Sounds of 2024
As heard in Belfast, Holyoke, and at home.
When I was younger, I participated for several years in a marathon poetry reading held every New Year’s Day. The New Year’s Day Poetry Extravaganza* was produced by a team of New Yorkers, led by my great friends Bruce Weber and Joanne Pagano Weber. Hosted at the Knitting Factory and then the Bowery Poetry Club, the event brought together hundreds of members of the spoken word communities from the Lower East Side, the East Village, and parts unknown. It was a family reunion, a cleanse, a blast.
Mostly, the reading served as a punctuation point, an opportunity to sum up one’s thoughts on the year behind us or the year ahead, or to bring out your favorite piece from the last twelve months. You only had three minutes before a flag would wave, followed by a loud horn. Poets push the limits, of course.
As 2024 draws to a close, I have no verse to offer, just a desire to pause. The coming year feels opaque, its contours bathed in fog. What follows are my strongest memories from a year ripe with celebrations and riddled with tragedies. I’m so, so fortunate that the people and work of Mass Humanities shape my life. I know I’m not alone in saying that the special initiatives of our 50th anniversary buoyed me with memories and hope. I hope you’ll support us again this year by making a contribution today.
Now for some memories of 2024.
Paula Elliott singing in Belfast.
Our trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland for #Douglassweek still feels fresh. Forgive the sports metaphor, but if you’ve ever experienced your team winning a championship, you may know this feeling: several months after the game, it hits you again that it happened. We did it. Eight months later, I still don’t feel that I’ve processed everything I experienced. A group of people who barely knew each other met at Logan Airport, flew across the Atlantic, and walked in the footsteps of Frederick Douglass. We traveled as something between an official delegation and a hearty band of musicians, presenting scholarship, meeting diplomats, and reading “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?” with Irish counterparts who felt like long lost relatives.
Of the many memories and friendships accumulated over those ten days, I treasure my conversations with Paula Elliott, who helped start the original Douglass events on Boston Common and who continues to sing at the reading each year. On several occasions during the trip, I had the honor of introducing our group, then handing over the microphone to Paula. It felt deeply spiritual every time. Here’s Paula at The Duncairn in Belfast on April 20, 2024.
Jess Rivera describing her cover art for Clementinos.
In his introduction to Clementinos: Voices from the Clemente Writing Project, Corey Dolgon recalibrates the relationship between the humanities and the lives of oppressed people.
“While the humanities may have intrinsic value for all people grappling with various aspects of economic violence, social marginalization, political disenfranchisement, and the myriad forms of trauma that result, I believe that ‘the humanities’ may need Clemente students as much, if not more, than the students need the humanities.”
The students Dolgon refers to are participants in the Clemente Course in the Humanities. The dynamic he suggests—one where the convert reshapes the canon—is both timeless and deeply urgent if we wish to see the humanities grow as a force in society. In centering the source of knowledge in the creative genius of people too often dismissed from solution-building, Clementinos pushes us to rethink our understanding of Massachusetts.
Clementinos collects the work of Dolgon, his fellow instructors, and the twenty-three students who contributed to the new anthology, published by Mass Humanities and University of Massachusetts Press. Please consider ordering a copy (now in its second printing!) today.
Jess Rivera, a graduate of the Care Center’s Clemente Course in Holyoke and one of the clearest, most persuasive advocates for the program, contributed a powerful essay to the collection. She also created original artwork for the book’s cover. Here’s Jess explaining her art to my colleague Wes DeShano:
Storytellers dancing in Worcester, Holyoke, and Boston.
Our team brought together Expand Mass. Stories grantees for three workshops this year. “The Future of Storytelling” series offered time for skill-sharing and encouragement. Listening to their laughter and their expressions of mutual support, I could not help but imagine new directions, possible collaborations, and even a pathway forward for Massachusetts.
It was also incredibly fun. The workshops were followed by receptions that included music and poetry and, yes, dancing. Because the humanities—as our friends at the Boston Dance Alliance show us—can embrace many types of movement.
Holyoke’s own Bomba de AquÍ got us moving at the June event. You may recognize a few of these graceful people!
My kids playing an old piano.
This summer we picked up a used piano from the local pastor. My kids started lessons a year ago, so it was time. The small upright fit snugly in a corner of our living room. It hadn’t been played in many years, so the piano tuner did a thorough cleaning and two tunings to give it new life.
Every day since then, someone in this house sat down and attempted a song. We might be loud or graceful, sad or searching, but we have this instrument to engage. I find myself there in the morning, doing my ham-fisted best to play “I Shall By Released” or “Helpless” or just the rickety blues in C that makes me feel a little funkier for a few minutes.
It’s a small thing, this piano. But I am grateful we could hire the mover and pay the tuner. And each time the efforts of those fingers on the keys travels through the house, I know that it was worth it. There are songs being learned, sounds called up to smiles or winces, hands shaping questions and favorites.
For 2025, I hope the music finds you with open ears and instruments of your own. Thanks for listening.
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*Bruce’s Hudson Valley edition of the poetry marathon continues tomorrow. See more here.