StgCoach – Page 57 – Oh, Contrarian!

2011 NEA delegate Mass

I’ll take a few moments here to write a brief account of the NEA Delegate Mass that we held in Chicago on July 3. A fair number of my music colleagues have expressed some curiosity about this annual liturgy. A few years ago I blogged about the 2008 NEA Delegate Mass in Washington, DC, and an article based on that blog appeared in The Liturgical Singer, an NPM publication for cantors.

NEA’s Annual Meeting is an eight-day gathering of leaders from the largest professional association in the United States, and it incorporates a four-day meeting of NEA’s governing body, the Representative Assembly. The RA is the largest deliberative body in the world, with between 8,000 and 10,000 elected delegates.

The four RA days are grueling: state caucuses begin at 7:00 AM, and the RA meets from 10 AM to about 6 PM each day. The RA meets right through Independence Day (and holds its own celebration during the assembly) and whatever Sunday falls within the four days scheduled for its meeting.

Obviously, this schedule creates problems for those who wish to hold Sunday worship. For decades, some delegates have gathered for Mass and an interdenominational prayer service. Since 1996, I’ve been the music minister for the delegate Mass.

Thanks to the connections of a long-time delegate who is a lay Dominican, our celebrants have included a number of Dominican priests. They have included film director Dominic DeLay, composer James Marchionda, now-archbishop DeNoia, and Emiliano Zapata, a former president of an NEA local in Texas. This year’s celebrant was Father Richard LaPata, a former principal of Fenwick HS in Oak Park, Illinois.

The delegate Mass has a number of unique challenges.

We never know just when the Mass will start. NEA provides us a room in the convention center, but only after the RA has adjourned for the day. Delegates have to hoof it there quickly, and this year we started the entrance hymn while they were still arriving. At this Mass, the “processional” is frequently for the congregation, not the priest.
The time available for Mass is limited by the transportation schedule. NEA uses a system of chartered buses to transport delegates back and forth between the convention center and their hotels. Those shuttles run only for a limited time, and cabs are expensive, so the Mass needs to be “expeditious” while also being reverent.
The room is frequently arranged however it was left by the last session. We can usually set an altar up on a speaker’s platform, but typically delegates sit at tables for the Mass. This year we had a unique configuration: round tables–no aisles!
We were fortunate this year that NEA had left directions for the microphone and speakers to be left on..

Other than that, what is the Mass like? Most members of this annual congregation say that it is very moving. We do our best to make it like other Masses.

We have a cadre of Eucharistic ministers from all over the country. Usually the first six who arrive are the ones who distribute Communion.
Similarly, the first several lectors who arrive are put to work with copies of the readings for the day. This year’s Mass was the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, and that’s about where the NEA delegate Mass typically falls in the liturgical calendar.
We never have any problem finding a hospitality and ushering ministry: these people are educators, and they’re used to taking over their space, whether it’s a classroom, bus, library, or in this case, makeshift chapel. Collections are put into whatever convention bags we can commandeer.
I’ve scheduled pretty similar music for the past few years: entrance hymn “Here I Am, Lord,” “I Am the Bread of Life” and/or “Pan de Vida” for Communion, and “America, the Beautiful” for the recessional.
When the convention is driveable, as it was this year, I bring my electronic keyboard and associated gear; when I have to fly to the convention city, I lead with just my voice.
We have a worship aid.
We have an emailing list to provide announcements and updates.

We typically have a congregation of a few hundred for this Mass, and delegates report that they look forward to it each year. We’ll be in DC again next year, and my guess is that we’ll be celebrating again in a room at the Washington Convention Center on Sunday, July 1.

Railbird Dad

For its Annual Meeting, GCSAE (the Greater Cleveland Society of Association Executives) usually tries to find a venue that won’t be seen as routine. For this year’s Annual Meeting on Friday, we chose Thistledown Racetrack.

For nearly 39 years, we’ve lived ten minutes south of Thistledown and ten minutes north of Northfield Park, and yet we’ve never gone to the races at either park. (I’ve attended meetings at Thistledown before, but they weren’t held while racing was going on.) This was my opportunity to live large at the track.

First we held the meeting itself. We had an excellent presentation by Deb Janik of the Greater Cleveland Partnership on the exciting developments that are going on in Cleveland just now, and we also had the opportunity to meet Wales-born jockey Lyndon Hannigan, who was scheduled to ride “Ohio Volunteer” in the eighth race. We enjoyed talking with Lyndon, and his limp as he walked in and out of the meeting reminded us that his sport is pretty dangerous: he’s broken legs six times. (A few hours later, he and “Ohio Volunteer” came in second.)

