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Why are museums closed on Mondays?

Can someone reasonably explain why museums are still closed on Mondays? It is a longstanding tradition that defies common sense. You won’t find many people advocating for tradition more than I, but what tradition I argue for makes sense. Museums closed on Monday makes no sense. It seems to be an outdated, strange sense of special privilege that almost all museums are closed on Monday.

In a nation full of highly mobile travelers and vacationers taking long weekends, and where so many small towns and rural counties have worked hard and significantly invested to attract tourists, we still come up against the strange tradition of museums being closed on Mondays. No one I have spoken to can give a good reason for this educational shut-down. They are even shut on Monday during the summer season, when tons of tourists are traveling through town.

Going to visit your old uncle via an oddly zig-zagging road trip you will never do again in your life? Don’t count on seeing the local museums or historical society that Monday; they will be inexplicably closed. “It’s Museum Monday, dontcha know…..

Taking a long weekend summer vacation on a whim to some remote place you will never visit again? Don’t make Monday your local museum day, because regardless of where you are, the museums are likely to all be closed. “It’s Museum Monday, dontcha know…..

Every other business sector works hard to meet its customers’ needs, except the museums, when they are closed on Monday. The list of Open On Monday Despite The Terrible Hardship businesses includes funeral homes, libraries, car mechanic shops, pet care shops, and ice cream stands. Among most other businesses.

Every other business sector has to survive, and can’t afford to artificially turn away customers, except for museums with their “poor me” donation boxes that are inexplicably closed on Monday.

Every other business sector rotates staff in order to give workers a day off, a weekend off, except most museums, apparently. Only museums have staff that must get Monday off. Only Monday. Not Sunday. Or Wednesday. But Monday….

Yes, I recognize that a hundred years ago when museums were becoming a thing, they developed a common culture of being available over weekends (except those museums that are closed on Sunday…and also Monday, of course), which necessitated having a day off for facility cleaning, repair, exhibit updates, and rest for the staff. I suppose.  But now? Every other business is open on Monday, and yes, museums can do it, too! They should do it.

Find some new staff or volunteers for the Monday shifts. Pay the museum staff more on Monday. Whatever it takes to meet customer demand, museums should do; this ain’t rocket science. The Smithsonian is open seven days a week, and if that gigantic place can be open on Monday, then so can small museums in Podunk USA across the USA.

I would like to thank the Ward O’Hara agricultural museum in Auburn, New York, and the Museum of the Fur Trade in Chadron, Nebraska, for being open on Mondays. We just happened to be passing through their respective rural necks of the woods on two given Mondays, a year apart, and lo! – a museum with an Open for Business sign! We happily paid their fees, left generous donations in the donation box, and had a really enjoyable time learning what they had to teach us. And no one involved turned into a pumpkin because it was Monday.

Dear museums, please join the 21st century, and make yourselves available for the highly mobile 21st century traveler. Arrange your open hours to meet the demand of your would-be customers; especially during the summer vacation season. And to those foundations who write big operating grants to museums, you should stipulate that the museums must be open when people are expecting to use it. That would definitely include all the week days, like every other business.

 

 

Voter Access, Public Funding of Private Elections…

I so totally agree with the gist of this opinion piece by our local newspaper of record, the Patriot News:

By Matt Zencey, May 15, 2014

Tuesday is Primary Election Day, and every year when it rolls around, I’m reminded of this unpleasant fact: Tax-paying Pennsylvanians who don’t belong to a political party are forced to help pay for an election in which they are not allowed vote.

You can’t vote for candidates Tuesday unless you are a registered member of a political party that has candidates on the ballot.

I wrote a column last year complaining about this injustice that is inflicted on politically independent Pennsylvanians. It’s a system that isn’t going to change anytime soon, because the power-brokers who make the rules are the same people who benefit from taxpayer subsidies of their party’s candidate selection process.

In last year’s column, I wondered whether this arrangement violates Pennsylvania constitution’s requirement of “free and equal” elections. What’s “equal” about an election, funded by tax dollars, where a duly registered voter has no say in which candidate wins?

Now it’s true, as I wrote back then, that the U.S. Supreme Court clearly says political parties have a First Amendment right to determine who may vote in “their” political primaries.

The question is whether political parties [THAT ARE PRIVATE ENTITIES] have a First Amendment right to force you [THE PUBLIC] to pay for their candidate selection process.

I don’t think so.

If you are going to participate in a primary election that you help pay for, you are forced to affiliate with a political party. That violates your First Amendment rights.

Pennsylvania’s closed primary election delivers a tax-subsidized government benefit to two preferred political organizations – the Democratic and Republican parties.

All of us are paying so they can pick their candidate who will enjoy a huge government privilege – one of two guaranteed spots on the general election ballot. (Pennsylvania law also makes it extraordinarily difficult for a third-party to get its candidates on the ballot.)

It doesn’t have to be this way.

California recently adopted a much fairer primary election system by voter initiative.

All candidates of all parties appear on a ballot available to all registered voters within the relevant district. The top two vote getters move on to the general election in the fall. The winners could be two Republicans, or two Democrats, one of each party. A so-called minor party candidate might even win a spot on the fall ballot.

This way, taxpayers are not forced to subsidize a process that’s stacked in favor of two political parties. And it’s clearly constitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly saidthat a non-partisan primary that is open to all voters and allocates spots on the general election ballot falls squarely within the First Amendment.

But good luck getting such a system here in Pennsylvania. Unlike in California, the poo-bahs who hold political power in Pennsylvania have denied voters the power to pass their own laws by statewide initiative.

On this one, we have to try to persuade legislators and the governor to do the right thing and reform a system that has put them in power and keeps them there.

I’m not holding my breath.

Matt Zencey is Deputy Opinion Editor of Pennlive and The Patriot-News. Email mzencey@pennlive.com and on Twitter @MattZencey.

http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/05/is_pennsylvania_closed_primary.html