A response to reading Jeremy Eichler's "Reading between the grooves of classical vinyl's improbable return"

When my kids were young and we lived on Main St. in Amherst, I used to walk them up the hill in a stroller until they fell asleep and then I would peruse the record bins at the Salvation Army that used to be in Amherst Center and Mystery Train. While I could sometimes splurge on an album from Mystery Train (like an early mono pressing of The Times They Are A Changing), for the most part I was a bottom feeder and bought the cheapest albums which were the free jazz at Mystery Train and the classical music at the Salvation Army where you could get 4 records for $5. Because of my childhood I knew the names of virtuoso classical soloists and the major composers, and I knew the major orchestras, but sometimes I also picked up a record because of the cover (the beautiful photograph of cellist Jacqueline du Pré) or the particular design of the gatefold album. What I couldn’t do in the moldy, wet cardboard smelling corner of the Salvation Army store was match the sound, the actual composition to the object I was holding in my hand, so I would walk home with these incipient surprises to be uncovered as the kids played on the floor and I cooked, or did laundry, or fell asleep on the couch. Those were also the days when I first pieced together my stereo system with parts scavenged mostly from the Amherst dump where retiring professors would empty out their offices and leave behind old analog dial Kenwood receivers, and Acoustic Research and KLH speakers. I pieced together a turntable using the chassis of an old Thorens turntable that I stiffened using a thick sheet of MDF on the bottom and put on a new acrylic tone arm mount and new-er tonearm (the one object from post 1980 in my system). Also, because so many of my records were from the Salvation Army they were often mildewed or so moldy you could see a green haze over the record. So I made myself a record cleaner. I salvaged a cheap turntable from the dump, cut a slot in a piece of PVC pipe and coated it with velvet, then connected the PVC pipe to a small wet vac, and using a recipe I found for a record cleaning solution from distilled water and soap, I washed and sucked all my new records clean, placed the record in a new clean sleeve, put it back into the record jacket and dropped the whole thing into a protective plastic sleeve. I’m pretty sure the word “geek” or “dork” is running through your head right now. So after the record was clean, I would put it on the Thorens, and while the kids played and I also build Lego spaceships, or read picture books, or prepared a snack, I would listen to an early Boston Symphony Orchestra recording conducted by Charles Munch playing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony No. 6 and suddenly I could remember the piece and I was eight or nine years old running through the gardens at Tanglewood back before they filled in all the fountains with dirt. My friend Robert Patterson (son of a cellist) and I would set traps in the topiary maze imagining some obnoxious tourist walking through the maze holding a glass of wine when suddenly a sprung branch would whip out and foil his sophisticated designs (we never did get to witness the fruits of our efforts). But, all the while that we played, there was the sound track of the orchestra. The start and stop and repeats of rehearsals, but also the full performances with the roars and cheers from a lawn and shed full of people more audibly attentive than I was. I am always grateful to have grown up with that core experience with music (even as I rebelled against the rigor of learning violin or piano). As an adult, as a young parent, I was able to relive my childhood by listening to the music that was ever present in my childhood. And in turn, as I revisited my subconscious auditory memory, my children were being imprinted with another generation of transmission so that today, my son Simon talks about hearing Cecil Taylor in Jazz History class and being the only one who raises his hand to identify the player, recognizing him, almost intuitively, from his childhood (I could only play Cecil Taylor when my ex was out of the house to maintain household harmony). Simon is, like his grandfather, driven by his love of classical music. I, of course, educated him on all the classic formative music of my musical influences (Duane Allman, Clapton, Hendrix, J.J. Cale, Roy Buchanan, and later The Clash, Dinosaur Jr., etc.), and in grade school he played in a band (switching off between drums, guitar, and keyboards) that played Beatles, Rolling Stones, and other classic covers. And while his musical curiosity still drives him to explore music with a braver outlook than his father (he sometimes listens to Bollywood music while going for a run), he always returns to the music I used to play from his childhood. The Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Saint-Saens, Mozart. The music of his grandfather. The music of summer lawns. The music passed down from father to son, and then father to son.

What Can We Learn From Artists?

I’ve been trying to experiment with how I might graphically demonstrate what I’ve started to learn through the Rethinking the Creative Economy Project. The data is clearly not complete, and to be comprehensive, or as comprehensive as possible, I would need include many more data points and categories, but as an introduction to the concept of what artists do to create the quality of life they seek, this is a kind of theoretical start.

Throughout the interviews I’ve conducted or read so far, everyone expresses some form of creating or managing their own quality of life. This takes the form of access to the natural world, ideal live/work space(s), access to safe housing, food security, the ability to care for family members, and creative expression. All of these categories are complementary in that often one impacts another, however, they are also distinct in their specific benefits and challenges.

Each of the categories of basic needs is crucial to the individual’s wellbeing. Housing, food security, family care, health care, and creative expression require an input to produce the needed effect. For example, U.S. currency paid to a landlord enables the artist or artisan to live in an apartment or rent studio space. This currency is generated through employment at one or more jobs, or is generated through the selling of art or crafts. Alternate exchanges can also be created that generate the same impact, for example, bartering one’s services in exchange for rent or a portion of rent (landscaping, building maintenance, artwork, etc.). But most often, the input of U.S. currency is utilized for paying for these basic needs, and to generate currency most artists turn to traditional wage paying jobs, often from multiple sources.

