As everyone around here agrees, this has been a long winter. And just this week we had warnings of another snow storm on April 1st. Fortunately this turned out to be just a bit of rain here.

So, I turned to the back yard, the parts not run over by backhoes during our sewer project, and found signs that Spring is upon us. It remains a mystery how these plants survive the cold nights. Last week we had temperatures in the teens.

Then, I recall from Cambridge that there are flowers that pop up right in the middle of the snow sometimes at the end of February and more usually in the first two weeks of March. Here are Snowdrops on March 8, 2004 in front of our old house in Cambridge.

adjective

• of undisputed origin; genuine : the letter is now accepted as an authentic document | authentic 14th-century furniture.
• made or done in the traditional or original way, or in a way that faithfully resembles an original : the restaurant serves authentic Italian meals | every detail of the movie was totally authentic.
• based on facts; accurate or reliable : an authentic depiction of the situation.
• (in existentialist philosophy) relating to or denoting an emotionally appropriate, significant, purposive, and responsible mode of human life ((definition adapted from Dictionary Version 2.1.1 Apple, Inc.)

In part because of the vigorous discussion in the various “Signage” postings in the Hudson Business Coalition discussion group and other discussions I have had recently about Hudson, I have come to think that a major feature of Hudson is authenticity. Hudson demonstrates authenticity in all four senses described in the definition above. People who own businesses here, whether in antiques, art, music, and many more, do so from some central personal passion. Visitors experience this directly. Visitors must digest the experience and make it their own. And, many times businesses receive direct feedback about their passions from visitors and not in frequently new perspectives and information about their passions.

Just pay a visit to some of our B&Bs to see authenticity in action. For example, compare The Inn at Hudson and The Country Squire Bed & Breakfast. Just a hundred yards apart, but completely different experiences, each personal and real.

This is no Disneyfied, corporate version of  life, no predigested, cleaned up tourist consumable. A visit to an art gallery here is a visit to the owner’s interests in art. The same goes for the antiques. The burgeoning music scene is filled with lots of local music. The streetscape is authentic, even the maligned Columbia-State St. streetscape. The diversity of the population is authentic and, for a town of seven thousand, quite amazing.

I hope that Hudson continues to develop, in its chaotic unplanned way, with an eye on authenticity. A strong commitment to preserving the streetscape is one obvious strategy. How to encourage and maintain authenticity in other dimensions is not so clear.

A deeper problem is the moment when we reach the tipping point and developers decide that Hudson is hot. As Jane Jacobs wrote about in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) success in the real estate world leads to the death of the social world. It is one of the seemingly inevitable consequences of private property rights that the “highest and best use” (for private property owners) always wins out over any social values.

During my thirty five plus years living in Cambridge MA I watched the death of Harvard Square and its conversion into a social wasteland dominated by large institutional and corporate interests. Everything funky, fun, disruptive. original, everything that made Harvard Sq. a destination for locals and youth, were driven out by large buildings filled with a parade of corporate logos and institutional uses. The only authentic use remaining in Harvard Sq. is the gathering of teenagers, all from the suburbs, around the entrance to the T.  In contrast, Central Sq. in Cambridge might be a good case study of a neighborhood that has largely escaped this fate, though its is just a long half mile from Harvard Sq. It has somehow remained quite indigestible.

I am glad to see the first pedestrian right of way sign that I have ever seen here. These had become a common sight in Cambridge over the last decade and drivers for the most part had become accustomed to the indignity of having to stop.

Hudson, with its usually sparse traffic, offers plenty of opportunities for both pedestrians and cars to pretty much use the streets as they see fit. In fact, though I would never do this in NYC or less so in Boston, here I regularly cross the street in mid block with just a casual glance to the left for an oncoming car then, as I approach the mid point of the street, a right glance for cars coming from the opposite direction. But, now in the 300 block of Warren I will have to be back to minding my pedestrian manners.

