Author Archives: Mary Baker Eaton

The Early to Mid Twenties Thing

Having talked to various young men and women in their early to mid twenties, in Newburyport and elsewhere, I am beginning to think that the early to mid twenties thing may be as difficult in its own way as the teenage years thing.

I have two wonderful Newburyport neighbors who are somewhere in their late thirties and early forties, closer to, and therefore with better memories of, the age of the twenty age thing than moi.

They tell me that it is a teetering transition time between adulthood and childhood (I naively thought this took place at 18) and it’s best to throw them to the wolves.

My son seems to agree with the throwing to the wolves thing, at least when it comes to the female member of the parenting part. I am all in agreement, with the great hope that the journey to adulthood thing, not only has been set into motion, but is chugging down the adulthood path at some sort of consistent regularity.

However, it is not necessarily easy to have gone intensely down the parenting highway at a good clip for a good couple of decades, get off at a 30 mile an hour thoroughfare, Newburyport or elsewhere, and be able to actually slow down. The brakes get quite a workout. I am, however, more than ready to enjoy the scenery.

Others who are older than my Newburyport neighbors, with children who are in their 30’s and 40’s tell me a different story. They look at me with either a smile or a frown, and tell me, “They never really leave home.”

And at least for me, while my parents were alive, that was indeed true. I might not have actually been present at their actual dwelling or in contact at that actual moment, but there was always a sense of “home,” one that, yes, might have evolved over the years, but still, in whatever shape it took, existed in a very tangible way. And I didn’t comprehend that I had stood on that foundation, with both obliviousness and confidence, until that foundation was no longer there.

Turning Heads in New York City

I was in New York (City) visiting my Dad and had lunch with him at his favorite eating lunch haunt in Mid-Manhattan.

It was one of those gorgeous New York spring days, and I walked back to where my Dad lived. And, as usual, when visiting my father, I was dressed in my “New York best.”

And I found as I walked North, I turned heads.

When my father got home that evening from work (yes, in his eighties, almost to ninety, my father worked, and loved to work), I told him that walking home I had “turned heads.”

He looked at me with that beady, quizzical look of his as if to say “Beany (he used to call me “Beany”), you are a woman of a “certain age,” and women of a certain age simply don’t’ turn heads.”

But I’d say to him, “No, Dad, really.”

When I was down visiting in New York one Christmas, when it was one of those blessed Christmases when it was actually warm outside, my son and I took a cab to his quintessential New York walk-up apartment near 42nd street, to bring back some of the Christmas presents that he had received. And we walked back to where my Dad lived, winding our way though a ridiculously packed Rockefeller Center.

Bakers don’t walk in New York, they stride. And yes, I was dressed up in my New York finest. And my son, who was also striding along side me, would say things like, “Mom, did you see that guy, he was trying to pick you up, and he was half your age!”

He recounted this amazing occurrence to my father when we arrived back at my father’s dwelling. My Dad gave him the same beady, quizzical look. And my son said to him, “No, Poppy, it’s true, really, the guy was half her age.”

When my Dad was ill and dying, I didn’t do any striding around New York City. It was more sort of stumbling blindly. And I noticed something–I sure as hell didn’t turn any heads.

It was as if in my grief, I had become invisible, or if not invisible, then sending out a grief aura, that folks in New York would like to avoid.

I thought of the old saying that goes something like, “When you smile the world smiles with you, when you cry, you cry alone.” (Of course this is not true everywhere, people in other parts of the country actually do respond with empathy to grief.)

And I came up with my own version of the old saying. It goes like this: “When you stride confidently in New York City, no matter how old you are, you turn heads. When you stumble in grief, you become as invisible as the ghost of the loved one that you mourn.”

Newburyport Walking

I walk. That’s what I do. Some people ski. I walk.

I have my Newburyport route, so when it’s time to take a break, I don’t even have to think about it. Set myself on Newburyport walking-autopilot, and off I go.

People ask me, “You walk everyday, how much?”

And I say, “Two miles.”

And invariably they say, “That’s not enough.”

And then I think to myself (I never, ever say it out loud, I’m far, far too polite), “Look at me and look at you. Who’s in better shape. I don’t even have midriff-bulge (yet).”

When I was pregnant, my father announced to me one day, that after my pregnancy, I would get the dreaded midriff-bulge, and that it would never, ever go away.

It’s been a few decades since I last gave birth, and I look into the mirror and go, “Do you have mid-drift-bulge yet? Is this mid-drift bulge?” And after all these years, I’ve decided that my father was wrong. I only have, decades later, a very mild case of the midriff-bulge thing.

