Category Archives: Sense of place

For last

Cambridge, Mass.

From Geneva, Illinois, to Richmond, Indiana; from there to Cambridge, Mass., and then to Concord, Mass.: orbiting around the “hub of the solar system.” Today was the day to fall down the gravity well, and into Boston, the Hub, itself.

Boston’s cultural institutions shaped me in ways I only dimly realize: Fenway Park, Symphony Hall, 25 Beacon Street; and perhaps more than anything else, the Boston Museum. So thence I road the Green Line trolley cars today.

Walking down Hollis Street towards the Davis Square subway station, along a narrow brick sidewalk where a tree has grown and uprooted bricks and spilled out over the granite curbstone and taken up more than half the sidewalk, so there’s just room for one person to pick their way between it and the white picket fence.

I got off the E-line trolley at Northeastern so I could walk the last few blocks to the Museum. First stop: the musical instruments collection. I thought every great museum had a musical instruments collection, and was shocked when I went to the Art Institute and found they did not. Another way Boston has shaped me: seeing musical instruments as art, not as beautiful objects for making music. I looked particularly at a mountain dulcimer made by James Edward Thomas, simple, elegant, painted black.

To the Asian art to look at Chinese hand scrolls. A scroll titled “Peach Blossom Spring,” by Qiu Yung of the Ming dynasty era, caught my attention. Excerpts from Tao Yuanming’s “Account of Peach Blossom Spring” accompanied the scroll:

During the Taiyuan reign of the Jin, there was a native of Wuling who made his living catching fish. Following a creek, he lost track of the distance he had travelled, when all of a sudden he came upon forests of blossoming peach trees on both shores. For several hundred paces, there were no other trees mixed in. The fragrant herbs were fresh and lovely, and the falling petals drifted eveywhere in profusion. The fisherman found this quite remarkable and proceeded on to find the end of the forest.

The forest ended at a spring and here the fisherman found a mountain. There was a small opening in the mountain and it vaguely seemed as if there were light in it. He left his boat and went in through the opening. At first it was very narrow, just wide enough for one person to get through. Going on a few dozen paces, it spread out into a clear space.

The land was broad and level, and there were cottages neatly arranged. There were good fields and lovely pools with mulberry, bamboo, and other such things. Field paths criss-crossed, and dogs and chickens could be heard. There, going back and forth to ther work planting, were men and women whose clothes were in every way just like those of people everywhere. Graybeards, and children with their hair hanging free, all looked contented and perfectly happy.

When the people saw the fisherman, they were shocked. They asked where he had come from and he answered all their questions. Then they invited him to their homes, where they served him and killed a chicken for a meal. When it was known in the village that such a person was there, everyone came to ask him questions.

The villagers said that their ancestors had fled the upheavals during the Qin dynasty and had come to this region bringing their wives, children, and fellow townsmen. They had never left it and thus had been cut off from people outside. When asked what age it was, they didn’t know even of the existence of the Han dynasty, much less the Wei or Jin.

In some ways, the story of Peach Blossom Spring reminds me of Boston.

The show of quilts from Gee’s Bend has at last reached the Boston Museum — it was at the Art Institute a while ago, before we started living outside Chicago. Polly Bennet, one of the quilters, said the following — one of the best statements for any artist, or craftsperson, or manufacturer:

Up until the start the quilting bee [a cooperative manufacturing effort in the community of Gee’s Bend], I just use old throw-away clothes [to make quilts]. I started buying material in ’66. I was one of them that built the quilting bee up. For that time I was making stuff that was being ordered. Star quilts, Trip around the World, –and a pattern they call Four Star. People would know my name and ask for a quilt I make. And I always make things just for my own pleasure, too. I like to try something I ain’t never made before. And I work on it until I get it straight. I want it fixed right because my quilts might go somewhere I ain’t never going to go, so they going to say, “This quilt made by Polly Bennet.” I got to put my best on it.

I particularly noticed this remark because during the trip out here, my sister Jean talk about what it is like getting her book published. Books and quilts go out, and people use them for what they will. Did Polly Bennet ever think the quilt she made in 1942, at the age of 40, this two-sided quilt in blocks, did she ever think it would wind up hanging in a museum rather than spread out over someone’s bed? Well, maybe she did –maybe she dreamed it just that way.

