#767 – Dick Bernard: The "Filing Cabinet" on The Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out

MOST RECENT UPDATE with comments at end of this post July 11, 2014. Most recent blog post Dec 4, 2014 (see below)
COMMENTS to dick_bernardATmsnDOTcom.
This originated as “The Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out: “Push” coming rapidly to “Shove”, published on August 30, 2013. This is the permanent “Filing Cabinet” for subsequent information relating to the Minnesota Orchestra situation.
UPDATES and MOST RECENT COMMENTS are always posted at the end of this post, most recent, last. Look for material posted after the most recent date
Other posts about the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out
October 18, 2012
December 7, 2012
June 1, 2013
June 5, 2013 to audience
June 21, 2013 to audience
July 26, 2013
August 16, 2013
August 19, 2013
August 21, 2013
August 30, 2013 (this post)
September 4, 2013
September 12, 2013
September 17, 2013
October 1, 2013 A Letter to the Audience
October 2, 2013

October 8, 2013 to the Audience
October 30, 2013 thoughts at 13 months into the Lock Out
November 16, 2013 Skrowaczewski concert Nov 15, 411 days into the Lock Out
November 20, 2013 SOS Mn meeting on “The MOA Debacle”
December 16, 2013: The Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra “Christmas Party”
January 3, 2013: An artwork in appreciation to the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra
February 9, 2014: The first post-lockout concert in the remodeled Orchestra Hall
May 4, 2014: Minnesota Orchestra at Northrop Auditorium
May 25, 2014: The Minnesota Orchestra and Bugs Bunny
October 13, 2014: Another Delightful Night at the Minnesota Orchestra
December 4, 2014: The Minnesota Orchestral Association Annual Meeting
Reference Websites:
Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra
Save Our Symphony Minnesota
Song of the Lark blog
Orchestrate Excellence
Minnesota Orchestra
(orchestra management)

Locked Out Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra Concert Oct 18, 2012, with Maestro Skrowaczewski

Locked Out Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra Concert Oct 18, 2012, with Maestro Skrowaczewski


August 30, 2013
I happened to be watching WCCO-TV 5 p.m. news last night (Aug 29 2013) when this report was aired.
Do watch it.
As you know, WCCO is across the street from Orchestra Hall, its nearest neighbor, and is the Twin Cities iconic television station.
Earlier the Minneapolis Star Tribune carried this news article, lower right on the front page of the B section. The Publisher of the Star Tribune is on the Board of the Minnesota Orchestra. The news from 1111 Nicollet Mall was fit to print…. (The address for the Orchestra Board: Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis MN 55403.)
The musicians have updated their web news with an August 30 release, here.
*
Most citizens, including Union members themselves, are only slightly aware of the realities of bargaining; of how public relations efforts to disrupt and confuse work.
There are facts, of course, well known to the parties closest to any negotiations, and unknown to the rest of us.
News “facts” – for the rest of us – are simply advertisements: carefully managed information. In this now near-year old dispute, it is easy for the only casually informed to believe the “news” as reported on TV or in the paper.
The basic fact known to we subscribers is that the Orchestra, and ourselves, have been Locked Out by Orchestra Management for ten months. The Minnesota Orchestra conflict is not and has never been a “Strike”.
*
In my opinion, there is a depressing reality we as audience/listeners continue to be faced with, as people who have come to love and support the Orchestra: the future of this Orchestra depends on us.

Except for a core constituency, relatively few people care whether the Minnesota Orchestra lives or dies. As the iconic Big Yellow Taxi song lyric goes, they won’t know what they’ve lost till its gone.
The same public apathy cannot be said about the Twins, Vikings or Wild, etc. They can have the most dismal seasons, never be “winners” (as sports fans define that term) have the shadiest of business practices, and gouge fans for everything to make a larger profit as an “asset”, including locking them out, but they are the tail that wags the dog here.
*
I tried to watch the news clip last night as if I knew (or cared) nothing about the Orchestra, or the facts about finances there, or about how collective bargaining works.
From that viewpoint, it would be easy to be convinced that the Orchestra members are being unreasonable and should just lower expectations and settle.
As a piece of hate mail to the Dixie Chicks said when that well known and then-hugely popular country-western group protested the Iraq War some years back, “shut up and sing”.
*
The crucial and unpleasant fact of the matter is, in my opinion, that the only power bloc that can make any difference, now, is that group to which I belong: the Orchestra audience; we, the listeners, those who have also been locked out for a year.
The only power we have is the huge power we do not want to exercise, which is to refuse to darken the door of Orchestra Hall until and unless there is a settlement which the Orchestra Union has ratified.
Not only do we have to express ourselves, individually, when there is still time for a settlement; but we have to be prepared to act on what we say.
There is no law that requires us to accept imposed terms, which is what Orchestra Management has been selling for a year now, and apparently will continue to sell.
*
Standing up for ourselves is not self-serving.
In a sense, to this community, we are like the bunch of volunteers who protects a vital but little known community resource from damage or destruction. We know its loss will have consequences, even if most of our neighbors don’t know, or care.
*
If we are sheep, and accept our powerlessness, we will get what we deserve: less and less fine music for more and more money.
The greater community will not know what they’ve lost till its gone; we who paid the bills know what we’re losing, from a year of lock-out.
It is our choice whether or not to make our voice heard. And we will make it by either individual action or inaction.
It won’t be easy. By our very nature we are individuals who’d rather be anonymous.
*
The musicians website is here.
All previous posts by this writer are linked here.
August 21, 2013

August 21, 2013


UPDATE Aug 30 2013 9 a.m.: After publishing this post, I picked up the Aug 30 Star Tribune, and a front page story, headlined “Orchestra’s board takes its case to public”, was in lower right. The link is still not available on-line. The Letter of the Day is about the new Orchestra Hall.
The essence of the front page story is typical positioning for bargaining. The Orchestra Board is stuck with one indisputable fact: it is they who began and have continued the Lock Out for the last ten months.
UPDATE Sep 1, 2013:
Todays (Sunday, Sep 1) Minneapolis Star Tribune had a full page ad, posted by the Minnesota Orchestra Board. It is on page A7. Since it is a paid ad, it will most likely not be found anywhere in the on-line edition.
I received several comments about this ad, and have my own, thus far as follows:
from John B: the ad is a kick in the face to the Orchestra musicians, a possible end run around the union and loaded with slippery distortions. It also betrays a bias: the board ad says board members have contributed $60,000,000 in the past 5 years. They think they own the outcome they seek. It isn’t negotiations, it is take it or leave it. I say the board should pony up more $$$; no doubt many could afford to. AND, launch an aggressive long term fund raising campaign including asking the legislature for greater arts funding. Since many board members are likely Republicans, if they would only get their friends in the legislature to raise taxes a bit, a fair resolution should occur.
from Alan S: The only reason for a lockout is to starve the opposition into capitulating and agree to anything to crawl back to the “job”. You don’t lock out anyone that you hope to negotiate with, when you slam that door in their faces. At that time negotiation is out of the question, so what else can the board do now but celebrate their victory of shutting what was a magnificent orchestra down for a whole year, and now they should resign enmasse! A new board should be brought forward that can show these wonderful professional musicians the respect that they deserve.
A day or so earlier, Alan commented: The Orchestra Board has dug themselves as deep a hole as possible, and haven’t figured an honorable way out. The will never admit that they have done anything wrong. They don’t understand shame so they have none.
from John G: Yes, Dick, the lockout remains in place. A vote by the musicians’ Union against this latest Board action would not change the lockout into a strike,
though the Board obviously is trying to lead the public to imagine otherwise. There has never been a strike by the musicians in this matter. They have been, and remain, locked out. The Board has done nothing, so far as I can see, to cooperate with the musicians’ Union. The Board also has not contributed to efforts to retain Osmo Vanska, so far as I can see. From my perspective the message from the musicians needs to be this: “Time is running out. We need the Board’s support now.”
from Kathy L: Like your focus on the groups respective statements to public as being marketing spin. Very aggravating.
from Dick Bernard, personal: This is a typical “it’s their fault” ad. “We’re being very generous”. There is always another side to the story, but the musicians are unlikely to be able to afford a full page ad in response. The matter remains in the hands of the audience, in my opinion. This remains a Lock Out, and not a Strike.
For whatever little it is worth, I’ve “been there, done that” dealing with propaganda, from both sides (deciding what to say, and interpreting what the other side said, and comparing it to reality – usually much different than the “spin”).
In my opinion, there has been a hostile takeover of the Orchestra, which was several years in the making, unknown to those outside a small inner circle (some portion of the Board). The Board is obviously full of wealthy people. Speaking from the level of the audience/listeners, I don’t recall any communication that conveyed alarm about finances. Rather, I would contend, a short-term crisis – and the perceived need for a new lobby – were translated into an opportunity to break the musicians union and take over the business, remade in their desired image.
I have long believed that if you want to judge the real intentions of any organization, you simply have to follow the money: what do they spend their resources, personnel time and otherwise, on?
If there had truly been a financial crisis, due to too little revenue, or too few people in the auditorium, it was never made obvious to me, and I was a loyal audience member and paid attention to such things. For instance, if inded the Orchestra were in dire straits, it would have been as simple as a real, genuine Board member getting out on stage at intermission, and just telling us, “folks, we have a problem”, accompanied with specific information about the situation, supported by others who should know, such as representatives of the Orchestra itself.
I don’t recall any such thing ever happening: just the routine appeals via fancy letter (which we get from endless organizations, since we contribute to many different things), and perhaps an annual phone call asking for a contribution. There was never any sense of urgency conveyed, until the Lock Out actually happened. Pretty obviously, as laid out in the full-page ad, there was an intense campaign going on among the wealthy side of the ledger, seeking money to bulk up the endowment. These folks got lots of attention, doubtless, and qualify for the perks that come with large donations….
In the end analysis, you need to decide who you trust.
For me, the musicians have passed the trust test, since the Lock Out began last October. Orchestra Management has failed, miserably. It would take much more detail to flesh my reasons, and they have nothing to do with loyalty to Union (though that would be a reasonable sounding accusation, given my background.)
The basically invisible Board – a bunch of names without faces or addresses (other than orchestra hall) has a very dark side.
UPDATE Sep 2, 2013
Apparently I have been taken off the Mn Orchestra e-mail distribution list, per this e-mail Mn Orch email 8-29-13002, received this morning, and another sent to me by another friend on August 5, 2013. Memo to the Orchestra Board: it is not quite so simple to quash communications. If my hunch is correct, that I’ve been deleted from your network, it is not to your advantage to do that.
Here is the pdf of the MN Orchestra’s full page ad in the September 1, Minneapolis Star Tribune. Click to enlarge it. Hopefully you can read the contents: Mn Orch ad Sep 1 13001
From Louise P Sep 2, 2013: Thanks for the ad and all your comments. As far as I can see, the ad is a huge pile of B.S. And I grew up on a farm, I know a pile of it when I see it. The Board has done nothing serious about negotiating with the musicians.
from Larry H. Sep 2, 2013: Thank you again for your personal perspective shared in your blog. As a musician, music educator, and subscriber I try to read every printed word of this situation. I also know your blog has been shared with many of the “principals’ and interested parties.
Like most, I have my personal opinion about this labor dispute and long for the return of our orchestra. My hope is that the impact of this struggle is not as devastating as some have suggested.
For you, as a person with a career in labor and negotiations, I suggest you, as I, view the immediate time period as crucial to this season and retention of quality musicians. If one “follows the evidence”, it is increasingly difficult to realistically expect a return to the status quo at Orchestra Hall in the near future.
UPDATE Sep 4, 2013:
from Dick Bernard:

This morning at 10:36 a.m. I received an e-mail from Harvey Mackay of the Minnesota Orchestra Board. Finally, I said to myself, I have at least one Board member who cares enough to write a response, albeit a very brief one.
Here’s what he said, responding to my August 27 e-mail to the Board:
Dear Dick:
Thank you for taking the time to write. Like you, my fellow Board members and I care deeply about the Minnesota Orchestra. That is why we volunteer, donate, and are committed to getting a contract with our musicians that not only preserves this great art form but also secures the financial health of the Orchestra for decades to come.
Sincerely,
Harvey Mackay

I have a 1989 copy of Mackay’s mega-best seller “Swim With The Sharks”, so I took it down and instead of reading the other book I’ve been working on, I tackled his, intending to write him back.
Then, at 3:04 p.m. I received an e-mail from a friend who is also interested in the Minnesota Orchestra Issue. Here was “Harvey Mackay #2, with “Dear _____” as salutation:
Thank you for taking the time to write. Like you, my fellow Board members and I care deeply about the Minnesota Orchestra. That is why we volunteer, donate, and are committed to getting a contract with our musicians that not only preserves this great art form but also secures the financial health of the Orchestra for decades to come.
Both e-mails came from harvey@mackaymitchell.com, the present day manifestation of Mackay’s firm.
Two identical e-mails does not a pattern make, but my guess is that there are quite a number of other folks out there getting the same chatty greeting from Harvey as the two of us received.
I did spend some time revisiting Mackay’s Swim with the Sharks, a #1 Bestseller from 1989. It’s a salesman and entrepreneurs’s think and grow rich bible, which is why it became a mega-bestseller, doubtless.
The book includes 68 short “Lessons”, and 19 even shorter “Quickies”. I “flagged” 10% of those principles, all promoted by Mackay, as being violated by Minnesota Orchestra management.
Harvey Mackay will hear from me, politely, as an individual, and I’ll not tell him which of his own principles they’re violating. Maybe he can reread his own book.
The game has gotten nasty.
If my hunch is correct, that there is a designated Board responder, Mackay was probably selected because, of the bunch, he has a pretty stellar reputation as a champion of the Orchestra.
As another friend put it a few days ago, “the guy on the board that I cannot understand agreeing to the lockout is Harvey Mackay. From what I know of him, I would have thought that he would have fought this as long as he could have, and then resigned from the board when he couldn’t stop the lockout. I am really shocked that he must have been in favor of it or decided just to go along with it. My opinion of him has certainly crashed!”
The Lock Out is at the down and dirty stage. Be aware.
UPDATE, Sep 5, 2013:
from Louise P, Sep 4: I just want to let you know that I had an email this afternoon from Harvey Mackay in response to the one I sent last week It was a thoughtful response. He clearly had read my email, but did not offer any specifics.
I sent a reply a short time ago, thanking him. I said that I feel the patrons have been left out of the discussion, and that I believe there are creative solutions to the financial issues. Then I asked, How can some of ordinary folk who buy the tickets and love the concerts be involved in some kind of creative dialogue?
I will let you know if I receive another reply.
I am now composing letters to the editor of both papers.
Thanks for your blog. Have you seen “Sticks and Stones” by Bill Eddins? He has an excellent column today.
from Larry H, forwarding an item from another friend, Sep 4:
Got the following from Harvey Mackay. His name is so familiar. Do you know who he is – besides being on the Orchestra Board?
Dear___
Thank you for taking the time to write. Like you, my fellow Board members and I care deeply about the Minnesota Orchestra. That is why we volunteer, donate, and are committed to getting a contract with our musicians that not only preserves this great art form but also secures the financial health of the Orchestra for decades to come.
Sincerely,
Harvey Mackay

Dick: Re Harvey Mackay, he is synonymous with the 1988 #1 Bestseller: “Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition”. He built a very successful business. In sum: he’s a top “Shark” among aspiring Sharks. His bio is easily accessed on the internet. More personal thoughts here: Notes on Orchestra Situation Sep 5, 2013
Sep 5, 2013 noon: visit this Facebook page, and especially note the polyphonic.org article by Robert Levine.
Excellent Commentary in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune Opinion Section, here.
Sep 6, 2013 5 a..m. from Dick. Quite certainly, for some reason, I have been removed from the Mn Orchestra Management e-mail distribution lists. If this is true, it is very odd, because I can and do receive the documents from others.
Today, the Orchestra Management made public its interpretation of the Financial Review Results, including the entire report: Orch Fin News Rel001. It didn’t come to my in-box, though, at least not from the Orchestra management itself.
Here’s a separate, presumably independent, analysis of the same report.
As one who has worked around numbers for an entire career, numbers can and do “sing”, depending on who is playing the music, and in this case, it is worthwhile to give very wide berth to management interpreting the data which it commissioned, paying someone else to do its report, with apparently no equal opportunity given to the musicians to submit the same data to their own experts for independent analysis.
Think of how Management would react if the Musicians Union who had been in position to do the same identical thing as the orchestra management has now done: a unilateral report.
There would be howling of outrage.
As best I understand the situation, denial of musicians access to Orchestra financial data has been a key issue since the very beginning of the negotiations problems at Orchestra Hall. There is apparent fear by management of allowing an open look at the Orchestra’s books.
I have mentioned before that I was directly involved with all aspects of collective bargaining for many years, in a great number of situations. There were about 40 of us who among us were involved in negotiations and administration of, literally, thousands of contracts between professional employees in teacher unions, and their management (school boards). Whether small or large, all bargains are essentially the same, only the number of actors and thus size of the $ numbers differ.
I know how this process works (or doesn’t, which happened quite rarely). It boils down to relationships between the parties to the bargain, usually primarily one side or the other. The Orchestra situation is an off-the-charts failure of relationships.
In my long experience, “money” was often identified as the Issue, but it was, really, rarely the Real Issue.
There was something else going on.

Money was something the Press and the Public THOUGHT they understood. New Releases could be distributed which were about Money.
Other issues may be mentioned, usually down the page, but the focus always seemed to come back to money, even though those of us at the table knew that money was not the crucial issue.
It is interesting to me to note that almost zero attention is publicly focused on the fact that the Musicians themselves are now 10 months off the job without pay or benefits. They have been locked out. In effect, they have been fired without any cause other than their insistence on completing a bargain on terms and conditions of employment, and people don’t seem to notice or care.
And several times in the past year I have heard from assorted persons who work in one capacity or the other for the Orchestra, and it is very clear that they are under orders to keep their mouths shut, or they will be fired. This is a hard-edged war: as one of Harvey Mackay’s chapters, Lesson 44, described, an “Unfinished Symphony”.
I hope you care, as I do, about what is happening at 1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis 55403.
Quite likely we’ll be outside the doors this evening at the event in the NEW LOBBY at Orchestra Hall just bearing witness….
A report at this space, tomorrow.
The Musicians Union website is here.
The silent musicians at the Hilton Hotel across the street from the rally for the silenced musicians at Orchestra Hall Sep 7, 2013

The silent musicians at the Hilton Hotel across the street from the rally for the silenced musicians at Orchestra Hall Sep 7, 2013


UPDATE Sep 6, 2013
from Andy D.

Harvey [Mackay] attended St. Paul Central High School with me. Always had some modicum of respect for him. Until now.
I’ve long believed what you believe – that this is a planned restructuring of the entire organization and most citizens are leaving [it] to those elites who are scrumming among themselves. The orchestra musicians haven’t the sympathy, nay, empathy, they need to force a revolution. The elitist nature of the board (with some silent dissenters, perhaps) means, generally, that they are immune from the opinions and pressures of the few masses in the gathering storm. Most got where they were trampling on underlings, anyway, and this is especially true in the take-every-dime-we-can get ethos of Wall St., of which these ba[n]kers running the show are offspring, if not siblings.
The other reason these board people are not rising up against their leadership is the comfortable isolation of the rich and detached. Most of the true believers have died off. The survivors seem to be at a loss to do anything about this and the public sector remains silent because they need the money these people can dole out when it comes to elections.
Harvey should have emerged from school with a better perspective, but if he feels he got where he is by saying no – smiling like the shark he is – then little will change him. Without identifying with the deeper meaning of the orchestra itself and what it stands for in this pop culture world of ours, the elites will take this outfit right down the tubes – as they’ve long planned.
Mina Fisher’s Op-Ed this morning says it all – for us fans – but the general public? I don’t believe so, and I’m saddened as hell for it.
I will never set foot in Orchestra Hall again if they destroy the orchestra on their way to a new world of commerce.
Vicci J, Sep 6, 2013 2 p.m.: Two of Vicci’s comments are at the end of this commentary “Even Allies think Davis Should Resign from [Minnesota] Orchestra Board”.
UPDATE Sep. 7, 2013:
Dick Bernard:

I participated in the Rally at Orchestra Hall yesterday afternoon. It was not large – maybe a few hundred – but in my opinion just gathering at the Hall was a big success. The photo above, and a few more below are from the Rally. More information will be found at the site of Save Our Symphony MN, which seems to have been the sponsor of the demo. The Facebook page for SOSmn seems their primary communication vehicle. They, and Orchestrate Excellence, seem to be the major players for the audience/listeners/patrons at this moment: the ones worthy of notice.
On the other “side” today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial is about the Orchestra (the Publisher of the STrib is an Orchestra Board member); yesterday’s STrib had a column by Marilyn Carlson Nelson, a life Board member.
The next big event is 5 p.m. on September 15 at the Lake Harriet Bandshell where Mn Orch will present a free concert. It would be my wish that tens of thousands would be there, surrounding the lake, most unable to hear the Orchestra. If you want any opportunity to hear the music, get there very early, secure a place, bring a picnic lunch. But come, rain or shine. Urge others to come.
In my opinion, this is now a matter between the audience and the Board. Period. But the nature of humans, especially patrons of the arts, is to not want conflict.
In this case, I don’t mean physical conflict – that won’t happen. We are gentle people.
But the Board has to understand that its actions are and will be having consequences. They are having consequences already, but don’t expect the Orchestra Board or the powers in the community to admit this. They count on people forgiving and forgetting and just being worn out and quitting. But the Board needs to be called to account, and those of us in the audience are the ones who will have to do it.
It is a typical response: to finally say, “I can’t do anything, so I won’t….”
Feeling defeated is the person in powers friend.
Keep on, keeping on.
Again, a good settlement, to me, will be one which the Orchestra Union ratifies, solidly. Till then, I will never again darken the doors of the Palace at 1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis.
Check back here from time to time for further updates.
They’ll simply be added to the end, as this update has been.
Some random personal thoughts about what happens when labor relations fails, following the photos.

Sep 7, 2013

Sep 7, 2013


Two guys in evening dress, on Orchestra property, watch the goings on.  I don't know who they are, or why they were there, but not all insiders are in concert with the Orchestra Management.  That is important to remember.

Two guys in evening dress, on Orchestra property, watch the goings on. I don’t know who they are, or why they were there, but not all insiders are in concert with the Orchestra Management. That is important to remember.


Musicians of YMM perform.  (Right behind their feet you can see the "line" that marks the property of Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall.  That line was a big deal, and voluntarily.   respected. But it was a line of separation....  DO NOT CROSS.

Musicians of YMM perform. (Right behind their feet you can see the “line” that marks the property of Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall. That line was a big deal, and voluntarily. respected. But it was a line of separation…. DO NOT CROSS.


Why I'm engaged.  What's being taken from the youth of this area...Example, Opportunity.

Why I’m engaged. What’s being taken from the youth of this area…Example, Opportunity.


When bargaining goes badly….
Dick Bernard

I’m truly “outside the walls”. There is a story about that, going back to the days immediately after my retirement in early 2000. Perhaps for a separate blogpost, at another time.
But there was a time when my daily work was inside collective bargaining and all things related to it: grievances, arbitrations, endless meetings…and about 40 of my staff colleagues did the same thing, year after year, in literally thousands of bargains. (Many elements of this story are told at Sep. 5, above, if you’re interested. The story deserves being told again, with additions.)
As I said to my retired corporate management friend about the Orchestra impasse yesterday, and he agreed, it makes no real difference the size of the unit, or the specific issues involved, every bargain in the end is more about relationships than power or money.
I know more than a little about this topic.
During my entire time as a union staff person, 1972-2000, we bargained contracts.
Except for a single year, 1981, which had quite a number of Strikes, our hundreds of Minnesota bargaining units worked stuff out. (Even in that year, 1981, less than 10% of the bargaining units went out for, mostly, very short periods of time. Every other year, even threatened strikes were very rare.)
We worked stuff out. We settled our differences.
You learn things during a career, and one of my big learnings, which came in the wake of 1981, was that a bargaining unit has power until it strikes: the threat is significant and important.
But once out the door, and a few days on the street, and the dynamics change.
The usually unspoken question on everyone’s mind becomes “how the hell do we get back in those doors we walked out of?”
It’s not easy: The other side is wrestling with exactly the same question: all the bluff and bravado doesn’t mask their own concern: “what the hell do we do now to end this thing?”
But there is a difference between those old conflicts and this one now going on in downtown Minneapolis.
Fast forward to today at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis MN.
Here we have a Lock-Out, which I never experienced in my long career. As I see it, a lock-out is a mirror image of an employee strike, but called by the employer.
On one side we have an Orchestra Board which largely represents big wealth in this community (donors) who own the lock and the chain and the keys. On the other side are the Musicians, with no pay or benefits, for now over ten months.
But there is, as one speaker at the rally said yesterday, a third leg to this Minnesota Orchestra stool: those of us who are loyal to this Orchestra, but have no say, and who largely have been unnoticed and not allowed to participate.
It is as if some cabal took over a towns government, locked out all the workers because the management wanted to change the town model and start fresh, and the residents of the town were not even consulted.
An appointed, unelected dictatorship took over, making changes privately.
But still the tax bills still came: we want you to come see Bill Cosby and others, they said, but don’t mind that we just destroyed your Orchestra. We have the right to determine what you see, and when. And how much you will pay for the privilege.
You can bet that there are plenty of folks on the perpetrator side of this Lock-Out who are now pondering “how the hell do we save face and get the Orchestra back?”
Being successful people, as one of their Board members Harvey Mackay described them, “Sharks”, on top of the power and wealth heap in this town, their thought process likely primarily centers around how can they win this thing (as they describe winning) without admitting that they accepted somebodies stupid idea in the first place.
Money is NOT the issue in this conflict. No amount of wasted newsprint and reports by hired auditors will change that story.
This lock-out is a prime example of why unbridled POWER gained through wealth, position and other similar things is not to be trusted.
The Minnesota Orchestra Management Locked-Out the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, but it really has now locked itself out.
Indeed, this is a strike in reverse, only it is a very, very long strike.
Conflict averse as we might be, we in the Audience are the ones who now need to do the hard work. Most of the community we live in really doesn’t care.
And a large part of this hard work will be in refusing to accept an imposed change in a corporate business plan, quietly made at private meetings, essentially under cover of night.

