On Saturday, we made our preparations for Hurricane Irene, especially for wind and power loss.  We’d driven home the day before from the New Jersey shore. We put away trashcans, flowerpots, lawn furniture; filled jars and bottles with water; took down the hummingbird feeder, washed it, and propped it on the kitchen drain.

“What will the hummingbirds do in the storm?” I wonder.

“Hunker down, I guess,” my husband Bob said.  “They have those little nests…”

I made a circle with my thumb and index fingers, maybe an inch and a half across, and imagined it being slammed into the side of the house.  We shook our heads.

Our children and grandchildren in Texas sent loving – and knowing – emails.  My friend Hannibal called and told me not to park the car under a tree.

We slept on the first floor, because each bedroom is caressed by limbs of tall trees. A magnolia planted too close to the house for sure clings to the front wall up to the third floor; oaks and maples encircle the house.  They do not to bend.  Even in regular storms, the limbs tap our windows like ancestors.

We also watched the Weather Channel.  I marveled to see Vivian Brown, now a full-grown women with two children, whom I’d first seen as an on-camera Barbie doll meteorologist with shiny black bangs in the early 1990s when I was on tour with Black Ice and wondering about the weather in a new city each day.  On local news the mayor announced the first State of Emergency in Philadelphia since 1986, which included shutting down the transit system at midnight.  Same in New York.

Bob, who is an Episcopal rector, sent an email cancelling Sunday worship at Good Shepherd and announcing a quiet service of Evening Prayer Saturday evening at five.  We called as many parishioners as we could manage.  And texted a few.  We always take a deep breath before that task, but it’s great to do a few times a year.  It’s a people/prayer audit:  this one’s treatment went much better than expected; these folks are unhappy about some change that happened last spring; this person is grieving the death of a far-away relative.  We learn who doesn’t have voicemail; who likes to brave the storm, just for fun; who has experienced hurricanes before and tornadoes.

Everyone had a plan and bottled water.  A handful of folks were glad for the Evening Prayer and would attend.  Bob picked readings from Job and Paul’s letter to the Romans.  The psalm and the canticles exalted God, like, no matter what. We also read the Phos Hilaron, said to be the oldest Christian hymn, maybe the first written after the Bible:

O Gracious Light…

Now as we come to the setting of the sun,

and our eyes behold the vesper light,

we sing praises…

Bob spoke briefly about the connection in Creation between beauty and delight and terror and destruction.  I remembered how many times I had argued with the sarcastic voice of God in Job: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.”  And how only the necessity of teaching Sunday School had chilled me out.  Exalt the Lord. Period, full stop.  Find the joy.  Live it.  Study it. Help children name it and find their way to it on their own.  The terror will come.  At least until then, we will have lived abundantly.

Part 2 of ‘Ladysitting’, tomorrow…

Like Tina’s novel, this piece is trudat and funny.

But seriously, Tina knows the real deal: that you can only be a single-minded champion for your book if you have really, really finished with it before sending it to the copy-editor.  It’s a challenge not to let impatience or exhaustion or self-satisfaction stop you from continuing to make the book better.  But once you know in your heart that you cannot do any more or any better, that you can’t write with any more insight, more feeling, or more energy, well, then you can start selling like a maniac.

Really, you almost can’t help yourself. – Lorene

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When they asked, “Where do elephants go to die?” they were really asking, “Where do e-books that nobody knows about go to die?” I’m still not sure about the elephants, but I know for sure the un-marketed e-book dies on the hard drive of the author who wrote it. If you’ve written a book completely and haven’t begun to market it, you are already way behind.  Marketing your book should begin the second you type “The End.”

Let’s stop here and face some facts: (1) you’ve written the most wonderful book in the world. (2) Nobody but your friends and family care. (3) They are your first customers.

The second you hit the final “enter” on the end of your book, call somebody, anybody, among your family or friends and say this exactly – “I’ve just finished my novel (Fish and Grits, my book title) and it will be available for sale in about six months or so.  Would you Facebook and tweet that for me please?” You have just begun to market your book.  The sooner you begin the more recognition you will receive, the more recognition, the more sales, etc. etc., etc. Don’t be afraid of the announcement, it will keep you honest.

Why six months? If you’re smart, and I know you are because you’re still reading this post, you will pay to get your book professionally copy-edited. Copy-editors do an incredible job of finding those little holes that will kill your book if the reader finds them first. While you are going back and forth with the copy-editor about why your protagonist needs to drive a Porsche while working part-time at the local fast food restaurant, get busy on your cover design. Covers can be costly, unless you can design your own. Shop around and see if you can find graphic arts student at the local college, or your cousin’s uncle on your father’s side, or anybody else who can produce the cover you’re been seeing in your mind while writing the book.  Remember that person you called when you typed “The End”; call them again. Then call a few other people and make your announcement. Find that artist who will work for cheap because the real marketing begins when you have that cover in your excited little hand. Ask for at least three examples to give you a short range to choose from and cross your fingers that they will deliver (young artists, while cheap, can be a bit un-reliable, especially on weekends).

