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.