It has come to your humble scribe's attention that the surviving members of the Brant Music Festival (BMF) are not happy with my plans to distribute their discarded trophies to previous winners.
How do I know this? Because they decided to post this "WARNING" online today on facebook:
Disappointing to see this false accusation. Unfortunately, it requires airing some dirty laundry of this children's charity. Oh well, the accusation makes it unavoidable, so LFG.
Addressing the "tasked with storage" lie requires going back a little further in time. When the Kiwanis version of the festival folded, and when the BMF was formed, all the trophies were transferred to the new organization, probably early 2018. All the historical Kiwanis trophies headed to the residence of the then-president of the BMF, one N.M. N.W.
On one fine day in August 2018, the then-president of the BMF decided to declutter her home, and discard some trophies. As my earlier blog post indicates, this did not sit right with my wife and me (we were both present), so we took the discards home to find them new owners. Here is one of the piles:
Yes, the photo is legit. This other photo was taken just minutes away at the same address, the former home of N.M. N.W.
My dearest lady wife quickly undertook some personal research about finding new owners for the trophies. One of the people she consulted was no other than the then and current (?) secretary of the BMF, one K.W., who said she knew one of the guitar teachers in town, toward eventual contact with the guitar winners. The discussion was clear that it was about finding the discarded trophies a new home. Well, we all got busy, so it didn't happen at the time.
Levac's soon took charge of storing all remaining trophies of the BMF. Yours truly was tasked with keeping track of where each one was (with a winner, or returned to Levac's), with a sophisticated space-age database, which all the BMF staff had access to. Every year, the issued trophies were transported from storage, handed out at the closing show of the festival to the winners, and a little under a year later, gradually returned. Levac's is a fabulous operation. No mention ever occurred of the discarded trophies, because those who knew about them knew that they were gone. After all, let's look a bit closer at that trophy pile photo. What does that little yellow sticker say? Computer, ENHANCE:
"RETIRE". Well, "Refire", spelling & penmanship are hard. And just guess whose judgement that little sticker represented --- and whose handwriting it was? Not mine, you can be sure. Sure doesn't look like "store & return", does it?
So anyways, FIVE YEARS passed. We sheltered the discards in various locations in our humble abode. We live with clutter, so they fit in nooks and crannies all over. We finally got around to publishing the discarded trophy list, after carefully memorializing their photos and their winners in the archive. And now the new management of the BMF, none of whom were present at the 2018 discard, wishes to play Indian Giver by publishing a false accusation? GTFO.
The reader might wonder what happened - why are the BMF people like this? Well, that will have to be another story. Guess what - it involves more false accusations!
UPDATE 12 hours later:
They removed the post. No notice, no apology. SOP