I believe in evolution.
I believe in God.
I believe in science.
I believe in challenging my beliefs.
I believe in dialogue

If you would check yes to some or all of the above, then I have the event for you. On Wednesday,  Oct. 22 at 6:30 p.m., at Northern Kentucky University,  there will be a mock trial to explore an important public policy question: Should creation science be taught, side by side with evolution, in the public school classroom?

I can assure you that where I work – on a university campus – the immediate answer is no, not until hell freezes over, that is, if there is a hell other than the literary one described by Dante or the earthly one defined by state budget cuts for higher ed. Say they, isn’t  creation science  an oxymoron? If you see it that way, come listen, because I’ve been talking to some of the creation crowd and they have a nice ability to get you thinking and questioning whether you know as much as you think you know. When someone with a doctorate in genetics begins talking about how genetic mutations are known to be neutral at best, damaging perhaps, and never advantageous to a species, I find I am anxious at least to hear a pro-evolution answer. Think about the creation science argument in terms of a single generation:  You might wake up tomorrow with a genetic mutation that will make you gravely ill. Cancer happens that way. I’m a cancer survivor, so I get that.  Genetic mutations suck. You probably won’t wake up with a genetic mutation tomorrow that will make you 20 years younger, with knees that don’t ache when you run a few miles. Too bad. I’m training for my first marathon.  About mile 18, I’ll be wishing for a quick genetic mutation to get me through the final 8.2.

Make no mistake. There is a counterpoint to the argument that genetic mutations don’t help a species.  Remember SARS? It was a virus that mutated to its advantage, much to the disadvantage of the human species. Evolutionary science, according to the National Academy of Sciences, not only provided researchers with the tools for understanding SARS, but also to combat it. More generally, creation science suffers from this reality: Most scientists are on board with evolution, as reflected by this passage from the Academy in a seminal report earlier this year: “The theory of evolution is supported by so many observations and experiments that the overwhelming majority of scientists no longer question whether evolution has occurred and continues to occur and instead investigate the processes of evolution.”

So the question settles out: Can and should this be discussed in a high school classroom -- or must a high school science teacher hew closely and solely to evolution? However you answer, it’s a question very much on the public’s mind. Sarah Palin’s  perceived agenda was only the latest scratch to expose this raw nerve in the body politic.  Even before McCain’s Alaskan acolyte walked on stage, many states were struggling against the public pressure of this issue, coming from both sides.

Our mock case is set in a fictional Kentucky county (Chandler County) where a high school biology teacher comes to believe that she should include in her science class information challenging evolution, given that an increasing number of credentialed scientists are publishing on the topic. She rigorously teaches evolution, fully meeting the guidelines of Kentucky's stringent core curriculum for high school science. But in the spirit of academic freedom and learning, she also points out there are some scientists who are publishing conclusions at odds with evolution.

Should such a teacher be fired? In the real world, this is a gray area. A top education official told me that teachers can “teach but not preach” – suggesting that a dialogue in the classroom about the merits of creation science would be legal. There’s even a state statute in Kentucky that expressly protects the teaching of Genesis. But federal case law tilts the other way, as do the Kentucky curriculum guidelines. And a friend gave me an even better personal measure: If your child’s school announced the teaching of creation science, would you object or applaud?

As director of the Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement, it’s my job to translate into action a mission that NKU President Jim Votruba often mentions, that a university should be a safe place for difficult conversations. In our mock trial planning, we’ve tried to reflect that – and bring to the witness stand thoughtful, informed people who will testify in ways that may or may not convince you; but if all goes well, they will at least get you thinking

And, I might add, the night should be especially good on another level. Two very talented Northern Kentucky lawyers will be squaring off. Margo Grubbs will represent the school board that fired the school teacher. Phil Taliaferro will represent the school teacher. These are two attorneys, who when one of them tries a case, attract an audience of other attorneys who come to watch the masters at work.

So join us. At 6:30 p.m., we’ll begin seating. Then, at 7 p.m., the trial will start. We’ll go for about two hours at the Budig Theater on campus. The audience will be our jury.

One more thing: This is the 150th anniversary of the publication of the “Origin of the Species” and the 200th anniversary of Charles Dawin’s birth is upon us. A lot of programming is planned around those anniversaries, and you can see a full list, compliments of the University of Cincinnati. And NKU is in planning stages of more events. Stay tuned.

