BRATTLEBORO — Tremendous article! The writer, quite a wonderful creative artist herself, has apparently drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid at least as much as I have!
I remember the first meetings I had in 1991 with Mara Williams and Trust Company of Vermont founder Jack Davidson on creating a real fine arts center here. Later, I was on the first tentative committee that explored the establishment of a Fine Arts Center in the local area and decided that the downtown should be the fine arts center.
I was with the late architect Leo Berman, designer of the River Garden, when Elizabeth Latchis gave us the first tour of the family business, and the idea of turning it into a fine arts center was first discussed.
Throughout, I have maintained that all Brattleboro needs is a vision for ourselves, for our community. And even though there has been some concern we might be gentrifying Brattleboro - Ms. Marcel has written with great foresight about that, too - I think that if we take stock now, we can only go forward.
But not all of Brattleboro's economic future and creative entrepreneurialism need to be in the arts.
How about, for example, reviving our former mid-20th-century industry of manufacturing fine, commercial-quality furniture with the fine woods of the area? We're already seeing some very welcome movement in the area of publishing, as is documented in this story.
And supposedly the town just bought the site of the first natural spring water well that sparked our Wesselhoeft Water Cure in the 1800s, which early on helped give us that tourism or resort-town allure. Should we bottle it and sell it? Or maybe make beer out of it? The key to our economic resilience is diversification.
Keep it up, everyone ... it's working!
Last year, I had the opportunity to merge the town's business database with the New England Foundation for the Arts one. I learned that at least 25 percent of all the recognized and licensed businesses in Brattleboro have something to do with the arts, from actual arts organizations to commercial firms that in some measure supply materials to them.
And that figure reflects only the recognized businesses! There is a healthy underground economy, too, some of which thrives in the atmosphere of economic freedom that the information revolution has brought.
Joyce Marcel's article helps further prove that culture and the arts in Brattleboro are hardcore mainstream. Congratulations to her for the wonderful work she performed writing it, and many, many kudos to everyone who has “drunk the Kool-Aid”!