Check this space tomorrow and following days for any updates, including comments.
September 6, 2013.  The Line.

September 6, 2013. The Line.


Intriguing to me was the gray line, seen below the demonstration marshall in the foreground. This line separated the sidewalk from Orchestra Hall property, and we were asked to not cross. These demonstrators, plus most I have ever been associated with, are unfailingly polite. Not only were they not disruptive, they seldom crossed the line, and then only for a specific purpose, like taking a photograph.
UPDATE Sep 8, 2013:
Dick Bernard

This week will be an intense week.
Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune had another full-page ad from the MN Orchestra Bd: Mn Orch Ad Sep 8, 2013.001 One can only speculate at the audience the Board is attempting to convince, and whether or not that audience can make, or is even interested in making, the Minnesota Orchestra a success. The audience is certainly not the locked out musicians, nor is it the equally locked out audience – people like myself – (which seems to be blamed, along with the musicians themselves, for the problem management asserts it is facing. Apparently, it certainly seems, it was our obligation to do more, even when we weren’t even aware that there was more that apparently needed to be done….)
Orchestra Management voluntarily locked itself out nearly a year ago. It apparently thought that its musicians would cave. They haven’t, though the pressure on them has to be intense. To me, they are heroes.
Make no mistake: at this point the Orchestra Managements sole objective will be to save itself. Period. It has had many opportunities to save face, going way back. It has rejected these opportunities, and none of these are talked about in its news releases and ads. For some reason, I think of Napoleon’s massive ego, and his Waterloo…. I could use a less savory and even more appropriate example of fighting a futile battle to the death, but won’t utter the name.
Hopefully, the cooler heads inside the bunker at Orchestra headquarters will prevail this week.
Ultimately, the musicians first, then the “base” – the audience – will have to decide, whether to reach an agreement, and on what terms; and whether to return to Orchestra Hall and continue the tradition, which continued for 109 years, until the doors were locked in October, 2012. (There are other, scarier, possibilities. I don’t want to go there.)
In the process of protecting its sacred endowment, the Management of the Orchestra has rendered that endowment useless.
In attempting omnipotence, they have become impotent, reduced to full page ads begging the Orchestra, which they have starved for a year, to settle so that the Management can declare a victory.
I don’t think most of the privileged wealthy few who managed to take control of the Orchestra Board knew what they were getting into. They certainly didn’t understand, and probably are incapable of understanding, the common people, like myself, who have supported this Orchestra for years and would have helped more, if only we’d been asked. But it’s too late for that, now.
With wealth comes responsibility.
With power and control comes responsibility as well.
They may get, but they don’t deserve, a way out where they can declare themselves “winners”.
Maybe these “sharks” have met their match….
Just a note about money, money, money:
We have only the Orchestra Management’s “spin” on the money situation. It would appear, that most of the huge amount of money they’re purporting to protect is an endowment, a bank account strictly used for investment purposes: a massive “rainy day” fund.
It is only a very large version of something I have recently been personally involved with: an effort to get 105 people together to accrue $10,500 to endow a fund that would yield a $500 annual scholarship to a single college student at the college we attended years ago.
Two of us are making an effort to find 105 people to contribute $100 each towards such a fund. In effect, we are keeping the $10,000 “in the bank” (the extra $500 is for setting up the fund), and only the earnings on the investment are used for the scholarship. The $10,000 floor is set by the college. It is quite reasonable. The donation is tax deductible.
It seems that Orchestra Management had bigger fish to fry. Instead of $10,000, it seems they may be looking at $100,000,000 or more – eight zeroes, instead of four. 10,000 times 10,000 = $100,000,000. If you have lots of wealth, and a network, this is doable. If you are ordinary, as the vast majority of us are, such a king’s ransom is unimaginable.
It simply demonstrates, to me, the huge economic gulf between the existing Board and the rest of us.
They are out of our league, so far superior to us in economic wealth, that they cannot imagine not being in total control.
But we vastly outnumber them, and if we do not fill their seats, their unimaginable advantage becomes a disadvantage to them.
We have far more power than we think we have.
We simply have to exercise it.
The Musicians Website: here.
Maryann Goldstein, SOSMn,Sep. 6, 2013, outside Orchestra Hall

Maryann Goldstein, SOSMn,Sep. 6, 2013, outside Orchestra Hall


UPDATE Sep 10, 2013:
Dick Bernard

Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune is full of material relating to Mn Orch. The main story on the front page, by Graydon Royce, has a large photo of Osmo Vanska and the headline “Is this goodby for Orchestra’s Vanska?” In the Opinion Section on page A9 is a column by Laurie Greeno and Paula DeCosse, leaders of the group Orchestrate Excellence. There are two letters to the editor on the dispute, by Mary Pattock and Georgia Gustafson. Page A8.
I note with some morbid fascination the Boards continuing preoccupation (obsession?) with the musicians compensation. It is as if these highly skilled and accomplished professional musicians are overpaid. It would be an appropriate full page ad, I would think, to list side by side, the names of all Board members, and all Orchestra members (they are approximately the same in number), and list beside each name the Adjusted Gross Income from line 37 of their 2012 tax return. And see which side does the best.
Of course, this cannot be done; and if it could, the listing for the Board side would likely be complicated by many factors unknown to more common persons. But it is a thought, anyway.
This is not, necessarily, a matter of “Monied Men Governing the Poor”, since the musicians are middle class, and those governing are not all men, but the comparison is apt, nonetheless.
Just a thought.
UPDATE Sep 10, 2013, received overnight:
from Mike R, a long-time fan of the Orchestra and transplanted New York City native who we met for dinner at least annually before one concert or another at Orchestra Hall.

I’m not surprised that the musicians didn’t agree to the management’s proposal in the full-page ad. It called for negotiation for two months and then if there was no agreement, the musicians would go back to work under the terms specified in the ad. If that isn’t a “My Way or the Highway” attitude, what is it?
Management’s initial proposal specified draconian cuts and I wouldn’t blame the musicians for feeling insulted by it. But sitting on their hands for a year, without offering a counter proposal was counter productive.
I think both sides have unrealistic expectations. The musician’s negotiating committee has two labor lawyers from New York. They may not realize the extent of the difference in resources between MNOrch’s patrons and the New York Philharmonic’s patrons. Minneapolis’ blue-haired dowagers may resemble the ones who attend Philharmonic Hall, but I would venture that the depth of their pockets is not nearly that of the New York Philharmonic’s contributors.
Six days left before the deadline.
I think the damage to MNOrch will prove insurmountable. They’ve already lost some key personnel.
Response from Dick: The key fact, difficult to understand, is that the musicians have been Locked Out for almost a year, no pay or benefits. This is not bargaining as usual.
Having come from a collective bargaining background, I think the members of the Orchestra are getting very sound advice from their lawyers. Most people do not understand the realities and the nuances of collective bargaining (of a Lock Out), and the implications of certain actions or inactions. Which of us would voluntarily accept almost an entire year without pay?
I have closely watched this situation from the sidelines ever since I became aware of it at the end of September, 2012. Like everyone else, I am a complete outsider when it comes to access to specific information; on the other hand, I know how this process works.
I agree there has been permanent damage. When (not If, but When) there is a settlement, and those Orchestra members appear on stage for their first concert, I will be there, first one standing, to give them an ovation before they play their first note.
(There is no guarantee that there will be a settlement, but I think there will be…sometime.)
We’ll be at Lake Harriet area Sunday afternoon, September 15, for the 5 p.m. thank you concert.
Manny Laureano, first trumpet for the Minnesota Orchestra, speaks at the rally outside Orchestra Hall on September 6.

Manny Laureano, first trumpet for the Minnesota Orchestra, speaks at the rally outside Orchestra Hall on September 6.


UPDATE Sep 11, 2013 9 a.m.
Dick Bernard

Today’s Star Tribune has a news article by Graydon Royce on page B3 (Metro section). The usual public jockeying in private negotiations.
Yesterday at lunch with three retired colleagues, I was trying to put a frame on the Minnesota Orchestra situation (none of them are as engaged in this dispute as I am – very typical citizens at large in this community.)
I asked them to imagine a small school district in this metropolitan area, and I mentioned one such place. One colleague interrupted: “be careful, two of my grandchildren go there, and it is a great school district.”
I continued: imagine this place has an unelected school board which is larger than the faculty. This board deliberates in private and is unknown to most of the citizens, who have no decision making power, but are expected to go to their kids school programs, and provide all sorts of other support through local taxes. Of course, the taxes is voluntary, since the citizens have chosen to live there.
The place I imagined is the Minnesota Orchestra, and we, the audience, are the disenfranchised citizens.
We far outnumber the unelected Board, and we have lots of power IF we choose to exercise it.
Outside Orchestra Hall, Sep 6, 2013

Outside Orchestra Hall, Sep 6, 2013


UPDATE, Sep 12, 2013
Dick Bernard
Facing Armageddon, and A Man’s Reach

Orchestra Managements full page ad in the Sunday Minneapolis Star Tribune ominously said: “Eight days left….”
Today is Thursday. That must mean there are four days left, which means next Monday is the day.
According to the folks who approved the copy for the ad, anyway.
I wonder how I’d vote, if in the Orchestra, 11 months locked out, having had to subsist with no pay or benefits from the Orchestra, faced with an offer which at this point could only be one to save face for Orchestra Management.
Sharks don’t do deals, other than to win….
There is less question what I’d do as a locked out patron, who didn’t have an opportunity to use any of my 2012-13 season tickets.
Of course, we patrons (aka audience, listeners) appear to not much matter.
For this single listener, the end of the Orchestra as we knew it happened back in January, 2013; but the beginning of the end probably began over a small lunch or dinner at a fancy restaurant somewhere back around the near collapse of our economy in 2008, five Septembers ago, when a few powerful people shared some ideas about making the Big Dreams they had into reality. There is, after all, great profit to be made from adversity, if you know how to play the money game. And there are different definitions of “profit”, too.
There are probably some scribbled ideas on sheets of paper somewhere about
how to exploit a near economic catastrophe as an excuse, in other words.
Or, perhaps there is no definable “ground zero”. It just evolved.
I speak as a single audience member, simply a long term account number at the Minnesota Orchestra (who seems, to my knowledge, to have been ‘disappeared’ from the Orchestra managements ordinary communication network.)
For some time now I have said, including more than once in this and other blogposts, that I’ll return to Orchestra Hall if and only if the Musicians Union ratifies a new contract. (This does not mean a “kick the can down the road” temporary agreement.)
But even if I’m back, the reality remains: without major changes in how business is done at Orchestra Management level, including who is permitted to be on the Board, the new Orchestra Hall will be a monument to failure of management and not to success.
To me, the Minnesota Orchestra of 110 years has been killed.
*
There are many models (mindsets, I’ll call them) which could have been followed to avoid this pending Armageddon.
Just for perspective, here are a couple of examples, compared against the current apparent model:
A. Alan Fletcher, President and CEO of the Aspen Music School and Festival, said this on June 23, 2013: “Classical music in the United States depends on four groups working together: musicians, donors, administrators, and listeners.” Two months later he said similarly, across the street from Orchestra Hall.
There is at least an implication in his remarks that these four components have essentially equal value.
B. As those of us in the audience now know, the Minnesota Orchestra Management has (and may have always had) a different model:
1) administrators/large donors/Board;
2) musicians;
3) listeners/audience;

with the administrators/large donors superior; and the listeners (it now appears) essentially irrelevant except to purchase tickets.
This model worked so long as there was a benevolent donor class which believed in great music for the greater community played by a top tier Orchestra conducted by a top tier music director.
Wealthy opportunists who like music but like power and control even more apparently saw their opportunity to take over the Orchestra, and have done so, and here we are.
C. And there’s a third model, which Board member Harvey Mackays “Swim with the Sharks” book caused me to revisit this week.
The alternative is in “A Man’s Reach” by Elmer L. Andersen (edited by Lori Sturdevant, University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
Mr. Andersen would be well known to any of the “players” on the current Orchestra Board: orphan who loved books and learning; well to do and very successful business owner, life-long Republican, MN political and civic leader, including Governor and UofM Board of Regents, philanthropist, on and on.
We were friends the last 12 years of his life.
In his book, pages 96-100, Mr. Andersen describes his “corporate philosophy” which “was built around four priorities in a definite order.”
1) “Our highest priority…should be service to the customer.”
2) “Number two was that the company [H. B. Fuller] should exist deliberately for the benefit of the people associated in it. I never like the word employee. It intimated a difference in class within a plant.”
3) [H.B.] “Fuller’s third priority was to make money.”
4) “Our philosophy did not leave out service to the larger community. We put it in fourth place….”

Mr. Andersen died in 2004. It would be interesting to hear Mr. Andersen and Mr. Mackay et al discuss the word “customer” in context with the Minnesota Orchestra.
There is, in my opinion, a severe distinction and disconnect between Mr. Mackay’s “Shark” approach to business and Andersen’s “A Man’s Reach” philosophy, and the distinction is on display at 1111 Nicollet Avenue now.
Mr. Andersen can’t engage in this conversation, at least directly. I wonder what he and many of his other contemporaries – former pillars of this community – would have to say.
Four days. My best to the parties.
The Listeners will determine the future.
(more updates below the photo”
A Man's Reach, c. Regents of the University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 2000

A Man’s Reach, c. Regents of the University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 2000


Later updates Sep 12, 2013:
Excellent commentary in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune p. 11 by Bruce Ridge of Raleigh NC, chairman, International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians: “Paper shouldn’t echo orchestra leadership’s dirge.” click here.
Comment received from Alan S: Many members of the Management Board of the Minnesota Orchestra have in the past or still do run large companies. Most of them deal with unions. Let’s imagine Marilyn Carlson Nelson locking out the union from the Radisson Hotels that the maids belong to, at contract negotiation time. No maids to make the beds, to clean the rooms, etc. Harvey Mackay locking out the workers that make envelopes until his demands are met. All of his customers placing orders for envelopes, but no workers to make them.
MinnPost has picked up my post about Armageddon: here
Comment from John G: Many thanks, Dick, for your sustaining pressure to get this conundrum resolved. Elmer Andersen was “right on,” as I also see it. It would be interesting to see what historians and musicologists will say about this fiasco 15-10 years from now. Likely they will interpret it, as you have, within the context of an Age Against Unions, an Age of Wealth at all costs, an Age Bereft of a Conscience. I agree. There’s a better way to do business. Somehow we listeners have to find a way to restructure the MOA. But if the present MOA needlessly forces Osmo out, I’m out as well…
(click to enlarge)
Dedication of new Minneapolis Convention Center 1927, performances by Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and Apollo Male Chorus.  Great thanks to Sean Vogt, current director of Apollo Male Chorus.

Dedication of new Minneapolis Convention Center 1927, performances by Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and Apollo Male Chorus. Great thanks to Sean Vogt, current director of Apollo Male Chorus.


Update, Sep 13, 2013
Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune has a front page Metro section piece on the new Orchestra Hall sans musicians, of course. I have not yet seen it in the on-line STrib. It is the paper we receive at home in suburban Woodbury, so it’s area wide news.
Overnight came this comment from Sean V, along with the wonderful photo above, of the opening of the Minneapolis Convention Center in 1927:
I enjoyed your Minnesota Orchestra article in the “Minn Post.” It was very well-written. I enjoyed reading it.
I direct the Apollo Male Chorus which opened the Minneapolis Auditorium with the then Minneapolis Symphony in 1927. Apollo’s ties to the MN Orch stretches back quite a ways. I am attaching the photo from that opening with optimism that the crowds and the orchestra will be alive once again.
As a former horn player, and a current continuo player, I’ve been on the receiving end of incompetent executive management. In any event…
Update Sep 14, 2013
from Vicci J:

What if the orchestra musicians received the same amount as in the past, and knowing the endowment will run out in 2018, plan to close the orchestra in 2018?
At least Minnesota can boast it has had one of the nations best orchestra’s for 100 years. We know the orchestra will not sell enough tickets to pay the musicians salary’s.
There is no audience development in the K-12 schools.
Dick’s response: It is Orchestra Managements claim that it will run out of money, of course. And, of course, this is the absolute worst possible case scenario. Vicci’s last sentence is the crucial one.
Update Sep 15, 2013: Louise Pardee letter to the editor in St. Paul Pioneer Press
The audience: locked out, too
It’s time for the patrons of the Minnesota Orchestra to be heard. The board has not only locked out the musicians for nearly a year, but they have locked out the audience, and have failed to respond to our emails and letters.
This is unconscionable, and I think it is not really about the money. In 2010, the board was bragging that the budget was balanced; they were in the black and the time was right to ask the Legislature for money to help renovate Orchestra Hall. This would bring in more people, because they were certain that patrons would come to see and enjoy a beautiful lobby. Did they forget about the music?
Two years later, the situation was so dire that the orchestra was on the verge of financial collapse. How could it have gotten so bad in such a short time? These board members are bankers and businessmen. Surely, their financial analysis should have been better. Does it have anything to do with manipulating information to suit their own purposes?
But at this point, it became the musicians’ fault. They just make too much money. The board has only one vision of reality. The community cannot afford a world-class orchestra. Did they ask us? The orchestra is a precious legacy, a gift to us from the visionaries who presented the first concert in 1903 and all those who have nurtured it and supported it ever since. Why did they assume that we would not support it as we always have?
Also, they seem to have forgotten that it is those very musicians, who by their hard work and excellence, have put this orchestra on the map of the musical world. Grammy nominations, Carnegie Hall and European tours where they performed in some of the best concert halls in the world garnering high acclaim, all mean nothing.
Now, the deadline is looming, and they are heading for a mighty crash if an agreement is not reached. Why will they not cooperate with their chosen mediator? Who has given them the right to destroy this orchestra with its wonderful 110-year history?
What exactly are they trying to prove? How will they pick up the pieces and what will they put in their beautiful new box?
Louise Pardee, White Bear Lake
From Larry H, Sep 15, 2013, a forwarded item from a friend: “I strongly urge you, if you haven’t already, to read Scott Chamberlain’s What Does Victory Look Like? in his Mask of the Flower Prince blog. Are you buoyed up as I am after that marvelous concert and talk today?”
Dick: This is first time I’ve heard of this blog, but the writer seems very well informed.
Thoughts/Photos after the Lake Harriet Thank You Concert of the Minnesota Orchestra Musicians, Sunday September 15, 2013:
There were thousands there for the concert, a wonderful hour and a half. At least five of us from my own Orchestra list have checked in so far. Other comments will be added as I receive them. There were several important announcements last night (no settlement). Best to check in regularly on the Musicians website, here, or the website of Save Our Symphony MN, here.
The Monday Sep 16 Minneapolis Star Tribune (p A7) has a long article about the Orchestra, including a photo from yesterday afternoon, and a cutline that indicates that more than 4,000 were in the audience. I won’t dispute that. The article emphasizes the warfare issues of bargaining, of course. Personally, I have confidence in the members of the Orchestra; at this point I have no confidence whatsoever in the management. And of course, we in the audience are out in the cold, just waiting. I’ll write more on that at this space tomorrow.
But Sunday evening at Lake Harriet was absolutely marvelous. An historic moment I would say.
Part of the audience September 16
(click to enlarge any photos)
Portion of Lake Harriet Bandshell crowd September 15, 2013

Portion of Lake Harriet Bandshell crowd September 15, 2013


from Madeline S, Sep 16, 2013: What a wonderful way to spend a late afternoon in the early fall! Our great locked-out musicians of the world-class Minnesota Orchestra gave a truly fantastic performance for the large (also locked-out) audience at Lake Harriet Bandshell today under the exceptionally fine conducting of Manny Laureano, principal trumpet of the Minnesota Orchestra, co-artistic director of the Minnesota Youth Symphonies, and who also occupies one of the specifically “endowed chairs” of the Minnesota Orchestra. The sun came out and made what would have been a pretty cool day quite alright. We missed hearing some notes when the occasional plane flew overhead, but the orchestra and conductor kept it together beautifully.
Before the performance, principal cellist, Tony Ross, told the audience that in the event there was no settlement with the orchestra board, the musicians of the orchestra will launch their own self-produced Fall Concert Series which will be partially supported by matching funds they have raised along with donations from their audience. The first such concert would be at Ted Mann Concert Hall (UofM), and acclaimed pianist, Emanuel Ax, who is currently scheduled to perform with them October 4 & 5, has said he will perform with the Minnesota Orchestra musicians wherever THEY are. Also, unbelievably, orchestra management plans to have a Symphony Ball on Sept. 20–with or without a Symphony??? It was suggested that if there is no settlement with the musicians, the green SOS (Save Our Symphony) shirts and signs should come out with supporters of the musicians outside Orchestra Hall at that time!!! Keep in touch for more information at the musicians’ website. (Photo by Madeline at end of this section.)
Louise Pardee, White Bear Lake, (center left, see her letter in Sep 15 Pioneer Press above) and Dr. Joe Schwartzberg at the concert Sep 15.

Louise Pardee, White Bear Lake, (center left, see her letter in Sep 15 Pioneer Press above) and Dr. Joe Schwartzberg at the concert Sep 15.


Manny Laureano conducted his orchestra colleagues with gusto Sep 15.  Theirs was a wonderful performance.

Manny Laureano conducted his orchestra colleagues with gusto Sep 15. Theirs was a wonderful performance.


At the Harriet Bandshell concert Sep 15, 2013, compliments of Madeline Simon.

At the Harriet Bandshell concert Sep 15, 2013, compliments of Madeline Simon.


Update Sep. 17, 2013
We have our tickets for October 5, 2013 at Ted Mann Concert Hall. Information about tickets, plus information about how to contribute to the Minnesota Orchestra Musicians can be found at the Musicians website, here.
Some of you have no idea what I look like. Someone took a photo of me recently (I’m usually on wrong side of the camera), and I’ve included the photo at the end.
A Personal Letter to the Audience* of the Minnesota Orchestra
On Sunday, September 8, 2013, a full page ad appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, paid for by the Minnesota Orchestra Board, headlined “Eight Days Left. But We CAN Get This Done!”
By my count, “eight days” was yesterday. It’s not yet done.
I’m simply an audience* member. Here are a few thoughts for you, my colleagues, my fellow listeners and patrons of the Minnesota Orchestra.
Yesterday I took time to review the first e-mail from the Orchestra Board announcing what began 50 weeks ago, October 1, 2012. The e-mail was dated October 1, 2012, and in relevant part says: “Today we regret to report that…[w]ith no contract in place, the Minnesota Orchestral Association has suspended salary and benefits for musicians until a new agreement can be reached…we’ve made the decision to cancel concerts through November 25 [2012]….”
The entire e-mail is here: Mn Orch Oct 1, 2012001. It is useful to print it out and read it again, while keeping in mind that it is a perfectly written advocacy document for one side, unencumbered by other facts or opinions which might differ with the official conclusion the document was intended to convey to us: “it’s their fault”. Also remember, it was sent 352 days before today.
At the demonstration outside Orchestra Hall on September 6, one speaker most aptly noted that the organism that is the Minnesota Symphony is like a “three-legged stool”.
Coming from a rural North Dakota background, it caused me to think back to Grandma and Grandpa and Uncles and Aunts sitting on three legged stools milking the family cows. It is a rich memory – we even had occasional opportunities to practice when we visited.
Later this week I’ll be in that very barn. It is now essentially abandoned, awaiting the fate of all old barns.
But I digress.
The speaker noted a particular problem with the three-legged stool that is our Minnesota Orchestra.
1. One leg, the Orchestral Association, is omnipotent with all the benefits of what we traditionally call “power” in this society.
2. A second leg is the Orchestra itself, which is a union, which has sacrificed all, literally, to reach an equitable settlement. And then there is the…
3. …third leg, which includes we listeners in the seats; the “farm team” in youth band programs in schools everywhere; people and little kids who come with their parents to be introduced to great music by great musicians; people who for assorted reasons cannot come to hear the Orchestra in person, but love great music, etc. etc.
This third group, in assorted ways, seems powerless, or so would go conventional wisdom. We’re along for the ride…if invited (best I know, I’ve been dropped from the Orchestral Associations e- and mail list. Stay tuned….)
My ancestors, attempting to sit on a stool of our current model, while milking a cow, would encounter some difficulties. Maybe that powerless leg would fall off; or that dominant leg would demand all the attention…. It just wouldn’t work. Three legs are three equal legs.
So, here we are, Audience*. What to do?
We Audience members are basically invisible (or so it seems).
When I hear talk about the Audience*, the talk is not about those of us in the seats, but the empty seats. There could be an entire essay about this topic. The point is, those of in the seats don’t seem to much matter. Someday, they’ll open the doors, and we will come back….
We are, those of us who make up the Third Leg of the stool, far more powerful than we give ourselves credit for being. All we lack is the resolve to empower ourselves.
For myself, and I speak only for myself, I have resolved never to darken the door of Orchestra Hall again, until the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra have ratified an Agreement on all terms and conditions. (This doesn’t count an interim “kick the can down the road” agreement – we know how those work in our Congress in Washington D.C.)
And I choose to be outspoken.
For you? Your choice.
But, please, refuse to be powerless.

