Category Archives: Sense of place

In the waiting room

On Friday, it finally became clear that I wasn’t going to shake the chest cold I’ve had since November, so I made an appointment with a nurse practitioner at my doctor’s office. My appointment was this morning.

It’s always a long wait when you go to a doctor’s office. The TV yammered softly away on one corner of the big waiting room; voices coming from the TV are compressed to be more intelligible, so it was hard to overhear other people’s conversations. A woman got up and stood facing into a corner of the waiting room, talking softly on her cell phone: “I can’t heeear you,” she said in a gentle voice; of course she couldn’t leave the room, because you have to be there when they call your name. She lowered her voice even more, switched to Portuguese, and all I could hear were sibilants: “zh — ss — zzh.”

An older man and a middle-aged woman sat next to me. He had an oxygen bottle beside him. The woman said, “There’s a lot of people here today who were here yesterday.” The man said: “What?” She repeated herself. “Busy,” he said.

A medical assistant poked her head out of one of the doors leading into the offices. “John So-and-so,” she said. Behind me, I heard a man say, “I can’t be-lieve it! You’re calling me? I can’t be-lieve it.” — in a deep booming sarcastic voice with working class New England accent.

The older man and the woman next to me talk in low voices, keeping up a continuous, and often hilarious, commentary on people in the waiting room, and on mutual acquaintances. “—- said he’s cut back on eating meat,” said the woman. “Huh,” snorted the man, “when he came over to my place, he ate plenty of meat.” “He’s putting on weight,” she said. “Look at her,” he said, “what, do you have to be 200 pounds to get a job here?” “What do you weigh,” she said innocently, “240?” “Nah, 220,” he said, sounding disgusted with himself, “I used to be 240 but being sick I’ve been losing weight like anything.” He started describing the spaghetti he was going to make for a friend of his, with shrimp and a sauce with lemon and white wine. “Why’re you going to make that for him,” she said, “he won’t appreciate it.” “You’re right, I’ll make spaghetti and meatballs,” he said, “two or three meatballs.” “Two meatballs,” she asked incredulously, “that’s all?” “Yeah, I’ll eat one, and I’ll give him one,” said the man. They both laughed quietly.

Another medical assistant poked her head out of one of the doors. “George So-and-so,” she said. “About time,” said a cigarette-ravaged voice from across the room, “fer chrise sakes.” A woman sitting right behind me said softly to her friend, “Boy, the place mobbed today.”

The older man said to the woman next to me, “What’d he say?” She replied, “About time for Christ sake.” They both laughed. “Nobody likes to wait,” he said. The woman opened her cell phone to check the time. “10:30. That’s pretty bad,” she said. “What’s pretty bad?” he said. “We’ve been waiting an hour for a 9:30 appointment. He said something about spending his life in a doctor’s waiting room.

Then they called my name, so I got up and walked into the doctor’s office. I got examined, they took chest X-rays, it’s official: I have bronchitis.

Universalism in New Bedford

I’m on study leave this week, and today I’ve been doing a little research on 19th C. Universalism in New Bedford.

There’s some good stories buried in the mass (mess?) of data below: material about the Universalist Hosea Knowlton, who was the prosecutor during the Lizzie Borden trial; about Nathan Johnson, an African American who was a member of the Universalist church in New Bedford c. 1840; about Rev. W. C. Stiles, who converted from Universalism to “orthodox” Congregationalism in 1880; and more.

Since this won’t appeal to everyone, I’ll put the bulk of the material after a jump…. Continue reading →

Death’s heads and sunrises

Screen grab from the video showing a gravestone.

I’m giving a talk on Puritan-era gravestones this Thursday, and I’ve been obsessing over the slides I’m going to show during the talk. So I had this idea of doing a sort of music video with death’s heads and cherubs and other images from gravestones, all jumping around to the music. Well, I don’t have the time to do something like that, so I made this video instead… which I admit is a little quirky.

[For you gravestone geeks out there, the stones were photographed at Old Hill Burying Ground in Concord, Mass. (most of the ones in the first third of the video, including those carved by the Lamson family and the Worcester family), the old burying ground in Acushnet, Mass. (many of the broken stones are from there, including the one that appears to be carved by one of Stevens family from Newport), the Naskatucket graveyard in Fairhaven, Mass. (including another possible Stevens stone and the phenomenal sunrise stone towards the end), and Westport Friends burying ground (the granite stone marked “R.B” comes from there).]

2:13.