Okay, you have your cover; now make it work for you. Before I chose my final cover, I had a contest asking my family, friends, and Facebook contacts to vote for which cover they liked best. This served two purposes – I got honest feedback on which cover to use and I increased my marketing reach. I began to receive emails asking, “When will the book be released?”

By the time my copy-editor and I were both satisfied, the cover was ready, and I decided which e-publishers to use, everyone in my life, in the life of my friends, at my workplace, school and local supermarket knew about Fish and Grits and wanted to buy a copy. You will never sell your book if you don’t talk about it every chance you get to everyone who will patiently allow you share your enthusiasm.  You can apologize later, after the sale.

By now you should have planned a kick-off (I used a fish-and-grits brunch) and began pre-sales of your book.  Sounds complicated? Not really. You already have your market for the kick-off because of your phone calls, contest, and follow-up contacts.  Google different book clubs and invite them to your affair. Contact your local newspaper and try to get a special interest story. Collaborate with a local restaurant, non-profit, or community organization for the kick-off. It takes a lot of mouth-to-mouth to keep an elephant from dying, even more to save a book. Blow, baby, blow.

Tina Smith-Brown is a Graduate of Temple University’s Journalism Program, the Art Institute on Line and currently working on a graduate degree in creative writing from University College, a division of Denver University. She is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council of the Arts Fellowship and two Leeway Foundation Art and Change Awards. Fish and Grits is her first independently published novel. Tina resides in Philadelphia, PA with her family. Follow her blog at run2fishandgrits.blogspot.com.

I am grateful to see that this week’s New York Times Book Review article by Roy Hoffman emphasizes the treatment of land ownership and the connection between If Sons, Then Heirs and my other books:

Land and its title, singular and collective, are the ties that bind, and nearly unravel, in this account of an African-­American family far-flung from its moorings. Cary — whose first novel, “The Price of a Child,” followed the antebellum travails of a runaway slave turned abolitionist, and whose second, “Pride,” set late in the last century, featured the voices of women telling of love and loss — has now found a through-line from the 19th-century to the 21st-century South.

Debra Powell-Wright notes that one of her favorite passages has to do with marriage, and that she read most of If Sons, Then Heirs in Jamaica visiting her husband’s family.

“Here’s something I wanna know,” she said. “You tell me: Why don’t young people get married anymore? Since we all speaking our mind today–” She looked into the backseat to make sure Khalil was sleeping. Then she whispered: “You got the boy callin you Daddy; now he call me Nana, and I’m fallin in love with him. You and the mother send telephone messages fifty a hundred times a day…”

Rayne’s phone vibrated once, to signify a text message.

“There she is again, probably askin how it went, and did the old lady act up.” Selma leaned sideways, as if talking into the phone on Rayne’s belt. “And the answer is yes, she did…

And as I read the Times review and Debra’s favorite passage, I cannot help but be taken back to writing and rewriting this book and trying to meditate on laws and culture that regulate family and laws and culture that regulate land.  For years I mulled the laws put into place that made South Carolina heir property so very hard for black inheritors to keep and so easy to lose; I researched the lynching—state supported terrorism, essentially—that enforced the laws, streamlined for the book, if you can believe it.  And in the background, I heard the longer, percussive historical dissonance among:  Europeans, whose histories have everything to do with land ownership, and Native Americans and Africans, whose legal systems, as Digital History puts it, “did not recognize the right to own, sell, or rent land as property.”

We, hybrid people here, still fighting each other in our United States, have inherited more legacy than we know, often more than we can manage.

My next door neighbors, when I was fifteen, were a black couple: a newspaper reporter and a retired kindergarten teacher.  The teacher had been on a racial commission with a white woman whose husband had attended an Episcopal boarding school in New Hampshire. The two women stayed in touch for years.  So when her husband’s alma mater needed to recruit black girls, white woman reached out to her friend to see if she knew any girls who might fit.

Aunt Florence called me.

It’s how I start my memoir, Black Ice, because without their friendship, I would never have had the experience that transformed my education–and my adolescence.  And I am sure that in twenty years, many, many, many relationships started in and around Elijah’s Dornstreich’s Fourth Wall will create many unexpected outcomes.  As if the refreshment and beauty of arts experiences were not enough!

