The Muse: September 2020

The skies are orange today. A sickening, disconcerting orange with an overtone of gray.

Ironically, the very color of my company is orange; our logo is the sun. But our orange is a different shade. It's a vibrant, juicy, nourishing tangerine. Not actually orange. And certainly not the dull, nausea-inducing orange apocalypse the wildfires throughout our beloved state of California have been spewing into the stratosphere for the past few weeks.

Personally, my favorite colors are the colors of the sea and the sky. And never more so than today.

That is what I wrote Wednesday of last week, when the heaviest of the smoke and ash from our unprecedented wildfires rose overhead. The smoke here, locally, has finally cleared, but the realization that we are now living in a very different world has not gone away. And it will not. But let me talk about another color. The color of inclusivity.

This whole summer I've been listening to the voices of color. Reading articles and essays. And thinking about what I can do. Given one of my responsibilities is being the editor in chief of a corporate blog, it was an easy decision. I hired a Black journalist to write the client's very first guest blog post, and the topic was, fittingly, National Black Business Month. The piece discusses what that means and why it's important to support Black-owned businesses.

This Tuesday, Hispanic Heritage Month kicked off, and I hired our first Latina journalist to write a piece about why that's important.

For me, that's what it means to uplift the voices of writers of color. Not just to hire them to write articles about their own culture (it would be unthinkable to have white writers write about these two themed months) but to commission these articles in the first place. More importantly, it's critical to hire them for regular work as well. And then to keep hiring them. Because consistency in action is critical—one-time displays of solidarity are not solidarity.

This isn't about me and what a wonderful ally I am. My name appears nowhere on Clover's blog; there's no press release, no celebratory dinner. And there shouldn't be. Hiring a Black journalist to write about National Black Business month is, and should be, as natural as breathing. And yes, I hired Lynn again for a second piece, and plan on giving her work consistently. Because she's good, she's professional, and she delivers on time.

I didn't ask my client permission. I just did it, and they loved the piece Lynn wrote. Happily, they get how important it is that companies, not just people, walk the walk. But if I hadn't commissioned these pieces, it's possible they would not have materialized. The point is, companies, groups, organizations are made of people. Individual human beings. So what you do as an individual can have an impact on the overall group, and on that group's impact on its stakeholders (customers, clients, partners, users, even the general public), and so on. You just have to decide to act.

Sometimes it really is that simple.

        ~ Birgitte

Last month we hinted at a special project we're working on. As mentioned above, it's Hispanic Heritage Month (or Latin Heritage Month as is being proposed, because of the colonial undertones implied in the term "Hispanic"). The Cartoon Network is doing a special video series on it with Latino children and their families, and guess what... Aria's in it! Her segment hasn't gone live yet but here's a sneak preview: see 0:08 in this intro video. Animation Magazine also wrote a piece about it that mentions Aria specifically—that was a nice surprise.

In more art news...

Earlier this year, Aria Luna was accepted to participate in her very first outdoor arts festivals--all here in the Bay Area. Then COVID-19 hit, and the festivals, along with many other art events, got cancelled. That is, until people started getting fed up and said, hey you know what, we're not letting this pandemic stop us from appreciating art. We're going online!

The virtual edition of the Los Altos Arts & Wine festival kicks off October 1. Aria Luna and the other artists will have their own online booths where you'll be able to view and buy their art. We'll publish the link in October's newsletter, which will land in your inbox that first week of the month.

Even more exciting, on October 17 and 18 at 1pm Pacific time, I'm hosting an online in-studio chat with the little artist as part of the festival's Meet the Artists line-up. So if you'd like to "meet" Aria Luna, register here on Eventbrite. It's free and it'll be a lot of fun!

Turning it over to Aria Luna:

Heyyyyy!

The past month has been crazy. Wildfires. Strange orange sky and smoke. Coronavirus and artblock (kinda like writer's block). And this whole summer I had to stay home, so it was really special to go to Lake Tahoe. It was a blast there! There was no smoke for most of the days and I got to go on a Treetop adventure course with ziplines and obstacles. I was tethered to a safety line, thankfully. I also went to numerous beaches and I kayaked and fished on Carnelian Beach. Sadly I didn't catch any fish but it was still awesome. I also got to have fresh pancakes every morning with fruit and tea.

There were so many new birds there! Like Steller's Jay, Common Merganser, Brewer's blackbird, Mallard ducks, and much more. I also got to see small squirrels and CHIPMUNKS! I love chipmunks!!

I also went to Emerald Bay and fed geese and ducks there. I loved it. The water was so refreshing and I even got to see a big red crawfish.

Back at home now, I have school and I'm doing great. Right now the sky is so strange--fiery orange and hazy. Tiny bits of ash started to rain down. Although, there are the hummingbirds on my patio who zoom around and fight for the hummingbird feeder and they don't care what color the sky is, pink or green, red or brown. I love them. They're like flying beans.

That was the end of this month's newsletter, I hope you all are doing happy, safe, and healthy. Eat waffles!

~ Aria