The title of this essay is a quote from Lily Tomlin I’ve had for at least a decade: I used it in my email signature for a few months half a dozen years ago, and it seemed true then. But after the utterly cynical way racism and antisemitism have been used this week to market …
Shine on me Let the light shine on me The Black Monks of Mississippi I spent the day at Grantmakers in The Arts’ Support for Individual Artists preconference (entitled Artists and Grantmakers: A Shared Enterprise). Dozens of artists and funders took part in the program, performing, offering panel presentations, Web pages, video clips, and PowerPoints. …
Two notes to you, dear readers: First, from Sunday through Wednesday (17-20 October 2010), I’ll be one of three bloggers invited to attend and write about the annual conference of Grantmakers in the Arts. I’ll be posting at least once a day, perhaps more, both through my own site and at GIA’s site. If you’re …
My friend heard it from Wilbert Rideau, a writer she admires. He was commenting on the constraints that shape certain prison writers’ perspectives. “They can only see the world,” he said, “through the lens of their own pain.” Some of us are imprisoned by iron and stone, some by cages erected in our own minds. …
February 17th is World Community Arts Day, the third annual global celebration of “art as a catalyst for caring and sharing,” with the goal of creating “a World Festival Society for a day.” Its underlying philosophy is that “We can either react in fear or anger to the state of our world thus becoming part …
It’s been an astoundingly busy time: I’ve inhaled a giant lungful of the air of possibility concerning cultural recovery, exhaling endless pro bono projects, days speeding by like spring petals on the wind. (Nagging thoughts of livelihood float like rain clouds overhead, but never mind for now.) Busy on the inside too. Something persuaded me …
This has been a week of collecting horror stories of behavior by people who seem to utterly lack a moral compass. As a friend of mine said, “Sometimes the world offends me.” But is it true? Are some people entirely lacking, without moral conscience in the way that someone might be born without wisdom teeth, …