Michael Schmidt-- Food Freedom Fighter

Below is a letter I received from my friend Treasa O'Driscol. It is in reference to our mutual friend Michael Schmidt, he of safe raw milk fame. Michael has had a thirty year fight with the government and the milk powers for his right to farm and produce raw, unpasteurized, yet safe milk. Anyone who has been to his farm can attest to the fact that Michael tends to his farm and animals in a loving and holistic fashion. The farm is as clean as I could ever imagine a farm to be and he cares for the animals by name. The milk is produced by hand, is clearly pure, clean and good for you. It tastes quite unlike the pasteurized stuff we are used to!

Having won many battles, it seemed the tide was turning in his favour, but more recently things have gone against his right to distribute raw milk-- and let's be clear this is not even to the public at large, rather to people, knowing the issues, who have invested in become cow share members. They own a share in a cow and are thus receiving milk from an animal they own already. As such, Michael Schmidt’s cow-share program is not a national health threat. The milk that he and others consume doesn’t go into the main food system. It is available only to his cow share members.

Maybe there was a time when pasteurization was necessary, but we should all have the right to choose.

A reader commented on The Bovine site, Michael Schmidt’s WordPress blog, that if it’s legal to buy all sorts of raw foods: beef, pork, chicken, sushi and raw vegetables (which we know, of late, can be contaminated with e-coli or other organisms) as well as PRODUCTS THAT ARE KNOWN TO BE HARMFUL TO HEALTH such as alcohol, tobacco and over-the-counter drugs — then WHY is it illegal for people to drink milk from a cow-share?

Well, those are the raw facts. (Sorry!) But the issue has taken an even more serious turn. Michael wants to have a dialogue with Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario, on the issue of food freedom and is willing to fight to achieve such. How Michael has chosen to fight is significant-- he has gone on hunger strike! He has consumed only water for 30 days now and is very weak. McGuinty seems to be taking no notice, but he can't ignore the many people who care about Michael and support his cause and the cause of freedom in general.

I am scared we might lose Michael. He is a unique and important voice in life and it is no small thing he does to be willing to die for what he believes in and for which he has fought so hard.

We could all contact Dalton McGunity.

Here is a link:

https://correspondence.premier.gov.on.ca/en/feedback/default.aspx

or

Premier Dalton McGuinty
Roon 281, Main Legislative Building, Queen’s Park
Toronto, Ontario M7A 1A1
Tel.: 416-325-1941
Fax: 416-325-3745

Michael, friend, we are thinking of you and support you!

Kevin


October 28, 2011
Dear friend of Michael Schmidt,

I spoke to Michael today and let him know that Barrie MPP, Rodney Jackson, has joined a newly formed bipartisan committee of Provincial MPPs that includes Randy Hillier, Greg Sorbara, Jack McLaren, John O'Toole and others. They are determined to persuade the Premier to concede to Farmer Schmidt's request for dialogue. They realise that Michael Schmidt's hunger strike is a matter of concern to a growing number of representatives from every party, much talked about in the corridors of power where many agree that Michael's stance is indicative of the much larger issue of Food Freedom that underlies his tireless campaign for Safe Raw Milk.

Michael said he was very moved by this show of support and that it made him hopeful that "something is happening". He remains firm in his resolution to end his fast only when Dalton McGuinty indicates a willingness to enter into dialogue with him. "At issue is the need to engage the highest level of government in dialogue so that the lower bureaucratic levels can ultimately fall into line with the conclusions of an open ended, forward looking and unbiased review of the current stalemate." Dialogue is only a first step in the direction of policy making that is mindful of the best interests of all concerned-farmers, consumers and animals alike." An exchange of views may reveal that it is possible to protect the health of citizens and permit freedom of choice in food at one and the same time."

Michael Schmidt contends that food choice cannot be contemplated without reference to farmers. We know that farms are dwindling and that farmers are ageing. There is a need for new incentives and Michael approach to animal husbandry, his respect for nature and his attention to the relationship that can flourish between farmer and consumer, carries a seed of renewal that we Canadians cannot afford to dismiss. "We are cutting the branch we are sitting on," is Michael's way of putting it.

"If Dalton McGuinty wants to avoid a funeral, I want him to know that I have no conditions, in my quest for dialogue, other than a wish to focus on the following questions with a view to progressing from where we are now to where we could ideally be as a robust society":

1. How can we move to ensure that farmers are no longer persecuted through being subjected to more and more raids on their properties, to more charges being laid against them?

2. Can we work towards the formation of a task force to look at current recommendations that address the stalemate that exists with regard to Raw Milk?

3. How can the individual right to food choice be upheld when the regulatory bodies revolve around the issue of risk and of 'endangering the public'?
Sincerely,

Treasa O'Driscoll,
Novalis Project, Barrie, Ontario

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

Strange-- this blog was hacked and deleted! I'll try to get round to redoing it.

The Reeds Grew Brighter-- Glad to be composing again!

Little know fact about yours truly! At college, my major wasn't violin or conducting, (the two things with which I primarily make my living now). Actually it was composition! I studied with three different teachers-- Frank Denyer, who was big into world music, Patrick Gowers with whom I did film scoring and Maxwell Davies, who, well, drove me into the abyss of darkness! This wasn't all his doing, I also did my thesis on Adorno, so I was well on the way to expressing my own version of German angst and screaming along with Edvard Munch!

