I am a ramblin’ man lately: in NYC yesterday, spent last night in New Haven, Boston today, Providence at this moment, Willimantic, CT tomorrow, back in New Haven for a couple of days, NYC at the end of the week — and then it’s off to Seattle for the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention! Anyone else who’s going, hit me up here or on the Twit.
- This is crazy: everybody’s favorite government bailout recipient, insurance giant AIG, is seeking control of a “$490 million charity endowment,” also known as the Starr International Foundation, so that it can pay bonuses to managers. Not only do they want their hands on the endowment, they are actually suing to recover $27 million in grants distributed during the past three years. What despicable bastards. (Note to arts peeps: the Starr International Foundation appears to be a different entity from, though associated with the same benefactors as, the more familiar Starr Foundation that gave $22 million to arts organizations in 2008.)
- Well, thankfully not all corporations are evil: charitable giving remained surprisingly resilient in 2008, despite 68% of surveyed companies reporting drops in profits, according to the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy. (We’ll see what happens in ’09.)
- Either 13 or 14 charges have been dropped from the increasingly ridiculous-looking vandalism suit against Shepard Fairey, the artist best known for creating the “Hope” Obama poster.
- On the heels of my “Lessons I Learned in Business School” post from last week, Seth Godin shared the results of his own experimental alternative MBA program.
- Thinking about starting a business of your own? Check out this interesting taxonomy of 6 advisor archetypes. The descriptions apply pretty well to board members for nonprofits, too. (h/t Tony Wang)
- This economy’s so bad, even the trustafarians are hurting.
- The 60 arts activists who visited the White House last month have published a report on the conversation. And Chorus America is out with a new report of its own on the impact of choral singing in the USA. The study estimates that nearly 43 million Americans sing in choirs of one kind or another.
- This is the most awesome wedding invitation you’ll ever see. (h/t @lisa_hoang)
- Tired of all this Twitter talk? Well here’s something you can complain about. A new study finds that men are much more likely to follow other men on Twitter, even though men and women tweet at similar rates. Also, it seems 90% of the content is generated by 10% of the users, though using this to claim that Twitter is “useless” is dubious at best (lookin’ at you, New York Metro).
- Great profile of the Dirty Projectors in the New York Times. If you’ll forgive me an “I knew him when” moment: I booked Dave Longstreth to play a short solo set back in 2002 as part of a little conference-cum-concert I put together as a senior in college that was designed to look at convergences between popular and contemporary classical music. Dave, who was a freshman at the time, led everyone out of the concert hall and took us up to the top of a nearby stairwell, where he strummed his guitar and howled a song (I think about birds) in his beautiful, hollow tenor as we all stood on the stairs below and watched him. Always an original.