Category Archives: Sense of place

Classic car night

I’m sitting in the Green Bean coffee shop, looking out through the big plate glass windows at classic car night in downtown New Bedford. All kinds of classic cars, from souped-up 60s muscle cars to lovingly restored Model Ts to brightly-painted Volkswagen Bugs, are parked with hoods open or driving down Union Street.

There are also all kinds of people walking around:–

A much-pierced man with assymetrical facial hair and a black heavy metal t-shirt smiles and chats with two elderly ladies. A small boy wearing a button-down shirt and a clip-on tie is standing on the street corner, waiting in line to ride on the Zoo Choo Choo, a little electric-powered train. A big man wearing an orange, yellow, and black Hawai’ian shirt rolls down the street in a powered wheelchair. A black man and a white man walk down the street together looking at car engines and talking to each other out of the sides of their mouths. Two of the car owners pretend to get into a fist-fight — they part, laughing, and the gray-haired man goes to stand beside his big muscle car with a huge supercharger sticking out of the hood, while the young man stands beside a sedate 50s-era Volvo. A big burly man wearing a red-white-and-blue bandanna and a Harley muscle shirt bends over to peer in the window of the Volvo. Two women (who, as it happens, recently got married) take a picture of the teal-green Mustang with their cell phones.

It’s like a poster for diversity or something.

Summer

At noon, Carol went to the farmer’s market at Clasky’s Common. She got some beans, some peaches, and a perfect cantaloupe. She knows I love cantaloupe. She said: “The farmer told me he picked it at five this morning.” I cut it open almost as soon as she brought it in the door. It had one little bruise, but aside from that it was perfect, and perfectly ripe. I ate half of it right away. We did some housework, went shopping, went for a short walk. At four o’clock, I ate the other half. It was so good, I couldn’t resist. That was too much fruit to eat in less than four hours, and I’ll probably get the collywobbles alter on, but what good is summer if you can’t gorge yourself on melon?

July Twitter

July 01
Dining car: supper with a sculptor, breakfast with retired military, lunch with a homeschooling mom. | 12:24 PM

July 02
In front of the Air & Space museum: a boy flies a paper airplane. His dad isn’t interested. They go into the museum. | 12:12 PM
On the Mall: plump tourists wearing pastels and big sun hats dragging bored, hot children. | 12:13 PM

July 03
Anxious young woman on a cell phone. Then she relaxes, smiles, waves. A young man walks up. They go to get lunch. | 12:19 PM

July 04
Driving north from New Bedford: fireworks over the trees on the right and left, and straight ahead. | 08:20 PM

July 06
Fog rolling in off the Atlantic. I hear other people, but all I see is sand, waves, a few gulls. | 06:08 PM
Now the fog has lifted… … …now it has come in again… | 06:52 PM

July 14
Moon through clouds and the whine of mosqitos. | 11:23 PM

July 19: Podcamp Boston 3
So far, lots more Macs than any other laptop. | 08:01 AM
“Enable your superpowers,” says Chris Penn. I.e., learn how to use new media. | 08:42 AM
David Tames: “Part of filmmaking art is figuring out when the ego needs to be put on hold and collaboate with other people.” | 10:54 AM

July 20: Podcamp Boston 3
Looks like Podcamp has already clogged up the wifi in the conference center. | 01:09 PM
They’re comparing Seesmic to CB radio… huh. | 12:18 PM
Podcamp was like drinking from a firehose. Overloaded. | 07:54 PM

July 23
A guy changing clothes in the middle of the rest area men’s room. He kinda laughs, says “Sorry…” | 08:50 PM

July 24
Suddenly half a dozen smoke detectors in the neighborhood start going BeepBeepBeep BeepBeepBeep… | 01:18 AM
I take the battery out of our smoke detector. It’s the only way it’ll stop. Humidity? Eerie. | 01:22 AM

