, the pain, the pain we suffer. And PBS like some small ointment on our cracked skin, to seal a throbbing spot off and heal it, so that we are self-contained again, not leaking our energies, not looking elsewhere in craziness for some answer. Yes, PBS, as anything good, knows pain and sorrow.

Lincoln's ghost sits over some golden imaginary and never-to-be-implemented clearing house (is that the word?) of ideas and thoughts and creative efforts. Something provided for in the ideal underlying a good democracy. Good works of art and literature should see the light of day and be promulgated, if only to 'provide for the general welfare,' to help those who aren't in school anymore to learn and study and be themselves to some good result. PBS is a model for that, a modest one, but a good start. And so, particularly these days, we shouldn't have less of it, less funding for the arts, but more. More? MORE? Yes, because the arts, at least the ones worthy of a nation of people, are vital to our health, our well-being, our future.

It wasn't a coincidence that a nation once came out of a Depression by putting people to work for public good. Artists were given work. Trails for hiking and natural places... There should have been room for making local wineries in Roosevelt's WPA. And the only way this great answer to the Civil War, this negation that everyone has to be a complete prick type-A frowning egotistical aggressive asshole-make the other guy sweat, rather than, say, share a recipe for something, was derailed was that solitary and bizarre act of complete egotism which was Adolph Hitler and all that followed, Nazi, Gestapo, my-ego-deserves-that-i-get-into-running-your-life-too. Which spawned the imitations that history always has of ego.

James Joyce as Gandalf, you and me as Bilbo and Froddo in the modern day Beowulf (I've never read it)...

That's the problem. Artists know they have to go through things and suffer in order to constantly reestablish, verify and create and repeat the act with validity. And a person of another habit might well ask, 'why do you go through all that? Can't you just be happy...' What to do with that argument?