As I was admiring the crosswalk I realized that neither side of the walk had ramps for handicapped access. Then, thinking about the sidewalks in Hudson in general, I realized that ramps at intersections and crosswalks are not to be found. How could it be that decades after legislation demanded access for handicapped people elsewhere, Hudson has not found opportunities to put them in just as part of normal maintenance?

Time will tell about how well this building functions as a library and public building. Part of this result will depend on the library staff being inventive and welcoming to public events in the lecture hall in the second basement and the other open spaces in the building. The new building does not have the encompassing warmth of the old building with its dark woods and somewhat less vast spaces.

If you are interested in the “green:” aspect of the building go here for a review of those features (a PDF file).

I went to for a visit.

View from Broadway of old and new library

1st floor looking back to entrance and stairs up on right (red)

from stairway to 2nd floor towards entrance and circulation

study area in stacks on 2nd floor

Teen Room in old library building

kids area in 3rd floor Children's Division

Computer area in old building

Middlesex County

848 sq mi

population 1, 465, 396

density 1,780/ sq mi

Columbia County

land area: 636 sq mi

population 62,363

density 98 / sq mi

Cambridge

land area 6.4 sq mi

population 101388

density 15,767 / sq mi

Estimated median household income in 2007: $58,850 (it was $47,979 in 2000)

Cambridge:	$58,850
Massachusetts:	$62,365

Estimated per capita income in 2007: $41,093

Cambridge:	$41,093
Massachusetts:	$32,822

Estimated median house or condo value in 2007: $558,800 (it was $331,600 in 2000)

Cambridge:	$558,800
Massachusetts:	$366,400

Hudson

land area 2.24 sq mi

population 6, 925

density: 3,094 / sq mi

Estimated median household income in 2007: $29,891 (it was $24,279 in 2000)

Hudson:	$29,891
New York:	$53,514

Estimated per capita income in 2007: $20,111

Hudson:	$20,111
New York:	$29,885

Estimated median house or condo value in 2007: $171,611 (it was $76,100 in 2000)

Hudson:	$171,611
New York:	$311,000

Saturday, with more than a little help from our friend Chris Brown, we moved an old love seat downstairs and out to the “barn”. As we were lugging this gem down the stairs, Chris said “Let’s put it out on the street and someone will come and take it away.”

I replied, “Well, in Cambridge that would be a completely safe strategy. We once put an old metal office desk on the street only to see it scooped up by students living across from us literally within minutes. But, I am not so sure about putting old furniture on Warren St. in Hudson. I have never seen anything like that here. But, lets put it in the alley. Plenty of people go by out there.”

So, that is exactly what we did. I came back a bit later and put a sign on it, “Free”.

Later that night I went out back and saw that no one had taken us up on our “free” love seat. Then, I flashed back to a memory from our Western Ave. Cambridge days. During a move from one side of the street to the other, we left an old sofa bed on the side walk. In the middle of the night we awoke to fire engines dousing a fire set in the sofa. With that in mind, I pushed our love seat a bit closer to the edge of the alley and a bit further from our very combustible barn.

Next morning, I went out to the barn and opened the door. The only evidence of our love seat was a slightly crumbled “free”.

I am still surprised by the ways flags are used. Maybe I am stuck in the 1960s when this would be described as “desecration” and in some quarters lead to a stay in the local lock up.

This tree in front of our old house at 52 Kinnaird was the size of a forearm and perhaps 15 feet tall when we first moved here in 1978. Now it towers over the house at probably 75 feet in height.¶

The Opening

Walking Central Square

a site/non-site installation by Karen Davis and John Tagiuri CAC Gallery exhibition, March 17 – April 22, 2005 Opening Reception: Monday, April 4, 2005, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Go to the Cambridge Arts Council website (opens in new window).

Some abstract works by KCD.

Some earlier B&W works by KCD.

One of John Tugiuri’s pieces

Boston Globe Sunday March 11, 2007 (URL for article in the Globe is at bottom of this entry)