It’s terminal

Catherine writes from Logan’s Terminal E

How to spend a last day in Boston?  We started late by our standards, catching up on sleep deficit from too many nights sleeping four to a room and sheer exhaustion after a hectic day at Six Flags New England rollercoaster park.  The aiport Hilton’s breakfast buffet suffered a major assault, especially in the smoked salmon department.  Then we played an amusing game with suitcases, which operates on a similar basis to musical chairs, in that there is inadequate baggage provision for the volume of luggage to be transported.  But there’s no music, only swearing.  And no prizes, only a $60 extra baggage charge at check-in.  I prefer the chair version.

After a pleasant interlude plashing in the pool, it seemed imperative that we should honour the place the T has occupied in our lives this last twelve month with a final ride.  We took the blue line to the Acquarium, ate a delicious Restaurant Week lunch at Sel de la Terre.   Plan A had been a last Duck Tour but the next available slot was too late for our schedule.  So in a hastily-improvised Plan B we headed over the Federal Courthouse where we sat in on a sentencing hearing for a drug trafficker with “previous”.  Elizabeth’s lust for justice was tempered by seeing the convict, led in by Marshals, trying to exchange a few brief words with his mother and girlfriend.  A jail term was certain following an earlier guilty verdict.  Mr Sutton got 70 months – it could have been double that but for a recent change in the law (motiated by race equality concerns) to equalise the punishment of crack cocaine and cocaine drug  dealing. 

We’re about to head down to the gate, hoping there’ll be room on board for Roger’s guitar and that there’ll be an array of English newspapers in which we can get details of our riot-ridden homeland!

Fun on the water

Elizabeth writes…….

We went to a kayaking place called “H2o” we went at 3:oo pm and met jeff but then we went kayaking with a guy called tom.First we put on our life-jackets and we put on these skirt things!!!!!!!!!!!

Then we got the boats out we got some advice on how to steer the boat,then went off!!!It was fun…

Rog continues…

We headed off along the coast, stopping in at Beal’s Cove for much-needed Oreos (all included in the price). We saw Rat Island, where the son of the owner of the cove lived (allegedly) for a couple of years after falling out with his dad. The tide was against us on the way back, but it gave us time to enjoy the sunset and discuss Thoreau, totem-poles, and other things with Tom.

Hat continues …

It was def. something I enjoyed and would like to do again!!!

Rog  concludes…

Amazing to think we did this last Sunday. The week has flown by, kind of like a bald eagle. This is our last evening in Maine this year but we hope to return…

 

Mainestream

Catherine writes …

Where Massachusetts “cahs” channel “The Spirit of America” and Texas vehicles tout “The Lonestar State” on their license plates, the tag on most Maine motors boast is “Vacationland”.  And you can see why – it’s the stuff of children’s storybooks.  We reached our cheeful billet, The Tadpole, having driven over bridges linking a chain of islands to the mainland.  The keys to the house have remained unused on a hook by the door – no one bothers with that sort of thing here.  Our first floor balcony looks out onto Lowell’s Cove, with lobstertraps piled outside small wharves. Blue and white striped tents shelter the trestle tables of Orr’s Island Library’s annual booksale on the field above the bay.  Back on the main road, it’s a short hop to the Island Candy Company which makes peanut brittle, sponge candy (aka cinder toffee), caramels and assorted fudge from scratch and stocks the scrumptious Shain’s of Maine icecream, at ludicrously reasonable prices.  Keep going on Route 24 and you reach the world’s only granite cribstone bridge, constructed like a Jenga tower in mid-game, with gaps between the massive stone blocks which let the tide flow through.  Just to your right is the red barn which houses a kayak rental company.  After brief instruction, we paddled tandem kayaks for half a day with our guide Tom, who teaches composition in a community college in winter but pulls on his kayak skirt for the summer months.  Once over the bridge on Bailey Island, the road continues only as far as Land’s End where any lobster-related gift requirements can easily be satisfied in the shop.  Even with the impending weight constraints of transatlantic travel we succumbed to a lobster Christmas tree ornament. 