It’s not any given Sunday that 400 or so people forego football and gather to hear poetry. But they did on a mid-September afternoon at Northern Kentucky University to hear poet, essayist and novelist Wendell Berry, who makes fewer public appearances these days but gladly made this one on behalf of the Friends of Steely Library. 

Mr. Berry, whose literary life has always been woven together with his example of how to live – that is, close to the land and with a sense of responsibility about your community – is a hero in the environmental movement. His words at NKU underscored why. He has been an eloquent voice against mountaintop removal, the strip-mining method for getting at Appalachian coal by blasting the top of mountains. Asked how to stop it, he replied humbly that if he could answer that it would be stopped already. He knew only how to keep telling people that this practice, which he described as “geological genocide,” needs to end before it utterly destroys to splendor of Kentucky’s mountains. He thought maybe joining the citizens group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth might be a good start.  If you’ve seen mountaintop removal, you understand. Streams are destroyed, as are homes and wildlife and old, beautiful forests. Yes we need energy, but not this way. Interestingly, both presidential candidates seem to understand this and are on record opposed to mountaintop removal.

Mr. Berry is a hero, too, to those who love storytelling. At the NKU event, I heard an audience member behind me whisper, “There’s nothing like a storyteller,” as Mr. Berry read a short story about a boy’s adventures in science. The boy decided to test the tenets of “Twas the Night Before Christmas” by seeing if he could ascend a chimney. Think soot. Think of a mother unamused and armed with a switch. Think of a boy trying to avoid wrath. Read with warmth and wit, the story had the audience in stitches.

The stunning thing about Wendell Berry is his range. After his public reading, I dug out an old book of his essays and read one about his going to camp for a couple of nights alone into the Red River Gorge, c.1971. It was a reflection on the time it takes a person to move from modern society into a wilderness. It’s not a journey of distance but of spirit. Though you can get there at 70 mph in a hurry from town to trail, the spiritual decompression isn’t so instantaneous. Thirty-seven years after that essay was published, the essay rings even more true today, what with BlackBerrys, cell phones, text messaging and, yes, blogs.

And 37 years later, Mr. Berry is still writing and relevant. His range isn’t just years. It’s also his formats: essays, short stories, novels, poems. The poems are especially compelling for me. My wife, Kate, and I boned up on our Wendell Berry the morning of the event, and as horse owners we especially enjoyed his poem, “Come Forth," which is found in "The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry," published in 1998 by Counterpoint. In the poem, a son dreams he is with his elderly father and they come upon "some horses in a field…” The poem continues:

They were sorrels, as red almost as blood,
the light gold on their shoulders and haunches.
Though they came to us, all a-tremble
with curiosity and snorty with caution,
they had never known bridle or harness.
My father walked among them, admiring
for he was a knower of horses, and these were fine.

I have gone back to the poem a few times since, and asked my daughter, herself a knower of horses, to read it to me so I could hear it in her voice. Poetry is made richer each time it is given a new voice. And each time I heard “Come Forth,” I marveled at the beauty of it and at the perfect combination of words. "Snorty with caution.” Exactly right and devoid of cliché.

Kate and I mentioned our little poetry reading to Mr. Berry in a moment with him, and he of course knew the poem we meant and related that his mother asked him, “Did you really dream that?” He did, he told her. We should all dream in such majestic verse and with such art. Until then, we can celebrate the fact that 400 people gave up their mid-afternoon to hear a poet. No offense to the NFL, but it was worth a Sunday afternoon in the way that some other things are not.

This wasn’t the first score for the Friends of Steely. The Friends have a knack when it comes to landing literary talent. One of the first events I attended after taking a job at NKU last year was a Friends-hosted reading and lecture by Robert Olmstead, whose gem of a novel, “Coal Black Horse” is sort of a “Cold Mountain” from a boy’s eye view and, for my taste, more poetic and haunting.  I was taken by the quality of the event and made a promise to myself to attend anything the Friends put on in the future. This year’s reading by Wendell Berry set the bar even higher.

