Buttermilk & Molasses

Give Small Art

I posted a bit about the Real Small Art League's "art to the people" experiment, which involves the distribution of 500 small pieces of art to people around the world. It's easy -- simply drop by their website and request a small piece of art be dropped in the mail, delivered to a person you know and love, and would like to surprise.

Simple stuff.

They're also posting testimonials from recipients, like this one from my mom:

What are you going to do with your Real Small Art?
frame it in a very, very large frame and place it in my family room where it will get a lot of viewing from family and friends. if/when i decide i want to remove it, i plan to give it to an art/consigment shop owner as a personal thank you for her support of my craft art.

How did finding Real Small Art effect your day, if at all?
not only do i love art and creativity, but most of all i love sponteniety and this hit the spot, making a very cold day much warmer. THANK YOU FOR BRIGHTENING MY DAY!

Your Assignment: 20 Slides, 20 Seconds, Be Creative.

Richmond is a chatty town, by which I mean you can't swing a dead flying squirrel without hitting a lecture or town square or panel discussion upside the head. Or mouth.

One of the more refreshing events hosted by and for the chattering class is the Creative Change Center's (C3) Talk 20 event, which gives a handful of creatives just under seven minutes to talk about what they do -- each speaker shows 20 slides representing their work and has 20 seconds per slide to talk.

I managed to get to the first half of C3's first Talk 20 event last fall, and loved it. Looking at the line-up for the second Talk 20 event on February 10 makes me even more excited.

• Artist and founder of the Real Small Art Tiffany Glass Ferreira
• Innovative and sustainable architecture Tamara Van Meter
• Painter Susan Singer
• LEGO artist Brian Korte
• Visionary architect Peter Fraser
• Artistic director for Amaranth Contemporary Dance Scott Puttman
• Visual artist artist Rosemary Jesionowski
• Photographer Gordon Stettinus

Make plans now to get your Talk 20 on. It happens from 5:30 until 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 10, at 1708 Gallery. It's free, and you'll be able to buy yourself a beer at the cash bar.

Mapping the Region's Nonprofits

ConnectRichmond has been one of the most powerful community building resources for nonprofits in the Richmond region since it emerged as a listserv email tool at the University of Richmond way back in 2001. Since joining The Community Foundation's Partnership for Nonprofit Excellence three years ago, it has seized the Intraweb by the virtual horns and turned its website into a tremendous clearinghouse for anyone with an interest in nonprofits and community building.

ConnectRichmond has just launched a new tool, which essentially maps service areas for local nonprofits.

We are pleased to announce our new Geographic Information System (GIS) Mapping feature. People will now be able to view your organization's service area on the Google map found on your ConnectRichmond profile. Not only will they be able to view your service reach, but they also will be given a great visual of all nonprofits in the region.

The maps can also be searched by service type. For example, if you search for "food banks" or "children's arts programs" in the Richmond area, each organization's service radius (depicted by a circle) would appear on the map. This will allow people to:

• find nearby nonprofits they or clients may want to know about
• help organizations find potential collaborators
• illustrate which neighborhoods have access to services.

As more organizations update their mapping information, the ConnectRichmond mapping service should also provide a great sense of where needs aren't being met by organizations -- or where too many organizations are serving the same communities.

Digging the PomplamooseMusic Video Collection

Nikole introduced me to Pomplamoose, the duo of Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn, when she started entertaining Thea with their video cover of Earth, Wind & Fire's "September." Now, we regularly keep Thea distracted for several minutes with their videos, though she strongly favors "September" and the cover of Michael Jackson's "Beat It."

For those of you hanging out in Richmond, I think Pomplamoose is the band that Ross and Valerie Catrow of RVANews would start if they were musically inclined.

Remember Them Well: A Memorial for the Harveys

Just four years after their brutal and tragic murder, another step is being taken to remember the family of Bryan, Kathryn, Stella and Ruby Harvey. Style Weekly reports on a memorial bridge being reconstructed in Forest Hill Park:

Those gray, barren trees look skeletal against January’s overcast skies, but occasional breaks of wintry sunlight reveal a halo of softy colored tiny buds, signs of approaching spring. The same towering old trees of Forest Hill Park once shaded Stella and Ruby Harvey at play in this magical extension of their Woodland Heights backyard.

