Call Me Ishmael's Landing: Surprising Moments in New Bedford

            I was unprepared for my visit to New Bedford last week. I had called the mayor's office, looking for some useful 'insider's' insight for a newspaper story; my questions were vague, my impressions of the city were vaguer, and I had to look up the mayor's name. My call was routed to the mayor's "PR person." I was impressed that the mayor had a PR person: most local governments could probably use one; and the some of the 'spokesmen' for state agencies seldom did anything as useful and get on the phone and welcome my inquiries. The New Bedford PR person, however, managed to persuade me in an upbeat minute or two that I absolutely needed to pay the city a visit.

            We made a tentative date; she would call me back. My meeting proved a moving target, variously planned for the mayor, the economic development director, the PR person herself, or the head of the tourism office. When I got there the agenda turned out to be, in order, the mayor, the tourism director, and the mayor's chief of staff.

            Maybe some credit goes to the absolutely gorgeous late September weather that accompanied my visit -- blue skies, seventies, sun glinting off the water -- but my impressions of the city were altogether rosy.

            Cobblestone streets, restored 19th century buildings, inexpensive loft space, a helpful cop who gave good directions, busy downtown activity, and an even busier port.

            Though photography was not (nor is ever) my job, when I was taken to the third story balcony of the Whaling Museum for the view of the harbor, I could not help taking out my camera. The photos of the harbor posted here are from that vantage.

            I'm fascinated by the port, which (I was surprised to learn) is the number one fishing port in the country according to the total value of the catch. Wouldn't the biggest fishing port be in Florida or somewhere on the Pacific or in one of those Cajun crawdaddy spots? (Answer: no). Apparently Atlantic fishermen are still bringing them in, quotas and all. And more of them bring their fish to New Bedford than anywhere else.

            The harbor is now also the site of the new staging area for the assembly of the gigantic Cape Wind off-shore wind turbines. Cranes rising from the harbor are now building a dock sturdy enough to hold these weighty components. 

           The official state sailing vessel, the Ernestina, is berthed there there. The Charles W. Morgan, the last remaining vessel from America's one-time globe-circling whaling fleet, paid a visit this summer and drew 35,000 visitors. Regular weekend festivals lure big catches of tourists as well.

            I am fascinated too by the map of the harbor the tourism director gave me, along with a score of other promotional materials.

            Tops on the list (for stirring the imagination at least) is the little rectangular inlet called "Ishmael's Landing." Not many of us sail our eyes all the way through "Moby Dick" these days, but almost all of us remain intermittently charmed by its first three words: "Call me Ishmael."

            I imagine Melville's Ishmael, the novel's first-person narrator, wandering into New Bedford these days and looking for a berth on a fishing vessel. He gets a craving for the sea (just as Melville tells us). He wanders into town late one evening and spends a night in the new Marriott Hotel. He finds a self-guided walking tour along the docks. There's the "fishermen's wharf" and "state pier," a high-speed ferry terminal to Martha's Vineyard (well now, he ponders, what can happened to Nantucket?). He stares at the highway bridge that carries Route 6 to Fairhaven and Pope's Island. He continues strolling, past the "visitors waterfront center," the dingy dock, the coal pocket pier, Homer's wharf -- Homer, you say? In honor of the old Greek mariner and travel yarner? -- and then stumbles on the sign for "Ishamael's Landing."

            He stares in surprise. They knew he was coming? What a city -- it throws the welcome mat out for everyone. 

          What does he do now? Well, according to another map I found online, he's in the right place to find a "water taxi."

            Call me Ishmael. And call me a water taxi.

The Roosevelts: 'Rosies' and Thorns in America's Common Garden

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            If we learn anything from the Ken Burns documentary concluding Saturday night on the Public Broadcasting System, it's that the progressive, humanitarian future foreseen by America's two great 20th century presidents has regressed in the last thirty years to a version of the darker, oligarchal, corporately manipulated past.

            It was Theodore Roosevelt, a Progressive Republican, who declared he would stand up to "the malfactors of great wealth."

            Nowadays Washington insiders would proudly wear that phrase as a team affiliation on their T-shirts. If somone or some entitly possesses great wealth, he must be good, because it's only by cuddling up to possessors of great health that elected can keep their seats. It's the new normal. Elections are too expensive for a Congressman to look a gift horse, however mangy, in the eye. The Supreme Court tells us that's the way things should be.

            FDR had some interesting epithets for his opponents as well.

            "Economic Royalists," we heard Franklin Roosevelt say in one ofhis famous Depression ERa speeches to the country, "fear that we are threatening their power."

            He regarded the coprorate bosses of his era as a class who saw themselves as "royalty." They deserved to hoard the wealth because they were born to their position, their class, their privileges. FDR was born to that class as well; he knew and understood them. He knew they 'hated' him as a 'traitor.'