Carol joined me at the museum after work, and we saw an Italian film there, “After Midnight” (Dopo Mezzanote), part of the museum’s excellent film series. While waiting for the film to start, C. came up to say hello, someone I had known when I worked at the Watertown, Mass., church. The narrator of the film said:

Tales, where do they come from?… Tales are like dust in the wind…. Perhaps places are the best way to tell stories.

And then, describing the heroine, Amanda, the narrator says:

Amanda wishes she had a better life, but mostly she settles for dreaming about it — which is a common attitude.

We caught the trolley, and transferred to the Red line, and came back out here to Cambridge. So I finally made it in to the Hub. Maybe it would have been better to go to Fenway Park, but the results would have been the same.

Tomorrow — on to New Bedford, and the end of the trip.

Concord

Cambridge, Mass.

A sort of pilgrimage to Concord, Massachusetts, today. I met my dad (who still lives in Concord) in the late morning to take a walk. It was hot, so we decided to go to Sleepy Hollow, the cemetery where a number of famous Transcendentalists are buried. We just wanted a cool place to walk on a hot day, but I did make a point of visiting Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s grave. She was a contemporary of Emerson’s, a Transcendentalist who ran the West Street bookstore where she sold Transcendentalist books, published “The Dial” for a few issues, and hosted some of Margaret Fuller’s “conversations” for women (sort of early consciousness-raising sessions). Elizabeth Peabody never married, always claimed she was too busy, and had an incredible career as a teacher, reformer, and intellectual. She is perhaps best known today for introducing kindergarten to the United States — in her conception, a way to give children of all scoi-economic groups a head start before they started school. An amazing woman, and my favorite of all the Transcendentalists.

Her grave stone is down the hill from “Author’s Ridge,” where Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Lousia May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne (her brother-in-law) are buried. She’s buried in a beautiful little hollow dappled with sun and shade. And her legacy lives on in some interesting ways. Late in her career, Elizabeth Peabody mentored a young educator named Lucy Wheelock, who later went on to found Wheelock College, where my mother got her bachelor’s degree. Lucy Wheelock was still a presence when my mother was studying there, and my mother went on to teach for a dozen years. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if my mother chose to pursue her career and not get married as Lucy Wheelock and Elizabeth Peabody did. Mom was an excellent teacher, and who knows where her career would have gone? We’ll never know, but it’s fun to speculate.

After I had lunch with dad and my two sisters, I went for another long walk on the Battle Road Trail in Minuteman National Historical Park in Concord. It’s blackberry season, and I ate some really good blackberries. It must be a good year for blackberries, because they were large and plump and tasty, and worth every scratch I got picking them.

Here

Cambridge, Mass.

Here at last — well, in Massachusetts at last. We got here sooner than I had expected, but that was partly because we decided not to stop anywhere along the way except to sleep. We’ve done a lot of driving over the past two days.

It was good to see Carol again. She’s been here in Massachusetts for six or seven weeks, working at a new job, while I closed up the apartment in Geneva. Carol is cat-sitting in Cambridge, which is why we met her here. She, Jean, and I went out for dinner last night at about 8 p.m. You can read my sister’s blog to read about our dining saga. But I want to go back to Monday evening….

Monday evening, Jean and I were in Batavia, New York, home of Batavia Downs. After an 18 month hiatus, the track is going to open again today. It sure seemed like there were lots of people trying to find a motel room in Batavia on Monday evening, maybe in anticipation of the opening. We finally wound up at a Days Inn, taking a room that had “weak A/C.” They said that was all they had left, and no one else had rooms so we took it. We dumped our luggage, and went to find dinner.

We followed the signs to Alex’s Place, right across the street from Batavia Downs. You can see the long narrow horse barns from the front door of Alex’s. Alex’s was packed. Lots of people who seemed to know each other, felt like a real locals’ hangout.

Our table was positioned so we could watch the bar. Right at the corner, my sister noticed an attractive young woman was flirting with a very thin young man. How did Jean know she’s flirting? “See the way she’s flipping her pony tail?” said Jean. The young man was clearly fascinated. He turned so I could see his face, and I saw he had a moustache that did not quite match his face, as if he hadn’t had it for long and hadn’t quite figured out how to trim it so it looked its best.

