NEA

Went to New York. Almost everyone in the program was white. Everyone we met was white. It was like being in much of Eugene (not to say that we have no people of color here; we just have a large majority of, well, white people), except that on the actual sidewalks of the city, not everyone was white.

So I wrote a "think piece" about that. Which maybe wasn't the point, but I had to say it. (There were some moments of what I would probably call racism and others would call racial insensitivity or white privilege, as well, with one of the authority figures at the institute. So uncomfortable. So crazy-making when someone says, "Well, it's not politically correct, but ... ")

Anyway. Here's my third piece, edited and turned into a letter to those who run the institute, after the jump.

OK. OK. I started a really long post on this topic last week. And yesterday, my post was destroyed when I tried to open another page. I wish I could say the page that destroyed my long, brilliant post on the National Endowment for the Arts etc. (see below) was, say, the webpage for something quite intellectual, say a chess-playing site.

But it wasn't. It was my favorite LOLCATS site.

Multitasking.

Anyway. I was gone for two weeks at the (clearing throat) Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism/National Endowment for the Arts Institute in Classical Music and Opera.

Before I go on, let me say that I got to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge at night (I've walked across it many times before, but never at night). That was freakin' glorious and worth the humiliating writing workshops.

Read all about it here.