The Common Online

A lesson on “The ABC of Architects.” For more...

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:15:25 -0500

A lesson on “The ABC of Architects.”

For more architecture, stop by our site to read the first installment of Scott Geiger’s monthly column, “Buckminster.”

Take a peek at what’s in store for The Common this year!...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 08:21:16 -0500

Take a peek at what’s in store for The Common this year! ”Philly Things” by David Livewell, an upcoming contributor.

Dispatches from Yemen, by LEE GULYAS

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 11:31:09 -0500

“The chicken vendor’s stacked cages combine manure and death. Flatbread browning in the baker’s oven wafts smoke and flour. Metallic hints of thrown-out bean cans, misty exhaust of diesel trucks, heady tangs of eucalyptus trees. Even from inside our house the smell of fire is usual, from water pipes for smoking dried fruit and tobacco, whiffs of the neighbor’s incense, a sniff of matches and candles each time the electricity blacks out. Once we watched neighborhood kids chase after a rolling tire set afire, orbiting whirls of black and flame until the blaze consumed the tire, which wobbled in circles, then lay motionless on the ground. Children watched while acrid plumes of soot spread, lingering bitterness infusing the air…” http://www.thecommononline.org/dispatches/spices-butter-and-earth

It’s here: the cover for Issue 04 of The Common! A...

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:12:19 -0400

It’s here: the cover for Issue 04 of The Common! A special thanks to Rodrigo Corral and Gabriele Wilson for their work.

Finding the Extraordinary in the Common: A Mission of Literature and Education

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:27:44 -0400

This summer, The Common’s community engagement intern, Amherst College student Sasha Smith, reports on events and outreach of several Pioneer Valley organizations.

Late in the month of June, I received an email from Amherst’s Center for Community Engagement regarding a pilot course being offered to students from the Five Colleges. The course was referred to as an ‘Inside-Out Writing Workshop’ and was to be held at The Hampshire Jail and House of Corrections in Northampton, Mass. The class would be comprised of both college students and prison inmates who aimed to achieve stronger and clearer prose.

Inside-Out classes have been offered across the country since 1997, two years after a prisoner incarcerated in Dallas, Pennsylvania, envisioned a space where college students could “ask questions, address stereotypes, and examine criminal justice literature—in the context of honesty, authenticity, and trust.” Over the last fifteen years, The Inside-Out program has blossomed into a nationwide effort to provide post-secondary education to inmates and to promote social change within both American communities and our justice system. Today, 60 institutions (including county jails, state prisons, federal prisons, juvenile facilities, and community correctional facilities) offer Inside-Out programs. More than 10,000 students (both inside and out) have participated in at least one of the 300 plus courses offered across 25 states. Although the numbers are impressive and the mission admirable, the facilities that offer the classes are few and far between when America’s several thousand facilities and 2.5 million incarcerated people are taken into consideration.

Amherst College has been one of the 150 colleges and universities participating in the program since 2006, when Professor Kristin Bumiller first offered a political science course at the Hampshire Jail. Today, both Bumiller, professor of political science and women’s and gender studies, and Martha Saxton, professor of history and women’s and gender studies, regularly offer Inside-Out classes to Five-College students and inmates of The Hampshire Jail.

Walking into the prison on the first day of class, I did not know what to expect. The guards seemed gruff and apprehensive, and the corridors echoed constantly as electronic doors were opened and closed. The classroom featured no more than a linoleum floor and chairs that had to be restacked at the end of each meeting. A gravelly voice rang out on the intercom intermittently, interrupting class with announcements that I didn’t understand. By the end of the summer, however, I had realized that a prison classroom can be no different than any other, and that behind the bars and beneath the stereotypes, there can exist a place where the common goal of higher education—prompted by an open-minded exchange of ideas—can overcome all differences.

Each week we read essays and book excerpts about various social dilemmas by authors ranging from Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo to Amherst alum David Foster Wallace. We discussed the causes and effects of the Rwandese Genocide and talked about the importance of our cultural backgrounds in light of Chang-Rae Lee’s essay about the meaning and influence of cultural traditions, “Magical Dinners.” Each student was encouraged to share his/her personal reaction to the week’s lessons and to discuss our points of agreement or disagreement, and every week we focused upon one aspect of writing, ranging from correct verb usage and the beauty of a well-placed noune to the art of argument and the craft of constructing paragraphs. Eager to exchange our stories and opinions, we explored our weekly lessons unabashedly. We listened with respect and responded to one another with sincerity. We often deviated from the prompts, and our discussions took on lives of their own.

