Tag Archives: Ben Hewitt

A Lack of Vision

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Tumbling, tumbleweeds.

Tumbling, tumbleweeds.

Where there is no vision, the people perish…

People and places without a plan for the future—a vision—are doomed to failure. Equally worse in my opinion is a plan that takes you in the wrong direction.

I grew up in a community that at one time was a vibrant little place. Main Street had a number of places where you could shop, buy ice cream, pick up auto supplies; there was a barber shop (there were actually two, at one time), a hair salon, and several department stores. All of that’s just a memory that people rehash ad nauseum on Facebook these days. There’s a lot of hand-wringing going on, too. Rarely do they look behind the memories and wonder what happened to what was once Lisbon Falls. Continue reading →

I Don’t Have a PhD

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I lost a training bid to teach technical writing to someone with a PhD.

I learned to write by writing. I’ve written something almost everyday for the past 10 years, have three books in print (and a fourth on the way), blog regularly, etc. My competition has a blog that hasn’t been updated in almost a year and has a total of six blog posts over the past two. As far as I know, their total book output is 0. Their online presence is pretty lame. Continue reading →

The case for community

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Robert Putnam coined the term “social capital” in a seminal essay written in 1995. He’d later expand those ideas about community into a full-length book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, in 2000.

Putnam’s book and his ideas have infused my own thinking about the world since reading the book in 2002. In 2005, I tackled writing a book of my own, one that drew liberally upon the concept of social capital, using baseball rather than bowling as the metaphor for the changes American communities have experienced over the last 50-60 years. Continue reading →

Can local food save us?

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Local food, at least in the sense of it being a subculture, is a healthy one in Brunswick/Topsham. All a person needs to do to take the pulse of the two communities relative to the importance of local food is to pay a visit to Crystal Spring Farm on Woodside Road on a Saturday morning between May and October. That’s where one of Maine’s most vibrant farmers’ markets takes place.

First, there are the numerous local farmers that come from a 25-30 mile radius of Brunswick, bringing a variety of locally-grown and produced foods. You can find vegetables, fruit, meat and poultry, even seafood, as well as value-added items like cheese, bread, all produced locally. Then, there’s the section of the 300 acre Crystal Spring property serving as a parking lot, packed with automobiles and even a few bicycles. Continue reading →

Small town growth and vitality

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Boothbay Harbor: One of Maine’s 10 prettiest villages.

Last week I gave a talk on community branding. My presentation touched on economic growth and vitality in small town Maine, and I also managed to wax semi-poetic (coherent?) on workforce development, something I’ve acquired a fairly extensive knowledge base about. More than mere knowledge, I have developed initiatives and programming that have been successful. Continue reading →