Visual art is what I write about--freelance for the art magazines since the mid-60s, as staff art critic for Newsweek, 1989-2003, and post-retirement freelance again. I was an NAJP senior fellow in 1998. Now 65, I live in Manhattan. I'm healthy as a horse, and can still hit the occasional college three-ball if nobody's guarding me.

In my opinion, NAJP should be a professional society (i.e., some kind of criterion, such as clips, to get in) whose main purposes are a) to try to reverse the downward trend in non-fluff arts coverage in the non-specialist "popular press"--paper and electronic, mainstream and alternative, and b) advocate/leverage better treatment of arts writers (more staff positions, especially for critics, and better terms for freelancers). A white guy myself, I think that there's a problem of too many white guys in the newswroom, so I support almost any non-Jacobin effort at diversification. Fellowships-as-of-old, however, are gravy until we get a viable organization going again.

I tend to be blunt and little aggressive, but age has mellowed me to the point where in matters such as NAJP, I'm a complete pragmatist: whoever's ideas stand the best chance of getting it done...go with 'em.