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HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
ANNOUNCEMENT FOR FIRST NATIONAL WOMEN'S MUSEUM
THE DECATUR HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
MARCH 18, 1998
1
Welcome to this historic announcement. I'm honored to join Cathy Bonner,
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Ed Whitacre, and all of you who have been such
role models and leaders on behalf of women in America -- as you make this
commitment to create the first museum dedicated to the achievements of women.
Today is a day to celebrate what many of us have known for a long time -- that
women's ability to influence every aspect of our lives has come of age.
It is quite fitting that we gather here today during Women's History Month,
a time to recognize women's contributions to the birth and evolution of this great
nation -- and to celebrate their achievements in the arts, in business, in public
service, in academia, in science, and in sports. It's impossible to imagine our lives
today without thinking about the pioneering women who every generation have
shaken off the constraints of their times to help shape a better future. Abigail
Adams. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Sojourner Truth. Margaret Sanger. Eleanor
Roosevelt. Rosa Parks. Sally Ride. Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Maya Angelou. And so
many more.
Throughout our history, women have expanded the very definition of
freedom; demanded an ever widening circle of opportunity for our citizens; and
furthered the explorations of our world and our universe. Yet too often, their
stories have not been included. Their contributions have not been celebrated.
Their voices have not been heard.
2
Today, we take an historic step forward -- to give voice to those stories, and
to build on those accomplishments -- by establishing the Women's Museum: An
Institute for the Future.
As some of you-may know, I've been engaged in promoting plans for our
nation's celebration of the Millennium. It's an exciting opportunity for
conversation and collaboration -- a time to take stock of who we are, and what
values, history and culture we want to carry into the next century. Over the next
three years, we hope to inspire all Americans to come together across the lines that
separate us -- to mark this milestone in our history. The theme we've chosen for
the Millennium is "Honor the Past: Imagine the Future."
And that is exactly what this new Women's Museum is being created to
accomplish. This will be a museum that not only looks back to honor and celebrate
the women who have helped forge and lead this great nation -- but also looks
forward, to help the present and future generation of women to imagine the
extraordinary possibilities to come.
3
I am proud that this Administration has been so committed to bringing the
concerns of women to the forefront of our nation's agenda. From the family
medical leave act to historic investments in child care and health care to last
week's White House announcements on international women's rights, this
Administration has worked hard to improve the lives of women, families, and
children. And as a result of that commitment, and those investments, our daughters
and their daughters will have greater opportunities to pursue their dreams, shape
their world, and fulfill their God-given potential.
The Women's Museum is for them, as well as for us. But a museum of this
significance does not happen by dreams alone. It becomes a living and breathing
museum thanks to the work and support of many people and organizations, from
both the public and private sectors. And here, I want to recognize SBC
Communications for coming to the table early on -- and providing such an historic
gift to salute women everywhere. I hope that their example will encourage other
companies and organizations to step forward and contribute in similarly generous
ways.
4
This year, we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the
women's rights movement in Seneca Falls. One of its leaders -- Elizabeth Cady
Stanton -- made the then revolutionary statement that "We hold these truths to be
self evident, that all men and women are created equal." Much of our nation's
history since then has been the struggle to make that simple statement a reality --
not only for women, but for all citizens denied the opportunity to fully participate
in the life of this country.
We know that this struggle is far from over. But today's announcement to
establish The Women's Museum will help ensure that the history of that struggle
will be told. Such a place, I believe, will also help inspire all of us -- men and
women, boys and girls -- to better meet the extraordinary challenges and
opportunities that we will face in the next Millennium.
5
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
TALKING POINTS FOR POETRY SLAM
JOHNSON JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
APRIL 22, 1998
As I watched the students from Johnson and Kramer Schools prepare to face off at
Borders Books tonight, I couldn't help but think: Poetry slamming may have begun in my
home town of Chicago more than 10 years ago, but it is being perfected by all of you
right here in Southeast Washington.
I want to thank all the students from the East of the River Inter-Scholastic Slam league --
Hart Middle School, Kramer Middle School, Evans Middle School, and Johnson Junior
High School.
Your success is a product not only of your heart, mind, and hard work. It is also a
product of the people who have stood beside you and taught you that you can go as far as
your dreams and abilities take you. I want to thank Nancy Schwalb, a WritersCorps
instructor who founded this Slam League and works tirelessly to nurture and guide it.
Kenneth Carroll, who not only moderated today's Slam, but coordinates the WritersCorps
program in D.C. [Beginning 4 years ago, WritersCorps brings professional writers into
underserved communities to help people improve their reading, writing, and other forms
of expression]
Mrs. Barbara Lois Fullard, the coach and inspiration of Johnson's team and the key to
making the program work here. And Principal Robert Gill, for inviting us here and
supporting Johnson's participation in the Slam League.
April is National Poetry Month. And tonight at the White House, we will be hosting a
celebration of the past and future of poetry. You are that future.
Like many of you, I was first introduced to poetry in school. I remember being asked to
recite some of my favorite poems in class. To prepare, I would say them over and over
again. That's how we become inspired and challenged by the music of poetry. We must
make sure that every student in Washington and America has that opportunity that the
arts are as central to our education as the 3 Rs.
I brought along with me three people who have a lot in common. Robert Pinsky, Robert
Haas, and Rita Dove have all worked tirelessly to ensure that poetry reaches every young
person, indeed every American. They are three of our nation's most extraordinary,
influential, and well-known poets. And they have all served as our nation's Poet
Laureate. Now what does that mean? It is my great honor to introduce the current Poet
Laureate, Robert Pinsky. He will explain what he does; and kick-off a poetry reading that
all of us will enjoy and a discussion that all of us can take part in. Mr. Pinsky
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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
April 22, 1998
REMARKS AT
MILLENNIUM LECTURE SERIES
The East Room
7:30 P.M. EDT
MS. LOVELL: Welcome to the third Millennium Evening at the White
House. We are glad to know that outside this room, so full of
anticipation, are thousands of Americans who are watching, listening and
having your own discussion.
We begin this evening with a short film in which our Librarian of
Congress tells us about the Poet Laureate Consultant Program, and the
three most recent Poets Laureate speak about their work as writers, but
also as voices of poetry.
At the same time, we are here to honor all of you, poets of the
world, listeners, readers, you whose curiosity and love of language is
alive. Where the voice that is in us makes a true response; where the
voice that is great within us rises up.
(A film is shown.)
MRS. CLINTON: Who can remember back to the first poets, the
greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus? No one has remembered that
far back, or now considers among the artifacts and bones and
cantilevered inference the past is made of, those first and greatest
poets, so lofty and disdainful of renown, they left us not a name to
know them by.
They were the ones that, in whatever tongue worded the world, that
were the first to say, star, water, stone; that said the visible and
made it bring invisibles to view in wind and time and change. And in
the mind itself, that mind of the hitherto idiot world, and spoke the
speechless world, and sang the towers of the city into the astonished
sky.
They were the first great listeners, attuned to interval
relationship and scale; the first to say, above, beneath, beyond.
Congerers with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine; who, having
uttered, vanished from the world leaving no memory but the marvelous,
magical elements -- the breathing shapes and stops of breaths we build
our babbles of.
To you, who speak the speechless world, and to the great listeners
who hear it, we are honored to welcome you to the White House.
Just like Howard Nemerov in "The Makers,' we are here on this
Millennium Evening to celebrate the timeless power of poetry and poets
as our American memory, our purveyors of insight and culture, our eyes
and ears who silence the white noise around us and express the very
heart of what connects us, plagues us, and makes us fully human.
I want to thank everyone who has made this celebration possible --
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especially Ellen Lovell, the Director of the White House Millennium
Council; our Poets Laureate, Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, Bob Hass, Anthony
Hecht, and William Meredith. What better way to commemorate National
Poetry Month than by gathering our nation's poetry and poets in our
nation's home.
When Stephen Hawking gave the second Millennium Lecture here, I'd
said that there had never been more physicists in the White House. I
don't believe there have ever been more poets in the White House than
this evening. (Laughter.) I hope you will also get a chance to visit
the foyer and see some of the extraordinary works that capture America's
role in poetry and poetry's role in America. For that exhibit and so
much more, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. James Billington, the
center for the book, the curators, and the entire Library of Congress.
Let me also thank Bill Ferris and the National Endowment for the
Humanities, state humanities councils, the Howard Gilman Foundation, Phi
Theta Kappa, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and Sun Microsystems
for bringing this event to people throughout our nation and the world,
first via satellite to more than 200 sites in 44 states, and also via
the Internet on the White House web site and the Sun Microsystems site.
This is the third of many Millennium Evenings we will be holding
with scholars, artists, scientists, and other creative individuals to
help our nation explore who we are, who we want to be as we enter the
next century. The goal of all of our White House Millennium activities
is to honor the past and imagine the future, and that is what we are
doing tonight, with both poetry and prose, with cutting-edge technology
and the torn pages of old books.
Like many of you, I suppose my first real introduction to poetry
took place in a classroom. I remember standing before what looked to be
a sea of other children and reciting poems I'd memorized by saying them
out loud at the kitchen table on the way to school before going to
sleep, over and over again. That is how I and so many learned to feel
the music and rhythm and inspiration of poetry, to understand its window
onto our experiences as Americans, individuals and communities. Whether
we sang the Star-Spangled Banner or recited in Emma Lazurus' words
inscribed in the Statue of Liberty, or asked Langston Hughes' haunting
question, what happens to a dream deferred, we were being influenced by
poetry.
We know that happens every day, not just while we're still in
school -- when we fall in love or see loved ones die, when our hopes are
realized or dashed; we tuck our children into bed, perhaps to a favorite
rhyme or walk through a garden. In every moment of our lives the poems
we read or write or remember speak to us, often transforming us,
comforting us. And we pass that love for them down from generation to
generation.
It's important that we touch not just the lives of the few through
poetry, but the everyday life of all of us. That's what the Poet
Laureate Joseph Brodsky was talking about when he said that, an
anthology of American poetry should be found in the drawer in every room
in every motel in the land. Seven years later, we see that dream being
fulfilled in truck stops, supermarkets and train stations, where
thousands of copies of 101 Great Poems are being handed out by his
American Poetry and Literacy Project every April.
This afternoon, we saw poetry in action at Johnson Junior High
School in Southeast Washington. We saw students who were practicing for
a poetry slam taking place tonight. Now, for those of you who have
never seen a slam, it's a high-speed, high-spirited competition where
students face off against each other, reading their own poems and
receiving scores like at the Olympics from a group of judges.
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Using their voices as an instrument and their souls as a library,
these students read poems about the beauty of their names, the plight of
a homeless man, the contributions of Duke Ellington, their pride, and
their pains. And they talked about how poetry had helped put their
anger on paper, instead of acting it out; how it had opened up thoughts
they never knew existed and given them confidence. One young man stood
up and said as part of his poem, I'm so musical that when I write a song
you sing it for the rest of your life. (Laughter.)
No one has worked harder to ensure that children and young people
and all of us throughout America sing poetry for the rest of our lives
than our two former and current Poets Laureate. Whether by promoting
literacy and celebrating our environment, or by bringing poetry to
everyone and putting everyday life into poetry, they have been on the
front lines.
We are also very grateful that Robert Pinsky has created a program
for recording poems, the poems that help define us as individuals and as
a nation. And just this morning I was pleased to announce that the
National Endowment for the Arts is awarding $500,000 to support the
Favorite Poem Project.
So tonight it is my great honor to introduce three of Howard
Nemerov's "makers" who will speak the speechless world and bring it to
all of us -- in other words, their own version of the poetry slam -- our
Poets Laureate, Bob Hass, Rita Dove and Robert Pinsky, who will start
things off with a few comments.
Please welcome them. (Applause.)
MR. PINSKY: We're here to honor our ancestors -- not our literal
ancestors, but our ancestors in poetry -- and to imagine ways that we
can give the gift that they gave to us to the young.
I'll start with just a few lines from Harriet Converse's 19th
century translation of an Iroquois Thanksgiving Song:
We give thanks that the voice of the
Great Spirit can still be heard through
the words of ganay-oh-day-ho. We thank
the Great Spirit that we have the
privilege of this pleasant occasion.
We give thanks for the persons who can
sing the Great Spirit's music and hope
that they will be privileged to
continue in his faith. We thank the
Great Spirit for all the persons who
perform the ceremonies on this
occasion.
We're going to try to give a fast, representative reading from the
great heritage of American poetry. And the place to begin seems to be
with the poet who embodies the sweep and embrace and cultural appetite
of American art and American life at its best. I'll read a few lines
from the opening from "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," by Walt Whitman, and
then my friends will continue in that vein.
Crowds of men and women attired in the
usual costumes, how curious you are to
me. On the ferry boats, the hundreds
and hundreds that cross, returning
home, are more curious to me than you
suppose. And you that shall cross from
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shore to shore years hence are more to
me, and more in my meditation than you
might suppose.
The others that are to follow me, the
ties between me and them, the certainty
of others, the life, love, sight,
hearing of others.
Others will enter the gates of the
ferry and cross from shore to shore.
Others will watch the run of the flood
tide. Others will see the shipping of
Manhattan, north and west, and the
heights of Brooklyn to the south and
east. Others will see the islands
large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them
as they cross, the sun half an hour
high. A hundred years hence, or ever
so many hundred years hence, others
will see them, will enjoy the sunset,
the pouring in of the flood tide, the
falling back to the sea of the ebb
tide.
It avails not, time nor place; distance
avails not. I am with you, men and
women of a generation, or ever so many
generations hence.
Just as you feel when you look on the
river and sky, so I felt. Just as any
of you who is one of a living crowd, I
was one of a crowd. Just as you are
refreshed by the gladness of the river
and the bright flow, I was refreshed.
Just as you stand and lean on the rail,
yet hurry with the swift current, I
stood, yet was hurried. Just as you
look on the numberless masts of ships
and the thick-stemmed pipes of
steamboats, I looked.
MS. DOVE: From Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself."
A child said, What is the grass?
fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not
know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my
disposition, out of hopeful green stuff
woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of
the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer
designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name some way in
the corners, that we may see and remark
and say, Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child,
the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform
hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad
zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among
white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman,
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Cuff, I give them the same. I receive
them the same. And now it seems to me
the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
And Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."
I've known rivers. I've known rivers
ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns
were young. I built my hut near the
Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the
pyramids above it. I heard the singing
of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen
its muddy bosom turn all golden in the
sunset.
I've known rivers, ancient, dusky
rivers. My soul hath grown deep like
the river.
MR. HASS: We move from Walt Whitman's Atlantic to Langston
Hughes' Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean of Robinson Jeffers. I'm
going to read a poem written after the death of his wife, in the late
1950s, and it's called "Vulture."
I had walked since dawn and laid down
to rest on a bare hillside above the
ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids
a vulture wheeling up in heaven. And
presently it passed again, but nearer
and lower, its orbit narrowing.
I understood then that I was under
inspection. I laid death-still and
heard the flight feathers whistle above
me and make their circle and come
nearer. I could see the naked red head
between the great wings bear downward,
staring.
I said, 'My dear bird, we are wasting
time here. These old bones still work.
They are not for you. But how
beautiful he looked gliding down on
those great sails. How beautiful he
looked veering away in the sea light
over the precipice. I tell you
solemnly that I was sorry to have
disappointed him. To be eaten by that
beak and become part of him, to share
those wings and those eyes, what a
sublime end of one's body, one an
enskyment, what a life after death." "
MR. PINSKY: I hope you all noticed how artfully we went from the
east coast to the midwest to the Pacific. (Laughter.) I hope it's not
a complete bromide to say that if Whitman embodies an audacious sweep
and cultural appetite and cultural omnivorousness, Emily Dickinson
embodies other characteristics of American art, an audacious
individuality and boldness and concentration. And we thought it would
be appropriate to do some of those.
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Further in summer than the birds,
pathetic from the grass
A minor nation celebrates its unobtrusive mass.
No ordinance be seen
So gradual the grace a pensive custom
it becomes, enlarging loneliness.
Antiquest felt at noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral canticle,
Repose to typify.
Remit as yet no grace,
No furrow on the glow
Yet a Druidic difference
Enhances nature now.
(MR. HASS:)
Much madness is the vinest sense to the
discerning eye. Much sense the starkest
madness. Tis the majority prevails; tis
the majority in this as all prevails.
Assent and you are sane; demure, you're
straight way dangerous and handled with a
chain.
(MS. DOVE:)
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness in the room was like the
stillness in the air between the heaves
of storm.
The eyes around had wrung them dry, and
breaths were gathering firm for that
last onset, when the king be witnessed
in the room.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away what
portion of me be assignable. And then
it was there interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
between the light and me.
And then the windows failed, and then I
could not see to see.
(MR. PINSKY:)
After great pain, a formal feeling comes.
The nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.
The stiff heart questions, was it He that
bore, and yesterday, or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round of ground or
air or ought. A wooden way, regardless
grown. A quartz contentment, like a stone.
This is the hour of lead,
Remembered, if outlived, as freezing
persons recollect the snow.
First chill, then stupor, then the letting
go.
We could be all Dickinson, couldn't we? (Laughter.) I said that
these are poems of the past, but we are imagining them for future
generations. So we thought we'd read a group of poems to do with
children and families and the passing on of culture. I think this is
the only commissioned poem that will be read tonight. This is a poem by
William Carlos Williams that his grandson asked him to write.
(Laughter.)
The Turtle (For My Grandson.)
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Not because of his eyes, the eyes of a bird
but because he is beaked, bird-like, to do
an injury, has the turtle attracted you.
He is your only pet. When we are together
you talk of nothing else, ascribing all
sorts of murderous motives to his least
action.
You ask me to write a poem, should I have
poems to write about a turtle. The turtle
lives in the mud, but is not mud-like.
You can tell it by his eyes, which are
clear. When he shall escape his present
confinement he will stride about the world
destroying all with his sharp beak.
Whatever opposes him in the streets of the
city shall go down. Cars will be
overturned. And upon his back shall ride
to his conquests my lord, you. You shall
be master.
In the beginning there was a great tortoise
who supported the world. Upon him all
ultimately rests. Without him, nothing
will stand. He is all wise and can outrun
the hare. In the night, his eyes carry him
to unknown places. He is your friend.
MR. HASS: Anne Bradstreet was, I guess, the first American poet.
She was the first English colonist to publish a book of poems. She
came to New England on the ship Arabella, the first ship that brought
the Puritans to New England, in 1630. And her book was published in
1650, but the poem I'm going to read was not in that book. She thought
it was too personal to be printed, and it wasn't, in fact, printed
until 1865. It was a poem that she wrote to her husband in the ninth
month of a pregnancy.
Giving birth in that wilderness in those years was a risky
business, and she feared she wouldn't survive it, and she wrote this
poem to speak to him. It begins, as Puritan poems often did, in adages
and platitudes, but listen to what happens. The Victorian editor gave
it the title "Before the Birth of One of Her Children."
All things within the fading world hath
end. Adversity doth still our joys attend.
No ties so strong, no friend so dear and
sweet,
But with death's parting blow is sure to
meet.
The sentence passed is most irrevocable, a
common thing, yet, oh, inevitable.
How soon, my dear, death may my steps attend.
How soon't may be thy lot to lose thy friend.
We're both ignorant, yet love bids me these farewell
lines to recommend to thee,
That when that knot's untied that made us one,
I may seem thine, who in effect am none.
And if I see not half my days that's due,
What nature would, God grant to yours and you.
The many faults that well you know I have
Let be interred in my oblivious grave.
If any worth or virtue were in me,
Let that live freshly in they memory.
And when thou feelst no grief as I no harms,
Yet love they dead who lay long in thine arms.
And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains,
Look to my little babes, my dear remains.
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And if thou loves thyself or lovest me,
These, oh, protect from stepdame's injury.
And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,
With some sad sighs, honor my absent hearse.
And kiss this paper, for thy love's dear sake,
Who, with salt tears, this last farewell did take.
MR. PINSKY: I'll read a poem by one of our predecessors as
consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, Robert Hayden. The
poem is a memory of his childhood.
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays, too, my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blue-black cold,
then with cracked hands that ached from labor
in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze.
No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm he'd call
and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing
the chronic angers of that house,
speaking indifferently to him who had driven out the
cold and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know of
love's austere and lonely offices?
MS. DOVE: Many of us know Sylvia Plath as a writer of wonderful
and troubled poems. And what some people do not realize is that she
wrote some of the most beautiful love poems to her children, poems about
being a mother, all of that joy, and that anguish.
"Child"
Your clear eye is the one absolutely
beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose names you meditate,
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
little stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical
Not this troublous wringing of hands,
this dark ceiling without a star.
MR. PINSKY: One of the things that Americans should perhaps be
most patriotic about is our impurity. Cultural blendings, collidings,
crazy mixes and improvisations are behind our distinctive works -- such
as jazz and the American feature film and, indeed, American poetry as
well as American music, of country music, things. And we thought we'd
try to read a few poems that suggest some of that genius for unexpected
and impure cultural mixes and ways that we're related to the cultures
of other continents in ways that are unexpected.
MS. DOVE: I'll start with a poem by County Cullin, who was a
great proponent of the Harlem Renaissance, that magnificent explosion of
music, of poetry, art and just plain good fun in the '20s. In this
poem, though, County Cullin, who's an African American poet, writes to
another poet, to John Keats, the English poet.
To John Keats, poet, at springtime. I
cannot hold my peace, John Keats.
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There never was a spring like this. It
is an echo that repeats my last year's
song and next year's bliss. I know, in
spite of all men say of beauty, you
have felt her most. Yea, even in your
grave, her way is laid. Poor, troubled,
lyric ghost, spring never was so fair
and dear as beauty makes her seem this
year.
I cannot hold my peace, John Keats. I
am as helpless in the toil of spring as
any lamb that bleats, the field of
solid earth recoil beneath his puny
legs. Spring beats her toxin call to
those who love her and, lo, the dogwood
petals cover her breast with drifts of
snow and sleek white gulls fly
screaming to her and hover about her
shoulders and kiss her cheek, while
white and purple lilacs muster a
strength that bears them to a cluster
of color and odor. For her sake, all
things that slept are now awake.
And you and I, shall we lie still, John
Keats, while beauty summons us?
Somehow I feel your sensitive will is
pulsing up some tremulous sap road of a
maple tree, whose leaves grow music as
they grow, since your wild voice is in
them -- a harp that grieves for life,
that opens death's dark door. Though
dust, your fingers still can push the
vision splendid to a birth. Though now
they work as grass in the hush of the
night on the broad, sweet page of the
earth.
John Keats is dead, they say. But I,
who hear your full, insistent cry in
bud and blossom, leaf and tree, know
John Keats still writes poetry.
And while my head is earthward bowed to read new life
sprung from your shroud, folks seeing me
must think it's strange that merely spring
should so derange my mind. They do not
know that you, John Keats, keep rebel with
me, too.
MR. PINSKY: A whole tremendous weight of European thought and
religion and philosophical questioning is dealt with in a very
irreverent and saucy way in this poem by Wallace Stevens.
"The Pleasures of Merely Circulating."
The garden flew round with the angel.
The angel flew round with the clouds.
And the clouds flew round and the
clouds flew round and the clouds flew
round with the clouds.
Is there any secret in skulls, the
cattle skulls in the woods? Do the
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drummers and black hoods rumble
anything out of their drums?