            JP Morgan, the darth vader of suffering inflicted on the millions of exploited workers and their families in America's 'gilded age' -- i.e., society divided into rich robber barons and impoverished masses -- clashed with both Roosevelts. He could not believe that Teddy Roosevelt invoked 'emergency' powers to prevent his takeover of the entire railroad system with toal of setting tranporatation rates for all goods. It doesn;t say in the constitution you have the power to do that, his lawyers pointed out.

            "The consitution exists for the poeple, not the people for the Constitution," TR said.

            Who would say anythng liek that today?

            FDR saved the country in 1933 by closing the banks until he had a plan to reform them. Morgan, still around -- no Luke appeared to slay this Darth Vader.

            Their hate was a price he would pay for saving America from chaos and despair, and saving them from the real possibility of a Soviet-style, class-based revolution. 

            But while much of this story might be familiar to many of us, what continues to amaze me is that the words -- the ideas, ideals and values -- routinely spoken by the men in the White House are completely absent from today's political vocabulary.

            FDR, in another archived film moment, observes that a public policy should not be judged by whether "it added to those who already had more than enough, but whether it added something to those who have too little."

            This would be apostasy today. There is no concept in American society of "having too much." Given the routine compensation packages for CEOs, bankers and stock brokers, how could there be? There is no notion in common public opinion tht they they are fleecing the public good to feather their own no nests.

            And there is no consensus that public policy ought to be concerned with those who have too little. If you are unemployed, poor, hungry or homeless or driven inot penury by exorbitant medical costs, the genearl opinion appears to be that such matters are your own business. Why come running to us? Congression leaders ask today. We take care of ourselves. Model your behavior on us.

            Americans wrote thousands of letters every day to FDR when he was in the White House because, int the words of one, this was the first time he thought someone actually cared about them.

            The government had an obligation to take action to ensure "a decent place, a and decent government" for its citizens.

            Somehow we've lost the notion that "providing for the common good" was the purpose of government.

            Maybe watching a documentary that provides a detailed passage through the major events of the first half of the 20th century will remind of us how hard life was for the many and how far we had to come to create the common social advanatages the Baby Boomer generation could take for granted. Do we have to go back to 1900 and do it all over?      

The Garden Water-Bearer; or, My Aching Back

            It's summer, one last time (presumably), with temperatures in the high eighties last weekend. We're in the last days of September, that month of mildly gentle farewells (assuming no hurricanes) and easing up to the fiercer embrace of October.

            And here I am putting the sprinkler on the garden. It feels so July.

            Typically, some time in July, in the midst of a nasty heat and humidity spell, driving up air conditioner sales (and suicide threats) all over the Northeast, I reach a point where I can't stand watching plants wilt groundward, stick out their tongues, and appear to beg for death. So I drag out the old made-for-lawncare sprinkler, try to remember which way to point it, and give everything a good soaking (generally self included). I like plants to look the way they're supposed for the given time of year.

            This year, since we did not get a peace of mind-destroying heat wave in July, I ignored the watering question -- except for potted annuals, which you pretty much have to water every day -- until I noted the leaves of a certain valued class of annual plants, namely tomatoes, turning yellow.

            The vegetable garden is always a special case. Veggies are almost all annuals, so they have a shorter growing season in which to send their roots deep into the ground, sprout flowers, then turn those flowers into fruit before that fell messenger nature says 'time.' If the tomato plants and others wither and turn yellow, there's no getting back those lost days and weeks, and even if the weather improves and the rain comes, you still fail to get value from the plants.

            So some time in July, the first of our three very low-rain months in a row, I began what felt like starting an intravenous daily drip to the vegetable garden, by means of carrying fully filled watering cans to placate the tomatoes. Actually I started by spraying the garden hose in their direction, a nearly pointless exercise if you're up against a serious dry spell. Some vegetables, of course, don't need this degree of coddling. The Swiss chard we had for dinner last night kept producing leaves with very little help from me. 

            Plants like tomatoes, peppers, beans -- not so much. We got tomatoes this summer because I carried water to the plants.

            But then all the perennial flowering plants started looking for the same treatment. This is the moment when I give up completely and try to remember where I put the lawn sprinkler, where I should slip it in among the perennials to do the most good, and how to aim it to soak the plants rather than the patio or the house. (Or the neighbors.)

            The thing is, unless I come up with a wholly improved irrigation method -- and I won't -- I have to remember that the wise man gives in and starts depending on the unfashionable sprinkler early in the season with the ultimate, entirely estimable purpose of saving his back.

            First I started feeling a soreness at the top of my right shoulder. It took me months, literally, to correlate carrying the two-gallon watering can around the property with that persistent soreness. Then came the day when I attempted an-ill timed contortion involving the use of my back. Almost all physical movements connected to watering plants do also connect to the human back, a notoriously temperamental piece of bodywork. -- and, according to most authorities, a poorly designed committee-solution to the problem of standing up straight.