The lessons were invaluable. I learned not only the value of my identity—my culture, heritage, and personal past—but also about the diverse identities surrounding me. From debates on the economy of modern day India to the controversial history of the United States, I found the discussions more stimulating—and certainly more versatile—than in most classes I’ve taken. But what I most take away from Inside-Out is a profound reminder that the classroom experience is much more than a silently copied lecture or a tableful of students fearing failure. Sitting amidst my classmates at The Hampshire Jail, I saw a group of people that had come together to learn, not just from Professor Saxton, but from each other. I realized that a classroom isn’t the room, the desks, or the chalkboard; it is the interactions that take place within. It is a safe place in which we can exchange our ideas without discrimination and gain experience. A classroom can be an ivy-covered building or a building behind razor wire where students of all kinds can come together in pursuit of the common goal of education.

To learn more about the Inside-Out Program, or to learn how you or your school can get involved, please visit The Inside-Out Center.

To read essays from this summer’s writing collaborative at The Hampshire Jail, visit https://blogs.ats.amherst.edu/writing-cooperative/

“Enter the Town of Shadows, where noise is ‘the color of rain,’...

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 10:28:00 -0400

“Enter the Town of Shadows, where noise is ‘the color of rain,’ and the self is a ‘hidden crowd.’ Indeed like shadows, the town’s inhabitants are elusive—slipping in and out of mirrors, wandering down secret corridors of the mind, hiding in the spines of houses—and perpetually at risk of disappearing or being ‘deleted.’ Lindsay Stern’s brilliant, urgent vignettes depict a people struggling to make sense of the limits of language and time. A dark and fascinating debut.”

— Hanna Andrews, American Poet

“That the fresh and haunting new voice Lindsay Stern exercises in Town of Shadows is difficult to classify ought to serve only to make it impossible to ignore. Rife with arch urgency, brief density, and fruitful disregard for traditional genre bounds, Stern’s debut is an important addition to the recent rejuvenation of the novella form. Through its razor-sharp technique, translucent diction, and elliptical vignette structure, Town of Shadows peels layer from layer to reveal a complex, perspicacious author who is unafraid to trouble the water where poetry and prose mingle. Stern’s youth and precocity are certainly striking, but don’t let them dupe you: here is a young Lydia Davis or Anne Carson unspooling only the beginning of a corpus all her own. Lindsay Stern defines the term ‘one to watch.’”

— Laura Goode, author of Sister Mischief

Excerpt

THE MAYOR

For a long time the mayor required all citizens to wear small wooden cages on their heads. The idea was to trap their thoughts before they wafted behind another’s eyes, between another’s ears. At first the results were satisfactory. Then came the complications: the cages filled until the mayor could no longer distinguish one face from the next. Through the bars he discerned only light—red for politicians, for philosophers bright blue, and for children the glint of candleflame. They were happily blind, watching their thoughts unfold before them as the objects of the world ticked on.

Soon the mayor tired of the cages. Bureaucrats sawed off the bars until the ground was laced with splintered wood.

“It’s for the best,” said the mayor through his black cigar.

They watched the ash descend into his empty sleeves. They watched him with one face.

THE PLAGUE OF DREAMS

Within a week, half the town had contracted the dream. It was highly contagious. Quarantine signs sprang up like dandelions.

…In the dream, the sleeper encountered a wooden box. The box was full of Nothing. The townspeople knew no words with which to express the dream, because words were nothing without things, which were nothing without words. The Nothing hung between words and things like a mirror.

THE CELLIST

On the Saturday after the war began, Analena fell in love with her cello. One moment she was an ordinary schoolgirl, and the next she lost her capacity for speech. She played through frost and thaw, sickness and sleep. The townspeople grew so accustomed to her music that it became, for those who listened, another form of silence.

For more details and to order the book, visit the author’s site.