Mrs. Anderson's Swedish baby might well
have been German or Spanish
But the things go round and again go
round Has rather a classical sound.
MR. HASS: Since Rita read County Cullin's tribute to John Keats,
I thought that I'd read the tribute of an Irish American poet to a great
black American artist. It's Frank O'Hara's elegy for Billie Holiday,
called, "The Day Lady Died." And you should probably know that Billie
Holiday used to sing at the Five Spot and that her accompanist was named
Mal Waldron. This is the saucy, circumstantial American poetry of the
New York art scene in the 1950s.
"The Day Lady Died"
It is 12:20 in New York, a Friday,
three days after Bastille Day. Yes,
it's 1959 and I go get a shoe shine
because I will get off the 419 in
Easthampton at 7:15 and then go
straight to dinner and I don't know the
people who will feed me.
I walk up the muggy street beginning to
sun and have a hamburger and a malted
and buy an ugly New World Writing to
see what the poets in Ghana are doing
these days.
I go to the bank and Mrs. Stillwagon
(first name Linda, I once heard)
doesn't even look at my balance for
once in her life. And in the Golden
Griffin Bookstore I get a little
Verlaine for Patsy with drawings by
Bonnard although I do think of Hesiod
translator Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon
or Les Negres of Genet,
But I don't, I stick with Verlaine after practically
going to sleep with quandariness.
And for Mike I just stroll into the
Park Lane Liquor Store and ask for a
bottle of Strega and then I go back
where I came from, to 6th Avenue and
the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld
Theatre, and casually ask for a carton
of Gauloises and a carton of Picayunes
and a New York Post with her face on
it.
And I am sweating a lot now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 Spot
while she whispered a song along the
keyboard to Mal Waldron and everyone and I
stopped breathing.
MR. PINSKY: We'll read a series of poems that have to do with
imagination, I think in an American context. The poem I'm going to
read to you has a lot in common in American country music. It's
basically kind of a "somebody done somebody wrong" narrative in which
the extraordinary nature of the woman who chooses very badly in love
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becomes part of the pride of a town. And the relationship between the
gossip, or the preoccupation of the town and her heroism makes
something of the story that's a little more significant to the
imagination than the story would be in itself, for her, or than the
town would be.
And the rhymes -- it's Edwin Arlington's "Eros Turannos" -- Love
the Tyrant. The rhymes in the poem are like a somewhat, somewhat
longing notion of a ballad, but it's like a hyper-ballad. It's a ballad
straining to be a ballad in a community that is partly too lonely to be
the adequate community.
"Eros Turannos"
She fears him, and will always ask
What fated her to choose him;
She meets in his engaging mask
All reasons to refuse him;
But what she meets and what she fears
Are less than are the downward years
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs
Of age, were she to lose him.
Between a blurred sagacity
That once had power to sound him,
And love that will not let him be
The Judas that she found him,
Her pride assuages her almost,
As if it were alone the cost.
He sees that he will not be lost
And waits and looks around him.
A sense of ocean and old trees
Envelops and allures him;
Tradition touching all he sees
Beguiles and reassures him;
And all her doubts of what he says
Are dimmed with what she knows of days --
Ill even in prejudice delays
And fades, and she secures him.
The falling leaf inaugurates
The reign of her confusion;
The pounding wave reverberates
The dirge of her illusion;
And home, where passion lived and died,
Becomes a place where she can hide
While all the town harbor side
Vibrate with her seclusion.
We tell you, tapping on our brows,
The story as it should be,
As if the story of a house
Were told, or ever could be;
We'll have no kindly veil between
Her visions and those we have seen,
As if we guessed what hers have been,
Or what they are or would be.
Meanwhile we do no harm; for they
That with a God have striven,
Not hearing much of what we say,
Take what the god has given;
Though like waves breaking it may be,
Or like a changed familiar tree,
Or like a stairway to the sea
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Where down the blind are driven.
MS. DOVE: Elizabeth Bishop wrote one of the most amazing sestinas
I think of the English language. The sestina is a lot like a household
as seen by a child. Words keep popping up, objects, and you try to make
sense of them. And just as a sestina uses those six words over and over
again, a child will find a way to piece together the puzzle of its
existence and its place in the world.
This is Elizabeth Bishop's "Sestina."
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old
grandmother sits in the kitchen with
the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of
the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the
child, It's time for tea now; but the
child is watching the teakettle's small
hard tears dance like mad on the hot
black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the
house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother hangs
up the clever almanac on its string.
Birdlike, the almanac hovers half open
above the child, hovers above the old
grandmother and her teacup full of dark
brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the
house feels chilly, and puts more wood
in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons, the child draws a rigid
house and a winding pathway. Then the
child puts in a man with buttons like
tears and shows it proudly to the
grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove, the
little moons fall down like tears from
between the pages of the almanac into
the flower bed the child has carefully
placed in the front of the house.
Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous
stove and the child draws another
inscrutable house.
MR. HASS: Wallace Stevens probably thought longer and more
directly about imagination, about the American imagination, about the
relationship of the imagination to reality than any other American
poet. And this is his last -- possibly his second to last, poem on the
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subject. It's either the last poem he wrote, or very near it -- this
man who spent 30 years walking from his house to his job as an
executive vice president of the Hartford Insurance Company, musing on
his own mind. And this last poem he called, "Of Mere Being."
I should say that it's a man who lived through hard winters
Floridian imagination of mere being. (Laughter.)
The pond at the end of the mine, beyond
the last thought rises in the bronze
decor. A gold feathered bird sings in
the pond without human feeling, without
human meaning, a foreign song. It is
then you know it is not the reasons
that make us happy or unhappy.
The tree stands at the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly through the
branches. The birds' fire-fangled
feathers dangle down."
MR. PINSKY: What we've been doing is seeking inspiration and
sustenance and comfort from our past, from the ancestors. The last
poem that we're going to read for this part of the evening is a poem
about that journey, how mysterious and difficult and stressful and
challenging and, the end, restorative, that search into the past is.
And we'll share the reading of the poem amongst the three of us.
So the final poem, this part of the evening, is Robert Frost's
poem, "Directive."
Back out of all this now too much for
us. Back in a time made simple by the
loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved and broken
off Like graveyard marble sculpture in
the weather.
There is a house that is no more a
house, Upon a farm that is no more a
farm,
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide
direct you
Who only has at heart your getting
lost, May seem as if it should have
been a quarry,
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping
covered.
And there's a story in a book about it;
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast,
northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic
Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness
from him
Still said to haunt this side of
Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal of
being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty
firkins.
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(MS. DOVE:)
As for the woods excitement over
you that sends light russell rushes to
their leaves, charge that to upstart
inexperience. Where were they all not
twenty years ago. They think too much of
having shaded out a few old pecker-fretted
apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
someone's road home from work this once
was, who may be just ahead of you on
foot or creaking with a buggy-load of
grain. The height of the adventure is
the height of country where two village
cultures faded into each other. Both
of them are lost.
And if you're lost enough to find
yourself by now, pull in your ladder
road behind you and put a sign up:
Closed to all but me. Then make
yourself at home. The only field now
left no bigger than a harness gall.
First there is the children's house of
make-believe, some shattered dishes
underneath a pine, the playthings in
the playhouse of the children. Weep
for what little things could make them
glad.
(MR. HASS:)
Then for the house that is no
more a house but only a bililacked cellar
hole now slowly closing like a dent in
dought. This was no playhouse but a house
in earnest. Your destination and your
destinies, a brook that was the water of
the house, cool as a spring as yet so near
its source, too lofty and original to rage.
We know the valley streams that when
aroused will leave their tatters hung
on barb and thorn. I have kept hidden
in the instep arch of an old cedar at
the waterside a broken drinking goblet
like the grail, under a spell so the
wrong one's can't find it, so can't get
saved, as St. Mark says they mustn't.
I stole the goblet from the children's
playhouse.
Here are your waters and your watering
place. Drink and be whole again,
beyond confusion.
(Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: I don't mean to be heretical, but I was
transported by Robert and Robert and Rita. And I was thinking, this
really is an historic moment: first, there were the three tenors
-- (laughter) -- then there were three sopranos, but nobody ever had
three such poets before. and we thank them. (Applause.)
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A few years ago there was an interesting article in the Atlantic
Monthly, which asked whether poetry could matter in the 21st century. I
reread it a few moments before coming down tonight. You know, in this
crazy world we're living in, everything's running around so fast. If it
could matter, how could we revive the human value of poetry -- its
importance to our culture, to our sense of who we are and who we are
becoming as individuals and as a people?
Well, tonight there is a poet who was not an American, but was
very much of the Americas, and I think we would be remiss not to
acknowledge. Here's what Octavio Paz said about his craft: "Between
what I see and what I say, between what I say and what I keep silent,
between what I keep silent and what I dream, between what I dream and
what I forget, poetry."
That is what we celebrate here tonight. Does it have any value?
Of course, it does. It made us happy. It made us nostalgic. It made
us sad. It made us wiser tonight.
When I was a boy in high school I was once required to memorize
100 lines from MacBeth -- hardly designed to entice me to a public
career. (Laughter.) But then again, I learned about the dangers of
blind ambitions -- (laughter) -- the fleeting nature of fame --
(laughter) -- the ultimate emptiness of power disconnected from higher
purpose. Mr. Shakespeare made me a better President. (Applause.)
Something quite a lot to be said for all this, and I welcome you
here tonight. Tonight, we have honored the poetry of our nation's past.
Now, I'd like for you to see some of the poets of our future, people
whom Hillary and our Poets Laureate visited with today at Johnson Junior
High School.
(A video is shown.)
THE PRESIDENT: Now I'd like to turn the discussion over to the
Director of our White House Millennium Project, Ellen Lovell.
MS. LOVELL: Thank you, Mr. President. We invited some other
Americans who love poetry to come here and read us their favorite poems.
And the first is Barry Norkin from the Veterans Nursing Home program in
Silver Spring, Maryland.
MR. NORKIN: Hello, I am Barry Norkin, and I would like to share
with you Robert Frost's beautiful poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening."
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
to watch his woods fill up with
snow.
My little horse must think it queer
to stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
this darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
to ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
of easy wind on downy flake.
Ah, the woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
but I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
and miles to go before I sleep.
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(Applause.)
MS. LOVELL: Thank you, Mr. Norkin. I know that poem means a lot
to you.
We have Internet questions now from all over the world, Mrs.
Clinton, from Germany and Australia, Saudi Arabia, England, and India,
but let's take the first one from the United States.
MRS. CLINTON: This question is from Rebecca Sue Olson from
Chapin, South Carolina. And it's for any of the poets. "As we become
more and more of a sound-bite society and rely upon technology for
communication, will poetry even be relevant in the new millennium?"
Robert, Bob, Rita?
MR. HASS: Someone asked me that the other day. In fact, poets
often get asked that in interviews, and I always think it's such a
curious question. Technologies are media. They have content. I was
with the grand old Nobel Laureate, Czeslaw Milosz, a couple of weeks ago
on a spring afternoon in Portland. And we walked into a restaurant, and
a very fresh-faced young waitress came toward us with a tray full of
fruit. And he turned to me and said, you know, life is so pleasant it's
a pity one has to die. (Laughter.)
One needs a language in which to say those things whatever the
technologies are. I don't understand how human beings will have any
less need to think strange thoughts and feel their way into the
strangest and funniest and happiest and weirdest feelings because
they're using some other media. (Applause.)
MS. LOVELL: Reverend Michael Haynes from the Twelfth Baptist
Church in Boston, I know that poetry is intertwined with your life and
work.
REVEREND HAYNES: My parents immigrated to the United States from
the island country of Barbados around 1920. I was born around 1927 in
the heart of Boston, on the edge of the Great Depression, which had its
terrible impact upon our family. I went to the Boston Public Schools,
and in the 9th grade in junior high school a very, very caring,
insightive teacher kept quoting phrases that said something like this,
"Be not like dumb, driven cattle; be a hero in the strife." That was
the first seed in my life of one whom I came to know as the New England
poet by the name of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
When I got to Boston English High School, our English teacher made
us learn the poem and recite the poem, gave us a little of the
background. I didn't realize that I was receiving a seed in my life
that was going to help me psychologically, sociologically and even,
eventually, theologically.
When I got to theological school all of the pieces of Longfellow
began to make an awful lot of sense. His Psalm of Life became mine:
Tell me not in mournful numbers, life
is but an empty dream, for the soul is
dead that slumbers and things are not
what they seem. Life is real. Life is
earnest. And the grave is not its
goal. Dust thou art, to dust returnest
was not spoken of the soul. Not
enjoyment and not sorrow is our
destined end away, but to act, that
each tomorrow finds us farther than
today.
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But it is through poetry that we're finally able to express those things
that are unspeakable, unbridled joy, and tragic sorrow.
It is the latter of the two that I share with you tonight in
effort to make poetry alive and lasting for my students. I read you
"The Ballad of Birmingham," by Dudley Randall, which expresses what was
going on in this poet's mind at the bombing of the churches in 1993
Birmingham, Alabama.
Mother dear, may I go downtown instead
of out to play, and march the streets of
Birmingham in a freedom march today?
No, baby, no, you may not go. For the
dogs are fierce and wild, and clubs and
hoses, guns and jail are not good for a
little child.
But mother, I won't be alone. Other
children will go with me, and march the
streets of Birmingham to make our
country free.
No, baby, no, you may not go. For I
fear those guns will fire. But you may
go to church instead and sing in the
children's choir.
She has combed and brushed her
night-dark hair and bathed rose-petal
sweet, and drawn white gloves on her
small brown hands and white shoes on
her feet.
The mother smiled to know her child was
in this sacred place. That smile was
the last smile to come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion, her
eyes grew wet and wild. She raced
through the streets of Birmingham
calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and
brick and lifted out a shoe. Oh,
here's the shoe my baby wore, but,
baby, where are you?
(Applause.)
MRS. CLINTON: This is an appropriate question to follow your
poem. It's from Alice George in Evanston, Illinois. "Please identify
one activity to be enacted in our country's public schools which you
believe best inspires children to welcome the power of poetry, reading,
and writing into their lives.
MR. PINSKY: A very simple answer: To read aloud. The teacher
should read aloud to the kids. The kids should read aloud. And people
should follow their tastes. The most stringent assignment a teacher can
give to students is find something that you think is worth memorizing.
Find something you think is worth reading aloud to other people.
To return to the previous question, it's the young poets and the
passionate young people who decide what lives. It's not curricula or
critics or anthologies. It's what gets under people's skin and what
gives them the pleasure of reading aloud.
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Knowledge is good. Analysis is good. Discussion is good.
Learning is good. But all these things in art must begin with a
physical encounter. And the physical encounter with the poem is saying
it aloud and feeling that emotion people feel when they say a poem
aloud. And my advice for anyone who wants to learn more about poetry is
the same as my advice to myself -- read it aloud and see what happens
between the mind and the body as you read it aloud.
MS. LOVELL: I think we have time for one last Internet question,
Mrs. Clinton.
MRS. CLINTON: This is from Louis Farrell of Las Altas Hills,
California. "Technology is leading us into the new millennium with such
things as new DNA research, faster computers, Internet, et cetera. What
value will poetry add to our quality of living that compares to these
new marvels?
MS. DOVE: The key word there of course is "quality." And I would
say that all of those new computer things have to have something to talk
about and to write about, and poetry allows us to imagine the future. I
don't believe that poets have any kind of monopoly on imagination, but
what poetry can do is awaken the imagination, and through that
imagination you can have the DNA research, the computers and all of
these marvels. So it's all connected, it's all wrapped up together.
MR. HASS: I'll say that I love my computer. (Laughter.) I have
a great time with it. I love my CD player. I like my television set
very much. (Laughter.) And all of those things, the human appetite for
art in the human being is bottomless, there's no end to it. And the
very speed and the technological magnificence and vividness and the
highly duplicable quality of those media I think already, as I perceive
it in the country, create in reaction -- I'm not rejecting those things,
but in reaction -- love for and need for the kind of excitement and
comfort that comes from an art where the medium is one person's body.
Not necessarily the artist's body, not Rita reading Rita's poems or me
reading mine, but the body of the audience.
When I say a poem by Robert Hayden or Dickinson or Whitman with my
voice, that voice -- my breath, is the artist's medium. And that's in a
highly individual, personal scale that I think we crave, along with our
craving for spectacular gadgets and massive film on a video disk of the
Earth from space. It's wonderful, but it doesn't fill up my appetite
for pizza. (Laughter.)
MS. LOVELL: Our next to last reading. Jessica Rawls is a 7th
grader from Charles Hart Middle School in D.C., she was with us today.
She's a star in her poetry slam team. Jessica has so many poems that I
know it was hard for her to choose just one to read, but she did.
MS. RAWLS: "Life Is Fine," by Langston Hughes.
I went down to the river. I sat down
on the bank. I tried to think, but
couldn't, so I jumped in and sank. I
came up once and hollered. I came up
twice and cried. If that water hadn't
been so cold I might have sunk and
died. But it was cold, cold that
water. It was cold.
I took the elevator 16 floors above the
ground. I thought about my baby and
thought I would jump. I stood there
and hollered. I stood there and cried.
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FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CELEBRATES
THE YEAR OF HUMANITIES AND ARTS (YoHA)
AND THE ARTS OF CITIZENS PROGRAM
HILL AUDITORIUM
APRIL 28, 1998
Thank you very much, President Bollinger and Provost Cantor, administrators, faculty,
students, alumni of this great university, members of the Ann Arbor community, elected
officials, distinguished guests and friends.
It is a pleasure to be back here in Ann Arbor and back on this campus and back in this
concert hall. Not only have many great American artists performed on this stage, the building
itself is a monument to the creative expression of one of the nation's finest architects - - Albert
Kahn.
So I am very pleased that not only am I a degree holder from this university, but that I
feel a part of this community.
We gather today for the continuation of an important discussion that was started here last
year about the humanities and the arts, what they mean to us, what they should mean to us and
what they must mean to us and to our country.
I was thinking, as I listened to President Bollinger speak, that this year-long series that
you have had here on the campus is particularly appropriate because certainly, as we move
toward the end of this century, and indeed toward a new millennium, we are going to be thinking
more often and more deeply about who we are, where we are going, what we mean to one
another, and what our lives mean to ourselves. I want to thank the leadership of this university
for helping all of us to begin that discussion.
I would like to thank Lee Bollinger for his many contributions: as a legal scholar, as the
President of this University, and perhaps even more importantly as an advocate for the principles
and traditions of American public higher education. Through his dedication this university
continues to stand for what is best in the history of our country. I know that President Bollinger.
among his many academic accomplishments, is something of a First Amendment scholar. I, too,
am a great supporter of the First Amendment, but I can't help but think that it might have just
passed through his mind that censorship would be in order given the recent UPI college ratings,
as opposed to those by the AP. But staying true to his values, you did not hear that from him.
The classrooms and laboratories on this campus remind us of the value of a diverse
student body and faculty, and the benefits they bring to a university community. I was very
impressed and moved by the opinion piece that was written by the President Bollinger and
Provost Cantor that appeared today in the Washington Post entitled, The Educational Importance
of Race. I commend it to everyone on this campus, and indeed on every campus, because it talks
about, in a very clear way, the challenges as we attempt to bring our university systems into the
future with our values and ideals intact.
I want to thank Provost Cantor for his advocacy on behalf of the arts and humanities, and
for the time and energy he has committed to helping Congress explore the role of women in our
nation's military.
I would also like to thank, as well, Associate Vice Provost Julie Ellison, Director of the
Year of the Humanities and Arts, and David Scobey, Director of the Arts of Citizenship Program,
for sharing with students, faculty, and the Ann Arbor community their vision of the dynamic
relationship between the arts and humanities in a democratic society.
When one thinks about the title of this series, "Arts of Citizenship", it could be just as
well stated "Arts and Citizenship" because, to my mind, they are very closely related. The arts
play an integral role in determining what we mean by citizenship. Certainly when I use the word
arts, I am including arts and humanities. They also tell us something about how we practice the
art of citizenship - what it means to be part of a large, diverse, pluralistic democracy,
particularly at this point in history. So this conversation does come at a propitious time.
As I was thinking back on the last 1,000 years, as we are about to end this millennium, I
was reminded of all of the dire predictions that were occurring around that time. I don't know if
you have ever heard of a prolific and rather controversial monk by the name of Raoul Glaber.
who lived in the 10th century and who consistently warned his local citizenry of impending
doom. Now, perhaps because of his checkered career - - he was expelled from several
monasteries - - he didn't attract much of a following. The earth did not implode as he predicted.
In fact, we have a lot of progress that we can look to over the ten centuries following his
predictions, even though we still can mark those last 1,000 years. as well. by plagues and
genocides and other unbearable human suffering.
However, Raoul Glaber comes from a long line of doomsayers and pessimists about the
human condition. The kind of people who are always looking for what is wrong with the
advancements that occur, who are always pointing fingers at one another and predicting the end
of civilization as we know it.
Yet despite the doomsayers and despite all of our own follies and missteps and
tragedies, we have a lot to look back on with pride because time's passage also allowed for the
discoveries of Galileo and Newton, the art of an El Greco, or Rubens or Picasso, the writings of a
Murasaki, a Shakespeare, Tagore, Neruda, the ideas of Locke and Gandhi, and so many more.
We can also look at those who were political activists who helped move the idea of
human progress forward. We can look at those who built a strong economy, created inventions
and scientific discoveries, all of which unleashed human potential and energy.
We know that for the last thousand years, from Islamic communities spreading north
across Africa to Native American Indian tribes right here in the upper Midwest, people created
new forms of art, built cities, designed new systems of cultivation, remapped their worlds, and
thought up new ideas.
Fueling all of these scientific, intellectual and artistic advances was, of course, the human
imagination. An imagination rooted not only in the knowledge and understanding of the past, but
in the ability to dream and envision a future; an imagination that allowed men and women
throughout time to say no to the archetypal doomsday monks, and yes to their own ideas of the
possibility of a more positive and more possible tomorrow.
Today we find ourselves at the end of another century, and even another millennium.
There is a lot that will occur in the next several years, all kinds of retrospectives, people talking
about the past, worrying about the future.
It is my hope that conversations like the one taking place here, about the humanities and
the arts, will help us think more clearly about what is at stake as we plan our own individual
futures and as we think about that larger, public, common good.
There are many unanswered questions about what will happen in the 21st century. Will
this century finally yield a cure for cancer? Will we find another Mozart? Will we end poverty,
or perhaps even aim at and come near to lasting world peace? Maybe we will achieve some of
that, but certainly not all of it, because we will continue as human beings having to strive to
overcome the age old problems that have beset us.
Yet we also have a darker view of what might occur. Will the next 100 years give rise to
more ethnic and racial hatred, a wider chasm between the rich and the poor, the spread of
biological or chemical warfare, or even a brave new world of genetically engineered people who
look and act the same?
When I think about the future; I come down, as you might guess, on a more optimistic
note than a pessimistic one. I am congenitally, I suppose, optimistic, but I have also seen enough
progress in my own lifetime to believe that we can continue to overcome the challenges that
divide us and to make progress together.
I have to confess that I am worried about certain trends that I see around me every day.
These trends could undermine our conceptions of ourselves as human beings and make it more
difficult for us to have a common future unless they are checked by our knowledge of our
history, our understanding of ourselves, and our willingness to work together to create a
consensus about what we wish for our future.
