The role of arts and culture in the integration of refugees and asylum seekers is the topic of a new report and DVD from Creative Exchange, the U.K.-based global Network for Culture and Development. "A Sense of Belonging," say the producers, is the first major report on the role of both culture (as a foundation for human development) and arts (as a means of expression, communication and sharing) in the resettlement process. It's based in a year-long research project involving 73 projects across the U.K. Creative Exchange has also launched "Culture: Hidden Development," intended to serve as a practical working guide for the international development sector. Both products can be ordered from the Creative Exchange Web site. [LINK]

Arts Extension Service (AES) at UMass Amherst has new partners for the 26th Annual Summer Institute for Arts Management June 20-22, 2005. AES will partner with MASS MoCA and the Creative Community Development Group (C3D) to present "Creative Assets: Healthy Organizations, Healthy People, Healthy Places," this year's professional development conference. It features three tracks: Fundamentals of Arts Management, The Creative Community and It's About People; the latter is an arts-based exploration of intercultural communication, human relations management and personal time management. The annual Robert Gard lecture, June 20, will be offered by Gard's daughter, Maryo Gard Ewell. On June 21, the conference will move to North Adams, Mass., to learn about its economic revitalization, tour MASS MoCA and participate in on-site workshops led by C3D. [LINK]

You could win the key to the city of Smalltimore if your story earns a performance in the Smalltimore Festival in Baltimore, Md., April 29-30, 2005. The Living Room Company and three guest ensembles - Fluid Movement, Mobtown Players and Black Broadway Productions - will take true stories from audience members and turn them into 15-minute plays with sets, props, costumes, music and a special appearance by World Renown Chef Duff Goldman as himself. During the intermission of Friday night's variety show (featuring the Velvet Velvets), stories will be solicited in exchange for crab cakes. The four top stories will be assigned to the four companies, who have 24 hours to come up with performances for Saturday night. The winning story gets the key. [LINK]

Juvenile offenders across three states are working together create a traveling artwork, ArtCarTraz, to raise awareness about the benefits of institutional arts programming. The art-car piece kicks off at the Alabama Department of Youth Services facility on May 2, 2005, and travels to correctional facilities in Mississippi and Louisiana, where it will be painted one section at a time by the juvenile offenders housed at these institutions. Once completed, ArtCarTraz will ride in the 17th Annual “Everyone's Art Car Parade,” produced by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art in Houston, Tex., on May 14. "Arts-based programs for juvenile offenders are highly empowering and transforming for the participants,” said Grady Hillman, founder of the Southwest Correctional Arts Network, a project sponsor. [LINK]

The U.S. Senate is establishing a new Senate Cultural Caucus to promote the arts and humanities within the Senate at the urging of Americans for the Arts (AftA) and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. Senators/co-chairs Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Jim Jeffords (I-VT) and Norm Coleman (R-MN) said in their invitation to fellow Senators: "Future generations will learn about our history and ideals through our literature, paintings, dance and drama. Yet, we often overlook the important role of the arts in our daily lives ... we can do much more to emphasize the broad array of activities that contribute in such a significant way to the cultural identity of our country." Let's all hope this turns out to be a good thing. [LINK]

Streets are safer in Bogotá, Colombia, thanks to Mayor Antanas Mockus, who reduced reckless driving by hiring traffic mimes, says María Cristina Caballero in the Harvard U. Gazette (3/11/04). Initially 20 professional mimes shadowed and mimed pedestrians who didn't follow crossing rules, and poked fun at reckless drivers. The program was so popular that another 400 people were trained as mimes. Mockus, a university rector turned politician, used lots of other "artist's resources" to change things. He reduced homicides by 30 percent and traffic fatalities by half, reduced water usage by 40 percent, launched a "Night for Women" and asked the city's men to stay home in the evening and care for the children, and got citizens to pay more taxes voluntarily. If you pick only one news story to read today, read this one. (Thanks, Beverly Naidus.) [LINK]

