Thursday, March 4, 2010
Update on Slavery Museum in Richmond
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/SLAVGAT04_20100304-192201/328396/
New Media and the Presentation of History
My son saw this in his fourth grade social studies class today. I like it.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
A Moving Piece
Paulnack is the director of the Music Division of The Boston Conservatory. This was a welcome to parents of incoming students. A friend flagged it for me and I wanted to share. I found it powerful.
Karl Paulnack, Sept. 1, 2004, Boston Conservatory
One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said, "you're wasting your SAT scores!" On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.
One of the first cultures to articulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.
One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940.
Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp.
He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose, and fortunate to have musician colleagues in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist. Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January
1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.
Given what we have since learned about life in the Nazi camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music?
There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with music? And yet-even from the concentration camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."
In September of 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. On the morning of September 12, 2001 I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.
And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.
At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, on the very evening of September 11th, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome". Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.
From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.
Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had.
Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.
Very few of you have ever been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but with few exceptions there is some music.
And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why?
The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks. Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.
I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in a small Midwestern town a few years ago.
I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.
Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.
When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.
What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute cords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?"
Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. The concert in the nursing home was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.
What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:
"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life.
Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.
You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.
Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."
Karl Paulnack, Sept. 1, 2004, Boston Conservatory
One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said, "you're wasting your SAT scores!" On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.
One of the first cultures to articulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.
One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940.
Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp.
He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose, and fortunate to have musician colleagues in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist. Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January
1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.
Given what we have since learned about life in the Nazi camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music?
There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with music? And yet-even from the concentration camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."
In September of 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. On the morning of September 12, 2001 I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.
And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.
At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, on the very evening of September 11th, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome". Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.
From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.
Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had.
Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.
Very few of you have ever been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but with few exceptions there is some music.
And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why?
The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks. Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.
I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in a small Midwestern town a few years ago.
I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.
Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.
When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.
What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute cords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?"
Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. The concert in the nursing home was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.
What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:
"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life.
Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.
You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.
Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Advocacy Alert:
You are probably aware of the serious threat to the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities – the House of Delegates has voted to eliminate all funding for it as of July 1, 2011 – just over a year from now. What you may not know is that VAM’s operating support comes from the VFH, and without that support... VAM will be a far different organization than the one you have come to rely upon for professional development, resources, technical assistance, networking and leadership opportunities. Please take a moment today to call or email your state Delegate and Senator and urge them to continue funding the VFH. If you do not know who they are, go to Who’s My Legislator? on the Virginia General Assembly website.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Critical Advocacy Alert & Call to Action
Can You Come to Richmond Next Week?
Advocacy Alert - Call to Action! February 26, 2010
As Feared - Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Virginia Commission for the Arts are both eliminated from the House Budget.
Both the House and the Senate passed their versions of the State Budget for the next biennium.
The House of Delegates voted to reduce, and then eliminate all-together, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Virginia Commission for the Arts.
These two agencies provide the only state support for museums and the performing arts.
There is still a chance to change this course. The two versions (House and Senate) must be reconciled by the Conference Committee and submitted to a final vote by the two houses. It is vital that we make our case to the members of this committee.
Thank you so much to all of you who responded to our call to action yesterday. Although the House did not back down, believe me that your calls and emails were heard. But now we need to strengthen our approach.
Below is a list of the probable members of the Conference Committee. If you or your museum or site are located within the districts identified, we especially need you to act! If possible, we are organizing visits for next Wednesday, Thursday or Friday (March 3,4,5) to the conferees in the General Assembly building in Richmond. If you can join us, please call Margo at 804-788-5821, or email mcarlock@vamuseums.org.
If you cannot join us, or cannot pay a personal visit another day, please phone or email your legislators. And it would be helpful if the rest of you would also phone or email your Delegate even if not a conferee - ask him or her to please encourage the conferees to save these two agencies.