Now, those trends are self-evident. What does it mean that we have such instantaneous
communication and such rapid technological advancement? Well, of course, in many ways it
means great opportunities. It means that we can be in touch with people around the world. It
means that we have access to more information than we ever dreamed possible. Yet, it also
means that we can retreat into anonymity, that we can be less personal in our dealings with one
another, and that we can hide behind a computer keyboard and communicate with the world only
at a distance.
It means that we can be so overwhelmed by information that we can't make any sense out
of it; that we have no context for it; that we are bombarded day in and day out by factoids that
don't add up to knowledge and wisdom. but rather threaten to drown us in irrelevancy. I worry,
too, about the need that so many people have to hang on to their own identity as they most
narrowly define it. How do they reach out into the wider world when the wider world seems so
confusing and so threatening?
In fact, one of the most frightening developments that I have personally been studying
and thinking about is the way mass communications played a role in the genocides of Rwanda
and Bosnia. People who before had lived peacefully with one another, were whipped into
frenzies of hatred and fear because of the messages that were coming across the television. the
radio, and even the computer. People who did not know how to make sense of those messages
were pushed into action because of what they were being told.
I also wonder about how we will survive as a democracy, and how we will retain a sense
of citizenship when there is so much pressure on a daily basis to move us toward a society of
consumers and away from a democracy of citizens. The emphasis on our consumer culture
distorts our sense of self. It threatens the essence of our pluralistic society, and yet, it seems
beyond our control to stop. More and more messages pour out more and more quickly
influencing particularly the minds and lives of young people.
Why are more young American teenagers smoking? Well, there is overwhelming
evidence that they are enticed to do so; that it seems like a very grown up, rebellious thing to do;
that the messages they receive, either directly or indirectly through the wider culture, create an
atmosphere in which they think it's a choice that will enhance their sense of self-being.
Why are more American children driven to violence? We are seeing more and more
evidence that the content of popular culture does matter. It really does count how many hours of
television you watch, and in those hours how many violent episodes, how many murders, how
many killers who are not remorseful at the end of the plot you see. If you are a child from a
situation that is not as stable as one would like, you are particularly prone to those messages, to
that image of reality that comes directly at you through that small machine in you living room or
your bedroom.
Why do so many American children judge their worth by the logo on their sneakers
instead of the good deeds that they might do or the homework that they finish at night? Well,
you know as well as I that the consumer culture driven by our free market economy demands
more and more buying on the part of more and more consumers. So many messages are aimed
now not just at thirteen and fourteen year olds, but at eight and nine years olds because in order
to keep this great engine going, we have to create a lot of unmet wants, a lot of frustration in the
minds of people. This is not in and of itself any great cause for worry. We have certainly
overcome a lot of challenges in the past. But, combining all of these trends together I think
should cause all of us to stop and think, am I being seduced? What am I giving up in my
thinking and in my spirit to the consumer culture, to the machine of technology?
How do I keep some distance? How am I sure that I have the right balance in my life?
How do I retain the most precious possession I have, my role as citizen, and enjoy the blessings
that I am given because those who came before us understood the importance that democracy
places on the role of citizen?
If one steps back and thinks about the images we have of the future, that is also a little
disquieting. I did a survey about what we think might happen in the century or millennium to
come. The overwhelming popular images are of movies in which desolation has occurred
because of war, where road warriors are fighting one against the other, where there are people
living under great glass bubbles or in very sterile atmospheres because we have polluted and
degraded our environment.
We don't have a picture in our heads of the kind of society that we want, and expect to
live in the future. In part, that is because change has been so fast in the last decades, faster than at
any point in human history, and we are only now being able to process it.
I have often heard it said that human evolution proceeded over tens of thousands and
millions of years, but within this last century we have been stretched, physically, and
emotionally, and mentally, and spiritually, unlike any of our ancestors ever have been.
So how do we take all of these trends, and how do we begin to understand what they are
doing to us so that we can assert control over them, and what do the arts and humanities have to
do with all of that anyway?
Well, I would argue that the arts and humanities still give us the best guide we will ever
have to thinking through the problems of today and tomorrow. It is not a luxury to read the great
poetry of the past, to ponder Shakespeare's plays, to think about the Greek philosophers, to
wonder in our own minds what modern poetry and literature and film are saying to us. Instead, I
think it is a responsibility because if we think hard about these challenging ideas that come to us
from those who are our scholars and our artists, we will be better equipped in our own lives and
in our public life to go on.
One of the people who has been most astute in looking at the consumer culture and what
we have done in modern days that undermines our sense of well-being with one another, our
obligation toward each other, is the Czech President and playwright, Vaclav Havel. He has
written and spoken at great length about how in the pressure of modern culture we are
homogenizing our desires and tastes.
Now, one would think that if everybody in the world wore blue jeans and a certain kind
of sneaker, as they do on every continent I have visited, if everybody listened to the same kind of
music and watched the same television programs around the world - that that would bring us
closer together as a people. That, one somebody watching a show in Bangladesh would feel
really close with somebody watching that same show in Bolivia, for example.
What Havel points out, which I think is right, that almost in an unconscious way, if you
will, there is a rebellion against this homogenization. There is a rejection of it even while people
take more and more of it in. One reads about horrific events in India where people are burning
brides because the dowry didn't bring a color television but only a black and white one. One
reads about people in Africa, who are living in terribly distressed situations, who are spending
every dollar they have to try to put on the accouterments of what they think of as the modern
American pop culture.
Yet, beneath that superficial homogenization, we are seeing a great striving for identity
and a great need to separate ourselves from one another because human beings have to feel as
though they have some identity that is of importance in their own eyes, and in the eyes of those
to whom they look for validation.
If we stop and think about the trends that are sweeping the world, then I think it is fair to
say that we are moving in a direction where all of the haves - which include us in this room,
people of education and affluence and particularly people fortunate enough to live in strong,
stable, functioning democracies will be more and more caught up in the world of materialism
as we work harder and harder and longer and longer hours to deal with the machines that are
taking greater control over our lives.
It is hard to escape. We have 24 hour television channels. We have 24 hour fax machines.
You are never out of touch. You never have a moment to stop and think. Decisions are demanded
from you all the time. The e-mail messages come and people expect responses to them.
It is hard for the arts and humanities to flourish when their is very little space left for
them in the popular culture. That is why we have to do all we can to support them, and to make it
clear that they are not a luxury, but rather they are essential to the refueling of the human
imagination. If one thinks about our earliest human ancestors, they did not first invent money.
They first drew on the walls of caves They first created figurines that had religious and other
significance to them. What were they trying to say? What were they doing? They were finding
that special human trait, that attribute of imagination and using it.
I can just imagine a scenario where a young man or woman wonders around not paying
attention to the mammoth hunt. And all of the relatives are saying. "You know. he just isn't with
it! He is going to get us all killed!" And then back in the cave that night with the flickering fire.
while everyone else sleeps, he takes the charcoal and he draws a mammoth. All of a sudden out
of his imagination comes an opportunity to share an experience that perhaps someone who had
never seen a mammoth before could now understand. We created the arts so that we could
advance human beings, so that our imagination could have an outlet. We saw it as a way to
communicate in ways that we couldn't, just by doing and being. It is one of our earliest ways of
defining ourselves as human.
It is through history and philosophy, literature and painting, music. sculpture. poetry.
photography, dance architecture, design, all of it, that we can reclaim the popular imagination.
that we can rekindle our spirit of citizenship and exercise the power of our ideas. experiences and
feelings to promote a brighter vision of the future.
In our country, there is too often an assumption that the arts and humanities are an
exclusive preserve of the rich or the best educated or some cultural elite. Yet from our own
personal experiences, we know otherwise. How many of us have felt our hearts stir at a favorite
song or a painting or a haunting passage in a novel or a dancer's elegant leap?
About a week or so ago, I read a very provocative opinion editorial in the New York
Times where a classics professor talked about what Thucydides meant to his professor's
community college students. He said, "I have taught at some of the great colleges in America,
but in these community colleges, in these state universities where young people and not so young
ones are enrolled and often working full - - time as well, they come to Thucydides with their own
personal experience. And all of a sudden, the world of ideas and history opens up to them."
How many of us have had an experience like that? I remember very well when I was
probably in junior high coming across a print of Guernica. Looking at that provocative painting
that Picasso had done after the fascist bombing of Guernica, I finally realized that art was more
than aesthetic. It was a way of communicating, a way of taking people beyond the boundaries of
their own experience and giving them a greater understanding of the world around them.
Guernica taught me about the human condition. I had never seen anything like that in my own
life. I was born in Chicago. I grew up in a very safe suburb in the outskirts of Chicago. I had
never even heard of such a thing as the Spanish Civil War. And yet here it was. a painting that
said to me, this is what people can do to each other. These were people thousands of miles from
where I lived, but I felt in some way connected to them.
Art and culture have always been a part of my life, not in any practicing way - I have
absolutely no talent whatsoever but as an observer, as someone who tries to appreciate what I
see and hear. In fact, I really attribute my long-time marriage and relationship with my husband
to art. Now, that is a headline! I was standing in line at the Yale Law School to register for
classes and struck up a conversation with this young man I had seen wandering around the law
school. He likes to say that we noticed each other because we each did not attend a certain class
very often, so when we showed up it was rather noticeable.
But whatever the story, we began talking and had not finished talking after we signed up
for classes. We began to walk around the Yale campus. He suggested that we go to the
University museum to see a wonderful exhibit of Rothko paintings and to show me one of his
favorite Henry Moore sculptures. We arrived at the door of the museum only to find that it was
closed. My husband, being the person he is, convinced the janitor to let us into the museum. And
the bargain he struck was that we could go into the museum if first we collected the trash that
had filled the courtyard of the museum. So, in we went where we spent a memorable afternoon
looking at the Rothkos and looking at the sculptures. Now, that was my first date with Bill
Clinton, but it also was my first date with Rothko and Henry Moore. And all three of them have
stayed a part of my life ever since.
I hope that every one of you either has had, or will have, an experience like that with
some aspect of the arts or humanities. And it is why I believe it is so important that we do all we
can to make sure that the arts and humanities are available in every school in America, in every
community in the entire nation. I have to confess that I find it disheartening when members of
Congress, or local school boards, or state governments decree that public support of the arts and
humanities is a luxury that we cannot afford.
I have seen what it does in the lives of young people whom we do not ordinarily think of
as season ticket holders to the symphony or the opera. Just last week I visited a junior high
school in an inner city Washington neighborhood whose students are drawn mostly from housing
projects nearby. I brought with me our three most recent Poets Laureate. And I was delighted to
have them with me to see inaction a program that is funded by the National Endowment for the
Arts through the Writer Core where writers and poets are assigned to work with these young
people.
The students we saw were engaged in what is called a poetry slam. Now, I did not know
what that was. If you have never seen a poetry slam, it is a high speed, high-spirited competition
in which students face off against one another by reading their own poems and then being scored
like ice skating at the Olympics from a group of judges. These students. all of them African-
American, all of them from poor homes, recited poems that just made my heart leap. Some of
them had poems about their own names, or about the plight of a homeless man in their
neighborhood, or the contributions of Duke Ellinton. They talked of their pride. their joys. their
pain. They also talked about how poetry, and learning how to write poetry to express themselves
enabled them to put their anger and pain on paper instead of acting it out. They talked about how
writing poetry had given them confidence, a sense of purpose and accomplishment. One boy
recited a poem with these wonderful lines: "I am so musical that when I write songs, you sing
them for the rest of your life."
Later that evening, at the White House, the President and I hosted the Poets Laureate in a
celebration of American poetry. Robert Pinsky and Robert Haas and Rita Dove read American
poets like Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams and so many
others. We had this broadcast, cybercast, over the Internet, and I think it is archived if any of you
are interested.
In the audience in the East Room that night we also asked some non-poets to read their
favorite poem. A disabled veteran from a veteran's home, in a wheelchair, read with a wonderful,
gravelly voice Robert Frost's Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening. He said it kept him
going because he, too, despite his serious injuries, had miles to go.
A minister from Boston told how, as a young, rebellious man in high school, he had been
taken under the wing of a teacher who introduced him to poetry and literature, and took him off
the streets. He read a poem that had made an impression on him as a young man and which he
still reads, Henry Wadsworth Longellow's Psalm of Life.
A high school teacher from Virginia, flanked by several of his students. Brought many in
the audience to tears when he recited Dudley Randall's Ballad of Birmingham.
And a little seventh grader, who was part of the poetry slam competition from the District
of Columbia, stole the show when she offered a spirited and touching reading of Langston
Hughes' Life Is Fine.
Now, whether you watched in the audience or on your computer screen or C-Span or at
one of the satellite downlink sites, you had to come away from the evening with a much greater
sense not only of the richness of our nation's tradition of poetry, but aloof the way that poetry
has influenced us as a nation and recorded what we have done during our passage these last more
than 200 years.
It is essential that we continue to celebrate the arts and humanities. You are showing us
here at this university how to do it. It is also essential that we take the arts and humanities into
places where they are not so commonly discussed or understood. We have seen how the arts can
transform the lives of children at risk. We need to do more of that.
And I am concerned that, at a time when we need the arts more than ever, music and art
in our schools are being cut back. So many young people no longer have access to music lessons
or art lessons during the school day. One of my hopes for the millennium is that all of us who
care about the arts and music, particularly in our schools, will do what we can to put them back
into all schools so that all students have access to them.
There is another very essential role of the arts and humanities today. At a time when our
nation is still dogged by racial insensitivities and unfounded stereotypes, what better way to
come to terms with our multiethnic, multiracial way of life than to share in each other's ideas,
emotions, tastes and attitudes. Reading Langston Hughes' poem helps us understand what an
experience different from our own might be.
I think it is very important that this university pursue the particular goal that it has had of
having a diverse campus. And I want to thank again President Bollinger and Provost Cantor for
their words because in this op-ed piece they write: "Institutions of higher education have pursued
a conception of education that emphasizes the joys, the variety and the benefits of emerging with
different experiences and perspectives. This means we ask of every applicant, what will you
contribute to the whole; not where do you stand in splendid, isolated comparison with everyone
else."
When I read that today, I thought back to an experience I had in 1965 that I have not
thought of very much since then. When I grew up in my suburb, it was all white. I attended all
white schools from kindergarten through high school. I never had any real contact with black or
Hispanic or Asian youngsters my age. I was very lucky that when I was in high school, I had a
minster at my church who said very forthrightly to all of us middle class, white suburban kids,
there is a big world out there, and you are not even going to understand how to deal with it unless
you get beyond the boundaries of your own experience. And he took us down to the City of
Chicago where we would have evenings with black and Hispanic youngsters. We didn't become
friends, but you know what we did on those evenings? We talked about poetry and paintings.
I will never forget a discussion with a group of Hispanic youngsters where we talked
about a wonderful E.E. Cummings poem in which it starts: "Dying is fine. but. oh. baby. death is
not" or something like that. Don't hold me to it.
But death, oh, baby - oh, I know what it is
"Dying is fine, but death, oh, baby, I
wouldn't like death if death were good."
And we talked about that. And the experience of the Hispanic kids was very different
because every one of them had seen somebody die.
People in our families died in hospitals, They died a long way from where we were. They
didn't die at home, and they didn't die on the streets.
And all of a sudden I realized that there were very different experiences that I did not
have a clue about.
When I did go to Wellesley, I was, for the first time, attending school with women who
were different from me. They were black. They were brown. They came from other places, had
other experiences. And I remember going to church one Sunday with a young African-American
woman who became a friend of mine. I had never gone anywhere with an African-American
before. And we went off campus, and we went to this church. And I can remember talking with
people later about what an amazing experience that was for me. She and I became great friends,
but I never would have had that opportunity if I had gone to school at a place where everybody
looked like me and everybody had the same background as I did.
It opened my eyes in a number of ways. And that is why it is so important that, if we
believe in the message of the arts and humanities, we take it to its conclusion, which is that we
all have much to learn from each other and each other's rich cultural traditions and histories.
You are doing that in a very practical way here in Ann Arbor in one of the oldest historic
neighborhoods. The Broadway Bridge Reconstruction effort will unite people young and old
throughout Ann Arbor. You will be exploring local culture through history and writing,
photography, design and other disciplines. It is a wonderful example of how the arts and
humanities can provoke the imaginations of people in an entire community and how you can
literally build a bridge to the future.
You know, my husband and I are very partial to bridge metaphors because we think that
they happen to very well display to us, in a lot of different ways, what it is we are trying to do
how we imagine, how we envision what comes next. To that end, we have chosen in the White
house to use the millennium as a way to honor the past and imagine the future again. that
word, imagine. Because we do believe in the importance of imagination.
The founding fathers imagined America. Who could have dreamed what they imagined
only a few years before? Imagination has fueled the American dream in the lives of countless
men and women. Imagination is what keeps us going day in and day out. Time and time again,
here in America, we have supported the arts because we have understood they are the fuel for
imagination.
In 1962, when President Kennedy asked for public support of the arts, he reminded
Americans that Abraham Lincoln ordered work to go forward on the capitol dome during the
Civil War. And I would add that one of the great sources of solace that President Lincoln had
during the Civil War was the poetry he read and wrote, plays that he saw, people who inspired
him to keep imagining. Franklin Roosevelt, in the midst of World War II, dedicated the National
Gallery of Art in Washington.
And President Kennedy said about them, "These leaders understood that the life of the
arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction in the life of the nation, is very close to the
center of a nation's purpose and is a test of the quality of a nation's civilization." We are now
facing that test ourselves. That is why in the White House we are sponsoring a millennium
program that invites speakers to come, like the Poets Laureate, to lecture about topics ranging
from America's founding ideas to creativity and science. That is why we are going to showcase
American art, so that we can see what we have contributed to this great march of human
civilization. It is why we are launching a project to save America's treasures because so many of
our nation's cultural treasures, from precious documents like the Bill of Rights and the
Constitution to artifacts like the Star Spangled Banner which inspired our nations anthem, are in
danger of deteriorating.
Universities have a special role to play in making sure we are all conscious of the
importance of the arts and humanities because it is a university provides a safe haven for
unconventional ideas and thought. This gives space for people to exercise their imaginations.
They are incubators of culture. These are the places where we can test our ideas, our emotions,
our experiences, and attitudes which is why we do not need to do it in front of a mirror. We need
to do it in a larger community that reflects back to us new ideas, new emotions, and new
experiences. And by doing so, we are, therefore, able to make choices for ourself as to what kind
of people we wish to be and what sorts of citizens we intend to be.
As the Year of the Humanities and Arts of Citizenship program here has shown, you can
provoke thought. You can create collective discourse. And you need to continue doing that. The
arts and humanities really are such great equalizers for all of us.
In front of a painting like Guernica or a beautiful piece of poetry. we are all in awe. And
we all have to reach deep down inside so, together, let us honor the past and let us imagine the
future. And by doing so, let us live up to the ideas of our democratic way of life by placing the
arts and humanities front and center in the ongoing effort to make America a more perfect union.
Thank you very much.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
May 4, 1998
REMARKS BY THE FIRST LADY
AT THE TREASURES PROGRAM EVENT
The East Room
11:35 A.M. EDT
It is a great pleasure to welcome all of you to the White House this morning. I know
some of you had some difficulties traveling, and some of our guests from Boston have not been
able to get here. But we are delighted all of you are able to be here with us.
We come together, here near the end of the 20th century and the dawn of a new
millennium, which we know will arrive whether we do anything about it or not, but all over the
United States, and indeed, the world, people are expressing their excitement in their own ways
about being alive at this time. They're seeking meaningful ways to celebrate their times and to
leave a lasting legacy.
We're here today to talk about a national initiative, an act of history to save America's
past. I hope all of you will join me in this urgent project to preserve the artifacts, documents,
monuments and historic sites that embody not only our nation's memories, but our dreams of the
future as well.
Last fall the President and I created the White House Millennium Council to develop
ways to engage all Americans in marking this milestone in human history -- to work with elected
officials on state and local celebrations, to involve the federal agencies in national millennium
projects, and to cooperate with our country's non-profit organizations, corporate and foundation
partners as well.
The overall theme of the White House Millennium Program is to honor the past, imagine
the future. The President and I are inviting all Americans to participate and to think about what
gifts each of us has that we can give to enhance life for future generations. Here at the White
House we've already begun a series of Millennium Evenings in which scholars, scientists and
creative individuals will help us honor the past and imagine our future.
We've listened to a renowned historian talk about the democratic ideals upon which we
forged our nation. We've heard from a world famous physicist who helped us envision the
scientific breakthroughs of the next century. A few weeks ago we had perhaps the greatest
gathering of poets ever held at the White House, reading their favorite poems and celebrating
America's enduring creative spirit.
One of the most powerful ways for us to imagine America's future is to preserve what we
truly value of our past our monuments, our art and documents and historic sites will tell the
story of this nation to future generations. Yet these very symbols of our heritage, from the Star-
Spangled Banner to the monuments at Gettysburg to the buildings on the south side of Ellis
Island, are literally deteriorating before our eyes, or will be at risk if we don't act now.
That's why I'm so pleased that all of you are here today to hear about our plan to save
America's treasures. As many of you may know, the President, in his State of the Union address,
proposed a public-private partnership to save our treasures. As he said then,
I ask all Americans to support our project to restore all our treasures, so that the generations of
the 21st century can see for themselves the images and the words that are the old and continuing
glory of America.
The President, in his budget, has called on Congress to appropriate $50 million
additional in each of the next two years to stimulate a national effort for the purpose of saving
our treasures. But this is just the beginning, and just represents the federal
commitment.
Throughout our history, in a way that is uniquely American, we have always provided
both public and private resources to pass on something of value to the future. Today, we need
your leadership and involvement to help preserve America's treasures, and to ensure that this is a
true public-private commitment and partnership.
We want to be able to reach out and involve millions of Americans - from
schoolchildren, to community leaders, to corporate executives -- who can contribute to these
preservation efforts in a variety of ways. I'm so pleased that the National Trust for
Historic Preservation has agreed to head up the private part of this partnership.
Today, the National Trust, under Dick Moe's leadership, is announcing the beginning of
a new national advisory committee to save America's treasures. I'm thrilled that so many
distinguished individuals and corporate leaders have agreed to participate on that committee. We
are pleased that all of you could be here with us at the White House today, and you will be joined
by others who could not be here - others including Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dick Jenrette, and Agnes
Gund. I want to say a special word of thanks to Agnes, who has already pledged very generous
support. And I want, in particular, to thank Veronica Hearst for the
important gift that will support this committee's efforts.
All of you are taking on what I believe will be an extraordinarily exciting and
challenging mission to help raise public awareness and support for preserving America's
treasures into the next millennium. I look forward to the opportunity to work with each
of you over the next few years as the honorary chair of this committee. It's very exciting to me
because I didn't realize until the last several years how so many of our most special places and
artifacts around our county were at such risk. And because of problems with the federal budget,
many of our national park sites were also deteriorating. As someone who believes that our
country has, even though a short, but glorious history, it struck me that we needed to do a better
job.
I'm pleased, therefore, that the National Trust will work closely with two other nonprofit
partners: the Heritage Preservation, Inc. and the National Park Foundation. I'm
grateful that they're being joined by our federal partners, including the National Park Service, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National
Archives, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the Smithsonian
Institution. Together, all of us will work to help widen the circle of individuals, foundations,
agencies, and corporations who will join with our government to care for our nation's heritage.
