Somerville used to be a place where it was impossible to be pretentious. Serious corruption was too recent, the litter on the streets too abundant, the city just too plain poor and scrappy to put on airs. But the trash has been cleaned up, we’ve been declared a “model city,” and the coffee choices have exploded far beyond ol’ reliable Dunkin Donuts. Back when we declared Somerville “the Paris of the Nineties” we said it with a sly wink because no one took Somerville seriously then, not even ourselves. But over time, the truth we knew in that statement, what made it resonate — that something special was happening here — blossomed. We worked together, earned respect, and the pride we felt lost the tinge of defensive bravado.
But maybe things have gone too far.
When I saw that the upcoming TEDX Somerville conference requires everyone to apply for an invitation to purchase a ticket I was taken aback. (For folks that don’t know, the TED conference is an annual event of speakers in the areas of technology, entertainment and design. The lectures have gathered a large on-line audience and spawned a number of TEDX conferences as local organizers bring the model to their communities.)
TED is now a well-known brand but this is the first such event in Somerville. Perhaps the invite-only approach is a marketing ploy — this event is so awesome we have to hold back the crowds so get your ticket now! It feels as if we’ve been lined up behind a velvet rope waiting for someone to decide if we’re cool enough or have the right pedigree or are someone-you-ought-to-know. It seems rather odd, considering the speakers are our neighbors. I hope this approach doesn’t gain wings in Somerville.
Maybe the organizers are wanting to ensure diversity? The venue can only hold so many people; with limited space perhaps they need to hold back tickets so the broadest possible swath of our community can participate. I don’t think that’s the purpose since there’s a limited variety of backgrounds among the speakers where the organizers have the greatest ability to curate the event.
The organizers explain they are doing this so they can get to know who is coming and can therefore better meet the needs of the participants. That doesn’t feel accurate though. A survey when registering would have accomplished this just as well.
What’s the worst that would happen if this invite-only approach was taken away? A yahoo might slip in — someone with a too loud opinion, someone who talks a little too much or rambles off topic. Maybe they’ll get a bunch of seat-fillers, those mostly silent in the conversation, more in a quiet learning mode, unsure of the value of their own voices or experience. Maybe someone different from us could sign up, someone annoying or gruff or who-knows-what. Maybe someone will attend who will surprise us. It could get messy.
The Somerville I know is no gated community. We’re swimming in a rich environment — people from all around the world, those traditionally educated and those wise through hard-won life lessons, folks who charm and impress and others who are challenging and less comfortable to be around. It’s all part of what it means to be a part of this city, to be in any complete community. From the artful multi-course meal at Journeyman to the hidden flavors at Vinnie’s at Night, from a plate at the Brazilian buffet to a slice and a Pepsi, there’s a place for you at every table.
Let’s be a community that reaches for excellence but doesn’t fall prey to elitism.
One of the rich and often not recognized qualities of Somerville is the legacy of our city’s blue collar roots. This group held the pride of place when there was little reason to do so. Back then, a lot of people passed through, the city a cheap and convenient place to live as a student or during those early hungry years of a new profession. These transient residents of means typically had their eyes towards Boston or the next big city. It was a spot to reminisce about later, like that first clunker car or those tragic frat parties. It was a rite of passage filled with colorful tales but meant to be left behind.
But over the years that pride of place, held so fiercely by the long time residents, rubbed off. Community organizations fostered it. Artists gave articulate voice to local history and our ecclectic residents. Cable access TV and local newspapers shared stories of what was happening on the streets and in city hall. Organizers and advocates led groups of diverse neighbors speaking to one another, finding common ground in a shared life within the 4.2 square miles. Slowly, Somerville became, after decades, once again a place to invest technical expertise, political connections, money.
The discomfort I feel with the TEDX Somerville conference is just the most clear identifier of something I seeing creeping in across the city. I’m pleased that Somerville is becoming a spring board for folks to do big things. It’s wonderful that so many can wear the badge of the city with pride. But especially those with resources, educations, and connections need to embrace their neighbor if we’re going to continue to thrive as a city, not out of some kind of tokenism or charity but because that’s the only way we’re an honest-to-goodness, thriving, beautiful city. Let’s not let whatever glamour or status Somerville might have accumulated let us forget who who are.
The working class values still beating in Somerville — shunning a sense of entitlement, a need for straight-talking, a commitment to being all in this together – are all ones Somerville needs to retain. It’s not always attractive or the most productive, it might mean you’ll be uncomfortable or won’t ascend as quickly, but it’s the soul of this city. Maintaining a spirit of generosity and acceptance is essential for ourselves and one another.
Note: Thanks for the title inspiration to the blog post by Rachel Held Evans, “Blessed Are the Uncool.”
