Mark Skogman Senior Reporter Spectrum 360 Media
’16 Nov. 06 Sun. E. S. T. 00:52
At 8:00PM on the nite of Wensday, the 5th of November 2016, just four days ago, the wonderful musician Bonnie Raitt played her latest concert at the beautiful Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, FL. Members of the Spectrum 360 Media staff were there! The concert was excellent, as usual. However, the event started with what is now standard security procedure at Ruth Eckerd Hall and the Capitol Theater. That is, airport style security where you have to take everything out of your pockets, put it on a tray and then get wanded by security just to get entry to the building. So tedious. After that, there was a stern warning from the female security guard who was wanding attendees that there was to be no still or video photography at all during the concert and if you were caught violating the rule, you would be forced to leave the concert immediately. How is that for an audience friendly venue? Wonderful! Not! A Tweet friendly environment it isn’t.
The interesting thing was that close to the end of the concert, Bonnie Raitt herself said from the stage that the audience had been “very good” about not doing still or video photography and that it was now “ok with me” if the audience did do still and video photography. Immediately, hundreds of people took out their devices and started to photograph and record and you could see many, many glowing screens all over the hall! Wow! What an about face from the greeting at the entrance to the hall.
Bonnie Raitt is of course known for her political activism and has a many decades long history of supporting Progressive causes, especially as it relates to the environment and environmental issues. She has done a long list of benefit concerts to raise money for organizations and individuals active on these and other issues. These facts are some of the things that endears Bonnie to her fans. Check out her website http://www.bonnieraitt.com for more information.
One of the things that she has been doing at her concerts is supporting the Guacamole Fund (www.guacfund.org) with proceeds from a select number of seats going to provide money to the Fund. Also, some organizations are allowed to table at her concerts, supporting progressive causes and actions.
She usually does make political comments from the stage and observations about the state of the country and other topics. So it came as no surprise, when she made some comments about the organizations that were present for tabling at her concert. She announced from the stage that the Southern Alliance For Clean Energy ( http://www.cleanenergy.org ) and Food And Water Watch ( http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org ) were present at the concert and she recognized both organizations.
This was followed by big applause for the organizations and then she said this: “I’ve been checking out what’s going on here in Florida and I’m really, really glad to see that solar energy and wind are making head way. In case your confused about One….. I understand One is on the ballot. Vote no on Amendment One. [Huge applause] In the state of California where I live, we’ve got all we need in a safe and healthy way and lots of jobs.”
Amendment One, currently on the General Election ballot in the state of Florida, is the deceptively worded amendment that appears to support solar power but does not and is supported by the electric power utilities in Florida.
You have got to love the one and only….. Bonnie Raitt!
Copyright (C) 2016 Mark A. Skogman All rights reserved.