* – Audience? Anyone who has ever attended, even a single time, a concert by the Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall, or anywhere else the Orchestra has performed.
NOTE:
So, how do I fit in?
1. Over the years, at bare minimum, we’ve been to 75 concerts by the Orchestra at Orchestra Hall, almost all in Row Four Center. Maybe we qualify as “average” – I don’t know. We saw some memorable ‘side’ events, live, from those seats in Orchestra Hall; the roses on the chair of a violinist who had recently died; Itzhak Perlman’s fall; Eije Oue conducting the Star Spangled banner at the beginning of the program in September, 2001.
2. We have attended other concerts of various kinds at various times, including during Sommerfest, and occasional public events in parks, including Sep 15 at Lake Harriet.
3. We came for the music, not for the Lobby, or the Cookies (though the caterers were certainly good!), or the coffee.
4. Of course, we parked, we ate downtown (usually at the Hilton). Orchestra day for us was usually at least six hours.
5. We supported the minstrel of the evening in the skyway; we occasionally bought tickets for others, including for one program which was cancelled.
6. As my wife would attest, I used intermission to wander around, to just see who was in those seats, out in the lobby. We were certainly not a cookie cutter bunch.
7. The list could go on. What are your memories? Your tradition? Your stand?
Dick Bernard Sep 12, 2013

Dick Bernard Sep 12, 2013


(This also appears as a separate blog entry at September 17, 2013.)
The Orchestra Ball
Friday night, the Minnesota Orchestra Ball will take place at Orchestra Hall (see link at end of this segment). We will not be there, we never have been. We wouldn’t qualify for admission. Even if we did, on Friday, I’ll be 320 miles away, in rural North Dakota, visiting my elderly Aunt and Uncle, and in the process, Friday, I’ll walk up into the haymow of the old barn where ‘back in the day’ my Grandpa more than likely did some fiddling: he was a farmhouse fiddler who was good enough to have a small band in his younger days, playing community dances. The story is that he was trained on violin with sheet music back home in Wisconsin, near Dubuque. He did not play by sound alone.
This has been an awful year for the Minnesota Orchestra musicians. It has probably been a horrible week for the Orchestra Board. It was predicted to be a nasty month in the negotiations standoff, and that prophecy has been fulfilled.
Yesterday’s listing of Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans included five Minnesotans, two of whom are on the Board of the Minnesota Orchestra. One, Marilyn Carlson Nelson, has a worth of $3.9 billion, it says; another, Karen Hubbard, is represented by her husband, Stanley E. Hubbard, whose worth is a paltry $2.2 billion.
I would guess they will be at the Ball.
The Orchestra Board is full of other “high net worth” individuals who, simply acknowledging reality, have no way of understanding ordinary people like myself. And they’ve made this lack of understanding even worse by supposedly saving the Orchestra by their own financial largesse, without involving people like me in the process.
The issue of terms and conditions of employment for the Musicians is not, and probably never has been, the issue. It is something else entirely.
The Board made a fatal mistake, and that will never be acknowledged by them; and they’ll continue to demand that people like ourselves rescue them so they can declare victory.
Avoid the temptation.
Friday beginning at 4:30, if you can, find your way to Orchestra Hall, for this program sponsored by Save Our Symphony MN
As I say, I can’t be there. I wish I could….
Sep 16, 2013
from Mary B:

MN Orch concert::::I was there and have never before heard (meticulously brought out) all the gorgeous non- melodic voices in the symphony. Much was found by Edo and harvested by the musicians – respect for the whole of the piece is amazing….and that respects us…..
Memory I played that horn solo with the Babbitt band at MN state contest around 1962 and we earned an A so it was special to me…Tchaikovski
Wasn’t it remarkable how perfectly poised to listen the audience was-so yearning to hear and be blessed by music. Once in Sweden I experienced an outdoor audience with such rapt attention and did not ever believe it possible in our USA’s habit of scattered attention…
Proudly,
Sep 19, 2013
from Val D:

Bravo Dick!
I appreciate your discretion, your insights, and your passion for the MN Orchestra. You have kept me in the loop for many months and I thank you for that. Because of you, I have been able to inform others with regard to the musicians struggle and some of them joined me at the Lake Harriet concert on Sunday. (It was a lovely day.) Others are buying tickets for the Oct 4/5 concert at the Ted Mann Concert Hall.
Just wanted you to know that your efforts ripple on.
Take care,
UPDATE Sep. 25, 2013
Thoughts at another deadline.
Dick Bernard

I was out of state Sep 19-21, and very busy on return, and was out of the loop for happenings regarding the Orchestra.
We’re subscribers to the Minneapolis Star Tribune and this mornings paper had an article “Talks intensify as orchestra deadline nears”. You can read the entire article here: Orch Talks Sep 25 STRIB001.
It seems so long ago, and it is, since that e-mail came to me from Mn Orchestra management on October 1, 2012, cancelling the programs through October 25. That, too, you can read for yourself. Mn Orch Oct 1, 2012001
Nothing much seems to have changed in the last 12 months. Power and Control seems dominant, as does the Sacred Endowment, presently worthless (except to the investment bankers). The Audience, people in the seats, like me, are irrelevant while Big People manage what we are allowed to know about the process and the prospects.
On October 1, 2013, regardless of the news between now and then, I will write my third letter to the entire Board. I will expect, as before, no acknowledgement of the letter (Harvey Mackays recent form e-mail doesn’t count as a response).
I will note my August 28, 2013, letter to Mr. Campbell and Mr. Henson, requesting a complete copy of the Business Plan, as well as the Bylaws of the Orchestral Association…a letter to which there has been no response. (We’re subscribers, and we’ve given to the Guaranty Fund 11 of the last 23 years – you’d think we’d qualify for such information.)
I will also note my September 6, 2013, letter to Mr. Henson, where I ask to be re-included on the e-mail and correspondence list of the Orchestra – a list from which I have quite obviously been excised, even though I am a long-time subscriber. There has been no response to that letter either.
I still rely on other untainted people to see what the Orchestra is saying to my colleagues.
Addiction to Power and Control is as deadly as any other addiction, and it is visible within the walls at 1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis 55403.
My support is with the Musicians.
Update, September 28, 6 a.m.
Sometime today, so announces the Star Tribune on-line, the Musicians of the Orchestra will vote on some undefined proposal. At the same space, to the right, is a tab including yesterday’s article about the proposed “signing bonus” put together by Marilyn Carlson Nelson and associates.
It is my practice, born of many years and many times sitting in tense meetings with members, or their negotiators, considering whether to take proposals to the membership for a vote, to not predict, comment, suggest or judge the outcome. All is much too complicated inside the process to judge from outside what they should do.
And when the musicians settle, whether today or never, I won’t judge that either.
I know collective bargaining from the inside.
I knew the MnOrch folks only as very fine musicians.
I’m also coming to know them as wonderful examples of standing up for justice.
All best wishes to them all today, and in the future.
Now, speaking from the audience perspective, that’s a whole other story, continuing, later….
Update, Sep 28, 2013, after reading the STrib letters: Today’s Star Tribune includes a letter from Will Shapira, which speaks for itself:
MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA
Explaining to do if new offer is rejected
After reading of the Minnesota Orchestra management’s latest offer to the locked-out musicians and the Sept. 30 deadline upon all of us, I think public opinion for a settlement will now swing to management, and the musicians and their representatives had better have really good reasons if they reject this offer.
Of course they’re not going to get everything they want, but to the public, that six-figure salary plus a $20,000 signing bonus places the musicians, rightly or wrongly, in the same class as professional athletes, with their bloated salaries, signing bonuses, performances bonuses and even body weight bonuses. Members of the public may now certainly view the musicians as pulling down incomes far above most of their own.
I hope that Marilyn Carlson Nelson, who is funding the signing bonuses, will proceed to create a new business model for the orchestra based on public-private partnerships for the long term. There could not be a better leader from the private sector, and she needs to get the governor and the Legislature on board with a plan that can be finalized either in a one-day special session — which costs about $25,000 and would help build confidence in the orchestra’s future (read: another reason for Vanska to stay here) — or the next regular session in 2014.
Dick’s Response: I think Mr. Shapira (who I’ve known for a long time) is blinded by his distaste for anything having to do with professional sports in the Twin Cities. The clue here is in his second paragraph.
Rather than very low six figure salaries for orchestra players, even ‘bench-warmer Bob’ professional sports athletes make seven figures. There is no equivalence, except that the Orchestra is world-class, and has long been one of the U.S. five top tier Orchestras. And it has no bench warmers, to my knowledge.
I had a long career, full-time, in labor relations, and virtually all of my professional associates were in the same business. In 27 years, and several thousand contracts between us (and that was just in Minnesota), I constantly observed in labor conflicts that money was portrayed to the public as the issue; but the issue was really never money. The real issue was something else entirely. And never in my experience was there anything that even approached a one year Lock-Out as this one is rapidly becoming. In fact, there was never a Lock-Out in all of those thousands of bargains. This one is without any precedent.
It is pretty clear that the movers and shakers within the Minnesota Orchestra management have money, understand and love money, and think that money will solve all of their problems. I don’t know the final results of this weekend, but I wouldn’t trust the ‘bonus’ as any resolution.
I do agree with Will that “the public” may not understand the significance of this dispute, but this is a hugely significant matter for the public good of this community.
Update 1:30 p.m. Sep 28: A friend called relating this announcement on Minnesota Public Radio.
from Carol T, 2:50 p.m. Sep 28: So let me get this straight. The orchestra hasn’t been paid for a year. The Board wants to cut their salaries dramatically – although less than earlier. Then they want to throw them a $20,000 bone – in payment for a year of no salary/insurance, and which is less than their future salaries would be cut? I don’t blame them for voting “no.”
I guess I don’t know enough about the background of this controversy- If the Board thinks their salaries are so exorbitant, how were they allowed to get to that point? Weren’t they negotiated by the union? And so, how can the Board not honor that?? Also, how can they have the moolah to make such a fancy renovation of Orchestra Hall and then plead that they’re too broke to pay agreed-on salaries? (I realize some of that money came from us – the taxpayers – who weren’t asked about our priorities.)
Yes, they make more than most of us. So what? So do most all the Board members, I’d assume. So does my doctor, my dentist… I cannot do what they do – and neither can I play a cello, or direct an orchestra. You don’t compare with the general public – but with a comparable orchestra in a comparable city.
A very interesting timeline and commentary from SOSMn in the Sep 27, 2013 MinnPost: here.
from Mike R, Sep 28, 2013: More and more, I think the Orchestra personnel are on a track of self-destruction. I agree that the management proposals have been more than a little arrogant, but my impression of the orchestra is that the subtext of their statements has been “We’re a world-class orchestra. Now pay us like a world-class orchestra.
They’re a world-class orchestra largely because Osmo made them one. He gets a response from them that Sir Neville or Eije Oue did not. Given the number of first chair players who have left, are they still world class? If Osmo leaves, they may remain a good group, but they’ll need to work to regain the cachet of “world-class.”
The musicians need to remember also, that it has taken years of volunteer work to build the audience to support the orchestra. The players work hard for years to get some of the benefits other professions now take for granted. Not every orchestra pays its musicians for a full year. I would venture to say that most don’t as they can’t afford to. Remember before MNOrch filled in with a Pops season and Somerfest. The hall was dark from June thru August.
I guess I’ve written enough about it.
Stay well and I hope to see you at a concert, soon. Pat and I attended the SPCO opener at Shepherd of the Valley Church this past Thursday. We missed them, just like we miss MNOrch. They were very good. We were very glad to see them.
Christian Zacharias conducted and soloed in Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto. Listening to a recording just isn’t the same thing as seeing and hearing a great piece played by a first class orchestra and a world-class soloist. There’s a thrill you just don’t get from a recording.
Dick response to Mike (we tried to coordinate concerts with them at least once a season so know them well: It’s interesting the kind of responses that come in. Right before yours came one from A.S. that is very different. He’s submitted it as letter to editor so I won’t include it for awhile.
Of course, I’m not even a musician, so I probably can’t discern good from mediocre. But Osmo couldn’t have made a world class orchestra out of amateurs; and world class musicians don’t conduct themselves! On the other hand, when I listened to them at Lake Harriet earlier this month, conducted by Manny Laureano, one of their own, they did a superb job (even with the plane interference).
And I do a bit more than most about the back story of this mess. I don’t believe the issue was ever really about money at all. They expected they’d have to take a cut. But they wanted to see the Orchestra Association books, and were denied these, the suspicion being that there is information within that would at minimum be embarrassing to the Orchestral Association.
Letter to Editor from Alan S, Sep 28: You [Minneapolis Star Tribune] printed a letter from Willard B. Shapira in which he called the musicians have now been offered “a six figure salary along with a $20,000 signing bonus which would put them in the same class, rightly or wrongly, as professional athletes with their bloated salaries, signing bonuses, performances bonuses, and even body weight bonuses.” He goes on to state that members of the public may now certainly view the musicians as pulling down incomes far above most of their own.
Evidently Mr. Shapira must think that these musicians go from the high school band to the Minnesota Orchestra. However, there is at least anywhere from 4 to 6 years of music college, like Juliard or the Manhattan Music Schools in New York City, and many other wonderful music schools in this country and world wide. To get into these schools, they are forced to do blind auditions, like we see on TV on the program “The Voice” and then after they graduate they again do blind auditions in order to join a major orchestra. They go through the same intensive education as a medical student and that is why they are entitled to a high six figure income.
New blog post by Dick Bernard at October 1, 2013:
NOTES: I wrote previously to the Audience of the Minnesota Orchestra here.
The group Save Our Symphony MN has an excellent chronology of the history of this conflict. You can read it here: chronology2013-09-25 I’m sure it will be updated.
The Musicians website is here. Support the Musicians. Come to the rally today, and one of the concerts this weekend.
Today is the first day of the second year of the Lock-Out of Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra.
Late yesterday the Minnesota Orchestra cancelled the arrangements for the concert at Carnegie Hall, and no doubt will blame the Orchestra. I can’t help but see an analogy between the cancellation of the Carnegie Hall Contract, and the Shutdown of the U.S. Government on the same day. But that’s another story.
Rich and Powerful People control public information and most everything else for the Minnesota Orchestra Board; but the members of the Orchestra, on Saturday Sep. 29, rejected 60-0 the last position of the Board. There is a powerful message in that unanimous rejection.
I represented teachers for many years, and I cannot recall, ever, anything near the unanimity of that 60-0 vote. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. But it did on Saturday.
The third “leg” of this non-functional “stool”, we, the audience, continues to be ignored in the public conversation. But we have all the power, if we choose to exercise that power.
If we want to retain a world-class orchestra in this community, it’s up to us; if we’re satisfied with average and ordinary we’ll get that too. It all depends on whether we now support the locked-out musicians, or admit defeat ourselves.

Yes, we audience members control what we’ll get. But we cannot be passive. We must act. Nobody can do it for us. We are key.
What I plan to do is at the end.

There is limited interest within the community at large about the disaster that has been the Minnesota Orchestra situation for the last 12 months. This isn’t a surprise to me. Most citizens, likely, have never been in Orchestra Hall; they weren’t told what this loss would mean. It will be their permanent loss if the Orchestra is diminished in stature, but they won’t realize it, at least directly, or immediately.
So, we audience members are crucial. We know the implications to this community of this potential loss of a community treasure.
Two contextual hypothetical examples for your consideration.
1. In my town of Woodbury there is an old farm house and farmyard, Heritage House, in a small park at the corner of Lake Road and Radio Drive. This tiny house dates back to 1870, and it exists and continues solely because of a loyal small group of people who think it is significant to local history. A couple of years ago, I took an interest in it. You can see the results here.
WHAT IF the people who lovingly maintain Heritage House lost interest; or new city leaders said we’ve got better use for that property; or we don’t like that dumb old building – let’s replace it with a more modern facility?
Ridding our town of Heritage House would be noticeable and irreplaceable loss for the total community. Only the advocates who appreciate the importance of history could save the place.
Heritage House, Woodbury MN September 6, 2013

Heritage House, Woodbury MN September 6, 2013


2. But there’s a much better example about what this theft of our orchestra from us will mean, in my opinion:
We are part of a very large metropolitan area – over 3,000,000 population. And most of our children and grandchildren go to large schools in large school districts.
But there are small school districts too, high quality ones, which have few students and teachers and are supported by a smaller community…whose relatives and grandparents live elsewhere.
What if one of these small school districts was taken over by a School Board, unelected by and unaccountable to the citizens of the town; a Board which changed the education plan, and in a dispute with the teachers who made the district great simply locked the school house doors for an entire year, completely ignoring the children and the citizens.
Would such an action have ramifications in the community? Would its effects ripple through the surrounding larger community as well? Would it have long-term consequences for future generations, including the children?
Absolutely yes.
We, the audience, are “the community” which has been ignored, now, for a year. The musicians have been our advocate. Now it’s our turn.
We can choose to do nothing, and accept fate as served up to us, or we can act in the many individual ways available to us.
Not only does this Board have to change its ways of doing business, including reforming itself; but it has to feel the heat from us in ways which it best understands.
As for me, I will strongly support the Musicians as they seek a fair agreement; I will not support the management of this Orchestra in its attempts to unilaterally implement a new business plan which it didn’t even ask for my input; nor did it clearly ask for my help when (it appears) help was needed.
The Board of the Minnesota Orchestra locked me out for an entire year. I will not darken the doors of Orchestra Hall until the musicians, by ratification of their contract, say its okay: come back.
It’s time for us all to stand up and be counted for as long as it takes.
That’s my stand.

from John G, Oct 1, 2013:
Could the locked-out musicians of the MO on their own perform at Carnegie Hall at the planned time, and could Osmo on his own (after resigning from the official MO) rejoin them there to conduct the concerts? The musicians would have formed the Minnesota Diaspora Orchestra. (Rehearsal space needs to be donated within the Twin Cities.)
From Larry H, Oct 1, 2013:
Thank you Dick for your continuing posts. As for me, I also will not return as a patron until the audience members are invited to return by the musicians.
Meanwhile, the vision of the MOA led by Mr. Campbell and Mr. Henson seems to be more clear. Public posturing aside, the avenue they have chosen is leading us to a lesser quality product that will be marketed as a “world class orchestra”.
Today we await the fateful decision of our master conductor. Likely, Osmo Vänskä will resign and seek other opportunities. I was in the audience several years ago when Osmo’s contract was extended and the agreement was announced at Orchestra Hall. It was stated by the MOA representative that we were in the midst of the golden era of the Minnesota Orchestra. This golden era ended abruptly one year ago today as the lock-out of the musicians began.
It is difficult to envision an excited ticket base captivated by an orchestra presenting a full-season of concerts led by a substitute conductor. Any artistically literate audience member, who has valued the magnificent interpretations of masterworks conducted by Osmo Vänskä, will quickly notice a different product. The absence of our familiar resident world-class artist-musicians will only augment the MOA’s worst-case scenario.
The legacy of the orchestra has been tainted and compromised. I doubt if the Henson vision of the Minnesota Orchestra will have the same level of patron support in future years, Minnesota’s “destination orchestra” is effectively being disbanded, and after a year void of concerts, a large portion of the audience has turned to other ensembles and venues with their budgeted entertainment dollars.
Looking to the future, it is hard to imagine if a lesser orchestra will command the same level of ticket pricing. Meanwhile, the renovated Orchestra Hall has a reduced seating capacity. It seems reasonable to believe that the audience revenue stream will be reduced as the MOA seeks sustainability after its public relations debacle.. Furthermore, some angered patrons, feeling ignored and disenfranchised, will simply not return to Orchestra Hall.
It is hard to believe that the donor base will be sustained. Reductions in giving seem imminent. Meanwhile, the MOA can offer a sparkling new lobby that leads to an empty concert hall.
The Henson-Campbell vision has now effectively altered the cultural fabric of culture in our community. All of this happened without accountability to the main-stream audience.
The clear solution, with an artistically sustainable future in a stabilized economic environment at Orchestra Hall, needs the locked-out musicians to again be the Minnesota Orchestra’s artists in residence.
Another thought … general public of MN doesn’t much care, nor does WCCO … WCCO is across the street yet has barely covered this story … even under normal circumstances they give the orchestra limited, if any coverage … yet, sports get continuous free advertising.
UPDATE OCTOBER 2, 2013
A Rally at Peavey Plaza
Dick Bernard:

Yesterday afternoon we joined several hundred at the first anniversary of the Lock-Out Rally at Peavey Park, adjoining Orchestra Hall. We saw quite a number of folks we know. The community is growing.
Much of what I have to say about the matter is in today’s blog post about the Shut Down. You can read it here. The portion about the Orchestra Rally and Situation is down the page a-ways. Here is a Facebook album link to some of the photos I took yesterday.
Featured speaker yesterday afternoon was Tony Hair, President of the 90,000 member American Federation of Musicians (AFM). The post rally AFM release is here: MN Orch Board AFM Statement Oct 1, 2013
Tony is a plain-spoken Mississippian born and raised in Texas. When I saw him before the rally began, I wondered who this guy was! Sort of a Willy Nelson in demeanor, down to the cowboy boots. But, no question why he’s AFM President, chosen to lead this nations musician, and invited to support our Minnesota Orchestra.
Tony Hair, President American Federation of Musicians, speaks at Rally for Minnesota Orchestra Musicians Oct 1, 2013.  At right, Tony Ross holds a sign held when the Lock-Out began one year earlier, October 1, 2012.

Tony Hair, President American Federation of Musicians, speaks at Rally for Minnesota Orchestra Musicians Oct 1, 2013. At right, Tony Ross holds a sign held when the Lock-Out began one year earlier, October 1, 2012.


The description of the last futile negotiating session with the Board, from the Unions perspective, was troubling. It is a version that will not be shared by Management in their fancy news releases, that is for certain. I’m a veteran in negotiations rooms so I understand. Perhaps one or more of those I know who were there will give their perceptions of yesterday at this space.
For some reason, when I thought of the Orchestral Associations news release and other similiar ‘spin’, I started to think of that old oft repeated refrain in “he (or she) done me wrong” songs. The all-time favorite is B.J.Thomas version, which is worth watching here.
Each and every one of us, one time or another, have related some a “done me wrong” lament to our best friend.
Of course, we have the perfect story; the perfect audience.
Unfortunately, always creeping in to such a refrain are certain inconvenient truths…. We all know that refrain too.
So, out comes the ultimate “done me wrong” refrain through a polished and refined news release, by whomever.
Somewhere in the ‘spin’ there is the truth. And everyone who has ever negotiated anything knows that.
After a year of being pretty intensely interested in this issue, and trying to learn the issues, it is easy for me to stick with the Musicians. They have much more truth on their side and they’ll continue to have my support. Of course, that’s just my opinion.
They also have given up all pay and benefits and resisted selling out, while their adversary can live in luxury…about as great a contrast as one can imagine.
On we go.
SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES
Comment and Link from Madeline S, Oct 2, 2013:
Have you received this? It’s important. Here is a link to a call/ petition for the Mn Orchestra Association board members to resign.
from Dick, Oct 2: The originator of this initiative is apparently a businessman, whose business is described here.
October 1, 2013

October 1, 2013


SOME THOUGHTS A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER
Oct 3, 2013
Dick Bernard

(Please note the Oct 2 item from Madeline, above)
Last evening I decided to do a quick review of the tear sheets from the Minneapolis Star Tribune which referred in some way or another to the Minnesota Orchestra lockout. These included articles, editorials, letters, commentaries and four full page ads (three management, one musicians). I’m sure I’m missing some, but likely I have as complete a set as anyone outside the conflict itself.
The first tear sheet: October 11, 2012, 11 days after the Lockout began.
The second, May 3, 2013, nearly six months later.
May, 2013: mentions on 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 28, 29 (in some of these would be a number of references in different forms)
July, 2013: 11, 12, 24, 25, 29
August, 2013: 8, 16, 20, 23
September, 2013: 1, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 25, 27, 28 29, 30
October, 2013: 1, 2, 3 (today, an interesting commentary.)
By my count, that’s 35 papers in which the Lock-Out was mentioned. The Lock-Out was news, but only sporadically.
I know negotiations very well. But I was not a player for either side in this tragedy. I was simply an active bystander, a Listener/Patron/Audience member.
Because of my long experience, I understand what happens behind the doors in bargaining. It is not a big mystery.
I understood exactly what the Musicians Union negotiator was saying at the Rally Oct. 1 when he described the anti-climactic and bitter end of bargaining on Sep. 30, when Management caucused for 1 1/2 hours about a proposal, returned, called off the negotiations, and sent the letter to Carnegie Hall cancelling the Orchestra’s November appearance there: the event that led, a few hours later, to Osmo Vanska’s resignation.
Vanska was a man of his word. Ne resigned. Would anyone have expected otherwise?
As we learn more, and we will, it will increasingly become clear that there was never any intent by Minnesota Orchestra management to bargain at all, from the very beginning. The historians can sort that out at their leisure.
I don’t believe that this same management had any interest in community or listener (small donor) support either. Their end game was to control everything…and they’ve succeeded, at least temporarily.
I hoped that the Musicians would not take the bait on what I considered a bribe from the Marilyn Carlson-Nelson group: the $20,0000 signing bonus. I was glad they rejected it 60-0, and especially appreciative of their reasoning for the rejection: the long term integrity of the Orchestra.
In the moneyed world, the bribe made sense, I suppose. The reason might go like this: after a year without pay or benefits, the Musicians should be delirious with joy at such generosity.
I’ve always supported the Musicians. This singular standing for principal cemented my respect for them forever.
What’s ahead? Who knows. A great deal depends on the commitment of we former audience members. I hope we’re up to the task.
I believe the entire Management of the Orchestra, including the entire Board, those 80+ people listed on the Orchestra website, were marginalized by their colleagues who had the power, lazy or stupid. They dismissed the musicians, and they ignored the base: the audience. They do not deserve their positions, any of them. (Yes, this is a harsh indictment. Yes, there are good Board members in there somewhere, but have we heard them speak out? Not in my hearing.)
The Orchestral Association richly deserves a parade of declined invitations by artistic individuals and groups to perform in their wonderful new space; and for those who sign, they don’t deserve an audience full of locked-out listeners from 2012-13.
Oct 1, 2013

Oct 1, 2013


Update, afternoon Oct 3, 2013:
from Pat R: I am so frustrated by the outcome of the Minnesota Orchestra drama, I don’t know that I would ever contribute to them again or go to another one of their concerts.
from Madeline S: Musicians’ website says Vanska to conduct SOLD OUT concerts this weekend! I’ll be there Saturday with a friend, and I’m also certain that there will be people “verklempt” [“choked up” in German] as well as tearful. [Along with the requested definition of verklempt, Madeline added] Beethoven instructs the first violin in one string quartet to play a passage with a sound that is “verklempt.”
from Molly R: Thanks for ALL your work on this, & the regular updates.
I assume you saw the Strib Editorial page article today… interesting, if a bit sky-blue optimistic. [Link is at October 3 within my today’s post]
more from Madeline S: More on the MNO. I also listened to MPR this morning, and they played some old recordings of the Minneapolis Symphony/MNO with Skrowaczewski conducting. He’s still at it, and sounded like an engagement conducting in Japan and more coming up. One of their morning programs also had the call-in discussions about the negotiations/hostage issues which included talking about the Government shutdown and Minnesota Orchestra tragedy.
Included in Madeine’s e-mail was this from Trish E: When listening to MN Public Radio this morning, I heard [former MN Gov] Arne Carlson making a plea to the MN Orchestra Board and the musicians’ organizations, asking them to each form a brand new negotiation team and get back to work immediately on negotiations. This immediately prompted me to write to both organizations, asking them to actively support the idea. When I went to the Saveoursymphonymn.org site, I found a really amazing number of well-written, well-thought-out blogs which I found very moving and full of insight. [A particularly good] one by Scott Chamberlain, with the responses to it (including several by Janet Horvath) [is recommended reading].
In addition, I discovered a blog from the World Socialist Web Site, which was featured on the SOSMN site and had some very, very interesting background facts on the whole situation. I’m no Socialist— but found the article quite plausible. It It also adds to the scenario laid out in a Wikipedia article I found recently.
If you’ve already read these articles/ blogs, I apologize for loading up your inboxes. I guess I just need to feel like I’m doing something—-anything!—-to deal with all the sadness and anger that losing our great conductor and possibly losing what remains of our great orchestra has brought us.
From Mike R, Oct. 4: I thought Lilek’s column was generally in bad taste. I realize he meant it as satire but it wasn’t funny. I’ve heard too many people make similar comments about the arts seriously. I view Vanska’s resignation as a tragedy for Minnesota and the Twin Cities. You don’t make jokes about a tragedy, even with satire.
I grew up listening to recordings by the Minneapolis symphony. In NYC, we had no shortage of world class orchestras with the Philharmonic and the NBC symphony (Toscanini’s house band), the Lewisohn Stadium Symphony (originally the NY Philharmonic played the Stadium Concerts, but then the Stadium Concert management spun off their orchestra as a separate and unique unit.
With Vanska leading it, MNOrch became a world class orchestra. And to make the situation worse, He connected with the audience. There’s none of the prima donna about him. I would also guess that he’s not making the same kind of salary that the Music directors of the Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Chicago orchestras make.
I do not play any instrument, but I’ve been a classical music lover from my earliest years.
Radio was our mass media growing up. Classical music filled prime-time network radio. both as concert programs, and as background music for radio drama of all sorts, mysteries, police shows, love stories, soap operas, and high drama.
I bet he’ll land a spot with another world class orchestra before too long.
I apologize for venting, but I really feel badly about this situation.
from Madeline S, Oct 4: Scott Chamberlain’s blog is here;
which is also accessible from On the Blogs on the Musicians website
October 6, 12:27 a.m.
Valse Triste

One of you asked, “How was the concert?”.
Here is a very imperfect photo I took at the final bows (click to enlarge)
The final bows, October 5, 2013, Minnesota Orchestra and Maestro Osmo Vanska.

