Office Space and Time

Closing up shop in Northampton

Moving is never easy. Along with the disruptions and physical labor, there are the memories that stir like dust from emptied bookshelves. Things you repaired, things you never got around to. A box in the corner offers up old drawings from a child who’s grown up, the extra invitations to celebrations that once seemed essential. Layer on the inclination of humanists for nostalgia and hoarding, and you start finding poignant moments in stacks of old letterhead.

This week, I stood in my empty office and sighed. We closed the Mass Humanities headquarters in Northampton this month, part of our move to Holyoke. The foundation operated out of the Shepherd House on Bridge Street for more than twenty years, tenants of our neighbors at Historic Northampton, one of the state’s most innovative historical societies. The property dates back to the late 1790s, so ours was but a brief chapter for these old bedrooms and parlors.

I first sat down at my desk in fall 2018. The weather was uncannily similar to the glorious spell of sunshine we’ve experienced this year, but much has changed over that time. The final weeks at the Shepherd House brought back memories from those early days.

New Orleans and Northampton are about as different as two cities can be. My move north brought on a staggering culture shock. Professionally, I had left one state humanities council for another, but the jump to the executive director role meant that almost everything felt new. And scary. Louisiana had been home, a place where people knew me and where I knew the characthers and roads and politics and all the best lunch spots. My kids were born there. In Massachusetts, I knew a few people in Boston and my wife’s cousins in central Mass. Upon arrival (this happens for every executive director everywhere), I met people for the first time who promptly asked, “What’s your vision for Mass Humanities?” Of course I should have expected the question, but I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce Worcester, much less articulate a plan for responding to an entire state.

My plan was to listen and get to know the place. In reality, I hurled forward at my accustomed furious pace, made a lot of mistakes, and spent too much time on the Mass Pike. Learning a state takes years. Learning about the people you work with is much more important, especially at the outset. I failed to realize that in my first year. People tell me this is a common error, but I’ll always wish I had spent more time in that office getting to know everyone.

And then COVID happened. Over the course of twenty-four hours, we went from making final preparations for a board retreat to being locked down and cut off from the rest of the world. Just when Northampton had started to feel like home, my family was sucked back into a transition period, stranded between the old and new, without compass or network. It was like standing on a satellite looking down at a darkened planet.

I will always remember the silence inside the Shepherd House. For the first six months of the lockdown, my wife and I were juggling childcare, taking turns working from home while we entertained our toddler and tried to keep our kindergartner focused on his zoom classroom. On Wednesday afternoons, I’d head to Northampton to check the mail and deposit checks. Then I’d order takeout and sit down to work late into the night. Like most everyone, I was trying to figure out what to do without any clue as to when this limbo would end.

And then the floors would creak. We always joked that the building was haunted, with its spooky attic and the wicker coffin in the basement. I did my best to laugh at myself as I walked to my car through a fog at midnight.

Slowly, our people began to return. We never resumed a fully in-person schedule, but we did find a sense of purpose. I’ll remember the gravity of making decisions on COVID-response funds, the zoom meetings where we carved out a new strategic plan, the successes we celebrated from a safe distance. We hosted online programs, completed a sudden shift from paper to digital, and ordered a huge supply of Mass Humanities-branded masks.

And we welcomed new colleagues. What’s unfolded over the last three years brings me a deep sense of gratitude for the people who became our team. They’ve greatly expanded the impact of the foundation, doubling our annual revenue and tripling our grant-making budget. Their expertise and perspectives reshaped our programs and the relationships with the audiences we served. I know they’ve made me a better person. My experience of the Northampton office will always be linked to COVID and those silences. But the laughter I heard as we closed up shop—I’ll keep that, too. I walked into that building very much alone; it was amazing to walk out with this group yesterday.

Moving is no fun, but we drew strength from the process because it surfaced institutional memories that we’d misplaced. We hired archvist Tom Doyle to organize our files ahead of a big digitalization project implemented by my colleagues Katherine Stevens, Alex Creighton, and Deepika Fernandes. That work delivered a steady stream of old posters, board reports, and books. A lot of books.

(We just debuted the first short documentary, directed by my colleague Wes DeShano, that connects some of the found dots.)

My predecessor David Tebaldi had a legendary career leading an organization that supported relevant, wide-ranging work across the commonwealth. When I arrived, he told me the books in his office library should stay with me. During the move, I revisited that collection, which certainly slowed down the packing. The shelves were loosely organized in subjects that became our programs. Here was the research David did as part of Mass Humanities’ initiatives on Islam, health care, the environment, journalism, democracy, and more. Retracing the steps of David’s intellect and industriousness never fails to humble me.

Now it’s time to move to Holyoke. We celebrated our 50th anniversary this year; it felt like the right time to start the next chapter. The choice of Holyoke reflects our emphasis on providing resources and architecture for storytellers and grassroots organizations. We know there’s more we can learn as a funder and partner for this work, and we can’t imagine a better place to learn. I plan to listen to the people we meet and find ways to contribute to this unique city and its rich cultural life.

On Monday, we took down the Mass Humanities signs that hung above the front porch of the Shepherd House. In this messy world, it’s rare that we mark an ending intentionally, to exit with clean rooms and organized files. That old house will always hold meaning for me because it held so much of the history of an organization that means so much to me. What I’ll take with me, though, is the biggest lesson I learned there: it’s not the office space that matters most, it’s the people inside the office. I’m so glad we’ll see each other again in Holyoke.