Arts-integrated curriculum produces conditions that cognitive scientists say are ideal for learning, says researcher Robin Redmond in an Education World Wire Side Chat. That's why academic performance rises and learning in all subjects becomes more hands-on and project-based. "Students begin to reflect on their own learning and that learning then becomes visible to both the students and their teachers through the art they make," says Redmond. Students' and teachers' opinions of student capacities improves -- shifts leading to "a cascade of change in the culture of a school." Redmond and Nick Rabkin edited "Putting the Arts in the Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century," a new study published by their Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College Chicago. [LINK]

Leadership for a Changing World (LCW) will host a live, online interview with Arnold Aprill, executive director of Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) on April 29, 2005, at 1 p.m. ET. In addition to answering participants' questions, Aprill will discuss the importance of integrating art into education and why cuts to funding for the arts is hurting America's children. Aprill, a recent LCW awardee and theater artist who has worked in Chicago's public schools for 25 years, founded CAPE in 1993. He stresses two urgent needs: "to address the shameful inequities in urban public education" and "to reclaim the arts as a potent force for activating participation democracy." Check for details and submit a question for Aprill on the LCW Web site. [LINK]

Augusto Boal and his son Julian are featured guests of the 11th Annual Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference in Hollywood, Calif., May 29-31, 2005. The conference offers 80 workshops, presentations, panels and events presented by people from all over the world on the theme: "Creative Tools for Critical Times: Amnesia, Witness, Intervention." Boal will lead preconference workshops (May 24-28) in Legislative Theatre and an introduction to TO. Keynote speakers are "Democracy Now" host Amy Goodman, filmmaker Robert Greenwald ("Uncovered" and "Outfoxed"), Paulo Freire Institute Chair Moacir Gadotti and theater artist Luis Alfaro. PTO-XI is hosted by the Center for Theatre of the Oppressed and Applied Theatre Arts, Los Angeles. [LINK]

In a recent N.Y. Daily News column, African-American critic Stanley Crouch urged black women to stop defending offensive hip-hop. In "Ladies, Stop Buying into Rap's Misogyny" (3/24/05) Crouch supports women challenging "the spiritual bilge of the worst of hip-hop," which "portrays black women as sluts, scantily clad nubile meat." He calls for more women to refute defenses of these images, such as that they "provide a way for black men at the bottom to become successful," "one should not mess with the flow of the dough," "anything that makes money is good - especially if it is not illegal" and "black people should not use 'white' standards to attack something that comes out of the neighborhood, that arrives from black street culture." [LINK]

A historic intertribal Unity Pow Wow is part of the Greening the Arts Festival in Columbia, S.C., in May 2005. In what is assumed to be the first-ever Native American ceremony on the State House lawn, tribes from 28 states will gather on May 22 to celebrate the state's long-awaited recognition of two tribes: the Waccamaw Indian People and the Pee Dee Indian Nation of Upper South Carolina. Greening the Arts (May 22-29) is an annual intercultural festival sponsored by the Children's Fine Arts Academy and organized by a culturally diverse committee of volunteers; this year's theme is "Our Native America." It also includes the South Carolina Cultural Literacy Institute, a film festival, exhibitions and music, including the African American Philharmonic. Info: Shirley Fields-Martin. [LINK]

Colegio del Cuerpo, or the College of the Body, is a contemporary-dance academy in Cartagena, Colombia, offering scholarships and opportunity to poor children. The colegio, says Juan Forero in the N.Y. Times (4/16/05), was founded in 1997 by Álvaro Restrepo, a native of Cartagena, after six years of dancing in New York. It offers scholarships, free lunches and the opportunity for travel to 56 children and young adults ranging in age from 10 to 27, many of whom are refugees from the civil war or Afro-Caribbean children living in Nelson Mandela, the sprawling shantytown on the city's edge. In the past seven years, they have performed in Paris, London, Hamburg, Brazil and Venezuela. "I discovered a new person inside of me," says student Eduard Martinez, 19, "one that was hiding." [LINK]

The first national critics conference, hosted by five national dance critics associations is set for Los Angeles, Calif., May 25-28, 2005. For "Critical Unity in Critical Times," the national organizations for dance, fine arts, classical music, jazz and theater critics will gather to discuss the arts and arts coverage of our times. "In a time when arts criticism appears to be in crisis -- fewer positions, less and less prominent space in most newspapers -- it is important not only to discuss the abiding rationale for criticism, but also practical solutions," said conference organizer and critic Michael Barnes. Meanwhile, says Barnes, "Arts journalism education is on the rise." For more on the crisis, read "Do Art Critics Still Matter?" by Marc Spiegler in The Art Newspaper. [LINK]