The final bows, October 5, 2013, Minnesota Orchestra and Maestro Osmo Vanska.


There is much to be said. This space is open to anyone who wishes to comment. dick_bernardATmsnDOTcom.
Here is your copy of the souvenir program from Oct 4-5, 2013: Mn Orch Prog Oct 4-5 13002. (It was very nice to see the Union “bug” on both the program and the insert recognizing the retirement of Stage Manager Tim Eickholt. These days, stamping out the “bug” is part of the goals and objectives of people who would like to rid the world of Unions of any kind. The Musicians could have opted for just any old printer, but they didn’t…. Several loud “huzzahs”!)
Before the second half of the program began, one of the Orchestra members announced that the special added matinee performance on Saturday went on sale at 8 a.m. Friday, and was sold out by 8:30 a.m. The Ticket Office reported 40,000 hits for tickets on Friday. So…classical music is dead?
The encore for the performances was Sibelius’ Valse Triste. Maestro Vanska specifically asked the audience for no applause to follow this powerful piece on death, and we complied. At the end he and Orchestra exited the stage together and we all were similarly subdued. It was a sad but realistic end.
The performance was covered by three video cameras, so one expects this sad day will live on later.
And doubtless Minnesota Public Radio will have the program available on archive.
Our work as audience must continue and indeed intensify.
This is not over.
Remember the “three-legged stool” so aptly cited by a speaker at the September 6 rally outside Orchestra Hall: in that case, the legs were management, musicians and audience.
Last night, they were musicians, maestro and audience. Take away any one of the three, and you don’t have the potential for brilliance. We audience members are part of the band, an essential part of the synergy that made this Orchestra great. Keep on.
from Alan S., Oct 6: I sent [the below] to the [Star Tribune] during the concert last night. If [my wife] had not suffered a foot injury recently, we would have been at the concert. It was truly beautiful listening to it on our 20 year old Bose radio.
“As my wife and I listen to the final concert on MPR Saturday night that is conducted by Osmo Vanska, it seems that so many of us teary eyed music lovers are so angry at the Board of the Minnesota Orchestra for doing their job so well in managing the personnel of their orchestra that we are forgetting to congratulate them on the 50 plus millions of dollars that they have spent to improve Orchestra Hall. We really should be putting things in their proper perspective, shouldn’t we?”
From Molly R, Oct 6: Thanks for the great post on the event. I enjoyed seeing the program (yup,I was one of those 40,000+ web hits hoping for tickets to the added concert). Am SO glad it was covered on MPR! Will be making a donation in hopes of Fall concerts…
peace, friend,
from Louise P, Oct 6: Thanks, Dick. I was unable to go, so was very happy that it was broadcast and I was able to listen at home with my eyes closed part of the time, imagining this amazing concert at Orchestra Hall where it should have been.
What an incredible loss for all of us. But I will support the locked-out musicians and hope something good will happen soon.
sent Oct 7 to his own list by Jim Fuller, retired Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter, reprinted with permission:
Please forgive the length of this note. I hope it will be useful.
I am a retired newspaper journalist with very long experience in covering local, national and international corporations and financial institutions, as well as economists and economics. For more than three decades, I worked with top executives of large corporations and financial organizations, the top tier of corporate executives, bankers and brokers. I know them, dined with them, sometimes partied with them.
Partially because I know those people, I do not believe the orchestra can be saved under its present board, present management or present organizational structure.
The people who control the board have achieved their central goal, though no one will acknowledge that fact. The goal was to put you, the musicians, in “your place,” to establish without doubt that they run things and you are only “the help.” Sounds radical, but it’s time people faced the facts. The rich and powerful are on a roll. They’ve essentially destroyed the labor movement, are close to bringing our once powerful middle class to its knees, now pull the strings on government at all levels. The move against you was just a little skirmish in the big battle to establish full control over our economy and our society.
In the case of the orchestra, however, they can be countered, though not without substantial loss and a very hard struggle.
Several days ago, I wrote a note to 20 or 30 music lovers I know, suggesting that the only way Minnesota can have a first class symphonic orchestra is to abandon the entire structure of what was the Minnesota Orchestra and begin again with a new structure controlled and run by musicians and music lovers from the wider community. I did it mainly to vent my own frustration and express thoughts I figured would not be widely shared or accepted. The day after I sent out that email, the Star Tribune ran an op-ed piece that similar conclusions but suggested that musicians should entirely control the new organization. i got, in response to my note, a few emails that indicated others agreed with me and were thinking along similar lines. But we were all thinking in a vacuum. Thus this note.
It seems impossible to me that a first-rate orchestra can operate ever again under the people who have controlled the Minnesota Orchestra in recent decades and, especially, the past decade. Those people are far more interested in establishing their right to rule and in maintaining their power than they are in music, an orchestra as such or the broader community. The only behavior they will accept from common folks such as yourself is obedience. They expect you to touch your forelocks as they ride by.
That means, among other things, you need for now and probably a long time, to give up any thoughts of returning to the palace the plutocrats built in their own honor. You also must, if you haven’t already done so, establish a new nonprofit corporation. You have to raise money, and find a hall to rent on a regular basis. You need a new formal corporate structure, a new board and a new method of naming board members.
I believe a new organization must protect itself from takeover by the would-be aristocrats who have destroyed the previous organization. Donations should be limited to no more than, say, $2,000 per individual per year, and no more than $5,000 per organization. (Exact numbers are, of course, open to discussion.) As a practical matter, the economic elite should be kept off the board if you don’t want a quick repeat of what you’ve just been through.
Yes, you need people who understand economics, who can help with organizational and legal matters and people who can raise money. They don’t have to, and shouldn’t, come from big financial corporations, big banks or big law firms. As someone who lived close to those fields for about 40 years, I can assure you that there is plenty of talent outside the big-buck playgrounds. (In fact, in all those years of covering big financial institutions, I can recall only one top-level bank executive who actually understood economics. What most understand is how to enrich themselves and their companies, and that’s a quite simple process.)
Also, I urge you to give up any idea of obtaining government financing. It’s possible in the present atmosphere, with public anger high, that you could pick up some state money, but that would lead inevitably to a repeat of what you have experienced. There is no politician of either major party who is not beholden to big-money donors, and the people they look to for advice on all matters involving money are the same people who just worked you over. If you doubt that, take a look at the process that led to the construction, at substantial taxpayer expense, of a new baseball stadium, a new university football stadium and, soon, a new Vikings stadium.
You’ve challenged people who believe they have a divine right to run things. They have not given up the idea of forcing you accept your role as wholly dependent servants. If you get government money, you’ll be handing control back to them through their in-pocket politicians. And almost immediately, the politicians will demand the right to appoint a controlling number of your board members, and those will be the same people who’ve got you where you are now.
Money, obviously, is the main, huge concern. I think raising the money can be done through volunteers, and there will be volunteers. The key will be to get enough of them — literally hundreds — to sign up donors. I, of course, will be one of those, and I know I can raise hundreds, probably a few thousands, of dollars. You’ll need some volunteer public relations people (I can at least make some suggestions there). The thing is, you need an army of volunteers.
With or without my small-time help, I hope you will do this very soon, before the public has given up, forgotten and moved on to other causes.
from Louise P, Oct 8, 2013: That is a very powerful letter from Jim Fuller and he is so right. This can be done and there will be volunteers. I will put my name on the list to do what I can.
from Madeline S, Oct 8, 2013: I think the MNO Board should be told they could be subject to a class action law suit. For years, people donated funds, and specifically endowed chairs for the Minnesota Orchestra. Some people have said they would not have donated millions to the MNO Association at the time of fund raising solicitations that included funds for the orchestra and the lobby expansion/hall renovations had they known the board had already in mind a change in business plan, from orchestra management to building (house) management.
from Larry H, October 8, 2013: I just wonder with the recent events at Ted Mann, and now the Northrup remodel reaching conclusion, If there are discussions. (Northrop Auditorium, a U icon and white elephant, transforming for 21st century | MinnPost)
One has to wonder if somewhere confidential discussions are exploring an orchestral return to Northrup in April. At Northrup. a MNOrch2 could return to its roots at Northrup as a new but re-invented symphonic organization.
Unlikely, but wouldn’t it be an energetic discussion.
from Michael R, Oct 9, 2013: As Violetta sings in the last act of La Traviata: E tarde!
“It’s too late.”
We were blessed with Maestro Vanska for ten years. I think he was very happy here and the orchestra responded to him, making better music than they ever had.
The magic of that partnership is over. Sooner or later, management will end the lockout. The musicians will accept a new contract, but it already is a different orchestra. Management will hire a new music director. It may be a genial director or a stern taskmaster. They’ve had both. But it’s not likely to be another Vanska. It will take a while to build the relationship and for the new director to put his/her imprint on the orchestra. The music will be good, but greatness will take a while to achieve, if it ever will again.
See you again at orchestra hall sooner or later.
from Jim F, Oct 9, 2013: I was able to get to your blog. I find your comments mostly very insightful and on target. (As a union officer, I helped negotiate five contracts with the Strib bosses; you’re especially right about a lockout being a flat declaration of refusal to negotiate. A Ted Cruz move, not the move of someone who wants to reach an equitable settlement in a dispute.)
Have had no response from the musicians, which is not all that surprising, but makes me a little sad. May indicate they have given up, or there simply aren’t enough of them willing to face the truth of the situation. Wouldn’t mind some disagreement, do mind that they apparently haven’t the energy to respond.
A good friend of mine, guy with whom I used to play in jazz bands, was very active in the citizen/audience move to save the SPCO. He became so disgusted, he now won’t go to their concerts. This is the first year in many that he and his wife have not had season tickets. The musicians who are still their caved and crawled, he says, and almost nobody in the save-the-orchestra movement was willing to face the simple, core truth: That the battle over control of the orchestra was part of a class war.
Interesting that my old friend Irwin Jacobs is said to have saved the San Diego orchestra, but we haven’t heard a word from him about this dispute. Too many of his business associates on the orchestra board?
I also know Harvey McKay, have known him for many years. I’ll send him an email and, I hope, take a strip of skin off his ass.
UPDATE October 21, 2013: We were out of state and off-line and thus out of the loop from October 12-19, 2013. There are some items of interest in recent issues of Minneapolis Star Tribune.
We are a society that (in my opinion) places excessive value on “winning” and one day I scribbled some personal notations about this topic as it might relate to certain constituent groups of the Minnesota Orchestra at this moment in time. These are simply my personal opinions as a long-time member of the audience of the Minnesota Orchestra. (The categories are in no particular order.)
Orchestra Management (the entire Board of Directors, including emeritus and honorary). Losers (but you will never hear that descriptor from them). Their individual and collective decisions over a long period of time led to the current result: a fancy building, a big endowment, and no Orchestra for Orchestra Hall.
The Musicians. Winners (but as measured by contemporary society they lost everything: no salary and benefits for over a year. Locked-out.) It is clear that they chose to stand for the 110 year heritage of the Minnesota Orchestra. Of all groups, they could easily have sold out, but they chose to stand for something. I admire them.
Osmo Vanska. Winner. He, too, drew a line in the sand, and when push came down to shove, he resigned, as promised. He was willing to stand with the Orchestra on October 4 and 5 when it wasn’t necessary. There are career risks accompanying what he did (as there are similar risks for the Orchestra members) and he doubtless realized those risks, but he, too, stood for something.
The Audience (variously referred to as “listeners”, “patrons”, students…) We were, it clearly seems, the “little people”, the ones who were overlooked, forgotten, ignored. We were as locked-out as the musicians. We have an immense amount of power if we choose to exercise it. We do not need to accept the status quo. We are the Minnesota Orchestra base, and if Arne Carlsons number is correct, over 300,000 have filled the seats of Orchestra Hall to hear Orchestra music in any particular year, compared with perhaps 500,000 to eight “performances” of the Minnesota Vikings. (This is not 300,000 separate individuals. For instance, the two of us came to six subscription concerts each year. Others came to more, others to less. But we are a great number of people.)
The Community at Large: Big Losers, though many if not most do not yet realize their loss.
The “Bigs”. Big Money, Downtown Big Shots, etc. The Movers and Shakers. Losers. This tight formal and informal network has the resources and the connections to control most anything. Here it failed. Even the proffered “signing bonus” offer (which I would consider a bribe) to get the Orchestra members back to work was unanimously rejected by the Orchestra members.
Unions, generally. Unclear as to Win or Loss. This was very clearly an effort to kill yet another Union, the Orchestra Musicians. I mark this unclear because much will depend on how working people identify this as a major issue relating to their own future. When I learned that the Orchestra management hired the same consultant that recommended Locking Out the American Crystal Sugar workers union in the Red River Valley two years ago, I knew there was trouble ahead. This was a take no prisoners operation from the beginning. There was no interest in “negotiations” as normally defined.
Money. Loser. Warehoused Money (the endowment) is useless. Money unused is of no value whatsoever….
UPDATE Dec. 5, 2013:
This mornings Minneapolis Star Tribune had a long article about the legal status of Orchestra Hall. The article speaks for itself, here.
This is about the time of year when the Minnesota Orchestra Board has its annual meeting which is closed, so far as I know, to the public. It would be interesting to be the “fly on the wall” listening in to the assorted reports, opinions, etc., likely to be expressed behind those closed doors this year. Out in the public, we will likely learn little about what really went on inside the meeting room.
Last years meeting was December 7, 2012. I wrote about that here.
Of course, the public position of the management as presented to the media is as portrayed by its lawyers in their expressed opinion (with emphasis on the word “opinion”). This is certainly no time for any “mea culpa” from the Board, if there will ever be such a time.
What interests me on a continuing basis, however, is not the wording of the legal opinion, which may or may not pass muster in the longer term; but in the far more difficult matter of any restoration of trust towards the current Board of Directors which, likely, as with most Boards, has been following the lead of some dominant characters, and is now mired in a huge mess of its own making.
In my opinion, every single Board member, whether honorary or emeritus, or otherwise, is equally responsible for this mess. Having worked with and served on assorted Boards over many years I know that it is difficult, sometimes, to take difficult positions – the tendency is to rely on power actors to tell you what to do and think. This is probably even more of a problem in a Board like the Orchestra’s, which chooses its own members, has no public or musician membership, and essentially has felt free to do whatever it wishes. It has brought this disaster upon itself.
Meanwhile there is my favorite group – the one of which I am a part – the audience, ignored, not in the Orchestra Hall.
The lawyers don’t speak about we, the audience, except in the most vague terms, but in the long run we are crucial to whether or not there is, ever again, to be a Minnesota Orchestra playing at Orchestra Hall, in cooperation with a Minnesota Orchestral Association Board of Directors.
I remain committed to never returning to Orchestra Hall until the Musicians can reach a bargained agreement that they willingly ratify.
UPDATE Dec. 11, 2013:
Day 437 of the Lock-Out of the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra

Several important items today:
1. Read here a just released very strong letter from eleven Minnesota Legislators, released just in advance of today’s Orchestral Association Board meeting.
2. Here is an article reporting on the Musicians Community Meeting on Monday of this week (I planned to attend, but got my days mixed up.) Here is the Musicians website, which includes a video of the presentation on Monday, and much other relevant news.
3. Here is an interesting commentary from Dec 2, 2013, Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine.
4. A second chance to get a ticket for an added matinee for May 4, 2014, with Osmo Vanska at Northrop goes on sale online on Dec. 16 at the Northrop website. There is nothing on-line as yet, and the chances are that you not only will have to be an early-bird, but a very lucky early-bird to get a ticket. Last time they added an additional performance there were over 40,000 hits at the ticketing site.
5. Added 4 p.m. Dec. 11: Report on the Orchestral Association Board meeting today.
*
Every year for the past 37 I have done my own Christmas and Holiday message based on something that struck me during the previous months.
This year, my intended subject was to be the phrase “Chained by their Certitude” which appeared in a Leo Buscaglia quote on risk I’d seen in the fall of 1982, and included in my 1982 annual message. The emphasis was to be the Lock-Out of the Minnesota Orchestra and we, the audience.
The photo from the 1982 message is below. Click to enlarge:
Leo Buscaglia quotation

Leo Buscaglia quotation


The death of Nelson Mandela changed my topic for this years message, which you can read here, including several interesting comments, and more pending writer approval to include in the post.
In 1982-83, a year I’ve often described as both the best and worst year of my life (there were better, and there were worse, but none better AND worst), I was about to embark on a year of risk-taking, and my attention was to the last sentence of the quote: “Only a person who risks is free”.
I can attest the truth to that phrase.
But this year, on numerous occasions, none more dramatic than the disastrous Lock-Out of our Minnesota Orchestra, the preceding sentence jumped out at me: “Chained by their certitudes they are a slave, they have forfeited their freedom.”
“Certitude” means certainty, and no doubt the Orchestral Association Board leaders, meeting today somewhere, were flat out certain of their wisdom and their omnipotent power to impose their “wisdom” on everyone else.
The results of that certitude are with them now, 437 days later.
Of course, there are many other dimensions to that word “certitude”.
People like ourselves, the audience, can easily convince ourselves that there is nothing we can do; that the tragedy is beyond our control.
If we succumb to such a certitude, we simply assure that we will prove our point, that we are powerless, because we do not exercise our power in the many constructive ways that we can.
I choose to march on. I hope you do, as well.
“Only a person who risks is free.”
(click to enlarge)
Note the Chain, in the demonstration Sep 6, 2013:
IMG_2375
UPDATE Dec. 12, 2013:
This mornings Minneapolis Star Tribune (page B1) has a long article about the Minnesota Orchestral Association Board Meeting yesterday. I include the link as #5 in the Dec 11 update (above). Do take the time to read it.
My interpretation of the reported results of this closed-to-the-public meeting: The Board has chosen to thumb their nose at the Orchestra, the audience, the legislature, and the citizens of this community. “Our way, or the highway”. A fight to the finish.
Citizens are going to have to speak out as citizens, especially to those in positions of influence at the State Legislature, the Governor, the new Mayor of Minneapolis, the Minneapolis City Council and like persons who are going to do the heavy lifting in 2013.
The communications need to go to YOUR local legislators, Senate and House, the more personal contact you can have, the better.
The City of Minneapolis has a big stake in the outcome of this as well.
I would particular recommend re-looking at the SOS Mn Powerpoint, linked here.
I recall one specific comment at that meeting (which Sen. John Marty also attended). Back in 1989, if I recall correctly, the Minnesota Legislature enabled the Orchestral Association to essentially become a private entity unto itself, allowing a corporate kind of structure where there is no requirement for public representation. There may have been an element of trust that was deserved back then – I don’t know. But such an arrangement as this invites the kind of abuse we are now seeing, where the Board can (and has) become an incestuous institution, filled with like-thinking individuals, unaccountable to the public.
In the Big Leagues of finance, the issue here are relatively small, and because the perceived market is limited, arguments such as those made by Jon Campbell are more likely to be accepted at face value by people who have never even been in Orchestra Hall, but exercise influence.
This is where audience members HAVE to become engaged.
The general addresses for letters to policy makers:
Governor Dayton and Legislators
State Capitol
St. Paul MN 55155
City of Minneapolis Officials, especially
Mayor-elect Betsy Hodges
and City Council President Barbara Johnson (Honorary Orchestral Association Board Member)
Minneapolis City Hall
350 S. 5th Street
Minneapolis MN 55415
Do write letters. Make your voice seen as well as heard.
UPDATE Dec. 26, 2013
I was struck by this letter in the December 21 Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
(click to enlarge)
Holly Grover letter001
Of course, this is a citizen opinion, and it was picked for publication.
So be it.
Personal opinion:
1) The Minnesota Orchestra is not dead, or dying. It has been a remarkable accomplishment for it to remain alive and breathing after 15 months locked-out. It’s $600,000 fundraising is an incredible accomplishment, against huge odds. It has great community support.
2) The Orchestra does exist largely because of the benevolent action of past Elites in this community: people with money who wanted a major Orchestra in this town, beginning 110 years ago. It happens, now, to have been temporarily hi-jacked by an aggressive and unaccountable-to-the-public leadership who tried to impose a different vision for the Orchestra to be. (I use tried, in the past tense, deliberately.)
I am not anywhere near the “elite” of this city; nonetheless, my guess is that there is considerable and substantive discussion going on about how to not only save, but restore, this Orchestra to its former status.
3) The audience – ourselves – needs now more than ever to support the Minnesota Orchestra, to be in solidarity with it. This is more than a lip-service commitment. There is a full schedule for the winter and spring concerts, all listed at the Musicians website. Every house should be a full house. Contribute some extra dollars as well.
Tickets for the first 2014 concert are on sale today.
The rest will come in stages, closer to performance.
As I said, “The Minnesota Orchestra is not dead, or dying.”
Keep active. As someone famous once said in WWII England: Never, never, never, never quit!
UPDATE: Jan. 5, 2014. Dick Bernard, some thoughts:
January 3 I passed along an unexpected and very welcome gift of art to the Musicians of the Orchestra.
At about the same time, came a link from Minnesota Public Radio received from Madeline which signals part of what is ahead in early 2014: “Group urges Minneapolis to take over Orchestra Hall”.
In the end of the year selection of letters of the year in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, one of the groups selected for focus was the Minnesota Orchestra conflict. You can read them here.
Tomorrow, the new Minneapolis Mayor and City Council take office. Mayor Hodges was the only candidate for Mayor that I recall seeing speaking in public at Locked Out Musician of the Orchestra events in the crucial days beginning in August, 2013. She was clearly making a statement, and she is now in office.
So, we may be in hibernation on this coldest weekend of the winter thus far, but there is plenty going on in the background.
Having said this, nothing is ever as easy as it seems, and now is the time to be active and engaged (as I say over and over and over….)
The Minneapolis City Government is crucial in the coming months; at the same time, many of the Council members are brand new, and have their own issues and priorities. It will not be an easy matter to move the agenda suggested by Orchestrate Excellence (above news item).
Those of us who have followed this since the beginning have witnessed a major train wreck which, in effect, has not been moved since before the Lock-Out began over 15 months ago. The parties closest to the action have not been able to degree on how to clear the wreckage and move forward.
I don’t know exactly what is going on behind the scenes, off the tracks somewhere, but I know there is a lot happening, and my guess is it will be not too many months before there is something significant to report.
For me, as I have said previously, I will return to Orchestra Hall when the Musicians have reached a contract agreement with whoever happens to be management at the time. I will not challenge their settlement (including whether or not they settle): I know bargaining from experience.
But until they are back home, with heads held high, I won’t be back to Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, and supporting the music from the outside. Check the Musicians website often.
Stay engaged.
UPDATE January 16, 2013 Two days after Contract Ratification
Dick Bernard

The ink isn’t even dry on the ratified contract as yet, and lots of details remain unknown, such as how the LoMoMo concerts for the winter and spring will work. Best to keep up to date at the Musicians website.
This mornings paper, front page, began the speculation of whether Osmo Vanska will return. Here’s the link. There was a rather awkward (in my opinion) editorial published in the same edition. The publisher of the Star Tribune is also on the Board of the Orchestral Association, and hardly a neutral in this newsworthy conflict.
I have taken one action today: writing my local legislators and Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, urging that they look at the public interest in how the Orchestral Association Board is comprised. My letter follows, and refers to the Orchestral Association Bylaws, which I attached to their letter. Those Bylaws are here: Orch Bylaws 2013001
To my local legislators via e-mail, paper copy to the Mayor of Minneapolis:
Attached are the Bylaws of the MN Orchestral Association.
I am sending this via e-mail should you know of Senators or Representatives who have a particular interest in this important issue. Feel free to share this.
The parties settled their contract just a day or two ago. The issue, as it most always is in negotiations, was framed in $$’s. But money was never the issue here, in my opinion.
The Orchestral Association Board selects its own members, which is a recipe for the very kind of disaster we’ve just watched for nearly 16 months now.
At a meeting in Nov., attended also by Sen. Marty, it was mentioned that perhaps a part of the culprit for what happened now was some change in law by the MN legislature in 1989. Of course, I have no idea what this might be or have been.
But regardless of the language, you nearly witnessed the destruction of a major Minnesota asset, which continues at risk.
At minimum, the Orchestral Association must be required in some way to have public and musician membership in sufficient numbers to prevent a hostile takeover, such as what happened in recent years.
As a member of the audience, a season ticket holder for many years, I felt completely worthless. I still don’t think the Orchestral Association Board gets it, that it is the people of this state that make the Orchestra a resource, not the rich folks who in return for their treasure demand control of everything.
If the community (which in this case means “government”) doesn’t demand some change in management selection and structure, it is inevitable that this disaster will repeat itself….

