boston - end of east coast swing

So at the end, we came up to Boston...another train, another bus, another shuttle to the hotel.  In the morning we went to the JFK Library.  IM Pei designed the building set on the waterfront of Boston Bay...on University of Massachusetts landfill...across from the center of the city.  Charlotte went through the exhibits while I spent time in the atrium, under the US flag, reading the day's New York Times.  And watching visitors as they came from the museum areas (JFK's inauguration in 1960, the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights movement...remember integrating the University of Alabama?..."segregation now, segregation forever" George Wallace said, and his death), they would come into this high atrium, overlooking the bay and the city.  And pause and reflect...under the huge flag hanging from the roof. 

In the afternoon, we went to the Institute of Contemporary Art, also on the bay, also overlooking the city center, also mixing inspiration with reflection.  In this case, Mark Bradford, an LA artist working with paper, old billboard materials, found objects to create vast "maps" and patterns.  Some of his work can be found at: http://www.pbs.org/art21/slideshow/?artist=172  Like the JFK Library, the ICA combines the interior exploring our human experience and the exterior exploring our relation to the world, the water, the larger city. 

 

This has been a good swing east.  Tomorrow we fly west, far from the sea, close to the mountains.  

The Cape

On Sunday, we drove over to the Quaker Meeting House in East Sandwich.  The current Meeting House was built in 1810 still with separate entrances and sides for men and women.  The Meeting, however, was established in 1657...it's the oldest continuing Quaker meeting in North America.  Ten members gathered around the wood burning stove during worship...the previous Sunday was a "work day" in which they came to chop wood for the winter services.  

So while we think of Thanksgiving and Pilgrims at Plymouth...just up the road from East Sandwich...the traditions are found all over the landscape.

After Meeting, we drove back to Sandwich to a Catholic church (built in the 19th century) and now converted into a bistro with Sunday brunch....another way of preserving tradition...using the soft light coming through stained glass...to fall on glasses of mimosas and plates of brunch fare.  Cheers.

Thanksgiving

So Thanksgiving...my favorite holiday...it's about being with others, making food (a new generation of "foodies" to make the fixings), eating food, drinking drink, reinforcing and reinventing our ties to one another.  No presents to open...just time to spend with one another.

 To eat together and, then, to recover together.  Did I mention drinking together?

And the requisite family photo...my how we have grown.

Cape Cod

We swung back north on the train to Providence and, then, by car to Cape Cod...a kind of separate state of geography and mind.  A canal linking the bay with the Atlantic cuts the Cape off from the mainland...the canal is crossed by three bridges, the most spectacular of which is for trains (the mid-section lowers to the land-based tracks when needed).









I was in a lobster market in one of the small towns along the canal.  The owner was talking to a friend, one of the customers who lined up to get fresh seafood, and asked, "So where're you going for Thanksgiving."
"We'll be home."  And later added, "We're going to Falmouth" (a small adjoining town).
"I thought you said you were going to be home."
"Well, I'm not leaving the Cape."  That is, not going to cross the canal.  

The lobster mart was located one of the Cape's "working" harbors, filled not with sailboats and yachts, but with fishing boats with nets, pulleys, and gear for bringing "home" food from the sea.  The towns along the canal are working towns with year-round residents, not like the beach houses which seemed at this time of year to be empty of their owners and renters.

A quiet time for celebrations of family ties. 

robwergeontheroad: Philadelphia

http://www.philamuseum.org/

Philadelphia

Heading south, we rode the train to Philadelphia to visit friends, Brad and Pat, in their town house just across the river from Central City.  I walked across the bridge early in the morning, capturing a painter, his easel and brushes, and his bike...he intent on capturing the boat houses along the Schuylkill.  "to capture"...hmmm...is that why we take pictures...to capture what can not really be captured?  to make permanent what is impermanent?

