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ACTA Convenes Bay Area Artists

An Apprenticeship in Puerto Rican Bomba and Plena

An Apprenticeship in South Indian Bharata Natyam Dance

A Cultural Heritage Fellowship at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

6th Annual California Arts Day

The James Irvine Foundation Releases a Working Paper Outlining Critical Issues Facing the Arts in California

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Dancing Along the Bay

Julian Lang, Director, Institute of Native Knowledge

It’s near impossible to put an exact date on when the Wiyot People of Humboldt Bay in northwestern California held their last ceremony.  According to Cheryl Seidner, the Wiyot tribal chair, and her sisters, the last ceremony occurred in the late 1880’s.  It was held for her great-grandmother.  So when we got the news that the Wiyot People set a date to hold their puberty ceremony, August 15th, we knew it was going to be a huge event for Wiyot families and a new chapter in their traditional lives.

Several years ago, serious discussions began on the subject of bringing back Wiyot ceremonies.  Discussions were also occurring between the Wiyot tribal council and the City of Eureka to devise the means for transferring the legal title to land owned by the city on Indian Island.  It was on the island that the infamous ‘Indian Island Massacre’ happened in 1862.  A major event was staged by the mayor to celebrate the signing of the deed transfer on June 25, 2004.  Quietly and slowly, the wheels bringing back the ceremonies began to move also.

The Hernandez family of Table Bluff Reservation held a Flower Dance for their daughter, Michelle, to bring her ‘luck and a long life’ on the weekend of August 19, 2006.  The ceremony occurred at the aboriginal site of Pihmad, within shouting distance of the mouth into Humboldt Bay.  There is one lone tree at the site under which Michelle’s family and friends ate and gathered in between the dances.  It seems that everyone was slightly nervous except for the pelicans and terns and sea lions that dove and chattered and squawked all night long.  The Wiyot belief is so unique – their language so descriptive of this land that is all tall sand dunes, bunch grasses, huckleberries, salal shrubs and fog.  It’s called kuwih hulagadakwahl, the Indians’ land.

The ceremony, karachbiwiwosh, occurred at a site that looks out across the Humboldt Bay.  The first ceremony was the family dance.  Michelle’s family trepidatiously joined the circle holding hands and singing.  Her family circled about her as they all sang along.  Each man entered her circle and danced with her.  Many of her family were told that this was a practice dance.  Afterwards I told them, “Oh no, that was the real thing.”  “We were doing the real thing!”  The father said, “We did?!”  “Yes.”  “Did you hear that guys?” he asked all of the men in the men’s dance camp, “That was the real thing.”  The men whispered and then smiled because it had been a great dance.  It was a great start to an historical tribal event.

As we sat around our fire that certain feeling happened.  It was that feeling when the past and future seem so distant, and the moment of now feels as if it is All-time.  We had just sang and danced a ceremony that hadn’t happened in over 100 years.  Yet, as we sat and talked and put away the regalia, and saw the wonder in the young boy’s eyes, it was as if the Wiyot ceremonies had never ended.  I think in large part it is the power of the singing of our traditional songs that magically connects us in these moments.  The songs connect us together.  And they connect us with our ancestors. And it connects our children with their future by giving them a new past.

ACTA helped.  Julian Lang, founder and director of the Institute of Native Knowledge, was funded by ACTA’s Living Cultures Grants Program to conduct traditional singing workshops.  While the Wiyot Flower Dance was not a guiding reason for the proposal, it became a means for Lang to serve as the singing mentor for the Table Bluff men and community as they prepared for the Flower Dance.  Lyn Risling was able to focus and help the girls and women.  We met with the girl’s family, taught them songs, composed new songs, and discussed the rituals of the ceremony.

The singing and ceremony became a healing salve for Lyn and me as well. In a recent The New Moon article readers were told of the arson attack on our sacred Brush Dance ceremonial house at the Karuk village of Katimiin.  However bad we felt about the burning, according to local beliefs we had to set aside those feelings as we prepared for the Wiyot ceremony.  As we sang and as we made a new woman on the Humboldt Bay, the songs healed the deep wounds caused by the arson attack earlier in the summer.  Our songs made us whole again – just like we were taught it would be by our elders when we were learning our cultural beliefs.