In early January I’m heading off on a pilgrimage of sorts to visit the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York to see the work of Vivian Maier.
There’s a fair amount of her street photographs visible n-line but I want to see them in person, up close, without the coldness of the digital computer screen. Websites detail her biography as a nanny, living her adulthood mostly in Chicago. An eccentric, opinionated, and intensely private woman, she treasured her day off when she’d head off into the city, exploring and capturing what she’d discover: life on the street, random people, capturing working class life, mostly those on the edge and unseen — woman and children, vagrants, immigrants, workers. Later, she’s drawn away from people and focuses on the abstractions of buildings, graffiti, litter.
The photographs were Vivian’s alone until, struggling with poverty and age, the bill for her storage space went unpaid and the contents were auctioned, the bins and bins of prints and undeveloped film, decades of work, sold in lots. One young man, John Maloof, recognizing the beauty and worth of the photographs in the boxes he purchased, hunted down and bought up nearly all the work that had been separated by that initial sale. He reached out to connect with her too late – she’d died just days before. He’s now devoting himself to preserving and sharing Vivian’s work with a book, exhibits and sales of the prints.
There’s a large number of self portraits among Vivian’s work, where I can see her trying to uncover herself, to probe her own being. The woman in the utilitarian outfit, the dowdy hat, the plain hair cut, invisible I imagine to near everyone around her. As these photographs struggle to reveal the woman behind the camera — caught in shadow, in the random mirror of a shop, in layers of reflections in a sidewalk window — it seems to me that Vivian remained unknown even to herself.
This onery woman, Vivian Maier, has captivated me. I’m a little late to the story. The auction of her work was back in 2007 and she died in April 2009. Major press all over the world has reported on John Maloof’s find; I didn’t catch the coverage here in the New York Times,Time magazine, CBS News or others.
I’m curious to see her treasures, created for her own joy and exploration. It wasn’t that her work went recognized in its time — it was hidden in its time. They’re a time capsule of American city life in the last half of the twentieth century. A diary of images, the story and vision of one quirky, brave woman.
My train ticket is purchased, hotel room is booked. I’ll have lots of time that weekend to reflect on how Vivian approached her life on her own terms – feisty, independent, inquisitive, ever enigmatic.
This past weekend I had an exchange with someone from the neighborhood. In the past couple years she’s been particularly active in community organizations, but now that her daughter is growing up she’s ready to move back into paid work. She’s struggling, floundering in her job search, her investment in community service not recognized or appreciated in the professional sphere. Then, yesterday, with a friend over lunch, her frustration was like a mirror for me. She spoke of how she’s not able to see a way to next level in her career, weary of the struggle for resources, worried that her love of the underdog and skill in making something out of nothing might mean she’ll remain in marginal projects. She’s thinking that her passions and experience are serving to bind her, that she’ll remain confined professionally in similar positions, unable to grow and do the other work she’s capable of doing.
I’ve been feeling that frustration and sadness and dismay myself, and it’s been dragging me down. Hearing their stories, though, I ‘m feeling renewed energy, fueled by fist-shaking protest.
Let me give you a little more context. Last week, I’d spent a couple days among policy makers and planners. Lovely folks, with visions for built neighborhoods I share, but I found myself restless. As the conversation stayed at the level of long term planning and regional policy, I wished to move beyond the abstract and macro approach. I’m interested in how these plans actually turn out, in the implementation and experience of the plans.
For me, it’s all about the “rubber hitting the road.” It is in the local — on the ground, with individuals and small groups of people — where ideas take shape. You can only create and appreciate change by looking through a micro lens. I love local communities for all sorts of reasons, but foremost among them, I love working local because that’s where things happen. Come up with whatever policy or scheme or initiative you want, something regional or national or global, but where that’s going to be explored, seen, measured, experienced, changed, and challenged is all local in the lives of individual people, in specific places.
Engagement and sustainable change, maybe by its nature as local, incremental, and built on relationship, is small. The specific actions, typically they’re intimate moments — listening with full attention, providing a meal on mismatched plates, hosting a quirky street performance, helping someone learn something new — those are small actions but they make a huge impact. It’s cliche, but just one pebble really can send out a far traveling ripple. Each pebble is valuable in itself. And pile in pebble after pebble, invite others to add their pebbles, and you’ve filled the pond. Impressive and inspiring for sure, but it doesn’t weaken the value and contribution of any one pebble.
I’ve had people off-handedly dismiss my work. I can see why on the surface they might be unimpressed. It’s very easy to poo-poo it as wasted time — another season of filling potholes, another community meeting, another round of needing to get “creative” when the fundraising comes up with just half the cash needed.