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

Harbor seals

Sunday night’s storm left enough snow to make walking difficult on our habitual routes, so this afternoon I walked along the piers nearest our apartment. I walked out State Pier, past the crane belonging to the Cuttyhunk Ferry Company, dodged a pickup truck driving past the wire and rigging warehouse of New Bedford Ship Supply, watched the Martha’s Vineyard ferry head out of the harbor, dodged another pickup truck belonging to the state environmental police, and went down to the end of the pier to take a look at the harbor in the waning light of a cloudy evening.

When I got to the end of State Pier, I was following a Red-breasted Merganser quite close to the pier when I swuddenly found myself looking into the face of a Harbor Seal (Phoca vitulina) down in the water less than fifty feet away. It looked up at me, and I looked down at it. Another seal head popped up out of the water next to the first; two more seals rolled up out of the water farther out. The first seal dove under the water, and resurfaced again at a safer distance from the pier; I could hear the second seal breathing, a sort of huff–ffff sound as it exhaled sharply and then inhaled; then it dove under the surface and disappeared.

It is really remarkable to come upon such a large mammal in the middle of an urban environment. And seals are large, typically some five feet long and weighing over 250 pounds — in other words, about the size of a small American Black Bear (Ursus americanus). If I came across a Black Bear while I was walking around downtown New Bedford, I’d doubtless feel a tingling of fear and a little bit of awe; because seals stick to the water, I don’t feel fear when I see them, but the sense of awe is definitely there. I don’t feel that same awe when I look at a merganser or a gull — they’re too different, and I don’t feel much of anything when I look in their faces — but a seal has a real and recognizable face, and it’s pretty much the same size as I am.

I stood watching the seals for quite a while. At one point, I counted seven seals with their heads above the surface of the water, or just having gone under the surface moments before. I stood stock still, and after a while they began to ignore me, and they came in closer to the pier. I listened to a couple more of them breathing, huff-ffff. At last a deepwater lobster boat came close by going one way, and a small tugboat passed close by going the other way, and the seals moved further away from the pier. The light was beginning to fade, so I headed home.

Low tide

Carol and I walked over to Fairhaven late this afternoon. By the time we got to the public access boat landing, the tide was quite low.

“Want to walk down on the beach?” I said to Carol. The beach in question is perhaps 100 feet long, a short section of muddy, pebbly beach in between the paved boat landing and the piers of the Coast Guard Auxiliary.

“OK,” she said. “First one to find the prize wins.”

We walked the short section of beach. There were lots or broken bottles, and small bits of plastic that had washed ashore. But there were also lots of shells, a surprising number of shells for such a disturbed section of shoreline. Particularly common were shells of the Common Slipper Shell, but there were also plenty of Ribbed Mussels and Northern Quahog.

“Look at this oyster,” said Carol, poking at a six-inch specimen of Eastern Oyster with her toe. It was a good shell, but it wasn’t a real prize.

I saw one or two other Eastern Oyster shells, a few Atlantic Bay Scallops, and some barnacles. I was looking for Common Periwinkles, which you can find in some of the most polluted parts of the harbor, when suddenly I spotted something very unusual half-buried in the muck. I pulled it out and held it up to show Carol: “Look, a sand dollar!” I said. The organism was dead, but the shell — technically called a “test” — was intact and perfect.

She came over to look at it. “You win the prize,” she said. It really was a prize — to think that a sand dollar was living in a marine industrial landscape! Carol had me rinse it off so we could take it home; and now it is sitting in our kitchen sink, drying out.

Not that bad

A friend called today and said, “Well, I hear you’ve been having a real winter up there.” It certainly sounds that way on the news, with all the reports of snowstorms in New England. But so far I have found this to be a relatively mild winter here in New Bedford. The harbor hasn’t frozen at all this winter, except for one day when a little bit of ice formed in one or two tiny protected backwaters. And there have only been three of four days when ice or snow kept me from walking as far as usual: we have had snow, but always followed by a warm spell that melts all the snow away.

From my point of view, this winter feels milder than the last two winters. And it’s not just my point of view — the waterfowl agree. I have seen about half the number of wintering waterfowl on New Bedford harbor this year, probably because the birds are dispersed over the many inland waterways and ponds that aren’t frozen. Had this winter been as bad as the last two, I think I’d be seeing lots more waterfowl on the harbor.

Send off

For the past few days, I’ve had a cold that keeps getting worse. Now it’s down deep in my lungs, and so I decided that rather than risk bronchitis, I better hadn’t go to New Hampshire today.

