Twenty First Century Writing
This is one of my favorite spots in Groton, Massachusetts. Whenever the sky is unusual, there are beautiful views from every angle, and when it is windy and bitterly cold, as it was last night, you can take great photos without even getting out of the car. This full moon is purported to be the brightest of the year, but I don’t understand how they can know that, unless it’s just because it is so cold in January that the atmosphere is extra clear.
As we write this, a ship carrying 2,000 U.S. Marines is on it way to Haiti to assist vicitms of the earthquake. America may be mired in conflicts that some deem questionable, but there is no mistaking that when disaster strikes, the world expects us to help, and we always do. The freedom to do the right thing is worth preserving, even if it’s not always clear how.
Photo taken at the Fort Devens, Devens, Massachusetts. Although most of the base has been converted to civilian use, it is still serves the Army and Marine Corps reserves.
This section of Ayer, Massachusetts, abuts the former Fort Devens. The area has been struggling ever since the U.S. Government closed the base in the 1990s. While the Devens Redevelopment Authority (it still has an Army Reserve Unit which houses lots of desert camo hardware – trucks and tanks and the like) has had some success in drawing businesses and a charter school to relocate or build there (with major tax incentives and subsidies from the state) the recession has nonetheless taken a continuing toll on the surrounding communities, which built their infrastructure throughout the 20th century on the population of soldiers and their families who lived near or on post.
There’s nothing better than when people make a little extra effort to do the right thing. This is the sign in front of the new Police HQ in Littleton, Massachusetts, and it stands on the site of a former farm stand, Stan’s Big Acres. Owned by the late John “Stan” Paskiewicz, the stand – a small red shack with a screen porch and a hand painted white sign with red writing – had a greeting painted on it “If You Can’t Stop, Wave.” Whenever we gave people directions to our house when we moved from the city, Stan’s sign was the landmark that reassured them they were not indeed lost and were, in fact, close to their destination (the other landmark was Bob’s Bait & Tackle – alas, it is gone also). Guests often arrived with cider or apples from Stan’s (no one ever arrived with bait from Bob’s – go figure) and even when I driving past alone I found myself raising a hand to Stan. When Stan’s closed the shack stood empty for a number of years, falling into disrepair, the sign still outside. We kept waving anyway. When Littleton decided to use the site for the Police station (and a beautiful one at that) some civic-minded person or group preserved Stan’s greeting on the new sign.
So, Stan’s is a Police station and Bob’s is a yarn shop. There are still signs of the agricultural life along the way home – farm stands, horse farms, fields of sheep and produce – but nothing quite like Stan’s, save for the red house directly across the street (below) that echoes his stand in it’s waning days; the future on one side the road, the past on the other. If you can’t stop, wave. Okay, then.
It just occurred to me that I have a penchant of taking photos of people talking on cell phones in places where it seems a little incongruous (see Can You Hear Me Now). The Cemetery is on Main Street in Concord, MA – and the two empty parking spaces just might be the most unusual things in the picture.
This window is at the top corner of the Haines House in Concord, Massachusetts. Built in 1813, it has shutters are made to work and most likely has layers of paint thicker than the walls of most modern houses. Below is the front door to the same house (currently an academic administration building at Concord Academy), where the wiring for the light had to be routed on the outside. The way all the exterior lines and shapes in these old structures can fit together into a coherent whole fascinates me – in modern times that approach doesn’t seem to work nearly as well, and yet here, it does. Are we more forgiving of older architecture just because it’s old or did they get something right that we don’t? I admit that I am more enamored of such places from the outside looking in – once inside, they tend to be dark and cramped and have a kind of slanted fun house quality because everything has settled unevenly over the centuries (and that funky wiring goes from quaint to dangerous).
Election night 2006. That’s Deval Patrick on the jumbo screen at right, emerging triumphant in his victory as the first person of color to be elected governor of Massachusetts. The campaign slogan was Together We Can. The headline in today’s Boston Globe was that he will cut 1,000 state jobs to avoid a budget deficit of $600 million. He didn’t create the recession, but there is still something terribly disheartening about this news. Families of people with disabilties will lose the people who support them, more teachers will lose their jobs, more schools will be overcrowded, and politicians – the Governor included – may use this as an excuse to build casinos in Massachusetts. He is sinking in a quagmire not of his own making, and signs point that he is looking to all the wrong people to pull him out. I don’t blame him for not getting along with his own legislature – even though his party holds the majority – but, just as with Obama, I wonder if he has been able to surround himself with people who are truly like-minded.
That election night was an interesting moment in time. Ted Kennedy spoke (boring boilerplate), as did John Kerry (deadly boring boilerplate – leftover from 2004 Presidential campaign) and Martha Coakley (most boring of all attorney general-speak that she still uses in her current campaign to fill Kennedy’s Senate seat). Patrick was the beaming exception. Like Obama – he literally lit up the room.
Still, my favorite moment from that night did not take place on the floor, but in the empty corridor outside as my daughter and I were going out to find something to eat before the speeches began. It was one of those enormous convention center hallways that could accomodate a truck if it was required, and walking toward us was a man in a red pullover sweater. He looked familiar and I squinted to get a better look. He smiled at me and, not breaking his easy stride, smiled and said “Hi there, how are you?”
“Fine, thanks.” I nodded and returned the smile as we passed each other.
My daughter looked at me, and said “Who was that? It seemed like he knew you.”
“That, my dear, was Mike Dukakis. And he was once the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. I’ve never met him before, but that’s what good politicians do – they make everybody feel like them know them.”
“That guy in the red sweater walking all by himself?”
That guy in the red sweater walking all by himself.
LettersHead 