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
PROBABLE CONFEREES FOR BUDGET BILL
House of Delegates
Lacey Putney, Bedford, 19th district:
All of the City of Bedford; part of Bedford County comprised of the Stewartsville, Hardy, Otter Hill, Cove, Big Island, Sedalia, Kelso, Boonsboro, Montvale, Shady Grove, Thaxton, Goode, Liberty High School, and Sign Rock Precincts and parts of the Forest and Jefferson Precincts; and part of Botetourt County comprised of the Amsterdam, Asbury, Town Hall, Blue Ridge, Rainbow Forest, Mill Creek, Roaring Run, Buchanan 301/Springwood 304, Courthouse, Eagle Rock, Glen Wilton, Oriskany, and Troutville Precincts
Kirk Cox, Colonial Heights, 55th district
Part of Hanover County comprised of the Ashland, South Ashland, Ashcake, Beaverdam, Blunts, Wilmington Parish, Goddin's Hill, Clay, Chickahominy, Shady Grove, Atlee, Cool Spring, Courthouse, Rural Point 502/Newman 503, Village, Mechanicsville, Farrington, Montpelier, Rockville, and Elmont Precincts
Steve Landes, Weyers Cave, 25th district
All of the City of Waynesboro; part of Albemarle County comprised of the Crozet Precinct; part of Augusta County comprised of the Verona, Crimora, New Hope, Weyers Cave, Fort Defiance, Lyndhurst, Dooms, Fishersville, and Wilson Precincts; and part of Rockingham County comprised of the Mill Creek, Grottoes, Elkton, McGaheysville, and South Fork Precincts.
Chris Jones, Suffolk, 76th district
Part of the City of Chesapeake comprised of the Camelot, Crestwood, Oscar Smith School, Geneva Park, Georgetown, E. W. Chittum School, St. Julians, Sunray I, South Norfolk Fire Station, Carver School, Providence Church of Christ, Westover, Sunray II, and South Norfolk Recreation Precincts and part of Deep Creek Precinct; and part of the City of Suffolk comprised of the White Marsh, John F. Kennedy, Airport, and Hollywood Precincts and part of Cypress Chapel Precinct.
Johnny Joannou, Portsmouth, 79th district
Part of the City of Chesapeake comprised of the Taylor Road Fire Station Precinct; part of the City of Norfolk comprised of the Larchmont Library and Larchmont Recreation Center Precincts and parts of the Canterbury, Titustown Center, and Zion Grace Precincts; part of the City of Portsmouth comprised of the Ten, Eleven, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Thirty, Thirty-Three, Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five, Thirty-Six, and Thirty-Seven/Thirty-Eight Precincts; and part of the City of Suffolk comprised of the Yeates Precinct and parts of the Harbor View and Nansemond River Precincts.
or possibly Roslyn Dance, Petersburg, 63rd district
All of Dinwiddie County; all of the City of Petersburg; and part of Chesterfield County comprised of the Ettrick and Matoaca Precincts and part of the Branches Precinct
Senate
Chuck Colgan, Manassas, 29th district
All of the Cities of Manassas and Manassas Park; part of Prince William County comprised of the Brentsville, Armory, Nokesville, Parkside, Jackson, Linton Hall, Woodbine, Park, Saunders, Enterprise, Coles, King, Dumfries, Graham Park, Pattie, Washington-Reid, Montclair, Evergreen, Haymarket, Loch Lomond, Sinclair, Stonewall, Sudley, Westgate, Catharpin, Bull Run, Plantation, Mullen, and Kerrydale Precincts and part of the Quantico Precinct.
Ed Houck, Spotsylvania, 17th district
All of Culpeper, Louisa, Madison, and Orange Counties; part of Spotsylvania County comprised of the Grange Hall, Maury, Plank Road, Frazers Gate, Belmont, Brokenburg, Todd's Tavern, Holbert, Salem, and Brent's Mill Precincts; and part of the City of Fredericksburg comprised of the District 1, District 3, and District 4 Precincts and part of the District 2 Precinct.
