Tina Aridas/James Reams

From: Jack Saunders
To: Tina Aridas/James Reams
Subj: Missing audio on DVD.

James speaking into camera
Square Dance
James speaking into camera
Jamboree
The Mysterious Redbirds
James speaking into camera

Barbara Ehrenreich has a book coming out about white collar professionals who get downsized called Bait and Switch. It's mainly about the leeches who prey on them--the outplacement industry. But shedding managers and professionals is built into corporate life, now.

I remember when the Space Program did it. All those guys in short-sleeve shirts and ties with nerd-paks in their pockets, at Cape Canaveral, can't sell their house in the subdivision because nobody has a job.

Now it's low-tech firms.

It used to be they would send executives to Bumfuck, Egypt, when they had kids in school where they worked, to keep from paying them their pension, but now as soon as anyone makes a decent living they replace her with a green helper--or an outsourced worker who will come back for half the pay as a scab.

Thoreau said our civilization is based on bankruptcy and repudiation, and reneging on a debt is standard practice, if paying a debt is inconvenient. The company deals in bad faith. You have to compromise yourself morally to work for them. Enron was not the exception it's the rule.

And it's not just private industry it's the government and higher education. Civil servants no longer have job security and professors aren't going to have tenure very much longer.

It's a labor issue.

And the middle-class professionals I worked with who all got sacked were anti-union.

Amazing.

I watched the documentary at IBMA. Good idea, interviewing the pioneers, while they're still around. Good luck finishing it. Have you thought about applying for a grant? Maybe Farleigh-Dickinson would donate production facilities. In-kind help is often available.

The NEA used to have a program for jazz masters, but I don't know of anything similar for bluegrass pickers. Ralph Stanley got an honorary doctorate. Most old pickers, they have to hold a benefit to pay for their coffin.

I know many of them die on the concert circuit because they can't afford to retire.

I personally thought Bill Monroe should have moved aside about ten years before he did.

Glad you got Jimmy Martin before he died. It was easy to make him look like a drunk and a fool. Which he was not.

Like he said, "It's hard work."

When you're not driving to a show, or playing a show, you practice.