California still ranks last in per capita arts funding. But the proposed new state budget includes some good news for arts education. “A spokeswoman for the California Arts Council said the overall state budget revision proposes an increase of $66 million in the Proposition 98 general fund to expand the arts and music block grants to a total of $166 million.”
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Pages Vs. Electrons – A Battle Even Grizzly Bears Would Love
The battle is shaping up – between those who believe the literary world needs to man the ramparts and defend the printed page and the traditional structures that support it, and those who believe the electronic world will liberate knowledge. John Updike and Chris Anderson duke it out at Book Expo.
Minnesota Arts Groups Happy With New Funding
Minnesota arts groups were hoping to get a measure on the fall ballot that would propose allocating a piece of the state sales tax to arts funding. The state legislature didn’t quite get there, but it did approve money for some arts construction projects.
Oakland Opera’s “X” Files
Oakland Opera Theatre exists as a vehicle for modern opera. Since it took on the Oakland Opera name in 1999 (the former Oakland Opera having shut down a few years earlier), the company’s offerings have ranged from Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s “Four Saints in Three Acts” to a disco-era staging of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” to a circus fantasia of Glass’ “La Belle et la Bête.” Seeing what inventive stagings the small company concocts with limited resources is half the fun…”
Beauty… In A Wind Farm
“A look at contrasting aesthetic intuitions about wind farms reveals a paradigm shift in how we understand beauty. Our sense of the nature of beauty cannot be separated from our sense of the beauty of nature…”
The New Yorker To Get A Digital Upgrade
Editor David Remnick “promises that by year’s end, the 81-year-old New Yorker, which didn’t regularly run full-page photographs until 1992, will dramatically upgrade its Web presence. More video, more audio, more flash media, more reader interaction. The publication is about to hire its first Web editor this month, and Remnick understands new media well enough not to drop Web-only 15,000-word anvils on the site.”
TV’s Sci-Fi Moment Passes
In the wake of “Lost”s success on TV last year, numerous science fiction shows got on the tube this season. Most of them flopped.
Smithsonian Reveals Details Of Showtime Deal
The Smithsonian made its contract with Showtime public Thursday. It is locked into its exclusive TV contract with Showtime network for 30 years. Critics have blasted the deal, saying it excludes other filmmakers.
The Writing Machine
Author James Patterson was “raised in upstate New York, the son of an insurance salesman. At 19, he took a job as a night shift psychiatric aide in a Massachusetts mental hospital, a move that would set off a series of what he calls “accidents” that eventually created the phenomenon of Patterson the master marketer, the man who can write no flop. Patterson has published 35 books, 18 of which hit No. 1 on the New York Times list of bestsellers. He’s sold 100 million copies, grossing $1 billion in sales.”
The Piano Man’s Cuban Connection
For 13 years, Benjamin Treuhaft has been taking pianos to Cuba – 237 of them so far. “Treuhaft keeps returning to survey donated instruments and tune and restore others, striking an insistent chord against the U.S. trade embargo. After nearly 20 trips to the island — some without U.S. approval — the jocular former hippie who sports a bandanna on his head and likes to tune pianos while barefoot is now a personality in some Cuban music circles.”