Actually, as an entire family, we never got the dreaded obesity gene thing. No, we all eat like birds, and when something goes wrong, we end up not having any appetite, and lose tons of weight, as well as any mild midriff-bulge thing that we might have actually acquired along the way, instead of the other way around.

People, who don’t have this very fortunate gene, always look at us and say things like, “You look so gaunt.”

And I want to say something like (but I never, ever do, I’m far, far too polite), “Don’t you wish sister.” or “Don’t you wish you dope. You have the midriff-bulge gene, and you’re just jealous as all get-out. You’re dying to look gaunt.” (No pun intended.)

But instead, I just smile, and say what a friend of mine calls the “Cheerio prayer.” I say “Oh.”

And then I sometimes, if it’s me that’s been told I look, “So gaunt,” I add, “I guess it’s from those two miles of Newburyport walking.”

Sailing to Obama Land

As I reread the entries on the Newburyport Blog of the last few days, they appear almost “giddy.” Now the Newburyport Blog has been silly at times, but “giddy,” I’m not so sure.

And as I think about this, I think I’m feeling giddy, because as a nation we’ve set sail and are very, very close (like on Tuesday) to Obama Land. (Although, I’m not too happy about the potential Secretary of the Treasury not having paid some of his taxes, I don’t care if it’s a “mistake.” I want my Secretary of the Treasury to have absolutely no hint of indiscretion, much less have the vague possibility of being indiscrete, or just as bad, being just plain old stupid. No, I want Obama Land to come up with a saint for Secretary of the Treasury, and I really don’t care that a human being, whose had that much money and power over the years, could not possibly meet that criteria. I want it anyway. Plus I’d like to have a Secretary of the Treasury during these scary financial time, in place right at the get-go, and, as of this morning, that doesn’t look as if it’s going to happen.)

And I’m glad to see the Land of Bush-Cheney fade further and further into the horizon, hoping that for once that the earth actually is flat, and Bush-Cheney Land falls over the edge, landing somewhere in permanent oblivion.

Oh the relief I feel at the thought of having someone, yes, human and of course mistake prone, like the rest of us human beings, but actually, intelligent, articulate, possibly “centrist” in his approach, thoughtful and it appears calm and possibly even balanced.

Whether all of this could possibly be true, at the moment, I really don’t care. It’s like the beginning of a romance, where no matter how flawed the human being might be, they appear saint like and untainted to their significant other. The reality of actual humanness can sink in later.

They don’t call it a “honeymoon phase” for nothing. I’m so looking forward to my first hundred days, first thousand days even (this guy really needs some major breathing room here) of happy fantasy, that despite all odds, Obama Land will pull off what seems like the near impossible, to restore health, financial and otherwise, happiness and peace to the world. I want my moment, in fact I want a very, very long moment, of being totally out of touch with national and international political reality.

Icicles Are Us

Icicles are supposed to be beautiful, sort of like living chandeliers, but I have a vague remembrance of once being told that as far as Newburyport houses go, icicles are bad, bad, bad.

I’m not sure if this is true, but it actually makes sense to me, so I’ve decided it is true.

This is one of the reasons I use my trusty roof-rake (see previous post), so, among other reasons, I don’t have the dreaded (all though I’m not sure why) Newburyport icicle thing.

I stand out in my Newburyport driveway, look at my Newburyport roof, and despite having used my trusty Newburyport roof-rake, I still have icicles. This is a mystery. But I’ve decided that although slightly menacing and dagger like, they also so sort of do look like drippy little chandeliers about to bring down my roof gutters, so I decide to enjoy them, or as my son would say, “Mom, just forget about it–put it on the shelf.”

On the shelf, the icicle thing goes, that is until I go for my walk. Then I start noticing icicles all over my neighborhood.

And on one house the icicles look as if they are blowing sideways. I’m not kidding, not up and down icicles, but sideways icicles.

I stand in the middle of the road (it’s a rarely traveled, Newburyport one way street road) and examine this ambiguity. “Could it be that this particular Newburyport house is close to the water, and the icicles actual are blowing in the wind,” I think to myself.

But as I walk back to my dwelling, I actually find crooked icicles dangling here and there. And gasp, when I get back to my own house, I notice that I actually have one angled icicle. One angled icicle among many, many long nifty straight ones.

Now this really is inscrutable.

I suppose I could visit the World Wide Web and learn about this icicle mystery one day. But for now, I’ve just decided to take my son’s wise advice, and really and truly put the icicle thing “on the shelf,” and accept this odd icicle anomaly.