Since the settlement there have been a number of other comments received from my own mailing list.
from Molly, Jan 14: Wow. Thanks for the heads-up! I was at the Saturday Requiems concert, and was utterly immersed in the Mozart. (Hope you also had the pleasure!)And was just furious at the thought of the wasted 18 months. Hooray. indeed!
from Jeff: Yes it would be good news.
from Val: This is good news! Thank you Dick for all the time and effort in keeping so many of us informed during this long ordeal.
from Jim, Jan 15: No point in arguing about the settlement. I think, though, they will be begging you to buy tickets. My guess is that the audience will be smaller than it was, long term. There may (or may not) be an eager audience for the first handful of concerts, but I suspect demand will fall of substantially after that, for reason. This is not going to be the orchestra it was, or even close (though I would expect the Strib’s freelance, amateur “critics” to lie about that). The bigshots got what they wanted: they beat the musicians and made their union mostly useless. Quality never was in their thinking. The majority of those with power on the board neither know nor care about music, and their board participation is driven by ego, by their bosses or both. (Yes, I know a few of them.) You will get tickets. I’ll wait a year or so and then see; probably not.
from an Orchestra member: Thanks so much, Dick. Yay!!!!! We prevailed. Much work ahead…
from John: Your comment, “This is only the beginning of the future, but not the end of the past,” is a reality with implications for the present, too. As a retired unionist and long, long ago, an aspiring bass trombonist, I experience the “settlement” in a number of ways. The future living- out the settlement, especially the relationships of so many passionate participants, on both sides of the dispute, will be the key to the future.
UPDATE Jan. 27, 2014:
The Minnesota Orchestra Wins a Grammy!
Dick Bernard
As reported in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: here
From the Musicians website: here
From the Minnesota Orchestra website: here
As best I know the lockout officially ends Feb. 1, so we’re still in the lockout era, till Saturday of this week….
We will be attending Feb 8 and 15 concerts at Orchestra Hall, sitting essentially where we sat before. The cost is much higher, I’m going to say 50% or more higher, but until I can find my receipt showing what I paid for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 season I don’t know for sure. I’ll report what (if anything) I can find. (I’m using 2012-13 as my base, as management had decided BEFORE subscription time that they were losing money, and could have adjusted prices then.
My narrative will remain, until proven otherwise, that the audience was essentially ignored.
(Those of us who previously had season tickets had a first chance for the first two concerts. What interested me is that the communication to us mostly came off as if to convey nothing had happened at all in these last 488 days. “Well, we just took a little break. See you soon” (to be more than a bit cynical). Below is the announcement we received Jan 17 so you can fact check my cynicism.)
I’m sure that the hall will be packed for the next few months, regardless of cost.
The proof of the pudding won’t come till next year and beyond. There is a need for very major change in attitude at 1111 Nicollet Mall, and I’m not talking about the musicians or Osmo Vanska.
*
Saturday, four of east metro area legislators had a town hall forum, and we could submit questions in writing. I wrote about need for a public representative on the Board. One answered the question for all 40 or so of us in attendance. They aren’t sure what they can do, but the Orchestra has received substantial public money from the State and future requests will be noticed. The legislator who answered the question said he has a daughter in music school in Boston, and one of her professors asked her what was going on with the Minnesota Orchestra.
Legislators are almost always nuanced in what they can say. There world is not a place of stark contrasts, shall we say. Representing thousands and millions of people is difficult and there are huge numbers of issues and points of view to consider, including the legislators own feeling or attitude. But they do care what their own constituents have to say. You will be heard if you communicate with legislators.
This is a window of opportunity to say something out loud in behalf of the Orchestra. A reality is that, for most, including rank and file union members, the Orchestra is a rather quaint and abstract issue. But another reality is that the Orchestra is a local treasure that will be a huge loss, if diminished or gone.
There will be changes of some kind at Orchestra Halls management suite. I don’t know what they will be or when they will occur or how they will manifest themselves. They may simply be slight attitude shifts. They will probably be rendered as invisible as possible so as to appear they aren’t changing at all. But there will be changes.
If you care, you’ll take personal action now to get your oar in the water on this issue, and stay in action long term.
Write whomever: your legislators, Minneapolis City officials, Orchestra Management, the Orchestra members, etc. Say whatever it is you want to say. Make YOUR case. Don’t depend on someone else to make your case.
This is no time to quit. Now the hard work begins.
UPDATE February 1, 2014: The first day after the Lockout officially ends and the first of the rest of our lives….
Dick Bernard
Bravo to Lee Henderson for his column in today’s Star Tribune: Bring Back Osmo Vanska
At the end he makes a request to readers, especially audience members, to feedback. Please look.
My personal feedback: We’ve renewed, now, for the first six concerts in the new Hall. When I renewed on Thursday, the phone solicitor (polite, gracious) asked for an additional contribution.
I deferred, not because I don’t believe in the Orchestra – I’ve contributed several hundred dollars to the Locked Out Musicians – but I’m awaiting the change I’ll see in behavior of the Orchestral Association Board.
Crucial to me is a formal and substantive involvement of the general public and the musicians as members of the Board, who can make a difference in policy decisions. As it now stands, from looking at the Association bylaws, the MOA Board picks its own members, a recipe for the same kind of disaster we’ve all witnessed recently.
In recent years I knew the Orchestra as a team: members and Vanska. The Board was only some abstract thing out there, resubscribing me once a year.
During the Lock Out I learned a lot about the Board, and it was mostly negative.
Their money pot was important; more important by far was the results of the money: the Orchestra and its musical director and the great good they did for us and our communities reputation.
I have said often on this list that the Audience is crucial, and those of you on the list are primarily Audience.
Now your chance. It will only come once.
Our efforts together are crucial.
Thanks again, Lee.
UPDATE March 11, 2014:
According to today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Orchestral Association Board is having difficulty choosing between death and life. I am a bit facetious, but it seems to all come down to whether Vanska will come back, and if so, with what authority; and/or will Henson leave. Here’s the article.
The Orchestra Board is a private entity (it seems) which answers only to itself, and reveals only as much as it wishes to reveal.
Today I sent three letters to the Executive Committee – the seven top people on the Board – and rather than explain them, here they are for whoever might be interested (9 pages in all): Bernard to MnOrch 3-14001
My letters say what they say. Since we are told only what the Board wants us to hear, it is impossible to assess exactly what is (or has) gone on. My main point, though, is made in the most recent letter, the first one, which is only one page long.
Read as you wish. It would be fun to hear from you, including an assessment of my sanity (or non-sanity).
Comments:
from Molly R, Mar 11: Good letters, Dick. And good observations. Thanks for being such a faithful gadfly.
from Jim F, Mar. 11: Quite clearly — clear now — the orchestra board — or, rather, those who run the board — made guarantees to Henson as he spearheaded the fight to break the union. Those guarantees have now come into play; he gets to keep his job no matter what bad things happen to the orchestra. The board members are doing what they, in their warped world of the rich, feel is the honorable thing,taking care of their point man no matter what that does to the orchestra. Can’t prove any of that, of course, but I’d bet a whole lot on that being the accurate scenario..
from John G, Mar. 12 Dick, your sanity remains impressively healthy, so far as I am concerned. Public suicide of their reputation by the MOA Board’s Chair and President is not only sad to see, but even more frustrating to endure as a powerless citizen. What they call “leadership” has actually killed the MO as we knew it in the decade of Osmo. Osmo’s leadership is what we need. Your enduring faithfulness to your north star and to all who have benefited from your communiques remains a model for us all.
UPDATE, APRIL 1, 2014
A few recent comments:
My letter to mailing list on Mar 21 elicited a few responses. First, my comment:

The lead story on the front page of the Star Tribune this morning.
NOTHING is simple in these kinds of things. This is an extraordinarily delicate time. If you support Vanska coming back, it is very important to make your voice heard, through a letter to the Orchestra.
This is no time for silence. It’s no time for “piling on” either.
I think the MOA Board “gets it”, at least sort of. But issues of power and control will remain a very big deal. The coming months will be most interesting.
from Madeline, Mar 21: The other day, a dental hygienist, knowing I’m a serious musician, asked me what I thought about the MNO affair. She mentioned that she is involved in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and said she didn’t recall which person was at issue in an election for the MIA arts board. It was one of the key players, either a MNO board leader or Henson–who she said was a controversial candidate–did they want him on the MIA board. Looking up the 2013-2014 Board of Trustees of the MIA, I find a Richard Davis in the list of “Elective Trustees.” My guess, one and the same.
I understand also that one of these guys, Davis or Campbell, is the chief negotiator for the NFL bringing the superbowl to Mpls in 2016.
Dick to Madeline: It’s Davis…. He has not disappeared, either, now he’s front man for getting the Super Bowl to Minneapolis when the new stadium is completed. He is a powerful actor in the Minneapolis business community, and his high visibility suggests that “downtown” has learned nothing from the Orchestra debacle
from Jim: Give you 3 to 2 odds they pick another antiunion activist….
to Jim from Dick: That’s better than 2-1….
from Val: Your comments here regarding “power and control” reminded me of an interview Charlie Rose did on 3/12/14 with conductor Zubin Mehta.
Conductor Mehta was discussing his upcoming performances in New York with the Vienna Philharmonic (3/16/14) and the Israel Philharmonic (3/20/14) and his joy in working with both of these orchestras. “I’ll be conducting two cooperative orchestras; they run themselves. You only discuss every point of view with musicians.”
If anyone is interested in hearing the 7 minute interview, follow this link.
It’s a 53:24 min program with Charlie Rose interviewing a number of people but you can drag to 46:38 min for Zubin Mehta. It aired 3/12/14. Season 22, Episode 140.
from John: Yes, “delicate” indeed. We really need extensive personnel changes on the MOA Board. They brought us Henson. That indicates a ruinous management philosophy prevails among them. That Board has not yet brought back Osmo. Until it does that, the MO must start from scratch without enthusiastic support from a large majority of its “activist” audience. The first Clarinetist of our MO chose to extend his stay in L.A. That disturbs me, for it suggests athat maybe he thinks Osmos will not be invited to return. Maybe the MOA Board has the illusion that they can solve their problems by getting rid of both Henson and Vanska. I’m really concerned…

from Shirley in Chicago-land Mar 26: You may be interested in this from [Mar 25] Chicago Tribune
Riccardo Muti says future of music sounds flat.
It’s no secret by now that Riccardo Muti is a man of passionate convictions, especially when it comes to speaking out about the central importance of music to a civilized society. It’s a trope central to the Italian maestro’s very soul as a world-famous musician who bestrides several nations and several cultures.
Finally, here are some major articles in recent issues of Minneapolis Star Tribune, particularly about the resignation of 8 MOA Board members in response to Henson’s departure, and Vanska’s carefully expressed thoughts here.
Thoughts from Dick: There seems no recognition by anyone on the Orchestra Board that the audience has any say in the resolution of the disaster we’ve watched develop over such a long period of time. It is easy even for myself, who’s pretty passionate about this, to lose interest in even expressing an opinion. Who cares?
Michael Henson is leaving.
Really, logically, there are good arguments why this entire Board should resign. After all, they are the ones who brought Henson in to do what he did, whether they were active or passive in his decision making over the last seven years, particularly the last three.
Henson’s the sacrificial offering. The perpetrators remain in power.
But it’s not so simpe. For this Orchestra to succeed, long term, there has to be a strong Board, and you cannot start over, fresh, with an entire new management. It doesn’t work that way. I spent most of my career representing teachers in public sector unions, and I know that good management, administrators and Board, is as necessary as a strong union, for an organism to survive and thrive. Each need each other.
In the case of the Minnesota Orchestra, the collective Board apparently selects its own members, pretty obviously from a tiny slice of society, the local wealthy and “powerful”. It insulates itself from public scrutiny, releasing only what information it wants to release, and also, pretty obviously, has had an obviously dismissive view of people like myself, the audience members, who, after all, are the major slice on which management relied for day to day income for operations. (The beloved endowment – the savings account – is obscenely large, and useless unless used.)
The Board collectively decided what was to be done, and still blames the victims – Union, and we in the audience – for the undesirable outcomes.
This Board is a tough nut to crack, and I’m just one person, an outsider. But I’m not a quitter.
It doesn’t help to quit, even when it seems the common sense thing to do.
I may be ignorant of a lot of facts, because that is what the Orchestra management seems to value, my ignorance, but that doesn’t mean I can’t say to them, in as many ways as I can, that they are ruining, perhaps already have ruined, their greatest asset.
The Orchestra members stood up and have been counted since the lockout began so long ago; and so has Osmo Vanska, who could have washed his hands of this debacle, and either quietly collected his paycheck and followed orders, but chose,finally, to resign, now expressing his wish to stay and rebuild what everyone knows was a great Orchestra.
The last two years, with this Orchestra, has been a bit like watching a house burn down, and the occupants now returning to rebuild it, even though they had inadequate insurance.
That’s what watching the Minnesota Orchestra these last couple of years has been for me.
But I – We in the audience – are relegated to bystander status when it comes to the business affairs of this management, behind the yellow “do not cross” tape. The Board quite obviously has not a clue as to how to constructively involve us in recovery efforts. They aren’t accustomed to really listening, and changing their own ways.
Recognizing this, I’ll just try to do what I can. (As an aside, I notice this one little post is now at near 25,000 words, and has been revised 156 times since I first wrote it a year and a half ago. It may be a “dead” document – old news – but it lives on like some plant in dormancy. Maybe there is spring ahead?)
Bottom line for me, going forward: until and unless the Minnesota Orchestra Board 1) opens its membership to other than its personally anointed representatives; and 2) becomes totally transparent, with open meetings and recorded votes; the future is grim indeed.
Both these actions will be excruciatingly difficult for them, accustomed as they are to operating in secret, telling only what they want to tell to everybody.
We have our half dozen ticket for the post-lockout concerts.
The future will be up to the management of this Orchestra.
Will they care what the audience thinks, or not?
And do we in the audience care enough to take our one oar and do what we can?

A PROPOSAL FOR CHANGE:
Change has to come from within. The decision making power comes from two poles: the Board, which controls the money, the building, the programming, etc; and the Audience, which has the ultimate power – whether or not to participate by attending events or contributing.
1. The Board of Directors has to make some very major decisions:
A. To become transparent, with open to the public meetings, recorded votes, and all the other public transparency aspects. Continuing to act as a closed body will not restore trust.
B. The Board apparently decides who can be on the Board. It must modify the structure of the Board to allow for elected public membership; persons independent of the current power structure, and accountable to public members who elect them to office for defined terms. There need to be enough of these public members to be able to make a difference. This is no time for “token” membership.
C. A relatively small slice of the general public has any particular knowledge of or interest in the affairs of the Minnesota Orchestral Association, therefore the word “public” needs to be defined, and I think a starting point for conversation might define “public” for the purpose of running for Board member, or voting for candidates, is anyone who has actually purchased a ticket and warmed a seat in Orchestra Hall during the previous year. There is, likely, a list of who would qualify as having purchased tickets, and this might be the starting point for the ‘electorate’. It is probably in the tens of thousands of names, but certainly not in the millions. It is a discreet number, and definable.
2. The Audience has to become engaged in this conversation. If they do not, the status quo will remain a major issue.
From Alan, Apr 2, 2014:
Dick, you are over 100% right about the audience, who I will refer to as the customer. I started a business in 1956 distributing food products to grocery stores. They were very small and had very little variety. Over the years, I found thousands of products that were sold in different sections of this country and showed it to my customers. The stores that added variety increased their business by getting more customers.
It is the customer that drives the business.
In the case of the orchestra, the customer is the audience. It is not the musicians that are the expense.
The greatest and most wasteful expense is any empty seats in the auditorium during a concert. Ideally, every seat should be filled. I believe that part of the reason that this does not happen very often is the building itself, Orchestra Hall.
When the orchestra did their concerts at Northrop, I believe that every seat had a 100% view of the stage and the orchestra. At Orchestra Hall, that is not possible because of the shape of the building and the position of the stage. The building is long and narrow with the stage in a narrow end. I only sat on the third tier once, and I could only see about a third of the stage and the sound really sucked. The building should have been built like the Ordway, where every seat in the hall has a clear view of the stage.
The many years that we had season tickets, we chose to sit on the left aisle center section. Before the building even opened, when the orchestra was rehearsing and the conductor saw that from his podium he could not see all of the seats, so he knew that some the seats could not see him, the Star Tribune called it an architectural blunder. Seats that cannot see the entire stage should not be sold and should be removed, I believe.
Every experience hearing and seeing our great orchestra should be a great experience for everyone. That always has not been the case, because of where one might be sitting. I never attended a concert to hear the orchestra. I attended to watch a great orchestra make wonderful music. During the 1980’s, I could watch my only child with her viola, under the baton of Leonard Slatkin, before MS ended her career, add to our personal joy. Alan
from John G, to the Board of Minnesota Orchestra:
Henson is leaving, but not until August. Why? He has all the months until then to keep matters in an uproar, especially by refusing to reinvite Osmo Vanska.
Second, we had an official unique, irreplaceable partnership between our Osmo Vanksa and the MN Orchestra. That most unusual splendid partnership was affirmed worldwide – except for our obtuse MOA Board.
Third, either you change your present members of the Board, or most certainly you ruin this MN Orchestra. That is inexcusable, not only in my view.
Fourth, I as a member of the audience every time my eldest daughter and her husband send gift certificates for this 83-year-old long-retired educator, even I will certainly not again be part of the Osmos Vanska-era orchestra’s audience if you break that celebrated chemistry between Osmo and the musicians and their enthusiastic audience.
Fifth, you claim to lack adequate finances. Nonsense. You lack simply the courage and wisdom to invest your considerable endowment at this emergency moment in this particular community of the MO and Osmo Vanska.
Sixth, we need a strong leadership that does not confuse brute force with real leadership toward results that all of us have invested in. That is not what we have had. That is not what your actions promise for us in the future.
Seventh, in particular you will never get the results that we in the audience expect, simply by shoving around both the musicians and especially their Music Director/Conductor Osmo Vanska. We support the latter, and insist that new members be elected to the MOA Board: members from the musicians, members from the musically informed public, members from Minnesota educators, members from the finance community who are open-minded about classical music rather than close-minded in their non-expectations for its future value as a leader in classical music for our state, nation, and world.
Eighth, I write as a former member in college of the music fraternity Phi Mu Alpha, as grandson of one who studied music in Germany in the early 20th century, as a son of one who studied some sessions at Juiliard in NYC, and as a lifelong amateur but informed participant in the music community. Even an amateur can see the seriousness of this immediate emergency. You
change, you leave, or the Minnesota Orchestra is no longer the envy of other cities and communities across the globe.
UPDATE April 26, 2014: Osmo Vanska Returns; still and uncertain future for the Minnesota Orchestra
Three very recent items in the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
1) About Vanska’s return: here;
2) Vanska and Joshua Bell and Orchestra here;
3) Symphony Ball cancelled for 2014, here.
My wife and our elderly friend from across the street saw Joshua Bell (link above).
We attend the historic concert at the newly remodeled Northrop Auditorium featuring the Orchestra with Vanska recreating (if I correctly recall) the first program of the Symphony at its founding 110 years ago.
There is a very long road to recovery, and my hope is for success. I wish I could be more optimistic, but I’m not at that point.
But without major structural changes in how the Orchestra Board chooses to govern itself, and less obsession with the money pot, the long-term priorities are still questionable, and the prognosis is not especially promising, in my opinion.
It is impossible to know for certain what goes on within the MOA Board because it is minimally transparent: it tells only what it wants known and it has no independent public members who can keep it honest.
Doing business the way business was done during the lockout is no solution. I used to feel ownership, pride, when I went past Orchestra Hall. That is long gone.
from Molly R: Well, I’m somewhat optimistic… Vanska’s return–even on a 2 yr. contract–helps me in that. I was afraid they’d insist on a head-for-a-head–ie, Henson’s for Vanska’s. So, this to me offers a few rays of hope, at least.
peace, friend, and again, thanks for all your faithfulness and work on this.
From Jim F: Alas, the would-be aristocrats are still very much in charge and are still determined to demonstrate their power over lesser beings. Guess, but an educated one: The Vanska deal won’t work and will end in the reluctantly allotted two years, unless he quits in disgust before then, which I would say is more probable than just possible. The aristos undoubtedly felt the public pressure and also knew that they were going to take the orchestra down the tube financially if they didn’t get him back and they didn’t want to be blamed for that. But they will interfere, block, get in the way at every step to demonstrate to the maestro that THEY rule the roost. It’s a disaster in the making.
UPDATE May 25, 2014:
There are several newspaper articles during the past month, including a major front page article on Richard Davis, the banker/chief negotiator for the MOA Board during the lockout, and lead person on the Twin Cities getting the 2018 Super Bowl. A listing of the articles is here. (The other lead person, Marilyn Carlson-Nelson, vice chair of the Board.)
In the major story, mention is made of Davis simply appearing at a protest at Orchestra Hall last year. I think I have a photo of him there, September 6, 2013, one of the men standing off to the side.
Sep 6, 2013, at Orchestra Hall protest.  I believe Richard Davis is one of the two men at center.

Sep 6, 2013, at Orchestra Hall protest. I believe Richard Davis is one of the two men at center.


UPDATE June 16, 2014 from Dick Bernard
Saturday I mailed a letter to MOA Chair Gordon Sprenger and Vice-Chair Marilyn Carlson-Nelson. The two page letter, plus additional background material is linked here: Mn Orch Ltr Jun 14 14001
Both the letter and the attachments speak to the difficulty I’m having establishing any kind of a trust relationship with the present Board of Directors of the MOA.
Read also, about the Superbowl “perks” demanded and granted; and the front page story about Richard Davis. “Power” and Wealth run amuck.
UPDATE July 11, 2014 from Dick Bernard
Today I am sending $100 to Mn Orchestra as a small contribution to help accomplish a challenge grant of $100,000. I encourage you to do similar, by the deadline of July 31, 2014.
All information follows in this July 1 item I received from Save Our Symphony Minnesota (SOSMn).
At this moment, I still have little trust for the MOA Board, but I have developed a great deal of respect for SOSMn.
I asked for more information from SOSMn, which came in a long and very informative but private letter on July 2. Along with the letter came the link to the Community Meeting presentation SOSMn made on June 10. You can view that here.
Healing from such a disaster as the MOA Lockout was takes lots of time and, ultimately, some trust that the captains who caused the disaster in the first place have learned some lessons and are in the always slow (and usually cloaked in secrecy) process of making correction so that a similar disaster does not occur again. Sometimes, “trust me” is necessary as a step from here to there.
We’ve been back in the Hall quite often, most recently to the marvelous Rachmaninoff and Brahms program yesterday, with pianist Natasha Paremski and Sommerfest conductor Andrew Litton. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks for “Bravo Broadway: Broadway Then…and Now”.
And we are renewing for 2014-15.
Success in music or anything else is a team effort.
For far too long, the lead characters on the MOA Board forgot that fact.
If you’ve been on the sidelines, please join us in coming back, while continuing to hold the Orchestral Association accountable.

#766 – Dick Bernard: Changing the Ways of Political Conversation

This column speaks of politics, but not about parties, or issues, or positions. Rather, it is about process. This relates, also, to the previous two posts. Regardless of your ideology, I’d encourage you to read on, and at least consider what follows.
Change in any long term habit is difficult.
I doubt there would be much disagreement with that statement.
People who appear to succeed in being change-agents have managed to get themselves in a position of sufficient power to move their followers (i.e. employees, subjects, etc) along. This can happen at any level, from the tiniest group to the largest. But, as they all come to learn, temporary power does not have permanence. Sooner or later they become irrelevant, hopefully not doing too much damage in the process of controlling outcomes.
Remembering August 28, 1963, and looking back at that awe-inspiring (or terrifying) event 50 years later, gives an opportunity to dust off a failed proposal I made in September, 2008. My proposal was met with yawns, then – at least I saw no perceptible results amongst the several hundred who I shared the proposal with, and they were mostly “birds of a feather”.
My “campaign” began in the Spring of 2007. I was President of an umbrella Peace and Justice organization which had about 70 member organizations even then. The organization still exists, and I’m still a member of it.
In April of 2007, I convened an ad hoc group of people I knew to meet and simply converse about the possibility of changing the way we promoted change (demonstrations, etc.) to something potentially more productive. Both energy and effectiveness were, in my judgement, flagging.
Ultimately, perhaps 15 folks showed up to talk, and we had a good conversation.
But when we left the room, it ended: a typical kind of scenario. As I say, change is difficult.
A year later, the spring of 2008, out of office, but still concerned about our drift towards irrelevancy, I thought up an experiment, which proposed to change how we might achieve a different result by using different means. Once again, I had sufficient folks to try the experiment, which, again, failed. I called it “each one, reach two”.
In September, 2008, about the time the Republican National Convention ended, I published the “failed proposal” I describe above. It remains permanently on the web, and you can find it by putting the words “Uncomfortable Essays” in the Search Box at my blogsite, Outside the Walls.org/blog. There, you’ll be re-directed to March 8, 2011. Click the link in the 3rd line, and read pages 3-7 about my failed idea. (There are two other references there. I also wrote about the idea on March 26, 2013.)
Succinctly, if you’re not interested in going to the links: what used to work, what we used to call “organizing”, doesn’t work as well as it used to for all sorts of reasons most every reader could recite. People and technology are different. What worked in my day, doesn’t work as well today.
But, because the old rules are what we understand, that is our first default position: to do things as we always did them. Power people are as susceptible as the rest, perhaps even more susceptible to ‘staying the course’. After all, what they did, used to work. …they “used to work”.
“Each one, reach two” was my attempt to move a little bit towards what I would call the strategy (or is it “tactic”?) of networking: “each one, reach two”.
It has awesome potential.
But it seems too slow, and (perhaps worst) it can careen out of control, for the initiator, who often wants to control the final outcome.
Networking works.
Why not give it a try at the beginning of these next 50 years?