Boston is in the midst of spending more than $1 billion on new arts facilities. "The projects are varied, ranging from a contemporary art museum on the waterfront and downtown theaters to a pair of cultural centers slated for open space created by the Big Dig, according to Geoff Edgers in the Boston Globe (4/10/05). "It's staggering," says Boston Foundation President Paul Grogan. "Boston has always had a lively cultural scene, but I think we're seeing the kind of arts renaissance catching up with the tremendous revitalization Boston's undergone over the last 25 years'." It's also happening in New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Dallas, claims Edgers. Richard Florida says the boom is "very much like the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when the great fortunes were made." (Thanks, Arts Journal.) [LINK]

The Massive Change Project is a new multidiscipinary, multiplatform initiative to approach global development as a design problem. Bruce Mau Design studio's Institute Without Boundaries (IWB) in Canada hopes to educate a new breed of designer, a “synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist" (Buckminster Fuller). Design is one of the world's most powerful forces, says Mau, and "We must ask ourselves: Now that we can do anything, what will we do?" Through the Massive Change Project, IWB students are involved in an international touring exhibition commissioned by the Vancouver Art Gallery (there through May 24, 2005), that examines world-changing design breakthroughs, as well as Massive Thinkers Forums, a book, feature film project, radio program, product line, public events and evolving Web site. [LINK]

Check into city art all over the world with a Dutch project called ArtinCities. Join people worldwide who are photographing the ways artists are using the cities as outdoor exhibition space and submitting them to a Web site from Holland that maps the globe. As cities pop up on the map, you can click them and view the pictures. In addition to the online exhibition, there's a Web forum, a contest, a gallery show this month (April 2005, including a discussion with artists, architects, art historians and social scientists) and a later book publication. It's all part of a yearly project from Galerie De Meerse in Hoofddorp called "Art in...," which is oriented to pop youth culture and has included ArtinGames, ArtinAds, ArtinStreets and ArtinBoards. [LINK]

There's a bill coming up for a hearing in California that could establish a continuous funding stream for the California Arts Council (CAC). On Tuesday, April 19, 2005, the Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media will hold a hearing on AB 655. The source of funding for the CAC would come from a one-percent admission surcharge on entertainment venues and presenters of for-profits and possibly nonprofits. AB655, "All for 1%-1% for All" could provide funds, estimated at $30 million the first year, for grants from the CAC to arts organizations and arts-education programs throughout the state. California currently ranks last in state funding for the arts. Americans for the Arts has a mechanism to make your voice heard on this issue. [LINK]

Students, scholars and Native Americans will again reconstruct an ancient fishweir -- a tidal corral to catch fish -- on Boston Common May 4-17,2005. The Ancient Fishweir Project began in 2003 when public artist Ross Miller, attempting to restore Boston's original shoreline, made two discoveries: that 3,700-5,200 years ago, native tribes built fishweirs where the Common now stands, and that Boston has no public artwork honoring its native peoples. The annual celebration now includes the recreation of a 100-foot-long fishweir, ceremonies by the Massachuset and Wampanoag tribes, and on-site presentations by native teachers and archeologists. A companion curriculum is in place in local schools. Miller hopes to stimulate support for "the first permanent public artwork honoring Boston's original cultures." [LINK]

It's National Crime Victims' Rights Week, and artwork by crime victims is showing in "Art of Recovery" at the Minnesota State Arts Board through May 31, 2005. These victims of rape, child abuse, domestic violence and other crimes have used art to as respond, explore, express or heal. “The whole experience for me was akin to falling into a long, dark hole,” rape victim Deborah Meyer said in a video report on WCCO-TV. “I think art is a great way to try and dig one’s self out.” Watch Darcy Pohland's story and browse the exhibit on the Web. This second annual "Art of Recovery" is sponsored by the Arts Board and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Office of Justice Programs. (Thanks, NASAA.) [LINK]