Our mission here today must not be left to either the public or private sector alone, but
must be a truly inclusive partnership that is a national effort. And it is also a totally
nonpartisan effort. No matter what our political differences might be on a day-to-day basis, we
will all stand together with pride as we review a repaired Star-Spangled Banner, or walk through
one of America's most treasured prehistoric sites in New Mexico, or help preserve the Louis
Armstrong archives of rare musical recordings at Queens College in New York, or visit the
newly restored tent which George Washington used as his headquarters in the Revolutionary
War, or know that we have helped save our precious founding documents at
the National Archives.
Before I introduce our first speaker, I want to say a few words about my own plans to
highlight America's national treasures in the next few months, and to serve with you on this
committee. In July I intend to travel around our country to visit some of our most endangered
historic and cultural sites that are so much a part of the American experience. I intend to do this
by bus, because I think that will be a lot of fun, and to pick up any of you along the way who
want to come for all or part of it, to travel around and highlight what it is we are trying to do; to
create public awareness in communities and states where many of these sites are located but
where, because of time and failure to continue to pay attention to our national heritage, even
people who live within a few miles of a historic site may themselves not realize its significance.
As I've said so many times, the enduring worth of our nation lies in our shared values
and soaring spirit as Americans. We are such a unique and blessed people. Certainly in today's
economy, we have more blessings, perhaps, than we can keep track of or country. But it is at a
time like this that we have an opportunity to make some commitments and investments for the
future.
Unfortunately, it is often at a time, though, when we're doing so well that we don't pay
attention to what we want to leave and preserve for the next generation. So I'm hoping to take
this moment in time, with all that we have to be grateful for, and to use some of that energy to do
what we will be very proud we have participated in doing and that is making it clear that we
will pass on to our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren the gifts of liberty and
creativity that made us who we are.
Now I would like to introduce our primary partner in this effort, Richard Moe, the
president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who will give us some specifics about
the urgent task ahead of us of saving America's historic and cultural treasures.
Dick Moe.
END
11:45 A.M. EDT
May 5, 1998
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
address to
LIVING ARTS DOWNTOWN
Thank-you, thank-you very much. I want to thank Bob Peck, who you may of surmised
is an old friend of mine, and we were at Yale Law School together, and I think the real story is
that we were spending a lot of time at the Lincoln Theater instead of in class.
It is a great pleasure for me to be here and to be part of this very important arts summit. I
want to thank Madam Pretsien and the ambassador and the entire staff of the embassy for hosting
us in this spectacular building. We are so grateful that the government of Canada saw fit when
many a time thought it not a wise decision for them to stake their future here at the downtown
with this absolutely wonderful building.
Mayor Barry, thank-you for being here, and thank-you for your strong words on behalf of
the revitalization of the downtown that we all love. I want to thank Calvin Cafrits, and the
Kafrits Foundation for your constant presence in our city and all that you do on behalf of it. Jim
Gibson and the downtown arts committee thank-you for taking this piece of living downtown
agenda and making it so real and important. Alexander Garden thank-you for being part of our
efforts to know what works and doesn't work and to try to apply those lessons here in
Washington.
You will have a great treat in a few minutes because you'll hear from some of the people
who have been on the front lines of revitalizing other cities. Carol Brown from Pittsburgh,
Marjorie Rendell from Philadelphia, and Lois Wiceburg from Chicago.
misspilling! Weisburg
Because I've been privileged over the past number of years to travel widely in our
country I have literally seen the transformations of downtowns all over the United States. I have
seen what seems to work and what seems not to work. But more often I have been inspired be
the enthusiasm of those who are willing to really stake their own future's professionally and
personally on what they can do for the downtowns.
I want to thank the Federal City Council for your tireless efforts in organizing this event.
Carol Thomson Cole will speak later, The Duke Ellington Choir and Brendan Conway for
bringing us the gift of music and reminding us what this is really all about. As we listened to the
inspiring performance of Brendan Conway, and as we think about all the young men and women
who are part of this city, I thought about, as we heard earlier, someone who was a wonderful
friend of the art who we lost this weekend.
Patrick Hayes went about filling this city with the sounds and sights and spirit of great
art. Now if her were here for more than five minutes we would have undoubtedly heard an odd
word "eino" which stood for Everybody In, Nobody Out, and that was Patrick Hayes's way of
saying that when it comes to promoting the arts, when it comes to improving quality of life in
DC, everybody needs to be at the table. Nobody should feel excluded from our efforts to work
together to improve life in Washington. I know he would of been very proud of this gathering
and proud of all that has brought us to this day. But I'm sure he also would have been looking a
little bit skeptically to make sure we follow through.
For our family living in Washington has been a wonderful experience with respect to the
diversity of art and music and sculpture and dance and all the other visual and preforming arts
that grace this city. That has always been the case going back to the beginning of the nation's
capital here in Washington. I'm told that Abraham Lincoln ordered work to go forward on the
capital dome during the Civil War, and FDR dedicated the National Gallery of Art in 1941 when
the world was engulfed by war.
These leaders, President Kennedy once said, understood that the life of the arts far from
being an interruption a distraction in the life of a nation is very close to the center of a nation's
purpose and is a test of the quality of a nation's civilization. That is why at a time when the
NEA has just survived its strongest challenge from congress, my husband has made it clear that
the federal government must continue to support the arts. It is why we have tried to make the
celebration of American culture an integral part of the life of the White House and particularly
with respect to the millennium activities. Where we were attempting to follow through on the
theme we have selected, "to honor the past, and imagine the future", and there's no way even to
think about doing that without thinking about and celebrating the arts and culture.
Now we have a wonderful opportunity before us. In the year 2000, Washington DC will
see its 200th anniversary as our nation's capital. In addition the White House and the Library of
Congress will be celebrating their 200th birthdays. The story of the last 200 years is in many
ways the story of dreams born of inspiration and reached with old fashioned hard work and team
effort.
Now when you hear from Lois Wiceburg I'm not sure she will tell you that one of the
ways that she has absolutely created excitement in downtown Chicago is by celebrating
everybody's birthday on a regular basis. If you are walking down the street in Chicago on a
business trip, if Lois knows its your birthday you're likely to have it celebrated. But she's done
that for a very simple purpose, it brings people together, it brings people downtown, it reminds
them how wonderful it is that the great cultural and historic traditions of Chicago are part of their
lives as well.
On the district's 100th birthday we remember the McMillian's commissions vision for a
monumental center of Washington. A vision inspired by the beautiful city movement, and a
vision that has largely been realized in the greatest concentration of museums and galleries in the
world. In 1961 we can remember President Kennedy's dream of a Pennsylvanian Avenue that
would be turned into America's main street. I can remember years ago coming to Washington,
and as with many of you wondering whether that dream would ever be fulfilled. And yet today
when we walk along Pennsylvania avenue we see a wonderful mix of historic preservation
residential development, the arts, open spaces, and street scapes. In a few years it will be done.
And we will see a bridge between the mall and downtown which is what the Pennsylvania
avenue plan envisioned.
Now my husband and I are partial to bridge metaphors which is why I mentioned the
bridge that is part of the long term plan. But bridges are helpful only if you want to get to the
other side. And today, as we look to the 200th anniversary of our capital city, we have a lot of
challenges about whether or not we will get to the other side the side that holds promise of the
kind of revitalized dynamic city that Washington deserves to be.
We obviously have a lot of work ahead of us and many of you in this room have been
working hard for many years, to make Washington what we want it to be. It is not only our
nation's capital in a very real way it represents who we are as Americans to the rest of the world
and if we don't give it the attention and the love it deserves then we in some fundamental way
are not meeting our own obligations as Americans.
When I met last year at the White House with leaders from the business civic
organizations, foundations, and art organizations here in Washington we talked about the projects
already underway to restore economic vitality to downtown Washington. From the new MCI
Center to a revitalized China town. We talked about the absolute importance of the federal
government's continuing commitment to our city's nerve center. And I am pleased that this year
the president's budget targets 100 million dollars to improve the districts economic development
infrastructure.
This includes 50 million dollars for a locally chartered economic development
corporation and 25 million dollars for the metro station at the proposed Washington Convention
Center. But it will only just remain words and numbers on a page if we don't rally around to get
it through the Congress.
We need to make clear to the Congress that this kind of effore, from the federal
government is essential for the work that we want to see continue here to revitilize Washington,
and I ask you to please do your part in getting that message across to our elected representatives.
Most importantly on that day we talked about the role that the arts must and can play in lifting up
downtown DC. The arts must be central, not peripheral, in rebuilding downtown and lifting up
the entire District of Columbia. They must be woven into everything we do. Now that may be
preaching to the choir to all of you who are already here at this arts summit, but we have to do a
better job to convince all the sectors of Washington's community how essential the arts are to
realizing our economic, our social our political development.
I have been privileged to travel around Washington and meet all kinds of people as the
mayor said earlier. And I have seen the impact that the arts can make in lifting up children's
dreams and aspirations.
Just last week I went to a poetry slam to see junior high students in south east
Washington participating in a poetry contest that is much like the Olympics, if you will, where
students take turns reading their own poems and I heard poems about their names, about the
plight of a homeless man, about the legacy of Duke Ellington, about their fears and hopes for the
future. These young people talked about how poetry helped them put their anger on paper,
instead of acting it out. This program was run by two young teachers, poets themselves, paid for
by a NEA grant to the writing core. There was a lot more going on that just poetry being written
and read. There was confidence being built, dignity being bestowed, futures being glimpsed that
might otherwise have gone unseen.
So we know what the arts can do in the lives of young men and women, boys and girls in
this city. The work that has been done in the last few years showing how the arts can take at risk
children and give them places to go after school. Meaningful work to do is essential.
Again going back to Lois Wiceburg in Chicago, they have taken a whole city block and
they've turned it into something called Gallery 37, where young men and women from Chicago's
junior highs and high schools get minimum wage jobs to do art in the summer. And some of
them continue during the school year. They're identified, they're encouraged, they're mentored,
and some wonderful art is produced. For example park beaches that the children design
themselves. Instead of doing graffiti on the walls of buildings they're painting park benches that
you can find all over the city.
So we know how essential the arts are to the future of the young people in Washington
DC, but as we've already heard the arts are essential to economic growth in this city. If we want
to complement them all where residents and tourists alike flock in the millions and then go home
when its dark, we have to do more to keep them and bring them downtown, and we have seen
what other cities have been able to accomplish.
In a study by the National Association of Local Arts Agencies they found that the non-
profit arts industry alone generated 36 billion dollars of business with in its communities,
supported 1.3 million jobs and brought 25 million dollars in personal income to local residents.
We know how that can work because again if you visit Pittsburgh, or Philadelphia or
Chicago you can see how city sections that were given up for lost have really been transformed.
You also need some anchors, and as with Gallery 37 where high school students create art and
get paid for it in Chicago. Lake Front Gardens is an urban park which anchors the entire theater
district and the Chicago Cultural Center offers art exhibitions dance performances, lectures, and a
senior center all right downtown and all free and open to the public.
Now we've seen some progress in downtown DC that we can celebrate. We've seen it on
E street's new theater row. We see it on P street an area once filled with boarded up homes and
stores after the riots has now come alive. All because the studio theater and other non-profits
moved in, stayed there, and grew there.
Now we have to continue to fill the space north of Pennsylvania avenue especially the 7th
street corridor. We can create a downtown bursting with art, and culture and spirit. We can fill
downtown Washington with painters and sculptors, musicians, photographers as well as lawyers
and lobbyists.
We can have a downtown that will bring people from miles away to who will want to see
what's happening now. I've been encouraged about the progress that the federal city council and
the downtown arts committee and others have made in creating a music center, that will include a
museum of American music and other related stores, displays, and restaurants. And I'm pleased
to announce that just yesterday the Smithsonian Institution made a formal commitment to
dedicate its resources, collections, educational materials and expertise to help make the National
Music Museum a reality in Washington.
It is my sincere hope that we are able to make comperable progress in developing a
museum to house some of the world's greatest examples of photography. And I know those
hopes are shared by many of you in this room. As Carol will explain later, we will expand the
White House inter-agency task force on the District of Colombia, so that the federal government
can support your work in bringing the arts downtown. And I will certainly pledge to you that I
will continue to be personally involved in whatever way is useful to you, in our joint efforts to
promote the arts in a living downtown.
I look forward to hearing the task group's reports and the challenges that you set for all of
us. And as we look towards these goals I hope that we will think how in just two and half years,
we will have an opportunity to showcase Washington, in a way that we haven't had in a long
time. The 200th Anniversary of the White House, the Library of Congress, the first meeting in
Congress, and this city as our nations capital city.
If we work together starting today, business and not for profits, art organizations,
foundations, governments officials, citizens from everywhere then we can honor those 200th
anniversaries with the kind of commitment to the future, and promise to this generation and
extraordinary gift to the next that this great city deserves us to make.
Thank-you very much.
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE SPRING GALA
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
MAY 11, 1998
Thank you, Kevin, for your remarks. But mostly for your outstanding
artistic direction of the American Ballet Theatre. Agnes de Mille once said that
"The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music." Thank you for
helping to make ABT such is an enormous source of pride for all Americans, and
such a beautiful expression of our nation's creative spirit.
It is a great pleasure to be here tonight, and an honor for me and for my
husband - my favorite dance partner to be honorary co-chairs of this gala event.
I also want to thank Caroline Kennedy and Blaine Trump for their leadership roles
this evening.
The American Ballet Theatre is truly America's ballet company. In addition
to thrilling audiences here in New York, ABT serves as America's cultural
ambassador across the United States and throughout the world. [Many of you may
not know that the original name of the company, Ballet Theatre, was changed to
the American Ballet Theatre at the request of the State Department, so that the
message of America's cultural vitality could accompany the dancers on tour.]
I've had the pleasure of seeing ABT dancers here in New York and in
Washington, D.C., frequently with my daughter, Chelsea. I was also thrilled to
have an opportunity to visit ABT's dancers last year in Buenos Aires. How proud I
was to see America's creative spirit and talent being represented so well abroad.
As many of you know, the President and I have taken a great interest in how
Americans celebrate the upcoming millennium, and we have created the White
House Millennium Council to develop ways to engage all Americans in marking
this milestone in human history, and leaving a lasting legacy. The overall theme of
the White House Millennium project is "To Honor the past; Imagine the Future."
And the President and I are inviting everyone to think about what "gifts to the
future" each one of us can give to enhance life for future generations.
Celebrating the human imagination -- through the arts and humanities -- is
at the very heart of this millennium effort. Because as President Kennedy said so
wisely -- "The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction in the life
of the nation, is very close to the center of a nation's purpose, and is a test of the
quality of a nation's civilization."
So I find it particularly appropriate that as the world celebrates this milestone
in the year 2000, that ABT is celebrating a milestone of it's own -- it's 60th
anniversary. We are so pleased, therefore, that the American Ballet Theatre was
one of only three dance companies nationwide to receive a special millennium
grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. This grant will allow ABT to
present and preserve the treasures of American choreography created in the 20th
Century -- ensuring that masterworks of Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins and so
many others are preserved for future generations.
Throughout our history, in a way that is uniquely American, we have always
provided both public and private resources in order to pass on something of great
value to the future. Important arts projects surely rely on such a consortium of
funding from government agencies, corporations, and individuals. I thank each of
you for your support of American Ballet Theatre, and hope you will take great
pride in your role in supporting -- and preserving -- one of America's greatest
treasures. This truly is "a gift for the future."
Thank you.
MUSCATINE
002
TALKING IT OVER
BY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
When you think of the arts in America, what first pops into your mind? If you're like
most of us, you probably have an image of adults -- wealthy adults - who have the time
and money to go to the opera, attend a play or concert, or spend hours browsing through
a museum.
In fact, the greatest beneficiaries of public funding for the arts are America's
children. Through federal support of local arts agencies and community groups,
hundreds of thousands of children each year are able to discover the joy, discipline and
self-confidence that comes from their own artistic and creative expression.
That's why current arguments about limiting public funding for the arts are so
misguided -- and short-sighted. Learning to paint, dance, write poetry, act, sing or play an
instrument gives children reasons to believe in themselves and their own futures.
For many children from impoverished backgrounds, exposure to the arts can
literally mean the difference between a life of accomplishment and one of hopelessness
and failure. This idea is not my own; a recent report issued by the President's Committee
for the Arts and Humanities, "Coming Up Taller," identified cultural programs that provide
young people with safe and productive alternatives to crime, violence, gangs, drugs and
other disturbing elements of popular culture.
One of those is the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in Pittsburgh. It is a testament to
the power of the arts to transform children's lives. The organization, which is supported
by both the National Endowment for the Arts and donations from corporate and private
foundations, trains inner-city schoolchildren in ceramic art and photography and opens
their ears to world-class music.
But its students learn much more than how to shape clay, take pictures and
appreciate jazz. They leave the guild knowing that they have the potential and tools to
become successful and productive citizens. Eighty percent of the guild's students go on
to college.
I met Bill Strickland, the founder of the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, last month
at a White House ceremony to celebrate arts programs that serve "at-risk" youth. Bill was
himself headed in a downward spiral, he says, until an inner-city art teacher introduced
him to "ceramics, jazz, and beautiful objects" and taught him that "having ideas had
value."
"I learned that I could achieve recognition from my peers through creative activity,"
he says.
05/22/86
TALKING IT OVER 5/21/96
Page 2
Determined to give other children the same opportunities he enjoyed, he founded
the guild. "The antidote for these 'at-risk' children, we have discovered, is to surround
them with good architecture, good food, good artists and good teachers who are allowed
to function in well-equipped environments and who will not accept anything less than the
best that the human imagination can provide," he says.
Hundreds of young people have passed through the guild's doors during the past
nine years. In that time, the guild has never had a police call, a fight, or a drug or alcohol-
related incident. Although it's located in one of Pittsburgh's most depressed
neighborhoods, there are no bars on the windows, security cameras in the building or
guards at the door.
"Given the current enthusiasm for building prisons to lock people up," Bill said, "I
would challenge them to build centers like this one to set children free."
While those who oppose public funding for programs like the Manchester
Craftsmen's Guild have not succeeded in abolishing the National Endowment for the Arts
and other federal cultural programs, their crusade will continue. And that means that all of
us who care about the arts -- and what the arts can do for children -- have to work as hard
as we can to protect a 30-year bipartisan commitment to making the arts more accessible
to more Americans.
That historical commitment represents a belief that the arts have the power not
only to improve our aesthetic surroundings but to improve our society as well. Learning
about culture, after all, is fundamental to understanding our own heritage and the diverse
world in which we live.
I find it particularly ironic that those who bemoan America's loss of values
(particularly those arising from Western civilization) are often the first to recommend
cutting public funds for the arts. Without federal support for arts programs, countless
children would never be exposed to Sophocles, Shakespeare or Mozart -- or the painting
of Georgia O'Keeffe, the music of Wynton Marsalis and the dance of Arthur Mitchell.
Today, funding for the NEA costs every American 32 cents a year, less than the
price of a candy bar. For those who wonder whether it is money well spent, ask yourself
this question: Would you rather see a child pick up a paintbrush or a pistol? Would you
rather see a child pick up a guitar or a gun?
COPYRIGHT 1996 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
May 21, 1996
Page I
to
AS PREPARED FORDELIVERY
Mccoy
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
FRIENDS OF ART AND PRESERVATION IN EMBASSIES
THE WHITE HOUSE
MAY 27, 1998
It's a great pleasure to welcome everyone here to the White
House, as we celebrate the accomplishments of the Friends of Art and
Preservation in Embassies -- and express our appreciation for their
efforts in sharing America's rich cultural diversity with the people of
the world. The work of FAPE and all of you here this evening is even
more valuable now -- as we begin to commemorate the next
millennium -- and reflect on what gifts we want to leave to future
generations. Because if there's anything that truly reflects our
common values as Americans -- it's our enduring creative and
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intellectual spirit, as reflected in the art and culture of this great nation.
I want to acknowledge some very special people here this
evening: Jo Carole Lauder, chairman of the board of FAPE; Ann
Gund, president; co-chairs of FAPE's Millennium Gift to the Nation,
Robin Duke and John Whitehead; Lee Kimchee McGrath, executive
director. And distinguished members of the board of directors. I'm
also pleased to see Wendy Luers, FAPE's president emeritus, and Lee
Annenberg, chairman emeritus.
We are also delighted to have some of America's leading
contemporary artists with us tonight. We'll be hearing from Chuck
Close and seeing one of his wonderful prints later on in the evening.
We also have with us artists Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg and
Ellsworth Kelly whose works are on display in embassies and
residences around the world thanks to FAPE's Limited Edition
Program. [I've just learned it will be Ellsworth Kelly's 75th birthday on
Sunday so let's all wish him a Happy Birthday.] It's also a great
pleasure to welcome Dorothy Lichtenstein -- who has also joined us.
And of course, it's a thrill to have so many advocates for the arts
gathered here at the White House -- particularly on a beautiful evening
in May. There's something humbling about the exquisite beauty of the
peonies on our tables tonight -- reminding us once again that perhaps
nature is the greatest artist of us all.
Hosting the Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies is a
Page 3
special pleasure for both me and the President -- because we've seen
first hand the wonderful results of your labors in embassies and
residences around the world. I remember participating at an event in
the Ambassador's residence in New Delhi, India, a few years ago, and I
saw this beautiful mural in the dining room. I felt such pride when I
was told it was painted by the American artist -- Karen Lucas -- who
had been commissioned by FAPE. I'm also very excited about FAPE's
efforts to restore the Ambassador's residence in Prague -- and those of
you who have visited it know what a spectacular treasure that historic
residence is. I know the chandeliers have already been restored -- and
work is now beginning on the historic wood panels and draperies.
These are just a few examples of the wonderful work FAPE has
done since it was founded in 1986, working in partnership with the
Art and Embassies program at the State Department to showcase and
preserve the works of America's visual artists around the world. But
these efforts serve an even larger design. President Kennedy once said
that -- "The life of the arts is very close to the center of a nation's
purpose, and is a test of the quality of a nation's civilization." What
better way of sharing that mission with the world -- than to display
the best of America's art on the walls, and in the halls, of our
embassies and residences overseas. We are indebted to so many of
you here this evening for your generosity over the years in making this
program so successful.
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I want to tell you one of my favorite White House stories - as a
way of underscoring the enormous value that we, as Americans, have
always placed on our artistic and cultural heritage. When this White
House was in flames, during the War of 1812, and the British were
marching on the Capital, word came to Dolley Madison that her
husband was urging her to flee, that they were not going to be able to
stop the British advance. She immediately began to grab a few things
that she thought she should rescue. And what did she save? She
saved a piece of art -- a portrait of our first President, painted by
Gilbert Stuart. That portrait of George Washington still hangs in the
East Room of the White House, because Dolley Madison saved
something that she knew meant more than anything to the
continuation of our country and its ideals of freedom and democracy.
Even as we learn from our past we anticipate the future with
great excitement. So tonight, I want to say a few words about the
White House Millennium Council, and how that effort ties in with this
evening's celebration and preservation of the arts. The President and I
created the Millennium Council to help develop ways to engage all
Americans in marking this milestone in human history -- with the
overall theme "to honor the past, imagine the future." And we're
inviting all Americans to participate, and to think about what gifts
each of us can give to enhance life for future generations.
