I get that everyone needs money and all dollars are green even if you have to sell your soul to get them but these sorts of pro-tourism "look how quaint this local boutique industry is" articles really rub me the wrong way.
Is it a bit romanticized? Perhaps. But, there are thousands of these small-scale "boutique" operations around the country in all sorts of industries. How quickly we've forgotten that this is how it used to be done.
I grew up in one of these sorts of tourism places. Just because some people make a living doing Actual Things(TM) doesn't mean that having a large portion of the economy be tourism related does not have negative effects for pretty much everyone.
>this is how a lot of our food makes it to our tables;
And someone dicking around fixing heavy equipment in the mud is how the table became your table but you don't see people romanticizing the timber industry because for the most part it isn't associated with tourism the way waterfront communities (and by extension, their industries) are.
The fishing industry exists as much to give the tourists something to look at so the captains' wives/friends/relatives can run successful restaurants and bars (and fish the tourists wallets) as it does to pull edible animals out of the water. On a community level this is all pretty soul crushing because your existence is predicated on your ability to basically put on a show for others (i.e. look quaint) but pretend that you're just this quaint naturally.
So, like all of Hollywood? : )
It seems like in your book, “putting on a show for others” is somehow a distasteful means of living. However, many people enjoy this lifestyle. Reinventing something as basic as fishing into an “experience” for tourists, most of who are likely city dwellers who would never get to experience this, seems like a win win to me, and honestly something we could get other industries involved in. You mention the timber industry... if there were places that would allow me to cut down trees with a chainsaw, I would actually be interested in that!
As more of human society urbanizes, we’re going to see a lot more demand for these “experiences”.
Look at what is popular on Youtube - 'mustie1' fixes junk with his hands in 30 minute videos for nearly 500k subscribers. 'Primitive Technology' replicate(d) societal development for 10.3M subscribers. Nobody is arguing that this work is hard. Sorry if the "theatre" of it bothers you, but I think it's a net societal benefit to help reconnect people back to "artisan" and "boutique" ways of living. We still need those people - think of tourism as a recruiting tool.
Meanwhile the work is hard, dirty and dangerous for the people who do this for a living in order to survive day to day. The author gets to go back to their well to do life on a family owned island while the fishermen continue to toil at sea.
> Originally from Connecticut, she worked one summer on a whale-watching boat in Bar Harbor, saw the lobstermen, and thought: I want to do that, that looks real.
And yes, the author does get to go back to her "well to do life", but she does not downplay the hardness, dirt or danger of this work.
Your position seems to suggest that you can't write about the sorts of things the author wanted to write about - the intersections between loneliness, isolation, community, friendship and work - unless you're not well-to-do and spend years or even a lifetime in a job.
I reject that perspective.
This year has all new problems though: Some people drove straight up from Florida and Texas then dropped by to chat within hours. What the bleeping bleep is wrong with you? Why are you here?!
Yes, the author is well-to-do, born to academic parents, through no fault of her own. What obligations does she have by virtue of that? Is the rule you propose that she should be prohibited from ever taking a blue collar job? Or only if she does so for a sufficiently long time?
Would the world or her perspective on it be improved if instead of spending her summer on a lobster boat she had spent it working at Starbucks?
Or is it just that she should be able to do these things but be prohibited from writing about them and sharing that? Would we be better off if we hadn't read this?
Sure, maybe she's viewing this through rose-colored glasses. But those are her glasses and that is her authentic perspective. Doesn't she have the right to experience it and share it? Or does one need to be born into a certain level of misery and poverty before they earn the right to write?
I think the world would be a much better place if everyone (or at least everyone in America) had to spend at least 6 months in a minimum wage customer service job. If that were the case you'd hope we'd have far less entitled customers abusing workers who don't deserve any such treatment.
This is not to say that a summer on a lobster ship is worthless, but your choice of example is poor - yes, I do honestly believe that a summer at Starbucks seeing people on their worst behavior could do more to shape perspective than a summer of manual labor in relative isolation.
Perhaps a better example would be her just lazing around her parents' houses.
it's a vaguely similar sort of problem with this type of article. the author probably didn't harm anyone by taking a quick stint on a fishing boat. I don't think writing and publishing the article harms anyone either. but at the same time it raises uncomfortable questions. would someone who makes their livelihood from fishing choose to write this sort of article? if they did, would they have an audience?
That's because what we do would genuinely be boring to watch in a tv show or movie. I can think of exactly one time in my 12ish year career where a co-worker actively fought a malicious actor, and that was more entertaining than anything.
This is true of most jobs, present and past. Ever see a soldier or warrior with a sword strapped on their back and draw it out to do battle? Yeah, thats not a thing. It looks cool, but is physically impossible to do smoothly or single handedly with all but the shortest of swords.
Similar things can be said of archers, peasants, gypsies, police, journalists, etc.
While I am on a rant, the term "bohemian" when used for artistic hippy types is blatantly racist, and we have ignorant young French aristocrats to thank for it, but nobody actually cares.
Would a fisherman write such an article? No, because the article was about a transformative experience which defied expectations. A fisherman who has done naught else is not likely to have the same experience, but that doesnt change what the author did experience.
I don't see what is uncomfortable about that at all. /end long winded meandering rant that probably missed the point
A more direct one would be if some liberal arts major did a coding bootcamp and wrote about their experience. I wouldn't be morally offended that they shared their small window into programming with the world. Sure, it would be limited in many ways and colored by their own biases. But the latter makes it more interesting.
I already know what programming is like for "real" programmers. Seeing what programming is like for someone outside of that tribe is actually pretty interesting.