            I can still stand up straight these days, but bending is just a pain in the, well -- lower back.

            Not that I've stopped watering, entirely. Especially the late-season new acquisitions such as Joe-Pye Weed (third photo down) and a blue cliome that perked up the late season color profile and, of course, my perennial favorite anemones (top two photos). I like them almost as much as my back.

The Roosevelts: 'Rosies' and Thorns in America's Common Garden

         If we learn anything from the recently concluded Ken Burns PBS documentary on 'The Roosevelts,' it's that the progressive, humanitarian future foreseen by America's two great 20th century presidents has regressed in the last thirty years to a version of the darker, oligarchal, big money-manipulated past.

            It was Theodore Roosevelt, a Progressive Republican, who declared he would stand up to "the malfactors of great wealth."

            Nowadays Washington insiders would proudly wear that phrase as a team affiliation on their T-shirts. If someone or some (corporate) entity possesses great wealth, he must be good, because it's only by cuddling up to possessors of great wealth that Washington insiders can keep their positions. It's the new normal. Elections are too expensive for a Congressman to look a gift horse, however mangy, in the mouth. The Supreme Court tells us that's the way things should be.

            Franklin Delano Roosevelt had some interesting epithets as well for those who opposed his progressive social legislation -- banking regulation to prevent dangerous speculation, the FDIC to gaurantee deposits, the Civilian Conservation Corps to put people back to work, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, child labor laws, minimum wage, the Wagner Act to guarantee workers the right to organize, the GI Bill of Rights to loan veterans money to buy a house or go to college, Rural Electrification to bring the 20th century to farm country... the list goes on. He called these detractors "Economic Royalists," in one one of his famous Depression Era speeches. They "fear that we are threatening their power."

            FDR understood that the the corporate bosses and billionaires of his era saw themselves as "royalty," who believed they deserved riches because they were born to them. FDR was born to that class as well. He knew and understood them. He knew they 'hated' him as a 'traitor.'

            Banker and monopolist J.P. Morgan, the Darth Vader of the suffering inflicted on millions of exploited workers and their families during America's 'Gilded Age' -- i.e., the period when American society was increasingly divided into rich robber barons and impoverished masses -- clashed with both Roosevelts. He was shocked that Teddy Roosevelt invoked 'emergency' powers to prevent Morgan's takeover of the entire railroad system with the goal of setting tranporatation rates for all goods shipped by rail. It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution you have the power to do that, Morgan complained.

            "The Consitution exists for the people, not the people for the Constitution," TR replied.

            Why don't we have political leaders who can speak truth to power like that? Imagine anyone saying something like that today? The good of the American people comes first; the search for precedent in the law courts a distant second.  

            FDR saved the country in 1933 by closing the banks until he had a plan to reform them -- and to restore Americans' confidence in their solvency. Many argue that he saved capitalism itself from perishing through its own excesses. The hatred of the billionaires was a price he was willing to pay for saving America from chaos and despair, and saving them from the real possibility of a Soviet-style, class-based revolution. 

            While the main lines of the Roosevelt story might be familiar, what continues to amaze me is that the words -- the public articulation of ideas, ideals and values -- routinely spoken by the two Roosevelts in the White House are just plain absent from today's political vocabulary.

            In one of the documentary's many remarkable archived film moments, FDR observes that a public policy should not be judged by whether "it added to those who already had more than enough, but whether it added something to those who have too little."

            You couldn't say that today without being attacked for being unfair to the 1 percenters. In the American political mind the concept of "having too much" no longer eixists. Given the routinely obscene compensation packages for CEOs, bankers and stock brokers, how could it? Politicians no longer say "malfactors of great wealth," they say "big donors with purchased access to elected officials." The Supreme Court says 'sure, go ahead, buy as many Congressmen as you want.'

            As a result, the so-called 'man in the street' no longer realizes that the super-rich are fleecing the public good to feather their own no nests.

            And there is no consensus that public policy ought to be concerned primarily with those who have too little. That government, again in the words of FDR, has an obligation to take action to ensure "a decent place, and a decent government" for its citizens. If you are unemployed, poor, hungry or homeless, or driven into penury by exorbitant medical costs, the general opinion today appears to be that such matters are your own business. 'Why come running to us?' Congression leaders ask today.' We take care of ourselves. Model your behavior on us.'

            Americans wrote thousands of letters every day to FDR when he was in the White House because, in the words of one correspondent, this was the first time they thought someone in Washington actually cared about them.

            Somehow we've lost the notion that "providing for the common good" was the purpose of government.

            Maybe watching a documentary that provides a detailed passage through the major events of the first half of the 20th century will remind us of how hard life was for so long for so many "common people" and how far American had to come to create the social advantages so many of the Baby Boomers could take for granted. Do we have to go all the way back to 1900 and do it all over again?