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Here at the White House, we've launched a series of Millennium
Evenings, in which scholars, scientists, and creative individuals will
help us honor that past, and imagine our future. We've already
listened to a renowned American historian; a world famous physicist;
and America's poet laureates - as a way of celebrating our
extraordinary creative and intellectual heritage -- and to help stimulate
conversations about who we are and who we want to be -- as we
enter the new millennium.
One of our major millennium programs is to "Save America's
Treasures," because so many of our nation's cultural and historic
treasures -- from the ancient Indian sites at Mesa Verde to Thomas
Edison's laboratory -- are in danger of being lost. And we are inviting
everyone - from federal agencies to foundations to local communities
-- to get involved in preserving our nation's documents, artifacts,
monuments and historic sites. Already, the National Archives is
planning to re-encase our precious founding documents, and the
Smithsonian Institution is beginning the 3-year restoration of the Star
Spangled Banner.
For the past twelve years, the Friends of Art and Preservation in
Embassies has been working in that same spirit of saving -- and
celebrating -- our nation's cultural and historic treasures. And tonight,
you will hear how FAPE is adding to that legacy - and contributing it's
own unique "gifts to the future."
27fape.wpd
Page 6
This evening, I've asked Jo Carole Lauder to talk about FAPE's
historic contributions to our embassies and residences around the
world -- and we will then unveil the newest addition to FAPE's Limited
Edition Program, by artist Chuck Close. After the unveiling of this
exciting new print, Robin Duke -- who has been such a tireless
advocate for women and children around the world -- will tell us about
FAPE's extraordinary Gift to the Nation program -- and some of the
contributions that are being made as part of that effort.
So now, it's my pleasure to introduce Jo Carole Lauder -- whose
passionate commitment to the Museum of Modern Art, to the
promotion of American art in Vienna's embassy and residence, and to
FAPE -- has made her one of America's leading cultural ambassadors.
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
ANNUAL CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS PRINCIPALS' LUNCHEON
CHICAGO CULTURAL CENTER
JUNE 3, 1998
as delivered
Thank you. Thank you very much. I am just delighted to be here for many different
reasons to see this beautiful room filled with all of you who are on the front lines of improving
public education and doing such a tremendous job for the children of Chicago.
As the mayor said, I've been in a number of your schools -- not nearly enough -- and I
hope I will be able to visit more in the next several years. And I've seen the changes; I've seen
them slowly but surely, really taking root. I know that the work that is being done in all of the
schools represented here can only happen because there are leaders like you in those schools, and
in this public education system.
I take nearly any invitation I am given to come back to Chicago. Especially during the
NBA Playoff season. (Laughter) I have to say though, Sunday night I thought I was going to
lose ten or twelve years off my life. I don't know about you, but when I watch a sporting event
on television--that I have any emotional investment in--I have to get up and leave the room from
time to time. I've become convinced that in some totally bizarre way that the reason we're not
scoring is because I'm watching. (Laughter) So rest assured that I'll leave the room a lot in the
next days.
But it is great to be here to help celebrate the accomplishments of this city and,
particularly, the accomplishments of this school district. I want to thank the extraordinary
Commissioner of Culture, Lois Weisberg. I don't know that she's gotten exactly the credit she
deserves for all the work she does, but I try to give it to her every time I'm in Chicago, and in
this Cultural Center, and doing anything in the city that Lois has had any role in. She's made
such a difference. She celebrated my 50th birthday here at the Cultural Center. I could have
gone without having a celebration of my 50th birthday. But, between my friends--some of whom
are here from my school days in Park Ridge both elementary, junior high, high school, and in
between--Lois, who celebrates everybody's birthday, takes any occasion to do so. Which, I
happen to think is a fabulous idea to promote the celebratory aspects of living in this city. She's
done a very, very good job. (Applause)
I'm also always pleased to be with Maggie Daley. Maggie Daley has been such a voice
for children, and for the arts, and has really spear-headed one of the most influential and creative
projects that I know of anywhere in the country, called Gallery 37. (Applause) It has made an
extraordinary difference not only in the lives of individual children and artists, but also in the
artistic landscape of this city and other places. If you come to the White House, and come to my
office sometime, you'll see a lot of the benches that the young people who work at Gallery 37
make and decorate. I'm always proud to point out that they were made in Chicago.
I too am very impressed by, and grateful for, the leadership of this city by the Mayor. It
is so exciting for me every time I am with the Mayor because he has about a million ideas a
minute. I always feel that he could, on his own, probably supply the power for a small city for a
year, because the electricity and the energy is just coming out. But I so enjoy that, because we do
know how to solve our problems. We do know what makes sense. We do know that as tough as
things are, we can make a difference. Who would have thought that 5 years ago we'd be able to
say that crime has fallen 5 years in a row? Well, the President and the mayor thought so. That's
why they adopted strategies like community policing, instead of just ringing their hands and
talking about how bad things were. (Applause)
Who would have thought that we would have, in my opinion, the most successful
Democratic convention ever in 1996 because the city was as beautiful and hospitable as it is now.
(Applause).
But the real crown jewel in what you, and the mayor, and this city is doing, is what
you've done in the schools. I want to pay a special word of thanks to everyone who is associated
with the school board, with the school's administration, but particularly to all of you. Because
that's really why I'm here. Because I know that we're lucky to have a President who cares about
education. And Chicago is very lucky to have a mayor who cares about education and who can
recruit talented people to come and work on this problem. But none of the progress that we are
seeing could have been possible without each of you. There is absolutely no doubt about that.
You've given a lot of us around the country hope. I go to a lot of cities that are still
trying to figure out how to make heads or tails about the problems they have in their schools.
And I'm always saying, look at the decisions that they're making in Chicago. Look at how
they're facing up to their problems. Look at the results that they are beginning to get. It didn't
happen overnight, but they didn't point fingers at each other. They didn't spend their time in
anarchy, engaging in the blame game. They rolled up their sleeves and they decided to do what
needed to be done.
You have proven that we can adopt sensible strategies that will once again make our
public schools the kinds of institutions we can be proud of, because of the products they are
producing and the children's lives that are being turned around.
It's happening all over the city. In fact, Paul Valance told me at lunch today that some of
the biggest turn-arounds are happening in those areas of the city that have the poorest kids. I
want to commend you, because I am sick and tired of hearing people in education elsewhere in
the country say to me, "Well what do you expect? Look at the kids we get." That is a cop-out.
That is an absolute cop-out. (Applause)
A hundred years ago we took people from all over the world that were flooding into this
2
city and cities like it. We took people who were coming up from the South who had been slaves,
and the children of slaves, and who had never been educated. We started putting them in public
school, and maybe they only went to the sixth grade, or the eighth grade, or the tenth grade. But,
nobody made excuses for them. Nobody sat around and said, "Poor old Joe. He's just come
over with his parents from the boat. Or poor old Mary, she's just one generation from the
fields." We had a belief that if we worked hard enough, and if we worked together and if we
didn't give up on any kid, we wouldn't make geniuses out of them. They weren't all going to be
Nobel Prize winners, or Pulitzer Prize authors, but they'd find a place in this society. And they'd
lead honorable, respectable lives, and they would raise kids, and they'd make a contribution.
And then times changed on us, and we lost a little bit of control. We couldn't quite figure
out how we were going to do the work that needed to be done when the economy was changing
so fast. Because there used to be a lot of jobs; I remember growing up here there were jobs in the
factories on the south side. There were jobs in the meat packing plants. There were all kinds of
jobs, where you didn't need a whole lot of education, where a strong back, and a willingness to
work would get you there. But all that began to change and the public education system didn't
keep up with it, at first. And how could it? It was overwhelmed by the changes. With the
economy moving so quickly, and jobs disappearing so fast, and the demand for more education
coming at such a rapid rate, how were we going to meet the obligations to the next generation of
children?
I understand--and I think we all do--why we lost our way for awhile there. Because it
was difficult to figure out exactly what we were doing in terms of educating. For what? For
what kind of future?
But finally it dawned on us. That there weren't going to be many, if any, jobs left for good,
hard working decent people, who were willing to get up at the crack of dawn and work, 8, 10, 12
hours a day. There just weren't going to be those jobs, and we had to do something to enable
everybody to be as well prepared as possible.
And I'm beginning to the see the country and the people kind of catch up with that
awareness as well. We're seeing a lot of success, for example, in people moving off of welfare.
Because, a lot of people are recognizing that they've got to set an example for their children.
They've got to go to work. They've got to encourage their children to go to school. We're
seeing a lot of people who never thought that their kid needed to go to college, all of a sudden
recognizing that they do need to get as much education as possible.
So the circumstances were poised for the hard decisions that needed to be made, but we
had to have leadership. We had to have people at all levels of the education system. We had to
have leaders in the business and labor community. We had to have political decision makers,
citizens and parents who all reached a new consensus about the importance of education.
That's what I think is happening now. And I believe Chicago is leading the way in
3
forging that consensus. And I'm always telling people, we'll go see what they're doing in
Chicago. And when I travel around the country, and people talk to me about things like vouchers
for schools, I say, "Go to Chicago!" We don't need vouchers, we just need a public education
system that works for every single child. (Applause)
So now that we have a strategy, and you all are leading the way here in the country by
what you're doing in Chicago. What does that mean, and where do we go from here?
Well, we need to do more to give you the tools to do the work that you know needs to be
in each of your schools. The President has an education agenda that he's worked out with people
like the Mayor, and the people who are involved in running the Chicago schools. He knows that
we have to reduce class size, and we have to repair school buildings and build new ones. We
have to insure safer schools. We do have to set high standards. We have to do what needs to be
done to expand after school programs and pre-school programs so the kids are both prepared and
able to get the extra help they need.
Now this agenda--particularly the President's call for 100,000 more teachers, which
echoes the call he made in 1993 for 100,000 more police. Because how are you going to make
the streets safer if you don't have more police on the streets? And how are you going to lower
the class size and give a lot of these kids more attention, as you know better than I, if you don't
have the teachers to do the job? And its not just a Chicago issue, it's an American issue, which
is why the federal government should step in and help provide the funding for 100,000 more
teachers. (Applause)
And what kind of message does it send to a youngster, if we're telling this young person,
maybe a first generation American, or certainly a child of hard working people who never went
to college, or a child of somebody who has just gotten off of welfare. What does it mean if we
say, we really believe in education but, by the way, we really want you to attend that school
that's fallen down around your ears? That school that hasn't been repaired, the one where the
toilets don't work, we want you to go there. We want you to believe we care about you and
your education.
Well, most kids I know are smarter than that and most teachers deserve better than that.
We need to do more to make the infrastructure of our public education system the best it can be
and we certainly need to do what is required to make our school buildings safe, and accessible,
and available to people, not just during the school day but to the neighborhood during the off
school hours as well.
The President has proposed such a plan. So there is some very important work that the
federal government can do if the Congress would focus on real education reform and quit trying
to design ways to undermine the viability of the education system with these voucher plans. If
the Congress would adopt a real education agenda, then the United States government could be a
better partner to the city schools here in Chicago and around the country.
4
We also need to recall what it was about the education that many of us received that stood
us in such good stead. My husband and I have talked about this a lot. He went to school in the
public schools of a state that never got off the bottom in terms of per capita spending for
children. But the elementary school and the high school that he went to, they had art classes,
they had music classes, they had band, they had a full range of sports and recreation activities,
they had clubs.
A lot of kids education and mine, going to a suburban Chicago school district didn't
just happen during the academic classes, it happened when the music teacher was introducing us
to opera, or the art teacher was attempting to show me how to get some sense of perspective
which I've never gotten to this day. So, we knew there was a lot going on that was beyond
reading, writing and arithmetic. And so much of that has been cut out in the first years.
When the budget has had to be tightened, what's gone? After-school programs,
recreational programs, art programs, music programs. I think that we have missed such an
opportunity with a whole group of children, to find their talents, to give them something to
believe in themselves. (Applause) And even to take people like me, who have no talent, but to
expose us to the talent of other people, to develop in someone like me an appreciation for those
who can create, for the students who go to Gallery 37 that sculpt and paint, and do what I saw
them do when I visited.
And I think one of the challenges we face as we're moving along the reform agenda, and
we're seeing test scores go up, is to not lose sight about what a well rounded education means.
What the full range of exposure for all of our children should mean.
I have a wonderful quote I heard recently from the choir director of a youth choir in
Oakland California. When he was justifying his efforts before the school board to get additional
funds to enroll more kids in his choir because the choir had taken off, and more kids wanted to
get in. He said, "You know a child can be in a gang, or a gang of singers."
We've got to create safe places where the children can find their own identities again:
maybe on the sports team and on the field, and maybe in a choir as well, or maybe sitting quietly
and practicing an instrument, or trying to draw something that a teacher has already modeled.
And I think that it's so critical in these days when so many kids have so much going on in their
lives. You know. You know what they bring to school. And, it's not just poor kids, it's all kids.
There's just so much going on around them that they have to sort out.
Even if they come from stable two parent families, they see a whole lot of stuff on TV
that I wish they wouldn't see. They're are exposed to a whole lot more than I was ever exposed
to until I was well into adulthood. How can they make sense of all that? And then, you've got
teachers standing in front of classrooms of kids, and I've had a good friend of mine that has
taught for years and she calls it the "remote control phenomenon." She said, "I stand up there
5
and what worked 20 years ago no longer works." She said, "I feel like these kids are just
mentally clicking me off. Running through the remote control looking for a better channel."
(Laughter)
Well what can you expect when the first thing a child is able to do--remember when we
used to learn about and talk about hand-eye coordination, when we worried about learning how
to tie their shoes so they could develop their mental capacity--well now they just learn to use the
remote control. It amuses, it entertains them, it doesn't ask anything from them. So then we
expect them to go to a school, and sit in a classroom, and not be mentally using the remote
control.
That's why we have to get them engaged in learning, and I've seen wonderful examples
of that in many of the classrooms of your schools that I have visited. I've seen hands-on
programs in the sciences. I've seen kids working with blocks and other materials to do math
problems, that were well beyond what I thought a first or second grader could do.
I've seen lots of interactive learning going on. And I think that's one of the roles that the
arts has to play because you have to be involved. You can't just watch and expect that picture to
show up on that paper. You can't just sit there and pretend that you're listening, when you have
to play that instrument. You have to participate.
So there are many reasons why we have to look for ways to bring the arts back into our
schools. But we've also learned something. It's not just a nice idea or nostalgia for people in my
generation thinking about what we had when we were in pubic school. It's not even one of my
favorite films, "Mr. Holland's Opus," that made me think of all those years back with all those
plays, and performances, and variety shows that we used to do.
It's also because we now have very significant and compelling research that arts
education can be a powerful force in boosting academic performances, particularly when it's
moved into the core curriculum of a school. A four year study involving an elementary school in
Dallas, Texas, has proven what educators, and cultural supporters, have been saying for years.
That integrated arts curriculum can dramatically improve academic success. A recent North
Carolin
h learning is enhanced by these hands-on visual
experie
omes to SAT scores, students of the arts continue to
outperf
9/1/96
e such programs in their schools.
CA.
when my husband asked me to work on education reform
in Arka
f schools, and I just could not believe that so many of the
student
ad in 1963. They didn't have the libraries, they didn't have
the arts programs. They didn't have the exposure that I'd grown up taking for granted. As a
result, they didn't have the tools at their disposal to manipulate information, to think about, to
make synthesizing ideas work as they learn things, and weren't able to add to their academic
accomplishments.
6
A study a few years ago called "Coming Up Taller" that was released by the President's
Committee on the Arts and Humanities--on which Maggie Daley has so well served--offered
compelling evidence that the arts provide young people, particularly those from homes and
little exposure to the arts, with creative alternatives to destructive
any research studies, and anecdotes, but I particularly like the ones
vill all of a sudden find an opportunity to be in an artistic program
, and all of a sudden caught fire. The kid who'd never been
len was.
I've gone around and visited some of those programs like Gallery 37, and others in other
cities, and I have seen with my own eyes what a difference it can make. We also know from
educational psychology that people learn in different ways. Some people are visual learners,
some people are auditory earners. Some people are kinesthetic learners, some people learn by
doing. Some people, in a way, have an absorbative ability with their whole body. Some of them
become our greatest athletes if they're given the chance to develop the discipline.
We are all different and introducing the arts particularly for young people who don't
have the outlets for th:
e, really demonstrates clearly that we can
capture something, lig
We also know
is information age that we are now a part of,
that looks like its only
e in its development--prizes exactly the
skills that the arts then
ty and innovation. If you go and talk to
companies like GE or
ig their employees to be exposed to the
visual and performing arts, because they want people to be creative and come up with new ideas
and think about how do to things differently.
So its not only that it will help a child--and particularly an at-risk child that perhaps might
get hooked into academic learning--but it will also help prepare a child for the world of work as
well.
I think that the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education is a very good way of beginning
to make sure that we have the arts well represented in our schools here in this city. I also
applaud the partnership between the Chicago public schools and Columbia College--which is
training 900 high school math and science teachers to use art, music and dance to enrich the
teaching of their subjects. Albert Einstein once said, "The gift of fantasy has meant more to me
than my talent for absorbing knowledge," and imagination, that we have to trigger in everyone,
for them to feel that they have a real claim on their own future.
A few weeks ago, I went to one of the toughest neighborhoods in Washington, where the
student body, and the school across from the housing project, was predominantly very poor and
7
disadvantaged. I went to something called a poetry slam. I don't know if any of you have seen
such a thing, but they are projects that are funded by the Americorps Writer's Corps--where
young writers and poets are sent into the classrooms in some of our toughest neighborhoods
where they work with young people in helping them to write their own poetry and where they
have contests, like sports contests. It's like going to the Olympics, because you have one school
represented by their four best poets, and the other school represented by their four best poets.
Then you have an audience of people who hold up cards like an ice-skating contest ranking the
kids from one to ten.
It has the excitement of a sporting contest. Who could have thought that these kids would
have labored over these poems. And the poems were so evocative, they told stories about their
lives. There was one young girl who got up and told a poem about the homeless man she has to
walk by everyday on her way to school. Another talked about what went on in his housing
project, and the noise that sometimes just made him feel like he was going to shatter into a
million pieces. One had a poem about the legacy of Duke Ellington. One student said, "I'm so
good at music, that when you hear my song, you'll sing it for the rest of your life." (Laughter)
Every one of these young people talked about how being in this poetry program had
helped them put their anger on paper, instead of taking it out on their fellow classmates in the
hallways, or on the streets. That it gave them a confidence that they hadn't had before.
This program was funded by, as I said, Americorps and the National Endowment for the
Arts, because they believe, and my husband and his administration believe, that art is not a
luxury, it's a necessity. And, that as we know more about the challenges we're going to face in
the future, it should be an integral part of our lives, and particularly of our education system.
So we at the federal level do what we can to try to promote arts projects like the Writers
Corps, arts programs, and provide funding for local projects every chance we can get. But I also
in the next two years intend to embark on a national campaign to get arts education back into our
schools. (Applause)
I think as our nation moves toward the end of one century--and the beginning of a new
millennium--its time for us to decide about the legacies we want to leave for future generations.
Earlier this morning Maggie Daley and I were at the Art Institute, where the Sara Lee
Corporation announced a magnificent gift. Twelve paintings from their private collection to the
Art Institute, one to the Contemporary Art Museum here in Chicago, and other museums around
the country. I sat, and I looked at those works--most of them 19th century, early 20th--and I
thought, just think in a 100 years, somebody could be making a contribution to the Art Institute
of work that was done by Chicago artists who got their start in the Chicago public schools.
(Applause)
And when Sara Lee made that announcement, the Chief Executive, John Bryant said that
it was going to be a Millennium gift to America. I said how pleased I was because, last summer,
8
the President asked all of us to think about the gifts we can give to America for the Millennium.
You give gifts every day in your schools. You give gifts that may not make headlines,
but as the mayor said, will be remembered in the hearts of students and teachers and parents in
years to come.
I remember those gifts. I have with me today one of my favorite teachers from high
school. A math teacher, that was not my favorite subject, but he was one of my favorite teachers.
(Laughter)
And I remember extremely well how he conducted himself, how he encouraged us, he
was our class sponsor, he was always there in our corner trying to make sure we behaved in an
appropriate manner. But I remember, and thousands of hundreds of thousands of people
remember your legacies, and we have to think about how we will build on that and what gifts we
will give.
I want to leave you with some words of Rita Dove, who was our poet laureate a few years
ago. Recently at the White House, as part of our Millennium Celebration, we had our present
poet laureate, and our two former poet laureates, of whom one was Rita Dove. She served from
1993 to 1995. She said,
"If children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they
cannot imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more
sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America's alienated
and disparate neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from
the heart--and then to discover that one is not alone in one's feelings. Once hope and self esteem
have been engendered, the work of redefining the future can begin."
Well, thank God for our poets like Rita Dove, and thank God for our artists who help us
give voice to what we feel. And thank God for all of our teachers and our principals who do
what you do everyday to try to light that spark in our children. I hope that you will find in the
next years even greater satisfaction because you'll see you're better supported in the work you
do. You'll see the results of your hard work, and you too will feel that the gifts you're giving to
the future are well respected and appreciated, and that you are part of building what we need to
have as we move in to the Millennium. Thank you very much.
9
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
OPENING OF THOREAU INSTITUTE AT WALDEN POND
JUNE 4, 1998
Thank you, Don, for that wonderful introduction, and Tony, for that stirring
rendition of "America the Beautiful." It's such a pleasure to be joining both of
you, Senator Kennedy, Senator Kerry; and Representative Markey; Kathi
Anderson and the staff at the Thoreau Institute, the Thoreau Society and the
Walden Woods Project, and all of you here today, for this historic opening.
I want to begin by thanking the person who has worked so hard -- and so
creatively to bring us all to this ceremony: Don Henley. I think most of us here
can remember when we first picked up a book, or read an essay by Henry David
Thoreau, and the worlds that opened up as result of turning those pages. And I
can't tell you what a thrill it is for me and my husband today -- to get our first
glimpse of this beautiful place where he lived and wrote; to see his papers and
manuscripts; and to place a brick from his cabin's chimney at the cornerstone for
the new research center.
Yet as powerful as his presence is being felt here today, in the stillness of
these New England woods, and in the historic documents and artifacts that are
housed here, we also see Thoreau's ideas and concerns are very much alive today -
- in the ongoing research taking place here -- and more immediately, in the lively
conversations that we just heard in the Media Center between the American
students and their counterparts in Moscow thanks to the wonders of modern
technology.
To you Don and your partners at the Thoreau Society, our deepest thanks
and appreciation for creating a place that speaks to and inspires historians and
young people and ordinary citizens alike.
We come together today at an historic time of great possibilities -- as we
approach a new millennium. And my husband and I are hoping that all Americans
will begin to think about what gifts we want to give to future generations; and
decide what historical and cultural treasures we should preserve for our children
and grandchildren.
And it's that same spirit that I believe so animates these activities today.
Because we are here to honor Henry David Thoreau: one of America's greatest
gifts to the world, and a true American treasure. We've already heard today the
extraordinary range of his accomplishments, and the breadth of his influence on the
people and world around him. A measure of his greatness is that it's almost
impossible to define him: he was a writer; tutor; surveyor; gardener; carpenter;
pencil maker; abolitionist; naturalist; conservationist; and -- in his words -- "a
sometimes poetaster." His expressive power -- reminding us that "nature is holy
and heroic" -- is his lasting legacy.
And thanks to Don Henley and so many of you here today, the tangible
evidence of his genius -- his writings, his ideas, and this sacred place -- are being
preserved and protected, for the enjoyment and enlightenment of future
generations.
