RETURN TO WAM
Nothing to do with the story- I like Jeff’s work very much— check out maniyackmonsters.com
I returned to the Worcester Art Museum like Douglas MacArthur- the first time I’d set foot in the Worcester Art Museum since seconds before Dr Fraudci declared the pandemic and shut the world down and put hard working people out of business so Andy Coumo could jam people with weakened immune systems together in a nursing home and then not allow the families to have funerals when the inevitable happened. I know a pandemic is tough to manage, but the folks running things should not just be making things up, especially someone who claims to be a scientist and who recently admitted a lot of what he did (like masking and 6 foot distancing) was made up!
How are you not angered by this? Jeez if the kid at Dunkin’ put your lid on wrong you’d get more upset— and these people destroyed lives. The chickens will come home to roost.
Speaking of chickens coming home— I walked up the steps to WAM which are totally new into a lobby I barely recognized and picked up my entry band at a station I’d never seen before. Walking in I saw Kevin, one of the guards I knew quite well and we exchanged warm hellos. A lot of the guards told me when WAM fired me back in 2014 they should have given me a full lifetime membership for the work I’d done over the years. Interestingly, as I was walking out of WAM that fateful day the Director asked me to stay— even though I’d just been fired by human resources. It’s more than OK, I was ready to go, leadership in education had plummeted to an all time low and the programs I’d help build, along with such things as Youth Art Month and Art All State were destroyed (I’m happy to see Youth Art Month has returned and the museum has implemented one of the biggest things I would push for— classes that had requirements of other Classes before you could get in).
I walked through the education department— very different, looked into a few studios and saw that they’d moved the cafe into the education wing— odd. I sat in on a lecture from Director Emeritus Jim Welu (not the director who was running things when I was let go). Jim has been my friend for 20+ years and if he’d stayed on as director I doubt I would have left.
Would I go back to teaching there? Sadly no. Since leaving I actually make real money— and if I want to teach classes I do it under my own terms and I make 100% of the proceeds instead of the usualy 10% you get at WAM. I would probably do a lecture every once in a while but my phone isn’t ringing so I won’t hold out hope.
Speaking of phones, I had to get a new one, but that’s another adventure.
