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KtothaC
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Birthday: 4/29/1982
Gender: Female
Interests: music, the arts, running, biking, reading, anarchist soccer, friends, food, cooking, dancing, exploring, lots of stuff...
Occupation: Other
Industry: Art
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
6/22/2005
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| Hey y'all!
Don't really care to have a blog anymore so this's all the blog-o-sphere is gonna get outta KtothaC.
Peace.
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| Right now at Yard Dog (a sweet kitchy folk art boutique and art gallery on S. Congress) is "Art Behind Bars," the 6th Annual Texas Prisoner Art Show. Coordinated and sponsored by Inside Books Project, the prison art show features a selection of original work by Texas inmates. The primary purpose of Inside Books Project is to provide free
literature and educational materials to Texas' incarcerated population,
which now exceeds 160,000 people and is the largest in the country. But each year it curates this beautiful, intimate, and inspiring show.
It's a small exhibit, displaying about 20 ink and pencil drawings. Poshdeluxe and I went to the show on Saturday afternoon and I took a picture of two pieces:
Nice, huh?
As you might guess, there aren't any pictures of flowers or rainbows. Texas prisons are the worst of the worst. Many of them are privatized, which means crowding more prisoners in cells and hiring fewer staff--a perfect recipe for extremely poor treatment and high violence. It's not surprising either that the Texas prison health care system is also in shams.
From a prison cell, Christopher E. Ward writes:
Prisoners
are the burial ground for minds entombed alive in fields incapable of
supporting life; the breeding ground for the virus which destroys the
will to live and the cafeteria for politicians partaking in a feeding
frenzy of human life.
To see even a smidgen of creativity coming out of these dismal places brings the proud artist out of me. There is hope in all things.
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| I just tried to take a nap on the floor of my office. I'm in the basement, no one can see me, I have no windows, and it's a slow Friday. I have a burnt orange tablecloth in here that duals as a nice, yet thin bedding option. Unfortunately, as I lowered to the floor in a smilely spacey state, I was immediately jolted wide awake from a sneezing attack. 6, 7, 8 in a row! more! I felt the dust that tickled my nose with each breath. Screw this. That's what I get for trying to sleep on the job. So now I'm back on my medicine ball, staring at my computer screen.
I'm thinking about leaving this job, though I don't know what else I want to do. Get my MBA yes, but that's all in due time.
On a completely unrelated note, this weekend is Austin's 24th Annual Moonlight Cruise! We fondly call it the Harvest Moon ride and a huge group of cyclists gather at 2 am Sunday morning at this time each year and ride around the city til the sun rises. It's an unofficial event that can bring out over 500 people, sometimes more. This website has some cool video and pictures from the '05 cruise.
I can't wait. It's almost as fun as the Halloween Critical Mass, where we all dress up in costume and decorate our bikes and start riding around the city in a huge group at 5 pm the last Friday of October. Right during rush hour traffic. I love it.
I love Austin.
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| I'M GOING TO SCOTLAND IN 4 DAYS!!!
and then to London for 3 days. A 12 day trip in all. I've never been to Edinburgh or London so it will be great great GREAT no matter what. Unless I break a body part or get Avian Influenza. That would make the trip not so great.
I haven't had a chance to look up any tourist destinations at all. I'll be walking the Royal Mile in Edinburgh all day long going to shows during the Fringe Festival and handing out flyers for American Repertory Ensemble. I promise I will not eat haggis but I do promise to drink a substantial amount of Scotch Whiskey. And bring some back for my loved ones. I can't think of a better souvenir.
I will definitely visit Edinburgh Castle, the most famous castle in all of Scotland. I'll be quoting "Monty Python & The Holy Grail" through the whole tour.
I'll wake up to the sound of bagpipes each morning.
I'll get swept up in the madness of 8 (eight) different festivals going on at the same time in Edinburgh. An article in ArtsJournal from the other day makes a case in point for arts economy:
The show must go on
By Ian Shuttleworth
Published: July 29 2006
The Edinburgh Festival begins in a few days. Or in little over a fortnight. Or in three, four or five weeks. In fact, depending on which Edinburgh festival you mean, it may already have started. The website www.edinburgh-festivals.com lists eight separate festivals occurring in the city now and in the near future. They include the International Festival - with Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Charles Mackerras conducting all of Beethoven's nine symphonies - as well as the sprawling, ever-inventive fringe festival of independent theatre, stand-up comedy and music. There's also the jazz festival, the film festival and, over the bank holiday weekend of August 25-27, the television festival.
To cover all the summer festivals you would need to take up residence in Scotland's capital for five-and-a-half weeks. More than 1.5m tickets will be sold for the various events and around £125m will be generated for the city. By comparison, Manchester city council's estimate of the corresponding figure when that city hosted the 2002 Commonwealth Games was a mere £22m. Edinburgh's base population of about 450,000 is estimated to swell by as many again each August.
It's the 60th annual Fringe Festival and here are some fun facts:
- Fringe 2006 features 28,014 performances of 1,867 shows in 261 venues (Fringe 2005 featured 26,995 performances of 1,799 shows in 240 venues).
- An estimated 16,990 performers will be on Edinburgh’s Fringe stages.
- Theatre makes up 32% of the programme, followed by Comedy (27%) then Music (21%). Musicals, Children’s Shows, Dance & Physical Theatre, Exhibitions and Events each provide around 4% of the programme.
- Over a third (36%) of all shows are World premieres. 4% are UK premieres, 10% European premieres.
- 177 shows at Fringe 2006 are absolutely free.
- It would take you 5 years, 11 months and 16 days to see every performance back-to-back.
- Last year, the Fringe sold 1,338,550 tickets - the third time and third consecutive year that the Fringe sailed past the million-ticket barrier.
- The Fringe has a 75% market share of all attendance at Edinburgh’s year-round festivals and annually generates around £75 million for the Edinburgh and Scottish economy.
- The Fringe sells 97% more tickets than it did only 10 years ago (679,147 in 1995, 1338,550 in 2005).
- In 2006, there will be 28,014 performances - 94% more performances than 10 years ago.
They also say on the website to "bring your dancing shoes" because everyone is up partying til 3 in the morning every night. Europeans are much better partiers than I. We'll see how it goes.
Josh meets me on the 11th and we fly to London on the 13th to hang with friend Roger and see as much as humanly possible in three days. I've been given strict orders to visit the Duke of Wellington pub; a place everyone in my family has gone to when they're in London--even my brother when he was only in London for one day.
We will go to the Tate Modern and possibly the Kew Gardens. We'll take the Tube around and eat fish n' chips. We will hear Big Ben chime at Noon and might climb to the top of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. We'll definitely go to Harrods to window shop (I stress window) and eat at Sarah's favorite cheap London chain restaurant.
Since we've never been to either place, I welcome all suggestions, tips, and recommendations!
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