Check out the book’s Facebook page and trailer.

From There to Here: A Musical Sense of Place

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:57:24 -0400

This summer, The Common’s community engagement intern, Amherst College student Sasha Smith, reports on events and outreach of several Pioneer Valley organizations.

On a sunny morning in mid July, hundreds of people gathered in Greenfield, Mass., to celebrate the Annual Green River Festival. Held in honor of Woody Guthrie’s 100 birthday, the music festival featured three stages, forty-one performances by locally and nationally renowned artists, an array of mouthwatering food and unique artisan crafts, and of course, the famous hot air balloons. The Green River Festival is, to date, the only festival in Massachusetts at which attendees have the chance to soar above the fields as passengers in the brightly colored balloons.

The festival has been hosted by Greenfield Community College for all of its 26 years and has helped to provide funding for the school, which receives more than 60% of its funding from the surrounding communities. “It’s a great collaborative,” says Dr. Robert Pura, GCC President. He proudly emphasizes that this collaboration is “how we do it in our community.”

As soon as the gates opened the crowds piled in, quickly transforming the fields of green into an expansive sea of colors. Sarah Lee Guthrie, granddaughter of Woody Guthrie, and Johnny Irion kicked off the event with an acoustic performance before throngs of listeners sitting amidst a spectacular array of lawn chairs, blankets, and beach umbrellas. Sarah delivered a touching speech on her grandfather’s musical influence and legacy, bringing reminiscent smiles to the faces of hundreds.

The laid-back pace of days long past picked up tempo when The David Wax Museum, a homegrown band living in Western Massachusetts, took the stage. Their innovative fusion of Mexican folk, American roots, and Indie Rock sent a ripple of electricity through the humid summer air and brought a previously hot and sleepy audience to its feet.

The band, comprised of David Wax, Suz Slezak, and Greg Glassman (as well as several other multifaceted musicians during tours and recording sessions), has, according to The New Yorker, “kicked up a cloud of excitement with their high-energy, border-crossing sensibility” throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and China. I was lucky enough to chat with Suz after their performance, who continued to radiate the charming energy of the band’s stage presence. When talking about the band’s eclectic influences she said: “A lot of bands these days are trying to draw inspiration from the past, but are trying to create music that is live and present.” She described music festivals like Green River as a “suspension of time and place,” adding that “this is her community.” As a travelling band, playing music across this nation and others, The David Wax Museum belongs to a broad community. Suz makes sure to point out, however, that despite its expanse and diversity, the music community that she and her colleagues belong to is just as tightly knit as the small communities she has grown accustomed to living in here in the Pioneer Valley.

As the day wore on and the music continued, a small train in the fields below the stage circled the grounds and collected eager young travelers. A dance tent far across the fields attracted children of an older age who sought to replace the tunes of their parents with bone-rattling beats of their own generation. Vendors of all stripes pitched their tents across the grounds, and sparkling displays reflected the afternoon sun. Jeffrey Kalin of Primitive Technologies, a small business from Connecticut dedicated to recreating the material culture of prehistoric Native American life, told me about the passion he felt for his trade as he chipped away at yet another breathtaking replica of ancient jewelry. “I can recreate what people did in another world,” he says, with a sparkle in his eyes. “I don’t do this to make a living, I do this because it is the way I want to live. I live this.” Another example of the diversity present within the local arts communities is Wildfibers, the brand of an artist from Sunderland who incorporates the raw fibers of natural materials into her work. Encompassing vendors and festival-goers from all over New England, as well as musical groups from as far away as L.A. and New Orleans, the crowd assembled in Greenfield on July 14^th exemplifies the wildly varied but tightly knit community that Suz Slezak described.

The Green River Festival lasted well into the night, finishing with a memorable performance by Arlo Guthrie, charmingly accompanied by his many children and grandchildren. As three generations of the Guthrie family crowded the stage, joining together to share their stories and sing the melodies of a shared past, the hot air balloons rose like multicolored moons from the dark fields below. At the peak of their ascent, they rained a golden light upon the community gathered beneath, swaying in sync to one last song.

Pick up our new Summer Fiction e-book (available on Amazon,...

