Here are some brief thoughts on recent happenings in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region.
If the name Amanda Gorman sounds familiar to you, it may be because you were mesmerized by her recitation of her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Now, two months later, the National Youth Poet Laureate’s reach has extended into Franklin County, where Ashfield illustrator Gayle Kabaker recently fulfilled a commission by the nonprofit Vital Voices to make a likeness of Gorman to be printed onto apparel.
Kabaker’s design features a screenshot of Gorman speaking at the inauguration with the words, “There is always light,” taken from Gorman’s poem.
But wait — Gorman’s reach goes even farther, to the Greenfield screenprinting business, Silver Screen Design, which turned out the finished apparel in short order. Owner Cheryl Termo said, “Here she (Gorman) comes with this message of light, and I was just super proud to be a part of it.”
The order also helped her company during these difficult times. “We’re a small business and got hit very hard (by COVID-19) because so much of (our) business is event-oriented,” Termo said. “We were able to bring back several local employees.”
Like ripples on a pond, the words of a young woman on a national stage reverberate far and wide: to amplify Vital Voices’ message of female empowerment, to employ the artistry of a Hilltown illustrator, and to extend a lifeline to a local business. As Termo put it, “It was just the perfect storm, in a positive way.” You can see the resulting apparel at bit.ly/3cgKSKY.
Culverts: You see them everywhere — those manmade conduits that allow the flow of water under a road — without really seeing them. It turns out, according to a recent story, that culvert design has come a long way since many of these were first constructed.
Explains planner Carrie Banks with the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Division of Ecological Restoration, “We found that a good number of culverts and small bridges on the landscape are barriers to fish and wildlife movement,” because they’re too small.
Such is the case with a culvert on Baptist Corner Road in Ashfield. Due for replacement, the Baker-Polito administration has turned a $50,000 design and technical consultation into a regional training opportunity for local road managers.
So far, there have been three trainings at the site, attended by road managers from over a dozen local municipalities. They discussed the issues with the current design and described how a better structure would be less disruptive to the natural ecology.
This is state funding at its best: Addressing a common problem by sharing best practices with a wider audience.
“Housing is a human right,” say the organizers of a joint planning committee of Greening Greenfield and Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution (FCCPR). Homelessness is often treated as a “personal failing,” chair Susan Worgaftik told reporter Anita Fritz, rather than the result of a system that sees housing as something to buy and sell, rather than a need for everyone.
“Housing is something that everyone should have as a right,” FCCPR member Doug Selwyn said.
Their nine-session virtual forum — the culmination of 18 months of study by the Forum Organizing Committee — offers a comprehensive and far-ranging treatment of this intractable problem that all communities could benefit from.
The committee’s suggestions take many forms, as the tantalizing titles of their sessions suggest: “Resident-owned Communities: One Housing Answer,” “Community Housing Trusts: The Burlington, Vt. Experience,” “Reclaiming Municipally-owned Abandoned Buildings” and “Achieving Affordability with Clean Energy” are just a few of the sessions scheduled for April and May.
“Our goal,” committee member Sarah Brown-Anson said, “is to engage our community in finding ways to act on long-term solutions.”
You can attend these important forums by visiting housingishumanright.com.