Richard Saslaw, Springfield, 35th district
Part of Fairfax County comprised of the Bristow, Chapel, Heritage, Kings Park, North Springfield #1, North Springfield #2, North Springfield #3, Ravensworth, Wakefield, Belvedere, Lincolnia, Masonville, Parklawn, Sleepy Hollow, Saint Albans, Westlawn, Weyanoke, Columbia, Brook Hill, Poe, Whittier, Walnut Hill #1, Bren Mar, Edsall, Graham, Greenway, Pine Spring, Shreve, Timber Lane, Woodburn, Merrifield, and Walnut Hill #2 Precincts; and part of the City of Alexandria comprised of the Hermitage, Southern Towers-Stratford, James K. Polk School, Patrick Henry School, Landmark Center, Charles E. Beatley Jr. Library, John Adams School, William Ramsay School, and South Port Precincts.
Janet Howell, Reston, 32th district
Part of Fairfax County comprised of the Reston #1, Reston #2, Dogwood, Hunters Woods, Reston #3, Glade, South Lakes, Terraset, North Point, Aldrin, Chain Bridge, Chesterbrook, Churchill, Cooper, El Nido, Great Falls, Haycock, Kenmore, Kirby, Langley, Longfellow, Mclean, Pimmit, Salona, Westhampton, Westmoreland, Herndon #1, Herndon #2, Clearview, Forestville, Herndon #3, Hutchison, Stuart, Sugarland, Hickory, Seneca, Marshall, Magarity, and Tysons Precincts.
William Wampler, Bristol, 40th district
All of Lee, Scott, and Washington Counties; all of the Cities of Bristol and Norton; part of Grayson County comprised of the Bridle Creek, Flatridge, Grant, Mouth Of Wilson, Mount Rogers, Rugby, Troutdale, Comers Rock, and Elk Creek Precincts; part of Smyth County comprised of the Seven Mile Ford, Chilhowie, St. Clair, East Park, West Park, Atkins, Wassona, Royal Oak East, Royal Oak West, Adwolfe, Sugar Grove, and Konnarock Precincts; and part of Wise County comprised of the North Coeburn, Wise, Big Stone Gap, East Stone Gap, Clinch Valley, and South Coeburn Precincts.
Tommy Norment, Williamsburg, 3rd district
All of Gloucester, James City, and New Kent Counties; all of the City of Williamsburg; part of York County comprised of the Queens Lake, Yorktown, Waller Mill, Nelson, Magruder, Seaford, Harris Grove, Edgehill, Dare, and Harwoods Mill Precincts; and part of the City of Newport News comprised of the Mcintosh, Reservoir, Lee Hall, and Nelson Precincts.
Walter Stosch, Glen Allen, 12th district
Part of Goochland County comprised of the Centerville and Manakin Precincts; part of Henrico County comprised of the Dumbarton, Glen Allen, Glenside, Greendale, Hermitage, Hilliard, Hunton, Johnson, Lakeside, Longan, Maude Trevvett, Moody, Staples Mill, Stratford Hall, Summit Court, Bloomingdale, Canterbury, Randolph, Chipplegate, Cardinal, Coalpit, Crestview, Freeman, Innsbrook, Jackson Davis, Lauderdale, Ridge, Sadler, Cedarfield, Skipwith, Three Chopt, Tucker, Westwood, Causeway, Stoney Run, Byrd, Lakewood, Derbyshire, Gayton, Godwin, Maybeury, Mooreland, Pemberton, Pinchbeck, Ridgefield, Rollingwood, Spottswood, Tuckahoe, and West End Precincts; and part of the City of Richmond comprised of the 309 Precinct.
Advocacy Alert - Call to Action! February 26, 2010
As Feared - Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Virginia Commission for the Arts are both eliminated from the House Budget.
Both the House and the Senate passed their versions of the State Budget for the next biennium.
The House of Delegates voted to reduce, and then eliminate all-together, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Virginia Commission for the Arts.
These two agencies provide the only state support for museums and the performing arts.
There is still a chance to change this course. The two versions (House and Senate) must be reconciled by the Conference Committee and submitted to a final vote by the two houses. It is vital that we make our case to the members of this committee.
Thank you so much to all of you who responded to our call to action yesterday. Although the House did not back down, believe me that your calls and emails were heard. But now we need to strengthen our approach.
Below is a list of the probable members of the Conference Committee. If you or your museum or site are located within the districts identified, we especially need you to act! If possible, we are organizing visits for next Wednesday, Thursday or Friday (March 3,4,5) to the conferees in the General Assembly building in Richmond. If you can join us, please call Margo at 804-788-5821, or email mcarlock@vamuseums.org.