I can get bored and restless myself with the mundane nature of working local, but I’m more tired of those who might minimize the work I/we do. It does have its limits — it’s small in scope, small in scale, small in resources — but those aspects are precious.
All these details of day-to-day life count. Maybe, in the end, they’re all that counts.
I’m uneasy when some people are able to co-opt grassroots work and repackage it for profit. It can be done with thoughtfulness and can provide a positive impact to the mission, and when that happens, grassroots, mission-driven folks like me can feel uneasy calling it out. Despite the good ends, there’s something that doesn’t smell right. For example, American Express with their “Small Business Saturday.” It’s good they’re jumping on the bandwagon and amplifying the movement, encouraging everyone to patronize local, independent businesses, but I think about the support needed for those who built and maintain the bandwagon, the one now getting plastered with their AmEx logo.
And there’s those who tell the story of what’s happening on the local level, gaining a power by being able to name our work. The latest I’m hearing more about are urban planners and developers packaging the incremental approach to neighborhood change as “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper.” It’s great that the small scale, practical solutions of cash-strapped community groups and entrepreneurs are being recognized as legitimate solutions, but I fear many could confuse naming with inventing, and are likely to bestow a level of expertise and authority (as well as disproportional financial support) on those who created the name when cheap, fast and nimble is just how its done down here in the trenches.
Some of this is just the way it seems to always go, as the people at the end of the line, those actually doing the work, are compensated the least. Today’s example: while the total cost for the wayfinding program in the Boston waterfront is $1M, (wayfinding is typically just a fancy way of saying signage) the line in the 2012 budget for the artist who will work on the signs is a shocking stipend of just $500.
I see a parallel with what’s happening among our legislators, as national office is, increasingly, not an end in itself, but a pathway to the big bucks of lobbying, no-show consulting, high-priced speaking gigs and lucrative media contracts. Just as the career path for political leaders seems to be dangerously warped, I ponder what’s happening to the career path of non-profit leaders like me?
I don’t think I’m completely pollyanna to think that those in the public sector and in the non-profit sector are both mission-driven folk at heart. (There’s more direct ways to make a buck, for sure, than public office. And those of us in community service, many of us have an uneasy relationship with money and our own personal compensation.) From this mission-focused place, what must we do when we seek to live in stronger financial security, to have a level of professional recognition, to gain respect from our peers and to work with sufficient resources to feel effective. What’s our path? It’s too trite to say “sell out.” There is a need though, if we seek our society’s measures of success, to discontinue our actual work and to find something related — talking about it, consulting on it, connecting people to it — but not actually doing hands-on, community serving, community building work.
Community focused, place based, grassroots, local work — it does have significant limits. Working local is small in scope, small in scale, small in resources, and those aspects are precious — as soon as you try to change the scope and scale and resources, the work begins to lose its authority, its authenticity, its integrity.
Is there a way to change this? Can those who seek to remain in local, mission-driven work — even as they seek to make their communities more sustainable — can they be in themselves more sustainable too? What paths do you see?
Working in the community, particularly in a community like Somerville, I’m so grateful to be able to experience those quirky, intimate things that people do to express themselves.
Like the mini-gardens punctuated with what some call “Our Lady on the Half-Shell,” statues of the Madonna set inside an upturned bathtub.
Or the artist who turns discarded lobster claws into these wacky painted creatures.
Or the family on Central Street that creates animated decorations for nearly every holiday out of plywood and old windshield wiper motors.
The sweetest part of community life for me is when people do these things to delight themselves and others, with no other intention that to be joyful. I love encountered such heart and kindness — expressions made so playfully, generously.
Photo by Emily Arkin. http://www.flickr.com/photos/earkin/912584462/sizes/m/in/photostream/
The Boston Globe on a recent Sunday published an piece in their “Ideas” section about how Boston’s top academics don’t focus their talents on the needs of the city. The article asserts that despite a wealth of institutions, talented professors and high energy of students, there isn’t a corresponding wealth of research on the community. It seems that by Boston academic institutions the city hasn’t been considered a worthwhile subject of study.
Now this certainly isn’t a universal truth. Northeastern and Tufts University stand out in my mind as two institutions leading research-based projects valuable to my work. Northeastern’s Dukakis Center did a valuable analysis looking at industrial bases and the changing face of manufacturing in the area. Tufts has again and again proved itself a partner with the Somerville community. The extension of Greenline transit in Somerville is thanks in part to the environmental analysis of Tufts researchers. The fight against childhood obesity in Somerville had Tufts as an active partner and the university’s detailed research documented the effectiveness of the program and provided ongoing evaluation. Had it not been for those Tufts researchers, it’s unlikely Mayor Joe would have stood alongside First Lady Obama to share the story of Shape Up Somerville. Other projects were more modest but still brought much appreciated impact. I’m thinking here of efforts like the year long exhibit at the Somerville Museum called Lost Theatres of Somerville, curated by David Guss. It was a visual and oral history of neighborhood picture palaces and their role as community institutions with lots of photos and artifacts, oral histories, film screenings and movie stars. I’ve appreciated the outreach of Boston University and Babson with training and assistance programs for social entrepreneurs and small business development. And I’ve got a sweet spot for what I consider a classic text looking at the negative aspects of urban planning, Herbert Gans’ work Urban Villagers. This sociologist told the tragic story of 1950s urban renewal that led to the destruction of his own neighborhood, Boston’s old West End, and how such a thing might be avoided in the future.
