“Woody Guthrie was a crossroads of creativity,” Blackburn said. “Woody Guthrie reveals so much about our history.”

The George Kaiser Family Foundation, a charitable organization based in Tulsa, announced Wednesday that it purchased the archives and plans to open the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa by the end of 2012 to mark the centennial of the singer’s birth.

The foundation did not disclose how much it paid for the collection, which includes the original handwritten copy of “This Land is Your Land.” Also included are original musical recordings, handwritten songbooks and almost 3,000 song lyrics, rare books by and about Guthrie, more than 700 pieces of artwork, letters and postcards, more than 500 photographs, Guthrie’s annotated record collection and personal papers detailing family matters, his World War II military service and musical career.

The archive had been housed in the Mount Kisko, N.Y., home of Nora Guthrie, the songwriter’s daughter. Woody Guthrie, a native of Okemah, died of Huntington’s disease, a hereditary neurodegenerative condition, in 1967 at the age of 55.

While Guthrie’s social activism rubbed some conservative Oklahomans the wrong way, Blackburn said his songs reflect the down-to-earth sentiment of the state where he was born.

“Woody Guthrie never changed his opinion,” Blackburn said. “Woody Guthrie was a populist who was fearful of big business, fearful of big government. That populist message came out of Oklahoma’s red soil.”

Oklahoma musician and music historian Steve Ripley, who has performed with Bob Dylan and also worked with Oklahoma native Leon Russell, said Guthrie’s work influenced them and other musicians including Bruce Springsteen.

“Most people recognize him as America’s songwriter,” Ripley said. “He’s so important in his own right. He’s writing about everything, and that was his genius.”

Guthrie did not have much of an audience for his music early in his career, Blackburn said, but his popularity soared during the economic and cultural tumult caused by the Great Depression.

“Only then did he really find an audience,” Blackburn said. “As the country’s attitude started changing, it came in line with Woody’s populist origins.”

Guthrie’s popularity in his home state suffered as it became more politically conservative, and he was even portrayed as anti-American.

Ripley noted that during World War II, Guthrie penned songs that railed against fascism, including “All You Fascists Bound To Lose,” and sang for troops to buoy their spirits while serving with the Army and U.S. Merchant Marine.

“He wrote so many great songs that are pointedly pro-American,” Ripley said. “They weren’t running around knocking America. That stuff was not let’s tear down America. It was let’s build up America.”

Attitudes about Guthrie have shifted over the past decade as Oklahomans renewed their interest in his life and music, Blackburn said. Today, a portrait of Guthrie hangs in the rotunda of the Oklahoma State Capitol and the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival is held annually in Okemah to coincide with his birthday on July 12.

The new four-building arts hub in Tulsa will feature public displays from the Guthrie archives and research space for scholars and artists “so the story of this extraordinary Oklahoman can be told for generations to come,” the George Kaiser Family Foundation’s executive director Ken Levit said in a statement.

Blackburn said the archive will ensure that Guthrie’s art remains timeless like that of another Oklahoma native, Will Rogers.

It “will be more than a collection of one man’s art,” he said. “It will be a tool for education, inspiration for artists and a window through which every man and woman anywhere in the world can search for a better understanding of the human experience.”

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Information from: Tulsa World, http://www.tulsaworld.com

The ministry said it also plans to introduce legislation later this year that would double the fine and maximum jail sentence for employers who fail to provide maids with a safe working environment. The new penalties would be a fine of 10,000 Singapore dollars ($7,750) and a 12-month jail term, the ministry said.

Singapore is under pressure to improve the working conditions of foreign maids, who live full-time in one in five households in the city-state of 5.2 million people. In March, the government pledged to mandate at least one day off a week for maids starting next year.

Last month, a court fined an employer SG$5,000 and barred her from hiring domestic workers in the future after a maid fell and died from her fifth-floor apartment last year while cleaning windows standing on a stool.

The ministry said seven of this year’s nine maid deaths were due to dangerous window cleaning or hanging of laundry; the other two deaths remain under investigation. More than 90 percent of Singapore residents live in high-rise apartments.

Local media Monday featured dramatic front-page photos of a 29-year-old Indonesian maid as she fell from her employer’s 12th floor apartment window Sunday. She was grabbed and rescued by neighbors one floor below.

The nine maids who fell to their deaths were from Indonesia, which supplies about half of Singapore’s 200,000 maids. The Indonesian Embassy in Singapore in recent months had called for a ban on maids cleaning the outside of windows.

In another odd twist, the index opened Monday at 2,346.98. That is being interpreted as 23rd anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown when read from right to left.

Public discussion of the Tiananmen crackdown, which the Communist Party branded a “counterrevolutionary riot,” remains taboo. Analysts refused to comment on the numbers.

