Wow, I’m about to match the Professor Fury record for non-posting days. April came and went with a whirlwind calendar so full that it’s taken a week plus to recover from all the running around. May looks like it’s going to be a lot slower, thankfully. My parents are coming to stay the weekend for Mother’s Day and to catch the last baseball game in LSU’s Alex Box stadium on Sunday, but amongst all that visiting I’ve got my sights set on the CD release party for Harlan on Saturday night at Chelsea’s. Harlan is one of the best bands out of Baton Rouge these days and seeing how they don’t get together to play very often and there are rumors of a certain key member’s possible move out of state, this is a show to catch for sure.
Only a few days after the publication of the article that I linked to in my last post and Baton Rouge is facing a pretty big community art crisis. It’s a rather lengthy play-by-play, so I’ll just link to The Advocate’s article on the matter. Wgo had told me about the school board meeting and I had planned to attend but just ended up watching the meeting on public access. I turned off the proceedings before the vote on the matter, thinking that there was no way that anyone could argue with the substitute motion that was filed. Alas, it only garnered a 5-5 vote, and so the Baton Rouge school board has cleared the way for the demolition for a student-built sculpture that is listed on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s inventory of American sculptures. Culture Candy sent out a call to action, where Wgo summarized the issue as such:
Culture emerges from community; and the various artworks and attitudes that comprise culture sustain and inform the very context in which they arise. Authentic art arises from authentic community, and this art in turn models authenticity to the community. Education is one of the more conspicuous of the means by which culture is communicated and sustained; it is certainly the most conspicuous guardian of a community’s intellectual health, and in a healthy community, this intellectual well-being includes the arts and humanities.
And this is why citizens who recognize the central role of culture in a healthy community must take notice when its school board votes to destroy a public sculpture on the Smithsonian list of monuments, a sculpture built by its young people through the process of education, an artwork that has authentically arisen in the community through the very process of acculturate that community. This is more than deeply troubling. The system by which the Baton Rouge community is educated has chosen to authorize the destruction of one of the few public displays of arts in education in this town. This is pathological; this is an animal eating its own heart in an attempt at sustenance.
I’m not sure what can be done or who is going to do it, but take a look at the full Culture Candy email for their immediate suggestions (I’ve reposted it here it because their site is down right now). If education, art and community are something you value in Baton Rouge, be on the lookout for ways to help out with this. I’ll post more as I know it.
My submission for the second issue of Culture Candy’s Sweet Tooth:
“The existence of a unified, art appreciating community brings with it the notion that there is some adhesive that binds the group together, a mutual concern or vision that provides the foundation and the impetus for further growth. Both here in Baton Rouge and in my previous home of Jackson, MS, the formulation and communication of this idea seems to have been the most major obstacle to overcome in art community growth. Beg, plead and cajole the larger community into taking a more active role in appreciating the arts and many of them are going to ask a very good, necessary and deceptively simple question: why? There are innumerable ways for us to answer that question, and such is the beauty of art: there are a myriad of avenues by which one can come to commune with and appreciate it. The challenge to us is to answer it in a way that communicates a real and concrete reason across the gulf of the disconnect between our art community and our larger one.”
Read the entire article.
Though the Major League Baseball season officially started last week with two games in Japan, the season has kicked off on the home front tonight with my team, the Atlanta Braves facing off against division rivals the Washington Nationals in the nation’s capital. As always it’s fun to see the familiar faces of your team, plus get the first chance to see the new additions in action. Notable in that category is Mark Kotsay, who takes over center field from departed free agent Andruw Jones, a fan favorite and one of the best defensive players at the position in the history of the game. So far Kotsay has looked good, tracking down some deep balls in the corners, though I have to say that I will miss watching the effortless grace with which Andruw roamed the outfield. And in both the familiar and the new face category, Brave’s fans have the opportunity to welcome back pitching ace Tom Glavine, a welcome addition to a pitching rotation whose #3 slot has not been too formidable in comparison to numbers one and two, Tim Hudson and John Smoltz. At least one ESPN writer is willing to go out on a limb and call the Braves, who’ve missed the playoffs the last two seasons, a World Series contender. We’ve got one hundred and sixty-two games to see how that pans out.
Many congratulations to BobbyP and MsXTC on the arrival of their first born! Joseph Walker (who at only 4 hours old has no online pseudo-name yet) arrived at 12:17 pm at 7lbs 3oz and 21 inches long at Women’s Hospital here in Baton Rouge. BobbyP reports that both mother and child are doing well and JW (I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to call him this until he’s old enough to tell me to stop) arrived with 10 fingers, 10 toes, and all other requisite male-oriented appendages.
Free time for A&W posting has been hard to come by recently, with a lot of time devoted to the doing of things and not enough time for reflecting upon them or even really catching my breath between them. In the last few weeks there have been trips to NO for both Wilco and St. Patrick’s Day, each excellent adventures, plus the first meeting of the Historically Curious Flavors & Pastimes Investigatory Committee (more on this to come as a regular A&W feature). Just this last weekend Maddie Potter and I had BobbyP, MsXTC, Wrestlerette and Wgo over for the first cookout since time changed. Over vegetable kabobs, hot sausage po-boys, galvanized buckets of ice cold beer and a fire on the deck we celebrated BobbyP’s birthday, he and MsXTC’s last weekend of living child-free and the arrival of the Vernal Equinox and Easter, all rolled into one. Through all that I’ve somehow knocked out over 20 hours of overtime (any web application in developers in the Red Stick area looking for work?). So yeah, things are jumping.
In that ever futile yet always waged battle against lost youth, I begin my 36 hours of Spring Break. As with last year’s mini-Spring Break to see Yo La Tengo at Tipitina’s, this year finds me on a trip to NOLA back to Tips, this time to see Wilco on the second night of their two night stand there. Maddie Potter and I are going to get down there early enough to wander up and down Magazine Street for a bit and hopefully the weather will be warm enough to enjoy a few pints on the balcony of The Balcony, just as I did the evening of the Wilco show at the State Palace Theater back in 2005 (that was the last live show I saw in NOLA before Katrina). After a night’s stay at the Prytania Park Hotel we’re hoping for a lazy lunch and meander up River Road back to Baton Rouge. SPRING BREAK!!!
The show is being streamed live from the Wilco website if you want to give a listen.