Harriet and Elizabeth are now fast friends with Harley, a sunkissed, acrobatic six year-old blond whose father is a lobster man.  We met him on Cedar Beach, just down RobinHood Lane.  You’d never find it unless tipped off by a local and it never looks the same twice.  Today you could simply walk to the island which earlier in the week was a hearty swim away. 

We’ve made excursions too, to Brunswick where the Bowdoin College Museum of Art has an exhibition on Edward Hopper’s links with Maine, and to Bath where we rounded off our visit to the superlative maritime museum with a six lighthouse cruise, spotting seals, a bald eagle and Hopperesque scenes.  Yesterday we headed to our furthest point north, to Boothbay’s Botanical Gardens, with its richly imaginative Children’s Gardens, inspired by literary themes (including Sal’s bear on Blueberry Island), and the sensory garden, with delights for all the senses.  Our favourite was the reflexology labyrinth – progressively smaller pebbles provided a stimulating massage for the barefoot.  The formal gardens segue gently into more natural environments – so you can meander down wide path through bog, hillside, meadow and other habitats to a meditative garden on the shoreline. 

All this and yet more lobster – bliss.

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Talking primates

Catherine writes …

I can’t claim that this year-long experiment with blogging has enhanced my mental processes to more deeply meditative ones.  But pulling together a post sometimes forces connections which might otherwise have passed you by, obliging you to acknowledge the strange irony of two film selections in one week featuring primates communicating with humans.  Not much else links Project Nim to Zookeeper.

Film classifications here seem even more conservative than the UK’s so I had to defy the Parental Guidance 13 rating of the former, with the mental justifications that H and E are mature (sometimes) and that it would be educational.  These are tough calls for a parent to make.  While you feel you can ride out the occasional bit of colourful language or a character’s reference to having had a sexual relationship with most of the people to whom she’s close, you question your judgement when your nine-year old’s chest is heaving with silent sobs, as a chimp is about to be incarcerated in a concrete cage.  Especially when you’re feeling a bit teary yourself.

Project Nim is a documentary about Nim Chimpsky, a chimp born in 1973 and raised as a human child.  His first foster mother actually breast fed him and he had the run of her comfortable Upper West Side apartment.  Nim was the test subject for the hypothesis that a chimp was capable with appropriate rearing of acquiring the words and grammar necessary to communicate.  His initial environment proved too unstructured for a scientific experiment so he moved to a leafy mansion on the outskirts of New York where he lived with a team of personable research assistants and Nim’s signed vocabulary developed apace.  What the academic in charge seemed not to have foreseen is that Nim would become a fully-grown chimp with a temperament and strength hard to accommodate within the permissive construct of this experiment.  Plot spoiling is a despicable act so I’ll refrain from saying anymore about Nim’s subsequent experiences, but as implied above, go equipped with Kleenex if you plan to watch it.

Was it worth subjecting the girls to this emotional roller-coaster?  Well, it raised the quality of conversation at dinner for days on end as they probed the self-serving, morally dubious behaviour of most of the people who interacted with Nim and the questions prompted by the film about what really constitutes language and communication.  They were amazed to learn that their father had read the Nim research for his B Phil thesis and met Herb Terrace, the scientist who conceived the project at a post-lecture drinks party in Oxford.   And, perhaps more practically, they can both now sign “dirty” by tapping a flat hand under their chins to indicate when they need to use the bathroom.

I am not sure that Zookeeper conferred any lasting lessons, though once again the talking primate (in this case the lonely gorilla Bernie) was one of the more attractive characters.  As devotees of Boston landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, we were rather shocked that the director thought he could improve on the setting of the real Franklin Park Zoo.  There’s a dramatic (and erroneous) Boston city skyline beyond the cinematic version.   The landmark cable-stayed Zakim Bridge features extensively and looks fabulous without cinematographical manipulation.  The same is true of the Boston Common, location of the bike race scene, which was manifestly present just outside the showy nineteen-screen Loews multiplex where we saw the movie.  Some Hollywood top brass (Stallone, Cher, Adam Sandler etc.) lend voices to the zoo animals, without actually appearing in the flesh.  Close readers of this blog may be wondering whether the film breaks my previously-posited law of Boston movie casting.  No Damon?  No Affleck? Rest assured, it conforms.  Donnie Wahlberg plays an evil zookeeper.