You see, a whole bus-load of people from New Bedford are heading up to New Hampshire to team up with the Carbon Coalition/ New Hampshire Citizens for a Responsible Energy Policy. They’ll meet up at the Climate Action Center in Manchester this afternoon, and then head over to Saint Anselm College in Manchester to be present outside the site where the televised candidates’ debates will take place. (For the record, the Carbon Coalition is working with the League of Conservation Voters.) Two weeks ago, someone suggested that a bunch of New Bedfordites head up to join the Carbon Coalition. In just two short weeks, organizers Annie Hayes and John Magnan got more than thirty people to sign up.

Even though the two of us couldn’t go, Carol and I made sure we were present at the gathering place to give everyone else a big send-off. By 11:35, people started gathering. As you’d expect, there were a good number of students, from UMass Dartmouth, Bristol Community College, and out-of-town colleges. But the majority of those going were older people: businessmen and businesswomen, people who work in the non-profit world, retired people, and even a reporter for the New Bedford Standard-Times.

Someone from WBSM, one of our local radio stations, showed up to do interviews. From Carol, who used to be a reporter and is still a freelance writer, I have learned that media people appreciate it if you introduce them to good interviewees. So I introduced the pleasant fellow from WBSM to Annie Hayes, since she was one of the key organizers; and to some of the students I know (I saw him interviewing Elise and Dani and some others); and to John Bullard, a long-time environmental activist, whom I knew could give an articulate and cogent overview of why these people were going to New Hampshire.

The bus showed up right on time. Appropriately, the logo of the bus company was a waving American flag –what could be more American than keeping America beautiful for coming generations? –what could be more American than participating in the democratic process? The cargo compartment of the bus got loaded up with signs and chairs and blankets and banners. Everyone filed on and found a place to sit. A few late-comers hurried aboard.

The man from WBSM wondered if he could get a recording of everyone chanting, so since I have a big loud voice I got everyone’s attention and passed on his request. Someone on the bus started chanting something like “Clean air, green jobs!” (Being from New Bedford, with its high unemployment rate, we are all in support of jobs creation and we know that green technology has the potential of creating lots of jobs for cities like ours.) Then someone started chanting, “What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like!”

This indeed is what democracy looks like: a busload of ordinary citizens going to tell the politicians what issues are of greatest importance. We can only hope that the politicians listen to us ordinary citizens, and not to the lobbyists from the oil and automobile industries.

John Magnan, one of the organizers, was the last person on the bus. He politely thanked me for seeing them off. “Maybe you should give us a blessing before we go,” John said. “Oh wait, you’re a Unitarian Universalist minister, I guess you don’t do blessings.” We both laughed. For my part, I figure the only blessing they needed was having some people see them off and wish them well: if you can’t engage in direct political action yourself, the least you can do is support those who can.

If you’re one of the ones who went on the bus, leave a comment and tell us all how it went!

Moby-Dick marathon at night

Carol and I went across the street at about eleven o’clock to see who was left at the Moby-Dick marathon.

The Readers, those who would be reading during their assigned time, sat on one side of the room, where the Watch Officers could keep an eye on them. They all wore numbers on their left shoulders, big numbers on stick-on labels. They paid close attention to what was going on, and they followed along in their own copy of Moby-Dick, or shuffled through papers with the reading schedule. Attentive and ever so slightly restless, it looked as though either caffeine or adrenalin was pumping through their bloodstreams.

The Spectators sat in the chairs on their side of the room, or on the stairs leading up to the balcony, or they sprawled out on the balcony itself, or they wandered back and forth to the back room where the bathrooms and coffee were. There were two groups of Spectators. There were a few people like Carol and me who would stay until they got tired and then go home. And then there were the people who obviously planned to stay all night. The all-nighters were predominantly young and slightly giddy; but the older all-nighters had more of an appearance of grim resolution.

We stayed and listened for a while. The rhythms of Moby-Dick, when read aloud, are expansive and calming; I sat cross-legged and felt meditative; although not all that meditative, because I craning my head back and forth so I could watch people come and go. At last Carol touched my arm and said we should go. We went across the street and went to bed.

——

At around two in the morning, I was awakened by loud voices outside our apartment building. There are a lot of bars in the neighborhood so we get more than our share of drunks walking by our house. But these voices kept on and on; and besides, it wasn’t a Friday or Saturday when we usually get the loud drunks. I went to the front windows and looked out. Three guys stood just under one of the windows, all bundled up against the bitter cold, and one of them appeared to be sipping out of a large can; but they didn’t sound drunk, merely high-spirited.

I opened the window a crack. “People trying to sleep up here guys.”

“Oh, sorry, sorry,” said the one with the can, and they scampered off towards the Whaling Museum. The only thing I can figure is that they were at the Moby-Dick Marathon and decided they needed to take a break outdoors; but it seems odd that they would come across the street and stand under our windows.