I studied the racing bulletin provided by Thistledown and discovered that Race #2 was a 5-1/2-furlong race. I cleverly concluded that my best guide to which horse to bet on was their previous performance in 5-1/2-furlong races, and selected “Not For Dice” and “Fatladyhzntsungyet,” both of which had done well recently in races of that length. Then I went to the one of the many betting windows, which had signs asking the patrons to identify the race, the horse, and the bet. I had heard the terms “win,” “place,” and “show,” so I confidently placed $2 bets on both horses to “win, place, and show.” When the teller rang me up for $12, I realized that each of those was a separate bet–lesson learned!

By the way, the Thistledown personnel were unfailingly pleasant and polite. The tellers were happy to explain how things worked, and patient with me while I worked out my questions.

After placing our bets, I joined some colleagues headed down to the track to watch the race up close. Like many of us my colleagues, I was wearing the spring-summer business casual uniform of blue blazer and khaki slacks. They stuck out among the racing crowd, but with my sunglasses and panama hat, I figure I blended right in.

Once at trackside, I discovered that they have snack bars! with beer! And pretty reasonable beer, too, at $2 for a 16-oz. MGD. So we settled in to watch Race #2. I decided to move right up to the rail so that I could see the horses up close. I was surprised at how much space was available at the rail, and pretty soon I understood why: you have a great closeup view of the action, but only for about 1/1000 of a second–and no view at all of the rest of the action.

The race was over so quickly that I had no idea what had happened until the announcer reviewed the results and they showed up on the scoreboard. That’s when I realized that “Not For Dice” had come in fourth and and “Fatladyhzntsungyet” had finished sixth.

Emboldened by my turf experience, I bet in Race #3 as well. This was a 6-furlong race, so once again I looked at the horses’ records and identified a couple that looked promising. I bet on “Musical Mischief” to win and on “A Slick Chic” to show. “A Slick Chic” showed (came in third), but “Music Mischief” came in fourth.

After the results were declared official, I redeemed my $2 “show” ticket for the princely sum of $2.20. So after $16 in bets, I got back $2.20 in recognition of my turf acumen. Not bad, I think: I could have lost that money faster and far more irresponsibly: for example, by playing video games at an arcade.

Next I’ll work on that “trifecta” stuff. My panama hat is ready for action.

Whoppers

As readers of this blog will know, I had the opportunity this week to give testimony on behalf of NEOEA to the Ohio House Commerce and Labor Committee for public employee collective bargaining, and against Senate Bill 5. (That testimony appears here.)Sometimes what appears to be a curse is actually a blessing. I don’t wait particularly well, and before delivering my testimony I needed to wait while several others delivered theirs. Members of the committee questioned several of the witnesses: always respectfully, but sometimes clearly in sympathy with the witnesses’ positions and sometimes not. I was struck by the number of items I heard delivered as fact that are simply incorrect. Some of these whoppers were told by witnesses, but some were passed on by members of the Committee, whom one would expect to be more knowledgeable.These errors have clouded the debate concerning Senate Bill 5, and I took the opportunity last night to point them out in an email to the Committee. Error 1: “Union dues are used to support candidates.” To do so would be illegal. Unions do have access to member PAC contributions, but those PACs consist of voluntary contributions. Error 2: Unions enjoy “forced membership.” Forcing membership would be illegal; charging an agency fee is not. Those who refer to “forced membership” almost never refer to the union’s legally-defined Duty of Fair Representation, which amounts to what might be termed “forced” representation and seems to make the relationship reciprocal. (Those who oppose agency fee arrangements don’t usually address whether they think unions should be freed from DFR, leaving the impression that they think non-members will pay dues if they can get the service for free.) Error 3: “I support union members but not union leaders.” Union governance is democratic by law, since union elections are federally regulated. NEOEA surveys of union leaders and rank-and-file members do not indicate any significant differences in their attitudes and beliefs. Supporting one implies support for the other. Error 4: “Teachers’ unions influence school board elections and then make sweetheart deals with their hand-picked board members.” Although a few of our locals make endorsements in school board elections, most do not. But if boards were indeed in union pockets, one assumes that OSBA would be joining with us against SB 5 instead of supporting it. When I repeated this whopper at a public meeting Wednesday evening, it drew laughter from the audience. Error 5: “State law mandates automatic step increases.” Automatic step increases are incorporated in most teacher contracts, but those provisions are not mandated by state law. (Observation: changes to existing salary schedules can be extremely difficult to work out, not only with Boards but with members. Sometimes the union’s toughest negotiations are among its own members.) As I told the Representatives in my email, “I have confined myself here to errors that I actually heard in the hearing room yesterday, and have resisted the temptation to address other errors that creep into the debate about this important issue. Simply correcting these will be enough for now.”