When the Feds target arts funding, they target communities like ours
Fourth show added for dramatic reading of The Last American Newspaper
Please consider supporting The Front Page with a paid subscription: HERE
My son was born and raised here and has been gone too long. When he returns and catches a glimpse of the lush green hills that surround his hometown, he often laments how much he misses the view.
Too often we fail to appreciate the world around us.
The familiar mountains, the beauty of Lake George from the tip of the southern basin looking up the lake, the quiet of downtown Glens Falls on a soft summer night, the giant mural of hot air balloons on the side of the building at Centennial Circle or the excitement of Saturday night hockey at the Civic Center.
Yeah, we take this all for granted.
How do you monetize happiness?
Or more importantly, beauty?
Or that profound feeling of being touched by prose, or a poem or piece of music?
This is what makes life worth living and is often seen by politicians as something that has little value, that is expendable.
Miriam Weisfeld, the Producing Artistic Director of the Adirondack Theater Festival, wrote a letter to members of ATF - perennial season-ticket holders like myself - and told them she was worried.
Most of you are not season-ticket holders.
Many of you have probably never been to a production downtown.
And you are poorer for it. I know that from my 30 years of attending shows, of being inspired
Live theater is not solitary, but community. It is about the interaction with each other. It's why we often rise to our feet in support of the actors on stage.
Theater can move us and make us think of the world in new ways, and still, it is regularly discarded as unimportant.
Over the past three months, we have seen that again and again, although this time worse than ever.
For the first time, these cuts to the arts community directly affect me. I wrote a book and now a play called The Last American Newspaper - you probably know that - and it is a love letter to my colleagues who worked with me at The Post-Star. I wanted people to know about their spirit, their dedication and how they sometimes changed their little corner of the world.
It is a good story.
It is one you should hear.
Weisfeld agreed, so four dramatic readings are planned July 25-27 here in Glens Falls and the plan was for a full staged production in the summer of 2026, then Weisfeld wrote this week:
"I attended a conference in Minneapolis for about 150 theatre leaders from across the country. A session on Saturday morning was scheduled to be led by Greg Reiner, the Director of Theater and Musical Theatre at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in Washington, DC. Recently, NEA staff had encouraged ATF to apply for a major grant in July to support The Last American Newspaper. This potential grant would hopefully help us transform the play from a reading in the cabaret of the Wood Theater this summer, into a full mainstage production in 2026."
But recent developments in Washington made Miriam worry.
"Instead of appearing at the podium, Greg popped up on a Zoom screen," Miriam continued. "He explained that federal officials had confiscated the credit cards of NEA employees and forbidden them from traveling. He urged theatres that had already been offered grants to file their paperwork immediately. Then he gave all 150 of us his personal email address and invited us to contact him when his employment ended at the end of the month. When I checked the national news on my phone, I read that the budget proposal released by the White House late the previous night included eliminating the NEA entirely in 2026."
I'd urge you to write your congresswoman at this point, but most of us know that won't help.
Miriam reminded the ATF community that NEA provides funding to arts education in all 50 states and is critical to state arts councils, particularly those in rural areas.
"The loss of this federal agency will be felt particularly deeply by communities like ours," Miriam wrote. "And it makes your support more vital than ever."
Over the next four years you are going to be hearing more and more pleas for help from the arts community at a time when most of you will be more and more cash-strapped.
ATF is professional theater.
It is expensive, and it is high quality.
It makes our lives better, our world a little better, a night out more profound and our community a better place to live.
Yes, I have a stake in this game but I believe the story of the rise and fall of community newspapers is an important one that needs to be told. And the longer game is that Adirondack Theater Festival needs to survive.
So I'm hoping many of you will feel the same way.
The reality is that too many will shrug believing there more important things to fund. I understand that.
But 25 years ago a group of Glens Falls businessmen bought the old Woolworth building in downtown Glens Falls. They believed we needed a theater, a place where we could gather to celebrate and be inspired. They donated that building to the community. They raised money and the Wood Theater was born as not only a home for the Adirondack Theater Festival for hundreds and hundreds of community events since.
So I'm hoping you will come see my play, this little slice of Glens Falls history and realize how unique it is to tell a Glens Falls story in a place built by Glens Falls residents dedicated to making this a better place to live.
Something else to be proud of in Hometown, USA.
Check out the ATF donation page.
Give what you can?
Attend one more play than you did a year ago. If you like it, go again. Spread the word.
Will The Last American Newspaper be any good?
The story is local, the characters are local and the events are local and that is totally unique.
Like the arts community nation-wide, I cannot guarantee a happy ending.
But supporting it today could.
Fourth show
The demand for tickets for the The Last American Newspaper has been so strong that a fourth show was added - a matinee on Saturday - for July.
The dramatic reading will be held July 25-27:
Friday, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday - 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Sunday - 2 p.m.
Hard to believe
We hear a lot from the current administration about how it is keeping us safe, but this one fact from Politico should raise your concerns.
Since President Trump took office in January, he has sat for only 12 daily intelligence briefings. Previous presidents did it daily.
Politico is also being told Trump does not read the written daily intelligence report.
Police suicides
Another fact from the New York Times story on police suicides.
One wife of a suicide victim found out that most people suffer one or two traumatic events in their lifetimes, but over a 20-year career, police officers experience an average of 800 traumatic events.
That's why so many officers suffer from PTSD.
Truly American
Six weeks ago masked men employed by the federal government grabbed Tufts University PhD candidate Rumeysa Ozturk off the street in Boston, whisked her away to Vermont and then to a detention center in Louisiana where she was housed with 23 others in a space meant for 14.
A federal judge ordered her release this weekend and when she got back to Boston, she said this:
“America is the greatest democracy in the world. I have faith in the American system of justice.”
Not many of us who were born here would have said that after experiencing what she did.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
The constant "Make America Great Again" tirade kills me. What this Administration did the first go-round and now this current regime is destroying all that has made America great. The NEA, our National Parks, our investments in science, health, education, climate change, our libraries, the environment, endangered species, help to poor nations and their citizens and much more. Even though IMO we haven't invested enough in any of these, it's clear now that there is no investment nor interest in providing the people of our Country anything that makes America great. I still think a phone call to stefanik's office is worth it. Let her hear what we have to say even if she doesn't give a crap. I am very sad about the defunding of the arts. It's an attack on our personal emotions and the betterment of our communities.
Yes, I was deeply affected by the Turkish grad student's comment as well. And if, after the nightmare she's been through, she can still see America's promise, we need to see clearly what we are losing. Trump, Our Elise, and the MAGA's are destroying our global presence. They are extinguishing the light our Liberty Statue holds up. Believing we can go it alone, without NATO, without emerging democracies, without Voice of America, without leadership in foreign aid, is so destructive. It will leave us far less safe, far less educated and far more immoral.