| Number 410 | June 27, 2008 |
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This Week: The Summer 2008 Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive!
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Greetings, Almost this entire issue—except for the "Quote" of the Week"—is all about Nygaard Notes and the need for you to make a Pledge of support. Maybe it's because this is the first time that I've done a Pledge Drive in the summer months, but for whatever reason we're off to a slower start than usual. Therefore I have a single focus this week: To convince some of you readers of the Notes to make your support tangible. This is the moment! Make your Pledge today! In solidarity, Nygaard |
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I usually do the twice-annual Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive in October and April, for reasons that I cannot recall. But this year I was too busy, and there were too many other things that needed to be written in April and May. So this year it's June For those of you who have never experienced a Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive, here, very briefly, is how it works: Readers like YOU voluntarily send in a donation to support the work of producing this FREE periodical publication of independent news and analysis. There are two ways to do this: 1. Nygaard Notes OR, if you prefer online transactions, you can 2. It really is as simple as that. Thank you! |
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Some of you have been meaning to send in your check and already know how to do it. If you are in that category, you can skip the rest of this issue (except for the last essay about ignorance, which explains why Nygaard Notes is what it is, sort of.) If you already know you want to make a Pledge, just make out your check right now to "Nygaard Notes," and mail it to: Nygaard Notes OR Go to the Nygaard Notes website at www.nygaardnotes.org , look for "Donate to Nygaard Notes, and follow the instructions to donate online using the PayPal system. FOR THE REST OF YOU... ...this issue and part of the next will explain how this Pledge Drive stuff works, how to decide on an amount to pledge, and so forth. I invite you to read as much as you need to, then consider making a Pledge of support for the Nygaard Notes project. It's a unique and important project, people tell me, and I hope you agree. Basically, twice a year I ask each and every reader of Nygaard Notes to make a Pledge of financial support to the independent media project you have in front of you. It's similar to the pledge drives you hear on public radio and television, except that I don't have any matching grants and I'm not looking to raise $600,000 by June 30th (or whatever it is this year). Let's be honest here, however: I would not turn down $600,000 if someone wishes to make such a Pledge! Seriously, though, the Pledges that hundreds of you have sent in to support the Notes are the ONLY support that I get. That is, * Nygaard Notes receives no grants. * Nygaard Notes is not tax exempt. * Nygaard Notes has no advertising (except that one time in issue #that I advertised my own business—but I didn't pay for the ad!). * Nygaard Notes has no corporate funding, no government funding, no matching anything. All Nygaard Notes has is YOU. |
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As everyone should know, subscriptions to Nygaard Notes are FREE. This is most assuredly not because I don't think it is worth whatever I might charge if I were to charge for subscriptions. No, instead it is because I consider that my work belongs in the public domain. People forward my articles widely, my stuff is reprinted by other groups and publications from all over the place, and I guess some people "steal" my stuff although I don't know if one can steal something that's free. In fact, this is what I want—for people to find my work useful and do with it what they will. I intend for Nygaard Notes to function as a sort of "tool kit" for activists, cultural workers, creative folks, and anyone who finds it useful in their striving to understand and, more importantly, to change the world. It wouldn't make sense to charge them for this work. I sometimes refer to myself as a "public intellectual," by which I mean that my intellectual work is publicly available and universally accessible. So Nygaard Notes is free, but it does take time and money to produce it, so that's why we have Pledge Drives. The more money I receive in the form of Pledges, the less time I have to spend at my other jobs. In practical terms, more Pledges means one of two things will happen: 1. The Notes will come out more often (my goal is once per week); 2. More of the issues will be the labor-intensive sort, with more investigative, heavily-researched stories. |
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There are 18 of you who last sent in your Pledges in May or June of
2007. That means that, if you wish to renew your Pledge and keep it
current—and I hope you do!—now is the time to do so. I plan
to send you a formal reminder soon, but if you want to save me the time,
and the stamp, please send in your renewal before I remind you individually.