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Lorene Cary knows about art.  As founder of the seminal Philadelphia cultural institution Art Sanctuary, Penn professor, author, and holder of five honorary Doctoral degrees, Lorene really knows about impact.  We seek to walk in the footsteps of generations of Philadelphia trailblazers – not least Lorene Cary.

The Fourth Wall Arts project began early last year, and has grown well beyond our expectations.  At first we just wanted a cool alternative to the typical social menu of cocktail parties and the like:  a chance to gather our circle of friends, young artists, intellectuals, and taste makers in the Philadelphia region for a monthly evening of arts, wine, and food in my center city home.

As we formed our plans, many artists got on board, and our ambitions grew.  We never ended up having an Arts Salon in my home. The first Fourth Wall Arts Salon occurred in May of 2010, welcoming 100 guests to Media Bureau in Northern Liberties.  The following month we had 180 guests.  Then 205.  By August we welcomed 260 people to Fourth Wall Arts Salon.

Each month these events are an eclectic mix of music, dance, theater, poetry, visual artists speaking on their work, and topical speakers along with an open bar of beer and wine and a spread of vegetarian food. The idea is to create an environment of artistic excellence, cultural vitality, and community engagement unlike anything else. On our website’s “feedback” page, on Facebook, in our recent fan survey, and in countless interactions at our Salons, we see a theme:  these are the most diverse events our guests have ever attended.

And that is the point.  Fourth Wall is actually about breaking down walls. Between artist and audience, between black and white, old and young, rich and poor, traveling through the varied and beautiful neighborhoods of our great city.  By mixing communities we create shared inspiration and understanding.  Just like every other city in America, we have neighbors who have no idea about one other.  And that would be fine, if once they found out, they didn’t care.  But they do.  Perhaps my mother summarized it best when she emailed me after a recent Salon:

”Last night as we were leaving the Salon, a young, African-American man was entering. I (a gray-haired Jewish lady) recognized him and asked “Didn’t you perform at a previous salon?” He beamed at me and said yes. I was beaming at him. Without the Salon, there is most likely no way that our two lives would intersect. With the Salon, our two usually disparate cultures met in fellowship and goodwill. It was joyful and I am very grateful.”

By creating unique and beautiful arts experiences we nourish the vitality of our cultural ecology, which should be a model for the nation and an accurate reflection of our truly colorful metropolis.  By providing opportunities to showcase the best of our carefully vetted local artists from every genre, we encourage and enable growth, laying the foundation, brick by brick, of a rich cultural landscape – an integral prerequisite for a vibrant community as well as economic development.

Our model is tirelessly collaborative.  We have held Salons in community dance centers and soaring cathedrals.  In 2011, things are shaping up incredibly for Fourth Wall.  The level of our partnerships with City institutions has climbed right to the top.  Catch us inside the Philadelphia Museum of Art on September 2^nd.

We have begun to expand our work based upon the platform we’ve created.  Fourth Wall is developing partnerships with local schools and institutions to implement our model of arts-based education and community activism: in poetry and creative writing, visual art, dance, and more – even magic.

Fourth Wall has partnered with local institutions including the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, the African-American Museum, The National Museum of American Jewish History, and the Philadelphia Theater Company to place artists and produce gala events, infusing an element of diversity and inspiration unique to the Fourth Wall brand.

Fourth Wall is manufacturing – or at least reinvigorating – demand for the arts, one person at a time. If city institutions like The Kimmel Center, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and others are to survive, they will need to play by the same rules as anyone else in a capitalist economy; subsidies won’t do it.  By mixing hip-hop with opera, African dance with chamber music, tap-dancing with rock, we are simply revealing what true arts enthusiasts already know:  EVERYONE loves good art if it is presented in a manner in which they can approach and enjoy it.  And no city in the world has better artists than the City of Philadelphia.

Follow Fourth Wall Arts on Twitter: @fourthwallarts

Leslie Esdaile Banks passed from this life on August 2, 2011.  She wrote more that forty books under the names Leslie Esdaile, Leslie Esdaile Banks, Leslie E. Banks, L. A. Banks, and Alexis Grant.  She wrote romance, TV-tie-in novels, crime/suspense, crossovers, comics, a graphic novel, nonfiction essays, and short stories.  She was one of the most professional writers I’ve ever had the privilege to meet, full-bursting-running over with energy, ideas, new plots, new characters, and entire systems of thought to govern the worlds she created.  She studied film and wrote with cinematic scope and specificity.   Leslie did not ignore the world in order to make this abundant output.  Rather, she came out to meet us with open arms and the biggest of hearts.  She mentored and bonded and adopted people and showed up at schools and recreation centers and churches.  She helped us all.

