Blog

What’s Needed To Defeat COVID: Morality Pills?

When someone chooses not to follow public health guidelines around the coronavirus, they’re defecting from the public good. It’s the moral equivalent of the tragedy of the commons: If everyone shares the same pasture for their individual flocks, some people are going to graze their animals longer, or let them eat more than their fair share, ruining the commons in the process. Selfish and self-defeating behavior undermines the pursuit of something from which everyone can benefit. – The Conversation

How Do You Work To Preserve Indigenous Languages When You And Your Native Speakers Are All In Lockdown?

“It’s a transition that has taken on particular urgency given the fact that the speaker pool for the world’s threatened and endangered languages skews older — precisely the population most at risk from the pandemic. This problem is compounded by the fact that indigenous communities not just in the United States but around the world are disproportionately affected both by the virus and by the economic toll of the shutdown. Against this backdrop, the push to keep language revitalization going under lockdown is a symbol of cultural resilience — and, for many, an opportunity to build national and international solidarity among indigenous peoples around the world.” – Slate

Charlie Parker at 100

In his too short, too fast, too hard, too brilliant 34 years, Parker transformed an art form, no less than Mozart or Chopin or Gershwin did in their similarly brief time among us. Like those revolutionaries, Parker played his instrument – alto saxophone – with astonishing virtuosity. But Parker also did as much as anyone (and more than most) to forge a musical language, one that dominated 20th century jazz and continues to influence it in the 21st. – Chicago Tribune

WPA Murals Slated For Demolition Saved, Thanks To Black Nurse Born In 1818

History of Medicine in California, a 1938 ten-panel fresco by Bernard Zakheim, is in a building at UCal-San Francisco that the school is going to tear down and replace. UCSF gave Zakheim’s family 90 days this summer to find a way to get the 2,000-pound paintings removed (at Zakheim expense) or they would be destroyed. Then a young scholar discovered that one fresco features Biddy Mason, a formerly enslaved woman who became an admired nurse, midwife, and philanthropist — and a cause was born. – The New York Times

How Non-Profit Arts Organizations Measure Their Impact

“The important idea here is this – there is a sharp difference between the meaning of the concept of art (which certainly doesn’t need you to be indispensable) and the meaning of the purpose of the art that your nonprofit performing arts organization produces. When your performing art makes its case by showing intentional measurable impacts, then it too will be indispensable.” – LinkedIn

Goethe Was Wrong About Art (At Least Abstract Art): Study

“In Goethe’s 1810 treatise on color he wrote, ‘red-yellow gives an impression of warmth and gladness.’ He added that ‘the feelings they excite are quick, lively, aspiring.’ His idea that visual attributes, like color and form, cause universal responses in viewers has influenced art theory ever since. But a study published earlier this year in the PLOS ONE journal contested the idea that everyone experiences the same emotions when viewing abstractions.” – ARTnews

Canadian Artists Lead Drive For Basic Income

“We can all agree that systemic racism should be eradicated at all levels on all fronts (in every employment sector and other areas), but the arts presents a particularly challenging arena,” he wrote. “Only by ending the inherent funding disparities that have built up over many decades across the country can the not-for-profit arts sector successfully face the challenge that confronts it now.” – The Tyee

Second City Tries To Give Itself An Anti-Racist Makeover — Will It Work This Time?

“In interviews with more than 20 past and present performers, staff members and others, as well as with the leadership, the challenge of making these enormous changes becomes clear. This is at least the fifth time Second City has tried to reconcile the concerns of employees of color. … Yet the culture that many found deeply offensive was ingrained for decades.” – The New York Times