Painting and Newburyport Snow Removal

I find that I clear the snow out of my driveway the way I paint. I find this both weird, but at the same time, strangely reassuring.

When it didn’t snow in Newburyport, MA, what seems like every three to four days, and only snowed now and then, or some Newburyport winters not even at all, I never even noticed a pattern of snow driveway removal by moi.

Now when it snows in Newburyport, MA, I’m starting to go into auto pilot.

First I talk to the snow, “What you again?” “What is it this time? A few cute snowflakes mixed it with a dash of drizzly icy rain?” I might say to the stuff that’s falling or already landed.

It’s the first thing I do when I walk into my Newburyport studio in the morning. I talk to my paintings. “How are we do’n today?” “You look a whole lot better than you did last night.” That sort of thing.

The next thing I do is tackle the big snow picture. No details here. Only unlike painting, with snow, I have help. I have count’em, two neighbors with snow-blowers. God bless them.

So, I always hope that my Newburyport neighbors will actually tackle the big snow picture, before I get out there with my trusty shovel.

And then comes the details, just like in painting. I clean up the edges of the driveway, clear a path to the fire hydrant, make sure there is a nifty clearing to the storage shed. Oh, yes, and make sure the top of the car has no snow.

I learned the hard way, during one Newburyport winter from hell, the snow on the top of my car turned to ice, because I figured, who cares it can stay. But it fell forward in a block and dented my hood. Showed me. Now that snow is the first to go. Not going to make that mistake again.

And then the roof-rake. I’m starting to get real obsessive here, just like with my Newburyport paintings. I’ve offered my neighbor the use of my trusty roof-rake, but, their tool of choice is definitely the very efficient snow-blower. And who could possibly blame them.

And then the driveway and I have a major chat. “I want to see pavement,” I say, “No ice, no white stuff, no trampled snow. I want my mail person to have a nice stroll to the mail box, when they deliver the mail. Hear me?” I say this very quietly, so my neighbors don’t hear me talking to my Newburyport driveway.

And then, yes, I get out the dainty, but slightly beaten up broom at the end, just the way I end up using tiny little #000 brushes on my paintings. But I’m not painting gorgeous pictures containing green stuff and warm weather, I’m longing for green stuff and warm weather instead.

Rhododendron Weather Predicting Qualities

I don’t need to turn on the weather channel or peer at my web weather channel bookmark setting on my computer, to know in the morning when it’s New England cold outside.

When I wake up and my hands feel all crinkly and dry, I know it’s one of two thing. A) I’ve developed some mysterious fatal disease over the last 8 hours, or B) the humidity in the house has dropped because it’s freezing outside.

Since so far it has never been A) I usually figure it must be B).

After a few sips of coffee, I shuffle into my studio (where I’m also trying to madly expand Mary Baker Art by obsessively designing websites to be sent out into the world via the World Wide Web) and peer out my window at my trusty outdoor thermometer. And sure enough, it’s B), the wretched thing reads below 10 degrees, and it’s freezing outside.

I also learned to tell whether it was cold outside, without looking at an outdoor thermometer, by my Dad. As a young girl, by father would take me to the dinning room window, point at the loan rhododendron in the small yard next door, and point out that the leaves on the loan rhododendron were not perky, but shriveled and pointing straight down to the ground. Ergo, my father would point out, it was freezing outside and I better “bundle up.” Sure enough he was always right.

I’ve always been fond of rhododendrons. Maybe it’s the vast array of rhododendrons at Maudslay State Park here in Newburyport, that at one point were subjects of lots of paintings by me. Or, it could be the fond memories of my father’s rhododendron weather science predictions. Or it could be multi-determined.

I’ve planted all sorts of rhododendrons in my small Newburyport garden, and I peer at them on winter mornings, trying to guess the New England temperature, before I shuffle in and peer at my trusty outdoor weather thermometer. My rhododendrons, weather predicting wise, are always right on the money.

However, I’ve noticed that rhododendrons, landscaping wise, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, appear to be going out of fashion.

As I keep squeezing yet one more rhododendron plant in my now rhododendron filled small garden, I notice that huge, literally century old, magnificent and stately rhododendron plants are being hacked out of century old High Street magnificent gardens, not to mention lesser century old rhododendrons in “lesser” Newburyport destinations.

So, either I’m out of touch with new landscaping designs (which is highly probable), or the owners of the dwelling in which these gorgeous rhododendrons are being hacked down, don’t know about their weather predicting qualities. Or maybe they do know about their weather predicting qualities, but figure since they now live in the 21st century, they can watch the weather channel instead.

On Frogs and the Once Being Toaded Dilemma

As many long time readers of the Newburyport Blog know, I have a fondness for frogs.

