Uptown Radio

When dementia sets in, it’s often thought that all is lost. But staff at the Studio Museum in Harlem doesn’t think so. It has a program to provide art therapy to Alzheimer’s patients, which is meant to keep moods up and minds active. Some hope the program might lessen the need for medication to fight depression. Andrew Parsons visits the museum, where seniors were discussing an art exhibit.

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A week of diplomatic turmoil has appeared to culminate in a deal to bring blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng to the U.S. as a study abroad fellow. All week long, an economic summit in China featuring U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been overshadowed by the controversy. Today, Secretary Clinton expressed gratitude over the possibility of Chen going to New York University.

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You can take the boy off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy. Commentator Andrew Parsons grew up on one and wonders if it was ever in him to begin with.

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HOST INTRO: You can take the boy off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy. Commentator Andrew Parsons grew up on one and wonders if it was ever in him to begin with.

***

I had been living in New York City for two years when someone offered me a rescue chicken. For me, it was a no-brainer. She was docile, curled up on my lap like an awesome feathered cat and had a great backstory.

Lady Albert had been found running down the streets of Brooklyn missing all her neck feathers followed by an old man yelling “chicken soup, chicken soup.” My friend Kate and some friends took picked her up and offered her to me. I accepted because she reinforced an identity that I had spent my years in New York flaunting. I was a country boy, a hillbilly.

I grew up in the woods of Pennsylvania, my parents had chickens and ducks. We grew acres of vegetables. So I brought my love of the outdoors to Brooklyn. I walked around my first job barefoot, grew a beard and climbed trees at every chance. Everyone said oh that’s just Andrew – yeah, he’s from a farm. And he owns a chicken.

Lady Albert lived in my backyard and was invited into my apartment for parties. A few years later, a raccoon broke into her cage and killed her. I was devastated, a grieving farmboy.

But shortly after Lady Albert died, my Uncle Jim died. He’s my father’s little brother and we shared a middle name. My dad is a university professor fluent in three languages. He’s from a small town in West Virginia, the only one of his 5 siblings who went to college. And the only man in his family who hasn’t worked in a coal mine. My Uncle Jim never even went to high school.

I hadn’t spent time with my Dad’s side of the family for years but I did my best to update them on my life. It was hard to explain what I did when I said I produced radio documentaries. I hoped to impress them by talking about Lady Albert – but in Peyton City, West Virginia a lot of people own chickens. So I meandered through the family gatherings listening, more than talking.

After everyone had gone to sleep, my father poured shots of tequila for the two of us. He said it meant a lot to him that I had come to Uncle Jim’s funeral. He recognized that it wasn’t exactly my comfort zone.

“You’re not hillbilly,” he said. “After a few days here, I can blend in but I know it’s not easy for you.” And he was right. He had been the one to leave the country and become a fish out of water. Yeah, my parents owned chickens and some farmland but I never did much farm work. I spent most of my childhood going to private schools, not milking cows at sunrise.

So when I came back to the city, I didn’t exactly change who I am. I still love chickens, flannel shirts and my ample beard. But my father worked hard to ensure that I my life wasn’t his. I recognize that I’m a sum of my parts – and I’m one part city-person too.

BACK ANNOUNCE: Andrew Parsons knows that in the end he’s probably just another Brooklyn hipster.

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HOST INTRO: When does someone else’s photo suddenly become your own? One artist takes images from a photography book, changes them and integrates them into his own painting. It’s called appropriation art. So when does this violate copyright? It’s a big issue in the world of high-priced art, and, as Andrew Parsons reports, an upcoming court case could have an effect on how art galleries do business.

***

There are photographs all around Penelope Umbrico’s Brooklyn art studio–on the walls, strewn on tables. She sorts through hundreds of prints of sunsets.

SOUND: Umbico showing reporter her photos –
Umbrico: Often there’s piles of 4 by 6 snapshots that are left over from installations Reporter: These are other people’s photos?
Umbrico: Well, they’re all from other people’s photos, yeah

Umbrico is an appropriation artist. She gets her photographs from Flikr. The images are copyrighted and she uses them without permission to makes collages. But Umbrico takes everything but the sun out of the pictures – the people, the beaches, the ocean, everything. The result looks like a colorful, patchwork quilt.

ACT Umbrico 2 (:08)
You would not be able to tell if these are your suns because these are very small fragments of larger sunset images. I’m just taking the sun.

This is a legal principle called ‘fair use,’ Under certain conditions, it allows you to alter someone else’s copyrighted property so it becomes yours. Because Umbrico alters her material so much she’s safe from any lawsuits. However, in a case before the courts, the issues aren’t as clear cut. Richard Prince is a famous appropriation artist who sells his work for millions of dollars. A court ruled last year that his use of a photographer’s image of a rastafarian community violated copyright. The photographer, Patrick Cariou, claims that in one case Prince altered his photograph very little. His lawyer is Daniel Brooks.

