by Michael McDermott, Charter Oak Cultural Center’s Facilities Manager
I remember as a child watching Orson Welles’s post-modernism 1973 final film F for Fake and being struck by a moment in the film where he gives a speech about mankind, and the structures we have built since time immemorial. In this monologue he says, “our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash.” After hearing this, I began to look around my own community and ask why is that some buildings stand the test of time and some succumb to it, “wearing away into the ultimate and universal ash?”
So, when I was welcomed into the Charter Oak Family eight months ago as the new Facilities Manager, I was struck once again by that question. How it is that Charter Oak Cultural Centers building survived up to the present moment? In the eight months I have been here, which is but a tiny microcosm in her long history, she has continued to show to me graciously all her sides. I thank her at the completion of every day, for allowing me to watch over her in the coming years, but more so for granting me a fleeting sense of touching that ever-so-elusive sense of time, not only presently, but all the way back to when her first corner stone laid down in the mid 1800s.
When our new Director of Operations Daniel Nischan showed me photographs through the ages, I was again taken aback by how Charter Oak decade after decade, in each photograph, watched houses around her be erected and torn down, roads that once were dirt made solid by asphalt, even a massive factory building towered over her from behind, only to have this “industrial building of progress” succumb to times ruthless marching on beat of, change, change, change.
During our monthly meeting, our Executive Director Donna Berman, encourages everyone to share our ideas, hopes, even struggles as we all work together to keep Charter Oak Cultural Center’s mission alive and thriving. It dawned on me — this building hasn’t withstood the test of time solely on her solid building quality alone, but continues to stand tall because of her symbolic value and her culture of, “harnessing the power of the arts to create positive social change, loving community and a safe place for self-expression.” As Donna said at this meeting, “When people feel seen and heard, all is possible.” Truly words that stand the test of time.