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.

[]

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

Ice Storm Cleanup

More Ice Storm Videos

From the Worcester Telegram

Princeton, Mass., from the Metrowest News

Driving through Holden


Acton

Gardner

Our Amazing Ice Storm

In Worcester, a mess

Boston Globe Photo Gallery: Ice storm slams region

I am one of the few people in my town today with power as 350,000 in Massachusetts lost power last night in a huge ice storm. My friend L has a tree limb on her car and the windshield is smashed; her boyfriend's car's rear windshield got taken out by a limb, too. They couldn't even get to the cars to remove the limbs because of downed power lines. My next door neighbor had a tree limb fall on his roof. It sounded like a shooting gallery this morning with all the limbs breaking off and crashing with all their ice to the ground. I drove in to the Craft Center in Worcester late this afternoon and had to take 4 detours to navigate the mile between my house and Route 190. Saw cars without windows sitting in driveways, trees in front yards, and tree lined roads that looked like they had been decorated with boughs of evergreen from all the cleaned-up branches stacked in the ditches. Plus limbs are still falling off the trees as you drive along the roads, and random tree branches stick out into roadways, so it's quite scary out there. Power will not be restored completely until next week. The grocery stores and gas stations are all closed.

Video of a branch snapping while filming a TV interview:

Giving Blood

Life: A view of a poster urging people to donate blood to help wounded soldiers., London, United Kingdom, 1939, Photographer William Vandivert

Nothing to write about, really. I can't get worked up about politics or the economy. We got the right choice in the Presidential race so I feel safe in relaxing a bit. What to rail/write about when I am calm? My life, I guess.

I gave platelets for the first time yesterday. I've been giving blood for the past two years, and this summer the Red Cross sent me a letter saying I have a high platelet level and am eligible to give platelets. (I also have Type A blood, and while Type O is a universal donor for whole blood, Type A is the universal donor for platelets.) Did you know that while whole blood can be stored for up to two months, platelets have a shelf life of six days? And platelets are very important to people being treated for leukemia.

I was a bit nervous about it, surveyed several people about what it was like, and even asked my doctor at my annual physical whether she thought that frequent platelet donation could damage my veins (her answer: no, your veins heal and as long as there is no infection involved, your veins will not be overly scarred.)

So I presented myself at the Red Cross's Worcester Pheresis Center yesterday afternoon. Went through the typical pre-donation questionnaire, checks of blood pressure (132/78), iron level (13, 12.5 is the minimum to donate) and then got into the donation chair/chaise. This is what it looked like:


Both arms have to be still for the whole procedure, as there is a needle in both. One needle is taking out the blood, and the blood is returned (along with a little saline) through the other needle. So you can't move, you can't bend your arm, and you can't itch any scratches. The nurse told me that they would itch for me, that's part of the job. Luckily I was able to quell any itching urges. The chair had a built-in heating element on the back, and they covered me with a blanket and gave me a handwarmer for the hand that wasn't squeezing the little ball to make the blood flow, but it was still a little chilly. I had tingling around my mouth and they gave me Tums to up my calcium levels, and advised that the next time I donate I should eat a yogurt beforehand.

There were three movies to choose from, and I chose Made of Honor, figuring that even if I wasn't paying any attention to it, I could still enjoy very handsome Patrick Dempsey. The movie was terrible, and I was way too distracted to follow it at all, so it was OK that I was finished long before the movie ended. The procedure itself took less than an hour. I had juice and cookies and headed home feeling none the worse for the weather. The nurse told me that the entire procedure harvests about 1 teaspoon worth of platelets -- but that is the equivalent of the amount of platelets in 6 pints of whole blood. (This blogger says that 70% of your blood goes through the machine roundtrip during the donation. Ewww.)

You can donate platelets every six days, but I can't imagine doing it that often. I'm going to aim for once a month, which is about twice as often as you can give whole blood. I'm the only person in my family eligible to give blood, as my mom takes several medications, and my brothers and sister all spent more than 3 months in the United Kingdom in the 1980s, so they're disqualified.

I'm not a great lover of the Red Cross as an organization, and I have to question how blood that is donated for free is charged at $600 to $700 a pint to patients in hospitals, but that's a macro question. On a micro level I will continue to give blood to help those that need it, and to build up karma points on my agnostics scorecard (in case there is a heaven).

One of my father's teaching jokes was the Agnostic's Prayer:

Oh God, if there is a God
Save my soul, if I have a soul.

Just in case points.