New England Bookshelves

No matter where you travel in New England, you will find books: at antique shops, rental homes, inns, bookstores and even some restaurants and coffee houses. In New England, we love to read. It’s been part of our culture since the region was settled in the 1600s. Reading and books define us. A friend once remarked, “I enjoy meeting people, but I particularly like visiting their homes for the first time and seeing their bookshelves. What they read tells me so much about who they are.”

Bookcase in Chatham
Bookcase in Chatham, MA

How those books got onto the shelves is also a story, one that’s really a narrative of life. When we first started dating in the 1980s, we often found ourselves in a bookstore after a nice dinner or an invigorating hike. (Things haven’t changed much for us since.) It didn’t matter whether the bookstore had new or used books, because what was on the pages of those books always left a lifelong impression. They became part of us. Perhaps the story we write now is an attempt to attach us to our books, inspiring a future reader long after we’re gone.

Today, when we pull a book off the shelf, it immediately evokes memories of the day we bought it and of that particular time in our lives. For instance, we fondly remember two cookbooks (one Greek, the other Eastern European) that we picked up in 1988 after a fall visit to Pack Monadnock in Peterborough, NH. Now, when either of those books is removed, we recall hiking the Wapack Trail that day, dining afterwards at Hiroshi Hayashi’s innovative Latacarta restaurant, discovering a great recipe for Shopska salad and listening to Pachelbel’s Canon later that evening. It’s fascinating how our brains retain information by association.

Other bookshelves tell stories too. Recently, we vacationed by the Oyster River in Chatham, MA on Cape Cod. Like many New England seasonal, coastal properties, our rental home had three elements familiar to many of us: beach paintings; musty smells; and bookcases of old, out-of-print books. Such bookshelves are a chronicle of decades of New England guests and snapshots of periods in American history. We were immediately drawn toward the hardcovers and paperbacks in our rental cottage.

One title in particular drew our attention: Massachusetts: A Guide to the Pilgrim State, edited by Ray Bearse. It was printed in 1971, the second edition of a book originally commissioned by the WPA in 1937. In the preface, the editor reflects on how much things changed in the time period between the first and second editions. Reading the latter edition forty years after its publication left us equally moved. It not only provided an interesting view of how much things had changed since 1971, but also affirmed how many of those things we hold so dear remain constant. But with the book in our hands we asked: Who put this on the bookshelf in Chatham? Why did they come to New England? What happened to the author? Why did he choose to write about Massachusetts? What other visitors over the years picked up the book? Did the book influence their visit?

Parnassus Book Service
Parnassus Book Service, Yarmouthport, MA

During that same trip, we went to some used bookstores on the Cape hoping to find another copy of the book. Even one of our favorite New England bookstores, Parnassus Book Service in Yarmouthport, MA didn’t have it. After several more attempts we realized our search might be futile, but we finally found the book online, and bought it. At the time of this writing it hadn’t yet arrived, but we know the book will end up on one of our bookshelves. From now on when we remove it from the shelf, we’ll recall our trip to Chatham, reflect on how much Massachusetts has changed, remember a wonderful vacation with family, and savor the smell of just-ground coffee and fresh-baked muffins from the Chatham Village Café where we wrote this story.

-The Two Palaverers

Photo credits: The Two Palaverers

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New England Museum Redux

Old Sturbridge Village
As a follow-up to our post on museums, we subsequently came across this somewhat dated, yet still relevant article from the Wall Street Journal. We’ve decided to post it in its entirety, concerned that it may get permanently archived and its message lost.  It was written by Bruce Courson, Director of the Sandwich Glass Museum on Cape Cod. We soundly applaud Mr. Courson’s efforts and insights and wish to add a few more points.

We (our youth in particular) are losing the connection to our past. In order to have children visit museums, we need to have parents visit museums. We need to do a better job of engaging and teaching our children history, something that can be done both in school and outside of it – as a family or among friends.  There is no better place to do that than here in New England.  Once we fix our society’s connection to the past, our local museums will be the beneficiaries. What’s the contemporary challenge? Think about Old Sturbridge Village (a working museum) versus Grand Theft Auto (a video game). Fortunately, it only takes a brief afternoon to open up a whole new world. And that new world is in our own back yard.

-The Two Palaverers

Why Rural Museums Are Becoming Ancient History

by BRUCE COURSON
Tuesday, December 27, 2005 12:01 A.M. EST

It was disheartening to learn last month in the Boston Globe of Old Sturbridge Village’s recent layoffs and closure of several major facilities. The museum is a living history museum in central Massachusetts that depicts 1830s New England life on a 200-acre site with 40 period buildings. One thousand reservations for Thanksgiving dinner, a tradition since the 1950s, had to be canceled this year. A new tavern and motel, which were expected to generate much needed revenue for the Village when they opened in 2001, will be shuttered in January. Only 20 of the once nearly 70 costumed guides remain. A personally troubling fact, as I was a “tinsmith” there in 1971, a period when increasing attendance was a given.