As we approach the end of a century -- and the beginning of a new
millennium -- we too must become the preservationists of our national treasures,
and the protectors of our nation's heritage. This unique moment in history gives
us an extraordinary opportunity to think about who are, what we stand for and
value. And what we want to bring with us into the new millennium -- as
individuals and as a nation. And to decide what artifacts, and documents, and
cultural works, and historical sites -- like Walden Pond -- embody the spirit of this
nation, and should be celebrated and preserved for the future.
Last year, the President and I created the White House Millennium Council,
to develop ways to engage all Americans in marking this milestone in human
history; and to work together with elected officials, community groups, federal
agencies, and private foundations -- to celebrate our rich and diverse heritage. The
overall theme of the millennium program is to "Honor the Past: Imagine the
Future" -- and the President and I are inviting all Americans to participate, and to
think about what gifts they want to give to enhance future generations.
One of the most powerful ways to help us imagine America's future is to
preserve what we truly value of our past -- the irreplaceable objects and documents
and places that will tell the story of this nation to future generations. Yet these
very symbols of our heritage, from the Star Spangled Banner to the monuments at
Gettysburg to the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde are literally deteriorating before
our eyes, or will be at risk if we don't act now. We must do a better job of
preserving and celebrating our history. That's why we've created a national effort
to Save America's Treasures, and placed it at the heart of our Millennium efforts.
Today, we've all had the opportunity to see, touch, hear, and even
contemplate a precious part of our heritage -- because a group of people took the
time, and made the investment, to preserve it. Imagine then, for a moment, what
it would be like for all of us -- a few years from now -- to stand beside a repaired
Star Spangled Banner at the Smithsonian; or walk through one of America's most
treasured prehistoric sites; or examine the artifacts in Thomas Edison's newly
restored laboratory; or listen to the rare musical recordings of Louis Armstrong that
we were able to save; or read the newly encased founding documents of this nation
at the National Archives.
I've mentioned some of the more well known "treasures" that need to be
preserved and protected. But every community has its own treasures -- its own
garden, or monument, or statue that makes it unique, and which gives its citizens a
sense of where they've come from, and where they're going. So let's not forget
that history and tradition can be found in our own backyards, as Henry David
Thoreau found his inspiration at Walden Pond. And let's hope that people across
America will work together -- as you have done -- to preserve what is uniquely
precious to them.
Throughout our history, in a way that is truly American, we have always
provided both public and private resources to pass on something of value to the
future. This national effort to "Save America's Treasures" must also be a
public/private partnership. The Institute that we are unveiling today exemplifies
that partnership -- with its combined support from Don Henley's foundation, the
Isis Fund, the Thoreau So ciety -- and a major challenge grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities. While Thoreau has written -- in his essay on
"Civil Disobedience -- "that government governs best which governs not at all" --
I am sure he would be applauding -- along with us -- the public support being
committed to save his most favorite place on earth.
Henry David Thoreau left us so much to think about. Just as he spent much
of his time in contemplation -- and in challenging society - -- he continues to
challenge us today. As he wrote: "Be a Columbus to whole new continents and
worlds within you; opening up new channels not of trade, but of thought." It's
difficult to imagine our future as a nation without drawing on such rich inspiration
from our past. Thank you, Don Henley and all of you here today, for recognizing
how irreplaceable this man's writings and place are to us, and for helping to
preserve them for the generations to come.
And now, I'd like to introduce my husband, President Bill Clinton, who has
done so much to launch this effort to preserve America's treasures.
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
VIDEOTAPE REMARKS FOR
THE 75TH ANNUAL SCHOLASTIC ART & WRITING AWARDS CEREMONY
JUNE 10, 1998
Good Morning. It is my pleasure to welcome you to Washington and to the 75th
Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. I want to thank the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, its
Board of Directors, and its national sponsors for making this celebration possible. And I want to
congratulate all the award winners and their families and teachers.
Today, you stand on the shoulders of millions of other young people, who, for 75 years,
have been recognized by Scholastic for their outstanding talent. You stand on the shoulders of
artists and writers like Richard Avedon, Truman Capote, Joyce Maynard, Joyce Carol Oates,
Sylvia Plath, Robert Redford, and Andy Warhol. I hope you are very proud of all you've
accomplished.
Like those who came before you, your success is a product of skill and commitment. It's
a product of family members and teachers who nurtured your interests and encouraged you to
travel as far as your dreams would take you. And it's a product of our nation's support for the
arts.
For over 200 years, the arts have helped shape America, enriching our cultural life,
expressing our diversity, and breathing life into our democratic ideals. Through prose and
poetry, sculpture and painting, we can see the world through others' eyes. We can celebrate the
past and imagine the future.
And as we approach the Millennium, we must continue to support the arts, individually
and collectively, publicly and privately. That is the best gift we can make to your future as artists
and writers and our future as a nation.
It is now my great honor to introduce the 1998 Scholastic Art & Writing Award winners.
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
REMARKS AT BILL IVEY'S SWEARING-IN CEREMONY
THE WHITE HOUSE, JUNE 17, 1998
(TRANSCRIPT)
Thank you and, please, be seated, and welcome to the White House. It is a great honor
and pleasure for me to join the Vice-President on behalf of the President and myself to be here
for this very special occasion. I want to be sure that all of you in the audience know that we're
joined by two very strong supporters of the arts. Former Senator Pell, we're very pleased to see
you again, and welcome back to the White House. This is the second time, today, that I've had
the pleasure today to be with Senator Jeffords from Vermont. He was here earlier this morning to
join with the President in announcing some very important after-school grants to communities
and schools around the country, because he has been a champion of our strong belief that
children deserve a safe, and secure learning environment after school and that includes learning
with the arts, as well, as some of the programs demonstrate. So Senator Jeffords, welcome again
to the White House.
We are so pleased to have this occasion to honor and make official the new Chair of the
National Endowment for the Arts, Bill Ivey. I'm pleased that he could be joined by members of
his family including his mother Grace, his sister, a nephew who's there, and other members of
his family and friends, all.
You know, when I was fortunate enough, and dumbfounded, to win a Grammy for the
recorded version of my book, It Takes A Village, there were all sorts of people giving me advice
about the awards ceremony. The most common advice I received was the same advice I've been
receiving all my life, particularly from my high school drama teacher, and that was don't sing --
as if there were any real chance of that. (Laughter) But I was so fortunate to have a real pro by
my side, and that was Bill Ivey.
Today all Americans are lucky to have him out front and on their side as he carries the
torch of leadership so confidently held over the last four years by Jane Alexander, and helps to
bring the NEA into the 21st century. No one has a greater depth of experience or breadth of
vision. He really understands and appreciates all forms of culture and art. He's a tough manager
with experience in the private, and public, sectors. A long time friend of the NEA, he knows
what makes the agency work and how to make it work better. He certainly has been an effective
member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, chaired by John Brademas,
and I've been privileged to work with him in that role. As one of the principle contributors to the
committee's report, "Creative America," he helped draw up a blue print for what we need to do
to improve public support of the arts in America, to reach young people, in particular. To use the
turn of the century, and the turn of the millennium, to really celebrate our artistic and cultural
heritage. He's also a pilot, I understand, who has learned to fly through extraordinary turbulence.
That probably is the talent he brings to Washington that he will rely on the most in years to
come. (Laughter)
You know, the annual attacks on the NEA have a predictability to them now, I'm very
sorry to say. But, what we've seen in these debates, if we're looking about ways to make
lemonade out of lemons, is that they've given us an opportunity to tell the real story of the NEA.
Not the distorted, half truth, misinformed story of the NEA, but the story of the NEA in it's role
in countless lives and communities across our country. Whether it's the Vietnam Veterans'
Memorial, or the play, "Driving Miss Daisy", or contemporary dance performances in Lewiston,
Maine, Americans support public funding for the arts. They understand that art is not just for the
elites, but for all Americans, and must be supported by all Americans. Right now, each one of us
as Americans contributes 36 cents a year to the NEA, less than we spend on a candy bar, for
example. But, it is one of the best investments that we all make together. It certainly lifts our
spirits, it provides opportunities for children and adults alike, to experience live theater, or to
meet a real live poet, or to have a chance to attend a performance that would otherwise be out of
their reach. It also lifts up our economies, and drives our tourism, and I think that's an important
argument to make to those who wonder whether the arts are just a frivolous, marginal activity. It
also helps express our dreams and differences and defines us as human beings and as Americans.
The arts are not a luxury, they're a necessity we have to afford.
On behalf of the President, I want to promise you that the President, and the Vice
President, and this administration will continue to fight all attempts to destroy this agency. We
will never back down on our nation's bi-partisan commitment to the arts in America. We will
work to ensure that the arts always have a seat in classrooms because they improve learning,
stimulate creativity, pass down our heritage, and literally transform children's lives, particularly
the lives of children at risk. I see Robert Pinsky in the audience, you know he's our current poet
laureate. He, and I, and Robert Haas, and Rita Dove went to see a poetry slam at a DC junior
high school that serves mostly children from a housing project across the street. I wish every one
could have been there with us. We saw students, all of them from poor homes, reciting poems
they had written themselves, that just made my heart leap. Some of those poems were about their
own names, or the plight of a homeless man, or the contributions of Duke Ellington. They also
talked about how writing poetry had helped them put their anger on paper instead of acting it out.
How poetry, and the process of writing poetry, had given them confidence. One boy recited a
poem with this wonderful line, "I'm so musical that when I write songs, you sing them for the
rest of your life."
Now, that's a program that is funded by the NEA that, through the Writers Corps, sends
poets into some of the schools in some of the toughest neighborhoods in our country. I can attest
first hand, as can Robert Pinsky and those who were with me, that it is making a difference in the
lives of those children. May every child have that opportunity to have the arts touch his or her
life. With Bill Ivey leading the way, I know that our children will. Again, I thank all of you who
are supporters of the arts as well as artists yourselves. Thank you for what you have done to
make America the land that it is, a land of creativity, of hope, of high aspirations, that challenge
all of us to be just a little bit more than we might be if it were not for the arts.
Our next speaker is someone who cares very deeply about the arts and has been a strong
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voice for artistic freedom and an extraordinary leader for our nation. It also doesn't hurt that he
happens to be from someplace called Nashville, and has a long time association with Bill. I know
how proud he is to be here today. It is my honor to introduce the Vice President, Al Gore.
(Applause)
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Remarks by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
Montpelier, Virginia
July 9, 1998
Thank you so much, it is such a pleasure to be here on this beautiful afternoon where we
are blessed with enough cloud cover that it is not quite as warm as it would be otherwise. And it
seems like such a large crowd of people gathered to celebrate this very important day with these
two remarkable announcements that we have just heard. I want to thank everyone associated with
Montpelier, and with all of you who have worked so hard to bring this day to fruition. I want
especially to thank Congressman Bliley, the proud occupant of the Madison seat in Congress, for
his tireless efforts to preserve Montpelier, and for his singular commitment to the Dolly Madison
coin, which I think is a long overdue recognition of her important role in our nation's history.
And, of course we would not be here without Dick Moe and Nancy Campbell, and all of
the members of the Trust. They have given our nation an extraordinary challenge. Every single
day they challenge us to remember what is important about who we are as Americans, and to
preserve the past that not only is a part of what is long gone, but really continues to inform us
today and help lead us into the future. I am delighted that the trust is working with the White
House on the "Save America's Treasures" campaign, and I am confident that with the kind of
leadership that Dick and Nancy, and all of you associated with the trust give, we will have many
such occasions as this where important announcements will be made, and more and more
Americans will appreciate the significance of historical preservation.
I also want to thank and applaud Kathy Mullins for the work that she has done and her
staff. (applause). I hope all of you have chance to visit the "Discovering Madison" exhibition
that Ralph Applebaum, who's here with us on the stage, has designed. It's very informative and
interesting and I think will give you all some new insight into Dolly and James Madison, and the
life that they lived here. I also want to congratulate and thank Glen Moreno, and the new
Montpelier property council, for stepping up to the plate and making sure that the challenge the
trust has issued will be met. I look forward to hearing about the successful completion of that
challenge campaign in 2003 when the work gets completed, the money is collected, and
Montpelier really demonstrates all that it can to the public as they visit.
Now, I also want to thank the extraordinary generosity of Norman and Lyn Lear. The
papers of our founding fathers and other significant early Americans are an ongoing project. I
was surprised to learn, when I looked into this a few years ago, how many papers has still not
been properly cataloged, edited, or made available for publication. The gift that the Lears give
today will help us to continue this very important work. I thought that what Mr. Lear said today
was particularly significant because he was not only talking about his own gratitude for the
1
blessings our country has given him, but he was recognizing how those blessings continue to
flow and how we must continue into the future for us to keep pace with everyone who came
before us, whether it's a beloved grandfather, or James and Dolly Madison. This generous gift
will help edit, compile and publish at least eight volumes of correspondence and letters from
James Madison, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams.
By doing so it will help ensure that the ideas and ideals which built our nation survive forever.
We could not have a better person to help oversee the expenditure of those funds than Bill Ferris,
the chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who will work along with the National
Archives to collect and safeguard the writings of those Americans who we continue to look for
inspiration from.
There are so many to be thanked today but I think that the real lesson of our gathering
here was really summed up by James Madison. He once wrote, "The origin and outset of the
American Republic contain lessons which posterity ought not to be deprived." I could not agree
with President Madison more. In fact I believe, as we move toward a new century-- and indeed, a
new millennium - those lessons need to be learned over and over again. Not only by students
and children, but by all of us. We need to be educated and inspired time and time again by the
American story written here by James and Dolly Madison, and written by so many who came
before. Because, it is only by understanding where we came from looking squarely at our past,
appreciating the sacrifices and difficulties others endured for us to be enjoying what we enjoy
today - that we can hold dearly those ideals and values that should be cherished, and pass them
onto our own children and grandchildren. Norman's son Ben is here and I see other children in
the audience and I want every one of them to appreciate what brought many of us here today,
to understand the significance of the lives of James and Dolly Madison. Not as a history lesson,
to be read about and put on a shelf, or maybe be tested about, but as a living reminder of what
each of us must do to keep pace with the country that we are blessed to live in.
I'm also pleased that the work here at Montpelier will give a great deal of time and
attention to one of my favorite predecessors, Dolly Madison. Ever since I was fortunate enough
to move into the White House with my husband I have been reading everything I could get my
hands on about the women who lived there before me, and what a remarkable group of women
they are, indeed. And, we are finally recognizing their contributions. Some of you may have seen
recently the new and improved exhibition at the Smithsonian. It used to mostly just show the
gowns that the women wore when their husbands were inaugurated. But a few years ago it began,
once again, bringing to life all of the activities that these women engaged in and the roles that
they played in helping thier husbands and contributing to our country. And, there are few who
did more than Dolley Madison, a women of strength, of conviction, energy, and joy. Not only a
wonderful hostess but a very skilled diplomat with a tremendous political ear, who could bring
people together, have them work together, and then send them out feeling that they were charged
with a mission to help try to do whatever President Jefferson or President Madison wanted to see
accomplished.
I also think, often, as I walk through the White House about the lives of the people who
2
have lived there before us and the singular acts of courage that occurred time and time again as
Presidents and their families faced difficult, challenging times. But I am also aware that many of
those stories are not as well known as they should be; one of my favorites concerns Dolly
Madison. During the War of 1812, in the year 1814, her husband was our last President to be an
actual Commander in Chief in the field. He was out leading his troops against the advancement
of the British forces, and Mrs. Madison had prepared a wonderful meal for her husband and his
officers for their return to the White House. Word came from her husband that the British had
broken through the lines and they were on their way to Washington and they could not be
stopped and she had to flee. Well, in a letter that she wrote to her sister which will be included
in the Madison papers she described being within the sound of a cannon. But she did not leave
when she was first ordered to do so. Instead, she decided she had to stay behind to collect the
most valuable items of the house. Those were not the account books of the house, those were not
her personal possessions, those were items that represented the founding of our republic. And,
the most important one, to her, she felt, was the fabulous Gilbert Stewart portrait of George
Washington which hangs in the East Room of the White House. Some of you may have seen it.
Here's what she writes in her letter to her sister: "Our kind friend, sister Carol, has come to
hasten our departure, and is in a very bad humor with me, because I insist on waiting until the
large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall.
This process was found too perilous for these tedious moments, I have ordered the frame to be
broken and the canvas taken out. It is done, and now dear sister, I must leave this house."
I think of Dolley Madison not only taking time to gather the picture, a copy of the
Declaration of Independence and other valuables, but to write to her sister. If you think of the
extraordinary stories we've heard about our patriots of the past this one, I think, ranks right up
there. But, she did get out in time, just in time she escaped, and the British came. And, I've never
really appreciated this, I've told the British Ambassador several times, the British officers sat
down, ate the meal Mrs. Madison had prepared, and then burned the house to the ground. If you
visit the White House you can still see some of the scorch marks on the North Portico which we
have left unpainted to remind us always that we have to be vigilant, and we have to remember
that house was once burned, and had to be rebuilt, in order to continue to represent Democracy
and the home of our President. But because of Dolley Madison, Gilbert Stewart's portrait of
George Washington still hangs proudly in the East Room today.
So, there is so much to be learned and appreciated, about both James and Dolly Madison.
Dolley Madison understood very well the importance of history. Whether it was saving that
portrait or transcribing her husband's letters and essays when he was stricken with Rheumatism,
she understood how significant it would be to future generations like ours to know what the
founders thought, the debates they had, the arguments and discussions that led to our founding
ideals. They knew that none of us own our nation's past, but we are all caretakers of it, with the
responsibility to safeguard the gifts we have received and to pass them on to all who come after
us. That is the idea behind the White House millennium program, and espcecially our plan to
save America's treasures.
3
Now we know that the year 2000 will bring out all kinds of celebrations, people are
already planning what party they will attend when New Year's Eve strikes and we are in a new
century. And there is room for a lot of fun, new products like Millennium toothpaste, for
example. But I hope that it is not just that, not just a passing moment, not just a celebration, but
real time for reflection and appreciation. Because we are all joined together as Americans. We
are one nation, under God, and we have many of the same hopes and aspirations for ourselves,
for our communities, and for our country.
On Monday the President and I will kickoff this tour and the "Save the America's
Treasures" effort by standing before the Star Spangled Banner at the Smithsonian. I will then go
to Ft. McHenry where, you may recall, that banner was waving during the War of 1812 when the
Star Spangled Banner was written. I'll travel on to see the laboratory and home of Thomas
Edison where just boxes and boxes of his works and adventures have been sitting unopened for
years and where we hope to draw attention not only to our founding patriots and their work, not
only to our wars, not only to our great men and women who served in politics, but also our
scientists, our artists, our creative geniuses who have contributed so much to America over the
years.
So, during this next week and then during the next years many of us will be working
together to try to highlight the treasures of America that have helped to make us who we are.
That's why what you're doing today and these two announcements are so important. Because, I
hope, that in years to come, more and more Americans will appreciate the contribution of James
and Dolly Madison. I sometimes think that President Madison is underappreciated in our country
today. Not as many Americans as I would like know and appreciate his role as the father of our
constitution. He made extraordinary contributions which are still relevant today; many of the
debates that are going on in our country today, and many of the debates that go on in our
Congress, harken back to the debates that happened at the end of the 1700s and the beginning of
the 1800s. So if we think about what Madison did, using the power of the written and spoken
work to give life to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia resolution, then we can
learn more about the issues that are facing us today as well.
Because of today's announcment, future generations will look to Montpelier and see a
part of America's memory. But not just that, they will also see a road map to our future. I hope
that all of us who are gathered today will think of ways that we can give gifts to the future to
celebrate the new century and the millennium. Just as our founders took a great leap of faith, and
imagined their future with confidence, so must we. In this time of great blessings there is no time
to rest on our laurels, to take for granted our liberties, to not think about what we should do to
make sure this country remains strong into the future. It is up to each of us, and probably more
than anything else, the two announcements and the gifts that we recognize and celebrate today
will help us not only honor the past, but imagine a future that gives great hope to every
American. Thank you all very much.
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FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
REMARKS AT MONTPELIER
MONTPELIER STATION, VIRGINIA
JULY 9, 1998
James Madison once wrote: "The origin and outset of the American
Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived." Now,
because of all of you, every future generation will be educated and inspired by the
American story written here by James and Dolley Madison.
I want to especially thank Congressman Bliley, the proud occupant of the
"Madison Seat" in Congress for his tireless efforts to preserve Montpelier. Dick
Moe and the Trust for the extraordinary challenge you've offered today and the
critical role you're playing everyday as the private partner in our national effort to
Save America's Treasures; Kathy Mullins, Glen Moreno, and the new Montpelier
Property Council, thank you for stepping up to the plate so that all who live and
visit here can truly discover the vast contributions of the Madisons.
Much of what we rely upon for exhibits here, for scholarly publications, for
the lessons we teach our children about the birth of this nation come from the
papers of the founding fathers. And I want to thank Bill Ferris and the entire NEH
and National Archives for all you've done to collect and safeguard the writings of
our founders and other pivotal Americans.
And, of course, to Norman Lear, whose skill as a creator is only rivaled by
his commitment as a citizen. Your generous gift will help us edit, compile, and
publish at least 8 volumes of correspondence and letters from James Madison,
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams.
And, when all is said and done, it will help ensure that the ideas and ideals that
built our nation survive forever. Thank you.
Walking around this place of our past and future, I am reminded of my
favorite story about Dolley Madison. During the War of 1812, she got word that
the British were about to attack. In a letter to her sister, which will be included in
the Madison papers, she describes being within the sound of the cannon but
nevertheless staying behind to collect the most valuable items of the house. Not
their private property. Those, she said, "must be sacrificed."
Here's what she writes: "Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten
my departure, and is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until
the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed
from the wall. This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I
have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvas taken out. It is done And
now, dear sister, I must leave this house..."
And she did. Just in time. When the British arrived, they burned down the
White House. But, because of Dolley Madison, the Gilbert Stuart portrait of
George Washington still hangs proudly in the East Room today.
I often think of Dolley Madison back then. Here she was, one of our
founding mothers, the first to be called our First Lady, a consummate host,
someone who knew how to bring together individuals. as well as our nation. And
whether she was saving the George Washington portrait or transcribing her
husband's letters and essays when he was stricken with rheumatism, what she
understood so well then was how important the founders conversations and
contributions would be to all of us now.
Both James and Dolley Madison knew that none of us own our nation's past.
We are its caretakers with a responsibility to safeguard the gifts we've received
and pass them on to all who come after us.
That is the idea behind the White House Millennium Program- and
especially our plan to Save America's Treasures. We know that the year 2000 will
bring all sorts of parties. We know that they' 11 be Millennium toothpaste and
potato chips and everything else you can imagine. But, this is also a golden
opportunity to think about the places and ideas and things that define who we are as
nation.
No matter what our differences, all of our hearts are stirred, our fates united,
when we stand before the Star Spangled Banner. When we see the laboratory
where Thomas Edison's spark of creativity gave rise to inventions of sound and
picture that touch us every day. When we visit the homes of visionaries like Edith
Wharton and James Madison.
If we want a guidepost for our future in the next century, all of us have a
responsibility to save what we value from our past. That's why next week, I'll be
traveling around the country to raise awareness about our need to preserve our most
endangered historic and cultural sites -- from the Star Spangled Banner at the
American History Museum to the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, Massachusetts to
Harriet Tubman's home in Auburn, New York.
