Places to Avoid in New England

There's still some summer left and folks from hot climes think about cooling off in New England. Leaving aside the fact that New England humidity is often a rude surprise, the region has lots of charming places to visit: Vermont, Acadia National Park, Newport, Cape Cod, the White Mountains, the Berkshires, the Maine coast from York to Bethel... Those wanting an urban experience will find Boston a cultural and historical gem (and foodie paradise), Providence full of pleasant surprises, and Portland , ME and Burlington, VT the kind of places that spark the question, "Why wasn't I told about this place?"

Lawrence: New England's worst. But it has competition

The key to a good trip is knowing also where not to go. In truth, there simply aren't that many "nice" American cities and New England has the dishonor of sporting some real cesspools. Connecticut, for instance, has some of the poorest cities in the country, even though its per capita income is among the highest. As a public service, here are places you should avoid at all cost:

1. Lawrence, MA: If you wanted to update Dante's Inferno, Lawrence would be the ticket. It's a played out mill town that's become a dumping ground for social problems. Too poor to live in an urban ghetto? Try Lawrence. Last or near the bottom in every negative category imaginable.

2. Bangor, ME: Motorcycle gangs, fast food, and desperate people spending what they don't have in a faux-glitz casino. Bangor, once a lumber town, has always been rough, but the modern city exudes bad vibes.

3. New Haven, CT: Yale is there and it has amazing museums, but do not get lost here. Think gangbangers and crime ranging from petty (breaking into cars) to murder. For the record, New Haven pizza is America's most overrated.

4. Springfield, MA: On a warm day the stench of the Connecticut River's Bondi's Island waste treatment facility will force you to close the car windows. And that's one of the city's better features. The gateway to the postindustrial nightmare of Holyoke, Springfield has very little to recommend it, except the Basketball Hall of Fame. Luckily, that's just off the interstate, though you can see/smell Bondi's from there.

5. Central Falls/Pawtucket, RI: No jobs, decaying factories, dead downtowns... Central Falls was recently voted the worst town in America. That's not true, but not even Rhode Islanders find charm within the joined towns of Central Falls and Pawtucket. McCoy Stadium­, which opened in 1942, is one of minor league baseball's oldest venues. Not much else has been updated in Pawtucket either.

6. Lewiston, ME: A city that has become a dumping ground for refugees–especially Somalians–but this place was a pit long before they got there and they've actually made the town better. It's Holyoke with a colder climate.

7. St. Albans, VT: Here's a handle you don't want: the heroin capital of Vermont. The only other thing for which it's known is a Walmart frequented by bargain-hunting Quebecois. This saint should be desanctified.

8. Worcester, MA: The Detroit of Massachusetts–that is, a blue-collar tomb of crumbling red brick, rotting triple deckers, crime, and truly scary-looking street walkers. There are some nice parts to Worcester, but unless you know the city well and can negotiate traffic through its incomprehensible "squares" (which never have that shape), you'll never find them and neither will your GPS.

9. Brockton, MA & Bridgeport, CT: Even if these cities were not crime-ridden there would no reason to vist them. Does anything at all come to mind when you think of these places? I didn't think so.

10. Manchester, NH: Back in the day, Manchester was the world's largest industrial city. That day was the turn of the 20th century. Buildings of the former Amoskeag textile firm still line the riverbank, but Manchester is the poster child of New England deinstrialization. It has a nice minor league ballpark and enterprising city leaders. Some day it might turn around, but that day's not here yet.

Springfield's Losing Bet

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Downtown Atlantic City. See any prosperity?

 Springfield, Massachusetts–a city as high on anyone's vacation agenda as, say, Detroit. Like Detroit it's a postindustrial hellhole–a dumping ground for recent immigrants and poor folks because of its vacant housing stock. It's been in decline since the machine tool industry collapsed in the 1960s. Ask Western Massachusetts locals to describe it and you'll get gang warfare, drugs, racial tension, substandard schools, and slums. It has its charms–the Basketball Hall of Fame, a decent art museum, a few colleges–but few rational people spend more time there than they must. If Springfield were a dog, it would have been put down.

It's hardly a surprise that Springfield lobbied long and hard to secure one of the three casino licenses approved by Massachusetts legislators. City officials such as Mayor Domenic Sarno speak boldly of casinos as economic engines to revitalize the city, though it's just public posturing. In truth, Springfield is grasping at straws. Casinos are the latest desperate grab, after an inner city mall and a new Basketball Hall of Fame failed to make a dent, and no minor league baseball team wanted to relocate there. I'm not sure anything can revitalize Springfield, but the only bet I'll ever make there is that casinos are not the answer. The city will try–assuming Bay State voters don't repeal the casino enabling law in November–but casinos are the worst idea yet for trying to deter Springfield from its an inexorable slide to become Botany Bay without the view.