July 30
Neon sign: “SHE ATON COMMANDER” – A female monotheistic Pharaoh who’s in charge? 9:12 PM

Summer

I had an hour to kill in the middle of the day, so I parked at the old rifle range, and walked up the abandoned railroad bed to White Pond. The air was thick with humidity, and everything looked incredibly green from all the rain that’s fallen in July. Cicadas buzzed. A few birds braved the heat of the day. I passed through swamps caused by beaver dams. In places, the railroad bed was almost overgrown and only a thin path led through exuberant green shrubs and grass and poison ivy. Brilliant green leaves brushed against me from head to toe on both sides. At one point I noticed where a stand of white pines had dropped enough needles and shed enough shade to kill off most of the undergrowth; aside from that, I didn’t think of much of anything at all. Once the swamp ended and the woods began, the undergrowth mostly disappeared.

On the way back from White Pond, a Golden Labrador Retriever lay panting at the side of the trail, attended by a white-haired woman.

“That dog has the right idea,” I said. “It’s too hot to walk.”

“He’s gone lame,” said the woman. She had an English accent.

“What, does he have something in his paw?” I said.

“He walks a few yards, and then he stops and lies down,” she said. “My friend has gone to get the car.”

“He’s hot, too,” I said, watching him pant. “It’s very humid.”

“It is clammy,” she said. “I’ve just come over from England last night. We’ve been having some of the same weather over there.”

We chatted a bit, and then I said, “I’ try to carry him up to the road for you, but I think he’s a bit heavy for me.”

She laughed. “Oh, I didn’t expect you to offer to carry him up. He’ll be fine.”

Of the whole hour-long walk I took, most of what I can tell you about is that three-minute conversation. Aside from that, there are only general impressions of walking hard, sweat, gentle heat, damp air, greenness, small animals in the underbrush, flies, smell of grass and leaves — but there wasn’t much to be said about such basic physical impressions.

Rest area

I was getting my coffee, waiting for my fries to come up, and listening to what the woman behind the counter was saying to to the woman wearing the headset.

“Power’s out in my part of Bridgewater,” she said. “My kids called when I was on break, they can’t get the stove working.”

The tall man in the Teamsters t-shirt said, “Power’s out in the prison.”

“What?” said the woman wearing the headset.

“Power’s out in Bridgewater State Prison,” came the reply. “That’s a place you don’t want the power to go out.”

My fries came. I ate them, drank the coffee, went down to the men’s room to wash my hands. Some guy was standing in the middle of the rest room putting on his pants. He looked up at me and laughed, a little bit embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said. I resisted telling him that next time he should change in one of the stalls.

I walked out of the building. It was still raining, there was still a lot of lightning. I sat in the car, hoping it would taper off. A bunch of teenagers came out of the building, hesitated, then ran for the minivan next to my car. Suddenly all the lights in the rest area went out.

Time to get back on the road.

This happened this morning

 Right in the middle of church
 outdoors in the pine woods chapel
 the preacher gets stopped
 by a loud caw. The preacher
 pauses, smiles, and says,
“He was outside my house
 early this morning,” and we laugh.
 The crow caws again and grows
 more raucous. The crows always
 have the last word. They’ll be
 cawing here long after
 preacher and people have died and
 gone to dust and dirt.
 After church ends, as I
 sit and write this down
 three crows come close and watch me,
 hoping for food, impatient.

Summer evening

1
Out on the bay, wind
blows whitecaps. Here, one small bird
sings the twilight in.

2
This one bush covered
with ripe blueberries, while still
the rest are unripe.

3
A secretive bird
calls from treetops. Suddenly,
there it is! and gone.

Saco, Maine

Microblogging 2008-07-06

  • Fog rolling in off the Atlantic. I hear other people, but all I see is sand, waves, a few gulls. #
  • When in fog, you have a circle of visibility that depends on the density of the fog. Right now in that circle swim about 80 eider ducks and chicks. #