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ACTA Convenes Bay Area Artists

Lily Kharrazi, Living Cultures Grants Program Coordinator, ACTA

On a bright sunny August afternoon, on the cusp of the summer’s official end, ACTA staff and board members convened a meeting of Bay Area artists and organizations, representing two of its core programs: the Living Cultures Grants Program and the Apprenticeship Program.  As ACTA continues to promote the practice and transmission of culture through traditional arts, convening artists allows us to hear what kinds of  experiences artists encounter, and can also create networks of connection and learning opportunities for all.  In the words of Jennifer Walsh, Capoeira practitioner and executive director of ABADA-Capoeira San Francisco, “We are all from so many different places and do such different things, yet our values seem to be similar.”

Beginning around the table, artists and cultural workers introduced themselves and their communities, recounting areas of success and frustration in the work they do as traditional or folk artists.  The projects and artists involved in this funding cycle are working at many different levels of organization.  Some have just established themselves as new non-profits, some are working as individuals and others have had a history spanning decades.  Some of the participants around the table received their first-ever grants from the Living Cultures Grants Program, while others had had funding success before.  No matter what kind of history was represented around the table, the shared stories were recognizable on some level by all.  The stories were laden with practical experiences, a clear commitment to the traditions and an unflappable desire to keep going.

One such story came from the Chhanddam Chitresh Das Dance Company, whose school of Kathak dance has 250 students in five Bay Area locations.  They are learning one of India’s classical dance forms.  After three decades of focused work, the organization is seeing their determination come to fruition.  We heard from three points of view.  Celine Schein, Executive Director, spoke about the need to engage one’s community to financially support work stating clearly the need to depend on many sources of funding to ensure the health of a tradition.  Pooja Doshi, an advanced student of Pandit Chitresh Das, carries on the legacy of performing the art of Kathak.  And finally, board member Binta Patel reported on the international conference, “Kathak at the Crossroads,” which will convene artists and scholars from India and the United States to look critically at the development and practice of Kathak on September 27-29, 2006.  What had begun as the work of one solo artist in America now encompasses large segments of the community in learning, performance, and educational outreach.

At another critical point in the spectrum of traditional art practice, we heard Crystal Richardson, a Karuk Indian from northern California introduce herself in her native language.  She has participated as an apprentice, learning the Karuk language and cultural traditions from elders.  “There isn’t a way to separate art and language and culture,” she said.  “I’ve been studying my language for about three years now.”  Her first master, an octogenarian, taught her old sayings and the rhythm of the language.  With a younger master teacher, Julian Lang (please see Julian’s article in this month’s The New Moon) they “started putting the language together in new ways.”  Crystal has been introducing the Karuk language to children.

Adding to this, l. frank, a long time activist, basketweaver, and organizer and participant in the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (AICLS) workshop, introduced herself, “I was born in Santa Monica; I’m a California Indian.”  She spoke about the impetus behind the UC Berkeley workshops which are designed to bring linguistic support to reconstructing extinct and nearly extinct Native California languages.  This is done from recordings and artifacts housed in the sizable anthropology archives at the university.  “We recognize that language is not separate from art, from health,” she continued.  She recalled that when she saw Native American baskets housed in museum collections around the world, she felt that “the baskets talked to me” and that “they were able to help us put our language back together,” referring to the relationship of the weaver to the basket itself.  Each basket as a product of a person, weaves with certain intent as they are creating it and it contains that spirit.

At the Croatian Cultural Center, located in San Francisco, a series of festivals take place every month or two, largely by groups whose ancestry come from the Balkan countries.  The recent Tamburitza Festival, held February 2006, is an annual event that has flourished and grown with the introduction of educational content to the popular weekend of dance and music.  Rajna Ledoux, an ethnomusicologist , along with John Daley, Executive Director, reported that by providing educational content in the form of panel discussions, an historic photo exhibit of local tamburitza musicians, and a jam session with master musicians, they are witnessing that the level of the local musicianship has improved and grown.