But what about the big universities? Where’s the power house of Harvard, for example, just a twenty minute walk down the road? They’re not seen in my neighborhood.
As the title of Boston Globe article itself explains, top academics are not here working in Somerville, or even in mighty Boston. To be considered top of your field, a local focus is not the path, at least not unless you’re already in one of the hot spots deemed worthy of study. Cities of New York, Los Angeles, and post Katrina New Orleans are all deemed worthwhile, while for Boston academics opening your eyes to your own backyard is not.
The paradigm, not at all surprisingly, is that you’ll never get anywhere professionally if you don’t go big and sexy. It is compelling to seek out the “Other,” a source of the exotic and the cool. And I suspect while it’s not quite an issue of familiarity breeding contempt, it is a case of people not appreciating the wealth right under their own noses. You’ll likely not gather a crowd at the department cocktail party to brag about your sabbatical spent talking to immigrant gardeners over in East Somerville, when you might otherwise have studied the redevelopment around lower Manhattan or spent some time with Brad and Angelina atop a broken levee in New Orleans. You won’t get the chic friends or tenure at that rate!
But what’s happening right here under each of our noses I say is just as valuable, and not just in some fringe, do-gooder way. Dig deeper, look closer. Maybe you’ll see how the growing creative class in Somerville’s Union Square parallels the changes taking place in cities across the US, or maybe you’ll discover we’re doing something totally unique that the world would do well to notice. Maybe you’ll reveal the patterns of asthma affecting low income communities that they can use to save the health of their children.
We’re slowly moving away from a hierarchical model of researcher and the researched. The communities under study are playing a more active role. We’re no longer passive subjects for those who wish to survey and interview, measure and analyze, collecting their data and keeping the insights to themselves. We’re defining our questions and asking for the resources to answer them. The folks in the grassroots are learning the power in those charts and numbers and are increasingly seeking those resources to make their case. The academics ignoring the projects near to home — aren’t they ignoring a powerful opportunity to conduct research in a valuable, relationship-intensive way.
Could it be that academia is still holding fast to its ivory tower when it advances those who focus their work in projects that limit relationship building?
I think of it sort of like photography. A quality photograph captures attention and tells a compelling story. When we see a portrait of ourselves, we’re given a fresh insight in who we are and how others experience us from the outside. Sitting for a picture, standing before the lens can be an empowering experience, a source of affirmation as worthy of the gaze. Sure, the big sexy cities deserve study, just as celebrity movie stars are going to be examined every which way. But its a big world out there, and if you’re a photographer only seeking out Kim Kardasian, Johnny Depp, or even Patti Smith, your work is just part of a herd, with the subject cities like posing red carpet stars when the really telling, interesting stuff is happening backstage.
Working local won’t provide the short-cut you’ll get by going the well trod path of the sexy and the familiar (everyone loves New York), and for sure you’ll need to work harder to get support. Your partners likely won’t be as experienced as you and you’ll have access to fewer resources to access.
But you’ll be building a multi-layered relationship. The kids you’re weighing for the child obesity study might be your own child’t classmates. The public transit enabled by your air analysis may one day take you from your apartment to your classroom. The acres of industrial spaces you disdain on the edge of town you’ll come to treasure as a source of livable wage jobs and part of a vibrant economy. Your life’s work will fuel not just a professional career but a full life.
For the past seven years I’ve been working to advance Union Square — to enliven the streets with people, to beautify the public spaces, to increase the viability of the businesses. I, and a lot of other Somervillians, have been investing time and money and energy to transform the dirty, neglected neighborhood back into a bustling business district.