Actually my fondness for frogs developed as a defense against being “Toaded.”

A little background here, because how soon we forget.

There was a time, long, long ago, when Tom Ryan ruled the political Newburyport earth, and had a local political journal called “The Undertoad.” Mr. Ryan had an astounding radar for what drove any particular human being nuts. And if a Newburyport human being crossed a particular Tom Ryan code of ethics, that human being got “Toaded,” i.e. slammed in the Undertoad, and all their particular buttons got wildly pressed.

It was not a pleasant experience for those who entered into the very, very long (and actually it was becoming somewhat distinguished) list of the Newburyport Toaded.

I figured, writing the Newburyport Blog, that it was only a matter of time, before, I too would get Toaded. But Mr. Ryan went on to bigger and better things, like being given the Human Hero Award by the MSPCA-Angell Animal Medical Center, receiving it at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and headlining the award ceremony with Emmylou Harris. Not a bad gig.

My big defense against getting Toaded–a bunch of stuffed frogs. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, it seems a little out of touch with reality. Oh well.

But the frogs and I had a grand old time (and for goodness sakes we still may). There was a good deal of eye rolling, especially by male readers of the Newburyport Blog, about my beloved frogs. I was told once that no serious reader would read any post that contained green critters, except this person had read all the posts containing green critters. Go figure.

I was also told that because of the frog thing, I was totally whacked. Yes, “No Comment.”

However, it is my experience, that weirdly, the more political power an individual actually had, the more they actually liked my cadre of green things. A sort of interesting frog political Rorschach test.

I was listening to a friend talk about a (national) politician, and they were talking about this person not exactly being a “prince,” but no “frog” either.

And that got me to thinking. Maybe all those readers who didn’t like my frogs, were actually frogs themselves. And no amount of frog kissing would ever turn them into “princes” or bring about some sort of fairy tale ending, like being honored at the Kennedy Center for a humanitarian award and headlining that 21st Annual Animal Hall of Fame dinner with Emmylou Harris.

Ain’t life grand.

Primary Care Physicians and Bye-Bye Doctors

I have a very conscientious GP aka primary care physician, which I gather from looking at the news lately is actually pretty hard to come by these days.

Apparently there’s a vast GP shortage.

I guess to go all the way through medical school and only become a GP could be kind of a letdown. I can’t imagine even going to medical school in the first place, much less spending lots more time and money in medical school, and becoming a specialist, which medical insurance companies now are not so found of paying. Sort of a catch-22 for folks going to medical school, if you ask me.

I don’t like going to specialists, it means something could possibly be wrong. I’d rather just go to a GP.

Once, a while back, I was feeling particularly hypochondriac like, and mentioned an “ailment” to my very conscientious GP. Bad move on my part, let me tell you.

My very conscientious GP tested me for every terrifying thing in the book. You name it, if it was terrifying, we found out whether I had it or not. This could also be called CYA, but I’m not sure. Thankfully, I didn’t have any of the terrifying, life threatening or fatal ailments that I was tested for.

Showed me. Now the when my very conscientious GP asks me if anything is “wrong,” I think about it for a mila-moment and then say, “Nope, everything’s just fine.” I don’t care what possible ailment, that I’ve conjured up in my brain, that I think I might have. No more terrifying tests for me, thank you very much.

And insurance companies should learn from this. Instead of saying, “No, we’re not going to test you for x, y or z.” Take a different approach. A person comes in and complains of burping, you scare the shit out them, and then they never ask for anything ever again. Sort of like dealing with a wayward two year old or difficult teenager. You know, reverse psychology.

But, no, as I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve gotten very, very used to getting missives (if not just down right taking them from granted, anticipating them even), disguised as expensive looking brochures, informing me that, nope, guess what, we said that you were covered for x out of x, y and z, but guess what.. x is now out. Lucky you.

In fact, last week I get a long letter from my medical insurance agency letting me know that, oops, some patients thought that their doctors were part of this insurance company’s insurance plan. But guess what, in 3 long weeks, bye-bye doctors. Got to go find some other folks. Not that this is the medical insurance agency’s fault. Oh no. The doctors want to be paid an actual living wage, and that is too much to ask of the medical insurance agency. You got to give these medical agency people a break, come on.

So I’m hoping that my very competent GP, aka primary care physician doesn’t get deluged with all those patients, betrayed by their greedy doctors, wanting to actually get paid something decent for a visit to the physician, GP, specialist or whatever.

I still like having the option of saying, “Nope, everything’s just fine,” but knowing that if something actual isn’t “just fine,” there is someone out there who will scare the shit out of me, trying to find out what the hell might be going on.