First, casinos are going to cost a bundle: improved access to the site, water main upgrades, tax abatements, costly demolition projects, utilities of all sorts…. The city has no money; hence it will have to bleed schools and social services to get it. Expect the city's grim social statistics to get even worse in the short run. It will be sold as short-term leveraging to secure a glittery future. Sure–said the man down to his last thou as he doubled down for a last spin on the roulette wheel.

Casinos are destined to flop in Springfield for reasons that go beyond investment or the morality of gambling. They will flop because Springfield is Springfield. If you're a high-stakes gambler, do you have to go there to drop your cash? Why would you? Why wouldn't you jet off to Vegas, which at least has warm weather and other attractions? Or down to Florida where you can also catch some races and loll on the beach? If you want to stay close to home, why not venture down the Mass Pike to Boston, which will also have a casino? Springfield has all the lack of charm of Atlantic City, sans the ocean.

Speaking of Atlantic City, is nobody paying attention to what's happening there? Jersey casinos are folding faster than a man holding a pairless poker hand. Observers taking off their rose-colored glasses might notice that nearly four decades of legalized Atlantic City gambling made no dent in alleviating the city's squalor. Most gamblers don't even leave the hotel lobby for the Boardwalk, let alone frequent downtown merchants. Several casinos have express bus routes that literally go under parts of the city, lest gamblers be forced to gaze upon the city's urban wreckage. If Atlantic City, with its access to Philadelphia and New York City can't turn the corner through casinos, explain how Springfield can.

It's certainly not that gambling would be unique. The casino bus left the station a long time ago. Thirty-five states now have casinos, a list that includes neighboring Connecticut and New York. I'm at a loss (wordplay intended) to understand why someone from Hartford (27 miles to the south) would come to Springfield instead of driving another 10 miles to Foxwoods, an established casino in a considerably more pleasant location. Or why an Albany poker player wouldn't head for the sylvan delights of Saratoga. Who's going to fuel the gambling jet in Springfield? Locals? In a city whose median income is six grand below the state average?

I could go on, but my money's on the following: a casino opens, costs Springfield a bundle, exacerbates already bad social statistics, struggles, and in 5-6 years folds it tent. Springfield has it backward. You need to make people want to come by cleaning up Dodge City, not adding to gun play. Want to know what casinos will mean to the city? Take a trip to Detroit. Not comparable you say? Try Bangor, Maine. It has a casino and if it gets more grim than Bangor, I don't want to know about it.

Rod MacDonald: Protest with a Wink, a Smile (and some anger)

ROD MacDONALD

Later That Night

Blue Flute Music 107

Every few years the mainstream media drives a lame stallion out of the stable to see if he'll gallop. All of a sudden there will be a spate of articles on the disappearance of protest music and every explanation except the right ones will be trotted out to tell us why there is no Dylan, Ochs, or Seeger in our midst. I think it was Holly Near who incredulously responded to a journalist's question of where all the idealists have gone by remarking, "You must be hanging around with the wrong people." Anyone who doubts Near's wisdom should check out Ron Olesko's excellent piece on David Rovics in SingOut! 55:4 (Spring 2014). Or maybe listen to Holly's music instead of asking her stupid questions.

There are some big differences between now and protest music's heyday in the 1960s. Unwilling draftees don't staff American wars for one; the civil rights movement battles for justice more in courts than on the streets for two. Plus, as folks like the late Utah Phillips observed, liberal uses of humor and irony go down better with post-Baby Boomers. And let's not forget that performers draw upon personal as well as public events for creative inspiration and that they need to make a living. Need I remind you that one of folk music's greatest gifts is capturing the universal human condition, not just the evening news.

A young musician looking to strike a balance between righteous anger, bemused irony, and just plain old good songwriting should check out folk vet Rod MacDonald. Later That Night is Rod's fourteenth album and it finds him in well-tuned wit, voice, and melody. He takes down religion's nasty social uses on "Hole in the Bible" and gives the same treatment to the G.O.P. on his hysterical calypso/reggae/folk mash-up "Young Republicans in Love." If you wonder if humor can change things, check out MacDonald's six-minute narrative ballad, "White Flour," which recounts the 2007 tale of how clowns took down the Ku Klux Klan in Knoxville, Tennessee. MacDonald is no shrinking violet. Although it's quite different musically from Cheryl Wheeler's rap "If It Were Up to Me," MacDonald's "Joe Public" similarly refuses to excuse working-class louts who cite all manner of excuse and imagined enemies to explain why they act and vote against their own interests. That's not to say that he's unsympathetic. Every union hall in American ought to be playing his "Last American Worker," the best pro-worker song I've heard in over a decade. MacDonald names the real enemies, including banks, Wall Street, global capitalism, the health care industry, and greedy shareholders. His refrain, "He's the last American worker/And they've got him dead in their sights/They've taken away everything that he worked for/Somebody turn out the lights."  

