Category Archives: Sense of place

Fall color

On the drive down from Cambridge to New Bedford this afternoon, the traffic was heavy and slow until the Route 24 exit. I had plenty of time to look at the progress of fall color.

Leaf color is at or just past peak south of Boston. The cold snap of the past two nights means that the leaves on most trees have finally reached full color. Exceptions to peak color include the oaks, with many oaks of all species still fully green — and the swamps, where most trees have already dropped their leaves.

Overall, leaf color is not spectacular this year, with fewer brilliant reds than usual, and not much in the way of true orange. The red maples tend to have mixed red and yellow leaves this year, and yellows and muted reds predominate on the sugar maples. Nevertheless, there are some real bright spots, and on a cloudy day like today, even the more colors stand out. It’s not a breathtaking year for fall color, but still quite beautiful.

The colors become even more muted farther south. From Taunton southwards, I saw mostly yellow and even brown leaves, with many trees retaining a great deal of green. Yet there are still some remarkable spots of color — for example, the northeast corner of the intersection of I-195 and Rte. 140 has a beautiful stand of maples with yellow, bright orange and crimson red. And the most spectacular tree I saw on the drive today was in Taunton along Rte. 140, a brilliant red oak with cranberry-red leaves, so red they were almost black in places.

Buttonwood Park here in New Bedford is still pretty green. I’d guess that we’ll see peak color here in New Bedford early in this coming week.

Repairs

The laptop is up and running again. After three weeks of no progress, I finally trekked up to the Apple Store in Cambridge and talked to their tech people there. Yes, it was probably a conflict in the Finder preferences that prevented the Finder from launching. Yes, it is entirely likely that the problem was caused by the CD Verizon gave me to start up DSL. (Besides, Macs running OS X do not need any additional software to access DSL, so the CD was totally unnecessary.) The simple solution was to re-install the operating system, archiving all the old preferences.

Carol is cat-sitting in Cambridge again. This evening while Carol was visiting Ann Taylor Loft in Harvard Square, I sat down with Mina the cat and the laptop. While the new operating system installed itself, I got out Mina’s favorite toy — a long springy wire with a handle on one end, and a little chewable thing at the other end. I held the handle and twitched the wire while the cat stalked the little chewable thing. She is a pleasant little black cat with a sweet face, but when she is stalking, her face is the picture of feline killer concentration. She would catch the little chewable thing, bat it around until it was “dead”, chew on it for a minute, and then get up and eat a couple of kibbles from her dish. (I thought the bit about eating the kibbles was a nice addition to the game.)

We played this very engaging game for most of the hour it took to re-install the operating system. After all the anguish I’ve gone through trying to fix the laptop’s problem, this was a particularly pleasant end to the story — playing cat games while the computer bascially fixed itself.

What th…?!

Sitting at the table in our apartment having lunch today, reading Mark Twain, and every now and then gazing out at the sunny courtyard of the Whaling Museum. Suddenly, I realize that there are two eight-foot-long white sperm whales in the courtyard, lined up one behind the other, facing me with their heads up, smiling with pendulous lower lip hanging down, and tails pointing smartly to starboard. I stand up to get a better view. No, I was not imagining them. Funny I didn’t see them before. Must be some exhibit for the Whaling Museum. Back to lunch and Mark Twain.

Five minutes later, I look up again. Now there are four white whales, two ranks of two, all facing me and smiling, all four tails pointing smartly to starboard. I know the other two whales weren’t there five minutes ago — were they? I get up to look. No one standing in the courtyard. No truck or delivery vehicle on the street. Who put them there? Maybe I just missed them before — ? Oh well. Back to lunch and Mark Twain.

Five minutes later, a fifth white whale appears, smiling at me with nose in the air and tail pointing smartly to starboard — but this time, I see the two guys in Whaling Museum polo shirts just straightening up after setting this last whale down. At last I know — that’s where the whales have been coming from.

Workshop

Saltwater UU Church, Des Moines, Washington

Josephine and I finished leading the workshop at 12:30 today. We had fourteen people attending the youth advisor training this weekend. Now sometimes you get people at these workshops who want to work with youth for (ahem) the wrong reasons, but at this workshop everyone had all the right motivations. We had responsible lay leaders committed to spending time with young people, because they know that young people really benefit from the support of a religious community (and studies do show that youth who have the support of a congregation are much less likely to engage in risky behaviors). You couldn’t do better than spend a weekend with responsible people who are committed to doing ministry with youth.

I did have one disappointment about this weekend’s workshop, though. Josephine promised that she would teach us all how to play a silly bonding game called “Pass the Chicken.” But we ran out of time, and never got to play. I was crushed, absolutely crushed I tell you.

Pacific Rim city

Des Moines, Washington (just south of Seattle)

The woman who checked me in to the motel last night was not a native speaker of English. The hotel, right next to the Midway Casino and Restaurant, stands on a little pocket of reservation; the woman who checked me in was a Native American.

Seattle/Tacoma ariport has electronic signs giving information in some East Asian language (Japanese?).

It’s fall, so you see the occasional tree with bright red or yellow leaves: sweet gum, red maple, sugar maple, ash. But the most common trees are dark firs, or trees that drop big brown leaves without any show.

Weather today: Clouds. Clouds and mist. Sunny and warm. Clouds. Partly sunny. Clouds.

A different aesthetic from the East Coast: –no hulks of old brick industrial buildings; –trees everywhere; –bright colored accents on houses; –balconies even on cheap apartments and condos; –plenty of trees in the trailer parks. Even the ugly buildings seem to fit the landscape. A differnt landscape from New England: the land drops dramatically in big steps and swoops down to Puget Sound, which glows silver gray under the broad cloudy sky.