Then another young woman, wearing fashionable glasses, joined the first young woman (we called her “Glasses Girl” to distinguish her from the first). The first young woman made the young man get off his bar stool so Glasses Girl could sit between her and the young man. We decided that the first young woman realized that the young man just wasn’t going to go away, but didn’t quite know how to get rid of him.

It was quite a little drama to watch. I decided that these people probably all knew one another, maybe even worked together. Jean wasn’t so sure. Then Jean said, “You know where we got this from?”

“What?” I said.

“Watching people and figuring out their motives,” Jean said. “Mom used to do this.”

“Oh yeah!” I said. Suddenly I remembered Mom doing just this kind of thing — watching people, and figuring out the story or little drama that was being enacted.

Then back to the hotel, where we grdually realized that we didn’t have “weak A/C,” we had no A/C. It was stifling. At 2:30 in the morning, I called the front desk, and they found us another room. We had air conditioing from 2:30 a.m. until 8 the next morning, and then another long hot drive with the windows rolled down. And here we are, in Massachusetts ahead of schedule. I still feel jangled from all that driving. Good thing Jean was willing to come along and share the driving with me. Thanks, Jean!

Hub

Cambridge, Mass.

You’ve probably heard the saying, Boston is the hub of the solar system. And you may well have thought, What East Coast snobbery, or What a dated sentiment from the early 19th C. when Boston was the literary center of the United States, or What a provincial thing to say, or maybe you didn’t think anything at all because you felt it was so patently untrue.

I have said all those things to myself, and have always used that saying with a sense of irony. “Hub of the solar system,” spoken as if it has quotation marks around it. But it’s also true for me, because I know I have been shaped by Boston-area literary heritage, by Boston-area instituions, by Boston area people. So here I am, in Cambridge, right at the edge of the hub of the solar system.

Not that I ever want to live in Boston, or even in Cambridge. I’d rather be outside the hub of the solar system. New Bedford will be close enough — or, I should say, far enough away.

And I do fit in, here in Cambridge. I ran into someone I went to middle school with, and an old friend saw me from the bus and sent me email saying hi. Walking over to the farmer’s market at Davis Square, I saw A. and T.’s house, and the house where R. and her sister M. used to live. Boston and Cambridge are smallish provincial places where you do know people.

So here I am, and while we’re here I’m enjoying being in Cambridge, next door to the Hub. Jean and I walked up Mass. Ave. towards Harvard Square to visit bookstores today. Jean stopped in at Robin Bledsoe, who sells art, architecture, and horse books (Jean was looking at the horse books). We went to Harvard Bookstore, where I found a translation of Japanese travel narratives, a book on the Cambridge (England) Platonists, and a Perry Mason novel.

Looking through the used nonfiction books, I wound up standing next to a tall thin young woman talking to a young man. I got the impression she had just graduated from college. She was telling him about a job interview that she had gotten with what purported to be an advertising agency. “So I got all dressed up, in like my best businessy clothes, and went in for the interview.” Then she told about her first interview, though I missed part of what she said, and she was called back the next day for a second interview. “So I walk into this room full of men in suits, and I’m wearing my business outfit, and they start talking to me, and they were saying I’d be good for the job.” I squatted down to look at a book, and missed a sentence or three. “It turns out I’d have to go door-to-door for like four hours a day, selling door-to-door. When I got back home, I was like, Nick, I got duped, I thought I had a real job, but it wasn’t at all, it was like going door-to-door.”

While we were at Harvard Bookstore, Jean saw that Michael Cunningham was going to be reading from his latest book tonight. So tonight we went to hear him read.

We got there 50 minutes early to be sure to get a seat. The reading was in the bookstore, and there wasn’t much room. Twenty minutes before he was to start, it was standing room only.