In 1998, when I founded Art Sanctuary, my mother and a few friends allowed me to give house parties to sell the idea like Tupperware.  It was real start-up.  There was the bootleg videotape and a Xeroxed handout explaining the concept.  Our first season was upcoming.  At one friend’s house, with great food and a beautiful setting, the presentation went fine right up until the pitch for charter memberships.  People were about to give. Then one woman demurred.  It all sounded very promising, she said, but she was a discerning sort of businessperson, and she would need to see a budget and financials and more detail before she invested her money into the project.

With that, the momentum stopped.  Suddenly, instead of folks being down with arts in the inner city, they had to be prudent and hardheaded.  Not too fast…I was new at fundraising, and stymied.

Leslie Esdaile stood to her full height and tossed her perfect mane of dark hair. That big, gorgeous smile burst across her face and filled the room.  “Well, hey,” she said laughing, “The way I figure it is: we’re not on the Board of Directors, so I’m not sure  I get to ask for a budget.  She has a board for financial oversight.  Don’t you? And a 501©3.  And registration with the state Bureau of Charitable Organizations and due diligence yadda yadda yadda.  You’ve done all that, right?” She looked at me in a way that told me lovingly to buck up and smile.

“Oh, yes. Of course.”  I said it in a confident voice.  Her intervention made me feel instantly less desperate.

“And for everybody here who works long corporate hours, then lives in the suburbs, all they have to do is write a check—not even that much, really, like the cost of a dinner out—and then they get to come to North Philly and see Terry McMillan and The Roots and all these people here?”  She raised the handout and shook it.

“Yeah, that’s it. For real.”

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a lotta friends who say that they do notwant to be the kind of black folks who make it—and then drive through their old neighborhoods and push the door locks.”  She stood next to me and opened her checkbook.  “This is great!”

It was vintage Leslie: big-hearted, entrepreneurial, smart, creative, fast, a rescuer.  Because of our hosts’ hospitality and Leslie’s intervention, we came very close to our goal for that day.  More than a dozen years later, some of the donors who began giving that day still support us.

That was how she wrote: just do it.  Leslie put the P in prolific.  Her head brimmed with complex webs of relationships as she explored how the world worked with all its potential for evil.  I’d call and she’d say that she was sitting next to the washing machine—writing!  She’d write two books at a time.  Sensitive to the many in our community who worry that the paranormal may undercut family values, she agonized about whether or not to start the black vampire series—which worked out ideas about redemption more thoroughly than many faith-based books!

Now and then, we’d get together at some important literary juncture for one or the other of us: before making a decision to start a book or overhaul it.  I joked that it was like having an affair, so intense and pleasurable was the experience of spending a morning in her book-head, or inviting her in to shrink mine.

I cannot stand to think that she’s not here to do it again.

Thank God for all those books to keep us company.

We talk about the arts in so many ways. Gary Steuer’s deep and wide command of the research shows why the arts are good for young people, good for business, and good for the mind.  His work as Philadelphia’s Chief Cultural Officer has been extraordinary, and it’s no doubt his training in the arts that has made him succeed so quickly at leading the sector in one of America’s most, let’s just say it, insular cities.

We’ve broken this richly argued and resourced essay into two blogs, so that you can stop, follow the links, and think about the implications. We teach our children to obey and to compete, pretty much, but what will happen to us all if we do not teach them to create? – Lorene

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Part 2 of ‘Arts Education as an Economic Development Imperative’.

In  2009 Dr. James Catterall, a professor at UCLA, released a study “Doing Well and Doing Good by Doing Art,” that followed up 12 years later with 12,000 students studied as part of Champions of Change, an earlier, seminal study of the impact of arts education on youth (also still worthwhile reading!). They found that intensive involvement in the arts in middle and high school is associated with higher levels of achievement and college attainment and also with many indicators of pro-social behavior such as voluntarism and voting. And while they found that intensive involvement in other activities like sports, also had positive outcomes, there were special and stronger results with the arts. In their research they also adjust for socioeconomic differences so they are not just measuring the results of students with more advantages attending wealthier schools more likely to provide arts-rich learning.

And anecdotally, we see this in our own City, Philadelphia, and our own youth. Our Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Everett Gillison, sees that the young people engaged in arts education programs are much less likely to get into trouble, and end up “in the system.” Engagement in the arts by ex-offenders – arts education IS a lifelong learning issue – also significantly reduces recidivism. The dollars that we invest in quality arts education programs are not only helping to enrich the lives of our young, not only developing workers that our businesses needs that will help drive our local economy. They are also frankly getting many young people onto a different path in life that will also save our society and economy significant investments in police and prisons, not to mention potentially event save their lives.