On the other side of the river are Philadelphia's great monuments...including the Museum of Art at the end of a long boulevard.  The boulevard was full on Saturday morning with runners about to start an 8 K race.  The lights of the police cars blocking the road and the roar of the loudspeakers sent the pack off with a great start.  I did not stick around to see who came in first...clearly it was a morning for outdoor exercise.

   In the afternoon, I went back to the museum.  I love the interaction of art, architecture and people.  The way in which they dissect or just glance at the paintings, pinned to the walls, or sculptures, placed in the center of halls is a kind of discourse on reality.   So what does the artist mean?  And why is it in this room?  And how do I feel reacting to what is put before me?   I guess it is a kind of question, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"  "What is the meaning of this painting if no one sees it?"  So it is the interaction, the point of contact, taking place in a stage-managed setting (the museum is, after all, the sister of the theatre), that most engages me.  On a sunny day in Philadelphia.

And then you step outside...looking the other way down that long boulevard, into the center of the city.  The runners have run home.  The sky is darkened...traffic has thinned...and it is back across the bridge, back to Brad and Pat's...we are going out for dinner.  Lebanese food. 

Side Trip to New York

I took a day off from staying with family in Connecticut and took the commuter train down to Manhattan.  My initial objective was the renovated Morgan Library on 36th Street.  Its three buildings had been recently tied together by an open Scandinavian atrium designed by Renzo Piano, the architect, and Morgan's library and study had been restored to their original brilliance.  Alas no photograps allowed, though I did sneak one of the Morgan Dining area (ahhh...the marriage of art and food).

 And the treasures Pierpont Morgan had stored for himself and, now, for us.  In just one display case in the library were the following:

• a letter from Elizabeth I of England to her stepfather telling him, ever so gently, to "buzz off" - 1538
• a letter from Galileo declaring his innocence (you know, that the earth moving around the sun was not heresy but that was the way the planets did move) - 1635
• first draft of Alexander Pope's "Essary on Man"...."know thyself, presume not God to scan/the proper study of mankind is man" - 1733

and later, Bob Dylan's first draft notes on the words to "Blowin' in the Wind" (acquired long after Morgan's death)...but it shows the library is not a tomb but a living institution.

The most interesting encounter in the library, though, was in Morgan's study...walls draped in heavy red velvet with Renaissance paintings, brilliant in their coloring and composition, all around.  I asked the guard what his favorite painting was.  He looked around and pointed out one with several saints, including Saint Barbara holding a replica of a tower in her arm (she had been locked in a tower but had become a Christian.  She refused to marry a pagan chosen by her father and was murdered by him but the father, in turn, was killed by a lightning bolt accompanied by a loud clap of thunder).  The guard explained that she was also identified as Shango, a West African (Yuroba) goddess, who is identified with thunder.   And he had studied African religion at times...so he identified with her.  His favorite painting.  And clearly one of Pierpont Morgan's also. 

East Coast Swing

We are riding the trains on the east coast...visiting friends, families, museums and city streets along the way.  Charlotte has figured out that if we buy small bottles of wine before getting on the train we could save large amounts of money...given the inflated prices of Amtrak club cars.  

The itinerary is: Boston, Providence, Westport, New York,  Philadelphia, Annapolis, then back to Providence, Thanksgiving on Cape Cod, Boston....then home.  

But some of the best time is on the train...watching those marsh lands and coastal towns speed by.  As you can tell by Charlotte's expression.  

Providence

Providence was founded by Roger Williams as a refuge from the intolerant Puritans of Massachusetts. So there is the First Baptist Church founded by him in 1638…right next to the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University…the present church having been built the year before the Revolutionary War began. Sculptures in the university gardens; students studying sort of. Lots of good energy in the damp morning air.












Student energy. Providence is home to Brown University...a sunny day, studying on the garden wall, studying the statue's contours and feeling the sense of late fall.



One of my favorite places around Brown is the Athenaeum, one of the first lending libraries in the colonies, founded in 1753. Its rooms are lined with books, ahhh books…such portals to other worlds, with desks and chairs scattered about for study and reading or just looking at pictures. Or just sitting down and thinking about all the books yet to be read.