It is a story increasingly common for rural Massachusetts museums within a day’s drive of major metropolitan areas. Many have current paid attendance numbers that are nearing 50% of what they were three decades ago. My own institution, the Sandwich Glass Museum, saw attendance drop from 84,000 in the early 1980s to 42,000 in 2000. Published figures and statistics I have gathered over several decades point to similar trends in nearby maritime and historical museums, not only in Massachusetts but along the Boston-Washington corridor as well. Considering all that we hear about “the museum boom” in major cities occurring during that same period, this might seem a surprising state of affairs.

Numerous causes have been cited for this precipitous decline, including the weather and 9/11. But one factor stands out among the reasons behind this consistent, decades-long trend: the 1978 deregulation of the airline industry and a new era of cheap air travel. Before deregulation, most vacations were taken in the summer and the automobile was the affordable, preferred means of travel. After 1978, however, inexpensive travel and free “frequent flier” tickets gradually became available. As a result, passenger counts more than doubled between 1978 and 1998. The vacationing public increasingly opted to leave their cars at the airport and, at any time of the year, fly to their destinations. Since 1978, the likes of Glacier Bay, Alaska, the Galapagos, or a Caribbean cruise have become affordable and popular attractions. Changing leisure-travel patterns among the American public are not a new phenomenon: A historic parallel occurred when Coney Island’s Steeplechase Park succumbed to the post-World War II “automobile vacation” in 1964.

How have most museums dealt with the financial downturn brought on by this decline in attendance? They’ve raised their prices. I know of one major, Sturbridge-like outdoor history museum in Massachusetts that, in 1971, charged the equivalent of $5.72 in 2004 dollars but, now, after its latest price increase, charges $21. Its many efforts to expand public programming have not kept pace with the 267% increase in admissions fees. This example is unfortunately not the exception but the rule. A museum will often raise its price slightly to help a sagging bottom line only to find that next year’s decrease in attendance requires yet another increase in admissions fees — a vicious cycle.

How many companies, realizing a serious decline in demand, merely raise their prices without substantially improving their product? Not many still in business. Unfortunately, a great number of museums are now perceived as too expensive, with potential visitors often choosing to go elsewhere.

Other institutions have tried a different tack, “improving their product” by means of major expansions. While some have been successful, all too often the results have been devastating. In many cases small operating deficits became large ones because of additional staffing, greater facilities costs and debt from insufficient capital campaigns. Increases in attendance revenues, if any, failed to meet unrealistic projections. Layoffs became necessary and some institutions ceased to exist altogether.

In 1992, the New Bedford Whaling Museum was forced to close its two-year-old Whale Discovery Center in nearby Plymouth, Mass., after attendance fell short of what was needed to break even. “We had hoped to have 75,000 visitors each year. We had 36,000 over two years,” stated then-director Anthony Zane.

There are no silver bullets in the museum business, of course, and every institution faces a somewhat different set of circumstances. The Sandwich Glass Museum on Cape Cod, aware of several failed expansions in the region, chose a different approach to the problem of seriously declining attendance. In 1998 we launched our first-ever capital campaign, raising $2.3 million — four times the institution’s operating budget. We built a glassblowing arena, a high-tech multimedia theater and new retail space. The difference was that our business plan included holding general admission fees to 1970s levels, $4.50 in 2004 dollars, and reducing group admissions fees to $1. Staffing numbers and operating expenses were budgeted at pre-expansion levels and only a stabilized attendance was anticipated, not an increase. In short, more bang for the buck, not more bucks for the same old bang.

The museum is now in its third post-expansion year. The number of paying visitors increased by 26% over that period and is now holding steady at that level, while attendance at similar area institutions has fallen by 19% during the same three-year period. A sizable operating surplus will be posted for the second year in a row. While these numbers are encouraging, the museum still has regained only one-third of the attendance lost over the past three decades.

As residents of the Boston-Washington corridor continue to favor airline over automobile vacations, the possibility of a broad uptick in attendance at rural locations is highly unlikely. Until museums face up to the real market forces at play, and cease blaming the weather or 9/11 for annual declines, we shall be reading more stories of those in serious trouble or ceasing to exist. Decades of hard work have gone into building these institutions and presenting their accumulated knowledge to millions of people. It would be a tragedy to lose even one of them.

Mr. Courson is the director of the Sandwich Glass Museum in Sandwich, Mass.

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