Although looking at the map of the state of Massachusetts people will easily see the coastline, what they may not know is that  it is divided into sections.

From New Hampshire to the beginning of Boston’s northern border, it is the North Shore. It has its own topography and geology. Where did Cape Anne come from? Its rocks exist only there on this continent, and in ancient times it was valuable to the indigenous people on the East Coast who would travel hundreds of miles to get some.

Its major city had been Salem in the 1600s and the society that spread out from it had its own identity. There have been farmers like elsewhere but the soil, the rocks, the natural resources determined their methods of farming and what they produced was what could be grown. There was fishing as it was on the coast, but what the North Shore fished for was not as wide ranging or as lucrative as it was further south.

Starting at the southern border of Boston stretching down to the northern part of Cape Cod on the mainland side of the Canal is the South Shore. Plymouth is there, but with the arrival of the Puritans with their dislike of the Pilgrims, starting in 1630 Boston controlled and limited any competition to it and the South Shore with its own typography attracted a population among whom were farmers ad fishermen who approached each differently than on the North Shore. 

There is a different atmosphere and attitude in both places as the North Shore became more commercial in many ways and the South Shore overtime began to attract people looking for fancy homes in quiet areas away from the city and at one point became the Irish Riviera as it became the place for vacation homes of those of Irish descent in Boston who eventually became eligible to purchase summer homes by the sea.

For all intents and purposes, as far as the state is concerned, the only shores that count are the ones that are stopped by the city of Boston on one side and the Cape Cod Canal on the other with a pull toward Boston like a magnet as it was the place from which the suburbs grew.

The North and South Shores favor Boston and it favors them.

What lurks below the Cape is the states stepchild, the kid they send to the attic when guests come over, the South Coast that goes from Wareham on the mainland side of the Canal to Rhode Island and like Lawrence and Lowell had been industrial powerhouses for the state and one, New Bedford was the city that lit the world, first when it supplied the whale oil for lighting and then when its power plant had been used in the 1960s to jump start the East Coast electric power grid and end the huge blackout.

The needs of the South Coast are different than those of the other Shores and the Cape, but the state keeps referring to the area as the South Shore, which it certainly is not, assuming whatever they claim they have done for the South Shore should keep us happy. In reality, they have not only not addressed the local needs but they feel happy with themselves for having had when in reality they gave what they claim they gave us what the actually gave to someone else because they can’t even recognize their own kid. It is as if the South Coast asks for needed food but is supplied with the clothing the South Shore had asked for so it got it too. 

Statewide organizations as well as state government have this idea that if the totally different South Shore got something, the South Coast, being the same place got it too.

Working with state organizations, especially political ones and the state government is the same as having every package you are expecting from Amazon delivered to a wrong address and you are told that the package has been delivered and that is as far as you go in getting either the package or any satisfaction.

So, pay attention state people:

You have from north to south the North Shore, Boston, the South Shore, Cape Cod, and the South Coast in that order and in that entirety.

The needs of the South Coast demand attention be given to them.

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