The freighter Green Honduras (a reefer out of Nassau, Bahamas, 420 ft. length overall, gross tonnage 7,743) is in port right now. Looks like they’re unloading fruit, perhaps citrus from Africa. I spent some time this afternoon just standing there watching them unload the cargo, and I made this video to justify wasting all that time spent doing nothing. (2:16)
Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.
My partner, Carol, found a video online showing a lunch-time protest staged by local unions two months ago outside City Hall here in New Bedford. The city wants to tear down the Cliftex building, a historic mill building on the waterfront. Local unions want the mill building renovated for housing and buisnesses — the renovation will provide union jobs, whereas if the building gets torn down we’ll be lucky to get a parking lot, or a big-box retail store providing minimum wages jobs.
In any case, I went and stood with the union people, and I was impressed with the quietly effective way they made the protest happen. No chanting, no screaming. They talked to passers-by, they distributed flyers to passing motorists, they button-holed people coming and going from City Hall, they were politely articulate about why the city should save the building.
During that lunch hour, they reached a lot of people. They did it without the street theatre that usually characterizes demonstrations done by leftists since the 1960’s. They did it without polarizing opposition, as most leftists today seem to do. The emphasis was on making face-to-face connections with as many people as possible.
Link, if you want to watch the video.
Another video postcard — this time “Autumnal Tints in New England.” It’s shamelessly pastoral, with however the realistic inclusion of passing SUVs and airplane noise overhead. All video shot in and around Concord, Massachusetts, in Minuteman National Historical Park and Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. (1:05)
Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.
The Board meeting at church went late (they always do, don’t they?), and I just had to go to the supermarket afterwards. So it was ten o’clock when I finally pulled up in front of our apartment. A middle-aged couple was out walking their dog, looking in the windows of the art gallery that’s on the first floor of our building. That is unusual. You see, when we first moved in, we quickly learned that our neighborhood was quite safe at any time of day or night. But we never saw people out walking dogs at night, we never saw joggers, and the only people we saw out walking late at night were homeless people and people wandering up from the waterfront looking for a bar. Aside from that, after six o’clock the streets were pretty much empty.
The neighborhood has changed over the past two years. Fancy new apartments got built, luxury condos got built, a few new stores opened up. One morning a year ago, we saw the first jogger running along our block, although he was probably just lost because we never saw another one. But about six months ago, we did start seeing a few dog-walkers after dark. A couple of weeks ago, a new police station opened three blocks away, and it seems as if we’re seeing even more people walking around after dark. Smells like gentrification to me.
I was out in Naperville, Illinois, for three days last week, co-leading a workshop of worship for religious educators. Most of the dozen people in the workshop were from the Midwest. I was reminded of a few regional differences between Midwestern religious liberals, and New England religious liberals.
As much as I like our little church in New Bedford, and as much as I love New England and New England Unitarian Universalists, I did have a moment of nostalgia at this workshop, thinking about the year I spent serving in a Midwestern Unitarian Universalist church. New England Unitarian Universalists do have this tendency to make excuses about why New England Unitarian Universalist churches aren’t growing; we could learn from the Midwesterners who are just rolling up their sleeves and making growth happen.
I’m out in Chicago leading a workshop. While I’m there, I’d thought I’d treat you to some interesting Unitarian history.
The following comes from an unsigned manuscript in the First Unitarian church archives. This manuscript, titled “How our church began,” gives the history of North Unitarian Church, which merged into First Unitarian in 1971. It should be obvious that when the author refers to a “Bohemian man,” she means someone who literally came from Bohemia, a part of Europe now part of Germany and the Czech Republic. Thus, the “Bohemian man” is a recent immigrant to the United States.
In the year 1889 Mr. Paul Revere Frothingham came to New Bedford as assistant minister to Mr. Potter who was the minister of the Unitarian Church on Union and Eighth St. He had a very pleasing personality and was liked very much by young and old alike.
In the year 1892 Mr. Potter tendered his resignation and Mr. Frothingham then became minister of the church.
It wasn’t long after Mr. Frothingham became minister that he began looking around to see what he would do to improve the community. With Mrs. Frothingham they started a club for girls, called ‘Girls Social Union’ they met in the chapel of the Unitarian Church. There were classes in sewing, millnery, & cooking, besides having fun playing all sorts of games. This was given free of charge to any girl who was interested in becoming a member.
In 1894 it was decided to hire rooms in the North end of the city 1651 Purchase St. where the girls could meet and they would be nearer their homes as they all lived in the north end of the city. It was in the same rooms Mr. Frothingham established a free kindergarten and secured a trained teacher for the children. Later this kindergarten was taken over by the city and called the ‘North End Day Nursery.’