It’s been more than four years since their last happy afternoon here. The sisters, ages 9 and 4, were brutally murdered New Year’s Day 2006, along with their parents, Bryan and Kathryn, in the basement of their home on 31st Street.

The Harvey family’s friends and neighbors hope to take a step in the long healing journey with a proposal to dedicate a soon-to-be-rebuilt bridge in Forest Hill Park in honor of the family. The bridge was destroyed by Tropical Storm Gaston in 2004.

I Like That Salinger Scowled for 50 Years

While it's sad news that author J.D. Salinger passed away at the age of 91 this week -- partly because he said he was going to live to be 120, and partly (as someone tweeted today) because we all assumed he died decades ago -- I particularly enjoy the image NPR paints of him in their lead:

Jerome David Salinger retreated to a New Hampshire farmhouse in 1953, a few years after he published the high-school classic The Catcher in the Rye. And there he stayed, for the next 50-plus years, scowling at photographers who dared snap his picture.

I remember copying Salinger's short stories from microfiche in the VCU library during my college years, and that a friend of mine made plans to travel to Vermont in the hopes of seeing the old man shuffle down the drive to his mailbox.

It's going to be particularly interesting to see what new manuscripts might emerge from his estate in the years to come; he apparently wrote almost every day since he vanished from the public eye, and rumors of 15 book manuscripts in a safe abound.

Mayor Jones' Dorothy Hamill Moment

You can forgive Mayor Dwight Jones his Pollyannaish optimism about the state of Richmond, because he has his own version of a monorail to save downtown. It's called an ice-skating rink.

And as silly as it sounds, it's probably not a bad idea.

Especially if he can figure out what to do with it the 10 months out of every year when no one will be ice skating on it. Chris Dovi at Style Weekly breaks the news:

Jones confirms his plan to propose an outdoor ice-skating facility — reminiscent of the one at Rockefeller Center in New York — on vacant Broad Street property adjacent to the CenterStage performing-arts complex.

“No, the mayor does not skate,” Jones spokeswoman Tammy Hawley says, but “the mayor has a strong focus on helping downtown become more vibrant.”

The plan takes the form of a proposal, yet to be submitted, in which Jones asks the city’s Recreation and Parks Foundation to front fundraising efforts for the facility.

Dovi reports that the mayor already has $80,000 pledged in private funds for the $100,000 venture.

"You've Never Heard" Is the Internet's Best Series

NPR's All Songs Considered has an awesome series where they ask their "unimaginably young interns to review classic albums they've never heard before." In addition to serving as a sad reminder to aging hipsters like me that Death lurks around the corner, the series is a great exploration of incredible pop music through unjaded eyes. Like, for instance, Will Butler's review of the classic U2 album, The Joshua Tree. Butler unravels several decades of rock influences with one listen, here:

When I hit "play," I can barely hear the synth-pad murmur of the opening cut, so I turn up the volume. "Where the Streets Have No Name" slowly builds, and finally, Bono cries out: "I want to run / I want to hide / I want to tear down the walls / that hold me inside." I'll admit, this got me going. It's vaguely reminiscent of another band, though I can't quite put my finger on who it is. It has something to do with the tightly synchronized bass line and drums, which thump along steadily as Bono wails in anguish off in the distance. Then I realize where I've heard this particular sound before: It's the bread and butter of Arcade Fire.

And again, here:

That said, "Bullet the Blue Sky" is a pretty sweet song. It's a refreshing departure from the sentimental, syrupy quality of "With or Without You," and I like the direction it's going. Larry Mullen starts it with that solid beat, and then the song really takes off into grungier, more dangerous territory. Bono begins by growling out a few verses, but his theatrics serve this type of song well. It's also politically charged. I don't think there's any way that Rage Against the Machine, which formed four years after this song came out, could deny that it was a direct influence. You can hear Zack de la Rocha in Bono's vocals, Tom Morello in the guitar work, Tim Commerford in the bass and Brad Wilk in the drums. I can even hear hints of The Mars Volta.