But if you think everything is angst and gloom, it's not. "That's Why You Play the Game" is a series of vignettes of those who were declared down for the count and got up for a few more rounds–"That's why you play the game/Because you never ever know/What you can't do till you do your best/Till you put yourself to the test/And win or lose or show/You stood tall just the same/My little darling/That's why we play the game." Optimism also shines through on songs like "Raven," with its catchy guitar lick in the vein of "Here Comes the Sun," and the bluegrass-influenced "To My Dearest One." Even more impressively, MacDonald makes us hopeful when he takes on a tough subject such as mental illness ("We're All One").  

Sometimes MacDonald gets out of synch. "Big Time Record Contract" is an anachronism in the age of downloads that pay musicians a fraction of a penny; and "Don't Come Knocking" has a fun soul/blues groove, but the subject matter is a tired old sex joke. But call these two the defects in an otherwise sparkling gem. And the next time someone asks you where good protest music has gone, make that person listen to this CD.

Rob Weir

Run Away Dorothy Worth the Wait

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RUNAWAY DOROTHY

The Wait

Self Produced

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Runaway Dorothy’s music has been endorsed by Ryan Adams and Roseanne Cash. It has been compared to that of Jakob Dylan, Mumford and Sons, Wilco, and Counting Crows. The alt-country/alt-rock/Americana sounds of Counting Crows is indeed a good comparison–if you toss in the atmospheric arrangements of Snow Patrol and hints of Credence Clearwater for good measure. The Brooklyn-based quartet of Dave Parnell (vocals, harmonica, guitar), brother Brett (electric guitar), Warren Robbing (bass), and Evan Mitchell (drums) tend to walk on the sunnier side of life and the instrumentation could use more diversity, but they have just enough edge to skirt being twee.

The band’s usual fare can be heard on tracks such as “Sing with Me” and “Let the Right One In.” The arrangements line up behind Dave Parnell’s lead vocals. His voice is dry but not gritty, and emotive but devoid of affected stress. Toss in tight harmonies, some jangly guitar, and let it shimmer. In “Let the Right One In,” for instance, drums and lead vocal are in the foreground, whilst everything else pulses behind it–highlights rather than deep color. There are lots of relationship songs, the edgy nervousness of “Hurry” being a highlight, and even a breakup song such as “Background” hints of redemption. Those looking for anything darker will have to content themselves with “Blue Kentucky Rain,” which is a modern-day Dust Bowl song with a sweet chorus; until they get to the final track, “Ballad of a Dead Man,” a vigilante revenge tale.  

In candor, Runaway Dorothy will need to temper its formula if it hopes to break out of a crowded alt-country market. Their song arrangements, though not identical, have a sameness of spirit that leaves a listener feeling as if The Wait is eleven movements of the same song. The album is a thoroughly enjoyable album that will please immensely, though it seldom challenges. I can’t knock that, but I also hear a band in need of a signature rather than more comparisons. Rob Weir

Here's a YouTube of the opening track.

Belly Dance Music (Really!)

JALILAH

Jalilah’s Raks Sharki Stage Cuts

Piranha 2856

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Who can explain passion? The performer known as Jalilah was born Lorraine Zamora Chamas and raised in California. Thirty years ago she fell in love with the raks sharki dance style–that’s belly dancing to those of us whose midsections jiggle more than jig–and began a journey that’s taken her to Egypt, Germany, Lebanon, and Canada. She’s made six albums of belly dance music, usually with highly regarded Middle Eastern orchestra leaders such as we find on this culling from her previous recordings: Mokhtar Al-Said, Hossam Shaker, and Ihsan Al-Mounzer. If the music reminds you of music you’ve encountered in old black and white movies, it’s because Jalilah prefers the vibe and rhythms of 1930s/40s style dances. Her major nod to modernity is the realization that today’s audiences have shorter attention spans. These are indeed stage “cuts,” in that she’s taken music/dance performances that would have originally run up to twenty minutes and knocked then down to five or fewer.

