Category Archives: New Bedford, Mass.

Historical re-enactment

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a Unitarian minister before he became famous for his writing and lecturing. When he was a minister, he preached for some months to the Unitarian congregation in New Bedford. So this morning, as a kind of historical re-enactment, I delivered one of the sermons he preached while he was here.

It turned out to be quite a bit of fun. The sermon still sounded fresh and powerful (although I admit I choked a little on the gender-specific pronouns), and it was moving to read it aloud. For the most part, I think the congregation enjoyed it, too.

If this is the kind of thing that interests you, and you want to know more, I’ve included some historical notes about the sermon below…. Continue reading →

Emerson speaks

This Sunday, I’ll be preaching one of the sermons that Ralph Waldo Emerson preached while he was in New Bedford during 1833-34. In those years, Emerson’s cousin Orville Dewey was the minister at the Unitarian church in New Bedford; but Dewey’s health had been damaged by overwork, and Emerson came to preach here while Dewey took a sabbatical to regain his health.

I knew the Concord Free Public Library had the complete four volume set of Emerson’s sermons (ed. Albert J. Frank et al., Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1989), so I drove up there this morning. I went down into the Special Collections rooms in the basement, and Leslie Wilson, the extremely knowledgeable curator and librarian of the Special Collections, got the four volumes for me.

Emerson kept a careful record of which sermons he preached in which church. Many of the sermons he preached in New Bedford appear to be among his favorites, for he preached them over and over again, sometimes as many as fourteen times. Mostly he did not write new sermons while he was here, but merely dug out sermons written originally for his church in Boston, or some other Unitarian church. But it appears that he did write sermon no. 169 (on the text Psalms 139.14) specifically for the New Bedford church; at least, this was the very first place he preached the sermon, on September 7, 1834. I decided this would be the sermon I’ll preach this Sunday.

Leslie Wilson, whom I have known for years and years, was curious what I was working on. I told her how I was going to preach one of Emerson’s sermons.

“You’ll have to cut it down,” she said.

“I know, no one wants to listen to a sermon that long these days,” I replied.

“And let’s face it, you’re not Emerson…,” she said thoughtfully.

“No, I most certainly am not!” I said emphatically.

“He was known for being an absolutely wonderful speaker,” she said. “He could say almost anything, and keep his audiences enthralled.” We both knew the old story of someone’s uneducated maid who went to hear one of Emerson’s lectures on Transcendentalism or some such obscure topic. Her employers were surprised that she would go to hear a lecture on such an esoteric subject. Ah, said the maid, but when Mr. Emerson says it I can understand it.

Emerson’s sermon no. 169 is so well written that it will stand up to even my delivery of it. Right now, I’m going through the two manuscript versions of the sermon — the earlier version which must be the one he delivered at New Bedford, and the later version that he delivered at Unitarian churches in Plymouth, Waltham, Boston, East Lexington, Concord, and at the Harvard College Chapel. It’s fascinating to see how he changed the sermon, mostly for the better, although at times the earlier version is more vigorous. But in both versions, you can sense a great writer coming into his full powers.

What must it have been to sit in the pews of the old wood-frame Unitarian church on the corner of William and Purchase Streets, and listen to Ralph Waldo Emerson preach on September 7, 1834, less than two years before he would publish his book Nature? The New Bedford church had wanted him as their minister — Orville Dewey having announced that his health would not allow his return — but Emerson got out of the offer by saying that he could not in good conscience preside at the communion table, nor offer a prayer unless he was truly moved to do so. Instead, in October, 1834, he moved to Concord and began writing in earnest.

New moon

A tiny sliver of the new moon shone overhead. I stood at the end of State Pier not watching the sunset. Instead I watched a barge loaded down with gravel, well out in the middle of the harbor. The gray gravel on the barge shone faintly pink.

The barge was dead in the water, the tow rope between it and the tugboat slack. I could see someone at the stern of the tug doing something to the rope; then the faint sound of a big diesel engine growling, the water between the tug and the barge churned with prop wash, the barge slowly started to move forward; the person standing at the stern of the tug waved madly at the pilot house, the sound of the tug’s engine dropped, the rope went slack, the barge slowed and stopped. Some kind of readjustment of the rope. The tug’s engine rose into an audible growl again, the water churned between the barge and the tug, slowly the barge began to move behind the tug, gradually they got up to speed and headed towards the hurricane barrier.

I watched for several minutes. The pink light on the gravel got fainter, the tug’s running lights grew brighter in the gathering darkness, tug and barge grew smaller. I got bored watching them, and turned to head home. Overhead the sliver of moon shone bright silver, the sunset nothing more than a red glow on the horizon.

Farewell party

Carol has rented an office space on Fish Island here in New Bedford, so she has a place to show the composting toilets she imports from Sweden. The office is in a small building that sits just a few feet from the water, so Carol has a phenomenal view of the working waterfront: barges, tugboats, and other boats are often moored right outside her windows, and she has an amazing view of the waterfront from Kelley’s boatyard on the Fairhaven side, to Palmer Island lighthouse, to the ferry terminal on the New Bedford side. Because of the fantastic view, we’ve taken to calling the office the Fish Island Yacht Club.

Tonight, the Fish Island Yacht Club (FIYC) hosted the farewell party for Tugboat Captain John, who will be heading back to Haiti on Tuesday at the helm of the tugboat Chicopee. As the official chaplain of FIYC, I blessed Captain John’s journey, calling for smooth waters and fair winds all the way through the Caribbean. There were toasts, of course — another member of the Chicopee’s crew offered a toast, and one or two of John’s landlocked friends in New Bedford offered toasts.

After the toasts, John said in his singsong cadence, “I’ve been here four — no! four and a half months. I walked up today into New Bedford, and looked at how beautiful it was — the trees, all yellow.” Conrad from the salvage yard, who moved up here from the islands twenty years ago, said, “If you stayed for winter, mon, you wouldn’t think it was so pretty!” We all told John that he was leaving at the best time of year, when New England is at its prettiest, before it gets cold and miserable. “No,” he said, “I wish I came up here now, and stayed for four and a half months over the winter.” We all got kind of quiet at that; we’re going to miss Captain John.

Anyway, Annie, who owns the building up the street from us, gave John a big hug. Davison cooked up grilled vegetables and salmon and sausages on the grill. Mystic, who works on a swordfish boat, said he wished he had brought over some swordfish, but there was too much food as it was. John got in a long conversation with Dave, who works at the sewage treatment plant, while the rest of us stood outside on the deck watching the harbor change color as the sun set and the sky grew dark.

Farewell, Captain John; and I mean it about the smooth waters and fair winds.

Freighter

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.

Union organizers

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.

Time of change

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.

An immigrants’ church

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.

Stranded seaman

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.