More Capering

Catherine writes …

A highlight of our first months in the US was our trip to Chatham, at the elbow of Cape Cod, to visit our friend Jim.  So we accepted a second invitation with alacrity and anticipation.  We broke the short journey with a stop in Sandwich, not far beyond the Sagamore Bridge, to consume an appropriate if unoriginal picnic of “filled bread” and to explore the Heritage Museums and Gardens.  This sedate attraction, with stunning plantings of rhododendron, hostas and hemerocallis, was funded by drug money (!) in the shape of proceeds from the Eli Lilley pharmaceutical group.  A replica of the Hancock Shaker Barn houses a sizeable collection of early American automobiles.  A working carousel offers unlimited free rides, next to a gallery of winsome folk and naive art.  Hyped by these pulse-quickening thrills, we pressed on to Chatham and a joyful reunion with  Jim.

We spent a substantial proportion of our time in Chatham immersed alternately in the brine of Harding’s Beach and Jim’s pool, working up appetites to justify the large and delectable meals consumed.  There were opportunities to reacquaint ourselves with favourite haunts of Jim’s, the bustling Chatham Squire (with its seafood spin on spaghetti carbonara) and the timeless Pate’s, where lobster is not mandatory but is highly recommended.  We were also introduced to the charms of Hanger B, a new cafe in the tiny Chatham airport building, accessed by walking onto the airfield itself between the small private planes.  The chef/proprietor decamped from the swanky Chatham Bars Inn to set it up and he brings a five star competence to his exeuction of brunch classics, like huevos rancheros and red flannel hash.  Free-ranging on our own one day we were proud to discover the Sesuit Harbor Cafe, in a boatyard close to Dennis.  This elevates the New England clam shack to a vastly superior level.

Swimming and scoffing, with occasional reading interludes, could easily fill a week but with a diminishing number of days left in the US we felt compelled to mount a few excurions.  After seeing an exhibition devoted to Edward Gorey’s drawings at the Athenaeum while the girls were in Florida, we parents were keen to introduce them to his unsettling and sometimes sepulchral view of the world at the Gorey House Museum in West Yarmouth.   Their sensibilities proved to be in tune with his, as they settled happily to the children’s challenge of locating representations of the successive, alphabetic deaths of the Gashlycrumb Tinies throughout the house.

They were less impressed by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Wilidlife Sanctuary where heat and greenflies militated against comfort.  And it is hard to appreciate fully a salt marsh habitat while determined insects are gouging lumps of your flesh and pumping you with an anti-coagulant in order to sup on your blood.  Still, it was exciting to see an otter paddling across the freshwater pond and painted turtles sculling in the shallows.

The stand-out trip was the one we made by ferry to the island of Nantucket.  Legend has it that both Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard are moccasins, kicked by a giant reclining on the mainland.  We were booked for an early crossing.  The slight feeling of nausea caused by getting up in time to depart at 8am was soon replaced by the more insistent nausea which results from riding up and smacking down over large waves.  But the charm of Nantucket soon erased unpleasant memories.  Beyond the retail centre of the town are treelined streets of elegant captains’ houses, many with railed walks on the roofs for looking out to sea.  It exudes the memory of prosperity founded on whaling, a trade in which the Quaker population of Nantucket excelled.  The story is beautifully documented in the Whaling Museum.  We had only a little time to explore it but were glad we spent some it listening to a storyteller relaying the tale of the Essex.  She was wrecked by an enraged bull sperm whale, but that was only the beginning of the troubles of the surviving crew.  It’s a grim sea voyage which sees a captain consume the 17 year old cousin he’d sworn to protect. 

We decided to explore whaling further on our way back to Brookline, making a detour to New Bedford.  This Massachusetts’ port was the world capital of the whale trade, before the mid-nineteenth century discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania, which undermined the value of whale oil at a stroke.  Many of New Bedford’s inhabitants were Quakers, as in Nantucket, so the port became an important stop on the Underground Railway, assisting former slaves on the journey north to freedom. We were very surprised to see that the same Park Ranger who’d led our morning walking tour on this subject had shed her NPS khakis for an 1861 bonnet, jacket and crinoline after lunch to lend period colour to a ropemaking demonstration.  H and E now know how to craft their own using two opposing, twisting forces.  We bagged our second whaling museum of the week, scampering around a half-size whaler, marvelling at scrimshaw, and in my case sqeaking with pleasure when I spotted a collection of ceramics depicting the iron bridge over the River Wear.

