Margotlog: Orchestras on the Slide: A Tale of Two Cities
"The Twin Cities were separate at birth and far from identical," I wrote in a novel called Falling for Botticelli (not yet published). Yet sometimes these separate cities suffer similar fates. Take the duo lockouts of orchestra musicians by management which both cities have endured over the last year. The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra resolved its dispute in the late spring, 2013, and played the final three or four concerts of the season. The Minnesota Orchestra (I know, it pretends to be the state's orchestra, but in fact it began as the Minneapolis Symphony and remains housed in Minneapolis. More of that in a moment)--the Minnesota Orchestra's difficulties are, in my opinion, far from resolution. Therein hangs a tale.
The SPCO audience was roused to battle quite early after the lockout. Under expert (and feisty) leadership, an organization called Save Our SPCO created a logo, began to gain members, who with all kinds of other music-lovers supported three hugely popular concerts to raise money and remind the community (of both cities and circling suburbs) of how they value and enjoy the SPCO. .
The audience and musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra took a wait-and-see, or perhaps a dig-in-our-heels and resist approach. The musicians refused to negotiate until management canceled the lockout. On the other hand, the SPCO musicians formed a determined and resilient negotiating team who continually attempted to meet with management. To their credit, management was often willing. Yes, there was acrimony and they sniped across the divide. The audience organization SOSPCO held several meetings a month. They helped bring up the question of using MN Legacy money (each orchestra had been granted money under this program) to the state representative in charge. Though nothing changed in real terms, the publicity created by groups of musicians attending the capitol to lobby helped keep the issue in the public eye.
As the SOSPCO membership grew, the organization staged a public declaration that it was considering negotiating with the musicians to form a cooperative orchestra. Public in its very being--held in Rice Park before the Ordway Music Hall where the SPCO performs, and quite near the mayor's office--this public demonstration of determination and forward-thinking, I believe, helped spark Mayor Coleman's decision to become an advocate for a solution.
NOW, finally the MN Orchestra's audience has become aroused. It's banding together, listening to Alan Fletcher, CEO of the Aspen Music Festival, assert that not all that happens if negotiating can occur will satisfy everybody. Some musicians will leave--taking other jobs, being relieved of their posts, etc. Salaries will be cut--as they were for the SPCO. And perhaps long-time musicians will be encouraged to retire, as ten of the SPCO did, taking a buy-out package offered by management.
The moral of the story: Be feisty. Be active. Don't sit on your laurels and wait for fate to come to you. At a recent meeting of over 300 Orchestra Excellence supporters, the first discussion question was "Does Minnesota want a world class orchestra and why?" I point out that Minnesota has two world-class orchestras. And one of them has resolved its gripes.
As Alan Fletcher reminded us, there is no way to predict whether a restored orchestra will be the same as the one locked out. But resolution is crucial. Audience in-put, in my opinion, needs to be regular and argumentative and creatively confrontational. The public, and even more the musicians and management, need to know that they are being supported. Tell stories, as did the SOSPCO, about musicians who are losing their health insurance, having trouble paying their mortgages. There is a very human face to this lock out. Audience needs to care deeply not just for the result, but for the hardship in the ongoing trouble.
Band together, my friends. Lobby, make noise. Do not be afraid of stepping on toes. Don't be excessively nice. Be smart. Be savvy, but most important of all, show the musicians that you care about them and their talents and dedication.
Our hopes are with you. .
musicians were not working.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Friday, August 16, 2013
Margotlot: What We Fear Can Sometimes Help Us - aka Bats!
Margotlog: What We Fear Can Sometimes Help Us - aka Bats!
For years "bat attacks" in my Minnesota residences wrought terror so extreme I was reduced to a quivering mass. What! Malevolent creatures flying across the moon, then swooping into my hair! Didn't they carry rabies? On dark winter nights, I heard them scratching and squeaking inside the walls. I taped up a small door to a crawl space, and NEVER opened it afterwards. I pounded on the walls to scare them. Once a claw emerged through the bathroom vent. I ran screeching from the room and refused to enter for 24 hours.
Worse yet, one night I woke up to something crawling in my pillow case. Shrieking I lept out of bed, fled to the hallway, and collapsed. While my husband beat the pillow on the floor, I could not look. When he dumped the contents into the toilet, I peaked over his shoulder. There floating in the bowl was our four-year-old daughter's hamster. I don't remember how long we sat on the bathroom floor in a stupor.
