Mona Mona Mona Mona

Mona maiden of the Salish, misguided maybe, maybe I can help. Sometimes my mind mingles with the mud of the bottoms where we live, sometimes I see and say, profetic and pathetic things. So it is that occasionally this prothetic prose is read by you.

Mona, museum of northwest arts, right now is going through the misery of smelling its own farts. Let’s hope that some spring breezes clear the air. Perhaps a little insight from an artful farmer, it seems only fair.

I’ve farmed here for over fifty years, with my artist friends as muses and guides. Arne Garborg, Clayton James, Bill Slater, John Simon, Patty Detzer, Lucy Martin, LaVonne Newell, Steve Harold, Kevin Paul, Paul Heald, Maggie Wilder, have all affected my eye, not to mention Vince Streano, Matt Brown, Lee Mann and many more. The arts of the Northwest cross many genres, yet it’s mostly the painters, that are represented there.

As a self-proclaimed “prothetic” poet, I ask, aren’t the musicians and mimists and kite makers artists too? Isn’t it true that the woodworkers, metallurgists, and architects, are artists too? Maybe I’m just an outsider saying squat, but I think I’d think outside of the box.

The prophetic side of my brain would see a future partnership with the Rick Epting Foundation for the Arts.

Collaboratively, the two groups would put on a music festival, where painters would paint the serene scene of the farmscape and Mount Baker in the background, with the music festival in the foreground.

The La Conner High football field is the venue, as is Gilkey Square and the Port and Maple Hall and the Museum and Pioneer Park and Rexville Grange and Skagit City School.

Then there’s the wish by Anelia’s to have a venue there, then there’s dirty biter park and the yacht club to mix the genres.

We might call it the Magic Skagit Slough Festival of the Arts.

Glen Johnson

The Prophetic Poet