It’s a world away from the south coast of Massachusetts.

Fog

I had appointments up in Boston yesterday (with a church consultant, the minister who’s preaching at my installation, our music director), and wound up driving back quite late. I ran into fog right after passing the height of land that marks the edge of the Buzzard’s Bay watershed. It got heavier the closer I got to the coast; it was heaviest here in New Bedford.

The remarkable thing about fog in the city is that although you can’t see, fog makes the night far brighter than usual, since it reflects all the city lights right back down. As I drifted off to sleep, I kept coming awake and glancing up at the skylight in our bedroom, thinking day was starting to break already.

Flight 15

On Alaska Airlines flight #15, seat 30D, Oct. 6, 2005

“This is the flight deck, giving you an update on our progress. We’re just leaving North Dakota air space, heading into Montana. We’re still holding to our original estimate of arriving at the gate about ten minutes after nine o’clock.”

A night flight, the cabin lights are off, but I’m too wide awake to doze. The light over my seat doesn’t work, so I can’t fall back on reading. The couple to my right are in and out of sleep. The woman across the aisle and just in front of me has been typing constantly on her laptop since they brought dinner around. Dinner was hot sandwiches and apple slices encased in plastic. The girl, maybe ten years old, in the middle seat right in front of me is watching “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” on a portable DVD player. Two young women across the aisle are talking, but I find I can’t eavesdrop due to the jet noise:

“It’s like I was just [drowned out]…” “…so I was thinking [drowned out]…” “…I was like[drowned out]….”

The anesthetizing effect of a good murder mystery would help the boredom. Maybe I’ll try to doze, out of boredom.

(Later)

Bits of a conversation from the woman with the midwestern accent and the man behind me:

“It’s a long flight, isn’t it?” “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” “Five and a half hours.” “You don’t think it’s that long, but it is.”

“Can I get out? –when you get a chance, it doesn’t have to be now.” This to the woman was has been typing constantly on her laptop, and she gets up to let the man in the middle seat get out. She’s not typing now, though, she’s playing a video game. “Ah, that’s important work you’re doing.” The woman with the laptop laughs, and the man continues, “I’m gonna stretch my back, it doesn’t do well in these –ahh!” as he stands up and stretches. He rocks back and forth and stands in the aisle.

I sit and stare in front of me. Too wide awake to doze again. I let my mind drift.

“We’re supposed to get in just after nine so it’s going to be,–” the woman with the laptop looks at her watch, “–another hour and twenty minutes.” This in response to the woman on her far left, sitting in the window seat. The man stretching his back is still standing in the aisle, rocking.

I let my mind drift.

Cell phone conversation

There’s a new used book store in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Raven Used Books, on the basement level two doors down from Shay’s Wine Bar on JFK. I was standing looking at the history books when a man stopped in front of the store to talk on his cell phone. I could hear him very clearly even though he was all the way up the stairs on the sidewalk.

[Something about plans for the evening…]

Pause.

[in a louder voice] Dad, you don’t have to pick me up after work. I can…

Long pause.

[in a definitely loud voice] I’m telling you right now, I don’t want to go out for dinner.

Pause.

[in softer voice] I don’t want to go out to dinner. I just wanna go home and unpack my s— and just sit there and relax.

He was still talking when I left the bookstore some five minutes later. I had expected a college student, but he was in his late thirties, curly brown hair touched with gray, blue flannel shirt and purple baseball cap, still trying to make plans for the evening.

Festival

Carol and I got over to the New Bedford Working Waterfront Festival this afternoon, and we had a blast.

Carol was over at the festival yesterday and got to see the scallop shucking contest, which she said was pretty good. We made a point of seeing the fish fileting contest today. Those guys were fast — as a recreational fisherman, I take forever to filet a fish, and these guys would filet several pounds of fish in the time it would take me to finish one filet. After the contest was over you could get a little closer, and I watched the winner skin his filets. Man, he was good, taking the skin off with a few fluid, practied motions. (In case you’re wondering, all the fish was immediately chilled and donated to the hungry of the city.)

I also spent quite a bit of time talking to the fellow who made scallop drags — still hand-assembled right here in New Bedford, and each one has to be pretty much custon-made for a given ship. The fellow said that much of the work is grunt-work, bending metal rings to make the chain-link bag that holds the scallops. But, he said, since every one is a little different, it takes a good bit of brain work, too. I love to know how things get put together, so I was fascinated.

Carol and I toured a couple of the boats, but I have to admit I wasn’t all that interested. Now if we could ahve toured a boat yard, I could have stayed all day — I’m more interested in how boats go together than in sailing them. We somehow wound up on a harbor cruise instead of going to the blessing of the fleet. There was just too much going on at once.

We did manage to catch some of the great traditional music sponsored by WSMU. David Jones and Heather Wood were there singing their a capella English songs — I like their unpretentious manner, and their resonant harmonies. We caught part of the set by the New Bedford Sea Shanty choir. Singer and guitarist Gordon Bok told a series of long involved stories instead of playing his usual music, saying that stories are the way we get taught by our elders, and as an example he told the story of how he was about to go on deck of a boat in a long coat when the captain stopped him and told him a story of how another man got killed by wearing a long coat on deck, and that led to another story, and another story, all drily funny and most pretty grim, as New England stories usually are — but we never did hear the end of that first story, and I still don’t know if Gordon Bok took off that long coat before going up on deck.

As we walked home, Carol remarked on the way the festival brought together all the different kinds of people who live in New Bedford. To me, it felt like the New Bedford equivalent of the midwestern county fairs. In any case, it was a great event. If you missed the working waterfront festival this year, don’t miss it next year.