Whether it is Lutheran social service agencies in the Midwest or Presbyterian parochial schools in New Mexico (founded because the Catholics so dominated the territory's few public schools) or Jewish philanthropies in New York or the ubiquitous Catholic hospitals and Protestant
colleges throughout the land, religions have provided much of the social (and financial) capital for building
local communities.
Widespread support for the project is evident, not only by viewing the list of endorsements the project has received — which range from
local officials to chambers of
college, tourism officials, area
colleges and not - for - profit organizations — but also by the proliferation of signs placed in the yards of residents
throughout southern Ulster County welcoming the Nevele back to the
community.
Throughout the United States, educational institutions — from
local schools to
community colleges to research universities — act as centers for public culture and for instilling in our children the values and knowledge that come only from a study of the humanities and the arts.
In 1995, he collaborated with the
College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah, to make replicas of their entire collection of dinosaur track casts, and exhibited these in New York and
throughout Europe; in 1997 he collaborated with the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing in Starke, Florida, to trigger lightning with rockets, and worked with a
local souvenir manufacturer to create over 10,000 replicas of a fulgurite created by the lightning strike; in 2000 he collaborated with the Pioneers Museum in the desert
community of Imperial Valley, California, to reproduce souvenir copies and large models of their
local mountain, Mount Signal, and the unique «Sand Spike» sand concretions found at its base; and in 2003, he created 120 topographical models of the states of Missouri and Kansas, which he donated and delivered himself to 120 small historical society museums in both states.