Change is happening. I celebrated when the auto glass shop moved out of the former movie theatre to make way for the housewares boutique called Grand. When the long vacant bank building on Bow Street nearly became a check cashing office, the little green space beside the building proposed as a parking lot, I blanched and did all I could to change the course. Today there’s a bustling cafe, yoga studio and patio there, a blooming tree encircled by a lovely bench where folks sip their coffee, read the paper and chat with friends. Over towards Boynton Yards and Inman Square, I remember the apartment I had back in the late 80s. The ramshackle 3-family was a run down mess, kept together by a sad combination of duct tape, caulk and misplaced nails. I used to joke about it but it was completely true that we didn’t even have paneling — we had poorly installed wallpaper to look like paneling. The house overlooked several used auto parts lots, and directly below our kitchen window I’d watch the neat grouping of windshields and fenders. Today, many of those lots and that old house are replaced by a complex of new condo buildings, the apartments just right for singles and young couples starting out.
This week was a community meeting to look at the proposed Green line station for Union Square that will be over under the Prospect Street bridge. The MBTA will need to conduct a “negotiated sale” with Prospect Iron and Steel that’s operating there. That big mound of scrap metal will need to go. Those trucks laden with the rattling black dumpsters won’t be barreling through the area anymore.
These changes are good. They’re all steps in bringing Union Square back to the life it held in its heyday in the first half of the twentieth century. We’re bringing back the mass transit that the Square grew around. We’re claiming public space for uses other than cars. Folks are again able to make a living from businesses that don’t pollute the neighborhood. Trash and vagrants and prostitutes no longer linger and instead the plaza’s benches attract a regular gathering of men from the Sikh temple, commuters waiting for the bus, parents with strollers, the farmers market bustles.
But let’s not make Union Square too nice. Some of these ramshackle buildings, these funky industrial spaces — these are an essential element that keeps the neighborhood alive. Just as Union Square grew up the transit and the retail businesses, it grew up around these industrial spaces too.
Take the long building right on the Elmer Bumpus Bridge on Washington Street. It’s accessible from Hawkins and behind from Olive Square, an impossible to sort out jumble of levels. That creaky old factory building might not look it, but it’s served as home for dozens of small businesses. Some of the businesses the city is becoming known for like Metro Pedal Power and the designers of Fringe. Or down on Somerville Ave. Often called the Paper and Provisions warehouse, this old brick building was part of the old American Tube Works complex of factories. Tucked behind the cemetery and Market Basket on Somerville Ave and hidden behind those dirty windows are artist studios, practice spaces for circus oriented street performers, and rooms where dozens of bands rehearse. For lots of twenty-somethings, this is where they connect early on with the area’s arts scene. Or 321 Washington Street, down that alley beside the railroad tracks. Not so ramshackle but still bare bones, artists have divided the space into a gallery and studios. Closer to the center of the square, right on Webster, the former convent school is home to the Community Builders Coop. It’s not been maintained in a way that the former life is apparent from the outside, but here too you’ll find an assortment from intriguing endeavors, where furniture makers, book binders, canoe builders, and house renovators have set up shop.
We’ve got a wealth of these spaces. Consider how Artisan’s Asylum was able to launch in Boynton Yards, quickly move into larger digs over a garage on Joy Street and then dream big with a move to the Ames complex over on Dane, all within a year or so, because of the wealth of flexible, accessible, industrial spaces.
For these, the low rents keep the bar to entry accessible. The lack of amenities reinforces the DIY ethos necessary for the tenants’ creative and entrepreneurial enterprises. The communal nature of the spaces builds social connections and Somerville’s social capital. There’s a lack of formality — it’s all a matter of talking to a guy who’ll hook you up. It’s business done on a handshake, decisions make with a gut instinct or a whim. It’s where ideas bubble, connections are made, experiments are conducted.
Every house should have a space where you can tinker — that grubby spot where you can fix stuff and can store that thing you know is gonna come handy someday. Every theater needs a backstage, where the messy, creative stuff is contained before the magic of the show goes on. To function, ecosystems need to accommodate all the functions of life, even the less pretty ones.
Every neighborhood has a character. When describing Union Square the words I hear most are eclectic, funky, off beat, quirky and gritty. We can and should and are making Union Square better. Change is good and keeps the community alive. But as we change, let’s remember to keep Union Square gritty.
Fred Lund at the Prospect Hill flag raising. Photo from the Somerville Journal.
Fred Lund passed away last month. He was 90 years old, and had remained active almost to the very end. He retired only two years ago, leaving his perch on the top floor of City Hall, where for 55 years he drafted municipal maps, each one impishly he marked with a dot for his house, his driveway labeled “Lundfred Drive.” Back when I worked at SCAT, I remember admiring a citation the organization had received from the City. It was an illustration of the Powderhouse in West Somerville with careful calligraphy, the black ink brightened by colored pencil. Fred was responsible for all these awards, along with the design of the city seal.
When I think of Fred, I remember him at the New Year’s Day celebration, dressed in colonial garb, to commemorate each year the flying of the first American flag on Prospect Hill. He’s in my memory ever-present there with his friend Isobel Cheney, local historian and former teacher, and with Al Rubio, silver-haired champion for seniors and the democratic process.