“Ma’afa” means reoccurring disaster in Kiswahili.  Wanda Sabir, one of the founders of this annual commemoration, approaching its 10th year, explained, “We are part of a small community that want to give our African ancestors who came over during the period of slavery a funeral.”  The ceremony is held on a Sunday in October before Indigenous People’s Day.  It is exclusively for people of African descent and honors the ancestors through ritual dress, song, drumming and dance at day’s break by the Pacific Ocean.  “Nine years ago Oakland recognized Ma’afa; I want this to be recognized by the state of California.”  The commemoration has included a panel discussion that centers on how a community deals with the psychological effects of enslavement.  Ms. Sabir continued, “Now hundreds of people come; we start at sunrise and light candles.  Thinking about the past helps you move forward in the present.”

With a longer recorded history to draw upon, the art of India’s Odissi dance was once banned under the British rule of India.  “The devadasis or temple dancers danced every day as a ritual for the lord inside the temple”.  The revival of this spiritual dance form is what Guru Vishnu Tattva Das is dedicated to.  Barbara Framm, a long time student of classical Indian dance, is the Assistant Director of Odissi Villas, which recently received its nonprofit status.  While they have started writing grants, they must also focus on maintaining classes in Marin and Fremont, as well as performing.  The frustration of how to find the time to devote to the demands of art versus the reality of having to work at other jobs in order to live was a refrain that resonated for many that day.

Marcia Treadler does not tell anyone, until she is prompted, that she is only one of two women world wide who has earned the title of maestra, or master, in the ABADA school of Capoeira.  Capoeira was first developed as “play” by the African slaves who were brought to the new world.  Combining music, dance, martial arts, and acrobatics, Marcia explains, “this form has created a large community who have come together to see the deeper value of it.”  Since she moved here from Brazil 14 years ago, she made a commitment to bring master artists from Brazil to teach her students aspects of the art form.  Jennifer Walsh, Executive Director, continued, “We’ve been around twelve years and we are trying to maintain the integrity of the art form as it develops outside of Brazil.”  This year the organization was able to host five artists from Brazil for a “Spirit of Brazil Festival.”  These guest artists presented workshops on other related traditional arts related to Capoeira.

Gladys Liu will leave for UCLA in the fall.  She began her introduction in this way: “I’ve been dancing for 9 years.  I started doing ballet and then switched to Chinese dance because I wanted to be more connected to my own culture.”  Gladys has been an apprentice to master artist David Chen, who teaches the more than 500 year old tradition of Kunqu opera from China.  “Throughout my years with Mr. Chen, I am starting to understand more about my own self and my own language.”

David Chen explained that Kunqu requires many hours of basic training in martial skill and acrobatics.  “You have to have a solid foundation,” he explained.  With close to 600 students, his Academy of Chinese Performing Arts School is in its eleventh year.  An annual performance is the culmination of the year’s work with performances by students and teachers.  “When Gladys was 12 years old, we did a we did a cultural exchange and went to a children’s dance competition in China and we showed Dang Ma (a Kunqu opera piece) there; they were very pleased to know that this Chinese art form was being preserved here in California,” Mr. Chen said through an interpreter, who is also Gladys’ mother, Vera Liu.

Zenon Anderson has been studying with Mr. Chen since he was four years old.  A junior in high school now, he said, “When I participated in ACTA’s program, I realized that I do something that most people don’t usually do.  When I had to recite the lyrics and move at the same time, it was interesting to me and I could feel it more as a part of me.”

Those gathered spent time in small groups discussing positive developments and frustrations encountered in their project’s life.  Later, we discussed strategies that were working in helping sustain cultural traditions and practice.  The short three hours left us realizing much common ground exists between practitioners and organizers working to sustain traditions, yet aware of the great needs of this field for funding, technical assistance, sharing information and expertise, and supportive networks that needs further development.

Our afternoon came to an end with renewed interest to continue to engage one another in conversation.  ACTA will be convening artists and organizations in other locations throughout the year.  Announcements will be forthcoming.

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An Apprenticeship in Puerto Rican Bomba and Plena

Mari Pongkhamsing, Special Project Coordinator, ACTA

As a participant in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program, Ali Luna is spending a year intensively studying Puerto Rican bomba and plena with master artist Román Carrillo.  Bomba and plena are uniquely Puerto Rican music and dance forms.  Bomba developed in the 1700s from three different cultures, African, Spanish, and indigenous.  Ali explained that the drums come from African roots, the wood instruments, like the maraca, come from indigenous roots, and the Spanish influence can be seen in the elegance of the dancers’ posture.  Plena developed in the second half of the 19th century and it is played on panderetas, which were originally made from wooden boxes that carried codfish.