The challenge with a traditional wage paying job is that one has to balance the time it takes to generate enough income to pay for these basic needs with the time necessary for creative expression. What appears to be different from the general population (we don’t have a control group yet), or at least evident within our pool of interviewees, is that creative expression is prioritized as importantly (and in some cases more importantly) as the other categories of housing, food, family, and health. Whereas some people might find that creative expression is something that can be sacrificed and reduced so that more of their time can be spent on a traditional wage earning job, artists and artisans try to hold certain aspects of creative expression and the time needed to engage in that process as sacred.

What appears to be a trend among our interviewees is that artists and artisans prioritize their day/night/week differently. There is a recognition among artists and artisans that creative expression reaps the greatest impact on their quality of life, and that when creative expression is sacrificed for other things, the quality of life as a whole is impacted negatively.

There are several preliminary ideas that are emerging from this analysis. First, when the time and resources necessary for creative expression are prioritized, compromises are then made in areas that non-artists and artisans typically do not compromise. For example, part-time jobs, or multiple part-time jobs, and self-employment enable greater flexibility in scheduling a week that enables multiple pursuits. Choices in housing are valued differently with a focus on aesthetics and utility (studio/work space). Food security can be a challenge, but it has not emerged as a primary challenge in our interviewee pool, however many of our artists and artisans also farm on small or medium scales to supplement their other food sources. Many of the artists and artisans are involved in parenting, caring for elders, caring for partners, and much of this is enabled by having a flexible schedule rather than a rigid traditional workweek. Healthcare is a major issue for many artists and artisans as many are dealing with long-term medical conditions, chronic pain, in addition to the various health issues that arise in the course of life. However, there is a strong thread of non-traditional healing practices, a reliance on coverage when possible, and a real recognition that without state or employer provided coverage, the healthcare crisis is insurmountable. So here too, artists and artisans make compromises. They forgo dental work, engage in as much self care when possible, and utilize community health clinics. A patchwork of solutions, some quite sufficient, others quite deficient, are utilized to care for themselves and their families.

The reprioritization of value for housing, food security, family care, healthcare, and creative expression is a pendulum that can swing in either direction. When things are going well and are functioning in proportional balance, the pendulum swings towards increased quality of life. And when there is a crisis for family care, health, housing, food, these things then require, most commonly, additional U.S. currency, which necessitates picking up an additional job, working longer hours, or increases in selling art, craft, or personal items. When this occurs, the quality of life drops dramatically, particularly when the category that is diminished is creative expression. When multiple crises occur, an injury predicates the loss of a job, which reduces available healthcare, and subsequently housing stability is threatened, much of the benefits to creative expression are lost as the individual scrambles to try and patch together a safety net.

The goal for many of our artists and artisans is to figure out how to reduce the amount of indirect time it takes to generate stability for housing, healthcare, food, and family care. What I mean by indirect time is that, when an individual is employed at a department store, they are working to sell items and serve customers that are not connected in any direct way to their apartment or the dental work they need. The employment is necessary so that these things can be paid for with currency. However, the work that an individual does for an employer is inherently inefficient in a capitalist system because the employer is seeking to generate profit. That means, the value of any employee’s work is greater (and sometimes far greater) than the hourly wage that employee earns. Imagine if the sales generated at a Walmart were divided equally among all the workers in proportion to the hours worked in the day. The workers would bring home a substantially different looking paycheck. So, in an effort to alter that equation, many artists and artisans are engaged in self-employment, utilizing technology to work at home or provide consulting services, giving community lessons, and doing commissions or work for hire.

Another way to reduce the amount of time necessary to provide stability and security for food, housing, healthcare, and family care, is to utilize cooperative models. In the most basic sense, if one person goes to the grocery store for three people, that is two less trips that need to be made, more time in the day for the other people, and less fuel utilized for the trip. Similarly, when one person rents a one-bedroom apartment, the choices are very limited within a lower price range. When two people rent an apartment, the same contribution of funds from each individual provides for a much broader and possibly more pleasing variety of options. Similarly, when multiple people share responsibility for bills, tasks, chores, there is a division of labor that can enable a greater amount of time that can be dedicated to creative expression, and there are greater resources to be tapped if there is a crisis. There is a potential for cooperative structures to reduce the amount of time required for basic needs stability without reducing the quality (and perhaps even increasing the quality) of that stability.

By reducing the amount of time needed to generate stability in the basic needs of housing, food, healthcare, and family care, artists and artisans are better able to utilize their time engaged in creative expression. This is enabled by a focus on sustainability rather than constant growth. It is a prioritization of quality of life as defined by the individual rather than dictated by a government statistic, marketing firms, or the Joneses. It is also an ontological shift, one that artists and artisans make on a subconscious level quite often, but to make these practices overt and intentional is a greater leap that my require assistance, guidance, and planning. When these overt ontological shifts are put into practice in formal ways, we need to learn how to recognize and highlight their successes as much, if not more than the mainstream recognition and appreciation for capitalist processes.