At each flag raising there’s a roll of generational Somerville waves, people I’ve come to know these past twenty years. Always there’s Evelyn and Tom Battinelli from the Somerville Museum, passing out the donuts, hot cider, tricorn hats and mini flags. There’s Kristi Chase and Brandon Wilson of the City’s Historic Preservation office, organizing the costumed parade with fife and drum from City Hall. There’s former police chief Bob Bradley on horseback, playing the role of George Washington, each year giving the command to hoist the flag. Set apart there’s the uniformed guard for the rifle salute. Neighbors greet and quietly chat. The kids wander about, generally staying close to their parents in the crowd, patiently kicking the slushy snow beneath their feet. On the platform festooned with bunting the politicians manage, somehow, to look not as cold as the rest of us.
The program has changed little over the years, although there are signs of a tighter rein on the length of presentations. There’s been chilly mornings with patriotic songs led in too high a key and with too much flourish for anyone to sing along, but that’s improved. There’s been rambling history lessons from the podium, presentations that might have been more engaging without the biting cold and sleet. Other years, we’ve been greeted by bright blue skies and temperatures on a pleasant side of winter’s bracing. Typically the flag raising itself offers a little drama — will the pulley catch, will the giant flag clear the edge of the monument, will the wind stay steady? It’s always welcome when the monument is opened to enter the monument itself and to climb the stairs. We stand at the very top, appreciating for a few minutes the broad view, parents pointing out to their kids the towns and landmarks way out on the horizon, all lingering as long as they can stand the shivering wind before making way for the next group of sightseers.
It’s all good, no matter what happens at the flag raising. It’s got a sincerity that it’s impossible to mock. It’s patriotic, but without the boisterous feel-good energy of Fourth of July on the Esplanade. There are no notable musical performances, no fireworks. For all the beauty and history we appreciate on Prospect, it lacks the recognition of Bunker Hill. It’s a decidedly local event — national TV is never going to cover the gathering.
The Prospect Hill flag raising has small but deep ambitions.
We show up each year in every kind of weather, with a modest act and the greatest of intentions. We connect this day to the more than two centuries of people who called his hill home — those of the revolutionary war encampment dreaming of a new country to the generations of people who made their home in our ever changing City. I suppose in modern day we’re most like those early colonialists — a motley group showing up in the cold, our supplies home-spun, circling ’round a flag.
Things that are real and true and sincere are never glamorous. The physical activity at the center is often simple — coffee in a styrofoam cup, voices in song, listening to a story, muffled claps from mittened hands and a cheer of “huzzah!” There’s beauty in the repetition — the changes each year deepening the experience, marking our place in the time of our own lives, in our community. This tradition was kept alive through tough years in Somerville by people like Fred and Isobel. Their steadfastness has been taken up by those just behind them. And now I see fresh generations coming up in this community, their familiar faces rosy January 1 on Prospect Hill. Through time we connect through this place. Together we weave an ever present community of past, present, future.
She writes: “In the early years, foundations and corporations came, saw, and wrote a check. Some were even grateful to be our ‘partner’…. Now we’re being asked to pimp for Pepsi, do market research for Google, and in general compete with our sister organizations for that ever-smaller piece of the pie….Are we being duped into doing sophisticated PR, marketing and market research for some of the wealthiest multi-nationals on earth?”
Short answer, Lyn, as you well know my sister, is yes.
I remember myself when I felt the shift begin. It was the late 90s and I was on the board of a tiny community computing center. I don’t remember the donor now but I recall it was a corporate entity that would have meant nothing to our clientele who were mostly elementary school kids and low income immigrants learning English skills. The donor, in exchange for their contribution, required that we change the screen savers to show their corporate logo, oh so gracefully sliding in and out at each work station. The donor explained that they didn’t have money for community good but there was funding from their marketing department. Those were unsophisticated times.
I remember the “old days” when major corporations in the greater Boston area had foundations within their company that funded local community groups. I remember with particular fondness the Boston Globe Foundation and Polaroid for the thoughtfulness they brought to their work and the relationships they built in the community.
And the retail community that could be called upon for in-kind donations, that’s changed too. The Home Depot killed the once landmark Somerville Lumber. The Target store sits beside our downtown district in a island of parking lot, a major retail draw disconnected from the rest of the commercial core and our business community. The approach by these national corporations and independently owned businesses is a lesson in contrast. I spent hours obtaining and completing required paperwork and waiting, as requested, for the manager at the local Home Depot to respond to my request for supplies for our neighborhood clean up. In the end, he issued me a gift certificate for $50 and showed me quickly to the door. Meanwhile, Tags, the family owned hardware store across town, with just a 3 minute phone call, sent staff to greet me in front of their store and filled my car with brooms, rakes, shovels, gloves and bags, fully equipping my whole team of volunteers.