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 13:45:23 -0400

Pick up our new Summer Fiction e-book (available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and our webstore) and enjoy three hot, new stories by three emerging writers! A must-have companion for your August vacation.

Strawberry Fields: Forever

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:25:00 -0400

This summer, The Common’s community engagement intern, Amherst College student Sasha Smith, reports on events and outreach of several Pioneer Valley organizations.

On Saturday, Junde 16th, Red Fire Farm of Montague, MA held its annual Strawberry Soiree. Amidst the noise of delighted children, ruby-red juice dribbling down their chins, and the music of local talents Masala Jazz and Molly and Maggie drifting over the fields, guests sampled more than nine varieties of strawberries. Over eighty guest purchased tickets for a dinner of ingredients locally sourced on farm grounds, showcasing the creativity of Chef Warren Leigh, co-founder of Hydrangea Catering, president of the local American Culinary Federation and Instructor at Holyoke Community College.

Red Fire Farm, founded more than ten years ago by Ryan and Sarah Voiland at their first farm location in Granby, MA, is a certified organic, mixed vegetable, berry, and flower farm. Membership in the farm’s Community Supported Agriculture program has grown in recent years to 1,400 shareholders spread our across the state from the Connecticut River Valley to the greater Boston and Springfield areas.

This regional support spells hope for the all too common human event that is ripping up roots and strewing them across concrete worlds where neighbors are strangers and gardens are scarce. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the country has lost more than 92 million acres of farmland over the last 30 years. Massachusetts alone has lost over 18% of its farmland acreage since the 1980s, and acreage continues to decrease. One of the largest contributing factors, aside from development, is the lack of affordable access to land.

The Red Fire Farm’s Community Supported Agriculture program has helped the farm to stay on its feet, but even this broad base of customers is not enough for farmers like Ryan and Sarah to escape what Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust calls an “unsustainable amount of debt.” Massachusetts now has the most expensive farmland in the nation, averaging $12, 202 per acre. In comparison, other farming states, such as Illinois, average $5,000 per acre. The Red Fire Farm holdings in Montague, spanning over 122 acres, has been operating with only a year-to-year lease: an arrangement that threatens the viability of the farm and therefore, the sustainability of the environmentally friendly jobs, food, and community activities that organic farming creates. Mount Grace’s Campaign for Affordable Farms is a new effort to raise $400,000 to purchase Red Fire Farm’s Montague property. Based upon the earlier work established by the Equity Trust, Mount Grace will hold the land as a “community asset” and place it under a permanent Affordability Restriction for future sales. The land conservation organization will then provide an affordable, 99-year inheritable lease to farmers like Ryan and Sarah for as long as they continue to farm. After last week’s Strawberry Soiree, three-quarters of the $400,000 goal has been raised.

The Campaign for Affordable Farms is an “opportunity for innovation,” Mount Grace says. The Red Fire Farm will serve as a model for future farm conservation endeavors, helping to “ensure that working farms are able to provide Massachusetts with healthy, locally grown food in perpetuity,” making sure that the strawberry fields, as well as the surrounding crops, will be there forever.

On May 23rd, in New York City, The Common celebrated a literary...

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 10:50:00 -0400

On May 23rd, in New York City, The Common celebrated a literary sense of place and one year of publishing. Thank you to all who joined us for drinks, hors d’oeuvres, Stephen O’Connor’s fantastic reading, and two stellar sets by the Dog House Band. Check out party coverage and photographs from Electric Literature and The Millions, and visit our Facebook photo gallery for more great images!

Photos from the Emily Dickinson Museum garden party (June 14,...

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 16:43:00 -0400

Photos from the Emily Dickinson Museum garden party (June 14, 2012).

Margot Livesey reads from her new book, The Flight of Gemma...

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 15:57:07 -0400

Margot Livesey reads from her new book, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, at the Emily Dickinson Museum. Introduction by The Common editor, Jennifer Acker.

Sun slanting through the trees, it was a perfect afternoon to...

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 15:47:00 -0400

Sun slanting through the trees, it was a perfect afternoon to celebrate landscapes, literary legacies, and the writer’s houses where authors created lasting worlds. On Thursday evening, June 14, The Common hosted Margot Livesey, A.N. Devers, and Writers Houses at the Emily Dickinson Museum.

