As we head into America’s 250th birthday, I think it is instructive to look at what our own Founding Fathers wanted for our future. John Adam famously wrote to Abigail “I must study Politics and War that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval Architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
To John Adams the Revolution’s purpose was to create an environment where his children’s children could enjoy and study the arts. Later in the preamble to the Constitution James Madison would describe this as securing “the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” As the co-owner with my wife Angela of Greenfield’s historic and crossroads cultural districts anchor the Garden Cinema, we are deeply committed to helping Franklin County celebrate over the course of the next year both our history and the future of the arts.
We are pleased to have partnered with the city to make Greenfield’s historic Paul Revere Bell available for free viewing in the lobby of the Garden though Constitution Day Sept. 17, which happens to be the 50th birthday of this bicentennial baby. We are excited to announce that for free this Fourth of July, in cooperation with the Walt Disney Company and The Daughters of the American Revolution Contentment chapter, for the first time since 1957, exclusive to Greenfield and the Garden, we will show on the big screen the classic movie “Johnny Tremain.” This cinema classic is about a Massachusetts youth in the lead up to the American Revolution based on Esther Forbes’ Newbery Medal-winning children’s novel. That same weekend, we will release with much fanfare Angel Studios’ amazing colonial period film “Young Washington.” From Red, White and Blue Icees, gummy bears and ring pops to our American 250th popcorn buckets, we are all in on celebrating this patriotic historical event.
But as we look back, we must remember that Adams, Madison and the other Founding Fathers and mothers were looking forward. Forward to a time when their grandchildren could enjoy and study the arts. As we travel into the future of the American experiment, I urge you to embrace the arts. Sure, I want you to come to movies (and we will have great ones this summer like Minions and Monsters, The Odyssey, Spiderman Brave New World and Supergirl), but more I want you to embrace all that there is to celebrate in the downtown cultural district. Please go dancing, listen to live and recorded music, visit an art gallery and a great restaurant, see a play. “Study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.” It is your American birthright.
It is very easy to get caught up in the drudgery of our workaday lives. Try to be reminded that Greenfield’s very symbol, the Poet’s Seat Tower, is one embracing the artist’s ability to gain perspective through the arts. As a movie lover I like to think of that iconic scene in “Dead Poet’s Society” where Ethan Hawke gets on his desk to thank his teacher Robin Williams, and quotes Walt Whitman “Oh Captain! My Captain!” Poets know that perspective makes all the difference. Greenfield’s own Fredric Goddard Tuckerman wrote:
His heart was in his garden; but his brain
Wandered at will among the fiery stars:
Bards, heroes, prophets, Homers, Hamilcars,
With many angels, stood, his eye to gain;
This 250th year my greatest hope for you is that you make time to stop and smell the roses. After all, the arts are the blessings of liberty. More than anything this year my sincerest hope for each and every one of you is to be blessed.
Isaac Mass is a local attorney and co-owner of the Greenfield Garden Cinema.