Insurance, My House is Worth Tons

I get my new home insurance policy and it seems high.

On one of the few transverseable Newburyport winter wonderland days, I wander into my insurance company, introduce myself to the new young lady in charge of insuring my stuff, and declare that the new premium seems “high.”

I also tell her that I haven’t read through the darn thing, I have no idea what’s in it, but promise that indeed I will peruse the document in question.

Also, somehow the subject of “Minnesota” (see previous post) comes up, and a declaration is made that my new young lady insurance person would never think of leaving good old New England. I, of course, think that this is downright dandy, and feel that we have a bond (a good thing to feel that you have with your new insurance lady, which, of course may or may not be true).

A few days later I actually do read the document in question. I find out, that it appears among other things that I am insured for a golf cart that I don’t own, and a boat, that I don’t own either. The insurance company also seems to think that the price of my house has actually gone up. Were that that would be actually true, in these lousy and scary financial times.

So I chat with my new insurance lady and explain that I don’t want to be insured for a golf cart or a boat that I don’t own. I’m told that this is standard policy, but I zone out during the explanation of why this is “standard” stuff.

I’m sitting there wondering, because I haven’t perused the document in question that carefully, what else might I be paying to be insured for. A flock of sheep? An island in the Bahamas? The possibilities are endless.

Also, I’m so used to getting statements from my medical insurance telling me all the things that I’m not insured for, that I’m just not used to being insured for a golf cart that I’m never planning to use, much less never planning to buy.

After the explanation, that I’ve paid absolutely no attention to, because I’ve been wondering what else I could be insured for, I also inform my new insurance lady, that in these times when houses, on a whole, are worth less than they were, let’s say a year ago (woe is me), that there is no way I’m paying what the insurance company thinks my house might be worth.

Silence, the insurance company might not agree.

So, instead of saying something tactful like, “I’m sure you can convince them to come to another conclusion,” I say the sort of thing that makes people wish they worked somewhere else. The sort of thing that instead of putting a smile on a person’s face, they grip their desk when they see you or hear the sound of your voice, and say to their family when they get home, “You would not believe the day that I’ve had!”

Maybe it was reading about being insured for the golf cart thing, but I slipped and pulled what my son would call a “New Yawker.” Lots of explanations on my part, but no excuse.

Newburyport Perpetual Winter

I’m still here you know.

I meet someone in the grocery store. Their face lights up with relief, huge hug, “You haven’t left,” they say. “You didn’t go to Minnesota.”

It’s nice to see their face light up.

Endomorphins from huge hugs are always appreciated.

But the “Minnesota” thing has me stumped. Maybe in the midst of yet another New England winter from hell, I might, might consider, possibly a stint in much warmer place like North Carolina, for instance. But Minnesota? As I recall from my vast readings of Laura Ingalls Wilder, winters in Minnesota are far worse than in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

I meet someone in CVS shortly after my very nice encounter in the grocery store. “You’re still here? We thought you’d left.” No, “How nice to see you.” Certainly no lighting up of any face. No, just a good old “Newburyport Yankee,” “You’re still here?”

Ah, what a relief. The “dichotomy” that is Newburyport appears to be very much around. The “dichotomy” that I’ve written about on the Newburyport Blog for now 3 years (good grief), poked at, mused over, tried to explain, is still very much part of the community in which I live. I find myself oddly relieved by this.

I like these “tough old birds.”

“Tough old bird,” was a “saying” that my Mother used to use. This was way before feminism was even quaintly fashionable. No one in their right mind would refer to any female these days as a “tough old bird.”

Where have I been? Obsessing over the sucky, let’s face it, yes, it’s beyond sucky, economy. Wondering (vast understatement) if anyone in their right mind would buy gorgeous paintings (I’m an artist), when even the very rich are losing their houses (or at least some of their houses).

So I’ve been designing “web stuff.” (Hopefully more on this later.) Thinking that it could be a good idea to expand “Mary Baker Art” to “web stuff.” I’ve been contemplating that websites could be works of art, launched into the universe by the World Wide Web, aka the Internet.

Yes, and what better project, I say to myself, than to design websites, during a sucky New England winter, that feels like something out of Narnia when that witch was in charge. It feels sometimes, like a frozen, perpetual “Ground Hog Day.”

One of my neighbors looks at me quizzically as I brush my front steps of snow (lots of snow) with a dainty, somewhat beat-up, broom. I tell them that it gives me hope that in the not too distant future, I will be complaining about wretchedly long hot summers (this is actually true).