Belly dance music, you say? Isn’t that a bit (as the British say) naff? It can be. Raks Sharki thrives in the seam between don’t-touch eroticism and melodrama. The music is look-at-me diva style that wiggles its way to the line separating dynamism and histrionics and sometimes transgresses it. You can close you eyes and conjure the jingling bells, slapped tambourines, swishing veils, gyrating bodies, and colored backlighting. How long can you hold the fantasy? How many dramatic pauses, sudden restarts, and swelling interludes are your limit? Some may find that sixteen tracks of this are too much, even in truncated form; others may wish for more. I wouldn’t want to listen to this every day, but it’s surprisingly good road music and it certainly serves to demolish any rut in which you may find yourself stuck. My bottom line is that I overcame my abiding dislike for performers with just one name and listened to the whole thing. It’s a small standard, I realize, but how else is one to judge something this far from one’s own journey?  Rob Weir

Here’s a clip of Jalilah doing her thing. And if you mail a check for $20 to my private bank account I promise not to post a YouTube of me attempting the same thing!

Still Life with Bread Crumbs: Snapshots of Life in the Boonies

STILL LIFE WITH BREAD CRUMBS (2014)

Anna Quindlen

Random House, 272 pp. ISBN: 978-1400065752

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Anna Quindlen’s Still Life with Bread Crumbs has been called a “feminist post-feminist” novel, and that’s not a bad descriptor, though one should also add that her book is also a take-down of bourgeois life, hipster pretense, urban snobbery, and crass materialism.

Its befuddled heroine is Rebecca Winter, a photographer who made her mark in the 1960s with her “Kitchen Counter” series­–think a mash-up of Annie Liebowitz and Judy Chicago. The photographic centerpiece is the shot whose title this novel shares–a black-and-white composition consisting of a decimated loaf of artisan bread in a sea of dirty plates and wine glasses presented as if it were the aftermath of a Willem Claeszoom Heda banquet (see below). “Still Life” became an icon of Second Wave feminism–endlessly reproduced in textbooks, as a poster, and on mugs, tea towels, and other objects. Theorists, critics, and graduate students rushed to ‘interpret’ Winter’s work and she became the darling of feminists and hipsters everywhere. 

Little did any of them know that Winter’s photos were inspired by fatigue, not deeply held reflections upon the social expectations of women. She was simply too tired to clean up after one of her husband’s many parties–he an outwardly charming Englishman and professor, and inwardly a cad and sexist pig. So sexist, in fact, that he grew enormously jealous of Rebecca’s art world fame. In retrospect, Rebecca realized she was filming a very personal story: the disintegration of her marriage.

Flash from the late Sixties to the 21^st century. Rebecca is 60 and has been divorced for more than a decade; her mother is in a nursing home, where she imagines herself a concert pianist; her father’s health is failing; she’s saddled with an abusive agent who belittles her work; and her son, Ben, is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker. Ben’s independence is a major problem–nursing home fees plus tepid sales minus support checks equal big-time financial woes. When Rebecca sees a rental advertisement for a rustic Maine cottage, she does some quick calculations and realizes she could improve her cash flow by renting her West Side Manhattan apartment and heading to the boonies. Maybe she’ll even have an Ansel Adams epiphany and rekindle the life of what she half-jokingly calls “the artist formerly known as Rebecca Winter.”

As Rebecca soon learns, those who live in rural places seldom use the word “rustic.” Living in the woods means raccoons in the attic, hunters in the backyard, gravel driveways that are hard to plow, and unreliable utilities. It also means exchanging urban problems for small-town woes that would make residents of Peyton Place blush. Rebecca encounters a new group of folks, some of whom are more impressed by who she used to be than she is, including Sarah, an overweight café-owner, and Tad, who dreams of being a singer. Most couldn’t care less, especially Tad’s mother; Kevin, Sarah’s shifty no-account husband; and Jim Bates, the roofer, handyman, and naturalist who Rebecca depends upon to repair her rural dreams-gone-wrong. And then there are mysterious crosses that she encounters throughout the woods-not graves, but shrines. To what?

Quindlen is a good stylist and is able to tell a story through spare, but evocative prose. She’s also superb at character development. The central hook of an urbanite seeking regeneration in small-town America won’t win any originality awards, though, and some may find that Rebecca’s May-September relationship (more like late June-September, actually) a bit far-fetched. I was more troubled by the too-easy problem resolutions of the last fifth of the book. That said, this is a breezy summer read that delivers many delights. I also give Quindlen kudos for daring to put a 60-year-old single woman at the center of her book, and I applaud her take on feminism as praxis. Rebecca Winter might have been hailed as a feminist poster child in her youth, but we come to learn that it’s only in her 7^th decade that she chooses her associates and breaks all the expectation molds. To my mind, feminism-as-a-life journey is the best kind of all.