And that's why what you're doing here is so important. Because of today's
announcements, when future generations come to look at this house or look though
the founders papers, they will learn about the "Father of the Constitution" and the
extraordinary contributions he made to build our nation and then keep it together.
They will be able to envision Madison using the power of the written and
spoken word to give life to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia
Resolutions. In his papers, they can learn what he thought about our nation's
journey, from the struggles of the Revolutionary War to the milestone of the
Louisiana Purchase. And in these stunning grounds, they can see why Jefferson
called Madison the finest farmer in the world.
Because of today's announcements, future generations will look to this place
and see part of our American memory and a roadmap to our future. It was no
accident that we kicked off our White House Millennium Evenings with a lecture
by Bernard Bailyn, who spoke about how close we are to our past and those who
created it. For as much as things have changed since then. Different clothes.
Different ways of entertaining and communicating. And as much as we celebrate
our diversity. We are connected to each other by shared values, shared
experiences, shared hopes for tomorrow.
And just as our founders imagined their future with confidence. So too must
we. In this time of great blessings, it is up to us to pass on to our children and
grandchildren and great grandchildren the stories that made us who we are and the
stories that will allow them to become all they dream. Thanks to all of you, I know
we will. Thank you very much.
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
REMARKS AT MARINE BAND'S
200ᵀᴴ BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
JULY 10, 1998
I am so pleased to welcome all of you to the South Lawn as we honor
the men and women of "The President's Own" United States Marine Band
on their 200th birthday. What an extraordinary thought - this band is the
oldest continuously active unit in the Marine Corps -- older than the Capitol -
- older even than the White House, which celebrates its bicentennial in the
year 2000. Every President except George Washington has enjoyed their
music. Every President since John Tyler or James Polk - there's some
dispute about this - has been honored by the band playing "Hail to the
Chief."
It was Harry Truman, in his own understated way, who said, "The
Marine Band has been a source of comfort and pleasure to the occupants of
the White House." As you can probably guess, the current occupant is one
of the Band's biggest fans and he's been thrilled on the occasions when he's
been invited to sit in. I've often caught Bill tapping his toes during a
performance and I know he's dying to trade places with Master Gunnery
Sergeants Hockett or Peterson.
This week as I was writing my newspaper column, I realized that I
can still remember all the words of the Marines' Hymn, which I learned as a
little girl. For many reasons, I'll spare you my rendition. And, in just a few
minutes, the entire band will join forces and you'll hear the Marines' Hymn
the way it was meant to be heard.
Before I turn the podium over to the Band's Director, Lt. Colonel
Timothy Foley, I want to welcome some very special guests who are with us
this afternoon: Secretary of the Navy John Dalton, Secretary of the Army
Caldera, the Chief of Naval Operations Jay Johnson, Commandant of the
Marine Corps General Charles C. Krulak. And, we're especially honored
today to welcome four past recipients of our nation's highest military
commendation, the Medal of Honor: Eugene Fluckey, Robert Foley, Carl
Sitter, and Brian Thacker.
Just this morning, the President was able to right a 32-year-old wrong
when he awarded the Medal of Honor to former Robert Ingram. In 1966, Mr.
Ingram, a Hospital Corpsman Third Class, was attached to Company C, of
the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines in Vietnam. On March 28, in a firefight with
enemy troops, he was shot four times while tending the wounds of his fellow
soldiers. After the battle, his commanding officers recommended him for
the Medal of Honor, but apparently due to an oversight, he never received it.
On behalf of a grateful nation, Mr. Ingram, let me say thank you. Let me
also take this opportunity to congratulate the U.S. Navy Hospital Corps
which celebrates its 100th birthday this year.
I want to say just a few things about Lt. Colonel Foley and the
amazing musicians whose birthday we celebrate today. They are not only
among the finest musicians in the world, but also the most versatile. Their
music has lent dignity to occasions such as the historic South Lawn
handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat. When South Korea's
President Kim Dae Jung arrived in Washington last month, the Marine
Serenade, featuring Gunnery Sergeant Jihoon [jih-HOON] Chang, greeted
him with a traditional Korean folk song called "Magnolia."
They have offered brilliant support to such luminaries as Beverly Sills
and Leonard Bernstein when they performed at the White House. And, of
course, I'll never forget my last birthday when Free Country brought the
house down with "Down at the Twist and Shout" and "Rocky Top."
Listening to the Marine Band is easily one of the best parts of living in
the White House. In the words of one extraordinary director, John Philip
Sousa, "The Marine Band is the national band as great among bands as
America is among nations."
And now I would like to invite all of you to enjoy this musical
celebration of the Marine Band's 200th Anniversary.
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
Star Spangled Banner Event
National Museum of American History
Washington, D.C.
July 13, 1998
Thank you so much. Thank you Dr. Spencer Crew for all of your work and leadership.
I'm delighted to see so many gathered today for this significant announcement. I want to thank
all of you for being here. I cannot think of a better place to kick off our tour to Save America's
Treasures.
It took the skill of a flag maker in Baltimore Mary Pickersgill and her twelve-year-old
daughter to weave this flag together. I remember reading about how her daughter later said
that some nights they stayed up as late as midnight to try to get it done. It had been
commissioned by the War Department during the War of 1812.
It took the courage of a young nation to ensure that when Francis Scott Key looked up,
the Star Spangled Banner still waved proudly.
It has taken the commitment of generations to ensure that today, as we heard from the
young students, that that pledge of allegiance to a flag still represents the best of America, as
Denise Graves reminded us.
I want to thank our hosts, Spencer Crew, and the entire staff of the museum. Dr. Crew's
leadership resulted in a study of the flag's preservation needs and an innovative plan to restore it
in full view of all who visit. I also want to express my appreciation to Secretary Michael
Heyman and the entire Smithsonian family for providing an American classroom for people of
all ages. Long after we graduate from school it is often our cultural institutions, such as our
museums and our libraries, that continue to teach us, and teach us especially about our history,
about the artifacts, the art, and all that represents the best of our nations past, present, and future.
I want to say a special word of thanks to Denyce Graves, who comes from this Capital city, but is
now not only a national, but an international treasure at the Metropolitan Opera.
There are many of you in this audience who have contributed to the preservation of the
flag individuals, foundations, and groups, and we want to thank all of you for your
contributions. Now some of you may know that in 1813 it cost $405.90 to create this flag. Now
all of us know that a few years have passed since then, and it will cost quite a bit more to
preserve it. Our entire nation owes a debt of gratitude to all of you who have stepped in to fill
this important need. I also want to thank Rebecca Rimel and the PEW Charitable Trusts, not only
for the generous gift of which Dr. Crew talked about, but for her commitment and the Trusts'
commitment to save many of the treasures of our national legacy, from the Star Spangled Banner
to the Library of Congress, to Independence Hall in Philadelphia. I want to pay special tribute
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this morning to Ralph Lauren.
I first met him when he organized the fashion industry in support of breast cancer
research. He has been a leader on so many fronts, and we are so grateful for his extraordinary
generosity and commitment. You know, the phrase "Ralph Lauren" has sort of become an
adjective. People say something is very "Ralph Lauren" if it has a certain American style or
design. Well, perhaps after today, it will also come to symbolize another aspect of the American
way: good citizenship.
When the President announced our Save America's Treasures project during the State of
the Union, he talked about how chapters of our American history, our story as a nation, like the
Star Spangled Banner, were literally deteriorating before our eyes, and he called on all
Americans to help.
Well, the next day, Ralph picked up the phone and called. He, like most of us, hadn't
known of the condition of the flag, but once he heard, he did want to join in helping to save it.
He said he'd been blessed by our nation and wanted to give something back. And today he has.
He is joined this morning by his family, his wife Ricky, and his children Andrew, David, and
Dylan. And I want to thank the entire Lauren family and the corporation for this extraordinary
commitment not just to America's past, but to America's future as well.
We've created a Millennium logo that some of you may see that people are wearing now,
and on that logo, you see this great symbol of our national heritage, the Stars and Stripes, the
Red, White, and Blue, all creating a pathway to tomorrow. As much as things have changed
since the War of 1812, when this flag proclaimed victory to all who could see, we still have
much to celebrate and much to work toward as we move to the future.
We are connected to each other by shared values, shared experiences, and shared hopes,
woven through our history and our flag. It is time, as we look toward the new century and the
new millennium, to think about what these values mean to us. The flag - and the freedom it
represents -- belongs to all of us. How will we use that freedom? How will we take some time
to study and save our past, not as a history lesson to be read about and put back on the shelf, but
as a living reminder of what each of us can do to meet our own challenges in the country we are
blessed to live in today.
That was the idea behind the White House Millennium Council. We knew as we were
talking about this in the White House that the year 2000 will bring all kinds of celebrations and
markings of occasions. We know there will be room for lots of fun and great New Year's Eve
parties, and there may even be products like millennium toothpaste or potato chips and
everything else you can imagine. But we hope that it would not just be a passing moment, but a
time for reflection about what defines us as a nation. What does it mean to be an American as we
approach the 21st century? How do we, as Secretary Heyman so eloquently said, "Think about
those shared values, that sense of justice and equality, and carry that forward together?"
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Today the President and I kick off our Save America's Treasures program, starting here at
the Smithsonian in front of the most valuable icon in our history. We're going to ask every
American to help preserve the artifacts, the documents, the monuments, the sites that tell the
American story. Now some of them are well known, such as the Star Spangled Banner or Fort
McHenry, where I will be later this afternoon in Baltimore. Others are less well known, such as
William Seward's home, where I will visit, where he hid runaway slaves on the Underground
Railroad. But all of them, in every community throughout our land, are part of our nation's
memory and should be a part of our nation's future.
I'll be visiting the homes of women who changed the face of history from Kate Mullaney,
who started a women's labor union; to Edith Wharton, who memorialized in her writings much
of what was happening in our history at a certain time; to Harriet Tubman, the former slave
whose bravery was an example to all who cared about abolition. I'll visit Thomas Edison's
laboratory tomorrow morning, where boxes and boxes of his work have been sitting unopened
for years, to draw attention to the creative genius, the scientific research, the others who have
contributed in so many ways to making America what it is today.
The White House Millennium Council, under the leadership of Ellen Lovell, who is here
with us today, has formed a partnership. That partnership with the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, under the leadership of Dick Moe, who is also with us, will take us on this first tour
from place to place through Maryland and New Jersey, and to Massachusetts and New York.
We'll be calling on Americans to think about what each of us can do. Perhaps there's a
monument in your town square, covered in graffiti or falling apart; maybe a cemetery overgrown
with weeds; or a historic building, threatened by development; a library lacking in resources; a
piece of art tucked away; historic photographs yellowing in a county clerk's file cabinet. We
have the chance to find and save America's treasures. And we're hoping every one of us, from
the children we saw today to those who inhabit our corporate boardrooms, will think of what
each can do to help save what we value from the past so that we can give our own gifts to the
future.
There is a great tradition of preservation in this country. By 1850 we had already
established George Washington's headquarters at Newburgh as our first state historic site, which
I will be visiting. What they knew then and what we have continued to learn through successes
and failures, such as the destruction of the beautiful Penn Station in New York, is that we can
never own our nation's past, we're the caretakers of it, and we have a responsibility to future
generations to be good ancestors.
I'm told that a group of young children walking through this museum one day took a look
at the flag and spontaneously started singing the Star Spangled Banner. I think about the lessons
that generations of young children have learned here standing before this flag, and I hope that
generations to come through the next millennium will have the same opportunities.
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When this flag was commissioned, the man who commissioned it, Lieutenant Colonel
George Armistead, did so because he imagined the future with confidence. Now when you think
about it, there wasn't maybe much objective basis for that confidence. We were once again in a
war with Great Britain, their great troops and fleets were on our shores, we'd lost a battle, the
British had broken through the lines, they had taken Washington --- I see our mayor, Mayor
Barry, here today - -- they had marched into Washington, they had burned the White House.
There wasn't much reason to think confidently about the future. And yet Americans have always
been confident and we have worked to make that confidence real. And just as our former
leaders, such as that Lieutenant Colonel and so many others, imagine the future with confidence,
so must we.
In this time of great blessings, it is not time to rest on our laurels. It is time to pass onto
our children, grandchildren, and all the children to come, the stories from individual families to
the ones we read in the history books that made us who we are today. No one has worked harder
or cared more about creating the kind of American future that will enable us to live with
confidence than our next speaker.
I know that because I see it at work every single day. Just ask him about American
history and be prepared to hear a very long dissertation because he reads it, he studies it, he lives
it, he makes it. And because of his confidence in our future, and what we should do as
Americans to ensure the kind of hopes and dreams we take for granted, it is my great honor to
introduce the President of the United States.
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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
July 13, 1998
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT NATIONAL TREASURES TOUR KICK-OFF
National Museum for American History
Washington, D.C.
8:48 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Is this a great way to start the week, or
what? (Laughter.) Thank you, Mr. Crew, Secretary Heyman, Ms. Rimel, Mr. Mayor and
members of the City Council, Mr. Moe. Thank you, Denise, as always for being so
wonderful. Thank you, Ralph Lauren, for this incredible act of generosity and, I think, foresight.
And I want to thank the First Lady for once again creating something of enduring value
to our country in this Millennium Project.
You know, Hillary mentioned this, but 1814 was not a particularly good year for
America. And the British did burn the White House and we've just finished a 15-year renovation
of the White House and we left two of the great stones unpainted to remind people
that it only became the White House after the British burned it, and when the burn marks couldn't
be scrubbed off, the beautiful stone had to be painted white to cover the memory of what had
happened. It's rather nice, actually, to have a couple of the stones unpainted so
that we don't completely forget.
Not since that time has the United States been invaded. And so the confidence of all the
people who were involved was well-founded. Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled
Banner in the midst of a very fierce battle. He was standing on the deck of a ship, behind enemy
lines, looking into darkness, searching for the fate of the flag. The poem he wrote about it
became our National Anthem.
If you remember the words and then you look at this massive flag, you can imagine what
it must have been like in 1814, waving gallantly during the fight -- standing unconquered in the
dawn's early light. Think how you would have felt if you would have seen it then.
This Star Spangled Banner and all its successors have come to embody our country, what
we think of as America. It may not be quite the same for every one of us who looks at it, but in
the end we all pretty much come out where the framers did. We know we have a
country founded on the then revolutionary idea that all of us are created equal, and equally
entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that this whole country was put together out
of an understanding that no individual can maximize the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness alone, and so we had to join together to reinforce each other's efforts.
And then there was another great insight, which is that in the joining we couldn't repeat
the mistakes of the monarchies from which we fled, and give anyone absolute power over anyone
else. And so we created this written Constitution to say that, okay, we've got to join together,
and some people have to be our representatives and they should be given authority to make
certain decisions, but never unlimited and never forever.
And I'd say that system has worked pretty well over the last 220-plus years. And that's
what that that flag embodies at a moment when we could have lost it all, when the White
House itself was burned, when a lot of people didn't think that we had such a good
idea. And so, now it's standing there -- a little worse for the wear - -- but quite ready to be
restored. And in that sense, it is a metaphor for our country, which is always ready to be
restored.
When Hillary and I were talking about what we should do to commemorate the
millennium, and she came up with this phrase, "honoring the past and imagining the future," I
loved it because it seems to me to be so much two sides of the same coin. You heard her
only slightly making fun of me there about my obsession with the history of the United States
and the White House and this great city. When I became President, I was often made fun of for
my obsession about the future and trying to modernize the country, and to me, the
two things are not inconsistent at all, because America is a country that has always been in the
act of becoming.
You heard if you listened carefully to the remarkable statement by Secretary Heyman,
he mentioned the phrase of the founders to "form a more perfect union." If you think about it,
that S the enduring mission of America. They were very smart people, and they understood that
any great nation is always a work in progress. They understood that they could never imagine
the far reaches of America's future. They understood that these ideals they set up would never be
perfectly realized.
And so they gave us a mission that will be just as good for our grandchildren as it is for
us, just as good as it was for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, "to form a more perfect
union," because there will always be something there to do better, always a new challenge. And
I agree that if you look at where we are today, we have both the traditional responsibilities of
every generation of Americans to deepen the meaning of our freedom and to widen the circle of
opportunity, and all these new challenges. One of them is to deal with our phenomenally
increasing diversity.
Didn't you get a kick out of seeing all those kids standing there doing the Pledge of
Allegiance, all their backgrounds? Who were their grandparents, who were their great-great-
grandparents? Where did they come from, what was their story? It doesn't matter,
because they now have a chance to live the dream that was promised to all of us so long ago.
That's what that flag embodies.
We have all kinds of responsibilities now to the rest of the world we didn't have before,
because now the world is yearning for freedom and there is no Cold War, and we must summon
ourselves to understand that in the 21st century, preserving everything good about
America at home requires us to be more involved with our neighbors around the world than ever
before.
We have new challenges when it comes to our natural environment, to prove that we can
continue to enjoy the fruits of material prosperity while replenishing the Earth, not destroying it.
There will be new and different challenges, but we can meet them best if we remember what got
us here. That's why saving the Star Spangled Banner is important. That's why I asked the
American people do it in the State of the Union. That's why I'm very grateful to Ralph Lauren
today for stepping forward.
You know, most of us have well, maybe not most of us, but a lot of us, including
Hillary and me -- have those great Polo sweaters with the American flag on it. I wish I had one
with the Star Spangled Banner on it because that's the gift that he's given America today.
Now, I want to echo what Hillary said. There is more to do. President Lincoln and his
family and many other Presidents' families used to stay in a little cabin up with the Old Soldiers
Home here in Washington, D.C. in the summertime because the Potomac was so
hot. That ought to be preserved for all time to come. And this committee has identified dozens
of other sites.
But I also want to emphasize something else Hillary said, as she begins this tour over the
next four days to identify nationally significant treasures. Every community in this country has
got some piece of itself that needs to endure. And I hope that the public airing that this event
receives today will make people in every community across our country once again say, what
have we got here that we should preserve for our grandchildren and for all time
to come. Americans need to know the stories of their country, their states, their communities,
their families.
Let me especially thank the History Channel for doing its part to share the story of the
Star Spangled Banner by producing its own TV documentary and providing teachers with
educational packets about it.
Again let me say to all of you, too, we must continue to imagine the future. I asked the
Congress to pass the Save America's Treasures program, as well as the biggest research program
for the future in history, and to put them together so that our people could see that the story of
America is a seamless one.
I hope all of you in this room and all of the people who are involved in this endeavor,
every time you see the Star Spangled Banner for the rest of your life will think about preserving
our past, honoring it; but also will think about imagining the future. What an imagination it took
in 1814 to believe that America had a boundless future.
The Continental Congress said when it authorized the first flag of 13 stars that they were
"a new constellation." They were right. When I looked at all those children today saying the
Pledge of Allegiance, I thought, now we are a newer constellation --different than they could
have imagined - -- racially, religiously. We have no longer a small country on the Eastern
seaboard, but a continental nation, with the greatest influence for good the world has ever seen,
and an enormous responsibility for the future.
And that is the last point I would like to make today. You can neither honor the past, nor
imagine the future, nor achieve it without the kind of citizenship embodied by all of our
memories of the flag. So as you see this flag and leave this place, promise yourself that when
your great-grandchildren are here, they'll not only be able to see the Star Spangled Banner, it will
mean just as much to them then as it does to you today.
Thank you and God bless you. (Applause.)
END
9:00 A.M. EDT
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
The Colonial Theater
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
July 14, 1998
Thank you all so much. I'm so grateful to be here, and I cannot tell you how I felt as I
was traveling down the road on my way to Pittsfield, and some of your friends and neighbors
were out in their yards, or in front of service stations, and I think there was a place called
Jimmy's on the side of the road. Some of them were waving flags, they were holding up their
babies, and I thought, "Boy, have I come to the right place."
Now you might be interested in knowing how I ended up here today. Let me just give
you a brief history of that. When we launched Save America's Treasures a few months ago, we
knew that we wanted to make the first trip to this part of our country, that is so rich with our
history going back before the Revolutionary War. That has seen so much of what made America
great happen, right here. And we sent out people and asked all kinds of experts, "Where should
we go?" We wanted to go from Washington D.C. and then end up in Seneca Falls, New York for
the 150th anniversary of the Women's Rights Convention.
As you might guess, there were dozens and dozens of places that people suggested in
Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts, and we had to sort through
all those, and we started sorting by looking at pictures and descriptions. Then we actually sent
people out. I know the Mayor had to kind of keep it a secret because we didn't want the people
from Washington coming to a community and having folks think that we would come, and not
come. That would be very disappointing. So everybody was kind of sworn to secrecy. And
your mayor, I like him he's really doing a good job and he understands how to get things done.
And so our people who were representing the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the
White House Millennium Council, they visited place after place after place and some were hard
to get to and some couldn't accommodate buses and all kinds of logistical problems. But when
they came back from seeing all these places, I want all of you to know, the place they could not
stop talking about was Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
So Mayor Doyle, citizens of Pittsfield, citizens of Berkshire County, it is wonderful to be
able to join you today, to be here at one of the great cultural centers of our country and to be
standing in front of this rare jewel of architecture, the historic Colonial Theater. I want to thank
everyone who has been working to preserve this theater and to revitalize Pittsfield and to
understand that in today's world, one of the ways to attract economic development to attract
tourism, to give people a sense of pride and a better quality of life is by taking the jewels of the
past and making them shine again, so that people all over the country and world know about
Pittsfield and know the Colonial Theater. So all of you, from the Mayor to the Congressman, to
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the Miller family, to Bob Boland who has done so much to remind us of the importance of the
Colonial Theater, to the Friends of the Colonial Theater and the Colonial Theater Steering
Committee and especially to the citizens of Pittsfield. I'm here to congratulate you for your
interest in preserving, not this particular site, but for what it could be to the future of this
community.
As Bill Ivey was explaining, we've seen all over our country -- he saw it first in his role
at the Country Music Foundation, the work he did down in Nashville. He's seen it now as the
head of the NEA, one of the best ways that communities can make an investment in the future is
to think about what was special about its past and then to make that live again. I just had the rare
privilege of hearing music from the stage once again. It hasn't happened since 1952, I was told,
but I heard the Berkshire Fiddlers, a group of young middle school students. I was amazed by
their talent and I was amazed by the quality of the sound. I have read, like perhaps some of you
have read, that the Colonial Theater has ranked above many, many other more famous and well
known theaters as having some of the best acoustics in the world. Based on what I have just
heard, I understand why experts say that the acoustics in this theater are on a par with just a
handful of theaters across the world. I could almost hear the echoes, as I listened to the young
people play, of all the performers who appeared on that stage all those years ago. And as the
small group of people who were gathered to hear them, including some very proud parents,
applauded at the end of the performance, I could sense what it must have been like sitting in that
theater years ago at the end of a performance. Imagine what it was like to sit there and hear John
Delacusa or Rachmaninoff or think of hearing the improvisational jazz of Eubie Blake or John
and Ethel Barrymore, Sarah Bernhardt, even some of my favorites, the Three Stooges.