In effect, the same things that arts education produces in young people that makes them better people, happier human beings, also produces a wide array of social and economic benefits that helps our City. Hence the title of Catterall’s study, a play on the “doing well by doing good” philosophy of socially responsible business. The research is clear: investing in arts education is one of the best investments we can possibly make – it builds a 21st century employment-ready workforce that is needed by business; it builds better citizens, more likely to vote and volunteer; it strengthens our communities by producing young people less likely to drop out, less likely to engage in criminal behavior; it makes our schools livelier, engaging, welcoming places of learning, and combined with integrating the arts into other subject areas, fuels the joy of learning and ultimately academic achievement.

In these challenging economic times, education funding and programs are seriously threatened, at the federal level, the state level, and the local level. In this climate, arts education resources are especially at risk, as there is a thoroughly misguided impression that arts education and training in schools is an “extra”, a “frill”, an “amenity” that is OK to invest in when we are flush, but expendable when purse strings are tightened. Perfectly smart people who are all about data, achievement, competitiveness and jobs, somehow have a blind spot when they support disinvestment in arts education – which actually goes against all their principles.

This is not a partisan issue – arts education should be supported by anyone who cares about a future for all of your young people, and anyone who cares about the health of our local and national economy. Shouldn’t that include everyone?

[Note: I know there is much more research out there than the studies I have cited. These are just the studies that came to mind first - this is not an academic paper. Anyone who is interested in more research can go to the Americans for the Arts “Art: Ask for More” advocacy campaign website which has great concise data, and links to other resources. The site has excellent tools for parents, teachers and other advocates for arts education. Another wonderful research is the Arts Education Partnership.

Gary Steuer has headed Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy since 2008. The Office’s mission is to support and promote arts, culture and creative industries, and to develop partnerships and coordinate efforts that weave arts, culture and creativity into the economic and social fabric of the City. As Chief Cultural Officer, he serves as a member of the Mayor’s Cabinet, advising the Mayor and all City agencies on cultural and creative economy issues. Recent major accomplishments including creating the City’s first arts and creative industry-targeted Community Development Block Grant capital funding initiative, completing a new study on Philadelphia’s Creative Vitality, and initiating a new arts and creative economy data mapping project.  Before joining the Nutter administration, Mr. Steuer was the Vice President for Private-Sector Affairs at Americans for the Arts, and had the additional title of Executive Director of the Art and Business Council of Americans for the Arts. He was responsible for leading efforts to stimulate more private sector support for the arts, including promoting partnerships between the arts and business sectors. Mr. Steuer served for ten years as the President and CEO of the Arts & Business Council Inc. before and during its merger with Americans for the Arts. Earlier in his career he was a theatre producer, both in the commercial and nonprofit theatre, served as Capital Funding program director for the New York State Council on the Arts, and was an aide to a United States Congressman. He has written, lectured and taught extensively on arts management and policy issues and has served on many boards of directors and funding and advisory panels for local, statewide and national organizations. He blogs at http://artscultureandcreativeeconomy.blogspot.com

We talk about the arts in so many ways. Gary Steuer’s deep and wide command of the research shows why the arts are good for young people, good for business, and good for the mind.  His work as Philadelphia’s Chief Cultural Officer has been extraordinary, and it’s no doubt his training in the arts that has made him succeed so quickly at leading the sector in one of America’s most, let’s just say it, insular cities.

We’ve broken this richly argued and resourced essay into two blogs, so that you can stop, follow the links, and think about the implications. We teach our children to obey and to compete, pretty much, but what will happen to us all if we do not teach them to create? – Lorene

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Recently I spoke at a reception for the Philadelphia region music education organization Musicopia. Because so many other speakers were already attesting to the value of their work, I decided I would focus on the larger issue of the value of arts education, with specific emphasis on what sorts of direct impact on a community quality arts education provides. To me, and to those of us in the field, this information, this perspective, may seem self-evident. But to many, this may not be the case. Given Lorene’s (and Art Sanctuary’s) extraordinary commitment to the role that the arts – including literature – can have on the lives of our young people, I thought it would be appropriate to share my thoughts on the subject with you.

Arts education is a crucial civic imperative for an array of reasons, none of which undercut its importance simply as a human right for young people to have the benefit of the arts as part of their educational experience, not just at home (where they may or may not get it) but at school as well.

But why should a funder, a legislator, a business-person care about arts education, especially in these challenging economic times when it can seem like a frill?