I know I'm weak and sniveling. I admit I always turn over bat capture to the resident guy. If none was resident, I'd drag in someone off the street. I only get involved once the critter has been thrown outside. Usually this is the next day. And winter. Once I couldn't find the invader. Husband # 2 said he'd thrown it into the trash can. When the garbage guy lifted the top, something flew up and out. We watched him starting around, with a very puzzled look on his face.
I've taken at least three dead bats (frozen to death) to the University of Minnesota Ag campus to have them tested for rabies. None has ever tested positive.A few years ago we installed a bat house on the northern, highest point of the house--it's where the bats seemed to emanate. Who knows if it's the right spot because, truth to tell, we now have fewer bats around. I'm probably testing providence when I admit it's been a year since we had a bat attack in the house.
Of course, they don't attack. They, like mice, compress their bodies through unbelievably tiny spaces and then begin flying in their erratic, sonar mode. Often it's a winter warm spell that wakes them out of hibernation too early. They reaching toward warmth - i.e. inside, rather than cold outdoors. I should pity them, really, but I can't shake the memory of that squirming mass in my pillow--even thought it wasn't a bat.
Lately, my fear and concern have shifted. Now I'm afraid FOR the bats, not OF them. Eastern bats have been dying in droves from something called "white nose syndrome." This fungal disease made its way to the U.S. from Europe where bats have developed an immunity. How long, how many hundreds or thousands of years it took for this immunity to develop, we don't know. But like other foreign invasions, the presence of this fungus has been lethal on bats without the immunity - aka all American bat colonies that come into contact with it.
Many states, including Minnesota, have bat caves where huge numbers of bats live, sleep, wake and fly around . Where they go home to roost after eating millions, billions of mosquitoes. Like so many other companions in the natural world (Yes, Dorothy, we humans are actually natural, part of nature, though we often act as if we aren't.), bats have a crucial niche. They devour small flying insects in exorbitant numbers. No Minnesota bat sucks blood! I promise. Furthermore, the more bats there are, the more they help keep these flying menaces in check. Doing us a huge service. Not that they care about us. They care about living, breathing, eating, sleeping, and mating. And not being sick.
Now some statistics. According to the Center for Biological Diversity: some 7 million bats in 22 Eastern U.S. states and five Canadian provinces have died of white-nose syndrome. Now the fungus has been discovered in Arkansas and in several Minnesota bat caves. These caves are in two Minnesota state parks--Mystery Cave in southeastern Minnesota (with 2300 bats) and Soudan Underground Mine in northeastern Minnesota with between 10,000 and 15,000 bats. (StarTribune, 8/10/13)
The Center for Biological diversity calls the white-nose syndrome outbreak "the worst wildlife epidemic in history." It's not that we--you, me and the guys next door--have caused this, but we could suffer significantly if bats in North America are reduced to such small numbers that they don't survive.
It's time to stop being afraid OF the bats and begin fearing FOR them. We need to recognize them as comrades deserving a chance for survival. Forget Batman. Forget Dracula!
And call the Department of Natural Resources to urge that they close these two caves to tourists--651-296-6157. Human contact with the fungus spores transfers the spores indiscriminately. Not even washing clothes will kill whiite-nose fungus spores. Only washing clothes in a 6% bleach solution. That's asking a lot. Not to mention wiping off shoes, and all other items carried into the caves. The chance to make a difference is NOW. We also have a great opportunity to educate kids and adults about how our behavior can make or break chances of survival--our own and other species. We are in this together.
For years "bat attacks" in my Minnesota residences wrought terror so extreme I was reduced to a quivering mass. What! Malevolent creatures flying across the moon, then swooping into my hair! Didn't they carry rabies? On dark winter nights, I heard them scratching and squeaking inside the walls. I taped up a small door to a crawl space, and NEVER opened it afterwards. I pounded on the walls to scare them. Once a claw emerged through the bathroom vent. I ran screeching from the room and refused to enter for 24 hours.
Worse yet, one night I woke up to something crawling in my pillow case. Shrieking I lept out of bed, fled to the hallway, and collapsed. While my husband beat the pillow on the floor, I could not look. When he dumped the contents into the toilet, I peaked over his shoulder. There floating in the bowl was our four-year-old daughter's hamster. I don't remember how long we sat on the bathroom floor in a stupor.
I know I'm weak and sniveling. I admit I always turn over bat capture to the resident guy. If none was resident, I'd drag in someone off the street. I only get involved once the critter has been thrown outside. Usually this is the next day. And winter. Once I couldn't find the invader. Husband # 2 said he'd thrown it into the trash can. When the garbage guy lifted the top, something flew up and out. We watched him starting around, with a very puzzled look on his face.
