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Bytes from the Bean by Joe Manning: 4-0412:00AM / Monday, April 19, 2004
TIME FOR A LONG COFFEE BREAK
"Rivers may run to the sea, but it's the lemmings that get there first."
-Elliot Criceti
On a late autumn day in 1998, Ozzie Alvarez pulled up along side of me in his car as I was walking near the North Adams Post Office. He said he wanted me to write a column for NorthAdams.com, his new website. At that time, I had already published Steeples: Sketches of North Adams, my first book about the city. And I was working hard on my second book, whose working title was Disappearing Into Dust: Urban Renewal in North Adams. Still a full-time caseworker in my home state of Connecticut, I wasn't sure that adding a regular column to my plate was good for my diet.
Having just signed up for the Internet, I was anxious to check out Ozzie's new site. I was impressed, and the prospect of seeing my byline on the World Wide Web was seductive. But what would I write about? My North Adams friends, the Bolgens, often prodded me to explain why I was so captured by the city, but why I seemed interested mostly in its history. "Don't you have any opinions about what's happening now, and about the future?" they would ask.
"Good point," I finally said to myself one day, and decided I would try to answer those questions in my column. I chose the name Bytes from the Bean, because the Appalachian Bean Café was where I hung out most of the time. The first column appeared Jan 21, 1999.
Looking over my first few attempts (I tried to contribute something twice a month then), I note that I offer a few personal thoughts that are usually buried beneath updates on news and events, and quotes from city folks. I was sort of winging it then, trying to find my voice.
It was the prospect of the much-anticipated opening of MASS MoCA on Memorial Day weekend that focused me on my mixed feelings about the museum. In my column dated May 25, after a drearily impressionistic, but fond description of a typical day downtown, I ask ominously: "What will happen to the familiar and the mundane that we cherish only after they are gone? What will the force of MASS MoCA sweep away?"
The grand opening coincided with my move to Massachusetts (Florence), and my planned retirement a few months later. Such life-changing events often steer one on a course of introspection, and that becomes very evident in my subsequent columns. New roads lead to new places, and soon I realized that my book about urban renewal needed some life to it, with a look at the present and the emerging future. And as the Bolgens advised, the eventually titled Disappearing Into North Adams turned out to be as much about me as it was about the city.
And now several more life-changing events have put me on another new road. My mother, my last surviving parent, passed away in January in Maryland, my native state. And my wife has just joined me as a retiree. And so I have decided to retire this column, at least for a while anyway.
North Adams will continue to be the inspiration for my participation in a variety of interesting projects. With the summer coming, I am looking forward to the museum events, and to being reminded once again of the glorious and spiritual landscape that attracted me in the first place.
I belong to the city now, at least for the seven or eight visits a month I make. After all, it's where my friends are. I see them all the time on the street, in the schools, at the museum, and in the neighborhoods where I enjoy walking. From time to time, you may see my byline when an idea sneaks up on me. But for now, it's time for a long coffee break at The Bean.
All of Joe Manning's columns are archived on this site, where they will continue to be posted. See http://www.iberkshires.com/columnist.php?colm_id=4&archive=1
Visit Joe's website at: www.sevensteeples.com
Email Joe at: manningfamily@rcn.com
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