#765 – Rosa, Joyce, Bill, Carol, Madeline, Jane, Jermitt, Jeff, John, Dick, Will, Peter: The March on Washington August 28, 1963, reflections by folks who weren't there, but were impacted, then and now.

Related Post: August 27, 2013
Highly recommended book (still in print): Why We Can’t Wait, by Martin Luther King, published 1964, about the year 1963.

Rosa, who was raised in Orangeburg SC and is old enough to remember Aug 28, 1963, remembers...

Rosa, who was raised in Orangeburg SC and is old enough to remember Aug 28, 1963, remembers…


PRE-NOTE: This is a very long post (about 10 times the length of a typical post at this space), but (in my opinion) worth your time and your own reflection on your place in the conversation about race and other matters in todays United States of America. There is a lot of content.
For certain, take the time to read the comments of Will S, who grew up in north Minneapolis and is a lifelong resident of the Twin Cities; and Peter B, who grew up primarily in Philadelphia and for some years now has been a rural resident – living on a farm – in New Hampshire. Their comments are last on this very long page.
You can learn both by reading and reflecting on what they have to say. Neither were at the march, but do they ever have stories!
August 28, 1963, an event whose end result was unknown (or unknowable) even to the organizers. took place on the National Mall near the Lincoln Memorial.
The news this week has focused on those who were actually there – I would guess the 1963 event directly involved only about one of every thousand Americans at the time. Still, it was an immensely successful event with great long term and positive ramifications for our country.
Today, President Obama apparently speaks from the spot of the 1963 speech. But, as seems always to be true, the real action of August 28, 1963, and after today, happens amongst the others – the remaining 999 of every 1000 – who are back home. People like us.
This blog is entirely comments by persons who weren’t on the Mall August 28, 1963, for one reason or another (you have to be at least 49 years old to have had even the possibility of being on that Mall Lawn, August 28, 1963.) What they have to say, in diverse ways, is very important.
They are simply friends, who I invited to make any comments they’d like to share, and a few ‘took the bait’, and here they are, the short ones first:
Joyce D, Aug 20, 2013: I was rather young at the time (12), but what I do remember is the demonization of the people involved in the march; my parents and their friends were liberals about many things, but not about race, and I remember their disgust at African Americans who “didn’t know their place”. I didn’t really find out what the civil rights movement was about until I went to college and met some African American students. I had tried arguing with my parents about race when I was a young teenager (I went to college at 16, so I was still quite young in high school) but I didn’t have the information to argue with them successfully; once I was in college, however, and getting to know African Americans, I was able to break away from my parents’ influence on race.
Here is a wonderful oral history from the Smithsonian:
From Bill K, Aug 20, 2013: Dick, Martin Luther King was a great, great American hero to me. In the mid-1940s I attended one of the two high schools in St. Paul where, thanks to some gerrymandering by the School Board, nearly all Black students attended. These schools were John Marshall High ( which I attended) and
Mechanic Arts High. Central High located on the western edge of the predominant housing area of most Black families was off limits to them.
It always amazed me when I heard the Black students in my classes sing the Star Spangled Banner with the words “the home of the free and the brave” or say the Pledge of Allegiance with words
“with Liberty and Justice for all” when so very much of this did not apply to their lives. What utter hypocrisy existed in those anthems then and for many years until the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1950s and the 1960s. I have so much admiration for those who actively participated in their campaign. I do not think I would have been brave enough having a wife and 4 children at the time but many others both Black and White did. They too are heroes to me; however, Dr. King’s “I HAVE A DREAM” speech was the crowning high point of this movement for Liberty and Justice for all Americans!! To this day I still get misty eyed when I hear a replay of his speech.
Joyce D, Aug 24, 2013: In response to Bill Klein’s comments regarding recitation of the pledge, my friends and I recited the pledge in high school (it was required) but we when it came to the phrase, “with liberty and justice for all”, we substituted, “with liberty and justice for some”. Only we knew we had changed the words, but it was important to us.
from Carol T, Aug 25, 2013: To my eternal embarrassment, I was paying no attention. I had just married and I’m afraid was centered on myself and my life. I can relate to the person who said their prejudice was against Indians. I graduated from Brainerd [MN], but of course there were not Indians in my school as they were all on the “rez.” Not a Black person in sight there, either – and basically none in St. Cloud where I moved. They lived in somebody elses world.
I was working at the St. Cloud VA Hospital in Personnel. I got my introduction to how institutional prejudice worked when it was necessary to hire PT or OT personnel. The law said that we had to hire from the top seven available candidates (highest test scores) on the lists provided. The best candidates seemed to always be from the South. My boss would comb through the resumes for evidence of race, like attendance at a Black university. Those were out. If a phone call to them was not answered, then it was documented that they were unavailable and he’d slide on down the list. Once he was in an absolute quandary as everyone on the list appeared to be Black, so he’d have to hire one of “them.” The new OT (Mr. White) was a wonderful gentleman, and attended our church with his family.
from Madeline S, Aug 25, 2013: I cannot recall specifically what I was doing that summer, probably working, knowing I would return to a second year at the Fergus Falls Junior College. My parents watched the news, so, living at home, perhaps I saw the march and the speech. West central Minnesota, “at that time,” had little mention of race. There was one black family in Fergus when I was in high school and I recall asking my parents how they would feel if I dated their son. To their credit, it would give them no concern if I did. He was a good kid and involved like all others in high school activities. At the Junior College we had two black professors, one a PhD in Psychology. [Following] is an email from a classmate shows how things were regarding racism in that area earlier in the century.
from Jane (friend of Madeline): Here’s an article Negroes MN 1915002 from way back in time, 1915 that was published in the Battle Lake [MN]Review.
Mary found this in many of her sister Noel’s oldies but goodies pile of collectable papers. It took me a while to enlarge the print to make it legible.
Hope you can appreciate how most people have become a more united and embracing society to all human beings. When someone says that we should go back to how things were in the past, this is a horrific example how people treated others that were not like them.
from Jermitt K, Aug 26, 2013: Dick: Thanks for your request on memories regarding the great march on Washington. I remember watching and listening to the presentations while on campus at the University of South Dakota. I was working toward my Master’s Degree in Botany. I was very interested in Dr. Martin Luther King’s presentation. I had met Dr. Martin Luther King three years earlier at a church conference in Florida. So I followed most of his activities from that time forward. His “I Have a Dream” speech had a very deep and emotional impact on me. While I was already teaching economically depressed children at the time, I made a commitment to continue working with children of all races who were struggling because of burdens of poverty, either directly or indirectly. I hope that I have been able to fulfill this commitment.
from Jeff P, Aug 26, 2013: I was 9 years old. I vaguely remember that, the big thing in my memory [President Kennedy Assassination] would come in November. I was in 3rd grade I think at St Sebastian school, we got let off for the day… sad days for those nuns.
from John B, Aug 28, 2013:You asked your blog readers about their recollections of the MLK I have a dream speech:
I am pretty sure I didn’t see the original MLK speech in August, 1963. I was beginning my first year at Saint Olaf College. I had likely just arrived on campus and nobody had TV sets. If I hadn’t been moved by the speech when I later heard about it, I have since, many times. It was a little hard to get whipped up about a speech, as I had already been whipped up in years earlier at a much more personal level.
All my heroes in my high school days were jazz musicians, especially Miles Davis and J.J.Johnson and Charlie Mingus, just some of my ideals I had pictures of hanging from the walls of my bedroom, along side of white musicians Bob Brookmeyer and Gerry Mulligan. I knew of the racial struggles. I tended to support a more radical expression of racial justice like advocated by SNCC and later, Malcom X and the Black Panthers. In my last year in high school I was in a speech activity called “play reading” where I played the roll of Walter Younger in Loarraine Hansberry’s 1959 play, A Raisin in the Sun. A few years later the play was made into a movie starring Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee. I got into the role. My teacher, Barbara Feldman, helped me do this through some memorable conversations. She also gave me a copy of an LP record of by Oscar Brown Jr., named Sin and Soul, which poetically told the tale of being a Negro in America pre MLK. Although predisposed to fight for the underdog, I have since realized, I will always root for the underdog. This trait, as you know me Dick, is part of who I am. It was like I was hard wired to be a union organizer.
I remember where I was and how I felt when MLK was murdered in 1968 or 1969. I can’t remember which year, but I was at the Plaza Bar in Madison after a rehearsal of the Madison Municipal Band. It was devastating news, another kick in the face in the 1960s. Yes, progress has been made. There is so much left to do.
from Dick Bernard, Aug 20, 2103: August 28, 1963, best as I can piece together, I was in an Army Division practicing war in the outback of South Carolina. We arrived at the Air Force Base in Greenville SC, and perhaps a couple of weeks later departed from Ft. Gordon near Augusta GA.
In between, we were playing war. I was a company clerk in an infantry company, nearing the end of my two years.
Maybe some of us knew it at the time, but what we were about was practicing for the Vietnam War, then just a gleam in somebody’s eye.
So, I have no recollections of any March on Washington D.C.
But I do have recollections of race in that time.
I was a North Dakotan, and in my youth “negroes” were essentially unknown to me, though by then the Air Force bases at Minot and Grand Forks had come into being. So far as I know, the Army was fully integrated in my time in the service (1962-63).
In North Dakota, the race of choice for us to discriminate against was the Indians (I am using the terms of the time) who were in reservations, and certainly not “equal” in any sense of the word. Years later, I was asked to talk about the business of race at my Church in St. Paul. I still have the notes from MLK Day, Jan 18, 1995: Dick B Jan 18, 1995 Race001 . Just a white guy talking about race to a congregation with many African-Americans….
There are some recollections from South Carolina in the summer of 1963.
1. Most dramatic personal memory was in Saluda SC where, for some reason, we had some liberty time – a few hours, perhaps – in a town. I recall a laundromat, there, with a “colored” entrance which one could reach only by going in an outside door, in what we’d call the basement.
2. In the boondocks we came across a long deserted plantation house, looked sort of like the antebellum pictures you see, but in advanced state of deterioration.
3. Somewhere along the way, somebody came across an Atlanta Constitution newspaper. I remembered specifically an advertisement in that paper placed by someone named Lester Maddox for the PickRick Restaurant in Atlanta. This was an interesting ad: a full column, advertising Fried Chicken and spewing what we would now call racist commentary. Lester Maddox, of course, later became Governor of Georgia. Years later I looked up the PickRick ads in old Atlanta Constitutions. They ran once a week, always the same. Here’s the copy for the ad for August 31, 1963, three days after DC: Atlanta Ad 8-31-63001. The copy would have been submitted before the march, but the content is nonetheless revealing, as the photo of part of the ad shows, below:
(click to enlarge)
From the PickRick ad in the Atlanta Constitution, August 31, 1963.

From the PickRick ad in the Atlanta Constitution, August 31, 1963.


4. Some lucky ducky’s in our battalion came across a country high school and had an opportunity to take a shower, but only the white soldiers were welcome to this luxury; the same report was given later by some GIs who had a chance to eat in a restaurant, but their black friends were not welcome.
But, I remember nothing about August 28, 1963, not until well after Army Days.
from Carol, in response to Dick (above), Aug 28: I have a delightful little story which you may enjoy- given your North Dakota roots. My grandpa (who, unfortunately, died before I could know him) homesteaded in the boonies of ND. My aunts tell the story (early 1900s) of the time he hired a Black man to work on their farm. Neighbors got together and helped each other out at “threshing time,” but sometimes they needed more help. Grandpa went in to their little town to meet the train, as migrant workers often were on it. He brought home a Black guy – who the neighbors thought was good enough to work alongside them, but they complained to grandpa that they didn’t want to sit down at the dinner table with him. Grandpa told them, “Oh, you don’t have to, you can take your plate and eat in the kitchen, or on the porch…” After that they shared the table. My aunts remembered him playing with them during “down time” instead of trying to socialize with the white neighbors. One remembered asking him why his hands were so black but the palms were whiter, and he said he guessed he hadn’t washed them well enough. Love the story, and love my grandpa for it.
from Will S, Aug 25, 2013: If Dr. King were alive today, I think he would create not a memorial march to the site of the 1963 event but a march moving from the White House to the Capitol to the Pentagon to the offices of the CIA, FBI, NSA and other spook organizations, the Treasury Department, K Street where the PR people and lobbysists are officed and perhaps most important, the Supreme Court.
People would be armed with draft bills to achieve what they want.
They would sending back reports to hometown media with their high-tech phones in real time on real events.
They would focus on the present and the future and try to build on the past.
That’s what I think we should be doing and if we couldn’t go to D.C. for the memorial event, we can always visit the local offices of our two U.S. senators and House representative and tell them in person what we think and what we want.
Sitting home (as I probably do more than the rest of you) and typing away may be productive if LTEs get published and writing your Congresspeople on their websites always is recommended (by me) but there is nothing like a face to face meeting if it can be arranged.
The memorial march on Washington should not be a one-day event that quickly fades into history. It should be a revitalization of the cause of civil rights and the start of something on-going.
More from Will S, Aug 26, 2013: There are varying accounts of who the first Freedom Riders were. I knew several classmates at the U of M who went to Tennessee and Mississippi in the late 1950s to register voters. They were hassled by the police but not arrested. I could not go because I was just beginning a job in the newsroom of KSTP. They called in reports to us everyday, but most of the other media just were not interested.
Not long after, word was received that one of the cities that the Freedom Riders visited was going to retaliate.
They had gathered a group of unemployed black people, told them jobs and homes were waiting for them in Minnesota and sent them on a chartered bus to a city in southwestern Minnesota, forget which one. The group became known as the Reverse Freedom Riders.
I called the mayor of this town and he had no idea this was happening, understood what was being done, was appalled at how the blacks were lied to and said, “Don’t worry, we will find them places to live, we will welcome them and try to find them jobs.”
This became a national news story. I reported it on NBC radio and we sent a TV crew to film it for Huntley-Brinkley NBC Evening News although I was not part of that.
Eventually, the blacks returned to the South because they could not stand Minnesota winters.
The mayor said they not only were the first black residents of that town but the first blacks most residents ever had met. Churches there played a big role in taking them in.
Another time, a friend of mine and I went to the Minneapolis Auditorium to hear George Wallace speak. Some of the pickets became disruptive and someone called the police. They sprayed some kind of crowd dispersal gas on the audience and I helped a woman and her kids out of the building.
When someone sued the police department, I volunteered to testify and did.
Can’t remember the disposition of the case.
In my career in the news business, among the civil rights activists I met were Martin Luther King III who came here to speak often; Julian Bond and Andrew Young.
More Will S, same day. When I worked in PR at 3M, I was a resource person to the company’s African-American Arts Society. Sometime in the 1990s, when the actor James Earl Jones came to the Guthrie Theater, then located near Loring Park, Minneapolis, to act in a play about apartheid in South Africa, I got 3M to pay for tickets and arranged through the Guthrie PR person for our group to meet Mr. Jones after the performance.
Meet him? He kept the bar open until 3 a.m. and we discussed many subjects of concern to black men and women.
3M had trouble attracting and keeping black employees. They had good jobs but were put off by the relatively few number blacks then living here compared to where they had grown up and-or come from.
They wanted to socialize with other blacks, meet new people, maybe find marriage partners. Many left in despair. But one told me she had done the most daring thing of her life: began dating a white man (not me) and they were totally in love. Don’t know how that worked out.
Once in the 1990s, I was attending a play at black-oriented Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul. To my surprise, I found myself sitting directly behind the renowned black playwright August Wilson who came here from Pittsburgh.
At that time, I was editor of the newsletter of the Twin Cities Jazz Society. I knew Wilson was a big jazz fan and we did an interview during intermission. The subject: is jazz strictIy a music by and for blacks or is there room for whites and others? “Of course there’s room for others!” he yelled at me and everyone looked at us. We both laughed. I scooped the corporate media which then and now was no big accomplishment.
In 2002 I was in New York for a jazz convention. In the lobby, people had gathered around Jesse Jackson. He held court on a variety of problems and I found him well versed on jazz, too.
Still more, Will S, Aug 26: When I worked at Honeywell 1965-1974, I met an engineer who was a German Jew who barely had escaped Hitler. When riots and city burnings were flaring up all over the nation including a small one on Plymouth Avenue North, Minneapolis, where I was raised and where many of Minneapolis’ blacks lived, Hans Peter Meyerhoff, now in retirement with his Belgian Jewish wife, Rose, in Fridley, decided to try to do something to help blacks economically.
He prepared on a manual typewriter and replicated by carbon paper copies of a list of black business operators in North Minneapolis, called it “Buy Black,” distributed copies to his friends and associates and urged them to patronize these businesses. It grew slowly but steadily. South Minneapolis was added, then St. Paul, then others around the state.
I wrote a story about “Buy Black” for the employee newspaper and when I told a friend of mine at the local AP office about “Buy Black,” he put it on the national AP newswire and over the years, “Buy Black” took on a life of its own with a small staff and still operates.
At the same time, the Urban Coalition and other Twin Cities business people helped create a local chapter of the National Minority Business Campaign [NMBC], designed to help larger black-owned companies do business with majority firms.
By this time, I had moved to 3M and helped the director of purchasing write a guidebook designed to help minority business people deal with majority firms.
Word of this reached the White House and when I attended the national convention of NMBC in DC, I was invited to speak.
Just before we entered the East Room at the White House, Pres. Carter came down the steps connecting the family residence to the main floor. He was holding a copy of our 3M guidebook. When we shook hands, I told him I had written it. He said he wanted me to meet his Secretary of Commerce whose name I forget. She and I spent an entire day together discussing what the Carter Administration could do to improve interaction between government, the private sector and the black business community. She wrote the book on that.
I should have taken with me when I retired from 3M all of the photos, documents, awards etc. that 3M received but I l left them in a file cabinet and when I asked someone to search for them, they were gone.
“Buy Black” held a reunion recently but I could not get the media interested. They did cover the annual luncheon of the local chapter of NMBC, probably because it is closer to corporate culture than small business. Big mistake to ignore small, minority business.
Still more Will S Aug 26: Although there are many black men and women I would like to meet or hear speak or read their books (which I try to do) the foremost one is Angela Yvonne Davis.
A mainstay of The Black Panthers in the 1950s and ’60, companion and ideologue of murdered Panther George Jackson, her 10-year-old book The Angela Y. Davis Reader is light years ahead of most others in its ideology and ideas for the future.
You’ll probably have to find it on Amazon or some such but it is well worth the search as is the sometimes-difficult read when it seems less a book and more like a PhD thesis full of arcane terminology and references, but then, why should that make any difference?
Davis now teaches at the University of California/Santa Cruz, does few media gigs but seems to be alive and well and, I hope, still writing and someday will emerge from semi-seclusion to become a political leader again for all of us. ws
and still more from Will, Aug 26: thenation.com Sept. 2/9 largely devoted to the 50th anniversary of The March.
I don’t know about where you-all grew up but at Minneapolis North in the 1950s, now crime-ridden, relations among almost everyone were peaceful.
We grew up integrated before the term ever was invented.
There was a tiny bit of socializing between a few of us white boys and a few black girls. My parents didn’t care but the girl I was attracted to said if her father knew she was dating a white boy, he would kill me and she was not kidding.
She won a scholarship to what became known as a Historical Black College in Atlanta and I never saw her again.
On some hot summer nights, weather like this, we would meet at Theodore Wirth Lake where the Aqua Follies were held including recently-deceased Olympic swimmer Esther Williams.
A few of us swam nude and a very few of us became intimate. It became the best kept secret in the school. But no white girls participated; they were scared to death of sex and even more scared of black boys.
The most astounding event was in about 1950 when a white Jewish man (older brother of a friend of mine) eloped with a black woman to LA.
A strange thing happened at my bar mitzvah June 25, 1949 at Mikro Kodesh synagogue, 1000 Oliver Av. N.
In the middle of my recitation, the doors to the synagogue opened and in walked a half dozen very tall black men wearing mourning coats and that type of formal dress.
The rabbi stopped the service and went back to find out who they were. Turned out their letter never had arrived announcing that they were Ethiopian Jews on a tour of the U.S.
Many in the congregation were very prejudiced against blacks who were beginning to move into North Minneapolis but the rabbi seated them and they joined us for the traditional Jewish feast after the bar mitzvah.
They knew nothing about Yiddish but the rabbi said they spoke a dialect of Hebrew that probably dated back to Moses’ time!
Their next stop was Seattle so we called ahead to a synagogue there to receive them, put them on the Empire Builder and off they went.
I can see them as if it were yesterday.
Tall and lean, heavily bearded, all wearing the same clothing including top hats instead of yamakas which was all right with us!
Prejudice of many of the congregation against blacks led me first to leave the congregation and eventually, Judaism. Am now a devout agnostic.
and more yet from Will, Aug. 27, 2013: If you are interested in working for causes that come generally under the heading of civil rights, find the NAACP or Urban League chapter in your area and find out what their needs are.
It has been my experience that they welcome new members of any race and there is no doubt in my mind that the readers of Bernard’s Blog could help these organizations immensely.
I once attended an Urban League national convention and an NAACP national convention as a representative of 3M and met some the most dedicated people I ever was to meet.
We have some people like that here and they will be in D.C. for the March, but they have been marching all of their lives.
and still more from Will, Aug 28: After Dr. King was assassinated, a friend of mine at 3M, Ken Coleman of St. Paul, of African American descent, a company photographer, put together a memorial to Dr. King which he offered to his widow, Coretta Clark King, for use at the King Center in Atlanta. The company gave free rein to Ken to do his project and he became close to the entire King family.
A few years later, Ken left 3M to take a job in California and except for a few phone calls and one visit back to St. Paul, we have been out of touch but I can imagine, wherever he is, what he is thinking and feeling on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, and what he did help memorialize Dr. King.
If you ver go to Atlanta, you must visit the King memorial.
From Peter B., Aug 25 & 26, 2013:
Dick,
I missed that march, but made a lot of others; and I was deeply engaged with the Civil Rights Movement in those times. The Civil Rights struggle is far from over, and by many measures things have gotten far worse.
The marches on Washington were not media events. They were hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life, who had tried every other thing they could come up with to change a terrible and quite deadly situation. Back then Washington was where we thought we could assemble for “redress of grievances.” Congresspeople still read their own mail. You could walk into the White House. Nobody knew what a “Jersey Barrier” was.
Most of the media coverage – newspapers and radio and black-and-white television – succeeded in watering down the real messages and minimizing the actual numbers of real people involved, and playing up the weirdos. Which in those times was anybody wearing a beard.
The coverage of Manning and Snowden and Assange today is much more skillfully bent. Old techniques still work reliably, and they were refined, such as “shoot the messenger” and “divide and conquer.” Who has seen any story about the actual content of the thousands of documents uncovered by these brave, pitiful human beings? Only those who are able to go find out themselves; and now, the NSA has your number.
We live in an Empire beset by “Terrorism.” Serious People discuss “The Terrorist Threat.” There is no possibility of functioning Democracy, none, it’s been gone for years, such as it ever was. Marches merely let off some of the pressure. A few big names get seen again. People go home tired, hoping they accomplished something. I don’t think any of the people born since the original March really understand what they are up against. Hell, we didn’t know back then what Hoover was up to (and now his kind of scheming has been legalized). King really went through some horrors at the hands of the State, and the miracle and mystery of that man is that he kept it up all the way to the bloody end.
King knew what we were up against. He had been convincingly warned. For the rest of us the message is clear: if you are effective at resisting Power, Power will fear you. And now, they have drones, and all your emails, and all your friends’ emails.
Weren’t we quaint, all those years ago, with our beards and our signs and our sit-ins? Our fire-hoses and police dogs? I got a copy of my personal FBI file. I was eighteen years old, and the Feds interrogated upstanding members of my community about me.
It is a scary thing.
Love
Peter
(Continued, next day)
Expanding a little on a previous observation:
Consider what comes across the Feed – most television content – these days, and how we – and when I say “we” I mean people of every race and kind – how we used to get our impressions about groups of human beings of which we were not members.
One source of info on this for me is my first marriage. She was about as “black” as possible, from the ghetto that was Philadelphia, PA. We were in a band that played every dive in the city. We were very young to get married. We moved into the heart of the worst possible neighborhood in North Philly, and my education began in earnest. For readers who don’t know me, I’m “white.”
What did I know about the life of an “inner-city” dweller? In my suburban high school the racism was comfortably entrenched. “They” lived down on Union Street. Today it is one of the better neighborhoods, but then it was the only street in town that “Negroes” would be shown by realestate agents. In elementary school the rhyme had been recently edited to go: “Eeny meeny miney moe / Catch a Tiger by the toe…” and I had seen one fight narrowly averted by a smiling-but-serious “Negro” child when the older version was pronounced pointedly in his direction. “Better watch what you say…” Most “White” kids I knew were quietly terrified of being caught alone and outnumbered by “Negroes” of any age or professional status. What nightmares did “Negro” kids suffer from? I just woke up from one last night, to my astonishment, about running out of gas in the ghetto, and suddently being surrounded by hostile teenagers who proposed to set me on fire.
These things get embedded deep and permanently in the brain. I have known people for whom I was the first “White” they had ever seen (they thought I was a ghost, and kept pinching my skin in fascination); and as a toddler, I remarked to a visitor from India: “Sharda, your face is dirty.” She replied, smiling, “Oh, Peter, you’re naughty!” So perhaps racism should be distinguished as, on one hand, the natural response to the sight of a person with obvious physical differences; and on the other, an insideous economic system based on this reaction.
This being a college town, there were professors and students from Africa, or the deep south, or Philly; to most of us kids they were all just “Negroes.” But I was brought up to believe racial references were impolite, and no basis for choosing our friends or restaurants or any other relationships, and we had also lived in Nigeria for a year when I turned sixteen, the year President Kennedy was assassinated. I had met Stokely Carmichael (look him up!) who told me in no uncertain terms exactly what kind of racist I was. He was a great teacher, and I took it to heart. I recognized my racist self right then, and it is probably the best lesson I ever learned.
And there was of course my first love, music. I followed it into Philly in the late sixties. Yet even with all this, I gues one could say inoculation, against the culural mindset of my “White” middle-class suburban background, I was totally unprepared for life in the ghetto, in America.
I have surprisingly little to say on this point: in the “inner-city” with the largest, deadliest gang, the Zulu Nation, with forty thousand members, where no non-“Negro” people existed for ten miles in any direction except pawn-shop and delicatessen owners, and very rarely, cops; where my soon-to-be brother-in-law was already shot dead on his front lawn, and my mother-in-law-to-be worked a second job downtown in a porn movie thearter selling tickets; I was always treated with the utmost kindness, respect and concern for my comfort. This had been true in Nigeria when I walked in the bush for days armed with a water gourd, a blanket and a stick, and the same genuine, authentic human compassion was extended to me everywhere I went in the most bombed-out slums in America.
Still I was constantly on my guard, because “White” kids in America were taught, by every subtle, invisible sign and signal, that “Negroes” were dangerous, unpredictable and hostile. This belief ran so deep in the culture as to be invisible, just a background assumption that would only appear in stories about running out of gas in the “wrong neighborhood,” or in the dirty stories young boys told in locker-rooms and behind the bleachers, in which “Negroes” all had straight razors and deadly animal instincts.
Now. What do kids know about “African-Americans” today? They have, mind you, the Feed now. The thing that comes into every suburban home, spewing a ceaseless torrent of multi-media experiences in which “African-Americans” are usually the enemy, the perpetrator, or just the helpless dysfunctional victim of “society’s ills.” Cosby? Are you kidding? Oprah? Again, are you kidding? The occasional doctor or church-lady or gospel singer only makes the contrast sharper in the flood of the “gangsta” and sports mythology industries. And no mistake, industries they are. In America today, racism is big, big business.
The only “White” kids you might see in a ghetto now are on posters and TV ads promoting lighter skin and products that promise lighter skin and straighter hair. And this is still the scale on which beauty is ranked. Any “White” kid contemplating, say, pursuing a career in jazz or rap by working up through the ranks from the street would be considered suicidal. Schools are more segregated, if possible, than ever before in history, and so are the commercial jails, of course.
Oh sure, there are lots of up-and-coming “African-American” (why are there no “Anglo-Americans?”) in the schools and community colleges, and quotas of same at the Ivy League schools (a bone of contention still). They are headed for the professions, and there are still some middle-class neighborhoods waiting for them, if the Banksters haven’t bought up all the foreclosed property yet. But in America, now, in 2013, Aparteid is on the rise, and accelerating.
Fifty years later, the system of racial prejudice is still with us, as institutional and complicated as ever, and now it is, like perpetual war, a cornerstone of “the Economy.” Progress, of a kind, but to my mind, retrograde, and terminal if we don’t wake up to it.
Love
Peter

#764 – Dick Bernard: "I have a dream", 50 years later

Published in 1964, and still in print, Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King Jr is an outstanding first-person view of the year 1963.