I've taken at least three dead bats (frozen to death) to the University of Minnesota Ag campus to have them tested for rabies. None has ever tested positive.A few years ago we installed a bat house on the northern, highest point of the house--it's where the bats seemed to emanate. Who knows if it's the right spot because, truth to tell, we now have fewer bats around. I'm probably testing providence when I admit it's been a year since we had a bat attack in the house.
Of course, they don't attack. They, like mice, compress their bodies through unbelievably tiny spaces and then begin flying in their erratic, sonar mode. Often it's a winter warm spell that wakes them out of hibernation too early. They reaching toward warmth - i.e. inside, rather than cold outdoors. I should pity them, really, but I can't shake the memory of that squirming mass in my pillow--even thought it wasn't a bat.
Lately, my fear and concern have shifted. Now I'm afraid FOR the bats, not OF them. Eastern bats have been dying in droves from something called "white nose syndrome." This fungal disease made its way to the U.S. from Europe where bats have developed an immunity. How long, how many hundreds or thousands of years it took for this immunity to develop, we don't know. But like other foreign invasions, the presence of this fungus has been lethal on bats without the immunity - aka all American bat colonies that come into contact with it.
Many states, including Minnesota, have bat caves where huge numbers of bats live, sleep, wake and fly around . Where they go home to roost after eating millions, billions of mosquitoes. Like so many other companions in the natural world (Yes, Dorothy, we humans are actually natural, part of nature, though we often act as if we aren't.), bats have a crucial niche. They devour small flying insects in exorbitant numbers. No Minnesota bat sucks blood! I promise. Furthermore, the more bats there are, the more they help keep these flying menaces in check. Doing us a huge service. Not that they care about us. They care about living, breathing, eating, sleeping, and mating. And not being sick.
Now some statistics. According to the Center for Biological Diversity: some 7 million bats in 22 Eastern U.S. states and five Canadian provinces have died of white-nose syndrome. Now the fungus has been discovered in Arkansas and in several Minnesota bat caves. These caves are in two Minnesota state parks--Mystery Cave in southeastern Minnesota (with 2300 bats) and Soudan Underground Mine in northeastern Minnesota with between 10,000 and 15,000 bats. (StarTribune, 8/10/13)
The Center for Biological diversity calls the white-nose syndrome outbreak "the worst wildlife epidemic in history." It's not that we--you, me and the guys next door--have caused this, but we could suffer significantly if bats in North America are reduced to such small numbers that they don't survive.
It's time to stop being afraid OF the bats and begin fearing FOR them. We need to recognize them as comrades deserving a chance for survival. Forget Batman. Forget Dracula!
And call the Department of Natural Resources to urge that they close these two caves to tourists--651-296-6157. Human contact with the fungus spores transfers the spores indiscriminately. Not even washing clothes will kill whiite-nose fungus spores. Only washing clothes in a 6% bleach solution. That's asking a lot. Not to mention wiping off shoes, and all other items carried into the caves. The chance to make a difference is NOW. We also have a great opportunity to educate kids and adults about how our behavior can make or break chances of survival--our own and other species. We are in this together.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Margotlog: Monarchs in the Mirror
Monarchs in the Mirror
My yearly summer jaunt up to the North Shore of Lake Superior used to run me home through a lazy blizzard of black and orange--not Iowa Hawkeye footballers, but Monarch butterflies on their way south and west. This year, I saw not a single Monarch, either on the road, or anywhere else on my lake-shore rambles. In fact I saw fewer winged insects of any kind than I can ever remember. One spectacular Luna Moth was plastered to the steps of the hardware store in Lutsen. And I plucked a smashed Buckeye butterfly from a side road after a thunderstorm. Yes, there were dragon flies in decent numbers, but that was it, except for, of course, mosquitoes. Plentiful as always. Too bad mosquitoes don't pollinate, carry beauty on the wing, or unfurl long tongues like the huge blue dragonflies I fed one year with sugar water.
Yes, it's too bad, isn't it. But (shoulder shrug) what can we do? We, meaning all of us who permit a farm policy that pays farmers by the area they have under cultivation. And what's wrong with that? says the defensive farm-supporter. Isn't industriousness a virtue? Isn't farming a multi-billion dollar Minnesota industry?
I call it greed. Environmental madness sanctioned by a powerful lobby. And, with all the Calvinist vigor I can muster, I predict we will pay, Big time. Not just with the loss of one of summer's most beautiful and mysterious visitors, its treasured butterfly, but with illness generated by water running off fields planted to the edges of water ways, bringing us, thanks to Monsanto and other herbicide and pesticide fabricators, diseases and huge remedial costs. It is simply not good for us life forms to eat and drink what kills other life forms. Try repeating this mantra: Monarchs, Milkweed, Waterways, and Me! Monarchs, Milkweed, Waterways and Me.
