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You are here: Home / Politics / Extra This Just In

Extra This Just In

June 17th, 2011 by Sallie Bingham in Politics, New Mexico 5 Comments

An Open Letter to the Santa Fe New Mexican in response
to their June 16 editorial “Lannan credibility suffers self-injury“

BRAVO TO THE NEW MEXICAN FOR RUNNING A STRONG EDITORIAL ON PATRICK LANNAN’S CANCELLATION, AND BRAVO TO THE SCREEN—FOR SHOWING ON JUNE 23RD AND PERHAPS FOR LONGER, “THE WAR YOU DON’T SEE.”

Newspapers these days are strapped for cash and staff, but I hope the New Mexican will follow up this editorial with an in-depth examination of the Lannan Foundation: how it is funded, who sits on its board beside family members and family employees (lawyers, accountants, etc), its mission statement, and a comparison of the costs of running the foundation—staff, offices, travel, entertainment—versus the miserable 5% the IRS requires it to give to non-for-profits to retain its tax-free status. All this is public information.

Inherited money sometimes comes with inherited attitudes about class, gender and race; it would be interesting to know what percentage of the Lannan presenters are members of minorities, especially Native-Americans and Spanish speakers who do not come from Latin America; women; and writers who happen to live in New Mexico.

Private money comes with many prerogatives, but also with a moral, if not legal, responsibility to support all members of its community.

SALLIE BINGHAM
SANTA FE NM 87501
Update: June 27, 2011:

“Don’t take your kids to a war,” the gunner remarked after shooting down civilians, including two children, on a street in Iraq. “How cheerful,” a man in the audience remarked in the horrified silence that followed Sunday’s showing of The War You See (again, bravo to The Screen for giving us this opportunity).

These two remarks frame our difficulties, as a society, with taking responsibility for the violence all around us; as we came out of the movie, the sun was a fireball in the middle of a dense mass of smoke rising from our newest fire, twelve miles from the border of Los Alamos… An AP story this morning reveals the large number of people who live around our nuclear facilities; meanwhile, the nuclear waste stored in barrels on the mesas around Los Alamos remains as it was during the last fire, when warnings prompted no action on the part of the Labs or the Federal government. How much more is it going to take before we as a people decide to act?

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In Politics, New Mexico Lannan Foundation John Pilger The War You Don't See The Screen Santa Fe New Mexican

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Comments

  1. Candelora Versace says

    June 17th, 2011 at 12:43 pm

    Saw this in today’s paper. Quite a drama brewing; I note you speak from experience…good job, Sallie!

    Reply
  2. Jim Terr says

    June 27th, 2011 at 6:10 pm

    Nicely said, Sallie. Though I don’t pretend to know what’s really going on at the Lannan Foundation. We may do a BuDDy colloquy on important current affairs that would, shall we say, “parallel” a similar Lannan “conversation.”

    Reply
  3. Jim Terr says

    June 27th, 2011 at 6:10 pm

    Nicely said, Sallie. Though I don’t pretend to know what’s really going on at the Lannan Foundation. We may do a BuDDy colloquy on important current affairs that would, shall we say, “parallel” a similar Lannan “conversation.”

    Reply
  4. Sallie Bingham says

    June 28th, 2011 at 9:05 am

    Jim: what a great idea! Buddy could be a pretentious donor who is infuriated that his judgement is being questioned by the very people he intends to help–what do they know????Buddy could have inherited oil money from an uncle in Texas he never knew existed….Buddy could also make a trip to Los Alamos to look at the nuclear waste under its “fabric canopy”….Sallie

    Reply
  5. Jim Terr says

    June 28th, 2011 at 10:11 am

    BuDDy’s monologue will be rambling and unpredictable as always, but will certainly not belie anything but his salt-of-the-earth origins and lifestyle for which he is so well-known.

    Reply

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