Is This What the End of Capitalism (as we know it) Looks Like?

In J.K. Gibson-Graham’s seminal book, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) (1996), they concretize what many people were already beginning to understand intuitively. Capitalism had breached what might be thought of as an ethical wall, and leapt into a self-consuming runaway cascade of reactions, the aftereffects we are feeling today. In England, for the last four days there have been riots, which started in Tottenham, peopled mainly by disaffected youth. While the ignition point for the unrest was the unfortunate shooting death of a civilian by police forces, it has evolved into a guttural expression of those who have not, against those they perceive to have too much. Department stores are ransacked by youth, like Louis James, 19, who in the New York Times, said, “No one has ever given me a chance; I am just angry at how the whole system works” (Thomas and Somaiya, 8/9/11). He managed to nab a $195.00 sweater. Neither J.K. Gibson-Graham, nor I promote violent destruction of property, the burning of buildings, and harming of other human beings as a form of economic reform, but it certainly seems like a foreseeable byproduct of the lack of reform.

In the U.S., Verizon is faced with a union strike as it tries to reduce benefits, even as the company enjoys strong profits with a “net income of $6.9 billion in the first six months of this year” (Greenhouse, “Sharp Rift in a Strike at Verizon,” NYT, 8/7/11). In fact, many corporations are enjoying record profits, generating “14 percent of the national income in 2010, the highest proportion ever recorded” (Norris, “As Corporate Profits Rise, Workers’ Income Declines,” NYT, 8/5/11). At Verizon, workers are seeking to stop the management of a company by investor greed and a mantra focused around infinite growth (of profit). In Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter has instituted a curfew to curtail flash mobs with threat of fines and the possible imposition of child neglect charges for parents (“Philadelphia orders curfew after flash-mob attacks,” BBC, 8/9/11). Amidst the record profit taking by corporate America, congress is stymied on how to provide needed social services when so much is owed to other countries and the wealthy do not want to pay.

What this global dissent says to me (even encompassing the spring uprisings in North Africa and South West Asia where people rose up against different, but similar tyrannies) is that the balance is shifting to where there are ever increasing numbers of people who can not afford appropriate medical care, can not repair rotted teeth, struggle to pay for college, for rent, for food, are increasingly characterized as lawless others, and they are becoming aware of the existing inequalities. While some classes of people have full dental benefits with their employment, oftentimes, those very same people are trying to deny the most basic of benefits to their employees or voters. As the imbalance increases, and it does because while the mantra of growth is infinite, the Earth is a planet of finite resources, and more and more people begin to recognize this inequity, we see its impact in increasing and increasingly unpredictable ways, with increased crime, more conflict between workers and employers, and more disaffected youth.

Interestingly, the disaffected youth who are rioting in England, seem to intuitively know who their oppressor is. They are targeting department stores, the material goods of a consumer society produced by corporations who steal from the workers, and sell back to them, the very goods they are producing. A recent rash of burglaries in Western Massachusetts has targeted ATM machines. Even the Tea Party is motivated by this same disaffected anger at inequity. They certainly seem confused and radicalized, but I can understand where that confusion and simmering anger stems from.

What Gibson-Graham did in their book, was deconstruct the obfuscating lens of corporate language and financial media, and validate that what people feel and experience is also a valid truth, one that needs to be listened to and incorporated into a broader concept of what economy could entail. There are many ways in which this can happen, on the individual level through conversation and personal interactions, from teacher to student and vice versa, on the level of factory takeovers by workers in Argentina, by large scale protests, and so on. Politicians are no longer in touch with the American experience and are too beholden to corporate America. If we actually want to fix the system, create change to benefit the people, then we need to discover ways to help the politicians see what their policies engender. Change does not necessarily have to be traumatic, and successes do occur. Look at the recent change of track for automobile and truck companies on the issue of raised fuel economy. Such a concession would have been impossible to imagine a mere five years ago. Yet, the corporations have recognized the value of natural resources, protecting the environment, the dangers of carbon gases, the value of catering to people and the planet. So perhaps there is hope. There may be a day yet, where Americans are no longer seen as plunderers of the planet, to paraphrase the late Ray Anderson, Founder and CEO of Interface, and we become its stewards.

My Testimony to The Joint Committee on Tourism, Arts, and Cultural Development

The Joint Committee on Tourism, Arts, and Cultural Development
1878, An Act Establishing the Massachusetts Cultural Trust Fund
filed by Senator Stan Rosenberg

Here is a link to the bill's text:< http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/senate/186/st01pdf/ST01878.PDF
>




The Massachusetts Cultural Council continues to be one of the most important sources of funding in Franklin County to stimulate economic activity in the arts. Make no mistake about it, artists and artisans are core to the future of how the region transforms and evolves.