ACT Daniels (:16)
He sent it to a commerical lab to have it enlarged and scanned onto a canvas, added blue paint over the man’s eyes and mouth and inserted into his hands a guitar. And that’s what he did.

In fair use, you must transform the meaning of an art piece by commenting on or satirizing it. Prince admitted that he didn’t want to do that, he was just using the photos as objects. Daniels claims that in addition to using material without permission, Prince also undercut an opportunity for Cariou to make money.

ACT Daniels (:15)
There was going to be an exhibition of Mr. Cairou’s photographs at an art gallery. When the gallery owner found out these paintings were being shown she decided to cancel or not go forward with the show.

Others disagree. Attorney Michael Rips, who represents artists in copyright cases, thinks that the court was wrong in the Prince case. He says Prince shouldn’t have to engage with Cariou’s work. Prince used the photos as objects – something many artists do. Rips and many in the art world worry that the ruling could set a dangerous precedent.

ACT Rips (:12)
It’s real precedent because this question hasn’t been addressed and there’s lots of artists who are using other people’s work as raw material as a opposed to engaging.

What also makes this case different is how it affects art galleries. In the ruling last spring, the gallery which sold Prince’s series was found to be an accomplice to Prince’s crime.

ACT Rips 1 (:09)
The district court is imposing upon galleries and museums a duty to inquire as to the source the imagery that artists use.

Museums would have to employ extra staff to determine if all works are within copyright law. In practice, it means they would avoid displaying works from those artists. That is the argument that a dozen museums like the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenhiem made in an amicus brief to the second court of appeals. The court takes up the appeal in late May. Attorney Michael Rips hopes the appeals court rules in Prince’s favor, but he admits Prince should have been more careful.

ACT Rips (:14)
If you’re just using another artist’s work because it’s aesthetically effective, I think you need to be and probably should be very careful about doing that.

The art world will be watching to see just how careful it’ll have to be.

Andrew Parsons, Columbia Radio News

Clint Eastwood had a clear message during February’s Superbowl commercials: “It’s halftime in America.”

And U.S. car sales support his declaration. They rose again last month, even amid high gas prices. This week, car manufacturers are showing off what those profits have earned them at the New York International Auto Show.

Host Andrew Parsons talked to Sonari Glinton, NPR’s business reporter in Detroit. He says this year’s auto shows have a different feel than they did three years ago.

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John Light brings us the news at 5:00 p.m.

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Last month’s unemployment number may have helped renew optimism in the economy, but that number is only a portion of the total Americans who are currently jobless or without full-time work.  Many economists even believe that this number doesn’t completely reflect the labor market anymore.

BY ANDREW PARSONS

Last month’s unemployment number may have helped renew optimism in the economy, but that number is only a portion of the total Americans who are currently jobless or without full-time work.  Many economists even believe that this number doesn’t completely reflect the labor market anymore.

Every month when the federal government releases its jobs report, politicians and pundits focus on one magical number – the unemployment rate. But many economists don’t think it completely reflects labor market anymore. Bernard Baumohl, an economist at the consulting firm the Economic Outlook Group, said he’s tired of hearing about it.

“It’s almost a useless indicator these days because just a lot of people are leaving the workforce and setting up their own jobs,” said Baumohl. “I think we have to be careful in using the unemployment rate as a gauge of what’s going on in the job market.”

The problem is that the unemployment number isn’t a accurate representation of how many Americans are really looking for full-time work. For the past decade, companies have been relying more on temporary employees and freelancers who also are looking for jobs. Freelance fashion designer Carolyn Ksenyak is one of them. She lost her full-time job about a year but now pieces income together by freelancing.

“I some times work 4 days a week and sometimes I would work 1 day a week so it is really not consistent,” Ksenyak said. “Like this week has been nothing which has been awful.”

On weeks where she freelances, she collects only a portion of her unemployment benefits. But the fact that she works at all means, she isn’t always counted as unemployed. Heidi Sherholtz, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said that whether she’s unemployed or part-time actually depends on the week.

“She’d be different from week to week,” said Sherholtz. “So in the weeks where she was looking for work but didn’t have any paid earnings she’d be counted as officially unemployed. In the weeks where she got paid for some work but didn’t get up to 35 hours, she would be classified as involuntary part time.”

On the other hand, is graphic designer Alex Profera. According to labor statistics he counts as full-time, self-employed. Like Ksenyak, he was laid off about a year ago and has been freelancing ever since. The difference is that all of his projects add up to more than 40 hours a week.

Even so, he’s still looking for a full-time job. “I’m usually always looking for work, usually nonstop basically since 2010 after I got fired after that other job,” Profera said.

