Well, let’s see what the news is today, Tuesday January 14 year of our Lord 2014…
*ambles over to Google News*
Obama to Place Restraints on Surveillance. Interesting…
Some rumblings about net neutrality. Compelling…
Why Journalists Frighten Putin. Haha. Haha, yeah. Dictators better beware of the power of writers…
…There’s apparently now a first-person cat simulator…
Oh, yeah, and the lockout of the Minnesota Orchestra musicians is over.
***
Um, so, I don’t really know what to say tonight besides thank you. Thank you to everyone. I didn’t have anything prepared to say tonight (no, duh). In all honesty, if I’d been forced to make a prediction at gunpoint, even a week ago, I’d have said another six to twelve months will pass, my friends and idols will ultimately be forced to their knees, Save Our Symphony Minnesota will fizzle out, and I’ll enter my twenty-fifth year as a total cynic who will forevermore hate orchestras and everything associated with them. (It was not a future I was particularly anticipating.)
But…that didn’t happen.
The contract on the table isn’t perfect by any means, but if you were expecting a perfect contract, you were always going to be let down.
We saved the Minnesota Orchestra and we saved it together. Because of our work, the Minnesota Orchestra will not die.
However, the new business model did. We killed it, and we killed it together.
But. Now we have to create the model that will replace it. And that’s where the hard work will come in.
Are you ready for that?
Tonight is not the end. In fact, it is only a chance to have a new beginning.
But in the meantime, I think we’re allowed to celebrate how far we’ve come, and think with hope of a better future.
***
Song of the Lark 