Quality arts education has an array of positive social benefits, that translate directly to positive economic benefits. First, there is the area of workforce development. A 21st century economy needs a certain kind of worker. This is NOT just a worker who has done well on standardized tests and is competent in math and English. This is a worker who is strong in so-called “applied” (as opposed to “basic”) skills. A young person who is strong in collaboration and teamwork, strong in communication and self-expression, understanding of ambiguity and nuance (it is not a rote, hierarchical, assembly line world anymore; in today’s world there is often no “right:” answer – just the best course of action with the information available). These are skills that we KNOW arts education develops. A study done a few years ago by the Conference Board, in partnership with a number of workforce development organizations, called “Are They Really Ready to Work,” showed that employers felt that their incoming workers were very poorly prepared in these applied skills, but that they rated the applied skills as the most critically important workforce skills that they needed. A follow up report called “Ready to Innovate“- conducted by the Conference Board in partnership with Americans for the Arts and the American Association of School Administrators – looked at how the views of employers aligned with those of school district leaders. It found a truly overwhelming – nearly unanimous – agreement among both the hirers and the educators that creativity was an increasingly important workplace skill. Those doing the hiring, however, found that they largely cannot find the creative workers they seek.

Both employers and educators rate arts study as a very high indicator of creativity (#1 for educators, #2 for business just behind entrepreneurial experience). A recent study by IBM found that creativity was rated as the most important skill for future success as a CEO. I remember speaking at a conference with a very senior executive from a large food service company, who indicated that their HR team found engagement in arts education and arts practice as being the best indicator of success in the workplace – not just for executives and managers, but all the way down to entry-level waitstaff, kitchen workers, etc. They found that workers who played an instrument, acted in plays or were otherwise engaged in the arts were better members of their team, stayed in their job longer, were more productive, and were better at customer service.

Tomorrow, Steuer will post part 2 of ‘Arts Education as an Economic Development Imperative’ and discuss how arts engagement has produced positive results in our city of Philadelphia.

Gary Steuer has headed Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy since 2008. The Office’s mission is to support and promote arts, culture and creative industries, and to develop partnerships and coordinate efforts that weave arts, culture and creativity into the economic and social fabric of the City. As Chief Cultural Officer, he serves as a member of the Mayor’s Cabinet, advising the Mayor and all City agencies on cultural and creative economy issues. Recent major accomplishments including creating the City’s first arts and creative industry-targeted Community Development Block Grant capital funding initiative, completing a new study on Philadelphia’s Creative Vitality, and initiating a new arts and creative economy data mapping project.  Before joining the Nutter administration, Mr. Steuer was the Vice President for Private-Sector Affairs at Americans for the Arts, and had the additional title of Executive Director of the Art and Business Council of Americans for the Arts. He was responsible for leading efforts to stimulate more private sector support for the arts, including promoting partnerships between the arts and business sectors. Mr. Steuer served for ten years as the President and CEO of the Arts & Business Council Inc. before and during its merger with Americans for the Arts. Earlier in his career he was a theatre producer, both in the commercial and nonprofit theatre, served as Capital Funding program director for the New York State Council on the Arts, and was an aide to a United States Congressman. He has written, lectured and taught extensively on arts management and policy issues and has served on many boards of directors and funding and advisory panels for local, statewide and national organizations. He blogs at http://artscultureandcreativeeconomy.blogspot.com

At lunch this past Sunday, former Civil Rights Commissioner Dr. Mary Frances Berry spoke to incoming students in the University of Penn’s Africana Studies Summer Institute. Coming to campus from teaching Sunday School, I was late and sweating, having rushed, parked a few blocks away, and hiked across the under-construction campus. The young people’s faces looked beautiful, focused. They’d come from all over the country and from ancestors across the globe.  They attended to every word, a little scared, maybe, but game.

Dr. Berry’s talk centered around a book she wrote with her former student, Josh Gottheimer, who worked as speechwriter and special assistant to President Bill Clinton. Power in Words: The Stories behind Barak Obama’s Speeches, from the State House to the White House analyzes 18 addresses from the President’s time in the Illinois State Senate to his election night speech in Chicago’s Grant Park. Booklist praised the authors’ examination of Obama’s “consistency of message—one of unity, responsibility, and change.”

Berry talked about the nature of power, politics, and Washington, among other topics.  It was a primer on how the world works, and I wondered how many of Berry’s many layers of meaning these intelligent and attractive young people were able to take in.  They had the book, and I’m sure that many of them had read it—and will re-read it as a guide in years to come.  But on Sunday, in answer to their questions, she seemed also to be challenging them to claim their ambition.

The day before, at the Harlem Book Fair, I’d meditated on ambition throughout the 100-degree afternoon, and all the variations I saw: from independent young publishers to the accomplished poet who put his volume into my hands and said: “$10”;  to Omar Tyree publishing a new e-book at $1/chapter to Amiri Baraka, who got smacked upside the head by a woman who tried to take over a panel discussion in Thurgood Marshall College; we brought our ambitions to the day, some grandiose, some trivial. Writers pushed and sold and told each other what they hoped for. We hawked our wares.