Over the years, I have used my composition skills very little, but they came in useful when I had to write inner parts for French 5 part baroque music etc. More recently I have started to dream music, a sure sign that I need to let my own music come out. As if to reinforce this, I was asked recently to provide music for the new TV series called Camelot, made by the same company who produced both the Tudors and the Borgias! (It's out in the US now and will be on the CBC next September.)

About this time too, Aradia was presenting a new music concert entitled Baroque Idol. Composers were invited to submit a 5-7 minute piece and the audience was to choose their favorite! I decided to produce a piece. Like the other works, my piece The Reeds Grew Brighter was scored for baroque instruments: oboe, bassoon, string quartet and harpsichord.

The oboist in the Baroque Idol concert (Sarah Davol) has subsequently commissioned me to rework The Reeds Grew Brighter for woodwind quintet for performances in New York. I have just finished tonight—many hours of work. I’m tired, but excited to be giving voice once again to composition.

The title of the work is a suggestion from a line of poetry by Yeats. From the collection The Wind Among the Reeds there is a poem called The Host of the Air, wherein there is a line which says "and he saw how the reeds grew dark." I liked the line but changed the "dark" to "brighter" to produce the title of this musical composition.

Watch this space, as they say, for more details about the performance dates!

"So, you do this too!" My meeting with Yehudi Menuhin.

It always amuses me to have contact with truly great and famous musicians and to discover they are genuine but are really just more (or usually much more) talented versions of ourselves! They worry about the same things-- have the same relationship troubles and in the midst of it all, still have to do their laundry!

One such individual I have had the good fortune to meet was Yehudi Menuhin.

Menuhin has always been a big influence for me. It is because of him that I took up the violin. My uncle Kevin, genius electronic engineer (after whom I was named), made a stereogram for his father, my grandfather, when stereo was the newest thing. This was in the mid 1960’s. To go with this, Uncle Kevin bought one of each type of record. We were always amazed that my grandparents had a Beatles record!

Electronics became a passion, probably as a result of hero- worshipping my uncle. Playing records was also an escape- while the older folks sat in the other room gossiping about all the goings on in the country neighborhood, I would play records from my grandfathers’ collection. Among that number was the Beethoven violin concerto with Menuhin. I don’t know what it was, but from the first timpani notes and the woodwind chords, I was hooked. Then, when the violin came in, I was transfixed-- I had never heard anything so beautiful! My mother was a pianist and a music teacher, my father- an amateur singer who accompanied himself on the piano. Something of their talent and love of music paid off- I begged to learn the violin and so, at the age of ten, I started to take lessons.

You can imagine my delight, when six years later, I had left my native Belfast to study in Manchester at the specialist music school, Chetham’s School of Music and discovered that Menuhin was coming to play the Bruch concerto with our school orchestra in a joint project with Wells Cathedral School. I was learning the concerto and so, before he came, I had the chance to play it through with the orchestra. This was at thrill in itself.

The concert was an amazing experience although, to be honest, Menuhin was by then suffering from his famous bow shakes. Even so, it is obvious what an inspiration this was for a little boy from Belfast. But lest you think you can take the boy out of Ireland, realize too that Ireland and the Irish were never far from the boy!

As luck would have it, before the concert I was in the washroom (the loo in Britain!) and was standing at the urinal. Imagine my surprise, when who should walk in, and stand in the urinal next to me but Mr. Yehudi Menuhin, the great man himself! I stood there for some time and finally caught his eye and said, “So, you do this too!”

Some fifteen years later, in 1992, The French government was opening embassies in the new Baltic States. Of course, being the French, with each opening they had a chamber concert of French baroque music with France’s premier early music ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, with whom I had the honour to be concert- master. After each concert there were an official reception.

Somehow, this tour would bring about a strange aligning of the stars!



When we were in Lithuania, doing our concert, Yehudi Menuhin was also in town conducting the Lithuanian Symphony doing Messiah! (Go figure!) He was invited to the French Embassy reception and because I was a violinist I was sat opposite him.

After a little while I said that we had in fact met before—that he had gone to Chetham’s School of Music to play the Bruch concerto, and it was a great experience for the students—and also for me personally, because I played it with the orchestra in the rehearsals before he arrived. Very graciously he said that he remembered—but I knew that he hadn’t!

I thought I would chance my luck! “Actually Mr. Menuhin we had another meeting at that time,” I said. It was just at that moment – something you will all know— that the room went strangely quiet and the ambassador, his wife, dignitaries, even Bill Christie all tuned in to our conversation!

Well, I had started so I went on—“ yes, we had another meeting just before the concert (pause… while I contemplated that this whole thing could go either way…) I was standing at the urinal, you came in, stood next to me, I caught your eye and said -So, you do this too!”

There was a little gasp in the room. Menuhin looked very still and then after what seemed like an eternity, he threw his head back and exclaimed—“I’ve been telling that story for 20 years!”

There was much amusement, but from then on that night, he was mine—he only wanted to talk to me and it was one of the most memorable nights of my life.

April 9, 2009