The Arts Go First

Looks like I'm losing my studio space. The Worcester Craft Center, where I have rented space for the past two years, has announced it is closing its doors for a "strategic pause" [pdf file]. To me, strategic pause sounds very ominous. The Board is basically giving up and putting out an APB for funding. I'm not sure whether to use the past tense or the present tense in writing this post. The Center took the studio renters money for January so we are allowed to continue to use our spaces until the end of the month; but there are no longer any employees at the Center. No classes, no gift shop, no one to pay for supplies or clay, no one to fire the kilns, no one to maintain the equipment.

Everyone but the Executive Director was fired yesterday; a few people will stay on for a day or two, but that's it. They even closed the gift shop so apparently bringing in modest amounts of money is not considered important. (The gift shop was profitable.) The glass studio which is in a separate building is now offering all kinds of rentals, of space and different kinds of equipment.

The Craft Center has been in financial straits for years and the economic crisis has made things worse. Here's the financial situation according to the Telegram:

The decision, reached at a trustees meeting Monday night, came after pressure from creditors and a significant decline in tuition, donations and other revenue added up to a shortfall of about $700,000, said David J. Firstenberg, president of the board of trustees. To reopen, the center needs about $1.2 million, to retire debt and finance a restart, he said, while acknowledging that that is a steep challenge in the current economic climate.

Last summer, the Center for Crafts had just begun to recover from several years of serious financial struggles. The board had worked hard to stabilize the venerable institution, Ms. Walzer had been hired as a permanent director after a period when the position had been a revolving-door, and a $1.2 million capital campaign was showing promise. The board had hoped to use some of the money to rebuild the staff after several rounds of budget cuts in recent years had gutted it. There was no marketing director or accountant on staff, for example, and several craft areas languished without department heads.

Then, in October, the recession deepened and the money flow ebbed. Some capital campaign pledges didn’t come through, and investment portfolios deflated. Tuition revenue declined as prospective students became more conservative with spending.

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The craft center is hampered in borrowing its way out of the crisis by the debt it has already incurred. Among major creditors are vendors such as utilities and printers, who are owed about $140,000. “A significant portion of that is over 90 days and so we’ve been stringing vendors along and that gets dicey after a while,” Mr. Firstenberg said.

There also is a substantial institutional debt. The Non-Profit Funding Foundation loaned the craft center $330,000 in 2004, on which $290,000 is still owed. “We’ve been making interest-only payments for a period of time and they’ve been, not at all inappropriately, asking when we were going to begin making principal payments,” Mr. Firstenberg said. The Commonwealth National Bank in Worcester, where the craft center does most of its banking, also has been receiving interest-only payments on loans totaling about $29,000, he said. Other debt is in friendlier hands, he said, friends of the institution that had made loans last fiscal year to help hold the center over until pledge money came in.

I stopped in yesterday afternoon to check on the work which came out of the soda kiln the Monday before Christmas. (Which turned out really well, BTW.) The lights were off, but I figured that there was just no one in working. Nope. The head of the clay studio broke the bad news to me; of course, it's far worse for him, a loyal 15-year-professional who is out of a job. Apparently rumors had been swirling around the entire time I've been gone, so at least I missed the anticipatory anxiety. I just get the thud of loss and stress.

Angry deep thought: If the Craft Center had had the foresight to change its name to Worcester Center for Banking and Crafts a few years ago, we could fill out a two page form [pdf file] and get a billion dollars from Hank Paulsen.

This is a tragedy for the city of Worcester. The schoolkids who took classes at the Center, the high school students in the Teen Apprentice Program, all the adults who have taken classes, all will miss the school. Of course, part of the problem that the Crafts Center has had is that it is not the most well-known of Worcester's cultural institutions. PR was never their strong suit.

The clay studio is the largest of the Craft Center's areas by number of students, and that community will want to stay together. One of the great things about the Craft Center is the ability to work in a collegial atmosphere, with everyone getting great ideas and inspiration from each other. If the Center does close that will be my priority, being able to stay in touch and work near some of the artists I've met and become good friends with.

A sad day.


Worcester Telegram: Center for Crafts shuts doors

Slide Show: Worcester Craft Center Over the Years

Worcester Craft Center

Strategic Pause letter from WCC (pdf)

New Street Glass Studio Hot Shop Rental Rates

Be Forewarned

The Republican/McCain plan is to get the Democrats to bail out the GOP's Wall Street friends and then run against them for doing it.

- Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo

The first blogger to call this? Duncan Black (Atrios), of course:

And Because It's So Obvious

If the Democrats pass this piece of shit, look for Republican challengers to run against them on it.

A Better Bailout Plan

A plan to benefit Main Street, not Wall Street.

No blank check for crooks.

firedoglake: The Government and the People Need to Be The Insurer of Last Resort, Not the Idiot of Last Resort

1) Buy up mortgages at a discount and give people new fixed rate mortgages. The government shares in further house appreciation (only fair since it bailed the homeowner out). This stabilizes mortgage prices and helps people and banks both. It is essentially identical to what FDR did with the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), and we know how to do it. Initial price tag? Probably around 20 billion.

2) Use the FDIC (the folks who take over failed banks) to take over failed mutual and money market funds, make sure the investors get as much money back as possible, liquidate the funds in an orderly fashion (or keep them operating if necessary) and if they are kept alive, kick the people who screwed them up to the curb and change how they do business.

3) Declare a national emergency, with judicial review (unlike Paulson's seizure of ultimate power) and use the authority to review all purchases of banks, to institute oil rationing if necessary (or simpler procedures like "every street now has a 55 mile an hour speed limit, if it is normally higher). Also allows release of oil from the reserve, if necessary.

4) Expand the safety net such as food stamps, employment insurance, welfare and so on. We know this is going to get worse no matter what we do, so why aren't we taking care of ordinary people?

Get Calling -- Beggars Can't Be Choosers

This is your brain on dope
John McCain on 60 Minutes last night.
"I think the [bank] deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy."

Contacting Congress

You can get the telephone numbers of your Congressperson & Senators at this link.

I just finished my calls, and didn't get one busy signal.

Get calling, people!

I made two points:

(1) No blank check for those crooks on Wall Street, and

(2) Don't include foreign banks in the bailout!

-- Foreign banks like Phil Gramm's UBS Bank -- a Swiss bank! -- have lobbied to be included in the bailout proposal, and yesterday Treasury Secretary Hank Paul[Son of a Bitch] said he would be in favor of that.

Krugman on Maher

New York Times economist and columnist Paul Krugman on Bill Maher's Real Time last night. Dire.

More Like This, Please

From an email sent by an unnamed member of Congress:

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I'm not voting for a blank check for $700 billion for those mother fuckers.

[]

I don't want to trade a $700 billion dollar giveaway to the most unsympathetic human beings on the planet for a few fucking bridges. I want reforms of the industry, and I want it to be as punitive as possible.

OpenLeft: Yes, There Are Deeply Angry Democratic Members of Congress

I Approve This Message

Flickr user Paul Keleher: Vote No sign

No. Blank. Checks. For. Crooks.

Thers at Eschaton:

I think everyone who reads this blog who's American, first thing on Monday morning, needs to call their Representatives and Senators and say: No. Blank. Checks. For. Crooks.

Be as polite as you can be and don't use bad words. Personally, this injunction may limit the duration of my calls to under a thirtieth of a second, or shorter.

TO CLARIFY. Look, right now the choice is, Bush's Plan, or Something Else. Kill Bush's Plan now, worry about Something Else later.

Spineless Media

I am watching George Stephanopoulos interview Hank Paulsen.

I wonder, where is the room where TV journalists go to have their spines removed before they can appear on TV?

Is there a room somewhere littered with the vertebrae of the media?

All Your $700,000,000,000 Are Belong To Bush

my palz git yer $$$$$$$$$$$

The Bailout Plan will transfer $2,333 from every living American to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen (former CEO of Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs), who will then distribute the $700,000,000,000 to his old Wall Street cronies. No rules, no limits, no judicial review.

Mission Accomplished.

As many bloggers have noted, it's like the Iraq War all over again. Paulsen called Congress in on Thursday night and told them there was a mushroom cloud in their future. They began cringing and mewling on the floor, begging to go along with whatever he proposed. Today Hank-o says he needs billions for a Shock and Awe campaign to occupy Wall Street. No exit plan, either.

No one should trust the Bush Administration about anything. They are stealing us blind to reward bad actors. No wonder the stock market soared on Friday. They're getting away with it.

Read this:

Paul Krugman, NYTimes: No deal

Glenn Greenwald: The complete (though ever-changing) elite consensus over the financial collapse

Sebastian Mallaby, WaPo: A Bad Bank Rescue