The Uncommonwealth

By this point you may be wondering how I came up with the name "The Uncommonwealth" for this site. The real story is fascinating. About a year ago our esteemed Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism (2004 budget: $6M, enabling legislation: "The Office of Travel & Tourism shall serve as the principal agency for promoting the recreational, cultural, historic and scenic resources of the Commonwealth to increase its desirability as a location for tourism, convention, travel, and recreation-related activities by providing informational, marketing and technical assistance to public and private nonprofit entities organized for similar purposes.") decided to sponsor a statewide contest to pick a new slogan to promote tourism in Massachusetts. Thousands of Bay Staters, myself included, screwed on our thinking caps and began kicking around possible successors to "Make It in Massachusetts," etc. After rejecting several lesser alternatives, I settled upon "The Uncommonwealth." This had an Wilde-esque inverted wit to it, and it neatly echoed the "Un-Cola" slogan that 7-Up smacked Coca-Cola around with in the '70s. The only downside: people in other parts of the country might be unfamiliar with the term "Commonwealth," which is affixed to only four states. But what the hell, I thought it had a ring.

Months passed without a word from MOTT. A call to their flak produced the perky reply that the MOTT brain-trust was still mulling the entries, with a winner expected in "a few weeks."

Then dropped the hammer: MOTT was rejecting all of the thousands of home-grown entries and selecting the profoundly uninspired "Massachusetts... Make It Yours," as thought up by those un-bright lights at MOTT's own $300,000 ad firm, CGN Marketing and Creative Services.

So... MOTT's loss is this blog's gain. Welcome to The Uncommonwealth, baby!!