Tony Du Shane, Solo Sundays, Kristie, Writers' Groups, Networking events
All four local writers' groups are up and running - including the new one in San Rafael, which is at a coffeeshop I found on Yelp that's a nice place but with a slightly different vibe than I expected. I thought it'd be showy/fancy/organic in that area, but it's more laid back with green diner chairs and a big fridge full of Cokes in the middle. Attracted a few nice people though, including a guy who goes to Burning Man and whose sister wrote a children's book to illustrate the lyrics to Monkey and the Engineer.
Went with the San Jose writers to join the First Friday art walk last week - forgot somehow that I'd scheduled it on Good Friday...that and the rain brought out a small turnout. I admire Works Gallery especially for the quality of the art and the ICA Print Center for the intellectual artist's statements.
Met a woman from http://www.artshiftsanjose.com who said the magazine's looking for writers on any aspect of the South Bay art scene...email editor@artshiftsanjose.com if you're interested.
Kristian's family has three new baby kittens...saved from their trash compactor hideout, now they're maybe a month old. He's also looking into working with installing solar panels and I gave him my mother's guide to government jobs.
Last week also dropped by Last Gasp Publishing's 40th anniversary celebration. Diane Di Prima, Michelle Tea, and others gave live performances of their writing.
I received Lauralee Summer's memoir, Learning Joy from Dogs without Collars (the girl who grew up occasionally homeless with her creative but eccentric mother, who traveled the US and stayed in shelters...and eventually became a serious wrestler and attended Harvard while developing a writing career) in the mail and sent it off to Katy and Liz Hughes with a little cash - and said I believed in them, that they could get jobs and get into school and do better in life, and would be cheering for them and would send them my autographed Diane di Prima memoir to celebrate with them once they found work.
Went to a NCSWA science writers' dinner, learned about restoration efforts for the Monterey Bay ecosystem. The head of the biology department at SFSU invited Synchronized Chaos Magazine to come cover their May conference on genomics and genetics and better targeted cancer therapy...we're also reviewing a San Jose Opera performance of La Rondine and writing on makeup and hairstyle artists for a SF Fashion Week benefit, where they're inviting people to submit poems defining beauty on their own terms.
Went to a networking event for young nonprofit professionals - some good organizations represented, lots of folks from this legal aid group, and others from an international literacy society which is hiring (but only finance and HR professionals) - Room to Read, which I'd love to work for if I could. Also another event on nonprofit marketing that was at the Castro Valley Library.
Wrote on some interesting women for Ada Lovelace Day, also finished my consent forms for my thesis, now the ball's in my professor's court to take an online training class. For St. Patrick's day had one of my famous three hour BART and bus commutes, heading into San Jose for a magazine meeting and then to SF at night for a Lincart reception, celebrating "St. Patty's Day Around the World with a Brazilian Artist." Ran into a bunch of people who'd come visit UC Davis once and we'd chatted in their vans outside an art gallery...they totally remembered me, and I remembered them telling them they were from SF, I just didn't make the Lincart connection for awhile, and they actually got Davis mixed up somehow with Sacramento. Did get to enjoy a Guinness in San Jose though and met a professional violinist at the bar who was younger than I am.
Judged the Hayward Poetry Slam, great crowd of 60+ people, excited to foster the development of an emerging art scene! Bananaritis also went well, plenty of energy and potential for a MFA thesis student project.
UC Berkeley hosted a day on women in leadership...attended a seminar on negotiating and another on nonprofit careers, where I was very inspired by a woman talking about her organization defending the legal rights of refugees to work and earn money in their new countries.
Kristie's dealing with stuff in her life again and I'm trying to help as much as I can...what she needs is a Hella Pretty Army, like goodbadgirl! I wonder how you can build such a group for someone with a lesser known disorder which affects her personality...but this is a team effort, more than I can handle on my own, as her family realized about themselves years ago (when they abandoned her to me and other non-blood relatives) and I'd like to get more of an infrastructure of support for her, especially as I'm leaving for Europe next week and will be gone for two weeks. She knows now, I told her on Monday, and she called me crying and freaking out saying she couldn't handle me being gone and having to deal with strange social workers. And yes, she's more important than Europe...but the trip's a gift from family I'm living with at the moment who don't allow me to care for Kristie as they think she's taking advantage of me and it's "their house, their rules."