Artists and speakers on the frontlines of drug policy will talk with audiences of the Los Angeles Poverty Department after performances throughout L.A. in May 2005. LAPD reprises its classic re-enactment of a 1988 Congressional hearing into CIA drug trafficking, "Agents & Assets," for the theater company's 20th anniversary. Director Peter Sellars leads the post-performance discussion, "Endless Wars: Drugs and Terror," May 21 at REDCAT. Historian Alfred McCoy chairs "Journalism, Propaganda & the War on Drugs" May 25 at the Democracy Forum (for the National Critics Conference). Dave Fratello, political director of Campaign for New Drug Policies, chairs "Then & Now: Proposition 36 and the Prison Industrial Complex," May 29 at Compton Community College. For complete info, e-mail Susan Martin. (For more on "Agents & Assets," see CAN's "Performing Communities.") [LINK]

Fifty years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama, the story is being retold by young people in four U.S. cities as an interactive digital mural. Working with the artists of the Cesar Chavez Digital Mural Lab at SPARC (Social and Public Art Research Center, Los Angeles), school children in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and D.C. learned about the nonviolent movement that would begin a process of desegregation in the U.S. Using SPARC's "voice to vision" process, the children wrote and painted visual metaphors to be combined in a digital mural and reproduced for installation in all four school sites. The process is illustrated on SPARC's contantly blossoming Web site, along with lots of other great SPARC news. [LINK]

This month Arlene Goldbard reviews a new book by James Bau Graves, "Cultural Democracy: The Arts, Community & the Public Purpose" (University of Illinois Press, 2004). Graves, a musician, ethnomusicologist and co-founder and director of the Center for Cultural Exchange in Portland, Maine, reports on his own journey as what he most often calls a “cultural mediator,” someone who stands between artists and communities, facilitating expression and relationship, says Goldbard. She enthusiastically recommends the book to CAN readers and "people who find themselves in such mediating, facilitative roles, because it models a thoughtful, self-critical and ambitious way to occupy this shifting and sometimes precarious professional space." But she does add a few "caveats." [LINK]

Artists Lucy Winner and Katt Lissard write this month for CAN about what happened when they asked their students at Empire State College, "What Does Democracy Look Like?" Their "Democracy Project: A Laboratory in Arts and Civic Dialogue" encouraged students to explore ways to "perform democracy" that is, to respond to current political, social and civic matters by making art together. The result? "The Museum of Democracy's Hall of Curiosities." Empire is SUNY's alternative college for adults and its student body couldn't be more diverse. This group produced a vote shredder, person-on-the-street videos about the First Amendment, a "Foundations of Democracy: An Exercise in Ostracism" installation, a "Column of No," a "Civic Dialogue Parlor," "The Last Protest Singer" and a "New American Emergency Flag." [LINK]

Denmark's Institute for Popular Theatre is making an international gesture with the 2005 Prize of Hope, for the first time presenting the award to an American cultural institution: The Dell'Arte Players and The Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, Calif. "Dell'Arte has been chosen to receive this award because they create artists with vigor and pith," says the Institute. "Actors who learn to ask questions and drive new initiatives. People who learn to believe in their dreams and see them through. The wild flowers fostered at the school continually burst through the asphalt in Aarhus, Amsterdam, San Francisco." The prize will be presented at the Aasen Theatre Institute in North Jutland on May 15, 2005, with "dance until sunrise." [LINK]

There's a new participatory "inquiry blog" on the Web from Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education. CAPEblog was created to facilitate and encourage social networking and dialogue on news and issues in arts education among CAPE partners and colleagues. Controversies are welcome. "Art is a problem seeking activity, as much as, if not more than, a problem solving activity," says CAPE Executive Director Arnold Aprill. "[This] blog is a record of CAPE staff encounters with local, national and international arts partnership programs, and the questions these encounters raise about our local work as well as about the growing field of school improvement through the arts. You, the reader, are heartily encouraged to respond to the questions raised." [LINK]

"U.S. Cultural Policy: Its Politics of Participation, Its Creative Potential" is a new white paper by Roberto Bedoya available on the National Performance Network Web site. Bedoya suggests a reframing of the discourse around American cultural policy. "Embracing Evan Alderson’s definition of cultural policy as a 'system of arrangements,'" says Bedoya in his introduction, "I aim to shed light on who is participating in the discourse. I ask whether there are exclusionary practices within the field of cultural policy, and conclude that there is in fact a significant sector of the nonprofit arts community — specifically artist-centered and ethnic-specific arts service organizations — that has been marginalized or absent in cultural policy discussions." [LINK]