If you cannot join us, or cannot pay a personal visit another day, please phone or email your legislators. And it would be helpful if the rest of you would also phone or email your Delegate even if not a conferee - ask him or her to please encourage the conferees to save these two agencies.
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
PROBABLE CONFEREES FOR BUDGET BILL
House of Delegates
Lacey Putney, Bedford, 19th district:
All of the City of Bedford; part of Bedford County comprised of the Stewartsville, Hardy, Otter Hill, Cove, Big Island, Sedalia, Kelso, Boonsboro, Montvale, Shady Grove, Thaxton, Goode, Liberty High School, and Sign Rock Precincts and parts of the Forest and Jefferson Precincts; and part of Botetourt County comprised of the Amsterdam, Asbury, Town Hall, Blue Ridge, Rainbow Forest, Mill Creek, Roaring Run, Buchanan 301/Springwood 304, Courthouse, Eagle Rock, Glen Wilton, Oriskany, and Troutville Precincts
Kirk Cox, Colonial Heights, 55th district
Part of Hanover County comprised of the Ashland, South Ashland, Ashcake, Beaverdam, Blunts, Wilmington Parish, Goddin's Hill, Clay, Chickahominy, Shady Grove, Atlee, Cool Spring, Courthouse, Rural Point 502/Newman 503, Village, Mechanicsville, Farrington, Montpelier, Rockville, and Elmont Precincts
Steve Landes, Weyers Cave, 25th district
All of the City of Waynesboro; part of Albemarle County comprised of the Crozet Precinct; part of Augusta County comprised of the Verona, Crimora, New Hope, Weyers Cave, Fort Defiance, Lyndhurst, Dooms, Fishersville, and Wilson Precincts; and part of Rockingham County comprised of the Mill Creek, Grottoes, Elkton, McGaheysville, and South Fork Precincts.
Chris Jones, Suffolk, 76th district
Part of the City of Chesapeake comprised of the Camelot, Crestwood, Oscar Smith School, Geneva Park, Georgetown, E. W. Chittum School, St. Julians, Sunray I, South Norfolk Fire Station, Carver School, Providence Church of Christ, Westover, Sunray II, and South Norfolk Recreation Precincts and part of Deep Creek Precinct; and part of the City of Suffolk comprised of the White Marsh, John F. Kennedy, Airport, and Hollywood Precincts and part of Cypress Chapel Precinct.
Johnny Joannou, Portsmouth, 79th district
Part of the City of Chesapeake comprised of the Taylor Road Fire Station Precinct; part of the City of Norfolk comprised of the Larchmont Library and Larchmont Recreation Center Precincts and parts of the Canterbury, Titustown Center, and Zion Grace Precincts; part of the City of Portsmouth comprised of the Ten, Eleven, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Thirty, Thirty-Three, Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five, Thirty-Six, and Thirty-Seven/Thirty-Eight Precincts; and part of the City of Suffolk comprised of the Yeates Precinct and parts of the Harbor View and Nansemond River Precincts.
or possibly Roslyn Dance, Petersburg, 63rd district
All of Dinwiddie County; all of the City of Petersburg; and part of Chesterfield County comprised of the Ettrick and Matoaca Precincts and part of the Branches Precinct
Senate
Chuck Colgan, Manassas, 29th district
All of the Cities of Manassas and Manassas Park; part of Prince William County comprised of the Brentsville, Armory, Nokesville, Parkside, Jackson, Linton Hall, Woodbine, Park, Saunders, Enterprise, Coles, King, Dumfries, Graham Park, Pattie, Washington-Reid, Montclair, Evergreen, Haymarket, Loch Lomond, Sinclair, Stonewall, Sudley, Westgate, Catharpin, Bull Run, Plantation, Mullen, and Kerrydale Precincts and part of the Quantico Precinct.