There’s a larger context for this, too. If you’ve not been by NKU in a few years, visit. The physical look of the campus has changed dramatically, which is not to say all of the concrete is gone but there is more architectural diversity among the buildings and more plant life. More significant is what’s happening inside the buildings. There is a flood of cultural contributions that goes unnoticed to much of Cincinnati. Music, art, theater. The examples are endless. I had the pleasure of sitting in on a taping with the string quartet in residents, the Azmari Quartet, one Monday morning. There’s no better way to start a week. If you get a chance to hear them, do so. The upcoming Alumni Lecture Series, with Dee Dee Myers and Karl Rove on Oct. 9 is tailor-made for political junkies. The Military Lecture Series already has a following and the next one, on Lincoln and Grant, with the highly regarded Civil War historian Dr. James Ramage, should add to the following. It’s on Oct. 14 at 7 p.m. on campus.

And the list goes on. It’s a rich and robust menu, and Wendell Berry was a taste of it. 

As a lifelong print journalist until The Cincinnati Post and The Kentucky Post closed last year, I’m neither comfortable being a blogger or with blogs. They’re new media. I’m old media. Yet here I am, saying yes to an invitation to blog. What’s my discomfort with blogs? It’s not that I’m wed to print. I’m a dedicated Internet user, and I buy into the forecast that the future of newspapers and, more broadly, journalism is with the web, not newsprint. Sites like Soapbox bring a new resource for defining and describing the community, for conversation in the community and for reaching into the community’s nooks and crannies. All good.

What concerns me is that a community also needs vibrant, serious, in-depth reporting. That takes people who are doing the hard work of authoritative reporting. They’ve got to hit the streets and gather information, talk to those in the know and make sense of the chaos and confusion.   An especially complex story takes time to sort through. It takes grasp of context. Traditionally in the media, we’ve accomplished that by hiring reporters with expertise in certain categories (be it business or politics, sports or the arts) and then leaving them on a beat long enough to gain insight and institutional memory. They become the town’s expert on some topic, whether it is City Hall or the delivery of medical care or the governance of the school system or the city’s professional sports franchises. Doing this well is a tremendously expensive enterprise because it is labor-intensive and has to be done not once but a thousand times over. It’s a sustained commitment. What’s more, a community is best served when such reporting is done well by more than one outlet, which was why having two daily newspapers in town was better than having just one. But two papers is a luxury few towns have these days. Add in the declining resources available for today’s remaining newsrooms and you are witnessing a reduction in the quality and quantity of local news.

Can the online community step in? The answer may be yes, and may even be emphatically yes. A wider array of talent is invited to the dialogue by the online model, and with the invitation comes the opportunity for new expertise in the analysis of the community and in providing information about a community. The challenge is whether the continuous, daily collection of timely facts – the basis for good analysis of the news – can be accomplished as the model changes for how news is gathered and delivered.  If there were some local issue, for example, as complex as the nation’s current economic woes and the remedial legislation proposed, who would accumulate a journal of the information needed for people to make informed commentary and to form informed opinions? In some instances, the current online models are up to the challenge. Posting the whole legislation (and counterproposals), for example, is a greater level of information than traditional print could offer, with its limited space. But there will remain some information that has to be dug out and made public. Governments tend to be selective about what information is released, and some of the hard work print journalists have provided over the years is a dedication to fighting to make secret records public. Again, that’s an exercise that takes time and money. Try going to court to get a document released. You’ll empty your wallet in a hurry.

We’ll be exploring some of these topics early next year at Northern Kentucky University, where I now work as director of the Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement. So consider this blog an invitation to join us at Greaves Concert Hall on Tuesday, Jan. 27, at 7:30 p.m., when we host a free public lecture by Washington Post reporter Dana Priest. She was this year’s co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize in the public service category for stories on conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Ms. Priest’s work with colleagues Anne Hull and Michel du Cille created an outcry in the nation. A question posed, I think, by the current transformation from old media to new is whether the next generation of media can financially support this kind of journalism. There are important ancillary questions for new media, too, including whether there is an appetite for the kind of digging required. Serious reporting often means knowing you will hit deadends, and then starting over. The instant gratification of posting what you find has to give way to discipline of persistence until you have the story nailed. However this challenge is met, it must be met because online is where things are headed – or so it seems to me. Now is the time to think through this and find revenue and structure models that take the best of the old and build it into the new.

We’re still working out the details of the programming that will accompany this event, but we hope to include panel discussions and other elements that will allow people to be heard – and to hear. So stay tuned. And plan to join us in January.