Please Help the William Grant Still Arts Center

Per my last post, the William Grant Still Arts Center in West Adams, Los Angeles, is having funding problems due to the city financial crisis. If you are interested in helping, please go to the Facebook page for their supporters below to get updates and info about their upcoming fundraiser on May 8. The Center is fantastic and offers free and low-cost public arts programs for kids. It fills a gap left from programs that have already been cut in the public schools, and to lose it would be to lose a treasure of Los Angeles culture.

http://www.facebook.com/people/William-Grant-Still-ArtsCenter/1211918846

Mid-City Press

I did land the position as Mid-City Press arts columnist, and just turned in my third piece, a review of the Earth Day show at Eco-Logical Art Gallery. Here is the link - it came out today and made the front page, scroll down for the text:

http://www.midcitypress.com/

And here is my second piece, published a few days ago, about trying to save the William Grant Still Art Center from closing its doors due to funding problems:

http://www.midcitypress.com/?p=381

My first column came down already, but it was about the St. Elmo Village arts community in PicFair, a neighborhood in central LA that used to be the Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks compound. I am loving this writing assignment, I get to meet everyone creative for a ten-mile radius. It's very inspiring.

BP and the Beeb

I have been reading my beloved BBC, purveyor of Doctor Who and Monty Python, a lot lately for their coverage of the Gulf oil disaster. I read them to get a perspective on news events from outside of America. I wanted to see how they would handle news that a British company is dumping oil into the Gulf at a heart-stopping rate. Here's the link for today's piece:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8662573.stm

And here is their archive from the past two weeks:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/bp

I am somewhat biased on this issue because I lived in New Orleans briefly, and in Corpus Christi, TX when I was very little so this situation is really freaking me out. I'm heartbroken for the people who make their living from the Gulf, and worried about the animals and the long-term consequences to that complex ecosystem. I'm also a dyed in the wool Anglophile. A lot of my family is British and my folks even lived in Essex County outside of London for three years early in their marriage. I once tried to get hired at the BBC so maybe I could live in England myself someday. I'm glad they are covering it objectively.

Will the Editing Never Cease?

I am re-re-editing my first book. Even one of my roommates got exasperated with me when I told her I was at it again, wondering if I would ever finish it, but I got a fresh burst of creativity and found a lot of places where I could make it stronger. It's been long enough now since I looked at it that I lost some of my attachment to turns of phrase that can upon reflection be improved. I am readying it for e-publication, and I figured it's been this long, why not make a last push and make it as perfect as I possibly can? I'll know when I am done. Again, I learned so much writing the second one that I have found new avenues of self-expression that I can bring to prior work. It just seems slightly underdeveloped to me now, and I know how to fix that. What's a few more months in the course of a lifetime?

Back in the Saddle

My new hard drive seems to be working fine, knock on wood. I was relieved enough to go out and buy backup drives for the Mac and for my little cheapy PC netbook and laptops. I am now budgeted for May to drop some cash on Logic Pro for the Mac so I can get my music composition off the ground again. It's agonizingly slow to get all of the stuff I need for my projects, but it's an investment that is worth it.

Mid-City Press

I just sent an inquiry to a new community newspaper that is starting in my neighborhood. The editor and founder spoke at the local neighborhood council meeting last week and said she is looking for writers. I told her about my fine art and entertainment background and offered to write about local arts organizations and cultural institutions. I live in an artists' comunity in Mid-City, which is located roughly between between Mid-Wilshire and the Miracle Mile on the west and Koreatown on the east, and is bordered by the 10 freeway on the south and Pico Blvd. on the north. There are some very interesting things going on in the area, from St. Elmo's Village, a longstanding artspace for mainly African American work, to Mid City Arts, a graffiti and urban art collective. There is also the Eco-Logical Art Gallery, just outside of the official Mid-City map, but right down the street from me. One of our neighbors shows his work there and they have some really interesting shows.

Here is the newspaper's website - it looks to be in beta-testing stage still, not finished, but there is some info about the mission and content.

http://www.midcitypress.com/

I definitely approve of their aim to fill some of the vacuum in local coverage left by cuts at the LA Times and other more established media. It's brave to start a newspaper right now, and I hope they make a go of it.

Medieval Studies

I did not make it to the medieval studies conference last week in Arizona. I almost went, but then decided I would rather spend the money on computer things to advance my own projects. There is a Celtic studies conference coming up at the end of the year, at UCLA. I will go to that one - it involves no travel other than driving across town, and it's completely free. I am kind of sorry about missing this recent one - the topic was Man and the Natural World during the Middle Ages, which sounded fascinating, and I would like to visit Scottsdale again (I once went when I was six years old and liked it). I've just only got so much time, money and energy, and I have to allocate all of those resources as I go.