As we reassess how we define a healthy economy, we must also reexamine how we place value on the core elements we require for the quality of life that we desire in our cities and towns. How do we adopt practices that develop the skills and expertise that our residents already have? How do we build on the economic activities that enhance a sense of community, that value creative agency and innovation, and that stimulate the interconnected nature of relationships in the towns, counties, the state, and the world?

The Massachusetts Cultural Council is the manifestation of the values the state has for the future. It is a reflection, not only on a commitment to the arts and humanities, but for why the arts and humanities are crucial aspects of our communities. The arts and humanities are about inquiry and exploration, the pursuit of meaning, and the synthesis of the individual with the environment. The objective of funding for the arts and humanities is not unchecked growth, or the generation of profit, but the expansion of successful practices, the exploration of how we can learn to create the world we seek to inhabit, and the generation of value.

The contributions the Massachusetts Cultural Council has made to the Fostering Art and Culture Project has allowed Greenfield Community College to focus on the creative economy with a similar kind of intensity that the health and business sectors receive. The Fostering Art and Culture Project strives to build collaborative, mutually beneficial relationships among parallel creative economy constituents: artists and artisans, local and countywide organizations, and local government. In addition, the Fostering Art and Culture Project seeks to educate across economic sectors about the interconnected nature of the arts, agriculture, and traditional business and industry, and how a community can actively foster a diverse range of economic practices to create the kind of balance that generates an increase in the quality of life.

The Massachusetts Cultural Council’s funding has enabled Fostering Art and Culture to offer business classes for artists and artisans, workshops on marketing, public forums about the connection of the creative economy and business, a summit about the creative economy on local, state, national, and international scales, and the development of marketing plans for the county.

An increase in the standard of living does not equate an increase in the quality of life for people. What increases quality of life is the ability to become active participants in determining one’s future, is the ability to engage in the generation of meaning (or value), and it is the ability to express one’s self creatively. An investment in the Massachusetts Cultural Trust Fund, is an investment into how the citizens of the future will look back in history and see our state, the stories we write, the art we create, the activities we pursue, the innovations we stimulate, and the questions we ask.

Carrot Mob

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

Defining Economy

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First Responders

Greenfield Community College's Commencement, President Bob Pura

President Bob Pura has given me permission to post an excerpt from his speech at Greenfield Community College's commencement on June 7th, 2009.

Honored Students, Colleagues & Guests—I thank you for this opportunity to share in an event so meaningful to you. It is both an honor and a privilege.

In just a few moments you will walk across this stage and receive your GCC diploma. Good for you! You have earned it. You have met all of the academic requirements established by the faculty and staff; you have overcome financial barriers, met your family responsibilities and you have handled the stress of those demands. You have worked hard and we are all proud of your accomplishments.

Not long ago, you came here not knowing what to expect. For many of you, GCC was your first visit to a college campus. For many others, you are the first in your family to attend and now graduate from college. Well, we applaud your persistence, your patience and your hard work. We applaud with all of our heart, the courage that you have demonstrated in the pursuit of a better life for yourselves and your families. Most of all we applaud the active pursuit of your dreams. You stepped into the unknown and you persevered.

You have learned a great deal here at GCC. You have studied math, science, and the English language. You have learned how to be good teachers, nurses, police officers, fire fighters, and have learned the healing touch of massage therapy. You can now communicate more effectively, think more critically, and solve problems more creatively. Graduates you have learned more about other people, other cultures - and you have learned more about yourself. You have discovered your voice and have developed the courage to express it. Most important, you have learned how to learn. Learning is not something that you do as a student in preparation for life – learning is a way of life.

Research suggests that you will change your job 13-15 times and change your career 8 times. Each new job, new career or new skill will demand change and that change will require your learning. And in this economy, I can assure you that nothing will be more significant or more empowering than your ability to learn.

But learning is not just for work – it is not just a tool for career success. Your ability to learn will make you a better parent, a more informed consumer and a much more engaged and enlightened citizen. Learning is a process – a way of life that makes better people of us all. Some make great leaps of faith in religion; others have comparable blind faith in science. For me, it is in education and in the process of learning that we will blaze the path to social and economic justice for all; finally making world peace truly possible.

It would be impossible to celebrate your achievements without recognizing all of those who have supported you along your journey. I ask that you first recognize your parents, grandparents, sons, daughters, partners, and friends, who were with you – even when you thought you were alone.

Please stand and let them know just how much you appreciate their support.

And it would be impossible to think about your academic success and your learning without thinking about the passion, courage, commitment, and professionalism of the GCC faculty and staff. It was your teachers - those in and out of the classroom – that saw your potential, often before you, and then worked with you to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve that potential. Graduates – I ask that you stand, recognize and thank the heart and soul of this college, your teachers – the faculty and staff of GCC.

2009; Wow, what a year to graduate! There is a good chance that you will not remember today’s speeches and I am fairly sure that you will remember the party that you will go to this afternoon. I am 100% certain, however, that you will always remember that you graduated from GCC in 2009, the year that Barack Obama became President of the United States of America. Think about the level of optimism and hope that prevailed the day of his inauguration. Hold on to that moment. The hope and optimism that is born of the work of individuals and the power of community will be celebrated again in this great nation. I know that - because you get it. You understand that the real promise of our Democracy is not as much about the services provided as it is about your level of service. The hope and promise of this President is that he gets it as well. And although the seeds for this economy were planted many years ago, 2009 was also the year of the Great Recession. What a year indeed!