Published in 1964, and still in print, Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King Jr is an outstanding first-person view of the year 1963.


Tomorrow is the actual anniversary of the “March on Washington” August 28, 1963 – it was a Wednesday then, too.
It occurred to me that almost all attention is paid to that day itself, in Washington, and that of the then-population of the United States perhaps one in 1,000 people were there.
The heavy lifting occurred before and after August 28, 1963. The event itself was extraordinary, but, like Rosa Parks sit-in on the bus in Alabama, only one part of a much larger story.
I decided to ask my own list to consider sharing some of their own memories related to August 28, 1963: “YOUR THOUGHTS? August 28 is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Whether you were there or not, you may have some thoughts to share on how you felt at that time in history, and how that event has impacted on you and people you know.
Eight people weighed in, including Will Shapira and Peter Barus with very lengthy and interesting perceptions.
The entire file, now approaching 6000 words (a normal blog is 600-700 words, and this one is about 170 word at this point) was published August 28. You can read it here.
I invite you to at least scroll through, and to apply the comments to your own perceptions and memories and application to the future. The long ones – Will and Peter’s – are the last portions of the post.
Personally:
1) None of us are post-racial, in my opinion, and we probably will never be post-racial. It is part of our very fabric. Saturday we took Cathy’s friend Alyson to see “The Butler”, the movie about the White House Butler for a long succession of Presidents. Alyson came to the U.S. from Antigua in 1982 and is African and white descent, dark-skinned with the unique island accent. We asked her for her impressions afterwards. I don’t think she could relate to the racial aspects. In her island Republic, part of the British empire still, the top government officials are ordinarily black. It is not considered a big deal. She is of slave ancestry, certainly, but the white ancestry is prominent as well. Apparently, at least from her perspective, the American experience is rather odd.
2) There is lamenting about how far there is still to go to achieve the dream articulated August 28, 1963. I tend to prefer looking at how it was, versus how it is, now. In 1963, there was no question that ours was a society rife with racial tensions…the white attitudes prevailed. Fifty years later, it is the whites who remember the ‘good old days’ pre-1963 who are on the defensive. There has been a huge change.
3) But…we are a people who tend to do change, then take it for granted, with the inevitable repeating of history. So, it is not enough to rest on laurels, rather necessary to stay in action, and in conversation about the real issues which remain.
4) Which leads back to the comment that perhaps one in 1,000 Americans was in Washington on the Mall August 28, 1963.
The 999 back home, then, and still, are the ones who will in the long run make the difference, by their individual and small group actions where they live. There is no magic bullet. I understand that President Obama – a clear beneficiary of August 28, 1963, will be speaking at the Mall tomorrow.
He is just one person.
We must be, as Gandhi said so powerfully, the change we wish to see in the world.
It’s on all of our shoulders.
That’s 564 words, about 10% of tomorrows post. I hope you drop in on it, maybe look back once or twice to read it through in bits and pieces.

#763 – Dick Bernard: Congratulations, Tom and Jennifer, at your 25th Anniversary. "For everything, there is a season."

(click to enlarge photos)

Rick, Joan and Ron reminisce, August 21, 2013

Rick, Joan and Ron reminisce, August 21, 2013


Today is son Tom and Jennifers 25th wedding anniversary.
Congratulations to you both.
Achieving 25 years together is one of those significant accomplishments, not easy to attain. That’s long enough to experience both the unknown and unknowable. For a couple to reach 25 years together is a significant achievement, as anyone who has ever been in any relationship can attest.
For just a single example, Tom’s Mom, Barbara, and I married 50 years ago this year: June 8, 1963. Neither of us were expecting that she’d spend almost all of our very short marriage ill, dying little over two years later, July 24, 1965.
Roughly half-way through that brief marriage, Tom was born. He will turn 50 in a few months.
I became a single parent early.
Just two days ago I was out to Anoka, our first home after Barbara died, part of a reunion of fellow staff members of Roosevelt Junior High School in Blaine MN. I had signed a contract to teach there three days before Barbara, died, and I began teaching there scarce a month later, doing my best to cope, with the substantial help of new friends in my new home, far from ND, where we had lived the earlier years of our lives. I was there seven years, moving on in an unexpected direction which occupied my next 27 years.
Roosevelt Jr. High School, Blaine MN, Summer, 1968.  Photo by Dick Bernard

Roosevelt Jr. High School, Blaine MN, Summer, 1968. Photo by Dick Bernard


I told a colleague, Wednesday, that I still have not pieced together the events of that month of August, 1965…I guess it’s like living through a disaster: you remember it happened, but not exactly what. Survival trumps memory.
The picture which leads this post, was taken at that reunion two days ago: three of my colleagues from those early years. The photo started life as a mistake, but under the circumstances it is an ideal representation of times past. I taught with these folks. They are about my age. They can represent everyone I’ve ever known on the path of life thus far.
Earlier that same day, August 21, I received an e-mail from someone in Maryland, whose Mom remembers my parents, most likely in 1939-40, when they lived in Valley City, North Dakota, essentially next door to her then-young Mom and Dad. It caused me to dig out the earliest photo I have of myself, with my parents, 73 years ago in Valley City:
Henry and Esther Bernard with newborn son, Richard, May, 1940, Valley City ND

Henry and Esther Bernard with newborn son, Richard, May, 1940, Valley City ND


Her Mom has to be somewhere near 100 now.
(It’s odd what such pictures sometimes bring to the surface. For those of a certain age, who can forget the coal chute, whose door is visible behind the crib.)
We all know, as we age, priorities begin to change, often due to circumstances we couldn’t anticipate; often because our perspectives change.
Anybody whose life begins to approach old age is reminded of this when more and more frequently we attend someone’s funeral, or visit someone we know in a Nursing Home. To paraphrase the Bible phrase Ecclesiastes 3: 1-15, Weddings are replaced by Baptisms are replaced by Graduations are replaced by Weddings…. For everything there is a season. Fall is as certain as Winter, as is Spring and then Summer.
Last Saturday, at another reunion of former colleagues from the ever-more distant olden days of work with the Minnesota Education Association (1972-2000), an early must-do was to read a partial list of colleagues who had departed this life. It is an ever longer list. Each name, as read, brought back memories to all of us in attendance.
John reads the roll of departed colleagues, August 17, 2013

John reads the roll of departed colleagues, August 17, 2013


We were all young, once.
Enroute home on Wednesday, an unexpected detour on the freeway gave me an opportunity to stop in and visit a retired minister I’ve known and been good friends with for the last ten or so years.
Till very recently he, another friend and I have had a long-standing date, once a month, to meet for coffee and conversation.
Earlier this summer, William collapsed in Church, ending up in a convalescent facility.
Yesterday, I stopped to visit him there, and he’d been transferred to an assisted living facility, so I traveled a few more miles to visit him there. Returning home seems not an option for him any more.
Three short months ago, William and his wife had certain routines. He’s well into his 80s, now, so they knew the odds of change increased every day.
But we never like to anticipate the winter of our lives, whose evidence I increasingly see at funerals and memorials for people that I know.
Had Barbara lived, earlier this summer we might have celebrated our 50th anniversary. Such possibility was not to be.
“Lord willing”, as Dad would say, my 75th birthday is not far in the future. Wednesday night came a call that my once-young Uncle Vince is hospitalized once again. He’s made it to 88, but the slope is ever more slippery. At some point, reality becomes undeniable.
The family script mitigates against he or I or anyone within seeing 100, but that’s okay.
Contribute in some way to others lives today.
There may not be a tomorrow.
Happy anniversary, Tom and Jennifer.
We’re proud of you. We love you.
Barbara Sunde Bernard, June 8, 1963 - July 24, 1965

Barbara Sunde Bernard, June 8, 1963 – July 24, 1965


Dick Bernard and Barbara Sunde Wedding June 8, 1963, Valley City ND, with families.

Dick Bernard and Barbara Sunde Wedding June 8, 1963, Valley City ND, with families.

#762 – Dick Bernard: Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out. What's ahead?

UPDATE: August 21, 2013: This important link forwarded by John B, received from “my niece, an attorney in Albuquerque. She once worked for the MN Orch Youth Symphony and is a cello player from St. Olaf.”
August 24, 2013: In the 23rd Star Tribune an article appeared on page B3 of the Metro Section giving management site on the Domain name issue (referred to in the above link). The article did not appear in the on-line edition, at least was not found, but is now accessible. Here is the STrib link. Here is a pdf of the actual article in yesterdays Star Tribune: Orch Domain names001
The musicians website: here
Previous posts about the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out: October 18, 2012; December 7, 2012; June 1, 2013; June 5, 2013; June 21, 2013; July 26, 2013; August 16, 2013; August 19, 2013.
When I began blogging in March, 2009, I had no idea what would evolve. Over the years, I’ve obviously been prolific. I’ve also noted that I’m eclectic – I am interested in lots of things, some passionately, and sometimes topics take root, like the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out, now near a year old.
We went to the Community Forum about the future of the Minnesota Orchestra, sponsored by Orchestrate Excellence, last night, and I included a brief report and the links to the video and the handout here. I would urge taking the time to access both handout and video, and I would also suggest joining Orchestrate Excellence network (click on “Join the Coalition” tab). Orchestrate Excellence seems to be reasonable folks with an objective of keeping our World Class Orchestra intact, and finding some way to settlement.
I know collective bargaining all too well: it was my job for 27 years. My colleagues and I worked in diverse ways with thousands of collective bargaining negotiations and agreements in that time. We dealt with upsets, small and large, and occasional strikes (really pretty rare). Never do I recall a Lock-Out, and certainly no Strike that lasted anywhere near as long as this Lock Out has prevailed. The geniuses who devised and sold the Lock-Out strategy give meaning to a favorite country-western tune of mine: “What was I Thinking”.
But…that’s what they thought, and the way these situations often times go, once committed to a strategy, one follows it till death. And that’s the scary part of this conflict. The longer this Lock-Out has continued, the harder the cement in which feet are planted, and the bar for a “win” gets higher and higher. On the Union side, there’s nothing left to lose; on Management, a single-minded focus on destroying the Union. Very, very unhealthy.
We arrived early enough last evening to give me time to walk around the block and see the now infamous Lobby. I took a few photos.
(click to enlarge photos)

Orchestra Hall Lobby, Minneapolis, August 20, 2013

Orchestra Hall Lobby, Minneapolis, August 20, 2013


It was more than a little ironic, seeing “Orchestra Hall” on the side of the building, since the musicians who make up the Orchestra have been locked out without pay or benefits since October, 2012. And, of course, with the absent Orchestra, similarly locked out have been those of us who are called “Listeners”, the “Audience”.
As I walked down Nicollet Ave I noted through the window of the still-incomplete lobby a single step-ladder being used for something. Step-ladders are useful tools for achieving a goal.
I wondered what “step-ladder” exists to end the War at 1111 Nicollet Mall. A one-sided “victory” will be a Pyrrhic one, with no good end. Perhaps that Pyhrric event has already occurred. I hope not.
In our small group last night, I made a couple of comments which tend to summarize my feelings at this point in time:
1. The settlement will have to be made by the two parties to the bargain, the Orchestra Management and Orchestra itself.
2. As for us, the Locked Out audience, each of us in our own way need to do something; and that something should be a bit beyond our normal self-imposed limit. We can’t afford to sit on the sidelines. The ball is in our court. Last night was an excellent organized kickoff bringing together people of diverse opinions, all who care deeply about the future of our Minnesota Orchestra.
August 21, 2013

August 21, 2013


August 21, 2013

August 21, 2013


Comments:
from Mike R, Aug 20:

Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Dick.
We heard about the forum on KSJN and were wondering if it would help.
I have no confidence that MN Orch management bargains in good faith. What does your experience with labor negotiations tell you?
From Will S, Aug 21: Nobody knows what to do, not even my classical musician friends.
Nobody can tell us specifically what to do. They just don’t know.
It will play out by itself until someone comes up with a specific proposal to present to the governor and the Legislature and copy the public.
Response from Dick: This is a time for innovation. There’s nothing worse than doing nothing! Innovate.
from Cathy A, Aug 21: I was there [at the Forum] as well and inspired by the #s that showed up — but nothing in the newspaper this morning!
There will be a lot of PR work when (if) this thing is settled. I appreciate your comments and efforts.
from John B, Aug 21:
Is Minneapolis (and Minnesota ) becoming a cultural Detroit?
I’d like to see the comparison of salaries for the Viking players and the MN orchestra players.
What about the governmental financial subsidies for the MN Orch and the Vikings Stadium, etc.
Dick, you are correct in my opinion. The lockout is union busting, pure and simple!
From Molly R, Aug 21: Thanks, Dick. Fyi, this article up on MNPost today, too.
From John G, Aug 21: Dick, taking a stance of neutrality can have (and has been known to have) the opposite effect: namely, pressuring labor to cave in to management. I
hope that Orchestrate Excellence is being very careful to avoid that outcome. Fletcher’s one insistence that the lockout end unconditionally is his signal to the Board that there must be a level playing field for starters, or so it seems to me. Now is the moment, perhaps the last moment, for the MO Board, filled with leaders in our community, to take courage enough to initiate this way out of a debacle that our world-class Minnesota Orchestrate does not deserve. If Senator Mitchell can help pull this one out of the fire, he will have crowned his distinguished career with a historic last-minute “save” (with thanks for your contributions to a win/win).
From Vicci J, Aug 22 (retired music educator in St. Paul MN): Hi Dick, just read your blog, and here are a few comments.
Audience development to uphold the economy of arts tourism, is a state-wide and on-going generational project in all K-12 schools.
It will take 20 years to turn the MN Orchestra around, because it took 20 year for its demise. Today the MN Orchestra, as all major orchestras, need to payroll lobbyists capable of influencing legislatures to maintain the funding of music education programs.
In fact the only definitive insurance the arts tourism economy has, is arts programs in K-12 schools. So where are the lobbyists for music education?
Funding to school music programs was systematically cut, gradually, starting in the 1980s. If any one wants specific documentation regarding the politics of these cuts, read “The Manufactured Crisis” by Biddle and Berliner.” The proof is in the research and numbers.
A perfect K-12 program looks close to this:
Elementary School: Early Kodaly or Solfeggio in grades Pre-K-3. Maintain in classroom vocal music through grade 6.
In grade 3 start Suzuki strings; in grade 4 start wind instruments.
With early music education, in grade 3, students can read music, hear pitch differences and sing in-tune. In grade three, students are now physically ready to hold string instruments, and in grade 4, large enough to blow into a wind instrument.
These instrumental programs are scheduled in (a minimum of) 30-minute half hour, during school, pull-out-of class-lessons, with up to 4 instruments that are alike. To maintain National Standards in Music Education, there would need to be 2 such pull out classes per week. When students reach the end of their first year, a full rehearsal is added once a week.
This continues through grades 4-5-6.
Junior High: Students move into junior high: elective classes in choral; band; or orchestra classes.
Senior High: Students have elective classes, several academic levels, of band, orchestra, choral, and music classes. And lots of public performances.
This is how a community-city-state, develops a generational audience base for any major arts organization such as the MN Orchestra.
To A New Beginning: The Twin Cites Arts Tourism Economy is on the down-slide, and fewer young family’s will consider moving to Minnesota unless the public becomes vocal to state and city government officials about funding K-12 music education.
Governor Dayton has returned some funds to the education budget, but not enough to instantly repair the economic damage that has been done to both orchestras. Minnesota needs a brigade of arts lobbyists to accomplish this.
Who will find and hire them if not the arts venues?
from Alan S. Aug 23: I recently received an e-mail request from the Manager of Individual Giving for a donation to the Minnesota Orchestra Guaranty Fund. I believe that the people that are in management positions with what was once a great orchestra are now so far from reality that they as managers don’t begin to understand what they have virtually wrecked by locking out the people that made the music. The Director has already given his date that he will resign, quite a few of the musicians have left for other orchestras, and the management is looking for donations like they want to be rewarded for what they have done?
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS FROM DICK BERNARD ON AUGUST 22, 2013:
Tuesday night, after Allen Fletcher’s talk, we were in a randomly selected group of 13 people to discuss the two questions in the Orchestrate Excellence handout (link above). All of the other participants were, presumably, in similar kinds of groups as ours: just ordinary folks talking.
I was aware, and I am aware, that few people are very aware of even the basics of collective bargaining. As for me, all the assorted aspects of collective bargaining were my full-time job for 27 years, and myself and my colleagues dealt with, literally, thousands of collective bargaining agreements.
I know collective bargaining.
Bargaining is, in my opinion, more than anything else, about relationships between people.
Here are some comments I heard within my own small group, and my interpretation of them. These are strictly my thoughts, based on my own experience:
1. Is there any analogy to an ordinary persons life in the present Lock-Out of the Orchestra? I think there is such an analogy: it’s called a divorce. Most all of us have either experienced a troubled marriage, or know well someone who has. Now, assume one partner has all of the temporal power: the money, the cars, the decision making authority; while the other party has all of the talent and most of the friends in the neighborhood. Mr. Fletcher, as I recall, described such an “asymmetric” relationship, where the Orchestral Association has everything; and the Orchestra members have nothing at all, except many friends who feel completely powerless to do anything.
Let’s say that right before Court, the parties agree to reconcile, to settle. Assume the asymmetric couple I just described above. How will this work if/when the impasse is broken, by whatever means, through whomevers influence.
Even most optimistically, this will be an extraordinarily difficult reconciliation.
2. Someone in our group said that Board members had ponied up $4,000,000 to essentially save the Orchestra. Don’t they deserve some sympathy? This is interesting, and the immediate response would be “yes”. But…this is a number without any definition whatsoever. It is just a number tossed out.
Assuming that the number is accurate and its use correctly identified (not safe assumptions, but let’s assume they are), there are about 80 members on the Orchestra Board. This would mean about $50,000 per Board member. Board members are basically “high net worth” people to begin with: that would be a normal criteria for nominating Board members to a large non-profit. It would take, at maximum, $1,000,000 of idle money to generate $50,000 a year, without ever touching the principal. And such a donation would presumably be tax deductible. It would take roughly 200 six-performance listeners to generate the same revenue, and such revenue would not be deductible.
In addition, an aggravation for me, which I expressed within the small group, is that, to my knowledge, we listeners were never asked nor informed about the change in orchestra direction, nor the supposed financial crisis. We listeners are a massive non-entity to the decision makers, except to the extent that we provide revenue.
3. Why doesn’t the Union just make a counter-proposal, even if locked out? This is a labor law problem that the vast majority of individuals would not understand, but that the Union bargainers are fully aware of. Orchestral Management would love to have such a proposal. My understanding of this is it would make breaking the Union even simpler. One of the very clear messages from Fletcher in his talk was that the Board needed to unilaterally end the Lock-out to make any settlement possible.
4. Why don’t we adopt some new model (i.e. musician representatives on the Board), etc? There are different models of governance. Unfortunately, we are stuck with the current labor-management model until after the current situation is settled. Some would like to fire the entire Board. I’m sure some would like to just get rid of the Union. Both have some logic. But both are crazy ideas. This is not normal labor-management relationships, and we’re stuck with the status quo until there is some kind of settlement, however that settlement looks. I can’t even speak intelligently about which management should be fired: the Orchestral Association Board activities do not seem open to public view. Imagine a local school board whose members were inaccessible to the public, and unaccountable to the public. Essentially, this seems to be the current Orchestral Association management.
5. What can I do? At one point in the small group, somebody asked how many people we had in our personal networks, and how we could work together. If I recall correctly, he said he knew about 15. I said my network was about the same (though this writing will go to a core group now including about 30 people). I don’t recall anyone else commenting on this. As an audience, a group of listeners, we are fragmented, and it is difficult to break this fragmentation – we know the people who we’ve come to know in our section of the auditorium, or others we know have been at one or another Orchestra event, but no one else.
The only remedy I can see to this is to plod along, by bits and pieces, creating a network for the future.
We didn’t plan to this crisis (which we didn’t know was about to happen), so we can feel justified in pleading ignorance. But we can no longer plead ignorance.
6. But I don’t know what to do? In the group, I said I had only two pieces of advice: 1) do something; 2) stretch yourself (I mention them both in the original post, above.)
Doing nothing, being defeated, assures only defeat. We can do a great deal, in many different and creative ways. From now on, IF I return to Orchestra Hall, the Orchestral Association Board is not going to be allowed to be anonymous and unaccountable.

#761 – Dick Bernard: A Full Moon, Pretty Flowers…and owning a mistake

UPDATE, August 20, 2013 9:45 p.m.
A short while ago we drove east from Minneapolis, driving into the Full Moon rising. The sky was clear and the view was spectacular. Pity that I only had my small camera, with which I took this snapshot. The moon was, for me at least, a positive harbinger of the future for the Minnesota Orchestra.
(click to enlarge)

Full Moon, August 20, 2013, at Woodbury MN

Full Moon, August 20, 2013, at Woodbury MN


We had just attended, along with several hundred others, a Community Forum on the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out. The extraordinarily well run event was conducted by an apparent ad hoc organization, Orchestrate Excellence, and co-featured a keynote speech by Dr. Alan Fletcher, CEO and President of the Aspen Music Festival and School, and a large number of moderated small groups, largely of strangers together, dealing with two questions:
1. Does Minnesota want a world-class orchestra, and why?
2. What will you, as a community member, do to support a world-class orchestra, and how?
Dr. Fletcher’s talk is available at The UpTake and is well worth your time.
The handout we all received is here: OrchExcel 082013001
We thought our time to be very well spent. Ours was a diverse group, 13 of us, with diverse opinions, but we were talking.
If you have even a little interest in the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out do take time to print out the handout, and watch the video, and enter into your own conversations within your own circles.
Personally, I think tonights meeting, along with other events recent and pending, mitigate towards a settlement, which must be between the two parties to the bargain. If I’m right, the settlement of the contract will only begin the hard part: to move ahead to heal and rebuild.
It won’t be easy.
Tonights full moon was, I found out, a Blue Moon. I’m not much of a moon person, but I liked its rising as we came home this evening. For some reason it brought a feeling of hope.
Here’s the earlier post….
Bergeson Nursery rural Fertile MN August 8, 2013

Bergeson Nursery rural Fertile MN August 8, 2013


This day this blogspace was to be about pretty flowers in a wonderful pastoral setting about 300 miles from our home in the Twin Cities!. Our tour guides on August 8 were Annelee Woodstrom, and her friend, Joyce Schlagel, who suggested we drive from their home in Ada to the Bergeson Nursery in rural Fertile MN.
The afternoon was a huge treat, and I posted 22 snapshots in this Facebook album. If you can’t access them, I’ve sprinkled two photos from the pastoral farmyard within this post.
At Bergeson Nursery August 8, 2013

At Bergeson Nursery August 8, 2013


Flowers can speak for themselves, but they speak as well for those who nurture them.
More compelling to me, right now, is the continuing tragedy of the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out, nearing twelve months, with the next two weeks crucial.
I need to start by correcting a mistake I made in my August 16 Post. It is marked by [*] in the third paragraph, and acknowledged in the last two paragraphs. It was a foolish mistake, that I had no reason to make. I apologize.
Of course, mistakes do not begin and end with me.
One of the more memorable dissertations on owning a mistake is one I heard years ago, at a meeting, where a woman quoted her mother: “never apologize”. Nothing more was said about why the Mom said that to her daughter, at the time long an adult, but it stuck.
This morning I reviewed my entire Lock Out file. It is a couple of inches thick, my personal reference point for this disaster. It includes my letters to the Board: Nov. 24, 2012, to every Board member; Jan. 10, 2013, to the Officers; Feb. 18, 2013 to the Executive Committee.
There is one reply which seems genuine, dated Jan. 8, 2013, from Jon R. Campbell and Michael Henson, but it is just too perfect. It reminds me far too much of a letter I received about 1965 from a downtown Minneapolis office. I had been raising a complaint about some small and (in my mind) unjustified bill, and finally got a long letter, typed in the fashion of the day, with the salutation “Dear Richard I. Bernard (or anybody else)”. With that, I paid the bill, satisfied I got somebody’s attention.
The Lock Out of the Orchestra by Orchestra management was a horrendous mistake, and the “never apologize” rule is likely to be applied here by those same managers whenever this issue is over.
But sooner or later there will be a settlement, hopefully not imposed, and my signal to begin supporting the Orchestra once again will be an enthusiastic ratification of the agreement by members of the Orchestra Union.
They are, all of them, heroes to me.
It is time for a beautiful sunrise out of a stormy sky, such as the one I saw this morning enroute to coffee, and hurriedly snapped.
Sunrise August 19, 2013, Woodbury MN near corner of Radio and Lake.

