Photo by Tony Sampas.
April 13th, 2012
Loaves & Hyacinths; Bread & Roses
Here’s another piece of lyrical writing that former Mayor John Robert Smith of Meridian, Mississippi, quoted at the Creative Placemaking Summit on Wednesday. This sentiment pre-dates the Bread & Roses slogan of Lawrence by some centuries, but makes the same case about the need to feed soul and body.
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“If I had but two loaves of bread, I would sell one and buy hyacinths, for they would feed my soul.”
- Prophet Muhammad (570-632)
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If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
and from thy slender store
Two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy Hyacinths to feed thy Soul.
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Sa’di (Persian poet, 1184-1283)
April 13th, 2012
‘A city is not builded in day’ (Vachel Lindsay)
On the Building of Springfield
Let not our town be large, remembering
That little Athens was the Muses’ home,
That Oxford rules the heart of London still,
That Florence gave the Renaissance to Rome.
Record it for the grandson of your son —
A city is not builded in a day:
Our little town cannot complete her soul
Till countless generations pass away.
Now let each child be joined as to a church
To her perpetual hopes, each man ordained:
Let every street be made a reverent aisle
Where Music grows and Beauty is unchained.
Let Science and Machinery and Trade
Be slaves of her, and make her all in all,
Building against our blatant, restless time
An unseen, skilful, medieval wall.
Let every citizen be rich toward God.
Let Christ the beggar, teach divinity.
Let no man rule who holds his money dear.
Let this, our city, be our luxury.
We should build parks that students from afar
Would choose to starve in, rather than go home,
Fair little squares, with Phidian ornament,
Food for the spirit, milk and honeycomb.
Songs shall be sung by us in that good day,
Songs we have written, blood within the rhyme
Beating, as when Old England still was glad, —
The purple, rich Elizabethan time.
Say, is my prophecy too fair and far?
I only know, unless her faith be high,
The soul of this, our Nineveh, is doomed,
Our little Babylon will surely die.
Some city on the breast of Illinois
No wiser and no better at the start
By faith shall rise redeemed, by faith shall rise
Bearing the western glory in her heart.
The genius of the Maple, Elm and Oak,
The secret hidden in each grain of corn,
The glory that the prairie angels sing
At night when sons of Life and Love are born,
Born but to struggle, squalid and alone,
Broken and wandering in their early years.
When will they make our dusty streets their goal,
Within our attics hide their sacred tears?
When will they start our vulgar blood athrill
With living language, words that set us free?
When will they make a path of beauty clear
Between our riches and our liberty?
We must have many Lincoln-hearted men.
A city is not builded in a day.
And they must do their work, and come and go
While countless generations pass away.
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—Vachel Lindsay
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This poem was quoted by John Robert Smith, former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi, at the Gateway Cities Creative Placemaking Summit at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center on April 11. He now heads a national mass transit advocacy group, Reconnecting America. He spoke eloquently about the value of cities and the importance of the arts in the life of all cities. The summit was presented by MassINC, the Mass Cultural Council, and the state Executive Office of Housing and Urban Development.
April 13th, 2012
Lowering gas prices by Marjorie Arons-Barron
The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.
It never made sense to me, but now it does. I never thought this was the time for the President to open temporarily the spigot of the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve, the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil. Although prices were high and getting higher, there didn’t seem to be a real disruption in the oil supply. Speaking to the New England Council on April 11, Congressman Ed Markey made a cogent argument for immediate Presidential action.
According to him, a measured release can help stabilize and reduce prices, minimizing the impact of sky-high rates on our economy. George H.W. Bush released oil from the reserve in 1991 during the first Iraq War, Desert Storm; prices came down 19 percent. George W. Bush did it in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, also lowering prices. President Obama did it last June to respond to disruptions in Libya. Now, instead of war or natural disaster, we have another form of market disruption, in the form of speculation.
Traditionally 70 percent of those in the market were end users (us) and 30 percent speculators. Today that’s reversed. In fact, said Markey, “The largest single holder of home heating oil is Morgan Stanley.” That boggles the mind. Market manipulation helps explain why even though we’re producing more oil that we have since 1998 and demand is down (by nearly 2 million barrels a day over the last six years), prices are still rising.
Even the promise to release can help bring down prices and reduce incentives for speculation in the market. Prices started to come down slightly two weeks ago when Nicolas Sarkozy and even the Saudis started to talk about releasing more oil into the market. A petroleum reserve release is on the President’s table.
Real-life remedies for rampant speculation are threatened by budget politics in Washington. Budget slashers want to torch the budget for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission as well as eliminate the elements in Dodd-Frank reforms that would limit Wall Street’s power to manipulate the market. So, while Newt Gingrich promises a return to $2.50 a gallon oil (what’s he smoking?) and Mitt Romney embraces the Ryan slash-and-burn budget and wants to end Dodd Frank, these are policies that would encourage speculation that we would feel at the gas pump.
Tom Ashbrook spent a recent WBUR “On Point” segment exploring what the President can or can’t do regarding lowering oil prices. With Mitt Romney more certain than ever to be his party’s Presidential nominee, the hope is that we’ll now get a serious and full discussion of our energy policy, including a release of crude oil from the strategic petroleum reserve.
I’d greatly appreciate your thoughts in the comments section below.
April 13th, 2012
Mass Innovation in Lowell
Last Wednesday at the Appleton Mills in Lowell Mass Innovation Nights, ran an “event designed to leverage the local social media community. Every month the event showcases a wide range of new and innovative products from local companies. Mass Innovation Nights is marking its third anniversary and the first event in the Merrimack Valley” (Mass Innovation website).
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