In this big, global world, is a career singularly focused on a single, small community a failure?
I’m a graduate of Wellesley College and a recent alumnae magazine cover story addressed the feeling among graduates of not “measuring up.” When comparing ourselves to famous fellow Wellesley women – Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, Diane Sawyer, Nora Ephron – most found themselves lacking. Beyond these household names, there are plenty of others in lofty circles that we could at once admire and set ourselves above below, from 2003 graduate Katie Johnson, personal secretary to President Obama, to Pamela Melroy, class of ’83, Space Shuttle pilot and commander. These women wrote their names large on the world, with impressive, ground breaking careers international in scope.
The magazine article was based upon exchanges on the alumnae message boards. Some of the nuance and thoughtfulness to the individual reflections from those messages show through, despite the gloss and ham handedness in the final article. The word “failure” repeats over and over in the published piece when describing the difference between the idealized image Wellesley women typically hold for themselves as students and young graduates — an image likely also held for us by our professors and families who had invested care, time and money in our education — and the place where we stand today, after the complexities and compromises of life have revealed the most likely trajectory of a complete life. The overall impression I got from the article was not one of encouragement, not one of enlightening perspective, but one that reinforced the same paradigm that no, indeed, I do not measure up and measuring up is important. As this article implied it, there’s quite certainly an external ruler, in each sense of word, evaluating “success.”
In the article, graduates spoke about stepping off the career ladder to care for ailing family members and to raise children. Others spoke of dreams dashed by addiction and by the overwhelming challenge of personal illness. Goals were unmet. Apparently, so it seems, all are failures now — the career summit will never be theirs. It’s a matter now of coming to terms with one’s inadequacies.
Bah!
If the measure of success is financial security, political power, reaching the peak of one’s profession, then I suppose they and I do not measure up. But I’m unwilling to deem these women or myself as having failed.
In my work, I’ve long followed the advice of Marsha Sinetar, author of Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow. As much as I could, I’ve stepped clear of the fear of not having enough money and simply pursued the work I felt was mine to do. I’ve never been in want despite periods when I was marginally employed. At times, there was an almost a miraculous response, my bank account like a magical cabinet — it was supposed to be empty yet, somehow, each time I needed it, it held just enough. My cardinal rule for work has long been that I won’t do for pay what I won’t do for free — meaning that my work needs to have purpose, to be something I care and believe in. It’s not about glamour – I’ll volunteer to scrub toilets, toil over data entry, make any sacrifice and engage in any task if it serves a mission of care and community service.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas when she was a Wellesley College senior
I’m now at a period in my life when financial security is more of a concern. I worry about retirement and a time when I might not be able to work full time and have little in savings. I wonder if I’ve done a disservice to myself and my community by not having achieved more. I wonder if I was wrong when I didn’t demand a higher salary, wasn’t thoughtful in planning my career, to have prioritized personal goals over community mission. I’d hoped the Wellesley magazine article might have given me some food for thought.
But the article, sadly, didn’t give me comfort or helpful challenge. In a kind of protest, I went angrily looking at which women Wellesley lists among its “notable alumnae,” ready to compile evidence for my hypothesis that notable is always grandiose. But then I came upon fellow Wellesley grad Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
I always seem to find my greatest inspiration among older women — the septuagenarians, the octogenarians – those women of sassy life and light who seem to burn brighter as they age, when the cover of life’s demands eventually fall away. I gratefully found one of these older role models today in reading about Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
Like me, Marjory’s life centered around a place — her Somerville was the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami and the area just beyond, Florida’s Everglades. She lived to be 108 and it’s a good thing because Marjory’s key work saving the Everglades didn’t even start until she was 57 and it wasn’t until her seventies that she really hit her stride.
Born in 1890, Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s childhood was a turmultous one filled with divorce, illness and financial ruin. After graduating from Wellesley, she made the mistake of marrying someone who turned out to be a con man. To escape, she reunited with her long lost father and went to work for him at his newspaper, the Miami Herald. Miami was then what Marjory called “little more than a glorified railway terminal.” She seems to have been a less than stellar reporter, not keeping up with what news there was and, when the subject matter bored her, she would make up stories. Through her newspaper columns she had an audience though and used it to speak out on political issues including suffrage and poverty. Her local activism met with some notable success. After learning that the racially segregated areas of Coconut Grove were without working sewers or running water, she championed a law that required all homes be equipped with working toilets and she established an interest-free loan program for black residents to pay for plumbing work. Moving away from reporting and opinion pieces, she went into short story writing, working freelance for many years with work published in well recognized venues including the Saturday Evening Post.