The young folk waited in line to meet Dr. Berry at the end of the luncheon.  It sounded to me as if some of them thought that they had to decide everything very soon, before they let slip great opportunities.  They are right to think of this time as precious.  But I wanted to grab them and spin them around and dance.  I wanted to warn them to make the ambition their own.  Not just what should you do, but what can you do well, brilliantly, with your whole spirit?  Not just where is power, but in what ways are you your most powerful?

I thought of our older daughter, who had gone to Penn herself, and worked a couple of jobs including a promising magazine appointment in New York.  Just last December she left it, packed up the dog, subletted the perfect sunny start apartment in Brooklyn, and went to teach snowboarding!  She teaches with enthusiasm and soul: groups in the winter, and one special boy in summer. On the second or third day in Vermont, she rang to tell me that she was driving up the mountain.  The sun was rising gold and pink over the snow, and she said that she had almost forgotten that she could be this happy.

That, too, is an ambition, one we forget to tell the young people about. Dr. Berry and thousands of others did indeed win rights for them.  I hope they will use the gift, not just to grab and wrassle money and power, but also to find ways most fully to live.

Sometimes writing for a living is like being a sex worker. You take something wonderful and just make it into work for money.

Uh-oh.  Now TheWriting is mad. He’s standing in the corner, hand on his you-know-what, saying that I make’im feel cheap.  Sorry.

But, really, Carleen and her grandfather are so right. And I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out my hobby and writing around the fact that I don’t have one. Oh, Carleen. I wanna come play in your garden.

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I am a writer, which means I write. A lot. Almost every day. It is creative and (most of the time) satisfying to stretch my mind to find just the right word, image, feeling, thought to describe how I see it in my head.

However, after publishing three nonfiction books, two novels, and countless articles, essays, and blog posts, I’m starting to realize the importance of having something else creative to do. Something that’s just for me. A hobby.

My grandfather told me this years ago.

“You have a hobby?” Papa asked Dirk, my husband. We were in the driveway at my grandparents’ house and Papa was about to show Dirk his hobby. Dirk was considering how to answer. I whispered, “Say no. Just say no.” Dirk shook his head, intrigued.

Papa raised the garage door and we stepped in. Dirk started laughing. If what he saw before him was a hobby, then no, he didn’t have one.

More than 50 years ago my grandfather started collecting black sports and music memorabilia. Papa’s garage was a sports museum that rivaled the real ones. I’ve been to the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City. My grandfather had almost as many photos, videos, and books (about baseball, boxing, football and basketball) crammed into his one-car garage.

We looked around and just when Dirk thought he’d seen it all, Papa told him, “This is just the sports. We haven’t even got to the music.”

We entered the basement, which was part museum, part lounge and part shrine to the gods and goddesses of rhythm and blues.

My grandfather wore his heart on his walls, ceilings and even floors. Along with two jukeboxes, thousands of albums and 45s, there were hundreds of laminated newspaper stories, autographs and black and white glossies of people with names like Duke, Cab, Basie, Ella and Billie.

If it was music-related it was there: including saxophone-playing M&M figurines and a life-size cardboard Tina Turner. My favorite part was that, like a crow decorating his nest, he gilded his finds with shiny beads, mirrors, disco balls, and sayings like “Some of our best friends are old songs.”

Papa told us that day, “Get a hobby. Something to keep your mind busy. I could be down here forever and still not read all my books or listen to all my music.”

A few years later, Dirk and I dug up the grass in our urban front yard and planted drought-tolerant trees, shrubs and flowers. We weren’t thinking about hobbies, just that in a drought, a lawn doesn’t make sense.

But a funny thing happened: we ended up not just creating a garden, but becoming gardeners. In the spring, I’m so excited to get outside that I don’t stop to change out of my pajamas. I go out “just to pull a few weeds” and hours can go by. Like Papa and his basement, I could be in my garden forever and not learn all it has to teach me.

But we don’t have forever. Papa died four years ago. I’m grateful to him for many things. Perhaps most for teaching me to live passionately. And thankfully I got the chance to tell him that when I showed him my hobby. He and my grandmother came to visit for my birthday. The California poppies, fire witch dianthus and blue flax were in delicious bloom. Dirk and I walked my grandparents through the yard, telling them what was planned and what were happy accidents.

“You’re out here all the time, aren’t you?” Papa asked, smiling.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Beautiful,” he said, and I knew he meant more than the flowers.

I’ve had a hobby for six or seven years now. But it’s just this summer, while I’m working on two novels, that I’m realizing what a godsend it is to have something else to obsess about. Something besides characters, theme and plot that fills me with wonder. Something that stretches my mind (and body), but also rests it. I always respected my grandfather’s wisdom, but the older I get the smarter he seems. Writers, take Papa’s advice: get a hobby.

