Further topics that will still not be covered in this blog

Public schools in the United States. Florida governors. The 2012 election. True the Vote. This and that percentage of the population.

Today's quotation comes from Chapter One of When Art Worked: The New Deal, Art, and Democracy by Roger G. Kennedy:

This is a book about artists as citizens. Its point of departure is Franklin Roosevelt's speech accepting the Democratic Party's nomination for president in 1932, in which he summoned his fellow citizens, including artists, to participate in a covenant of common purpose: 

'I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.' Roosevelt's use of the lower case "new deal" is important; he was putting his stress not on that now famous phrase but on what came before and after it in the sentence, upon the pledging president and the people he summoned to a new covenant. He was not announcing a program of princely patronage or largesse. He was, instead, inviting each of his countrymen, artists among them, to come forward in a covenant of service. Artists were among the many who needed work in 1932, and the nation needed the work artists could do.

I find it comforting that, at one time in our country when the economy seemed beyond repair, programs were created that included artists and writers and craftsmen of all kinds.