They shrug (it’s a good thing that I’m an artist, I can pretty much get away with this kind of nonsense) and look at me as if I’m nuts.

Politics in the Middle

My guess (actually it’s been my hunch for a while) that Mr. Obama might have more problems with the “Left” of his party than with the “Right” of the other guys. (That was even more my hunch when I heard his first named “go to guy,” Chief of Staff, would be Rahm Emanual, not exactly a wilting flower. I thought, “Maybe my hunch could be correct.”)

Already there are grumblings about Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team, not so much from the “Center Right” folks, but from the “Left Leaning” folks. Sigh.

This is my guess. When President-Elect Obama got his first intelligence briefing, he might have said to himself, “I knew things were bad, but, Oh my, this really and truly is a terrifying foreign policy world.” And folks like Mr. Gates (Secretary of Defense) were asked to stay on for the good and safety of the country. What Mr. Obama would call a “practical,” not a partisan thing. (Actually he most likely would not call it a “thing,” far too many smarts to sound like Dr. Seuss.)

So here is one of my favorites, what I would call the ever eccentric (I’ve always liked eccentric people), ever outspoken, to the Left, Congressman from Massachusetts, Mr. Barney Frank:

“‘It would be very helpful if the president-elect would become more involved in resolving the issue over the source of the funds,’ he (Barney Frank) said.”

(No offense to Mr. Frank, but President-Elect Obama has been kind of busy lately, with trying to put together a new administration and everything.)

Mr. Frank goes on to say, “Having lived with this very right wing Republican group that runs the House most of the time, the notion of trying to deal with them as if we could be post-partisan gives me post-partisan depression,” … (The entire article from the Huffington Post can be read here.)

I can’t help wondering whether Mr. Frank’s good old North East (reminds me of a good old New Yawker) combative spirit, might be part of the reason, although not all of the reason, there has, to my knowledge, not exactly been a “love fest” between Mr. Frank and the Republican Right.

And that, hope against hope, Mr. Obama’s calm, practical, (and let’s not rule out tough, don’t forget Mr. Emanuel), inclusive, problem solving approach, not to mention scary melt-down times, could be slightly more effective than the, at times, entertainingly “bombastic” style of Barney Frank.

National and Newburyport Local

In two and a half months so much has happened. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath. And the world is still swirling around and it still feels as if I’m out of balance.

A person who does seem to be in balance (and very calm), is our president-elect, Barack Obama.

My one very strong reservation when I went to the voting booth and cast my ballot, was that I had no indication, really, of how Mr. Obama would govern.

And so far, I am unbelievably relieved.

My great hope was that with the chit chat of the “middle” class, Mr. Obama would indeed govern from the “middle,” and with smarts.

And it appears from the appointment of his economic team and his foreign policy team that “middle” and with smarts may be us. In my book so far this is a, “Whew.”

Having blogged The Newburyport Blog for almost 3 years now, and having followed minutely how folks govern on the local level, as I’ve said before, I’ve become a downright “centrist,” because it appears to me that governing from the center, locally, has the best chance of getting things done.

And maybe it’s that just these “up in the air” times are making me cranky (they are making a lot of people cranky), but I’m having very little tolerance for the folks that are on either edge of the spectrum, right or left. My eye-rolling response to both is, “Please give it up, let us get important (vast understatement) things done.”

And what happens nationally, very much effects us locally. Such things as aid to states in financially perilous times, has a whole lot to do with Newburyport, MA, in the hopes that, if it arrives, state aid trickles down to our fair seaside city.

I am local, and I am hoping for good national (as my friend Frank Schaeffer would say) “Juju.”

Newburyport Banks

I stopped by my Newburyport mutual savings bank, which I call one of our Newburyport community banks, and it was business as usual. I asked if they were giving out mortgages, and Yup, yes they most surely are.

And I am so grateful that I have my mortgage with one of the local community banks. Which is what I told them.

One of the perplexing things about this financial crisis, is that institutions that are having trouble don’t know what kind of mortgages they have.

That is because their mortgages have been sold and resold.

And one of the things that I like about our Newburyport banks, and I’ve said this before, is that they are local in the best sense. They know exactly what mortgages they have, and who they lent them to. They do NOT sell them. They keep them, and they make money off them.

They are in great shape.

Responsibility, accountability, commonsense, fiscally sound. Not to repeat myself, but to repeat myself, that’s one great example for the situation that we as a country find ourselves in.

And part of me even hesitates to blog during a financial crisis as big as the one that we are experiencing at the moment. I just could not believe it when the House of Representatives did not pass the rescue bill yesterday and the DOW dropped almost 800 points. Yikes!