The whole review is worth reading, and is comes with several classic U2 performances and videos. And while Butler may not be fully on-point with his comparisons and analysis, it's a great lesson in paying attention to the shifting perspectives of time, especially in the world of rock-and-roll.

You Can't Beat A Dead Tweet

The hard thing about taking cheap shots at Richmond BizSense's founder for his "Why I still hate Twitter" commentary earlier this week is that he might not like blogs either. That's why I'm spending my energy on constructive things, like pointing people in the direction of some reasonably cogent blog posts about why Twitter might actually serve a purpose or three in the universe known as Richmond's news industry.

[For the record, let it be known that @MattDiNardo of TV8 was first out the gate early Monday morning with predictions for a GIGANTIC SNOWSTORM this weekend. On Twitter. Of course, the bread I bought that morning is now stale.]

At any rate, it seems like the entire staff of The Hodges Partnership (THP) received a homework assignment after Kremer let loose: Go write a blog post about how Kremer can use Twitter.

First up, co-founder Jon Newman, who founded Twitter from his office on the second floor of the McDonald's at 18th and Broad streets. In his "open letter" to Kremer, Newman offered some advice for the errant newsman, including building a "core Twitter posse". Which is what all of us really want out of life.

As always, the comments sections of blog posts are often where the real meat is manufactured. Such is the case with Jon's post.

Newman's advice was followed by a blog post from Tony Scida, the guy whose last name I can never pronounce. A new member of the THP team, Tony was obviously looking to score points from the boss. Regardless of his motivation, he offered some great perspectives on the value of Twitter:

Whether Aaron realizes it or not, his web site is an example of social media. When he left Media General, he could have gone off and started a print business paper. And he might have been successful. But, he chose to use the blog format, letting readers post comments on every story. We all know that comments can be a mixed bag, but hosting discussions has proved to be a Good Thing™ for many site owners. In the halcyon days of blogging, you could count on most of the discussion about your posts to happen in the comments and trackbacks. But today, much of that discussion is happening off of our sites and on social media platforms.

If you aren’t actively monitoring Twitter, you may want to find another way to engage that off-domain discussion. One way would be to use a plugin that shows Twitter discussions about your articles in the comments section. Many active Twitter users are compulsive content generators who like having their own platform to react to the world. If I comment on my Twitter stream, I know most of my followers will see it, but when I comment on your site, I don’t know who will see it and I might not see the responses. RBS already has comments and trackbacks, and this could be a way to encourage even more discussion.

Of course, Kremer isn't the point here. He's done exceptionally well with his new venture, and is providing a great news resource for a news-starved city (that doesn't want to pay for news, apparently). But the dialogue sparked on Twitter and through the local blogs about his column are a great demonstration of how social media can push conversations deeper, further, faster and better.

Gene Cox Is Unstoppable!

Every time I imagine Gene Cox is ready to fade away in Richmond's media attic, he rears his head and lets loose with a mighty howl of incomprehensible babble. Or, as is the current case, he starts tweeting, letting loose in 140 characters or less.

Yes, Gene Cox is now on Twitter.

Better yet, RVANews has taken Gene Cox's Twitter feed and turned it into a veritable Wheel of Fortune for folks interested in exploring some of the more transcendental questions confronting the universe. It's called the Gene Cox Oracle. It's a simple concept, really.

Enter your question. Click "Ask away!"

The Gene Cox Oracle is only the latest attempt to capture Richmond's oldest newsman's wisdom. You may (but probably don't) remember Caffeine Magazine's Celebrity Biorhythms debut, which compared a month's worth of Cox's actual biorhythms to a month of his actual news anchoring.

That was in the early 1990s, when people though Cox was ready to retire. (In your face, Larry King!) There's genius in outliving your critics. Just ask J.D. Salinger.