How many times this year have you heard that the Chinese symbol for crisis is also the symbol for opportunity or some variation on that theme? Graduates, because it has the advantage of being true, I will add my voice to that chorus, this IS the golden moment for you to make things better. If you want to see the world change for the better, then America must regain its status as a global citizen born of moral convictions. If our nation is to again achieve that status, then Massachusetts must remain united with intention. If our commonwealth is to be a better place to live and work, then our communities must be fully engaged. If our communities are to develop economically as well as socially, then each of you must step up to the plate and make that change happen in your lives. Graduates, you must be the change that you want the world to embrace. I suggest three steps along that journey:

1. Live within your means

2. Take stock

3. Hold Fast your Dreams

#1 - Live Within Your Means: By all accounts we are in the midst of the worst economy in 70 years. Although the data and key indicators suggest we are nowhere near the economic environment of the Great Depression, these are hard times. The 8% unemployment of today is significantly lower than the 24% of the 1930’s. But to those 8% and their families it feels exactly the same today as it did to the families who suffered during the Great Depression. Our compassion and support are needed.

I am confident that we will find our way out of this economic moment – we know the economy will recover. I trust that you feel the same. History teaches us that many good things will come from this recession – many will create opportunity from this crisis. In his book “Pop,” writer Daniel Gross points out that railroads and the technology boom are just two very good examples of major developments that occurred during very bad economic times. Will the so-called “green technologies” be the spark that revitalizes this economy?

Will those two photovoltaic panels soon become laughable antiques because solar panels will become so small, so powerful and so affordable that they become an integral part of our way of life? I suggest that this is not only possible, but that you will help make that happen. But will we, as a nation, have learned anything at all? Will we look back to the great recession of 2009 and see lessons learned? Or, will we have missed this opportunity; destined to repeat our missteps?

Ladies and gentlemen, Capitalism is not broken. It has just been mismanaged. Capitalism is but a vehicle; it is the drivers of that vehicle that determine the destination and the direction. If the drivers are greedy, then greed will be rewarded. It seems to me that beginning somewhere around 1980 our economic engine became less a vehicle in service to people –and more of one in which people began serving the economy. Our economic system resembled a runaway train destined to derail.

The gap between those that have wealth and those that do not grew to historical proportions. The top 20% of our nation’s citizens accumulated 85% of our nation’s wealth. Driven by the incredible power of Madison Avenue and the advertizing industry, the only thing that trickled down was the illusion of wealth and the reality of great debt. Credit was flying around like turkey vultures.

We went on an unprecedented shopping spree. That buying binge did stimulate the economy – production increased dramatically. However, so did income disparity. Fewer people had fewer resources with which to buy homes, buy goods and services, or afford go to college. The bubble had to burst, and so it did.

We have in this moment a great opportunity to take control of that vehicle, strengthen our economy and communities and in doing so, strengthen America. You can make that happen. You do have great economic power and you have more than you realize.

Why, for example, do you think that fast food numbers are down and organic and locally produced food sales are increasing? Hybrid cars? Cell phones? lap tops? You can impact the direction of our economic engine and you must take some measure of control.

How? How can each of us under this tent impact the economy of our nation for the better? One answer - is that we can all live within our means. A stronger economy is not always a bigger economy. By living within our means – we will lead the way for America to live within its means. By living within your means you will save money for your future and in doing so, you will be investing in the future of America.

#2 - Take Stock: At an All College meeting not too long ago we were discussing the many challenges and opportunities facing Greenfield Community College. Like each of you here today, GCC must face this moment and prepare for the future. We talked at that meeting about having a clear vision of where we want to get to and a plan describing how to get there. It was in that discussion that Professor Sharon Roth raised her hand and said that her grandmother taught her of the importance of stepping back for a moment to ‘take stock.”

Well Professor Roth’s grandmother was absolutely correct. It is essential that every once in a while we step back from the day-to-day and take stock. Dear graduates, now is a good time – a perfect time- to take stock. But what does that mean and how do you do it?

I know what a stock room is and I understand the work of taking inventory. Taking stock in this instance, however, is not just about the canned goods in the kitchen cabinet. I am talking more about taking a snapshot, a black and white photo, of who you are. What are your ideas: not the ideas of Fox news, National Public Radio, Sarah Palin or Nancy Pelosi? What are your core values and your core beliefs: not your parents, your friends, neighbors – but yours?

What brings meaning and purpose to your life: Making art; writing poetry; science and medicine; creating new businesses; the healing arts; mathematics; music? Who are the significant people in your life? Who are you now: not who you were growing up in the eyes of family or friends, but who you really are - right now?

That process of self-reflection takes time. You don’t need to quit your job and live out on Walden Pond to take stock – but do try and stop the noise for just a moment and then take an inventory of who you are. It is by taking stock today that you can begin a thoughtful journey to a hopeful tomorrow.