You may know who you are, but just in case, you are (first names only,
for confidentiality's sake): You'll be hearing from me shortly. UNLESS you renew your Pledge soon! And here are some people who are a little overdue. Have you been meaning
to send in a Pledge and haven't gotten around to it? The list of the
slightly tardy includes: I miss you! Please renew your Pledge! |
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Everybody is not totally ignorant, of course, and American humorist Will Rogers finished the thought in an essay in the New York Times on August 31, 1924. He said, "Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." I have spent many a summer weekend at a small resort in Northern Minnesota that used to have an outdoor toilet with a large photo of Rogers above that very quotation. It's burned into my brain, and is a big part of what animates Nygaard Notes. Keep reading to learn why. I'll start by quoting from an essay written at the end of May by Tom Sullivan of the national activist group "Campaign for America's Future." It was titled "The Elitism Thing," and it has generated a bit of discussion recently in some liberal/progressive circles here in Minnesota. In it Sullivan talks about how folks on "the activist left" respond to the charge of being "liberal elitists." He notes "how quickly the topic of voter ignorance arises" when he talks to people like himself, that is, "liberals and progressives." Speaking about events where liberals and progressives gather to work on one issue or another, Sullivan said, "Inevitably. . . some complain about how hopelessly ignorant Americans are, exhibiting little awareness of the incongruity of thinking people are stupid and expecting them to vote with you." (Note that being ignorant is not at all the same as being stupid, a point to which I will return shortly.) Later on Sullivan says that "for many [liberals and progressives] . . . the reason for conservative dominance across America's middle is that the rubes are rubes and uninformed, that what's needed to turn around America is a movement of independent, non-corporate media to distribute more and better information." But, he adds, "Maybe the problem isn't simply the media. Maybe voters aren't hearing us because we haven't troubled ourselves to speak to them in language they understand." The thinking revealed in these quotes is very, very different from the way I think. As I explain the difference, I hope it will explain a little bit about why Nygaard Notes is such a unique and useful publication. I agree with Sullivan that "the problem" is not simply a lack of "more and better information." In fact, I addressed this very issue back in 2003, in Nygaard Notes #234 ("From One Big Lie to Many Little Lies.") But when Sullivan says that "we" need to speak to "them" in different ways, using language that "they" understand, we part ways. When he uses the identifiers "we" and "they," I can't help thinking that I may be one of "them." Sullivan seems to be saying that some people ("they") are ignorant and others ("we") are not. That's not how I think. I agree with Will Rogers: I think we all are ignorant, only on different subjects. What Do I Write About? It Doesn't Matter One of the most common questions I am asked when I tell people that I publish my own newsletter is, "What do you write about in your newsletter?" I usually mumble for a while and then end up saying something to the effect that it doesn't really matter what I write about. Then, if I'm lucky, a discussion ensues in which we talk about how I can write a newsletter and not be concerned with what it is "about." Long-time readers understand what I mean. I write about a broad range of issues, and I think they're all interesting and important. But I don't pick them because I think they are more important than other issues. I pick them—whatever they are—because I think they offer an opportunity to get to a deeper level of understanding about the questions that really interest me. Questions like these: * How do we know what we know? *.What makes us believe some things and not others? * How could we improve our understanding in ways that would make us more effective agents of change? * What are the wacky or misguided ideas that lead us astray? Where do we get such ideas? How do we challenge them? I actually do not know the answers to any of those questions, and I'm not sure anyone does. In place of answers, what I have is some life experiences that give me some hints about where the answers might be found. Everybody has this, not just me. Perhaps it is obvious, but many of the things that you read in Nygaard Notes are things that I have just found out. (That's another smart thing that Will Rogers said: "An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.") What those things are, exactly, is of less importance to me than is my effort to write about them in such a way as to make you see why I think they may be important to think about. Or, more accurately, to consider that the decision about what to think about may be more important than the choosing of the "correct" issues. And that decision (about what to think about) is best made by talking to people who know more than you do. Which, since we are all ignorant on different subjects, is pretty much everybody. And "everybody" includes people with whom we don't agree. And it also includes the people that Mr. Sullivan labels the ignorant "they." I said earlier that "ignorant" and "stupid" are not at all the same thing, and I think that this is not a minor point to note. When Sullivan uses the words "ignorant" and "stupid" interchangeably, he seems to be forgetting that they are very different things, and here we go back to Will Rogers again: We are all ignorant. But we're not all stupid, and part of what I try to do in Nygaard Notes is to constantly remind myself and you—the readers—of that distinction. After all, we can't do anything about stupidity (whatever you think that is). But we all know what to do about ignorance: educate ourselves. The tricky part is knowing where we most need education, and why it matters. I repeat: We're all ignorant, and that includes me. Furthermore, the only ignorance for which we are fully responsible is our own. And here is where Nygaard Notes is different, I think, from many other "political" publications: I am not trying to educate you, or any other reader of Nygaard Notes. I am trying to educate myself, and I'm inviting you to join me, and to try it yourself. I try to write in such a way that you know I'm not an "expert." My hope is that you—the people who read Nygaard Notes regularly—will end up thinking that you, too, can find out about the things that interest you. Just like I try to do. The only difference between you and me, I suppose, is that I have made it my job to spend a lot of my time doing this, and I've been practicing for many years. And I do it in public, and people read it. So, I repeat what I said in the headline: Everybody is ignorant. But nobody is stupid, and by working together—that is, by allowing as many voices as possible to be heard in our decision-making processes—we can all help to fill in the gaps of each other's ignorance and come up with some solutions that will be ‘way better than anything we could come up with individually. Rather than "teaching" you something about some issue or another, Nygaard Notes is concerned with trying to encourage each of you to find your voice, and to use it. Then we'll all learn more. |