Román Carrillo grew up in both New York and Puerto Rico and started learning Puerto Rican music and dance as a teenager from Rafael Cepeda Afiles, the founder of Familia Cepeda, which was the number one folkloric group in Puerto Rico at that time.  He has been teaching Ali the three basic rhythms of bomba called the yuba, sica, and holandes.  Román explained that in bomba there is a game played between the dancer and the drummer where dancers challenge and drummers respond.  The dancers are always in control.  He explains, “That’s the beauty of it and that’s what makes it interesting.  I have to anticipate what the dancer is gong to be doing.  It’s a conversation and it’s a fun challenge.”  He has taught Ali to improvise and respond to dancers while he is drumming and Ali is also learning to dance and sing.

Traditionally bomba and plena were played in the streets.  Román explained, “This music used to be off limits.  Cops would stop people because it was too noisy or the performers’ color wasn’t right.  This wasn’t introduced to high class society until the 1960s when it was brought into the hotels.  It was banned for a lot of years.”  The musical style may have been threatening to authorities because of its historical roots in slavery.  Román explains, “If you take it all the way back to slavery, it was the same thing.  A lot of times they played behind the slave master’s back.  It was getting rid of all the day’s labor.  They weren’t allowed to do it and it hasn’t changed a lot today because we still can’t get into a lot of places with this music.”  Román described how his band used to rehearse in a little alley in between people’s homes.  “Today in Puerto Rico you can still see a lot of people doing plena on the corner of the street.  You don’t really need a special occasion to play.”  Bomba is often played in people’s homes at social gatherings called bombazos.

It has been challenging to keep this music alive in California because it is not well known here.  Román offers weekly classes at La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley and he and Ali perform together with their group Son Borikua.  Musicians also gather regularly to play together at local bombazos.  But the Puerto Rican music and dance community in California is still small and Román has to return to Puerto Rico to get new ideas and connect with other master artists.

For the next six months, Ali and Román will focus on plena.  They will continue to work closely together even after their year long apprenticeship is over because they are both committed to keeping the tradition alive.  Ali hopes to teach what he has learned to his own kids and other young children in the community.

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An Apprenticeship in South Indian Bharata Natyam Dance

Mari Pongkhamsing, Special Project Coordinator, ACTA

Vishal Ramani doesn’t remember when she began to study dance, but she believes she was kicking her legs in the cradle because dance has always been a part of her life.  Her student Nitya Venkateswaran doesn’t remember her first dance lessons either, but Vishal does.  When she was only about three years old Nitya began picking up steps from her older sister and Vishal saw her talent and believed she was ready to learn. Now Nitya has been studying South Indian Bharata Natyam dance with Vishal Ramani for over twenty-five years, and as a participant in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program she has spent the last six months working intensively to learn how to choreograph new pieces.  Originating in the temples of South India, Bharata Natyam is one of India’s oldest classical dance forms.  Dancers depict Hindu mythological stories and themes using a combination of nritta (pure dance movements) and nritya (expressional dances).

Vishal Ramani grew up in a musical family.  Her mother sang and played violin and she enrolled Vishal at the Raja Rajeshwari Bharata Natya Kala Mandir school of dance in Mumbai, India, when she was only three years old.  Vishal performed her solo dance debut, or Arangetram, at the age of seven, and continued to study with her gurus Mahalingam Pillai and Srimati Karunamambal, as well as many other renowned teachers.  When she moved to the United States in 1974, she faced new challenges.  There were fewer Indians in the Bay Area at that time and there wasn’t as much interest in the arts.  Her dance teachers were in India and she wasn’t yet connected to an Indian dance community in the United States.  She found a way to keep her identity as a dancer by starting her own school and becoming the first person in the Bay Area to teach this art form.  In thirty years as a teacher she has trained over one thousand students.

Vishal is training Nitya to become a teacher so that the art form will continue to be passed down to the next generation.  She explains, “It can’t stop with one person, there has to be a continuity.  Nitya is my hope.”  Nitya doesn’t feel like she can teach until she understands everything behind the choreography; she believes the time she is taking now to learn how to choreograph will give her the deeper understanding she needs in order to go into the classes confidently.  Nitya explains how she has slowly started to own more of the choreography and bring more of herself in to the performances.  This year she spent several months in Chennai, India, the birthplace of the dance form, where she was able to perform and learn more about the music, Hinduism, and the Tamil language.  She believes the more she understands the language, music, and poetry, the better she can express the meaning of the dance and share that with her audience.

