Divided Loyalties with Arts Fwd: Howlround and Kennedy Heights Arts Center

Whoa, it's weird when worlds collide. Or when they merge in places you never in your life suspected.

Innocent me: Today I logged on to Facebook. I've been keeping away from Facebook for about a week now. The noise, noise, noise, noise was getting to me. But then I saw this post from HowlRound, about voting for them:

HowlRound is a semi-finalist for the ArtsFwd Business Unusual National Challenge! it read. Our idea, Culture Coin, aims to put the equity back into sweat equity! Vote and read more here!

I'm behind HowlRound's work, so sure I'll vote for them, I thought. So I follow the link to here, and I see this link to another organization, Kennedy Heights Arts Center. Whaaat? It can't be the same Kennedy Heights, next to where I grew up? But yep, click on the link, and it's an arts center on Montgomery Road, in Kennedy Heights.

I grew up in Pleasant Ridge. P-Ridge. The Heights is just one neighborhood north, right up Montgomery Road. I went to school for a year at Schroder Junior High. I know none of this is important to anyone else, but lately I've been having strange little things like this tear me from today and put me way back there, maybe not necessarily Pleasant Ridge and Kennedy Heights, but way in my past.

There was that dream I had about one of my best friends in high school, and then I learned he had died about a month before. I found a tape my father sent me, making it about thirty years since I had heard his voice. Thanks to social media and the Internet, in the past year I've had three people from long ago contact me. It's always jarring at first, because it's so unexpected. But it always does bring a little smile to my face, just like this did today.

Who to vote for? HowlRound, who is doing some ground-breaking research and work in the American theater? Or Kennedy Heights Arts Center?

You can vote everyday until May 31. If you're reading this blog and have some roots back in Cincinnati, I'm giving you a heads up about the arts center. Good things are happening back there.