Macdowell Colony

The MacDowell Colony is a beautiful desert island. It offers silence and time for the most unadulterated form of concentration. It's an experience all artists, writers and composers should have at least once. --Frances FitzGerald, 1972 Pulitzer Prize winner for "Fire in the Lake" For 81 years writers, composers and visual artists have been coming to MacDowell Colony to spend a few weeks alone concentrating on their craft.

When it emerged Sunday night that Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, some people thought I might not hear about it for weeks. Not because I only consume news about Sarah Palin but because, for the last month, I've been in semi-isolation in the New Hampshire woods. I'm on a fellowship at The MacDowell Colony, a hallowed institution that provides artists of all kinds — writers, visual artists, composers, filmmakers, even architects — their own studios (mostly rustic cabins and beautifully designed loft-like structures)

President Clinton on Monday honored artists, scholars and philanthropists by awarding arts and humanities medals that he said showed the United States was "a nation of creators and innovators." Clinton told guests on the White House's South Lawn that celebrating the nearly two dozen recipients of the medals also celebrates the nation's achievements. The president said the country will always support artists and scholars. "It is our heritage.

President Clinton on Monday honored artists, scholars and philanthropists by awarding arts and humanities medals that he said showed the United States was "a nation of creators and innovators." Clinton told guests on the White House's South Lawn that celebrating the nearly two dozen recipients of the medals also celebrates the nation's achievements. The president said the country will always support artists and scholars. "It is our heritage.

When it emerged Sunday night that Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, some people thought I might not hear about it for weeks. Not because I only consume news about Sarah Palin but because, for the last month, I've been in semi-isolation in the New Hampshire woods. I'm on a fellowship at The MacDowell Colony, a hallowed institution that provides artists of all kinds — writers, visual artists, composers, filmmakers, even architects — their own studios (mostly rustic cabins and beautifully designed loft-like structures)

Honors: Santa Monica-based architect Thom Mayne has been awarded the MacDowell Colony's Edward MacDowell Medal for his contribution to the arts. -- Ruling: A Malawian judge on Wednesday approved Madonna's adoption of a Malawian boy she met in an orphanage there in 2006. -- Departure: Elizabeth Blumenstock, concertmaster and resident artistic director of Musica Angelica, has resigned from the Santa Monica-based period instrument ensemble.

So I think I'll stop, so tired of mumbling and walking, slow collisions of dust and lung and those other things arriving out of air like a sneeze, how everyone needs help now and then. But not now. Downtown, in the easy mingle of trash cans and the insane, there's a fear of angels that pack the missions, that hover in the sleepy corners of an eye. And whoever lives in a paper tent folds with it and falls, a mean vision of comfort in the sway of city traffic.

Artists' colonies around the nation, including three in Northern California, are the latest recipients of the largess of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In an unusual initiative announced Thursday, the Chicago-based foundation awarded a total of more than $2.5 million to 18 artists' retreats and residences in 10 states.

Born of wheat root and summer rusk, born of rain, sheened gold as hair swirled in the soft comb you rake and truss, you delight in a mirror or a photograph or the touch of any son. When you bale bread one by one with prayer hands, the heart of hair on every child's arm lingers. You blush at a wedding dance and love counting fingers when I play the boy and promise to die young. All day in the shadow wood of the green martyr, you kneel, your babushka slung high across your shoulders.

The Pacific Symphony has named Richard Danielpour, 41, the orchestra's new composer-in-residence. He will begin a three-year term in October, succeeding Frank Ticheli, who has been in the post since 1991. "American Dream," which will premiere April 15, marks Ticheli's fifth piece for the orchestra. Danielpour will compose two major works for the Pacific that will be recorded by Sony Classical, with which Danielpour has had an exclusive contract since 1996.

The MacDowell Colony is a beautiful desert island. It offers silence and time for the most unadulterated form of concentration. It's an experience all artists, writers and composers should have at least once. --Frances FitzGerald, 1972 Pulitzer Prize winner for "Fire in the Lake" For 81 years writers, composers and visual artists have been coming to MacDowell Colony to spend a few weeks alone concentrating on their craft.

--Peaceful international relations are a game--just ask 12-year-old Michelle Alexander of Fresno, Calif. Michelle invented the "Give Peace a Chance" game three years ago as a third-grade class project. In the board game, players, who use small markers that carry a nation's flag, are rewarded for cooperation with other countries.

No one speaks the truth anymore, the people who did are long gone. O God, will you help us! Everybody lies to everybody else! They lie in their teeth, they have double standards. God cut their tongues out and the lies out with them! They brag about it: "Lies make us powerful! Lies are like weapons! No one can stop us!" God gives them the lie: "I will make them stop it. The poor are in tears, the helpless are groaning. They will have from me all the help they cry for!"