Yet as unique a place as this theater holds in the history of American theater, there was no
guarantee that the building we are in front of today would still be standing, because we see too
often many of America's great theaters and other treasures erode away, be torn down, to make
way for something else. A few, like the Federal Street Theater in Boston, burned down. Most
fell into disrepair and were demolished. Yet here in Pittsfield, the tradition of preservation runs
deep. When the original owners sold it, they didn't want it to see it destroyed and they put it up
for bid, as I understand the story, and they made a decision to choose, not the highest bid, which
was to buy the building and destroy it, but instead, to choose the lowest bid from George Miller,
who guaranteed he would keep the building in tact because he had a dream that one day it would
be a (inaudible)
You know there are untold stories around our country of men like George Miller and his
son, Steven Miller, and I want to applaud the late Mr. Miller and Steven Miller, because they
understood, even thought they didn't have the resources themselves, that they were the caretakers
of a great treasure. I really appreciate that because by being the caretaker of a historic site, you
are preserving it for a moment such as this, where hundreds of thousands of people of this
community come together to hear about this great tradition. When you can have a plan by your
mayor and others, to think of how that would fit in to revitalizing this city. When we talk about
preserving national treasures, many of us envision the concrete examples like the Star-Spangled
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Banner that the President and I stood before yesterday at the Smithsonian. I also saw today in
Newburgh, New York, the headquarters of President Washington after Yorktown and before the
Treaty of Paris. We think about the Gettysburg Address, we think about statues and monuments.
Yet it is equally significant as to who we are as Americans to think about our cultural and artistic
heritage. It is our dance, our music, our plays, our literature that define us as a people. They lift
our spirits, they challenge our imaginations. You better than most understand this, living in the
center of so much artistic, musical activity.
If we could think for a moment of what America would be like without our arts and
culture, whether you are an country music fan like Bill Ivey or a Rachmaninoff fan, or a Jacob's
Pillow fan. This is the rich variety of arts and culture here in the United States, It's not just a
luxury for the few. We know that experiences with the arts are especially important to children.
We understand how significant being exposed to music and artistic opportunities are to let each
individual child develop their skills and talents. Every child should have that experience. Few
children would have access to a theater such as this, whose state would permit more and more
young people, adults as well, to perform and attend their own artistic experiences. If we were
able to preserve a theater like this Colonial Theater, we would be keeping pace with our earliest
founding generation.
The first American theater was built in Philadelphia in 1756, and Americans fell in love
with the stage ever since. When I read history about the predecessors who lived in the White
House, I'm always struck by how so many of them sought out the theater as a way to escape the
pressures of the job. While so many of us have found that same solace and refuge. And here at
Pittsfield, you have an example of a place that goes far beyond what other communities could
even dream of. Think about how promoting the arts year round, not just during the summer when
so many people from all over the world come to enjoy the Berkshires, but keeping it going all
year long, what that could mean to the development of this community.
So in 1962 when President Kennedy asked Americans for public support of the arts, by
creating the National Endowment for the Arts, he reminded us that during the Civil War,
Abraham Lincoln ordered work to go forward on the Capitol Dome. And that Franklin
Roosevelt, in the midst of World War II, dedicated the National Gallery of Art. President
Kennedy said "These leaders understood that the light of the arts, far from being an interruption,
a distraction in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation's purpose, and is a test
of the quality of the nation's civilization."
Now we are facing that test ourselves today, which is why the President and I created the
White House Millennium Council. We're going to have a change of century and change of
millennium whether any of us do anything about it or not. We can plan a great New Year's Eve
party, and I think all of us should, but I think we should spend a little bit of time reflecting about
what are the values from the past and the lessons we want to take with us to the future. And so
we created a theme to "Honor the Past and Imagine the Future." Just think what that means to
a community like this. I believe that if we stop, as we approach the change of century and
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millennium, and think how do we honor the past and how do we bring forward what we honor to
the present and then build on it as we imagine our future, that's a pretty good description of what
we need do in our own lives, in communities like Pittsfield and in our nation.
I'm an optimist by nature because I believe that when people put their minds to
something, they can solve problems, they can make a difference, they can work together. And
there certainly is no reason why this great city, which has certainly a glorious past, that's
contributed so much to who we are as Americans, cannot take the lessons and the values of that
past and move them forward into the future in a way that does honor to them, but is imaginative,
is on the cutting edge, which leads people to say to one another, Pittsfield, the Berkshires, they're
showing us how we should imagine the future.
So I ask all of you, not just today, but in the days and weeks and months ahead, to work
together, to be creative, to think of ways of saving America's treasures. And you all are, in
addition to the Miller family, you all are caretakers of a great American treasure. A treasure that
meant so much to people in the past, but can once again mean so much to all of us in the future.
I would like to come back in some early part of the 21st century and attend a performance here
at the Colonial Theater. Now I learned the other day, that to be eligible for National Landmark
status you have to be at least 50 years old, I'd qualify. I don't think I could wait a really long
time, but I could wait a while to be able to return to Pittsfield, and with all of you, celebrate, not
just the reopening and rehabilitation of a great American treasure, but the revitalization of a great
American city.
Thank you all very much.
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THE FIRST LADY CALLS ON COMMUNITY PARTNERS TO
RECOGNIZE THE POWER OF THE ARTS IN EDUCATION
September 17, 1998
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton today spotlighted the critical role of the arts in education. In a
White House ceremony, Mrs. Clinton spoke to members of the Arts Education Partnership about the
power of the arts in children's education. Mrs. Clinton highlighted the important progress made in
the field of arts education in recent years, and called for further attention. In particular, Mrs. Clinton
stressed how national policies and partnerships can support local arts education efforts. She
applauded the commitments of the partners present, including the Head Start Bureau, and welcomed
new partners, including the CBS Corporation and VH1, both of whom announced their companies'
commitments to arts education.
BUILDING ON THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION'S COMMITMENT TO ARTS EDUCATION. The Clinton
Administration is committed to making the arts basic to every child's education. In the Goals 2000:
Educate America Act of 1994, the Administration added "arts" to the core subjects listed among the
National Education Goals. In addition, the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 (the re-
authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) includes language highlighting the
power of the arts to strengthen education. In 1995, the National Endowment for the Arts and the
U.S. Department of Education established the Arts Education Partnership to assist national, state and
local arts education advocates to include the arts in the education improvement efforts supported by
Goals 2000 funding. Since then, the Partnership has been able to track at least $10 million in awards
to local arts education applicants through the various State departments of education and has since
expanded its work beyond its initial Goals 2000.
For the first time since the 1970's, American students have been tested on their knowledge and skills
in the arts through the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) program. The NAEP
program, or the "Nation's Report Card" tests to determine students' academic achievement; the
inclusion of the arts in its test underscores the significance of the arts as important academic
material. The results of the NAEP program will be released in November 1998. The National
Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Education both supported the development of
the National Standards for Arts Education with which the NAEP test was aligned.
ARTS EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP. The Arts Education Partnership is a private, nonprofit coalition
of education, arts, business, philanthropic, and government organizations that demonstrates and
promotes the essential role of arts education in enabling all students to succeed in school, life, and
work. The Arts Education Partnership was formed in 1995 through a cooperative agreement
between the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States Department of Education, the
National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, and the Council of Chief State School Officers.
The Arts Education Partnership will produce a handbook on Partnerships for Arts Learning in the
Spring of 1999. The Partnership will also release a report highlighting school districts that value arts
education in November 1998, in conjunction with the President's Committee on the Arts and the
Humanities, the GE Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, Binney and Smith, Inc. and the U.S.
Department of Education.
Highlights of the Partnership's commitments include:
THE HEAD START BUREAU. The HHS Head Start Bureau, a member of the Arts Education
Partnership, revised its program performance standards in January, 1998, adding a standard in the
arts for its 2,000 centers around the country. The Bureau is now creating materials to assist its
centers' staff and parents to implement creative learning experiences for their children. Recent
research conducted at a Head Start site suggests a link between early childhood instruction in
musical keyboards and the development of important brain synapses which support spatial-temporal
ability.
AMERICANS FOR THE ARTS/CBS CORPORATION. Michael Jordan, Chair of the Board of non-
profit Americans for the Arts and CEO of the CBS Corporation, announced the creation of Youth
Arts USA. The initiative is a national, multi-year effort of Americans for the Arts to bring
much-needed attention to the value of the arts in the lives of America's children. There are three
main parts to the initiative: research, policy development and a public awareness campaign. As part
of the public awareness campaign, CBS Corporation is producing public service announcements and
contributing air time for broadcasting them. The PSA's will begin airing in October, National Arts
and Humanities Month, and will reach millions of viewers.
VH1 SAVE THE MUSIC MILLENNIUM COMMITMENT. Earlier in the day, VH1 President John
Sykes joined the First Lady at the Marie H. Reed Community Learning Center to announce its
donation of $100,000 worth of musical instruments to three D.C. schools as part of a total $1.3
million contribution nationwide. At the White House event, VH1 announced its 10-year commitment
to raise $100 million to benefit one million children. Save the Music is an initiative of VH1 to raise
money and collect old instruments to donate to school instrumental music programs. A receiving
school must commit to hire or retain a certified music specialist and to keep the instrumental
program as part of the school day. In each of the 16 cities in which Save the Music now operates,
VH1 has a local cable partner who airs public service announcements, and, of course, school partners
who implement the instrument instruction.
Members of the public can call the U.S. Department of Education's toll-free at 1-877-4ED-PUBS to receive
a copy of Eloquent Evidence: Arts at the Core of Learning and a Guide to Arts Education and School
Improvement Resources for Local and State Leader or visit the Partnership's web site at http://aep-arts.org
for further resources.
TALKING IT OVER
BY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1998, AND THEREAFTER
It was British sculptor Henry Moore's "Draped Seated Woman" that first brought
Bill and me together. After standing in line to register for law school classes one
afternoon, we found ourselves in front of the Yale University Art Gallery, which had a
Mark Rothko exhibit inside and works by Moore in the sculpture garden. A labor
dispute had closed the museum's doors, but Bill managed to get the two of us in by
offering to pick up trash. This was our first date.
I have always loved sculpture and, shortly after Bill's first inauguration, started
thinking about bringing favorite American pieces to the White House.
With the help of a friend, designer Kaki Hockersmith, and J. Carter Brown, the
former Director of the National Gallery of Art, the idea for an outdoor sculpture garden
that featured works by contemporary American artists began to take shape. The plan
was approved by an enthusiastic Committee for the Preservation of the White House
and overseen by the White House Curators.
It was easy to pick the perfect location the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden,
named for the First Lady who believed so strongly that art should be a part of
everyone's life. When I first moved to the White House, I spent a lot of time in this
peaceful refuge, which appears to have been designed with sculpture in mind.
Museums in Nebraska, Texas, New York and Arkansas organized the first four
exhibits, intended to highlight sculpture from public museums representing different
regions of the country. The fifth, planned by the National Gallery's Director, Rusty
Powell, featured some of the magnificent works found in museums here in
Washington. And the sixth celebrated the rich diversity of Native American sculptors,
whose art I have admired for years.
Over 6 million visitors to the White House have walked past the Sculpture
Garden since October 1994, when the first exhibit opened. Included among the
American masterpieces in that group were George Segal's "Walking Man" and
Alexander Calder's "Five Rudders."
Subsequently, tour participants have enjoyed works by Georgia O'Keeffe,
Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Isamu Noguchi and Allan Houser.
Among my favorites of the 83 pieces that have been shown at the White House
are those that incorporate movement. During the second exhibit, Bill and I would often
just sit and watch George Rickey's "Two Lines Oblique, Atlanta," a 35-foot stainless
TALKING IT OVER 11/4/98
Page 2
steel sculpture that quivered slowly in the wind. And I found myself repeatedly
reaching out to touch Harry Bertoia's "Tonal Sculpture," just to hear the lovely sounds
it would send floating over the garden.
I will never forget the clear November morning when Phil Minthorn, a Nez Perce
Indian offered traditional blessings before the opening of the Native American
collection.
This week's unveiling of the seventh exhibit, which was organized by the
Brooklyn Museum of Art, marks a departure. Subtitled "Inspired by Rodin," this group of
12 sculptures includes three pieces by the French master.
Often called "the father of modern sculpture," Auguste Rodin worked in Paris in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But his influence on American artists has been
dramatic and can be seen in several of the works included in this group, among them
de Kooning's "Clamdigger," Segal's "Girl Standing in Nature" and Noguchi's
"Woman."
Although dozens of museums have been involved in choosing and lending
appropriate pieces for the exhibition, none of them could have undertaken the
expense of mounting such a series alone. For that, we turned to one of this country's
most important arts patrons, Iris Cantor, who, along with her late husband, B. Gerard
Cantor, and the Cantor Foundation, agreed not only to underwrite the expense of the
exhibits but also to loan the two centerpieces of the current show - castings of Rodin's
"The Three Shades" and "The Thinker," who appears to contemplate the other pieces
in a most inscrutable and dramatic fashion.
The outpouring of appreciation for each of these exhibits has been
overwhelming. Visitors often tell our tour guides how much it means to them to be able
to view these provocative sculptures while waiting in line to see the White House.
One of my great pleasures living in this wonderful house is to be able to wander
among the sculptures in the garden and know that so many others have shared the
experience as well.
Visitors to the White House can see "Twentieth Century American Sculpture at
the White House: Inspired by Rodin" through September 1999. If you stop by the White
House web site (www.whitehouse.gov), you can take a virtual tour of the series.
To find out more about Hillary Rodham Clinton and read her past columns, visit
the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 1998 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
VIDEOTAPED REMARKS AT
"BRING IN 'DA NOISE, BRING IN 'DA FUNK"
BENEFIT FOR COMING UP TALLER
NOVEMBER 5, 1998
I am delighted to welcome you to the Golden Gate Theater for the opening night of
"Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk." I certainly wish I could share it with you in person.
Because, over the next few hours, you will see an example of how the arts can move us, educate
us, and even inspire us to sing and dance, despite the protests of our friends and family.
But we also know that the arts have the power to literally transform children's lives.
Which is why it's wonderful that so many of tonight's seats are filled with young people from
Marin City and throughout the Bay Area.
For this, we owe enormous thanks to our host, Walter Shorenstein, for opening up his theater
and organizing the first fundraiser for Coming Up Taller. He has been a good friend not only to Bill
and me, but also to America's children and the arts whether it's helping to bring the Dolley
Madison portrait to the Red Room of the White House or organizing the private sector to bring the
arts and humanities into young people's lives. I also want to thank everyone else whose support
made this fundraiser such a success -- especially Jon Platt, Carol Shorenstein Hays, Ann Getty,
Marsha Williams, Jim Hormel, and Ernie Gallo (Gal-Oh)
Recently, we gathered in the White House to present Coming Up Taller awards to programs
that are giving young people safe places to go when they're not in school or at home. Because of
these programs, children are learning new skills and unlocking their creativity with poetry, painting,
song and dance. And, they're more likely to graduate from high school and go on to college.
We must make it clear that arts and humanities for children are not luxuries, they are
necessities. They provide us with tremendous opportunities, to reduce crime in our streets and give
all children the chance to find their voices and discover their dreams the chance to take a bow and
come up taller. Thank you for all you've done to make that possible. I hope you enjoy the
performance.
And now, without further delay please Bring on 'Da Noise, Bring on 'Da Funk!
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Remarks by
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
Sculpture Garden Reception
East Room
November 6, 1998
I hope all of you have a chance to see this latest exhibit about which we are so
pleased and of which we are so proud. There are a number of very distinguished
guests here today. I know the Committee for the Preservation of the White House
was announced into the room, and I am personally very grateful to each of them
who serve with the permanent staff of the White House to make sure that we are
constantly taking care of this house and presenting it in the best possible way to
the people who visit here.
I am also pleased that Bill Ivey, the Chair of the National Endowment for The Arts,
is here with us. I am very excited about Bill's leadership in Washington on behalf
of the arts, and I want to thank Congressman Engel for being here. We are
honoring some of his constituents as well. And to all of you, we are extremely
grateful for your commitment and advocacy for the arts, and particularly for your
commitment and advocacy for these sculptures.
Just yesterday here at the White House we held an awards ceremony at which the
highest honors of the arts and humanities were given. The great outpouring of
enthusiasm and excitement about the honorees is reflective of the growing
appreciation around our country of the importance of the arts and humanities in our
lives. It is not a luxury that a few people are entitled to or have access to, but a
necessity for how we live our lives together and how we understand one another
and our own humanity.
So again today, we are gathered to celebrate the indispensable role the arts play in
shaping our nation and enriching our lives. I know that most of you have had the
opportunity to view the sculptures, and I think that this exhibit certainly helps us
appreciate the inspiration of one of the greatest sculptors of all time, and gives us
yet another insight into sculpture and what it means to us and our lives.
Yesterday, I told the story about my husband's and my first date. I loved the art
gallery at Yale, especially the sculpture garden there, and that was where we had
our first date. It was closed because of a labor dispute, but we talked our way
in--Bill was able to do that--in return for cleaning up the yard, which we were happy
to do as well.
When we arrived here at the White House, we were so impressed with the
permanent collection of pieces and other objects of historical significance to this
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house and to the American people. We were surprised, however, that there was no
sculpture exhibit here at the White House, particularly outdoors, where millions of
visitors could see it. We began to talk about that, and with the support of the
Preservation Committee and the expertise of J. Carter Brown, in addition to the
assistance of Khaki Hockersmith, we were able to begin these exhibitions and
showcase American contemporary artists. We came up with the idea of using the
Jacqueline Kennedy Garden for sculpture. Certainly, the easiest part of putting the
sculpture garden together was to put it in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, because
of her very strong commitment to the arts.
This is the seventh exhibit here since 1993. And this one does have a special
excitement because each of the pieces reflects the breathtaking diversity of
America's artistic tradition. In each of these magnificent works, you can see the
inspiration of Rodin, who I think has, for many of us, well earned the title the
"father of modern sculpture," both by adhering to convention and by daring to
break away from it.
There is no more important tribute to Rodin and the meaning of his work than the
presence of our guests today. Iris Cantor and her husband, as you know, have
been among the significant lenders as well as educators about the work of Rodin.
Whether it is limestone and granite or marble and bronze, Rodin interprets the
complete work of humanity, challenging us to examine images that are as familiar
as a child's hand, a body reaching upward, or a family portrait. We can see the
genius of this artist, and we are required to use our imagination, too.
As we approach this next millennium, we are paying tribute to our artists, our
musicians, our philosophers and poets to express who we have been as a nation
and who we are becoming. And I think that through this exhibit we are provoked
into thinking a lot about those questions.
There are many people to thank for this current exhibition. I am particularly pleased
that we have several of the artists here and I want to ask them to stand as I
mention them. I want to welcome Stephen De Staebler, Bryan Hunt, George Segal,
and I know there are a number of family members of William Zorach. I know that
artists create on their own but then are dependent on others to make sure their
work is put on exhibit. Certainly here, we could not have had this exhibition
without some very important and generous support.
First, I want to thank Arnold Lehman, director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art in
New York, for organizing this exhibit. The sculptures themselves were lent by the
Iris and Gerald Cantor Foundation; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the town of
Greenwich, Connecticut; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the National
Gallery of Art here in Washington; the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase
College, New York; the Isamu Noguchi Foundation in Long Island City, New York;
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and the Whitney Museum of American Art. I want to thank all of those institutions
for their contributions.
I also want to thank Betty Monkman, the White House Curator, and members of
the Committee for Preservation. But most of all, I want to thank my friend Iris
Cantor, who along with her late husband, Gerald Cantor, and her foundation, not
only helped with this exhibit, but with others as well. She has also lent the two
centerpieces of the current show: the castings of Rodin's "The Three Shades" and
"The Thinker."
I first became acquainted with Iris and her late husband Bernie, in 1992, shortly
after the presidential election when I learned that the Cantors were donating a bust
of Balzac by Rodin to the Arkansas Arts Center in honor of our commitment to
education. And in 1992, there was a celebration at that arts center. Up to that
point I was so exhausted, and a friend of mine said that there were these wonderful
people who were donating this bust, and so I quickly pulled myself together-- as
much as I could-- and went up to meet Mrs. Cantor. It was a wonderful beginning
to a friendship for us, and I am grateful that because of her cooperation "The
Thinker" is placed in this exhibit. And, as some of you know, a cast of Rodin's
"The Thinker" was placed in the Oval Office on Inauguration Day. It was Bernie's
prized piece and it had never traveled until it was placed there. That is why it is a
special pleasure that it found its place in this exhibit today. And in addition to this
support of the arts, Iris Cantor has been a staunch supporter of the Breast Cancer
Center at UCLA and many other good causes, particularly the arts and museums,
from the Stanford Gallery to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
And so I am particularly pleased that she could be here with us today so that all of
us could thank her for being such a devoted friend to the arts and such a valued
friend to the White House and a personal and valued friend to the President and me.
I join with the President in thanking her. Iris, on behalf of all of us, we thank you.
We only wish Bernie could be here today.
One of the unique aspects of America is the extraordinary philanthropy of so many
Americans. We are blessed to have so many. who are willing to share their good
fortune with the community at large. We are grateful to everyone who understands
the importance of the kind of commitment to the arts that is represented in such
generosity.
I am grateful to so many Americans who, whether they make a magnificent gift of
millions of dollars such as the Cantors or a small gift of tens of dollars, understand
that part of what makes our country unique is this comprehension of ours that each
of us has a role to play in supporting the quality of our lives through arts education
and so many Americans are willing to do that on a regular basis.
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SIGNIFICANT LEGISLATIVE EVENTS
NEA DURING THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION
- November 1994, Republicans win control of House and Senate in election.
Prospective Speaker Newt Gingrich publicly announces opposition to continuation of
NEA.
- June 1995, Republican controlled House passes legislation cutting NEA funds by 39
percent for FY 96. Republican conservatives and moderates make deal: Two years of
funding, then elimination of NEA
Dec 1995- Vetoes appropriatenes bell- "dramate depar tue from
ourcomnitment to support me
- April 1996, after two govt. shutdowns, FY 96 NEA appropriations finally signed into acts
/
law. House cuts are adopted - agency budget reduced from $163 million to $98.5
million.
- October 1996, FY 97 appropriations signed into law - providing second year of
funding envisioned in two years and out deal — $98.5 million for NEA.
- January 1997, President Clinton's State-of-the-Union address urges Congress
to support artists and the arts President's budget requests $136 million for
NEA- 36 percent Increase.
- May 1997, House Appropriations Committee reports legislation zeroing out NEA
budget in FY 98. President issues veto threat.
- June 1997, arts supporters precluded from offering amendments, force showdown
vote on rule. Lose by one vote. President Issues veto threat.
- Summer and Fall 1997, President issues additional veto threats.
- October 1997, House caves to President and Senate - funds NEA at $98 million
- a $1.5 million cut. "Reforms" imposed including addition of Members of Congress as
ex officio members of the National Council on the Arts.
- February 1998, President again requests $136 million for NEA for FY 99.
- May 1998, House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee reports legislation again
zeroing out NEA. President Issues veto threat.
- June 1998, Obey Amendment to restore $98 million to NEA passes in Appropriations
Committee. 5 Republicans vote yes - GOP leadership caught off guard.
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JAN 22'99 16:59 No.003 P.03
- July 1998, Republican moderates and conservatives make new deal. Conservatives
strike NEA funding on point-of-order on House floor. Moderates offer the Nancy
Johnson Amendment to restore $98 million. Amendment passes 253-173- - 58
Republicans vote yes.
- November 1998, President signs FY 99 Omnibus appropriations bill, which
contains $98 million for NEA.
- February 1999 President's FY 2000 budget contains major new arts initiative,
and requests $150 million for NEA.