Everyone's struggling now, JobSeekers is getting bigger and last weekend at the theater for Solo Sundays, http://www.stagewerx.org/index.html#solo) Bruce Pachtman (who produced and emceed that show) came out between performers and tossed Tootsie Pops to people like a high school youth pastor, then came onstage and said that now he had our attention and an empty bucket. And we should know that 100,000 arts nonprofits had to shut their doors for financial reasons last year in california and he was worried, so to keep the theater around, he'd appreciate us putting some change in there on the way out.
I wanted to give something actually as it was a fairly good show and Bruce and the actors did quite a good job, someone even stood up to thank him, and I've seen how this experience of performing can transform people's lives. But I had no change left, only Chapstick, which I gave to a homeless lady with a dog outside the theater, and she was a published novelist! We ended up comparing favorite books and chatting for quite awhile.
All kinds of people read about the show, even people in our writing group in San Jose who have much less money than the Solo Sundays crowd, and they said how sorry they were the theater had to resort to that...my father, who used to fix planes and haul food out of freezers for a living, said he'd like to show Bruce and all the other artsy folks I knew in SF the 100,000 laid off assembly line workers in the East Bay now moving back in with parents or sleeping in shelters. He said they might not be funny or artsy but they were hurting worse from the recession than the artists who should know to expect it.
I get his point, and I get the theater people's point....hard to know what to do or where to give. Our magazine gets that issue too - people think Synchronized Chaos should do all this international and local philanthropy, and we do and we want to, but do we give to Haiti or very poor developing countries, or do we give to larger arts groups doing work we like or helping people we know and work with? What about our own contributors? We publish folks who live in their cars and who stay in shelters and who are on disability...maybe do something nice for our own writers and artists? I guess it's all about the heart and the intention and whatever we can do at any time.
Anyway...I'll be gone from April 11 to the 25th, will check comments though. Just heard author Tony DuShane (Teenage Jesus Jerk) speak and he said blogposts should be revised and polished...too late for this one.
Went with the San Jose writers to join the First Friday art walk last week - forgot somehow that I'd scheduled it on Good Friday...that and the rain brought out a small turnout. I admire Works Gallery especially for the quality of the art and the ICA Print Center for the intellectual artist's statements.
Met a woman from http://www.artshiftsanjose.com who said the magazine's looking for writers on any aspect of the South Bay art scene...email editor@artshiftsanjose.com if you're interested.
Kristian's family has three new baby kittens...saved from their trash compactor hideout, now they're maybe a month old. He's also looking into working with installing solar panels and I gave him my mother's guide to government jobs.
Last week also dropped by Last Gasp Publishing's 40th anniversary celebration. Diane Di Prima, Michelle Tea, and others gave live performances of their writing.
I received Lauralee Summer's memoir, Learning Joy from Dogs without Collars (the girl who grew up occasionally homeless with her creative but eccentric mother, who traveled the US and stayed in shelters...and eventually became a serious wrestler and attended Harvard while developing a writing career) in the mail and sent it off to Katy and Liz Hughes with a little cash - and said I believed in them, that they could get jobs and get into school and do better in life, and would be cheering for them and would send them my autographed Diane di Prima memoir to celebrate with them once they found work.
Went to a NCSWA science writers' dinner, learned about restoration efforts for the Monterey Bay ecosystem. The head of the biology department at SFSU invited Synchronized Chaos Magazine to come cover their May conference on genomics and genetics and better targeted cancer therapy...we're also reviewing a San Jose Opera performance of La Rondine and writing on makeup and hairstyle artists for a SF Fashion Week benefit, where they're inviting people to submit poems defining beauty on their own terms.
