His View: Oh, the humanities! Heart of America in danger

The elimination of funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities - as well as the National Endowment for the Arts - may sound like something so remote, elite and not a part of your daily life that you could be thinking, "So what?"

However, the endowment is at the heart of what makes our country great, and we specialize in telling those stories. More than 1,000 of your fellow residents on the Palouse have attended at least one of the programs funded by the endowment's state-level organization called Humanities Washington. You might have forgotten that you attended one of these presentations on our shared history and heritage, but they included "The Triple Nickel: Black Paratroopers in World War II," "Superhero America: The Comic Book as Historic Lens," and "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Anatomy of a Masterpiece."

These presentations took place at the Whitman County libraries in St. John, Colfax, Tekoa and Rosalia.