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In the Waldeness

Catherine writes …

H and E looked more than usually doubtful.  “It’s a pond.  And a man wrote a book about it.  What are we going to do there?”.  But their worries were needless.  You can approach Walden Pond in a “Thoreaully” authentic spirit, reverently bearing an inscribed stone to deposit at the site of the celebrated cabin in the woods.  Or you can just have a terrific time stuffing yourself with a prodigiously generous picnic, between dips in the sun-warmed waters of the lake and construction of earthworks on the sandy beach.

The fairy godmother who tranported us from Brookline to the sylvan idyll of Walden was our friend Amelie.  She’d filled the boot/trunk of her estate car with a sumptuous banquet, along with buckets and spades, rightly suspecting that H and E would succumb to their magical allure.  We paid brief respects to the bronze statue of Henry David Thoreau outside the replica cabin in the parking lot, before surrendering to the pleasures of non-slimy freshwater swimming.  Beyond the buoys of the official swim zone, you can detect occasional jets of cooler water, from the springs which feed the pond.  Striking out, the noisy chatter of beach soon recedes, replaced by gentle lapping and you see only water, the canopy of sky arcing above, and the verdant fringe of trees encircling the pond. 

It’s 1.7 miles around.  We know, because we stirred our stumps to walk it between the second and third immersion.  After his two year seclusion, Thoreau removed the cabin and nature soon eradicated traces of its presence.  Fans of the book wanted to see the specific site of the inspiration and Louisa May Alcott’s father marked the spot, as he remembered it, with a rock (an action later Thoreau devotees have emulated). He was subsequently vindicated by archaeological investigation which unearthed foundations.  The dimensions of the cabin are modest but at least Thoreau did not have to worry about his washing since his mum lived a convenient half hour walk away and was happy to deal with his dirty bundles.

Massachusetts has been providing me with an informal Geography O Level refresher course on glacial action, with the “terminal moraine” of Nantucket and the “kettle hole” of Walden.  If only I could add an oxbow lake to my collection before we go.

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Going Potty!

Harriet dictates …

Earlier in the summer Lizzie and I took a pottery intensive course at the Brookline Arts Center.  It’s the place where I had earlier taken a term of drawing classes so we thought the pottery course would be good.

Our teacher was named Julia (and her mother taught me drawing).  She’s 21 and she’s studying ceramics at university.  There were eight people (7 girls and 1 boy) in the class, including me and Lizzie.  We were allowed to make as many pots as we could.  There were six potter’s wheels that we could use and an unending amount of clay.  The wheel is harder than it looks.  We also learnt how to use moulds e.g. for bowls, cups, plates and how to coil clay.  We glazed our pots.  The colours you apply change in the kiln so brown becomes yellow and purple becomes baby blue.

The studio was air-conditioned but it was hard work and we got really messy and looked a bit strange going home on the T covered in clay.  We had breaks in the lovely garden outside the Arts Center.  While we worked we listened to Kiss 108 on the radio.

Catherine adds …

The summer school holiday in the US is unreasonably long.  H and E should have broken up on 17 June, resuming study only in September (by which time any hope of retaining the methodology for long division or the proper spelling of “separate” would be utterly lost).  Snowdays meant the breakup was postponed till 23 June.  I can see that in the past this practice would have liberated juvenile farm hands to assist with the harvest.  But it now presents a challenge for working parents to find child care and for full-time parents to provide some structure for the dog days of summer.  The solution for many is the camp, whether residential (as in the “Granada” of Allan Sherman’s 60s novelty song, a firm favourite of mine on Ed Stewart’s Saturday morning radio show) or day.  And the opportunity to expand resumés is eagerly seized, so in addition to custodial care camps offer development of sporting, performing arts, culinary, agricultural and, for all I know, hedge fund trading, Supreme Court Judge clerking, political lobbying and other skills.   H and E have thus continued their in-depth exploration of contemporary American culture by potting.  And they’ll “carry in camping” even back in Oxford with a week long sailing course at Farmoor to round off this truly Long Vacation.  Practically-minded readers will be quick to perceive the folly of my sequencing given the treasure trove of earthenware we now need to ship back to Oxford.