Carleen’s latest book is ‘It Might As Well Be Spring’, the sequel to her first novel Orange Mint and Honey. It is available exclusively at A Chapter a Month. Visit Carleen at her website www.carleenbrice.com, follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

“Deep where the writing lies,” is how Martha describes the Source of her writing. Three times I’ve tried to lowercase the S in source and failed, so I’ll leave it and let it tell us that the place from which writing comes does feel as if it connects to the divine. I often think of that writing source as my personal underground spring. I imagine that it’s been there since before I was born, and that it’s cold and pure. Too good to waste by hooking it up to a lawn sprinkler that sprays everywhere all day long.

Congratulations, Martha. Great title.

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My 4th novel “The Taste of Salt” will be published this fall. The publicity machine is gearing up, I’ve opened a twitter account and a facebook account and am getting my website refurbished and preparing for a book tour and considering whether or not to blog and chasing down electronic rights and…what does all this have to do with writing again?

Um…nothing? But as writer Tony Perrottet noted in his recent piece in the New York Times, “How Writers Build The Brand”,  it has been ever thus. Many of the greats were shameless self-promoters. What’s different now, is the number of avenues a writer has at his or her disposal and what’s more, the number of avenues that the writer is advised both by their publishing house and by friends and colleagues, that they really must use. It’s overwhelming—if you’re not careful, which no one is, all the time.

It can overwhelm not only your life but also your writing with extraordinary ease. After all, you’re doing something to help your career with every tweet, every post, every newsletter and public appearance. It’s so easy, and there’s so much feedback. The mentions! The comments! The little “thumbs up”! You sure don’t get that after a painstakingly crafted sentence. Plus a painstaking sentence takes a LOT longer to compose than a tweet. So really, what’s easier to do?

We all know the answer. And that’s one of the things I’m struggling with these days, even as I get caught up in the excitement of preparing for my book to come out and the hopes that go with it. It’s true that before the advent of the internet, there were always ways to get stuck—fingernails to examine closely, a fridge to be cleaned, that laundry that had to be done right this second. But the internet, and the illusion that it’s actually helping you as a writer—is seductive in a very particular way. So I’ve tried to put into place some strategies (not necessarily original ones) to keep me writing, at least a little bit, during this tense and hectic pre-publication time.

1) Do it first. I find, that if I don’t start writing first thing in the morning, as the first work I do, there is little to no chance that I will write that day. This morning, I didn’t work on fiction. This was due, I shopped for shoes on Zappos, there were a million chores to be done at home. By not sparing even 30 minutes first thing to write, it’s gotten away from me.

2) Make a schedule. So many of us dream of “quitting the day job” and spending all of our time writing. Well, you know what? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. For one thing, the hustle to earn enough is always there, always gnawing. For another, structuring your days well is a large and ongoing project, one that some of us (and I’d include myself in that number) are only kind of good at. One thing I’ve found very helpful is this book: Booklife by Jeff Vandermeer. He lays out a number of ways to manage both what he calls your “public” booklife—the publicity, etc. – and you’re “private” booklife, the quiet place where creativity dwells. Amongst much good advice in this book, there is an awesome example of how to schedule a day. Though it’s daunting at first, I find I always feel better at day’s end if I’ve at least attempted to follow a carefully laid out schedule, a schedule that contains time for a bit of writing and then not-open-ended time for all the tweeting, blogging, phonecalling…whatever.

3) Turn it off.   This is not news but sometimes you’ve got to back away from the computer, quiet the noise in your head. I know that while I can’t blame everything on the internet (see Colson Whitehead for more about that), if I’m not careful, it does scratch the deep part where the writing lies. So I try to make ample use of Freedom, which makes it difficult enough to log on that it acts as an impediment.  And I put the iPhone in another room, preferably under a pillow. There’s just no other way around it. Writing isn’t surfing. It’s as simple as that.

So what I say here is partly an attempt to give myself a pep talk—I’m going through a rough time, taking all this good advice I’ve outlined above. But I have faith, which is a crucial part of making it as a writer and finishing a project of any heft. And tomorrow is another day. One day at a time, I’ve written 4 novels. And I know that one day at a time, I will find my way to the next story I want to tell.

Martha Southgate is the author of four novels. Her newest, The Taste of Salt, will be published by Algonquin Books in fall 2011. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.  Her July 2007 essay from the New York Times Book Review, “Writers Like Me” appears in the recent anthology Best African-American Essays 2009. Previous non-fiction articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, O, Premiere, and Essence. She also has essays in the recent anthologies Behind the Bedroom Door and Heavy Rotation: Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives. You can visit her website at www.marthasouthgate.com

Follow Martha on Twitter: @mesouthgate