20 May 2011

The News In Other Parts

When we are traveling I enjoy taking the time to have an extra cup of coffee and read the local papers. This usually means a hike, usually short but sometimes surprisingly long, because the motel only has the USA Today, which apart from the sports section is not really that good. The Arizona Republic and the Albuquerque Journal is where I learned some good news and bad news recently. The good news was that your pets will not be abandoned if the Rapture should come along tomorrow, 21 May 2011, in the former. The combination of loving pet-owners and atheism has solved this problem. I saw this mentioned in a Phoenix paper but I can't remember when so here is their online address. They are understandably quite busy right now. The latter showed the following depressing headline a few weeks ago.


You may have guessed that NMSO stands for New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. They have declared themselves bankrupt and are now disbanded I guess if that is not too punny. I read the whole article several times and still was not able to get at the reasons behind this drastic solution to their financial woes. Almost certainly that means some combination of not enough income and too much expenditures, which likely means not enough donations and the musicians' union demanding too much in salary. I don't know if this is a full time orchestra or not. Probably not. It reminded me of the difficulty of non-profit organizations these days, especially our own voluntary organizations here in Billings. I saw this snippet online, so maybe there is some hope.

The other thing we like to do when traveling is to see what our kids and grandkids are up to. We visited our daughter Ms Gomez's 5th grade class on Monday morning before heading west into a dust storm on Interstate 40. They were an eager and curious bunch. We wish them the best as they go into middle school. Here is a picture of the whole group.

2 comments:

Recovering Lutheran said...

On the NMSO: there is a debate going on with our new city council concerning funding of the arts. The city is experiencing rising unemployment and may have trouble meeting the city payroll in coming months, yet the local newspaper (which is very far left of center politically) is lobbying hard for tax money to build a convention center and pay for local music and theater groups.

Given the makeup of the new city council it seems likely the editors of the paper will get their wish.

Ken & Carol said...

Thanks for your comment RL. I didn't know the city paid for the orchestra. That may explain a lot more about the whole mess. I am wondering when smaller city orchestras will have to go over to amplified strings in order to control costs.

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Good Cheese Here
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TAKE TIME FOR PARADISE

TAKE TIME FOR PARADISE
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Mrs America
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Rimrocks @ Billings MT
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Easter Sunday at St Patrick's Co-Cathedral
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