Chicago Public Art Group has a new online Community Public Art Guide, based on 30 years of experience in engaging communities in representing themselves and transforming their public spaces. The guide includes technical information as well as portfolios of more than 100 community projects by the artists of CPAG. It provides practical fundamentals for making technically sound murals, mosaics, sculptures and spaces in collaborative settings; information on organizing collective design processes; analysis of the evolving aesthetic considerations in designing collaborative murals, mosaics, sculptures and spaces; and suggestions for incorporating public art making into the school curriculum. The guide was edited by CPAG's Olivia Gude and Jon Pounds. [LINK]

"Powder River Country" is a new documentary from High Plains Films by first-time director Marianne Zugel exposing coal-bed methane development in Montana and Wyoming. The film tells the story of concerned citizens trying to protect the Powder River Basin landscape from drilling and scarring that will lead to one year's supply of natural gas and the waste of billions of gallons of water. The rush for CBM and the havoc created in its wake is polarizing communities throughout the American West, says High Plains. "Driven by soaring prices, empowered by federal mining law and cheered on by the Bush administration, energy companies have been unstoppable in recent years as they march through the Rocky Mountain West searching for natural gas," says the Washington Post. [LINK]

Artists in Mozambique have transformed weapons into sculptures as part of that country's "Transforming Arms into Tools" (TAE) program, says Kati Dshedshorov on PeaveVox.com. Thirteen years after Mozambique's civil war, millions of guns were still scattered around the country. Bishop Dom Dinis Sengulane came up with TAE and now, in exchange for their guns, former combatants are offered building materials, tools and equipment like sewing machines, bicycles and ploughs. After being dismantled by TAE staff, the guns are made into sculptures by Mozambican artists. The new works are exhibited worldwide and include birds of peace, saxophones, chairs, monkeys, jazz bands and a huge "Tree of Life" sculpture to promote the power of art in creating a culture of peace. [LINK]

"A Long Bridge Over Deep Waters," Cornerstone Theater's "Bridge show" in its Faith-based Theater Cycle, is set for June 2-12, 2005, in Los Angeles. In the tradition of Cornerstone's previous Bridge shows, this project brings together representatives of ten communities of faith that the company has worked with during the last four years, including Tongva/Native Americans, Catholic Immigrants, the Jewish community, African-American Christians, Buddhists, Atheists/Non-Believers, Baha'i, Hindu and Muslim communities and Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender People of Faith. The show stages "an interlocking chain of unexpected encounters between communities of faith in today's Los Angeles" and features more than 60 professional and community artists. It's written by James Still and directed by Cornerstone co-founder Bill Rauch, who leaves his position as artistic director in March 2006. [LINK]

In honor of its birthday, the Appalachian grandaddy of community-based arts centers has published "Appalshop: Celebrating Thirty-Five Years." Appalshop, the arts/media center in the Kentucky coalfields, opens its 60-page birthday chapbook with an appreciation of its recent "RFK in EKY: The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project," then looks back over 35 years of Appalshop Films, Headwaters Television, the Appalshop and Community Media Institutes, Roadside Theater, WMMT-FM Radio, June Appal Recordings, American Festival Project and "Holler to the Hood." There's also news about fresh projects underway, like Tom Hansell's "Coal Bucket Outlaw Rolling Installation," a traveling solar-powered video display built inside a high-voltage power center salvaged from a coal mine. In several unique ways, it displays Hansell's documentary on overweight coal hauling, including community voices. [LINK]

Artist Tim Lefens has been awarded the 2005 Arts & Healing Network Award of $10,000 for his work with individuals who have never walked, rarely if ever spoken and have little or no practical use of their fingers. "Because of their silence they have been overlooked," says Lefens. To help empower them, he founded Artistic Realization Technologies (A.R.T.), a New Jersey-based nonprofit creating tools and techniques like laser-guided painting that bring exacting control, allowing uncompromised creative self-expression for those with the most severe physical challenges. "Healing takes place that clinicians never dreamed of," says Lefens in an AHN interview. "I've seen it everywhere we've gone -- a silent, despondent, vegetative child, then -- with their realizing their full creative power -- POOM! alive with joy." [LINK]