Ed Houck, Spotsylvania, 17th district
All of Culpeper, Louisa, Madison, and Orange Counties; part of Spotsylvania County comprised of the Grange Hall, Maury, Plank Road, Frazers Gate, Belmont, Brokenburg, Todd's Tavern, Holbert, Salem, and Brent's Mill Precincts; and part of the City of Fredericksburg comprised of the District 1, District 3, and District 4 Precincts and part of the District 2 Precinct.
Richard Saslaw, Springfield, 35th district
Part of Fairfax County comprised of the Bristow, Chapel, Heritage, Kings Park, North Springfield #1, North Springfield #2, North Springfield #3, Ravensworth, Wakefield, Belvedere, Lincolnia, Masonville, Parklawn, Sleepy Hollow, Saint Albans, Westlawn, Weyanoke, Columbia, Brook Hill, Poe, Whittier, Walnut Hill #1, Bren Mar, Edsall, Graham, Greenway, Pine Spring, Shreve, Timber Lane, Woodburn, Merrifield, and Walnut Hill #2 Precincts; and part of the City of Alexandria comprised of the Hermitage, Southern Towers-Stratford, James K. Polk School, Patrick Henry School, Landmark Center, Charles E. Beatley Jr. Library, John Adams School, William Ramsay School, and South Port Precincts.
Janet Howell, Reston, 32th district
Part of Fairfax County comprised of the Reston #1, Reston #2, Dogwood, Hunters Woods, Reston #3, Glade, South Lakes, Terraset, North Point, Aldrin, Chain Bridge, Chesterbrook, Churchill, Cooper, El Nido, Great Falls, Haycock, Kenmore, Kirby, Langley, Longfellow, Mclean, Pimmit, Salona, Westhampton, Westmoreland, Herndon #1, Herndon #2, Clearview, Forestville, Herndon #3, Hutchison, Stuart, Sugarland, Hickory, Seneca, Marshall, Magarity, and Tysons Precincts.
William Wampler, Bristol, 40th district
All of Lee, Scott, and Washington Counties; all of the Cities of Bristol and Norton; part of Grayson County comprised of the Bridle Creek, Flatridge, Grant, Mouth Of Wilson, Mount Rogers, Rugby, Troutdale, Comers Rock, and Elk Creek Precincts; part of Smyth County comprised of the Seven Mile Ford, Chilhowie, St. Clair, East Park, West Park, Atkins, Wassona, Royal Oak East, Royal Oak West, Adwolfe, Sugar Grove, and Konnarock Precincts; and part of Wise County comprised of the North Coeburn, Wise, Big Stone Gap, East Stone Gap, Clinch Valley, and South Coeburn Precincts.
Tommy Norment, Williamsburg, 3rd district
All of Gloucester, James City, and New Kent Counties; all of the City of Williamsburg; part of York County comprised of the Queens Lake, Yorktown, Waller Mill, Nelson, Magruder, Seaford, Harris Grove, Edgehill, Dare, and Harwoods Mill Precincts; and part of the City of Newport News comprised of the Mcintosh, Reservoir, Lee Hall, and Nelson Precincts.
Walter Stosch, Glen Allen, 12th district
Part of Goochland County comprised of the Centerville and Manakin Precincts; part of Henrico County comprised of the Dumbarton, Glen Allen, Glenside, Greendale, Hermitage, Hilliard, Hunton, Johnson, Lakeside, Longan, Maude Trevvett, Moody, Staples Mill, Stratford Hall, Summit Court, Bloomingdale, Canterbury, Randolph, Chipplegate, Cardinal, Coalpit, Crestview, Freeman, Innsbrook, Jackson Davis, Lauderdale, Ridge, Sadler, Cedarfield, Skipwith, Three Chopt, Tucker, Westwood, Causeway, Stoney Run, Byrd, Lakewood, Derbyshire, Gayton, Godwin, Maybeury, Mooreland, Pemberton, Pinchbeck, Ridgefield, Rollingwood, Spottswood, Tuckahoe, and West End Precincts; and part of the City of Richmond comprised of the 309 Precinct.
The State of Museums Today....
It might seem contradictory, but according to this article at NBC Washington, although more and more museums have been forced to close their doors since the economy went south, attendance at many museums is at an all time high. What gives?
- Heather
- Heather
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)