Marjory remained unmarried after that early failed marriage to the con man. While she did have some close male relationships through her life, she remained single and reportedly celibate, focusing her energies on her work instead. She had no children.
It was at 57 that she found her life’s passion. That year saw the publication of her book, The Everglades: River of Grass, about the unique importance of the waterways surrounding Miami and Coconut Grove. She’d had no particular interest in the subject before and had sort of fallen into the assignment. She only discovered a deep interest in the environmental impacts when she’d burrowed into the research. She learned how the Everglades provide important natural protection for the city, about the plants and animals and whole unique ecosystem present there. Her book drew intense public attention to what had been considered up to that moment only worthless swamp. The new awareness led to a near immediate halt to the draining and redevelopment of the area — within a year of publication President Truman designated 2 million acres as the Everglades National Park. Still in publication today, The Everglades: River of Grass has been compared to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring for its role in inspiring environmental protection among citizens and government.
In a way of thinking that speaks of its time, Marjory thought of her environmental work as a kind of housekeeping. While it was political and activist work, calling on her to be outspoken and very much engaged in the world, arenas that might have been considered those singularly for men, she framed her environmental advocacy as women’s work. Caring for the Everglades was like doing a neighborhood clean up and a neighborhood clean up was like tidying about one’s own house.
Marjory received a lot of honors later in her life, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton. She reportedly didn’t care much about accolades unless they were tied to real change. When the The Florida Department of Natural Resources put her name on a building, she told a friend that she would rather have seen the Everglades restored than her name on a building.
In Marjory, I’m not interested in the fancy honors either. I find in her a role of model of someone who centered her life squarely on her community of Coconut Grove and created positive change in her community. She remained focused on that place she loved and sought to be a steward for it beyond her own time to the generations of Coconut Grove after her. In her work, she dug in so deep and micro that it exploded out big and complex on the other side, inspiring work far bigger than herself, bigger than her community.
There’s a fair amount of her street photographs visible n-line but I want to see them in person, up close, without the coldness of the digital computer screen. Websites detail her biography as a nanny, living her adulthood mostly in Chicago. An eccentric, opinionated, and intensely private woman, she treasured her day off when she’d head off into the city, exploring and capturing what she’d discover: life on the street, random people, capturing working class life, mostly those on the edge and unseen — woman and children, vagrants, immigrants, workers. Later, she’s drawn away from people and focuses on the abstractions of buildings, graffiti, litter.
There’s a large number of self portraits among Vivian’s work, where I can see her trying to uncover herself, to probe her own being. The woman in the utilitarian outfit, the dowdy hat, the plain hair cut, invisible I imagine to near everyone around her. As these photographs struggle to reveal the woman behind the camera — caught in shadow, in the random mirror of a shop, in layers of reflections in a sidewalk window — it seems to me that Vivian remained unknown even to herself.
This past weekend I had an exchange with someone from the neighborhood. In the past couple years she’s been particularly active in community organizations, but now that her daughter is growing up she’s ready to move back into paid work. She’s struggling, floundering in her job search, her investment in community service not recognized or appreciated in the professional sphere. Then, yesterday, with a friend over lunch, her frustration was like a mirror for me. She spoke of how she’s not able to see a way to next level in her career, weary of the struggle for resources, worried that her love of the underdog and skill in making something out of nothing might mean she’ll remain in marginal projects. She’s thinking that her passions and experience are serving to bind her, that she’ll remain confined professionally in similar positions, unable to grow and do the other work she’s capable of doing.
I see a parallel with what’s happening among our legislators, as national office is, increasingly, not an end in itself, but a pathway to the big bucks of lobbying, no-show consulting, high-priced speaking gigs and lucrative media contracts. Just as the career path for political leaders seems to be dangerously warped, I ponder what’s happening to the career path of non-profit leaders like me?
Born in 1890, Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s childhood was a turmultous one filled with divorce, illness and financial ruin. After graduating from Wellesley, she made the mistake of marrying someone who turned out to be a con man. To escape, she reunited with her long lost father and went to work for him at his newspaper, the Miami Herald. Miami was then what Marjory called “little more than a glorified railway terminal.” She seems to have been a less than stellar reporter, not keeping up with what news there was and, when the subject matter bored her, she would make up stories. Through her newspaper columns she had an audience though and used it to speak out on political issues including suffrage and poverty. Her local activism met with some notable success. After learning that the racially segregated areas of Coconut Grove were without working sewers or running water, she championed a law that required all homes be equipped with working toilets and she established an interest-free loan program for black residents to pay for plumbing work. Moving away from reporting and opinion pieces, she went into short story writing, working freelance for many years with work published in well recognized venues including the Saturday Evening Post.