Artful Endeavors New England: November 2012

Like each of us, no city has just one personality.

Take Newburyport, Massachusetts, for instance. They've the sprawling wharf strung along Newburyport Harbor, the bustling post-Victorian downtwon business district, The Fire House Center for the Arts, The Newburyport Art Association, The Screening Room and the recently re-configured Fowle's Restaurant, a treasured local icon.

"Newburyport Lock-up"
Photo by Ross Bachelder, 2012

But have you looked beyond the usual tourist-feeding attributes of this proud, self-consciously trendy city with its street-by-street panorama of sea captain houses and rich nautical history -- beyond the quiet splendor of Maudslay State Park or the intellectual vigor of Plum Island's renowned Joppa Center? One must see the neglected nooks and crannies of a city to fully comprehend and appreciate its esthetic thumbprint.

"The Shadow"
Photo by Ross Bachelder

Think small. Think of long-neglected, out-of-the-way things -- things created not by MFA-driven artists or Chamber of Commerce drum-bangers but by the day-by-day, prosaic warp and woof of a society unselfconsciously maintaining and improving itself -- and you'll have discovered a new and exhilarating way of taking the fullblown pulse of a community -- a place that's always much more than what the slick, profit-hungry travel brochures say it is.

[Commentary in Progress... 11 27 12]

The Life We're Living: November 16, 2020, 2020

December 22, 2020

Dear Readers (of life-enriching books) and Sharers (of heartfelt, well-informed convictions):

We're only human.

Am I not right about this? I think I am right, though there will always be a small handful of people who, on the basis of their inhuman conduct probably don't deserve to be included in that esteemed number.

So! Given our shared humanity, there are certain yearnings that all of us have, even though we're not always able to satisfy or even articulate them.

We always want, for instance, the Holiday Season we're currently immersed in to be at least as fulfilling as, if not more than, the one we were immersed in the year before.

But I also think it's safe to say that this year's Holiday is going to go down in history as one of the most painful, heartbreaking, and challenging Holiday Seasons in recent memory.

As we near the end of the year 2020, we know, to our anguish, that we've lost more people through to the grossly incompetent mismanagement of the Pandemic than in all the world's wars since the year 1900.

We're all struggling, some valiantly, to get past the most amoral, ruthless, corrupt, and politically inept Administration in the history of this country.

Unemployment, underemployment, and homelessness are easily as bad as they were during the Great Depression, more than a century ago.

It has become painfully obvious that our beloved, vaunted Constitution lacks the power -- the critical apparatus -- to put an end to a Presidency -- and a President -- who finds a perverse kind of joy in violating laws and moral precepts, destroying careers, and rewarding gross incompetence and criminal conduct with grotesque perks and blatantly unwarranted pardons.

The unavoidable deficiencies in remote learning are causing anxiety, depression, and educational chaos in America's families, and in our public schools and universities.

Contempt for and distrust of science and higher learning is at an all-time high, and the current President of the United States is more responsible for it than anyone else on this troubled planet.

White Nationalism -- bigotry of every imaginable kind, driven by an amoral President and the rampant re-emergence of the Neo Nazis and other hate groups -- is spreading across the globe at breakneck speed, and with terrifying consequences.

Lawlessness has become fashionable, in traffic, in stores, in churches, in schools, in police departments, in courtrooms, and in America's very centers of government--those grand edifices in every state where laws are written for the protection of everyone who calls him- or herself an American.

Countless people across the country are either undernourished, hungry, or starving thanks to a collapsed economy, unemployment, and an alarming inability to buy food and put it on the table.

And it's not just the physical and economic wellbeing of America's citizens that are being crippled by the greed and indifference of the One Per Cent -- it's also their mental and emotional health. People are going begging for psychiatric help, and suicides among farmers, doctors, first responders -- and even children -- are occurring at an alarming rate.

I'm not going to make an ass of myself by suggesting for one minute that I have solutions to any of these problems. But I know one thing, deep within both my heart and my intellect: the answer is not in religion, flags, and jingoistic patriotism. Nor is it in violence, bigotry, and sanctimonious pronouncements.

All I feel qualified to offer my readers this evening is a modest, well-meant handful of reasonable, rational, practical, heartfelt recommendations:

1. Read worthwhile books -- a great many books -- but don't bother with books that lack substance and preach hatred, and learn to recognize the difference.

2. Question authority. Too many Jews, Immigrants, children, people with disabilities, and People of Color have stopped doing so over the centuries -- have caved into manipulation and discrimination, bigotry and brutality -- and they've paid for it with their dignity, their humanity, and their lives.

3. Be kind -- to your friends, to your relatives, to people anywhere who serve you in any capacity in the marketplace, to your neighbors, and to any people you come across at random in your daily affairs.

4. Be helpful. I've found, as I age, that the more helpful I am with people from every walk of life, in any manageable situation, the better I feel, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. (No, I am not a formally religious person -- not at all -- but I believe there's a spiritual component in all of us -- a proclivity to kindness, a drive to be good -- which, with or without religious influence, I'm more than happy to call spirituality.)

5. Have the courage of your convictions, but not if they're designed to insult, demean, or cause pain to the people around you.

6. Know the difference between constructive and destructive behavior, and teach that difference to your children.

And this, as I see it -- and for what it's worth -- is the life we're living as of December, 2020 -- soon to be Christmas Eve and with a New and Better Year close on its heels.

Thanks for reading this outpouring, and may you find as much joy as you possibly can in both the Holiday Season we're immersed in and the New Year that will soon be upon us.

Ross

12/22/20

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