Responding to Diana Kelm’s March 2 letter, realize that Haines is a town with many visual artists. It is not a town with a music scene. Except for the Southeast Alaska State Fair, which is more of a music festival than anything else, Haines has no music scene. While here are many artists per capita, there is a lack of musicians. As far as I know, there is only one professional musician living in Haines, and this person derives their income from Skagway. So we live in a town without a professional musician. Additionally, often times when a musician does come to town, the residents of the town show poor support by not buying tickets and not attending the shows.
I have been trying to form a flexible, adaptable blues-ish, rock-ish, folk-ish, country-ish band for about 15 years with little interest. There are either not enough interested musicians in Haines, or they are too busy to dedicate any time to music. The fact is that we are a town without a music scene. Therefore, it is no surprise that when it comes time for cuts, it’s the music teacher.
Obviously, we would never consider cutting the school administration, which we have among the highest per capita school administrators anywhere. We actually have a school superintendent with two principals reporting to them, among the lowest ratio of principals to superintendents to be found anywhere (almost 1 to 1). Let’s cut the school administration.
Fred Einspruch