The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

San Antonio loses an orchestra

The San Antonio Symphony dissolved itself yesterday, to howls of anger from its musicians:

The board of the Symphony Society of San Antonio cited stalled negotiations with the Musicians’ Union and the lack of a labour contract.

In a statement on the San Antonio Symphony’s website, the board said: “The last bargaining session between the Symphony Society and the Musicians’ Union took place on March 8, 2022 after which the Union declined to return to the bargaining table, despite efforts of federal mediators and the Symphony.

The symphony’s musicians had been on strike since late September 2021, when they were asked to take a pay cut from $35,774 (£29,097) to $17,710 (£14,404) a year.

In September Mary Ellen Goree, chair of the San Antonio Symphony musicians negotiating committee and principal second violin, said musicians had been “shocked and appalled” by the proposal, which would have reduced their salaries to less than the living wage.

Goree suggested the board's move might violate an existing contract:

She cited a 2019 contract that specifies what needs to be done if there is a dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony Society, the board that manages the symphony.

She read an excerpt of the document to TPR: “Such transfer of assets shall be subject to the approval of the Union and the members of the orchestra, as well as the Board of Directors of the society.”

The only vote taken was within the Symphony Society.

The news reached Sebastian Lang-Lessing, the symphony's former music director, during a visit to South Korea. He said the move by management was indefensible.

“It's totally in contradiction with the mission of the San Antonio Symphony, and they need to be held accountable for that," he said. "By just dissolving now and ... to blame to the musicians is a very arrogant move.”

The union's own statement calls out the Symphony Board for financial mismanagement:

“What the Symphony can afford,” of course, is directly tied to what the leadership of the Symphony Society is willing to raise. It is telling that the past 30+ years have been an unbroken trend of the San Antonio metropolitan area becoming larger and larger, and the Symphony budget becoming smaller and smaller. Given our population growth and the number of corporations either headquartered or doing significant business in San Antonio, the idea that San Antonio cannot support an orchestra even at the level of Omaha, Nebraska (an orchestra with a $9M budget), is ludicrous.

On September 26, 2021, the SSSA wrongfully declared impasse and imposed draconian terms that would reduce the size of the orchestra by 40%, cut the pay (already barely above a living wage) of the remaining 60% by 33%, and offer most of the remaining 40% of the musicians a salary of just over $11,000 a year with no benefits. Agreeing to such terms would have been meant agreeing to our own destruction, so on September 27, the musicians called an unfair labor practice strike.

There seems to be a lot more to this story, and I'm curious if anyone down there might commit some journalism to finding out what.

High temperature record and other hot takes

Chicago's official temperature at O'Hare hit 35°C about two hours ago, tying the record high temperature set in 1994. Currently it's pushing 36°C with another hour of warming likely before it finally cools down overnight. After another 32°C day tomorrow, the forecast Friday looks perfect.

While we bake by the lake today, a lot has gone down elsewhere:

Finally, apparently John Scalzi and I have the same appreciation for Aimee Mann.

Sticking with the good news for now

Because it's the first day of summer, I'm only posting fun things right now. First, I'd like to thank Uncle Roger for upping my egg fried rice game. Here's my lunch from earlier today. Fuiyoooh!

Around the time I made this delicious and nutritious lunch, a friend who teaches music in a local elementary school sent me a photo of the family of ducks she escorted from one side of the school to the other:

In other good news:

  • Believe it or not, today is the 55th anniversary of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I remember the day in 1987 when it really was "20 years ago today." People born on that day are now old enough to be president. Yeek.
  • Chicago's heavy-rail system, Metra, will start offering unlimited system-wide monthly passes for $100 at the end of this month. Unless you live on the Rock Island or Metra Electric lines. Hiyaaah!

And...well, that's it for good news. Check back later when I have regular, horrifying news.

Total Perspective Vortex

NPR did a segment this morning on the 1978 movie Grease, which correspondent Dori Bell had never seen—since, you know, she's a late Millennial. As I listened to the movie, while slowly waking up and patting Cassie, the timeline of the movie and the play just made me feel...old.

The play, which premiered in 1971, takes place in the fall of 1958. The movie came out in 1978.

So try this out, with the dates changed a bit: The play premiered in 2015 and takes place in 2002.

Oh, it gets better, Gen-Xers and Boomers: Grease the movie is to us today what It Happened One Night was to people in 1978. Because 1978 is 44 years ago, as 1934 was 44 years before 1978.

So, sure, Bell had trouble relating to Grease for the same reasons people just after the Vietnam War would have trouble relating to a movie made in the depths of the Great Depression.

Time for my Geritol...

High pressure, low temperatures

Even as the East Coast gets bombed by an early-spring cyclone, we have sunny skies and bitter cold. But the -12°C at O'Hare at 6am will likely be the coldest temperature we get in Chicago until 2023. The forecast predicts temperatures above 10°C tomorrow and up to 16°C on Wednesday, with no more below-freezing temperatures predicted as far out as predictions can go.

Meanwhile, I'm about to leave for our first of two Bach Jonannespassion performances this weekend. We still have tickets available for tomorrow's, so come on down!

Busy couple of days

I've had a lot to do at work the last couple of days, leading to an absolute pile-up of unread press:

Finally, on this day in 1940, Woody Guthrie released "This Land is Your Land," a song even more misunderstood than Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."

Welsh government retracts advice about tenors

It turns out, tenors don't actually spread Covid more readily than the other three sections, despite what you may have heard from the Welsh Government:

The advice appears to have been motivated by a spoof social media news post, created by meme page Quire Memes to appear as if written by us here at Classic FM. A doctored headline claimed that ‘Tenors should sit three metres away from other choir members, COVID study says’.

The post, which is categorically fake news, is captioned: “Tenors found to disperse aerosols the furthest, in this in-depth coronavirus study.”

A government spokesperson denied that the advice was based on a spoof post, but said they “apologise unreservedly for this error and for any confusion it may have caused”.

Professional tenor and choral director Charles MacDougall told The Telegraph it was “preposterous” that the Welsh government appeared to have based their official guidance on a meme.

Believe me, tenors have enough problems without being blamed for spreading this particular disease. Gonorrhea, however...