I am not heavily invested in farming, but I like to eat decently. I appreciate drinking water that is not polluted with cancer-producing, insect-killing chemicals. I appreciate farming practices that reduce the need for chemicals by using crop rotation to discourage pest production. Remember how cold it gets in a Minnesota winter? That cold can kill off pests if they are not given the same corn crop, season season to fatten up on.
I appreciate farming practices that use natural means to clean water running off fields. And that natural way is allowing buffers of what we sneeringly call "weeds," but are actually time-honored homes and food for winged creatures that benefit us: BEES for honey and pollination and MONARCHS.for beauty and inspiration. And a host of others.
Here's a thought: email this blog with a note of approval from you personally to your congressional representatives. Let them know you support a farm policy that REQUIRES all fields be buffered with native plants to clean run-off water of chemicals. Tell them that you OPPOSE a farm policy that encourages farmers to plant one crop (especially that DEVIL CORN) year after year, without allowing fields to go fallow.
By doing so, you will significantly reduce the insane marriage of excessive plowing with chemical spraying. You will be supporting a return to saner and more life-supporting practices. BECAUSE YOU want to stay healthy, and we are finally figuring out that the whole world is in our hands. Yup, we are that powerful, and that deadly, and too much of the time, that stupid.
Don't look in the mirror and see a thousand, a million dead Monarchs. And behind them, a thousand, a million sick and dying humans.
My yearly summer jaunt up to the North Shore of Lake Superior used to run me home through a lazy blizzard of black and orange--not Iowa Hawkeye footballers, but Monarch butterflies on their way south and west. This year, I saw not a single Monarch, either on the road, or anywhere else on my lake-shore rambles. In fact I saw fewer winged insects of any kind than I can ever remember. One spectacular Luna Moth was plastered to the steps of the hardware store in Lutsen. And I plucked a smashed Buckeye butterfly from a side road after a thunderstorm. Yes, there were dragon flies in decent numbers, but that was it, except for, of course, mosquitoes. Plentiful as always. Too bad mosquitoes don't pollinate, carry beauty on the wing, or unfurl long tongues like the huge blue dragonflies I fed one year with sugar water.
Yes, it's too bad, isn't it. But (shoulder shrug) what can we do? We, meaning all of us who permit a farm policy that pays farmers by the area they have under cultivation. And what's wrong with that? says the defensive farm-supporter. Isn't industriousness a virtue? Isn't farming a multi-billion dollar Minnesota industry?
I call it greed. Environmental madness sanctioned by a powerful lobby. And, with all the Calvinist vigor I can muster, I predict we will pay, Big time. Not just with the loss of one of summer's most beautiful and mysterious visitors, its treasured butterfly, but with illness generated by water running off fields planted to the edges of water ways, bringing us, thanks to Monsanto and other herbicide and pesticide fabricators, diseases and huge remedial costs. It is simply not good for us life forms to eat and drink what kills other life forms. Try repeating this mantra: Monarchs, Milkweed, Waterways, and Me! Monarchs, Milkweed, Waterways and Me.
I am not heavily invested in farming, but I like to eat decently. I appreciate drinking water that is not polluted with cancer-producing, insect-killing chemicals. I appreciate farming practices that reduce the need for chemicals by using crop rotation to discourage pest production. Remember how cold it gets in a Minnesota winter? That cold can kill off pests if they are not given the same corn crop, season season to fatten up on.
I appreciate farming practices that use natural means to clean water running off fields. And that natural way is allowing buffers of what we sneeringly call "weeds," but are actually time-honored homes and food for winged creatures that benefit us: BEES for honey and pollination and MONARCHS.for beauty and inspiration. And a host of others.
Here's a thought: email this blog with a note of approval from you personally to your congressional representatives. Let them know you support a farm policy that REQUIRES all fields be buffered with native plants to clean run-off water of chemicals. Tell them that you OPPOSE a farm policy that encourages farmers to plant one crop (especially that DEVIL CORN) year after year, without allowing fields to go fallow.
By doing so, you will significantly reduce the insane marriage of excessive plowing with chemical spraying. You will be supporting a return to saner and more life-supporting practices. BECAUSE YOU want to stay healthy, and we are finally figuring out that the whole world is in our hands. Yup, we are that powerful, and that deadly, and too much of the time, that stupid.
Don't look in the mirror and see a thousand, a million dead Monarchs. And behind them, a thousand, a million sick and dying humans.
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