On Tuesday, a spokesman at the Shanghai Stock Exchange, who would only give his surname, Zhang, said nervously that he had no information to release. He would not say anything more.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission, the market watchdog, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

On Tuesday morning, the share benchmark was little changed.

On the popular Sina microblog site, searches using “June 4″, “64.89″, “stock market”, and “benchmark Shanghai Composite Index” were all still blocked as of midday Tuesday. The number 23 was also off-limits.

Such searches draw the response, “According to law such words cannot be shown.”

That prompted some users to comment on the “magical” nature of the market, while others groused about not being able to discuss the stock market online.

In Beijing, the anniversary passed without any major sign of protest. The front page of the party newspaper People’s Daily trumpeted the “Stable, fast development of the Chinese economy: Advancing to be the World’s No. 2.”

The melee as soldiers fought their way into Beijing to clear Tiananmen Square is believed to have left hundreds dead. In response to the violence in the capital, demonstrations erupted in more than 180 cities and in some cases were quelled violently.

The government has never provided a credible accounting of the number of victims or arrests in the sweeping crackdown that followed.

Asked at a regular briefing if the government had changed its stance regarding the “June 4 issue” Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said, “I just knew you would ask this question.”

“The political case you mentioned was concluded long ago by the ruling party and government,” he said, objecting to a U.S. State Department call for a reconsideration of the party’s stance as “rude interference in China’s internal affairs.”

In the semiautonomous southern Chinese city of Hong Kong, tens of thousands crowded into a large park to mark the anniversary. They held aloft white candles that transformed the area of soccer pitches into a sea of light, before observing a minute of silence.

Activists laid a wreath at a makeshift monument dedicated to the Tiananmen victims, bowing three times as is customary in traditional Chinese mourning.

Hong Kong is a former British colony that enjoys free speech and other Western-style civil liberties not seen in mainland China.

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Associated Press writer Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

The department ordered the city to clean up the area by this week and will start making routine inspections, roughly every week, to ensure hygiene is maintained, said Jonathan Fielding, county director of public health.

“There are clear health risks,” he said. “Conditions seem to have been exacerbated there. There are more people, more material of different kinds on the sidewalks.”

Some 800 people bed down on Skid Row sidewalks nightly, and 3,000 others cram into its shelters and special housing. During the day, they teem into the streets. Most are mentally ill or substance abusers.

The May 21 Health Department report underscores the precarious conditions that homeless advocates have long decried.

Inspectors found 13 hypodermic needles strewn on the ground and disposable rubber gloves tucked under tree roots. They also found people were disposing of human waste — including vomit, feces and buckets of urine — in storm drains.

The crowded, unsanitary conditions make the area a high risk for communicable disease. Four cases of meningococcal disease cropped up in March 2011, and outbreaks of staph infection were reported in 2005, inspectors said.

The report recommended the city install more trash cans and public toilets, provide soap, water and hand basins, and step up waste collection.

The city must implement a vermin-control program in the area and monitor for hypodermic needle litter, the report said.

Inspectors also noted the desperate condition of many of Skid Row’s residents, including one man observed crawling across the street on his hands and knees, another eating out of a trash can and many unkempt people living amid garbage and debris. They recommended increasing efforts to get more social services to people.

Sanitation workers have been intensely cleaning the neighborhood to remedy the violations, and are developing a maintenance plan, said Jane Usher, special assistant city attorney.

Public health officials have conducted inspections of Skid Row in the past in response to specific complaints, but this was the first comprehensive look at the neighborhood’s overall sanitation, Fielding said.

The inspection last month was requested by the city attorney’s office as it gathers evidence in a bid to overturn a federal judge’s order last year prohibiting the seizure of homeless people’s property from sidewalks without notice.

The city says the order is making it difficult to clean up the area as sanitation workers are not sure what is personal property and what is trash. Meanwhile, nearby businesses and residents have complained about the proliferation of furniture and shopping carts and people living in tents as police have stopped removing tents due to the order.

“The deposits on sidewalks have reached a crisis point,” Usher said. “Conditions have deteriorated.”

Fielding said the county Health Department will continue to press the city on the problems.

“The city has demonstrated a willingness to address the concerns, but ultimately, it is our responsibility,” he said.

For homeless advocates, who have long criticized the city’s neglect of Skid Row, the violations are a black eye for the city.

Attorney Carol Sobel, who sued the city over the destruction of homeless people’s property, said providing toilets, trash bins and soap to people has nothing to do with confiscating people’s belongings, including important papers and medications, without warning.

“This really is a condemnation of the city,” she said. “The county is saying, ‘Come out and clean it.’”

Residents said they hoped the cleanups would be ongoing.

“I’ve been trying to get the county Public Health Department out here for years,” said community activist Jeff Page, who goes by General Jeff. “It’s not like Skid Row suddenly got dirty and infected. It’s always been like this. But at least it’s something.”

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Contact the reporter: http://twitter.com/ChristinaHoag