And #3 - Hold Fast Your Dreams: While there will be many positive outcomes and lessons learned from the Great Recession, the one most disconcerting outcome is the lowering of aspirations.

Research tells us that during hard times many good people do lower their aspirations; they diminish their dreams and suffer from increasing hopelessness.

Graduates of the class of 2009, if you remember anything from my words today – please remember this – you must not internalize this economic downturn – you must not recess your aspirations – you cannot depress your dreams.

Hopelessness is taught. Hope, therefore, can be taught as well. You have a responsibility to your family, to your community – to yourself - to pursue your dreams – and in the process you are teaching hope. In the pursuit of your dreams – you are creating hope for others to pursue their dreams. Hope is not just a street name here in Greenfield. It is the emotional fuel that has the power to create a better tomorrow. The pursuit of your dreams - will lift us all.

So while the knee-jerk reaction to this economic crisis might be to duck and cover, you dear graduates will follow a better path, an empowering journey that elevates you, elevates your family and will elevate this community.

What are your dreams? What aspirations do you have? What dreams have you stored somewhere all too safe within your heart, held captive, by your sleep? Let me tell you what we (point to faculty) see in you.

We see a nurse who will provide healing to those who suffer and compassion to those in distress; A teacher who will change lives for the better every day; An entrepreneur with just the right idea at the right moment at the right location; A farmer who will take over the family farm; A scientist who will help transition our nation from complete dependency on fossil fuel to the broader and more affordable access to sustainable and re-usable energy; A parent whose child will grow and develop with the support and guidance of a college graduate; A poet and writer eager to build a writing shack with the ambition of writing – just for the pleasure of writing; An elected official off to Washington, Boston or Town Hall passionate about economic and social justice for all; A community college president, lawyer, accountant, police officer, community organizer, musician, university professor, banker, an artist and, and, and… Dear graduates – we see your dreams – and we see them fulfilled.

Take Stock, Live within your means and hold fast your dreams. If you want America’s economic engine back on track – then become an informed and engaged consumer and live within your means. Help drive our economy beyond recovery to a sustainable one that serves all of our Nation’s citizens. Stop the noise for just a moment and take stock of who you are. By clarifying your core values and beliefs you will have a stronger foundation in which to build a more hopeful tomorrow. And although it was Langston Hughes that first wrote “hold fast you dreams,” it is the words of Henry David Thoreau that I would like to leave you with. He wrote, “I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Dear graduates - go in the direction of your dreams and live a life that only you will imagine. Live life so that you will never want to sleep. Hold fast your dreams, for in doing so; you will be lifting a nation. To the great class of 2009, Congratulations on your achievements and we wish you all Godspeed.

-President Bob Pura, Greenfield Community College

How do we define a service economy?

Recently, a lot of discussion has centered around the kinds of jobs where people expect to see the most growth in our region, the service sector. As community colleges are looked at to prepare students to enter this kind of workforce, how we define and frame the service sector is vitally important. 

At the core of who the service sector services, and the expanding need for service sector employees, is a potential to refocus how we integrate our understanding of community and employment, and how they build an economy that is centered on the quality of life for people. 

The service sector (as defined by the U.S. Census) is a broad category:

• Accommodation and Food Services (Sector 72)
• Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services (Sector 56)
• Arts, Entertainment and Recreation (Sector 71)
• Educational Services (Sector 61)
• Finance and Insurance (Sector 52)
• Health Care and Social Assistance (Sector 62)
• Information (Sector 51)
• Management of Companies and Enterprises (Sector 55)
• Other Services (Except Public Administration) (Sector 81)
• Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (Sector 54)
• Real Estate and Rental and Leasing (Sector 53)
• Retail Trade (Sector 44-45)
• Transportation and Warehousing (Sector 48-49)
• Utilities (Sector 22)
• Wholesale Trade (Sector 42)

From: http://www.census.gov/svsd/www/economic.html

These growth and focus on these sectors is different from and potentially more diverse than tooling up for a manufacturing industry, or a specific kind of I.T. training. What we are seeing in healthcare is only the first indicator of a need our communities will face for all kinds of services that cater to the things we utilize to participate and enjoy life. As our communities are faced with limited resources, more and more our choices will become thoughtful, aesthetic, and experiential choices dictated by the quality and value of the service, rather than availability and affordability. In a time with limited resources, cheap and inferior is wasteful. There is an opportunity to re-engage our communities with what they need at a local level to find fulfillment that is not based on a material products, but based in human relationships and interactions that incorporate meaningfulness.

If an external environment reduces the availability of material consumption, that as a nation we have looked to for fulfillment, where do we turn to provide that stimulus? What had become a primarily private activity delivered by UPS trucks in nondescript cardboard boxes can shift to more public arenas, to areas of commons, or varying degrees of commons where the activities, the action and engagement, is what stimulates fulfillment.