And someone described the situation to me this way. It’s a credit problem (one which our Newburyport banks are not experiencing, but obviously one which a lot of others banks are). It’s as if someone turned the water on the water spout, off or down to a trickle so the vegetation could not get any water. Consequences not so good.

It would mean that small business could have problems getting credit for their payroll. Not only might the businesses not grow, they may not be able to pay employees and jobs could be lost.

It could be difficult to get credit for cars, homes, a college education. People’s retirement could be at risk.

So this rescue bill if it does NOT pass, could effect all of us.

I’ve contacted my Representative John Tierney who voted against this bill, and asked him the next time round, in no uncertain terms, to get the thing done and vote for it.

Newburyport Yankee Economics

It was once called “Voodoo Economics.” I believe it was called that by the first Mr. Bush in the Republican primary against Ronald Regan.

I always thought Mr. Bush was right. “Trickle down” economics surely seemed voodooish to me.

I keep coming back to Ronald Regan. Sorry, heresy, I never thought he was a good president. I still don’t. I thought his deregulation economic stuff was a lousy idea. With the huge Wall Street bailout in the works, I wonder what he would think now?

It always struck me as being very un-Yankee like. Newburyport, MA has often been thought of as “Yankee” territory.

We have two “Yankee” banks in town. They do not sell their mortgages, and as a result, because they are responsible for what happens, it’s always been the case, to my knowledge, that if anyone applied for a mortgage, they got checked out pretty good, and had to actually prove that they could pay that mortgage.

“Yankees” tend to save. Coming up with something like coming up with a down payment when buying a house, could be seen as a good thing. Really. It means that the person is more likely to be very committed to making it work.

Our “Yankee” community banking institutions are doing just fine. And it’s because of what some might see as their “thrifty,” commonsense way of doing things.

It used to look sort of old fashion, even frumpy. Not any more. Newburyport Yankee economics is not “voodoo economics.” It works during good times and less than good times.

And it is my very firm opinion that Americans could see a great example by looking at how our Newburyport, MA local, community banks work.

Mythic Absolution, Newburyport, Politics

In thinking about the “mythic” power of politicians, and what they represent to our collective American unconscious (see previous posts), I began to wonder about what other myths our top ticket candidates might embody.

Bill Moyers (yes, wise men and women tend to make the top of my list) back in January 2008, addressed the myth of Barack Obama taking away white guilt of racism. (Myth not being something that would be either true or false, but a story or a person that represents a world view.)

You can read the transcript of that fascinating segment here.

For whites to be absolved of a history of racism has a very powerful mythic quality about it.

And then I started thinking about what other myths does Palin personify. One of those myths could be that, even a woman with a large family, could successfully work, i.e. be a governor or a vice president. (Just as a btw, our very own former governor Jane Swift, as I recall, had trouble demonstrating that this particular myth could be a reality.)

And this is also one very powerful myth. Because if someone with 5 children, a newborn with special needs being one of them, could be a successful mother and hold such a powerful office–that could mean, that a family with 1 or 2 children, with both parents who have to work, because of economic realities, and who may on some level feel very, very guilty when they leave their child with a caregiver– if that person could successfully accomplish that feat, that resolves an awful lot of guilt, for an awful lot of people.

And this goes straight to the heart of our difficult economic times. People are having to work harder to pay for gas, utilities, food and hold onto their homes. This could often mean even less time spent with their families–creating even more guilt on the part of struggling families.

And for families with this particular scenario, which is an awful lot of families in America, Palin resolves a lot of guilt in very difficult economic circumstances.

So, when I think about it, and this applies to families in Newburyport, MA as well, my question would be, are the many dilemmas that we as a nation face that Palin could represent (see earlier posts as well), are they stronger than the mythic quality of Barack Obama’s absolving the white world of racism? (Again check out Bill Moyers’ exploration of this concept here.)

Newburyport, Power of Myth

Bill Moyers again did not disappoint.

In this weeks Bill Moyers Journal, Bill Moyers had this to say:

“The novelist Russell Banks, in his first book of non-fiction, just published, explains the Sarah Palin phenomenon even before it happened. In “Dreaming Up America,” he writes that we choose our presidents not on the basis of their experience or even their political views, but on how well they tap into our basic beliefs, our deepest communal desires, including our religious or spiritual beliefs. Our presidents, he writes, represent in some very personal way the imagination and the mythology of the people who elect them…”

“No wonder reality-based journalists are having a hard time with this story. Mythology is not their beat. But in the imagination of her tribe, Sarah Palin achieved an almost immaculate conception. Her lack of experience matters not to them. Nor do they care that her past is filled with contradictions, and nothing the press reports, no matter how grounded in fact, can shake their faith…”

The whole transcript can be read here.