Vishal is supporting Nitya in her efforts to gain a deeper understanding of the art form so that she starts to teach other students.  Vishal explains, “Parents come and ask, ‘When is my daughter’s debut?’ and I tell them it’s not like that.  It’s not on a set schedule.  They have to really imbibe the art form slowly.  It’s like slow cooking.  The slower you cook the tastier it gets.  So take your time.  You have a whole lifetime.  Be a learner always.”

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A Cultural Heritage Fellowship at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Carly Tex

My name is Carly Tex.  I am a member of the North Fork Mono Rancheria, and I am twenty-two years old.  In 2003, I participated in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program as an apprentice to my grandmother, Avis Punkin, a North Fork Mono master basketweaver, to make a coiled bowl out of sedge, redbud, and deer grass.  I took it with me to the 2006 Smithsonian Folklife Festival where I participated as a member of the Cultural Heritage Fellows.

I was nominated for the Cultural Heritage Fellows by Sara Greensfelder, a friend of the family, founder of the California Indian Basketweavers Association (CIBA), and coordinator of the Cultural Heritage Fellows.  Our job at the Festival was to assist and job-shadow the coordinators and curators who ran the Festival, help the basketweavers, and learn about basketweaving from around the country.  We were also to speak with people and visit places where we would like to have a career.  Washington, D.C. is a place of people and organizations which are very influential to Native Americans, and this was our opportunity to let our names be recognized and represent our tribal groups.

While the Folklife Festival featured exhibits from Latino Chicago, Alberta, Canada, and New Orleans, stretching along the length of the National Mall, it also featured an exhibit called Carriers of Culture, which was sponsored by Michigan State University.  This exhibit was an enclosure of tables and canopies of basketweavers separated into regional or state areas such as California, Northwest, Hawaii, Southwest, Great Basin, Great Lakes, and so on.  Basketweavers from all over the country arrived to display their baskets, demonstrate their weaving techniques, and sell their wares.

The Fellows program was a cohort of Native youth who are active in some aspect of their culture, whether it is language preservation, basketry, dancing, storytelling, singing, and others.  We were the first group of this program, and I hope not the last.  The Fellowship was sponsored by a grant from the Kellogg Foundation.  Eleven youth participated, including one from Hawaii, Alaska, Arizona, Maine, four from New York, and two from California.  One of the Fellows was Laura Saunders from Orleans, California, a basketweaver from the Yurok and Karuk tribes. Also see the feature on Laura Sanders and LaVerne Glaze, current apprentice and master in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program.   I was surprised that we had never met before, and yet we knew the same people from northern California and were both apprentices in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program.

The Fellows were affiliated with the Carriers of Culture, but our range of activities was greater than that of the basketry demonstrators.  Among our activities, we visited the National Endowment for the Arts, National Museum of the American Indian, the National Congress of the American Indian, the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, and the U.S. Botanical Gardens.  We also participated in a reception for all participants of the Carriers of Culture participants at the National Museum of the American Indian, which featured Hawaiian dancing, basketry demonstrations, and a basket sale.  Among the participants of the Festival were California basketweavers Julia Parker, Ruby Pomona, Leona Chepo, Lois Conner, Kimberly Stevenot, Jennifer Bates, and Eva Salazar, who happened to be my roommate.  Many of the participants were also masters in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program.  All participants of the Festival stayed in the same hotel and were shuttled to the Festival everyday.  We ate all meals together and every night there was a social, where participants could get to know each other, dance, play music, or weave.  Every day something was planned for the participants to have a chance to see the city, whether it was a twilight tour of Washington D.C. or a shopping trip.

We were introduced to several Festival staff and interviewed them.  For example, a sound engineer, the directors of the Festival, the curators of the different cultural areas, the public relations coordinators, the graphics designer, and photographers with the Carriers of Culture basketry area.  Then we were given a couple of days to assist somebody who was interviewed.  I chose to assist Marsha McDowell, one of the curators of the Carriers of Culture and a professional folklorist, and my job was to help certain basketweavers fill out forms about their baskets for a Carriers of Culture traveling exhibit.  This was probably the most valuable part of my experience because it was highly educational about the different types of basketweaving styles, techniques, materials, and purposes for the baskets.  I was also made aware of the adaptation of traditional techniques to contemporary times and corresponding to the availability of traditional materials.  Working with the basketweavers and Marsha also helped me to better understand the stories she told the Fellows when we interviewed her.

