December 5, 2024

Our town. Newburyport. What is it about this town that keeps pulling us back to it? Is it the cobblestones, the salt air, the pink houses and bed races? Is it the theater, the musicians, the artists and the chefs? Is it the piping plovers, the boat builders, the shipwrecks and the abolitionists? After forty years orbiting this place, I am still trying to put words to the magic of Newburyport. It is a kind of gravity that tugs at all of us in our solitary orbits. It has its own heavy weather. The Coast Guard is stationed here for a very good reason.

My suspicion is that the magnetic pull has something to do with you and me. Thornton Wilder wrote in Our Town, “We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.” 

As I write this, the sun is setting over the Merrimack River and, although my office window faces Water Street, the orange hues and purple wispy clouds are reflected in the windows of The Tannery.

Forty years ago I arrived from South Boston and stood on this very street, in this very town, in my tutu and pink ballet shoes, outside a black box theater waiting for my entrance in a production of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Shadow (some of you reading this were there).

Thirty years ago I returned from Oregon, got a job as a bookseller at the old Book Rack on State Street and began Muggle Midnight Madness and dressed up as “PIG” from If You Give a Pig a Pancake on Saturdays (the inside of that pig head had its own heavy weather) while my dad read stories to the children of our town.

Twenty years ago I began my career as an artist and educator working with teenagers and adults down the street from our town. Sitting here thinking of what I want to say to all of you members and subscribers…it is simply this: we are the lucky ones. We get to live and work here in this special place. 

I have ideas for raising money, serving our members, diversifying our classes, workshops and raising our community impact. I want to hear your ideas about these things too. I can, and will, talk about all of those things in the months to come. On this cold winter afternoon I would rather say something from the heart.

I want to say thank you for welcoming me home.

I feel so lucky to be able to get stuck in and create with all of you. I hope we can make the NAA a hub for fun, for art, for education, for all ages, and all experience levels. I hope we can make it a place to listen, to learn, to love and to care for one another. I want the NAA to be a reflection of our town. It is not just a building. It is the human beings that make it special.

One of my heroes, bell hooks, wrote, “When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.” I cannot wait to connect with all of you in this magical, crazy, beautiful, creative, gravitational anomaly called Newburyport, Massachusetts: our city and our town. -Belle.

*Belle will be posting open hours for visits and drop-in conversations in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more info!