Went to a networking event for young nonprofit professionals - some good organizations represented, lots of folks from this legal aid group, and others from an international literacy society which is hiring (but only finance and HR professionals) - Room to Read, which I'd love to work for if I could. Also another event on nonprofit marketing that was at the Castro Valley Library.
Wrote on some interesting women for Ada Lovelace Day, also finished my consent forms for my thesis, now the ball's in my professor's court to take an online training class. For St. Patrick's day had one of my famous three hour BART and bus commutes, heading into San Jose for a magazine meeting and then to SF at night for a Lincart reception, celebrating "St. Patty's Day Around the World with a Brazilian Artist." Ran into a bunch of people who'd come visit UC Davis once and we'd chatted in their vans outside an art gallery...they totally remembered me, and I remembered them telling them they were from SF, I just didn't make the Lincart connection for awhile, and they actually got Davis mixed up somehow with Sacramento. Did get to enjoy a Guinness in San Jose though and met a professional violinist at the bar who was younger than I am.
Judged the Hayward Poetry Slam, great crowd of 60+ people, excited to foster the development of an emerging art scene! Bananaritis also went well, plenty of energy and potential for a MFA thesis student project.
UC Berkeley hosted a day on women in leadership...attended a seminar on negotiating and another on nonprofit careers, where I was very inspired by a woman talking about her organization defending the legal rights of refugees to work and earn money in their new countries.
Kristie's dealing with stuff in her life again and I'm trying to help as much as I can...what she needs is a Hella Pretty Army, like goodbadgirl! I wonder how you can build such a group for someone with a lesser known disorder which affects her personality...but this is a team effort, more than I can handle on my own, as her family realized about themselves years ago (when they abandoned her to me and other non-blood relatives) and I'd like to get more of an infrastructure of support for her, especially as I'm leaving for Europe next week and will be gone for two weeks. She knows now, I told her on Monday, and she called me crying and freaking out saying she couldn't handle me being gone and having to deal with strange social workers. And yes, she's more important than Europe...but the trip's a gift from family I'm living with at the moment who don't allow me to care for Kristie as they think she's taking advantage of me and it's "their house, their rules."
Everyone's struggling now, JobSeekers is getting bigger and last weekend at the theater for Solo Sundays, http://www.stagewerx.org/index.html#solo) Bruce Pachtman (who produced and emceed that show) came out between performers and tossed Tootsie Pops to people like a high school youth pastor, then came onstage and said that now he had our attention and an empty bucket. And we should know that 100,000 arts nonprofits had to shut their doors for financial reasons last year in california and he was worried, so to keep the theater around, he'd appreciate us putting some change in there on the way out.
I wanted to give something actually as it was a fairly good show and Bruce and the actors did quite a good job, someone even stood up to thank him, and I've seen how this experience of performing can transform people's lives. But I had no change left, only Chapstick, which I gave to a homeless lady with a dog outside the theater, and she was a published novelist! We ended up comparing favorite books and chatting for quite awhile.
All kinds of people read about the show, even people in our writing group in San Jose who have much less money than the Solo Sundays crowd, and they said how sorry they were the theater had to resort to that...my father, who used to fix planes and haul food out of freezers for a living, said he'd like to show Bruce and all the other artsy folks I knew in SF the 100,000 laid off assembly line workers in the East Bay now moving back in with parents or sleeping in shelters. He said they might not be funny or artsy but they were hurting worse from the recession than the artists who should know to expect it.
I get his point, and I get the theater people's point....hard to know what to do or where to give. Our magazine gets that issue too - people think Synchronized Chaos should do all this international and local philanthropy, and we do and we want to, but do we give to Haiti or very poor developing countries, or do we give to larger arts groups doing work we like or helping people we know and work with? What about our own contributors? We publish folks who live in their cars and who stay in shelters and who are on disability...maybe do something nice for our own writers and artists? I guess it's all about the heart and the intention and whatever we can do at any time.
Anyway...I'll be gone from April 11 to the 25th, will check comments though. Just heard author Tony DuShane (Teenage Jesus Jerk) speak and he said blogposts should be revised and polished...too late for this one.