The Nomadic Museum is a 45,000 square foot structure designed by architect Shigeru Ban that will travel during 2005 from New York to Los Angeles to the Vatican. The museum, at Hudson River Park's Pier 54 in New York City through June 6, exhibits "Ashes and Snow," 200 photographs (6' x 9') and a film by artist Gregory Colbert capturing his 13-year global odyssey to photograph extraordinary moments of contact between man and animal. The museum's perimeter is 148 steel cargo containers, borrowed at each new location. The interior is paper tubing, wooden walkways and stone-filled bays. A handmade curtain of one million tea bags floats 40 feet above the floor, while cameras project images on the walls. [LINK]

The National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts and the MetLife Foundation have launched a major new initiative to improve teaching and learning in the arts. The MetLife Foundation Partners in Arts Education Project aims to advance sustainable partnerships between community schools of the arts and public schools. Through the project, the Guild will publish and distribute "The Partners in Excellence Handbook," a guide to best practices in CSA-public school partnerships. It will also present two partnership training institutes, and award grants of up to $15,000 to support exemplary partnerships during the 2005-2006 school year. Additional information and grant application guidelines are available on the CSA site. [LINK]

The Network for Ensemble Theaters will present the Ensemble Theater Festival in Blue Lake, Calif., June 21-26, 2005. The festival includes full productions by the following ensembles: About Productions (Los Angeles), Campo Santo (San Francisco), Dell'Arte Company (Blue Lake), Rude Mechanicals (Austin), San Francisco Mime Troupe, SITI Company (New York) and Universes (Bronx, N.Y.) and lab presentations by A Traveling Jewish Theater, Theatre Grottesco/Side Show Physical Theater, NaCl, Cultural Odyssey, Playback Theater NYC, Sojourn Theater and Coatlicue Theater Company. NETfest also features several panels, including "Books on Ensembles" with CAN's Linda Frye Burnham and scholars Jan Cohen-Cruz and Ferdinand Lewis (both of whom have new books out on community-based theater). All three participated in CAN's "Performing Communities: The Ensemble Theater Reseach Project." [LINK]

Time to sign up for exciting 2005 community arts summer institutes around the U.S. Opportunities abound: Liz Lerman Dance Exchange at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, June 13–24. Cornerstone Theater Company Institute in Westley, Grayson and Vernalis, Calif., July 10-August 7. The Bauen Camp for youth in Parkman, Wyo., July 1-August 16. Sojourn Theatre at Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Ore., July 11-16. Axis Dance Company Physically Integrated Dance Summer Intensive in Seattle, Wash., August 19-28. Be sure to let us know about your community arts workshops, conferences, courses and degree programs. We would love to publicize them. [LINK]

Learn about engaging communities in site-specific performance and then perform in Brooklyn's historic Green-Wood during summer 2005. BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange offers a six-session workshop with Dance/Theatre/Etcetera's Martha Bowers June 11-July 13, 2005, including an overview of the field and its community strategies, visits to Green-Wood for research with historian Jeff Richman and on-site creation of a performance that will become part of a full-moon walking tour of the cemetery on Saturday, July 16. Application deadline is May 13, 2005. Bowers has developed large-scale site-specific performances with diverse casts from the mussel boats of Wexford, Ireland, and the train yards of Lincoln, Nebraska, to the annual Red Hook Waterfront Arts Festival, which she produces. [LINK]

On the Creative America Project Web site, artist Delle Chatman describes learning to run for office at a January 2005 Project training session in Chicago. "From fundraising to logistics, innovative problem-solving to tactful compromise, art and politics require many of the same gifts," says Chatman. "Kevin Conlin asserted that no one knows better than artists how to create something out of nothing. Nicole Gotthelf described years of politicking as performance art. By lunchtime, we had stepped into West Wing land. Speakers were discussing how handlers and candidates needed to have 'the talk' (wherein the candidate drags all those skeletons out of the closet). We’d begun editing our stump speeches in our heads. We got right down to the real nitty-gritty." [LINK]