The beginning of this movement is quite interesting, for at that time a Bohemian man living in the north end, having read of the day nursery and of a sermon by Mr. Frothingham translated was deeply impressed, and said this is what I believe, and would like my children to go to the Sunday school where Mr. Frothingham is the minister. The children went to Sunday school, soon other children joined, and this was the beginning of our [church]. Don’t know the exact year but think it might [be] 1896 or 1897.
In other words, back in the early 20th C., at least one Unitarian church was willing to promote outreach to recent immigrants.
Carol has been working down on Fish Island recently, borrowing some office space in an unused building there. She has gotten to know a seaman living on a boat moored nearby. He’s a captain of a small merchant ship, living aboard the boat and waiting for his business partner to straighten out some financial affairs in another country. But it now appears that, due to various delays overseas, and due to possible skulduggery in New Bedford, that the Captain may get kicked off his boat and temporarily stranded here.
In case he has to get off the boat fast, Carol told him about the Mariner’s Home, two blocks up the street from where we live. A big old clapboard building right next to the famous Seamen’s Bethel, the Mariner’s Home looks like just another tourist attraction from the outside, but it is still maintained by the New Bedford Port Society to provide overnight lodging for stranded mariners. A mariner who is far from home can be pretty vulnerable. Good thing the Port Society still provides this service.
Dear Jean, This afternoon the fog rolled in. Everything is damp and the salt won’t pour. Love, Dan.
(60 sec.)
Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.
In this part of the world, this is the best time of year for food.
At the downtown farmer’s market on Thursday, the produce was incredible, and cheap. From Mary, I bought the usual dozen eggs and two loaves of her oatmeal bread, a few pounds of her freshly dug red potatoes, some other vegetables — and she had the first Westport Macomber turnips of the year: huge white mild turnips, originally a cross between radishes and more traditional turnips, which you can eat raw or cooked, a local vegetable that you can’t find outside of southeastern Massachusetts. This turnip is one of the finest fall vegetables and its arrival should be heralded with a trumpet fanfare: a fanfare for the uncommon turnip. From the fruit grower, I got several pounds of Cortland apples; I used to be a big fan of Winesaps and Northern Spies, but his firm white-fleshed Cortlands have a superb texture and make just about the smoothest and best apple sauce: substantial, not at all watery, and nicely flavored. From the Mattapoisett farmers, I got carrots and cantaloupe (they’re still picking cataloupes) and cauliflower and, best of all, cranberries — real cranberries, with little bits of twigs and tiny leaves from the cranberry plant, in all shades of red from deepest crimson to pale green faintly tinged with red: just as small blueberries taste better than the huge agribusiness blueberries you find wrapped in plastic in the supermarket, so real cranberries are more flavorful, both more tart and sweeter at the same time. The next day, we drove out to Alderbrook Farm in Russell’s Mills and bought some local honey, and I made a huge pot of apple cranberry sauce, made from the Cortland apples and the Mattapoisett cranberries and the local honey — it turned a warm reddish-pink color — and I spread it on the oatmeal bread, and ate until I’d eaten too much.
On Friday, Carol called me on my cell phone and said, would I like to go to dinner at the farmer’s house? Carol worked for a couple of days pulling weeds at a nearby organic farm this week; she needed to get out of the house and away from the computer and the freelance writing, besides the fact that a little extra money is always welcome in our household. So we went for dinner at the farmer’s house, with another couple we know slightly. Before dinner, we walked around the farm; it is in its glory in this season. The summer squash spill out over the edges of the raised beds, covered with flowers and half-grown squash; the celery stands large and robust; the fall beets have grown tall leaves, rooted in deep red balls shouldering their way up out of the dirt; the salad greens show bright colors against the dark earth, light green and dark green and deep red. And the herbs were just as beautiful as the salad greens — curly parsley and Italian parsley, rosemary (Carol had weeded the rosemary bed that morning), different kinds of sage, chives, and other herbs I couldn’t recognize. After we met young Murphy, an Irish Jack Russell terrier who is being trained to catch the voles which plague the farm, and Murphy’s owner who was plowing up one bed of the farm with a tractor-mounted rototiller, we went in for dinner. Dinner included New Bedford scallops sauteed in fresh leeks and herbs, boiled potatoes newly dug, sweet and tender, and some kind of wild mushroom I had never eaten before.
So what if today is the autumnal equinox? So what if the nighttime will be longer than the daylight for the next six months? So what if winter is coming in? This is the best time of year for food, the best time of the year to be alive.