August 19, 2013, Woodbury MN near corner of Radio and Lake.


Previous posts about the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out: October 18, 2012; December 7, 2012; June 1, 2013; June 5, 2013; June 21, 2013; July 26, 2013; August 16, 2013

#760 – Dick Bernard: The End of the Line for the late-great Minnesota Orchestra?

UPDATE August 19, 2013: here
IMPORTANT NOTE RE TUESDAY, AUGUST 20: click HERE
UPDATE: August 18, 2013: In the middle of this commentary are some pertinent thoughts about what is happening at the Minnesota Orchestra. Note the four paragraphs which start with the para “While no one has…” and end with “Do rank and file donors….”
My spouse alerted me to an article in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Proposal but no orchestra deal”. It is worth reading carefully.
In our paper – we’re long-time subscribers to the Star Tribune – only a serious reader would have found the article on page B3 of the Metro Section. The link in the on-line version is similarly in the shadows, within the Entertainment section. Perhaps it is because the [*]. Star Tribune Publisher and CEO Michael Klingensmith is also on the Board. I doubt the writer had free rein to report as he saw things….
This Lock-Out (a management strike against labor) is not Entertainment.
Little more than a week ago I was at a meeting where the speaker noted that the Minnesota Orchestra Management is represented by the same law firm which represented American Crystal Sugar during its deadly lockout of Union workers at its Moorhead plant. That Lockout lasted well in excess of a year; the union was decimated; many of the workers left for other jobs…the same formula applies against a world class Orchestra. (There is a famed piece of audio tape from 2011 where the CEO of American Crystal Sugar, speaking to a friendly audience, compared a Union contract to a large Tumor needing to be removed (the audio link is at the end of the article). Labor, pay attention, pay very close attention.) (See note at end of this post.)
As it happened, the day after I heard that the labor consultant for the Orchestra Association management was the same as for American Crystal Sugar, I happened to be in the area of the present day American Crystal Sugar Plant in Moorhead MN.
From a distance, it is a bucolic looking sort of place, but get closer up and all pretense of welcoming disappears.
(click on photos to enlarge)

July 7, 2013 early a.m.

August 7, 2013 early a.m.


American Crystal Sugar Moorhead MN July 7, 2013

American Crystal Sugar Moorhead MN August 7, 2013


American Crystal Sugar entrance July 7, 2013

American Crystal Sugar entrance August 7, 2013


American Crystal Sugar office entrance Aug 7, 2013

American Crystal Sugar office entrance August 7, 2013


The signage I photo’ed was very benign compared with the signage near the entrance to the actual production area. Frankly, even from the street I didn’t have the nerve to take the photos where I felt intimidated, even simply stopping along the street across from the the guardhouse.
I was directly involved in collective bargaining for 27 years, as a representative of labor (public school teachers). In those many years, there were often times of tension, and very rarely there were strikes. But never did the management resort to locking out its union such as is happening here.
Management lock-outs are labor strikes on steroids. The intention is absolute control through union-busting. Imagine a community tolerating a 10 months strike by union workers. A friend, yesterday, was pointing out the Hormel lockout in Austin years ago.
I congratulate the Minnesota Orchestra Musicians Union for hanging in there for now, nearing a year.
Check their website, and give them support.
From my vantage point, a good settlement for them will be one which they ratify. Absent such a settlement, my attendance at the Minnesota Orchestra in the future is likely history.

Footnote: Tomorrow some of us retired teacher union staff people will be having a re-union. I wonder what my former colleagues will have to say.
Related post here.
NOTE:
One would think that labor would support labor, but that is not necessarily true.
When the audiotape came my way in December 2011, from a relative, I responded, and then another relative who works in some non-union capacity at American Crystal Sugar in Moorhead responded as follows:
“You are missing one point* however….these people all have jobs to come back to, very good jobs, they have chosen not to sign the agreement. Most of the rank and file employee who call in every day all want to be back to work…they do not believe they can stand up to their union…… so it is sad…..they do have jobs…..
You certainly can read the agreement offered to them with good pay and good benefits and see if you disagree. Do you have free insurance with a $150 deductible per person/ $450 per family????? I think not….they have never paid a dime for insurance and they don’t want to…so their choice is to not sign and our choice is to keep our factories running and providing our customers with sugar…..so consequently we have and continue to hire replacement workers……..we all wish for a signed agreement but the outlook is not promising……
Also, yes the CEO did have a poor choice of words about the cancer and I know he did not mean it how it was taken, totally out of context…..if you knew the man, he is one of the most caring men I know. He has a heart of gold and is very established in the community and on the Board for the United Way for many years…..so don’t believe all that you read…..the media is very one sided……”

* – My relative was responding to this, which I had sent on December 6, 2011:
As you likely know, my full-time job for 27 years was representing teachers in a union with right to strike.
I learned many things in those 27 years among which were these:
1. Employee actions are very serious matters, not frivolous. If they happen there are very strong underlying issues, not always money.
2. The issues are distinct and different for each dispute, and unless I was there, on the ground, I don’t cast judgement on motives. Something is badly wrong.
3. By far the most offensive thing I’ve heard so far is the tape of the chief of ACS [American Crystal Sugar] comparing the union to a big tumor that has to be removed for the company to recover.

[*] August 18, 2013 the original version of this post, which was picked up by the Twin Cities Daily Planet, includes this erroneous statement: “owner of the Star Tribune, Douglas W. Leatherdale, was, back eleven years ago, in 2002, Chairman of the Board of the Minnesota Orchestra, and still remains on the big-business and wealth laden Orchestral Association Board.”
To my knowledge, Douglas Leatherdale is not part of the Star Tribune, and this was a “haste makes waste” error on my part. My apologies. I had listed the Board members in my June 21, 2013, post (see end of post for listing) and I could very easily have fact-checked this assertion. Again, my apologies.

#759 – Dick Bernard: A bookshelf reminder of Governmental Insanity, and its consequences for those not vigilant and engaged.

COMMENTS after NOTE 2
Yesterday, I spent a lot of time doing an unpleasant task. A project required going into a family room wall, which necessitated repainting of a small portion of the wall by our bookshelves, and I decided to repaint the entire wall behind the books.
Of course, this required taking out all of the books, first, to get at the wall. We have quite a few in our little library. The book shelf came with our 20 year old house, and isn’t fancy: just a frame with shelving. But it works, which is all that is necessary. And the project made sense, even though I knew what I was getting myself in for.

August 15, 2013

August 15, 2013


Handling the books was almost like rereading them. Both my wife and I have quite a number of books about Germany and World War II and the Holocaust (See Note 2 below) and they drew special attention this day.
Over the years we’ve revisited that insane time, roughly twenty-five years, in civilized Germany’s history. Both of us have ancestry there; I’ve visited German relatives whose Uncles or cousins were German draftees into WWII, farmers, who refused to talk about their experience afterward. Many elders served; some imprisoned; some died in that War.
I’m 73, and was thus alive all of America’s time in WWII. The two of us spent powerful time with about 40 other Christians and Jews in our party at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other horrendous places in 2000.
We’re reasonably close to having “been there, done that”, when it comes to WWII.
Just last week we visited our great German friend, Annelee, who was six when Hitler came to power in 1933, and was very nearly bombed out of existence twice near the end of WWII. She walked nearly 100 miles home, near starving, after the war was lost. She was then 18; she’ll be revisiting her Germany in about a month. Her Dad, who refused to join the Nazis, was drafted, and disappeared in Russia. They know he died in war, not sure where he was buried.
Just a week ago, at her home, I read a gripping book she had given me about the Allied bombing of Germany in the last years of the war. Nearly 600,000 Germans were killed under those bombs, I read. I wrote in part about that book, “Fire and Fury” by Randall Hansen, a couple of days ago. You can read the comments, with link here.
So, why this musing on this most pleasant Minnesota summer day, in 2013?
Ordinary Germans were like us, exactly, ordinary people who bought dreams and supported the politicians who they thought would produce on their promises, and believed the false promises (propaganda), until it was too late. More than once I’ve asked Annelee when she knew the War was lost. Always, she says 1943, when she was about 16. You can tell such things. By then it was too late, and the Nazis in charge just kept charging. Power has little long-term perspective. It “goes down with the ship” and those who think they’re powerless go first.
We are casually dealing with some similar governmental insanity in our own country at this point in time. No, our situation is not exactly the same as WWII era Germany. But we’re not all that much different.
My favorite blogger, Alan, wrote at length about it last evening. His post, here, is long but very well worth a read. It simply summarizes the efforts by what is called the “Tea Party” to leverage their rabble into permanent control of the U.S. government, while blaming others for the dysfunction.

You love the angry disorganized rabble that is the “Tea Party”? Be my guest. Maybe you fancy yourself to be a Tea Partier yourself.
I see Tea Party leaders (and those politicians who see them as their ‘base’) as pretty analogous to the rabble who leveraged discontent into control of the German government in the 1930s with the end results that are amply documented by many of the books in the bookshelf downstairs.
I’d suggest reading the long link, but most of all, think about the craziness of a small minority feeling it can use the government to bend all of us to its philosophy, especially since it is only the most loosely organized band of individualists who probably don’t agree with each other on issues, other than hating the opposition.
It may be tempting to not notice what is going on and enjoy a fine day, perhaps satisfied to blame “politicians” generally for the “mess in Washington”.
But the ball is in every one of our courts. It’s not “them”, it is us who must be, as Gandhi said, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”

NOTE 1: Annelee speaks publicly about her experiences in Nazi Germany 1933-45, and she always takes written questions (her hearing was badly damaged as a consequence of the bombing). More than once she’s referred to the lawyer who asked her to comment on how Obama compares to Hitler. The question astounded here.
“There is no comparison at all.”
NOTE 2:
I have noticed a great deal of tension around analogies to Nazi Germany UNLESS it applies to some sinister “other”. Perhaps the reason for this is that the Germans of pre-World War II were people very much like stereotypical “Americans” – white, European, educated, hard-working, “Christian”….
Rev. Martin Niemoeller, famous German dissident who survived the War likely because he was imprisoned, and too well known for the Nazis to execute, made many speeches after the war, which included some variation of the famous quote attributed to him:
First they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
If you are interested in a longer academic analysis of what and when the quotation originated, you may wish to visit this web address, which is interesting and may or may not be definitive….
The essence of the quotation is, however, very true. People are easily manipulated. The impoverished Germans after WWI were easily led, in what turned out to be a destructive direction. So it can be for us as well.
There is plenty of “fool’s gold” being dispensed by American politicians these days, and especially the Tea Party version of disrupt and confuse is dangerous to our Democracy. Yes, he ball is in each of our courts.
COMMENTS:
From Bruce Aug. 16:
As you’ve said many times, things are complicated. As I’ve said many times, Libertarian roots run deep into American history. I don’t think one should vilify the Tea Party or dismiss it out of hand. Some aspects of the Libertarian view cuts across the political spectrum.
Here is an interesting piece: Julian Assange admires Ron Paul, Rand Paul here.
Response from Dick Aug. 17: Interesting, odd, trio, Julian, Ron, Rand. They could have some interesting conversations if they lived together. Mr. Assange doesn’t seem to be a good example of libertarian ideals, essentially imprisoned as he is in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Leaving aside the reason he is isolated (except by internet), I’m not sure I’d like his idea of freedom.
Yes, it is “complicated”. I’ve become a big admirer of Garry Davis, who in 1948 renounced his U.S. Citizenship and became an unwelcome Citizen of the World since he had no papers identifying him as being without a country. His crime had nothing to do with revealing state secrets; he just was sick of war and killing people because they were within somebody’s political boundaries of the planet. His only crime was inciting freedom from war, as I understand him.
Yes, interesting and odd. It would be interesting to know how the Paul’s would view Assange.

#758 – Peter Barus: Exercise won't defeat the endocrine system…

Note: Peter Barus is a long-time and great friend (and writer) who writes occasionally from rural New Hampshire. His personal website is here. Once before Peter has posted at this blog. You can find the post here.
Peter Barus:
Exercise won’t defeat the endocrine system…
This is a book review, and a heads-up about our relationship to the famous Obesity Epidemic. It’s not just obese people who are in danger.
I’m not into food fads. I’m not on any diets and never have been, save a brief flirtation with veggies that was really a flirtation with a girl who was into that, about forty years ago. I am, however, a three-decade practitioner of a Japanese martial art, with myself and about two hundred other people as experimental subjects, and rigorous physical training as laboratory. I read a lot of books, mostly on how our brains work, a work in progress. All this is to point out that what I want to say here is not without some long, hard thinking and solid experience, for what that may be worth.
Ever since my adventure four years ago being temporarily paralyzed with Guillain Barre Syndrome, the workings of the body have been even more of a fascination. From striving for perfection in a martial art, I now had to strive to move at all normally. Slowly the full function of arms and legs returns, and sometimes not completely.
The other day, walking beside my neighbor Leon’s hay-baler (to catch the ones that miss the wagon when the catapult flings them), the legs seemed to need very conscious attention, what with the terrain, the machinery, the windrows, the numerous real dangers to life and limb. My body felt sluggish and heavy, my legs seemed to lag just a bit behind the brain’s demands for agile locomotion. I was uncharacteristically short of breath.
Then something shifted, and the smell of hay, the sky, the sighing trees, and the whisper of the seventy-year old two-cylinder tractor going by – the glorious afternoon! – were all I knew. A lot of one’s experience of living is patterns of habit; the legs did fine when I forgot them; the brain handled all the chaotic processes going on around me as we got the hay in before the rain came.
But that was a little wake-up call: at sixty-five, things are changing. Cataracts are starting to form. Joints are starting to ache. I’m getting old. -er.
In the bi-weekly martial arts class I teach in town, my middle seems to be intruding more. Touching the toes is more difficult and less successful. In general, energy seems to fade in the middle of the morning. And this year my training schedule and student population has doubled. More exercise, less strength and endurance? The doc says I’m healthy as a twenty-year-old. Except for a slight cholesterol elevation, for which she suggests I go on statins. Statins?
I don’t eat more than one organized, sit-down meal a day; the rest is grazing, breakfast cereal, three cups of coffee, maybe a sandwich around two, and the meal is supper, often pasta, sometimes soup and sandwich. Meat dishes maybe twice a month, usually turkey or very lean local beef or venison. We’re talking fresh here. The next one is probably walking around in the back field.
My Instructors, sober and reliable gentlemen all in whose capable hands I have placed my life more than once, recommended a book: “Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It,” by Gary Taubes. One of them has lost sixty pounds in two years and has kept it off. One has lost forty in a year. Both say they eat bacon and eggs for breakfast and steak for dinner, as much as they please.
I wasn’t worried, but those blood tests do say if I didn’t get the numbers down there could be real trouble. I don’t look overweight, and maybe I’m not. Still, clearly it’s time to pay attention.
My doc suggested reducing the fat in my diet…
I bought the book.
According to Taubes, who is a science writer, and not peddling a diet fad, nutrition science lost its way after WWII, partly from attrition in Europe, and partly because a few popular American doctors were good at promoting themselves and the simplistic view that weight and obesity are a simple matter of “balancing calories in versus calories out,” a misguided application of the First Law of Thermodynamics. Taubes points out, with numerous citations of medical history and rigorous clinical studies (as distinct from many un-scientific ones), that there is no cause-and-effect there; to say fat is a result of overeating is like saying a room is crowded because it’s full of people. Of course fat people take in more energy than goes out! But what causes this? Instead of examining this obvious question, the medical establishment turned to advising people to stop eating so much (reduce intake), and get more exercise (burn off calories). Nobody has ever been able to show that either of these remedies works. (Quite the contrary, and I am living, though anecdotal, proof. Good enough for me!)
Taubes points out that for two and a half million years humans ate almost nothing but animal fat, and the species thrived; and further, that refined carbohydrates – sugar, flour, grains, starchy tubers – show up in the human diet only in the last .5 percent of human existence, when we started getting all these chronic diseases. And this isn’t his opinion, he’s reporting on hard science. He names names. You can look it up.
Fat is a system, like blood, bone, skin, the heart and lungs. Its function is to act as a kind of expansion-tank or battery, storing extra fuel when we eat, and releasing it when we’re not eating. This is how the body keeps blood sugar – the stuff the brain runs on – precisely regulated, as it must be. Insulin is the regulator. And this is not boom-and-bust: it is a continuous, minutely-balanced flow, more like breathing or pulse than the movement of the stock markets.
Or like this: as was once explained to me by a man named Piccard, whose brother made the first balloon ascent to the edge of space: when a helium balloon goes up, the gas expands; so it goes up faster. If you vent too much gas to level off, you lose altitude, and more you lose, the faster you fall. You have to throw a handful of sand out, or vent some more gas, to maintain level flight. The important thing is to be very close to the ground when you run out of one or the other, or you augur in. Balloonists operate with tea-spoons of sand and tiny puffs of gas to avoid gaining any deadlly momentum upwards or downwards. Normally this is how our bodies use fat.
When the insulin we produce can’t control the extreme changes in sugar levels of today’s typical carbohydrate-heavy diet, the pancreas must take up the slack by secreting more and more insulin.
And no amount of exercise or fat-free dieting can affect this vicious cycle. Contrary to almost universal belief, exercise will not take off weight. I know, I am an expert at exercise. It is not related, anymore than drinking coffee is effective at sobering up a drunk person: they just become a wide-awake drunk person. A fat person who exercises may become a very strong fat person. Their physical wellbeing will still be in serious jeopardy.
I have known several people who attained very high rank as martial artists, and one had quadruple heart bypass surgery; three of my colleagues have departed this life while at the peak of training, two from massive myocardial infarctions and one from liver disease. All of these men were far above average in strength and vitality. The idea that physical exercise can overcome chemistry and control your weight and make you healthy is a myth.
And among my chunky friends still on this side of the dirt, I know they are told by their doctors that they should eat less fat. As Gary Taubes shows clearly, again citing the hard science, that is of no use at all. They should be told to eat no carbs. None.
And myself, I notice I eat a lot of carbs. Almost no fat.
My style with motor vehicles is to fix them when they break down on the road. A body, though, you can’t just leave it in the shop to get repaired, you have to stay with it. I did that when I was fitted to the bed at New England Deaconess with a sign that said, “High Falling Risk” and a roommate who had somehow managed to run over himself with his own bread truck. His case seems a good metaphor now, knocked himself down with a load of carbohydrates. I have a more proactive attitude now. I know when it’s time to change the oil and rotate the tires. I still don’t think I could manage to put the car on top of myself while awake. But we never know.
After reading Taubes, and looking back over the last few years, here’s my situation: I eat a lot of farm-fresh eggs (three or four a day sometimes), which is good, not much meat, which isn’t, don’t put white sugar on anything, which is good, and a great deal of pasta, bread, cereal, and snacks like those little packets of salty peanut butter crackers, which is bad, and a good deal of cheese, which might be ok. If I don’t change this, I’m a damned fool. The responsibility for this thing I call “me” is all up in my face now. Somewhat early, I hope. Still some tread on the tires, and nothing clanking in the motor. A little sway on the turns, though. Need shocks.
Taubes is not peddling anything, he’s trying to report medical facts that are obscured the “Eat less and jog, or you have only yourself to blame” idea. Despite the billions of dollars behind the dieting industry, this is roundly discredited by science, and Taubes is gifted at explaining that. It speaks to his credibility that he is not marketing himself as a diet promoter. His lectures are delivered to academic symposia and medical institutions.
Here is an odd angle on all this that Taubes does not cover in the book: corporate employees are now being forced, on pain of termination, to participate in all sorts of awful “self-help” programs based on the idea that fat employees are ruining it for everybody else, driving up the cost of healthcare and draining productivity, by making “irresponsible lifestyle choices.” Now we’re blaming the obese for our problems as well as their own! A man I know personally was trained to conduct coaching sessions to whip these poor slobs into shape, coercing them to starve themselves and do painful workouts. Cruel, humiliating, unjustifiable abuse has never worked, and doesn’t work now.
The commercial diet that has done best in the most recent studies is Atkins, performing significantly above the rest in Stamford’s large-sample “ATOZ” trials. Taubes suggests Atkins could be improved by leaving all carbs out, but allows that everybody is different and will respond slightly differently to diet changes. Docs are coming around to being supportive for people who should be under medical supervision to make such changes; of course they may have to shop around.
Just in case you don’t think the conventional wisdom, and most of the medical establishment, still persists in blaming fat people for their supposed sins of sloth and gluttony, yesterday I was looking up one of my favorite brilliantly hip cartoonists (search “SMBC”), and the joke of the day was a drawing of a miserably obese woman, and the caption read: “This woman lost a hundred pounds of ugly flab by following this simple rule.” The next panel showed the rule: “Eat Less.” This is supposed to be funny if we believe that fat is caused by gluttony. Taubes has put that myth out of its misery, and it isn’t funny now, yet even an artist with a bleeding-edge wit on the foibles of academics has not caught up with the facts about fat.
You can’t lose weight by under-eating. You only end up consuming muscle, organ and even brain tissue while your insulin levels keep sequestering desperately needed nutrients in the fat cells. You can do real harm to yourself, if you can even stand to starve that long.
In obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and the rest of the myriad train-wrecks that await us once we are on this ride, insulin is the one factor we can consciously control by what we eat. The rule should be, “Eat foods that lower insulin levels, don’t eat foods that increase them.” The data is out there.
Go find out. Start young; but at least start now: many bad things are reversible at any age.
The book can be found at Gary Taubes website, here.
Love
Peter
COMMENTS
Dick Bernard Aug. 14:
Peter is always an astute observer of the human condition, flowing from many sources. When he talks, I listen more carefully…!
I write this comment after my daily exercise, which is daily (a necessary “addiction” – a habit I need to reinforce every day), and which has diminished in the last several months due to mild arthritis in one hip which reminds me of my age if I overdo things. But, I do structured exercise. I haven’t modified my other behavior (eating) to compensate, so I carry more weight than I’d like.
It follows by several days a close encounter with a young Vegan, very fit, who recommended two movies (which I have not yet watched, but will): “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead” and “Forks Over Knives”. (Serious vegans know what essentials their diet lacks, and can compensate for it with supplements – another topic for another time.)
Which led me to recall Henry David Thoreau, in Walden, or Life in the Woods: “One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.” (1854)
And then, childhood days at my grandparents farm, where the “diet” such as it was lard and fat ridden, and nothing was wasted, and folks had never heard of cholesterol and if they could avoid farm accidents or diseases generally lived to a pretty ripe old age, older than my present 73, and seemed pretty fit, a consequence of hard work.
So, Peter’s words are tempered some by other experiences. But I think the theory espoused makes sense.
And on we go.
Peter’s “rejoinder” to my comment, August 14:
Dick,
Well, it’s the right version anyway. If I were to make a rejoinder to your thoughtful remarks, it would be this:
Exercise is not a bad thing! It might help a little in the fat department, but mostly it organizes one in other ways.
And: Herbivores have quite different metabolism than humans. We would never be able to graze in the fields, except for my Aunt Anne, who knows what each plant is for. Human evolution happened while about 99.95 carnivorous, and the last ten thousand years is not enough time to evolve to digest the kind of scrubbed carbohydrates we eat now. My appendix, I was told as they snipped it out of me, would have been for digesting cellulose, but I kind of doubt it; and it’s no good now.
“Roughage” is good because it is hard to digest, which prevents the kind of sugar spike that arouses the pancreas to overwork. But reading the label on my “whole grain” bread this morning (over ham & eggs fried in butter, yum!) I see the carbs are about sixteen times the protein. Hopefully the “whole” -ness of the grains is not added after scrubbing off the hulls.
Lastly: moderation in all things, in moderation! We live on a planet in such numbers now, and with such an addiction to fossil fuels, that it is now very doubtful that we will survive as a species more than another century, if that. As I see it, violent revolution would be in order right now, but isn’t going to happen, because humans do not respond fast enough to actualities. Alternatively, the “99%” plan seems to be “attrition of the unfittest,” letting three quarters of humanity just die off in a generation or so. This seems the most likely outcome to this observer. It is going to hurt a lot, and probably won’t save humanity. But if it does, then we will have survived by the cruelest method possible, and I don’t know that life after that would be any fun at all for thousands of years to come. Then, with no cultural memory more refined than some flood myth, it would follow that we overpopulate and deplete all over again.
Maybe my bones will be fossil fuel by then.
Love and thanks,
Peter