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Katrina's VineyardJanuary 05, 2006 After several tries, I've finally gotten through most of the "looking forward to 2006" pieces in last week's Martha's Vineyard Times. The challenge is to make myself voluntarily ingest something that I know in advance will piss me off. My more-or-less successful technique was inspired by Otto von Bismarck, who noted: "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." (To this short list I add "the news" and "the future of Martha's Vineyard.") I did pick up the newspaper, and I did read. After several days on the verge of apoplexy, I decided to find the humor in the situation. Today's big yuk is "community restoration." Who woulda thunk you could "restore" community -- the way you restore a painting, or a house? Well, maybe you can -- if you understand how the community developed and sustained itself in the first place. I'm not sure these community restorators and I live on the same planet, never mind the same island.The underpinning of community is need, interdependence. People lend to and borrow from each other, we help each other out and entertain each other, because we have few alternatives; not enough money to routinely hire help (the summer people can do this: they hire us), limited access to big-city performances and sports events. In the process we discover that it doesn't matter so much that this one flies a flag on the front lawn and that one has a live-in partner of the same sex and that other one has a dog that barks too much. We develop our own skills and appreciate those of others. Community. This guy, a biggie in the affordable housing movement, thinks otherwise. He envisions working islanders tethered to their houses by mortgages and "affordability restrictions." Doesn't sound like community to me; sounds more like an indentured workforce for the affluent. I was lucky enough to arrive on Martha's Vineyard in the mid-1980s, when the grass-roots arts scene was on the upswing. Local theater was booming. Wintertide Coffeehouse opened its doors (at a succession of locations) most winter weekends, showcasing local musicians and the occasional touring singer-songwriter from somewhere else, offering regular open mikes for newcomers to try out new material or hone their performance skills. Daggett Ave. Café soon outgrew the living room it started in and welcomed all comers in other venues: poets, writers, actors, musicians, dancers -- the only requirement was that the work be original and last less than 10 minutes. The Art Workers' Guild was gone, but artists who had matured under its aegis were showing in island galleries and making reputations for themselves. It was through the local arts scene, especially Island Theatre Workshop, the Vineyard Playhouse, and Wintertide, that I became part of the wider island community. Despite occasional bright spots, like Featherstone Center for the Arts, the scene since the mid to late 1990s has been anemic by comparison. Some say it's cyclical; activity ebbs but eventually it comes back. I wish I believed it would come back this time, but I don't: the cycles are tied to economic realities, and economic realities have changed big-time since the early to mid 1990s. The scarcity of affordable housing is a major factor: if you're paying nearly half your income for a winter rental and every spring you're scrambling for a place to crash during the summer, how much time and energy do you have to commit to a theatrical production or any other serious volunteer activity? The dearth of accessible and affordable public space isn't helping either. New Orleans and large swaths of Louisiana and Mississippi were devastated almost literally overnight by Hurricane Katrina, with a follow-up wallop by Rita. It happened so suddenly that everyone remembers "before." On Martha's Vineyard the damage has been sustained more slowly; many current year-round residents have never even heard of Wintertide Coffeehouse, the Martha's Vineyard Singer-Songwriter Retreat, or the Art Workers' Guild. At least the dispossessed of New Orleans are eligible for some disaster relief -- in theory, at least; the practice has been less than inspiring. (Gotta hand it to the Vineyard on that one: we do disaster better than FEMA.) I have this bad feeling that, because so many of the people who made up the soul of New Orleans have little political or economic clout, the city will come back as a cultural theme park, with none of the nooks and crannies where creativity tends to flourish. There are still a few of those nooks and crannies on Martha's Vineyard -- I know because I live in one -- but far fewer than there used to be. Among those who have left the island, and those who came but didn't stick around, are musicians and theater people and writers and other artists. I don't see much place for us in the vision of the community restorators.
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