There is a potential, as work hours are potentially curtailed in employment, for a different kind of work to supplant that, one that is based more in care giving, community, and creativity. How does one person invest in the world that he or she creates and inhabits for him or herself? How does an institution help students inspire, develop, and legitimize the independence and interdependence necessary to effect these changes in the workforce? How does the conceptualization of work ethic and purpose change for employees and industry? How do the artists balance their role in a commons based experiential economy with the material needs to continue the pursuit of art making?

Peace Now, The Warblers at the Paradise, Boston, MA 11/24/07

Artscience

"Either way, the fused method that results, at once aesthetic and scientific--intuitive and deductive, sensual and analytical, comfortable with uncertainty and able to simplify to nature in its essence-- is what I call artscience" (7).

"It is this process of creative experience that interests me here. I call it idea translation. To translate ideas is to move them from some conceptual stage to some later stage in the general process of realization. Realization may be any combination of economic value (new technologies, say), cultural value (new forms of art), educational value (new scientific theories), and social value (new medicines or political policies). In the process of realization our ideas often cross disciplinary boundaries" (8).

-David Edwards, Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation

In some ways, it seems the economic crisis has created a kind of global idea accelerator, as Edwards terms it. There is a reignited desire and opportunity for change and this change is being driven by a desire to integrate ideas that have been excluded or othered in different times. Given that possibility, there is still a somewhat schizophrenic push and pull between the recognition of a need for different models, new ways of thinking and problem solving, creative responses to our environmental stimuli (our world), and a return to what is known, or familiar, or comfortable. How else can we explain the Chrysler union managing to gain majority ownership of the company, but not have a voting member on the board?

Edwards' idea accelerator connects social, educational, and industrial sectors with cultural sectors of thinking and idea making. And then there is a purposeful motion of exchange between the "lab" (17) and the public. For the accelerator to achieve its function of breaking down barriers to interdisciplinary exchange, a fluid acceptance of experimentation is necessary.

"We value creators in business, culture, education, and society, but somehow we struggle to create institutional environments to welcome them. That is because we made our institutions to resist change that did not reflect where we wished our culture to go--while the world changed in spite of us. Cultures mixed, people and information moved rapidly around the world, new ideas emerged and old ideas were swept away. This change--the hand that molds our children's future--is precisely the kind we engineered our institutions to resist. The consequence is that we're not expressing what we are actually thinking and we're not teaching what we need to learn" (13)!

How do we know what we are really thinking? As I work in the region and see a creative economy marketing plan for our county developing, how do we differentiate or individualize our uniqueness? What is easiest and most manageable, is to emulate sameness, exploit efficiencies. But, we seem to be creating something that has a potential to be soulless in a time when what people need most of all is to retain that core sense of place and authenticity. 

At a recent meeting at the college, a researcher asserted, the thing that would differentiate her plan from any other off the shelf policy/plan, is the data that has been collected about our catchment area and our students. The data for this particular policy is compelling, and I believe similar data needs to be drawn for the region around the creative economy, but I also have a rooted desire to move beyond demographics and employment figures, and dig deeper into the more core needs of the community.

If there are basic life/survival needs that we have as people for basic sustenance, our communities also share basic elements, that are sometimes out of balance, but reach a kind a equilibrium (hopefully) with the assistance of neighboring resources. And they beyond basic survival are the aspects that impact the quality of life and how that quality of life is perceived and experienced. How comforting and fraternal is it to be caught up in a movement? How desolate and demoralizing it can be to feel as if you are the only one of your kind. How invigorating and emboldening it can be to find yourself as the first, a pioneer. How does the translation of idea into action occur within one's life? Is there a capacity, an opportunity? Is there the choice? And if there is not, or there does not appear to be, how can you build that capacity?

Interplay of Perception

"To define another being as an inert or passive object is to deny its ability to actively engage us and to provoke our sense; we thus block our perceptual reciprocity with that being. By linguistically defining the surrounding world as a determinate set of objects, we cut our conscious, speaking selves off from the spontaneous life of our sensing bodies. [...] To the sensing body, no thing presents itself as utterly passive or inert. Only by affirming the animatedness of perceived things do we allow our words to emerge directly from the depths of our ongoing reciprocity with the world" (56).

-David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous

Abram seems to be drawing a connection to something I'm thinking of as how performativity and perceptivity are inter-related. To truly perceive a thing is to give it life and make it, as Abrams, and Abrams drawing on Merleau-Ponty, calls carnal. 

To expand on Abram's sense of the senses, the human experience is not complete without the metaphysical, the awareness of how to interpret the synaesthetic stimulation. Not in the strict form of classification and separation, but how the perceiver is acted upon and responds to the action of the perceived. 

"...Synaesthetic perception is the rule, and we are  unaware of it only because scientific knowledge shifts the center of gravity of experience, so that we have unlearned how to see, hear, and generally speaking, feel, in order to deduce, from our bodily organization and the world as the physicist conceives it, what we are to see, hear, and feel" (60, Merleau-Ponty qtd. in Abrams).