Jane Wald, the museum’s executive director, treated the crowd to several Dickinson poems, and A.N. Devers, paying homage to Dickinson’s garden in a dress of roses, described writers’ houses as the kinds of places appreciated not for their beauty, but for the role in deepening our appreciation for their inhabitants’ enduring words. Editor Jennifer Acker emphasized the role of place in the imagination of writers and quoted Livesey’s wise words that there is “no place more beautiful than the inside of your own head.” Lastly, Livesey read from her new novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, a recasting of Jane Eyre, which was a favorite book of Emily Dickinson.

All the while, the words of Emily Dickinson stared unblinkingly from the sides and roofs of the temporary small white houses adorning the summer-lush museum and homestead.

Visit The Common’s Facebook Album, Garden Party with Emily Dickinson, to see more photos!

A Skimpy Visual on Skateboard Wheels Bret Anthony’s...

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 18:39:00 -0400

A Skimpy Visual on Skateboard Wheels

Bret Anthony’s Johnston’s essay from Issue 03, “A Skimpy Primer on Skateboard Wheels,” comes to life in this short video featuring the author himself doing some flips and tricks.

On Vimeo: http://bit.ly/LwBl1K

Once again I glimpsed the way in which departure ripped the...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:04:00 -0400

Once again I glimpsed the way in which departure ripped the veil from ordinary life, revealing things that were normally kept hidden…For a moment I longed to back at Yew House, climbing the fort with my uncle, walking by the river. Then the hills were gone and I was traveling, untrammeled, towards the future. I opened by book.

~Margot Livesey, The Flight of Gemma Hardy

On Thursday, June 14, Margot Livesey joins The Common and Writers Houses at the Emily Dickinson Museum’s garden party to celebrate writers, their homes, and their legacies. Livesey will read from her recent novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, a recasting of the author’s own childhood and Jane Eyre, a favorite book of Emily Dickinson. Marshall Zeringue in Campaign for the American Reader calls Livesey’s novel a “sweeping saga that resurrects the timeless themes of the original but is destined to become a classic all its own.” Charmingly strong-willed, whip smart, touchingly brave, and truly reflective of her Victorian counterpart, Gemma is a modern hero.

Come to the Dickinson Homestead on June 14 for drinks, hors d’oeuvres, a visit from Writers Houses founder A.N. Devers and garden tours by landscape historian and gardener Marta McDowell. Free and open to the public, the party runs from 5:30 to 7:30. RSVP today to secure your spot!

Away from home and open to the possibility of romantic...

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 12:46:00 -0400

Away from home and open to the possibility of romantic diversion, she chose to have a fling with a bookish introvert in flip-flops and a 90-cent haircut. In this way, our love affair was, for her, a souvenir of sorts — a tourist snapshot significant less for its resonance than for its novelty

-Rolf Potts

We are excited to share that “Tourist Snapshots” by Rolf Potts, published in Issue 03, has been cross-published with Design Observer’s Places Journal. Find all the press coverage on Bookforum, under the Travel Blog of WorldHum, as “Things I Read that I Love” on Autostraddle, and as one of the “best stories from around the world” on Foreign Policy Magazine’s pick of the week.

"Double Life" by Stephen O'Connor (excerpt)

Mon, 21 May 2012 18:03:50 -0400

"Double Life" by Stephen O'Connor (excerpt):

From Issue 03. Hear more at The Common in the City! http://bit.ly/KR9bYB

Dog House Band’s “Way Out Here.” Hear more at...

Mon, 21 May 2012 17:58:23 -0400

Dog House Band’s “Way Out Here.”

Hear more at The Common in the City on May 23rd: http://bit.ly/KR9bYB

The Dog House Band — Way Out Here The Dog House Band will...

Sat, 19 May 2012 20:23:53 -0400

The Dog House Band — Way Out Here

The Dog House Band will be playing at The Common in the City event on Wednesday, May 23.

National Geographic’s “Visions of Earth”...

Tue, 08 May 2012 18:10:11 -0400

National Geographic’s “Visions of Earth” Online

(some cool pictures of place)