Rob Weir

Claeszoom was a 16th century Dutch painter who loved painting food the way today's foodies like photographing it.

Life in Postmodern Times II: Sleazy Men

Ladies: Think beofre you sign up for this crap!

This week’s version of "Life in These Postmodern Times" features five men who deserve dishonorable mention. They range from those making unwise choices to actively vile curs, so let’s take a look at them in that order so you can prepare your stomach for the final lurch.

Ralph Fiennes is a very good actor, but he should stay on the set side of the camera. Not many people saw his 2013 actor/director turn in The Invisible Woman–an accounting of the highly inappropriate 13-year affair between Charles Dickens and ingénue Nelly Ternan. In this case, a tepid box–just $3 million worldwide–is a good thing. Let’s just say that Fiennes makes a much better Lord Voldermort than a Dickens, whom he plays as if he’s an amusing fishmonger. Bad choice, bad direction, bad film.

It’s sad to see David Ortiz morph from Big Papi into Big Prima Donna. First there was the financially lucrative, but artless and crass  ‘selfie’ he took on his Samsung phone with President Obama. Then there are the Ortiz homerun antics, where he poses, watches, and gestures in ways that would get a rookie knocked on his butt his next at-bat, followed by his ravings when he someone throws inside at him. (I’d love to see an umpire with the cojones to call a strike on Dive-in-David when gets plunked on an elbow that’s over the plate.)  Worst of all are the boorish hissy fits he throws each time one of his batted balls is scored an error instead of a hit. (Imagine–a major leaguer expected to field a tough ball! In the old days, if you touched it and didn’t make the play, it was an error.) Recently Ortiz blasted his own park’s official scorer with such vehemence that Joe Torre, baseball’s chief disciplinarian, told him to STFU. Ortiz apologized, but the Boston Globe piously intoned that Ortiz “had earned the right” to be more outspoken. Really? So the rules of sportsmanship don’t apply to Ortiz? Torre got it right. Big Papi should either STFU or change his handle to Big Asshole.

Wisconsin Scab-in-Chief Scott Walker, who poses as governor, survived a recall vote, but the clock is ticking on the indictment meter. Walker stands accused of coordinating with outside-of-the-state conservative groups to fund his own campaign and that of other Wisconsin troglodytes. Lest you think this is simply politics-as-usual in modern America, it’s not. Wisconsin law lacks the loosey-goosey loopholes commonplace elsewhere. Prosecutors are using the phrase “criminal scheme” to describe Walker’s behavior and it’s probably just a matter of time until Walker is arrested. Count me among those who want to see Walker served papers in the State House, cuffed by a union cop, and hauled off to a union-staffed prison.

Another Scott high on the "Putz of the Year" list is Scott “Carpetbagger/Special Interests/Faux Working Man” Brown. Back in 2010 Brown surprised Martha Coakley in a special Senate election to replace Ted Kennedy. He left the Senate in 2012, when Bay State voters discovered that his blue-collar pickup-truck-driving routine was a cardboard con job and Elizabeth Warren thrashed him. No worries–there’s always a place on Fox News for another sleazemeister. Then Brown decided to move across the border to New Hampshire to try to unseat Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Now things are getting hotter for Brown. Surprise! He’s not a blue-collar champion. Not unless you think blue-collar workers make $839,520 per year–his income in 2010. Many people are still trying to figure put how he made that much on a $174,000 U.S. Senate salary, or how regular guy Scott made $357,251 when he was in the Massachusetts Senate back in 2006. Maybe our blue-collar lad had some investments–like the fees he got from Wall Street firms with links to a shady “penny stocks” firm in Florida. Now word is that Brown may have over $3 million in assets that he's taking his good old (boy) time revealing. In other words, he could have bought a pick-up truck dealership if he wanted. Maybe Brown hasn’t done anything illegal and he stands an even chance of getting elected in the Granite State, but he can expect the scrutiny to get tougher. Brown is worse than a crook–he’s a fraud the likes of which wear out their welcome very quickly. Let’s hope it’s before November.

File this one in the reach-for-the-vomit-bucket category. Former Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair sexually harassed at least two women under his command, actions that included coerced sex. The Army agreed that General Sinclair was a naughty boy–so naughty they fined him $20,000 and busted him down to a Lt. Colonel. Outside the US Army we call his behavior “rape.” Sinclair ought to be doing twenty years, not paying out twenty grand. Why any woman would join the U.S. Army is a complete mystery. It’s not that Army doesn’t get it–it doesn’t care. The Sinclair case ranks among the greatest injustices of recent memory. Shame!