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Changing states

Catherine writes…

Exactly a month from now we’ll be in the International Departure lounge at Logan waiting for our redeye (but nonstop) flight to Heathrow.  It will be our last chance to purchase a red plush lobster, which the airport authorities would have you believe is a globally recognised symbol of Boston.  Or we could opt for final refreshments from Dunkin Donuts, a more credible motif for the city than the velour crustacean given the percentage of Bostonians clutching one of their cups at any point in time.

Life is starting to assume the quality of the night’s last dream, when no matter how vivid the episode playing out in the brain’s cortex, the real world intrudes.  The unconscious orchestrator of revels attempts to assimilate the alien features, so the chestnut in your dream hand rings with the sound of the alarm clock but you’re not fooled and soon you’re swimming up to surface into wakefulness.  Here the hedonistic whirl of this, our ultimate city break, continues.  Treasures this week include the double bill of the Boston Community Choir, gospel singers par excellence, and the Holmes Brothers at the Museum of Fine Arts; a viewing of the new documentary, Page One, on the New York Times, a farewell dinner with Donna and Tim at the Island Creek Oyster Bar, and a superlative meal at Craigie on Main in Cambridge.

And yet – an email arrives from the letting agent about the date for inventory taking at our house in Oxford.  Harriet’s friend Macrina’s been in touch to say they’ll be in the same class at secondary school (taking Spanish not German – hooray!).  I am liaising about a couple of recruitments with the former colleague whose been holding the fort in the job which I will restart in September.  Elizabeth’s gym club have confirmed they have a spot to take her back.  Roger’s Dad has got our car through its MOT.  All undeniable signs of a parallel universe to which we will shortly return.

The spot where once a keyboard stood

Fourth of July

Catherine writes …

On our first Independence Day in the USA, it was hard not to feel a little bit left out.  It’s very much a family holiday, with trestle tables set out in yards for massive BBQs and big posses of relatives on picnic expeditions.  So at this distance from our extended families we seemed depleted.  Another factor contributing to a sense of exclusion is being subject to a monarch.  National Public Radio broadcasts a voice montage of the Declaration of Independence with sections read by various familiar presenters.  George III gets such a bad press (despite seeming so nice in that film with Helen Mirren) that you feel a poor sap for putting up with tyrannical oppression all these years, instead of affirming life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  But casting off a sense of alienation, we stiffened our upper lips and resolved to seek all three. 

Boston’s celebrations of the Fourth are widely acclaimed but the timing was tricky.  To get space for your rug at the Pops free concert by the Hatch on the Esplanade, you need to be in situ by 2 pm.  They don’t strike up till 8.30 pm and the first firework is scheduled for 10.30 pm.  The headline act, Lionel Ritchie, had to pull out (less able to keep things going all night long these days) and we decided to follow his example.

Instead, we lighted by happy chance upon Marblehead.  It’s a very picturesque seaport just beyond Salem on the North Shore, with a natural harbour that now serves as a marina to an armada of covetable pleasureboats.  Its fishing past is memorialised in the legions of golden cod which hang over the doorways of historic houses all over town.  We caught the concluding day of Marblehead’s four day Festival of Arts.  This showcases local achievement in the literary, visual and performing arts and on the evidence presented, they are a remarkably gifted lot.  Moreover, as Hat quipped, Marbleheaders were far from Stonyfaced, offering birds of passage a warm welcome and tips to enhance our visit.

At Fort Sewall, the earthwork defence which guards the harbour entrance, we encountered members of General John Glover’s regiment, a group of re-enactors particularly committed to education.  They were prepping a brass canon, cast in Seville and captured in battle, for a ceremonial shot on the stroke of noon.  By the time it sounded, we were ensconced in the Driftwood Cafe, tucking into heaped plates of brunch. 

