Very interesting discussion at Hudson of Peter Frumkin's Strategic Giving. What, I found myself asking as I read the transcript, are the disciplines, or practices, or "life worlds" that would ideally be convened around a topic like strategic giving? Bill Schambra, himself a PhD, I believe in political science, assembled a great panel with expertise in business, foundation work, political theory, social sciences, and other disciplines you might call "hard," or "knowledge based." "Techne" figured high in the covernsation, but "sophysyne," or wisdom, virtue, temperence, self-control, balance? I missed on Bill's panel the voice of poetry, particularly satire, comedy or carnival. It is as if philanthropy has become a serious and somewhat dismal matter of means and ends responsive to donor intention and theoris of social change and the donor's sense of community needs. Even when its "expressive" dimension is mentioned, the terminology is owlish and suitably impassive. If I had a big foundation, I would fund a Think Tank populated by "expressive" crazies, like Blake, Dickens, Artaud, or maybe Joe Bageant. Ideas, as conservative say, matter, but not ideas thought in the head alone. I wish Amy Kass, the literary one in the Hudson bunch, had been present to conclude the proceedings with a quotation from say, Hard Times.