So, as we perceive and are stimulated by the physical environment, natural and human made, we are also perceiving and being stimulated by the metaphysical environment of concepts and knowledge, pertaining to both natural (wind turns a leaf through an interplay of friction and resistance) and human made (an economic crisis manifesting itself in a cold and rainy day) ideas. It would be hard to argue that a person's sense of well-being does not influence his or her act of perceiving, and that in turn is performative in how that individual's world is constructed.

To examine a thing like the economy as if it is a separate inanimate thing, or perhaps a disembodied animate thing, dehumanizes what is inherently a human construct and activity, whether it is in the design of an assembly line or the purchase of a coop farm share. Similarly, to be able to perceive a thing is natural, but that perception is altered with an increasing awareness of (or perhaps an openness to) sensuality, or how the senses interact in synaesthetic complexity and harmony. 

If our normal socialized human state is one of disconnectedness with our environment, as Abram suggests, then the process of regaining that connection with our world, participating in the dialogue, is one that must be relearned. Relearned, in a way that integrates the spheres of the natural environment with the impact of the built environment, the familial, civic, and intellectual environments, and relearned in a way that empowers the creative capacity to imagine and participate in one's own actions.

As work in the community colleges focus on the local needs of community members and job availability, we see opportunity in providing services to others, what our demographers call service sector jobs. How we perceive the field, and our actions to prepare students to participate in that field can shape the fabric of our communities in how we provide care for our growing population of elders, and how we provide for each other and steward the environment we live in.

Community Colleges as Commons

Community colleges are rooted in a geographic context of service to a community. They have been the resource for local economic development and a grassroots based education and class revolution. In relatively quiet and modest ways, community colleges have altered the landscape of access to higher education and access to the skills one needs to be successful. The community college experience is about raising the quality of life for local community members and the opening of possibility. In this way, community colleges have fulfilled a need for a commons where ideas and knowledge is transferred and exchanged where ownership is not by the student, or faculty, or administration, but by the community.

 

The community college as commons, is the place where research and data is collected on community needs, and the place where the resulting action or preparation can take place. The same way fishing communities have used the collected knowledge of shared maps to better traverse costal waters that they all share, and through the sharing of plotted maps in a kind of commerce, of building a sense of identity and belonging, so too have community colleges shaped identity and diversity within regions.

 

The stereotypical view of community colleges as purely job retraining sites for a nation’s blue collar needs, denies a much more complex narrative, one that includes the local industry needs, but also includes the exchange of information that spawns innovation and curiosity. It includes the micro-economies that are neglected by larger metrics, and the diverse economies that impact quality of life in more humanistic terms than a purely capitalist reading. We have to discover ways to help communities re-discover their investment in the commons and the possibilities engendered there, and re-engineer the metrics in ways that can demonstrate the greater impact community colleges have on their regions.

 

From Kevin St. Martin’s “Disrupting Enclosure in New England Fisheries”

 

The fishing commons of New England is represented by a dominant neoclassical discourse of fisheries as a site of potential tragedy only redeemable through a movement toward enclosure and privatization of access to fisheries resources. While this particular narrative of the commons (in fisheries and elsewhere) has been roundly criticized and qualified, it remains hegemonic in New England and is increasingly used to represent fisheries throughout the world. The pervasiveness of this representation is due not only to its enticing promise of delivering stability and environmental sustainability but also to the impossibility of any alternative. This and other representations of the commons relegate economic difference to an epoch before (or beyond) the present of the capitalist commons.

 

St. Martin, K. 2005. “Disrupting Enclosure in New England Fisheries,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 16(1): 63-80. 

And further still....

Here is what I've stumbled upon... or evolved into. I believe we can see communities as living organisms that are made up of interlinked systems that interact with people, animals, and plants, and the result is something tangible in human experience, tied to quality of life, but also to how place is experienced, and how perception is experienced. Central to this, is how we develop, define, and value aspects of economies, with differing results emerging from how we weight or emphasize particular elements. With, of course, the idea that a healthy community is one with a rich array of diverse economies and that the performative nature of emphasizing and investing in these diverse economies, allow the communities to participate in and benefit from the production of these economies.
One of the challenges with the creative economy discourse, at least at my level, is all the aspects that are not measured, that are othered by standard metrics, and it is here that the diverse economy concept really rings as a path to pursue.

And then, thinking further... a layman's understanding of Gaia...

The role of a diverse creative economy as found in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and the role it plays in defining place as a living entity complete with interrelated systems that engage in a symbiotic relationship with the (organisms?) people, flora, and fauna that live in a city, and how together they shape the experience of community. Case studies will be drawn from communities in the Flathead Reservation, Montana; Hazard, Kentucky; and Gyeongju, South Korea that share similar assets and challenges.

Thinking about creative economies...

I am hoping to do an examination of four regions anchored by community colleges and how they have adopted diverse economic practices in implementing economies that support the local culture and contribute to the ecology of community (the Flathead Reservation, Montana; Hazard, Kentucky; Gyeongju, South Korea; and Greenfield, Massachusetts). I plan to document complementary approaches to developing economic models and create compatible research strategies that can be shared among the communities as ways to stimulate the recognition, growth, and sustainability of diverse creative economies that are centered on the improvement of the quality of life for the people in those communities.