Afterwards we found an ideal shaded spot in Crocker Park with excellent views of the harbour and the festival stage.  We were not sorry to have missed Marblehead’s answer to Nirvana but were immensely glad to have arrived in time for the whole of Hayley Reardon’s set.  Due to turn fifteen in September and a guitar player of only two years standing, Hayley is an accomplished singer-writer, cut from similar cloth to Lori McKenna.  She has a winningly natural stage presence, prefacing her compositions with the circumstances of their composition (“There aren’t many of the songs I wrote in 6th Grade which I still play…”).  She’s already won an award from WUMB and we all think she’s one to watch.  H and E each have an autographed CD ready to flog on Ebay when she gets her Grammy.

The Arts Association were running a proper tearoom with bone china, teapots, slices of lemon, milk in jugs and nosegays on each table in the old wine cellar of the King Hooper House. This provided the perfect restorative before an appropriately timed viewing of the patriotic masterpiece, The Spirit of 76, which hangs in the Selectmen’s Room of the Town Hall and a dip in the sea for the hardier family members at Devereux Beach.  It’s still the North Atlantic, even when the onshore temperature has tipped into the 90s, and I thought my personal happiness was more likely to reside on a bench with my book.

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Southie and Somerville

Catherine writes ….

Boston proper is home to just over 600,000 people so I can understand why New York born friends sniff when I call it a big city.  But it seems big compared to Oxford (160,000) and more essentially conforming to a city than Sunderland (300,000).  After eleven months here we still feel that there are still new discoveries to be made.  And now that school’s out for summer, I have two intrepid fellow explorers who can travel free with me on the T.

This week we sniffed out an oasis of calm in the unlikely environment of South Boston.  This working-class Irish-American district has a “well-hard” reputation.  Irish tricolours, shamrocks and the Guinness harp logo are much in  evidence.  Wikipedia cites Whitey Bulger as its most famous resident (prior to his Santa Monica phase).  The streets from which children disappear in Dennis Lehane novels are Southie streets.  But at Pleasure Bay, pedestrian and vehicle causeways link Castle Island to the mainland and form an attractive lagoon with sandy beaches.  We took the #9 bus, sunned ourselves, paddled, and ate our picnic, with supplementary nutrition from the Mister Softee van.  And when we were feeling hot and frazzled we sauntered in the seabreeze along the marine walk way to pentagonal Fort Independence, spotting the schooners in full sail in Dorchester Bay. 

Our next spree took us across the Charles on the #66 bus to familiar Harvard Square before we passed into the terra incognita of Somerville.  Its great claim to fame is as the birthplace of the marshmallow fluff with which Whoopie Pies are filled.  Somerville’s demography is mixed but the prevalent language on Cambridge Street seemed to be Portuguese (whether from the earlier Portuguese or later Brazilian immigrants I could not tell), with enticing pastelarias and churrascarias on all sides.

We were bound for the Taza chocolate factory on Windsor Street.  It’s a place with impeccably worthy credentials – organic (naturally), not just Fair but Direct Trade (they deal with their bean growers without any intermediary), vegan, and committed to environmentally sustainable practices.  Heck, they even stone-grind the roasted cocoa (which makes the chocolate sound high-fibrely, whole-grainily good for you) on granite mill-stones, cut by one of the company’s youthful founders.  After donning the mandatory mop caps we were shown round by Rayna, the charismatic Farmers’ Market co-ordinator.  She counters the inevitable effects of working in a chocolate factory by pedalling a 400lb Taza trailer with gazebo, trestle table and stock to markets throughout Greater Boston. 

The flavour palate Taza deploys is faithful the Aztec and Mayan roots of chocolate – chilli in various forms , the yerba mate herb, cinammon, ginger, salt, pepper, and vanilla.  The chocolate has a relatively dry mouthfeel and the trademark “Mexicano” Taza discs (which are less processed than the conventional bars) are pleasantly granular.  This is emphatically not the season to try it but I bet a Taza-derived hot chocolate is stupendous.  Taza are about to introduce their first Bolivian chocolate which will have the highest cocoa % so far, c. 83% but all their output is plain rather than milk.  Sophisticates H and E gobbled up every sample proffered but even they were impressed at the adventurous tastebuds of a curly-haired toddler who shared the tour and at the tender age of three already knows there’s more to life than Hersheys.

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