And a comment on an opinion piece in the New York times has this to say:

“Sarah Palin appeals to the conservative base. But she also appeals to Americans who are longing for a glorious past. A past in which a hard working man could support a family, even if he did not have higher education (Todd Palin). A past in which a mother of young children could rely on relatives and friends to help her with her daily tasks. And, on a more archaic level, a past where you could go out and hunt and fish to bring food home to your family.

I have had enough of liberals making fun of the Palins. I do not agree with Sarah Palin’s political views, but I see how her life can be attractive in a society that is losing all these very basic securities.”

You can read that comment here.

And in a world where families are splintered, fragmented and globalized, I think the commentator is right when she says, “But she also appeals to Americans who are longing for a glorious past… A past in which a mother of young children could rely on relatives and friends to help her with her daily tasks.”

And it is also one of the reasons that people are so attracted to Newburyport, MA, because it holds out a myth, a myth of community, a community which people are an extended family, and support one another–that is so embodied by our beautiful, quaint, historic (and Federally funded) downtown, and the historic neighborhoods that surround it.

Myth, Politics, Newburyport

Either you love Sarah Palin or you don’t, and what 2 weeks since her arrival on the national political scene, people’s feelings on the matter seem to be already pretty much entrenched. And I am fascinated by this phenomenon.

My observation in local politics here in Newburyport, MA, is that people often vote viscerally on personality, not necessarily who would be best on the issues that face our small New England seaport city.

And I’m imagining that some part of this political reality would apply to how we would vote as citizens on a national ticket.

I came across a fascinating article by Joe Klein, September 10, 2008 at time.com.

“Palin’s embrace of small-town values is where her hold on the national imagination begins. She embodies the most basic American myth — Jefferson’s yeoman farmer, the fantasia of rural righteousness — updated in a crucial way: now Mom works too. Palin’s story stands with one foot squarely in the nostalgia for small-town America and the other in the new middle-class reality. She brings home the bacon, raises the kids — with a significant assist from Mr. Mom — hunts moose and looks great in the process. I can’t imagine a more powerful, or current, American Dream.”

Joe Klein goes on to talk about Ronald Regan:

“The blinding whiteness and fervent religiosity of the party he (Ronald Regan) created are an enduring testament to the power of the myth of an America that existed before we had all these problems. The power of Sarah Palin is that she is the latest, freshest iteration of that myth.

Joe Klein continues on:

“The Republican Party’s subliminal message seems stronger than ever this year because of the nature of the Democratic nominee for President. Barack Obama could not exist in the small-town America that Reagan fantasized. He’s the product of what used to be called miscegenation, a scenario that may still be more terrifying than a teen daughter’s pregnancy in many American households.”

I looked up “miscegenation,” I had never heard the word before. It means, “Cohabitation, sexual relations, or marriage involving persons of different races.”

Joe Klein concludes that the “mythic” nature of Obama’s story, is actually much more reflective of America today, but is a “vision is not sellable right now to a critical mass of Americans.”

You can read the entire article by Joe Klein here.

Newburyport, Losing Funding for Education

As many of the readers of the Newburyport Blog know, I am a big fan of Bill Moyers.

On September 5, 2008 Bill Moyers had this to say at the beginning of the segment on the Bill Moyers Journal:

“Fifty million American children went back to school this week. But as reporter Sam Dillon writes in the “New York Times”, more of them than ever are homeless and poor enough to need free meals. Mortgage foreclosures are throwing hundreds of families out of their homes each month. With fuel and food costs rising, with tax revenues falling, school budgets are in retreat. Detroit, for example, has laid off 700 teachers. We’re not talking about just a few isolated places. This is nationwide…

The Bush Administration was announcing an increase in American aid to Georgia by more than 1500 percent… From 64 million dollars this year to one billion dollars next year. A billion dollars. You can only wonder how many American kids a billion dollars could put back on the buses, back in class, and back in the cafeteria line.”

You can read the whole transcript here.

And this is one of the things that concerns me. We as a country have the Bush administration (I trust Bill Moyers) allocating one billion dollars next year to Georgia (the country not the state). One billion dollars that could have gone to the education of the children in the United States of America. Money that we in Newburyport, MA would not see go towards funding for our much under-funded public schools.

Come January, I want a president who would be wise and prudent in spending our tax dollars, who would make sure that, yes, the war on terror is vital, but so is the education of our children. I want a president who understands that. I do not want another four years of a Bush-Cheney administration.