The monthly unemployment numbers don’t necessarily capture what Profera and fashion designer Carolyn Ksenyak are going through. Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at University of California at Berkeley, saidthat the only place to see the whole picture is the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means going to the website and clicking through to all the numbers including the unemployment rate, the underemployment rate and the size of the labor market among others.

“And if you do this by age, cohorts and gender and stuff, then it really gives you a picture of what’s going on,” said Allegretto. “And what’s going on is that the labor market is still very tepid for workers.”

Tepid, but according to all indications slowly improving. The next jobs report will be released on the first Friday of March.

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BY ANDREW PARSONS

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan has ordered troops not to retaliate for the death of two American soldiers. The two were killed yesterday in riots over the burning of Qurans at a U.S. air base in Bahgram. President Obama apologized for the burnings but protests

continue, leaving at least 7 dead.

****
Today, leaders from about 60 nations met in Tunisia and called on Syrian President Bashar Assad to immediately end the violence in his country and to allow humanitarian aid into areas hit by his regime´s crackdown.

BY MACKENZIE ISSLER

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was at the meeting, which is being called “The Friends of Syria.”

Clinton describe Assad´s crackdown as QUOTE an affront to the international community, a threat to regional security and a grave violation of universal human rights.

The group vowed to step up ties with the Syrian National Council, an opposition umbrella group. It also asked the United Nations to begin planning a civilian peacekeeping mission, however Russia and China resisted such calls.

****

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney outlined his economic plan in Detroit today, just days before Michigan´s primary. Among his new ideas were tax cuts and changes in social security. He also criticized the president´s economic record.

“Now everywhere I´ve gone in this campaign I´ve met Americans who were suffering as a result of the Obama economy,” the candidate said. “You can see it in their faces and you can hear it in their voices. They´re anxious, they´re scared about the future.”

Michigan is Romney´s home state but polls show him in a tight race there with former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. Voters go to the polls on Tuesday.

****
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez flew to Cuba today for surgery to remove a potentially cancerous growth. This will be his second cancer-related operation. Chavez spoke on Venezuelan state TV for four hours yesterday, assuring the country he is healthy. The firey President is up for re-election this year and says he will see his campaign through.

****

Republican lawmakers in New Hampshire are pushing legislation to overturn a 12-year old law requiring health insurance companies to provide contraception to women – even if they insure Catholic organizations. State House Speaker William O’Brien says the measure promotes religious freedom.

“The Obama administration is trying to divide this country and to divide women against Catholics,” O’Brien said. “The amendment before you, however, is a way of guaranteeing religious freedom by ensuring that we are not forcing employers to purchase health care coverage that violates their belief.”

New Hampshire Democrats say that the move is an election year ploy since the original law was passed by a Republican legislature.

****

Sales of new homes dropped last month but the Commerce Department says that the despite the dip, housing market is growing. The department released new numbers on last year´s sales – showing a ten percent increase at the last quarter of 2011.
Today, leaders from about 60 nations met in Tunisia and called on Syrian President Bashar Assad to immediately end the violence in his country and to allow humanitarian aid into areas hit by his regime´s crackdown. Mackenzie Issler reports.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was at the meeting, which is being called “The Friends of Syria.”

Clinton describe Assad´s crackdown as QUOTE an affront to the international community, a threat to regional security and a grave violation of universal human rights.

The group vowed to step up ties with the Syrian National Council, an opposition umbrella group. It also asked the United Nations to begin planning a civilian peacekeeping mission, however Russia and China resisted such calls.

 

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A bit of advice for the unemployed – use your free time to indulge your childhood passions. Producer Andrew Parsons recently found a former graphic designer at his new job on an air crafter carrier… refurbishing antique fighter planes for the Intrepid Air, Space and Sea Museum.

BY ANDREW PARSONS

Peter Torraca restores old airplanes at the Intrepid Air, Space and Sea Museum. On a recent day, he was busy patching new skin onto a 1960s era F3H Demon. The plane was huge and barely fit the 60 foot long restoration tent on the aircraft carrier’s flight deck.

Torraca was never a navy mechanic and never worked with fighter planes. But aviation is a childhood passion of his, passed down to him from his father.

“My dad, he wanted to be a pilot. He started building model airplanes,” said Torraca. “From birth I was just surrounded with balsa dust, all the ephemera that goes along with the model aviation world.”

Torraca’s love for aviation led him to get a pilots license and buy a plane during the 20-year period he was a graphic designer. But when Torraca was out of work in 2010, he was restless. His wife suggested he volunteer at the Intrepid working on the planes. Since he had some experience already, he excelled and was hired. It was a welcomed but unexpected career switch.

“I’ve been building model airplanes since I was seven and this is a dream,” said Torraca choking up a bit. “This is a dream come true.”