Although demonstrating our basketry was not the focal purpose of the program, it was a good chance to share some of our culture with the public.  I brought some baskets that I made when I was younger, a few baskets from my family’s collection, some rolls of weaving material, two books for reference, and pictures.  This was one of the highlights of my experience because I was able to actively share my basketweaving with the public and represent my tribe and family.

My interest in basketweaving began when I was about nine years old, and it led me to participation in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program.  I am involved with CIBA, and the exposure that CIBA brings to California basketweavers expands into the exposure of basketweavers across the country and the formation of other regional and state basketweaver associations.  Without this exposure, I am not sure I would have been considered to be a part of the Cultural Heritage Fellows program.

Participating in both of these programs inspired me to continue with basketweaving, as well as brought me closer to and educated me about other basketweavers and artisans.  To me, basketweaving is more than just an art form.  It is a way of life, and I have always been exposed to the processes of making baskets.  For the general public and non-Native people, they see the artistry of baskets.  However, I found that even the audience I spoke to at my demonstration were fascinated at the display of raw materials and the steps toward making a basket.  The ACTA and CHF programs have been beneficial for the same reason.  They bring basketweavers into light so we have the opportunity to educate non-Native and Native people about our customs.  I considered this experience my chance to tell the public about my tribe, my family, the Mono people, and share my knowledge to give them a better understanding of California Indians that they may not have learned in school or seen in films.  Basketry is a living legacy, and it is important to understand that we are still practicing our traditions to the best of our abilities with the resources that are available.  Luckily, basketry as an art form allows us to have a place in a contemporary society as cultural enrichment, and it allows for this essential custom to survive.

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6th Annual California Arts Day

The sixth annual California Arts Day will be held on October 6, 2006.  California Arts Day recognizes and celebrates the critical role that arts and creativity play in the state and promotes group participation in the arts.  This year’s theme is “Take 'Em to the Arts!”

Built on the same concepts surrounding such annual events as “Take Your Child to Work Day,” this year's California Arts Day encourages individuals to invite friends and family to attend arts events such as the theater, museums, galleries, dance performances, music events, and other arts and cultural activities. Parents can take their children on an outing, adults can make plans with their senior-citizen parents, couples can go together, and others can bring their best friend along.

Arts organizations are encouraged to offer incentives on or around Friday, October 6, 2006, to correspond with California Arts Day and its “Take 'Em to the Arts!” theme. Many organizations already have ongoing events and promotions for national Arts and Humanities Month in October.  For example, in the Los Angeles area, the San Fernando Arts Council sponsors the “Valley Artists Studio Tour” on October 14 and 15, a two-day long tour of 45 artists’ studios in the area.

Arts organizations that are planning "Take 'Em to the Arts" promotions can email Mary Beth Barber at mbarber@caartscouncil.com for potential inclusion in the California Arts Council’s newsletter.

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The James Irvine Foundation Releases a Working Paper Outlining Critical Issues Facing the Arts in California

This working paper, entitled, “Critical Issues Facing the Arts in California” published by the James Irvine Foundation and AEA Consulting, identifies the major challenges facing the arts and cultural sector in California.  Based on interviews with arts leaders and a review of the relevant literature, the paper describes five key themes that, if not addressed, may threaten the health and well-being of the sector going forward.  The themes are: Access, Cultural Policy, Arts Education, Nonprofit Business Model, and Preparing the Next Generation of Artists and Arts Managers.  This working paper is the first phase of a project to engage arts leaders and others in a discussion on how to ensure a more sustainable future for the arts in California.

The Irvine Foundation is very interested in hearing readers’ thoughts on the issues raised in the paper.  The Foundation hopes to hear reactions, ideas, suggestions, cautions, concerns and other commentary through a blog they started to encourage dialogue.  Comments are being actively accepted until October 31, 2006, although the blog will remain live beyond that date for those who wish to read the posted comments.

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