Hello! I hope you're doing well with Ms. Cole and completing all of your work :). The festival kicked off today with a reception at the Oil Museum and hosted by the former mayor of Stavanger who discussed how important it is to support art in a country like Norway which has become very wealthy due to oil drilling. However, an artist-musician presented a "fake" program called "Oil for Art" in which the government attempts to absolve itself of its contribution to environmental decline by giving money to artists. This made me think: If artists can be paid to live comfortably and produce important, meaningful work, does it matter where the funds are coming from? I also reunited with an Iraqi poet, Manal Al Shaykh, who left Iraq several years ago out of fear for hers
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