By Frederick A. Hurst

ALL IT TAKES IS VISION AND THE WILLINGNESS TO CHANGE
Although “My Point of View” article on page 24 sums up my thoughts and feelings about the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, it is important that readers know I am not alone as the author of a recent Time Magazine article confirmed. (November 7/November 14, 2022) The article was titled “The People’s Conductor” and was in reference to Gustavo Dudamel, who has conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 13 years.
The author wrote: “Under Dudamel’s aegis for the past 13 years, the L.A. Phil has spread classical music’s unifying power well past its traditional confines – across divides of class, race, gender and age. It’s an eventuality the New York Times did not envision in June 2005, when it published an article titled “DECLINE IN LISTENERS WORRIES ORCHESTRAS” in which it said: “Orchestra subscription sales are dropping widely, in some cases as much as two percentage points a year. Ensembles are not balancing their budgets. Audiences are getting older; young people are turned off by classical music.”
The author of the Time magazine article further wrote: “What was creeping toward death’s door wasn’t classical music itself, but classical music as an elite and exclusionary art form. Within this framework, the great orchestras were dominated by towering white men of genius who safeguarded and elevated a canon dominated by towering dead white men of genius – among them Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky. Performances of these masterworks were geared to an audience prideful of its refined tastes and getting a bit long in the tooth.”
And he wrote of Dudamel’s history: “Classical music as he first experienced it was an art without hierarchy – where no one was to be excluded from the orchestra or the audience on the basis of race, ethnicity, or class. Dudamel was raised in a working-class family in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. His mother was a voice teacher, and his father played trombone in a salsa band. But perhaps more important to his musical development was EL Sistema, Venezuela’s nation-wide classical-music education and performance program for disadvantaged youth.”
I first heard of El Sistema when I visited students enrolled in a joint music program run by the New Haven School Department and Yale University School of Music. One of the management employees I met, who was also teaching underprivileged students how to play classical instruments, had spent time in Venezuela working with El Sistema students. It seemed to me to be the perfect way to introduce young students of all ages and of different races to classical music.
The real important point that I hope I am making is that the survival of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, like so many across the country, depends upon people of vision with the willingness to change in a manner that others across the country have already embraced.

HERSCHEL WALKER IS NOT A LEADER
“Exit polls from the midterms showed that the only racial demographic that supported (Herschel) Walker was white people…. The clips of Walker fumbling over his words, talking in circles and just completely making stuff up are plentiful. Some are embarrassingly funny. Most are sad reminders that Walker isn’t an electrifying new voice in the conservative movement, just a pawn in a game he’s not aware is being played.” (The Republican, November 18, 2022) As I’ve often said, in the minds of altogether too many White folks, “Any old N—– will do.”

MATH AND READING SCORES HYSTERIA
So, math and reading test scores have fallen during the pandemic period especially for those students in 4th and 8th grades across the country. Yes, it’s bad news but it’s not apocalyptic as so many in the media seem to believe or want us to believe. It merely means we need to get to work bringing the students back up to speed. And it shouldn’t take the 30 years it took to get them to where they were before the pandemic. Parents and educators have learned a lot about how to teach in those 30 years. And, give the students credit for being resilient enough to catch up within a reasonable period of time.

THEIR BEHAVIOR WAS HORRIFIC BUT HOW FAR DOES IT GO?
I’m a bit late to the table in commenting on racist comments made in October by Nury Martinez, the Hispanic president of the Los Angeles City Council. The recorded comments were pretty racially gross and laced with profanity. She compared the Black child of a White council member to a monkey and called Oaxacan immigrants living in Koreatown short little dark people. Others with Hispanic surnames on the council joined her in making racist comments. I can’t claim to be surprised. I’ve heard Black folks who speak negatively of Hispanics and Hispanics who speak negatively of Black folks and I attribute most of it to ignorance. My family is made up of Black and Hispanic people and everybody gets along quite well and we have many Hispanic friends so I don’t hear a lot of Black/Hispanic negativity. But I still couldn’t stop wondering how many people think like Nury Martinez and her city council colleagues? The good news is that Martinez first responded to calls for her to resign by resigning her presidency and staying on the council but she finally responded to the continuing outrage by resigning from the council.

JUSTIN HURST IS RUNNING FOR MAYOR!
Justin Hurst is probably the most outspoken of Springfield’s City Councilors and he served two years as council president. He keeps the mayor and the city’s department heads honest and Springfield residents informed. He’s a good father and he is married to a good and accomplished woman who is a long-term member of Springfield’s School Committee. He is my youngest. Naturally, I am racing to be the first to formally endorse him for mayor after being assured by his news release in this issue that he is running. Justin would make a good mayor and Springfield could use a change.

THE RELIGIOUS CORE OF THE RACIST MAGA MOVEMENT
I don’t get it. Everybody knows that Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement refers to a return to the days when Black folks were assigned second class citizenship or worse, and the Hispanic population was small enough in numbers to be nonthreatening and women were “kept in their place.” And when every White man was considered superior to all. And when Antisemitism was the virulent exception. But what I don’t get is how the MAGA movement has been embraced by some of the most prominent White religious groups in the country. I’ve heard and read all of the various reasons and excuses for why that is supposed to serve as justification. There is no justification, in my mind, for people who are so Godly to make a bargain with the devil.

CLARENCE AND GINNI THOMAS
What a couple. The current Supreme Court is probably not the most political ever but it must be close. And Justice Clarence Thomas, with the assistance of his White MAGA wife, Ginnie, appears to be the worst offender. I personally have very little confidence in the Court. And if polls are correct, so do most people. And most by a lot. When combining the outright politics of all six conservative justices with the suspect ethics of Justices Thomas and, to a lesser degree Alito, justice doesn’t have much of a chance. ■