I've been pondering issues raised by Joseph A. Garland's address a few weeks ago to those assembled for the inaugural of Gloucester's first female mayor, Carolyn Kirk.
What he served up, cold turkey, is what faces the mayors, council members, selectmen and selectwomen from the North Shore to North Adams - how to deal with local needs in a complexity of considerations that did not exist a half century ago.
But he didn't lay the burden on them alone, and he did it in plain English.
The short of it is that most of our cities and towns are close to running on empty, their infrastructures are showing wear and tear, and passing the local taxation hat to solve problems is one thing, but divisiveness can be corrosive.
Mayor Kirk didn't need anyone to make her case, but her inaugural offered up one of the best case makers Gloucester has - Joe Garland, who probably knows more about Gloucester's roots, trunks and branches than anyone, and he flung a gauntlet with his address.
I've known Joe Garland for half a century, and not just from his histories that grace my shelves. We met at the Gloucester Times not long after Phil Weld bought it and the Newburyport Daily News. We shared much then, and still do. I was asked to introduce him to those gathered in his honor at the Gloucester Historical Museum several days following his address at the inaugural. I jumped at the chance, but what to say following so close upon issues he had raised at that time, and how to keep that brief?
I decided to use a couple of paragraphs from his inaugural introduction to make a point. What we need more of is plain talk, about what's gone wrong with our ability to take some bootstrap action to relieve our communities from ills too many face. Well, Joe Garland gave that, in spades, to those assembled.
The straight of it was that those trying to live in the past have to face what is. Change is everywhere about, and it has come later to some communities than others. It is here on the North Shore, and it has to be met with constructively. Those newly come did so because they were attracted to it for what it once was, but also for what it is as an opportunity either to enjoy or exploit. Exploitation at the cost of what's been so long enjoyed is what's feared. Understanding the difference between supporting change that nourishes and destructive opportunism requires more than knee-jerk rejection out of fear for any change.
What he served up, cold turkey, is what faces the mayors, council members, selectmen and selectwomen from the North Shore to North Adams - how to deal with local needs in a complexity of considerations that did not exist a half century ago.
But he didn't lay the burden on them alone, and he did it in plain English.
The short of it is that most of our cities and towns are close to running on empty, their infrastructures are showing wear and tear, and passing the local taxation hat to solve problems is one thing, but divisiveness can be corrosive.
Mayor Kirk didn't need anyone to make her case, but her inaugural offered up one of the best case makers Gloucester has - Joe Garland, who probably knows more about Gloucester's roots, trunks and branches than anyone, and he flung a gauntlet with his address.
I've known Joe Garland for half a century, and not just from his histories that grace my shelves. We met at the Gloucester Times not long after Phil Weld bought it and the Newburyport Daily News. We shared much then, and still do. I was asked to introduce him to those gathered in his honor at the Gloucester Historical Museum several days following his address at the inaugural. I jumped at the chance, but what to say following so close upon issues he had raised at that time, and how to keep that brief?
I decided to use a couple of paragraphs from his inaugural introduction to make a point. What we need more of is plain talk, about what's gone wrong with our ability to take some bootstrap action to relieve our communities from ills too many face. Well, Joe Garland gave that, in spades, to those assembled.
The straight of it was that those trying to live in the past have to face what is. Change is everywhere about, and it has come later to some communities than others. It is here on the North Shore, and it has to be met with constructively. Those newly come did so because they were attracted to it for what it once was, but also for what it is as an opportunity either to enjoy or exploit. Exploitation at the cost of what's been so long enjoyed is what's feared. Understanding the difference between supporting change that nourishes and destructive opportunism requires more than knee-jerk rejection out of fear for any change.
That fear, in Newburyport, was met by sorting out what was possible and acceptable as an alternative to what would have been destructive to its heritage. Newburyporters talked their way through that, collectively, spiritedly, and to a most satisfactory condition.
The word there is condition, not conclusion, because communities are either living organisms or they become ancient history. If they weren't Newburyport would still be trying to build Clipper Ships, and Essex would still be building schooners for Gloucester's fishermen.
Joe Garland, deeply concerned for what he sees, said it this way:
"...if we're going to keep this jigsaw puzzle together we've got to put aside our protectiveness about our own particular pieces of it and act on behalf of the whole...that means...we've GOT to get it together right now as fresh new leadership takes over.
"Organize a citywide forum, study out the challenges we have in common as a wildly but uniquely complex community we're all crazily ultra-possessive about, and make our collective good sense, clarity, passion and devotion to our Gloucester heard in the councils of our self government. Yes, that's what it's all about, the self-confidence to self-govern."
Indeed it is, Joe. It always is.
