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Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2023 17:22:22 -0500
To: membership@thetrustees.org, info@thetrustees.org
From: hobbit
Subject: Problem at Crane
This is important, please pay close attention to all of this and escalate
to the appropriate high levels within the Trustees.
I had a conversation with Chris Moore today, the business manager up at
the Crane properties. I didn't really want to talk to anyone from Crane
since that's where the original problem occurred, but so be it as that's
where I got forwarded on the phone. You may reference that to this email,
anyway, as it's about the same situation. I had a rather frustrating and
upsetting experience up at the Crane Estate with its personnel this afternoon
[Thursday], and it points out something that needs to be fixed organization-
wide so I never have this problem again, at *any* Trustees facility, and
neither does anyone else.
First of all, I'm [name], [memb-num], for several years now, and I've been
to quite a few Trustees properties -- mostly the woodland parks, as I like
hiking and being in nature. I've also visited a few of the house/estate
properties on occasion. I do my best to support our local organizations
that protect natural and historic resources, including Trustees, Mass Audubon,
DCR, and several forest Friends groups. I lead group hikes and try to pass
on as much of the lore that I learn as I can.
For today, I had signed up for a Cupola tour along with a friend, and we
arrived in plenty of time and spent quite a while wandering the grounds and
down the Allee. Racked up over 2 miles, in fact. It was when we went into
the House for the actual tour that the staff at the desk demonstrated some
profound ignorance and the type of personal prejudice that they really need
to leave at home and not bring to their workplace. They tried to insist
that footwear was needed for the tour.
WTF? This is not how the Trustees works.
I don't wear shoes, for health and mobility reasons. Typical shoes are
actually quite bad for us, all of us, but so many people have been brainwashed
to think that they're necessary. So there's a lot of old mythology around the
subject, as you might imagine. I hike all those woodland properties happily
barefoot, including all kinds of rough terrain, without any issues at all.
It's the way Nature wants our feet to be, really -- they can be a lot more
robust than we give them credit for.
I didn't catch the name of the younger woman who first started in on me, but
you can probably figure it out. She tried to throw every typical BS excuse at
me: "oh, it's because of the board of health", and then when I refuted that,
"but we serve food here" -- 100% irrelevant, food and footwear have NEVER had
anything to do with each other and you can look that and the "health code"
garbage up in 5 minutes. Then, "oh, it's liability, you'll sue us". Then
"Christina", I believe, joined the melee and tried to back up the first woman
and thus gang up on me. Neither of them seemed to understand that I am 100%
responsible for my own feet regardless of location, and that's the truth of
how contributory-negligence law works -- and frankly I resent their implication
that I was up there to try and deliberately cause myself some kind of harm and
then turn around and sue the Trustees. What kind of disingenuous nonsense is
that?? Everything they tried to throw at me has NEVER had factual basis, and
a little poking around on the internet can bring you all the proof you need.
It was almost comically ridiculous, in a sad way. It's all just prejudice at
work, which essentially started back in the sixties particularly in the US,
and we're still living with it 60+ years later.
Christina went up to the back office to talk to "Trina", or maybe it was the
other way around -- I didn't really catch all the names, I was too upset at
that point that this nonsense could happen at ANY Trustees property. As I
said, I've been to quite a few of them including the deCordova, and nobody
ever said a word about my appearance until today. I was also up at the Crane
house several years ago for that big open-house with the art installation
on the bowling green, wandering inside the house and out, and nobody said
anything about my feet.
Finally Christina came back and said I could go on the tour after all. Was it
worth having to fight with your staff for ten minutes? Not sure at this point.
This incident should have never happened. It was insulting and degrading,
and probably embarrassing for my companion and anyone else within earshot.
I don't pay well over the minimum membership per year *plus* ticket prices
on top of that to be judged and bullied. This is the kind of crap that makes
you lose members, especially when it's groundless textbook discrimination
over something so harmless. The staff who were involved in this need to be
reprimanded and educated if not dismissed, and this needs to go up to the top
of Trustees administration and back down to EVERY property staff that such
treatment of good-faith members, who arrive clearly knowing what they're doing,
is 100% unacceptable.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with avoiding shoes, and should not even be
noteworthy. Give http://outbarefoot.org/excuses.html a quick read, if you
would. That is the truth on the topic. I left the Crane staff one of my fact
sheets, a shorter version of that. I didn't have any shoes to put on even
if I was going to bend the knee to this nonsense, and if I had, I would have
been clumsier and LESS safe walking around than I ultimately was without
them. In that forcibly-shod scenario, that's when the Trustees staff *could*
have arguably been held responsible for causing a more hazardous situation.
And for the record, those parquet floors feel great, as do many other textures
around the property that I experienced that day! Consider this: I'm putting
less wear on those floors than anyone coming in with shoes.
_H*
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