He came up to Cambridge from a stay down in Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod (how very Boston). He was wearing a faded pink t-shirt, was very tan, with bleached-out hair, the picture of a Provincetown beach bum. He is a charismatic speaker, and he reads quite well. I have to admit I have not read any of his novels. I felt a little guilty that I was taking up one of the precious few seats. But then I realized that I belonged there, too. I’m a reader and a booklover, and unlike music lovers we don’t have concerts; unlike art lovers we don’t have gallery openings; our social events are author readings. It was good to be in a room full of book lovers, and it didn’t matter if we were in Cambridge, or Provincetown, or Geneva, Illinois — for readers, anywhere there’s a book and someone to read it, it’s the hub of the universe.

Fair

Richmond, Indiana

Off to the Preble County Fair this afternoon. Preble County is just east of here, over the border in Ohio.

Preble County still has a large agricultural base, so we saw lots of animals. The Lincoln Sheep were pretty impressive, with their beautifully groomed woolly coats. We watched a little of the judging of goats, but I didn’t understand what was going on. The judge said things like, “I have to compliment number three on good mammary development,” and “The sides slope into the [incomprehensible], and the rear legs are nice and wide-spread.” Not sure what all that means. Personally, I liked the ducks the best. And the big beautiful Barred Plymouth Rock rooster, with his finely-barred black-and-white feathers. We also saw apples that were shown by one of Dick’s children at Wechsler Orchards, with lots of blue ribbons.

While we were looking for some shade, we wandered in to grandstand for the horse races, just as the pacers and trotters were warming up. Jean, being a horsewoman, had to stay and watch the horses, and then she said, can’t we stay and watch one race. Why not, Dick and I were game. The horse pulling their little sulkies behind were fun, but I liked watching the people watching the horses. Two older men sat just in front of us, racing programs well-thumbed. The one man had on a robin-egg blue polo shirt with eyes exactly the same color. His friend said one or two things in a low voice, but the blue-eyed man did not say a word that I heard. They were both intent on the various horses warming up.

In front of the, two people struck up a desultory converstaion. “What did they pay last year?” she said.

“Well, last year they didn’t pay much,” he said, “the ones that should’ve won did win.”

“See anything you like so far?” she said.

“Number 8 just rode by, and he looked pretty good there,” said the man.

Their conversation went on like that. Behind us, a similar conversation between people who just happened to be sitting near each other, and who shared a passion for horses, started out about which horses looked good, and did you see such-and-such a horse race, and then it turned from horses to the bypass surgery one man had had, and whether you’re a Hoosier or a Buckeye — “I may live in Indiana, but I say I’m not a Hoosier, I’m a Buckeye who happens to be a Hoosier until retirement” — to other odds and ends of conversation.

At last it was race time. The race was over pretty quickly, and it was exciting. Jean said, “I can see how people could get addicted to this.” The horse I had liked the looks of finished dead last, ten lengths or more behind the rest of the pack.

Sister

Richmond, Indiana

It took longer than I had hoped to get around this morning — a few last things to throw in the moving container — deposit some checks in the bank in St. Charles — a few last-minute things to clean in the apartment. At last everything was done, and I went and celebrated by having brunch at Egg Harbor Cafe on Third Street in Geneva: three blueberry pancakes with lots of butter, two eggs over easy, and a side of bacon. A good midwestern breakfast. Then I drove over the Fox River one last time, headed east on State Street, headed for the Atlantic Ocean.

Driving was pretty horrendous. The Tri-State Tollway was all backed up from the construction south of Chicago. And Interstate 70 is down to one lane in three places from Indianapolis. Fortunately, my sister called me on the cell phone and told me how to avoid the construction on I-70 around Richmond. But even so, I spent about two hours today crawling in traffic. Which is unpleasant in a car that has no air conditioning.

But at last I made it to Richmond, Indiana, where my older sister Jean lives. I chatted with her and her husband Dick, catching up on the latest review of Jean’s new book, the state of Dick’s new photography studio, and talking about the drive east.

Just in passing, Jean said something about cars and air conditioning. “Jean,” I said, “You know what kind of air conditioning I have in my car.”

“What?” she said, giving me a kind of deer-in-the-headlights look.

“465 air conditioning,” I said.

“Danny,” she said (she is the only person in the world who can get away with calling me “Danny,” so don’t you try), “You mean, 4 windows down at 65 miles per hour — you mean you don’t have air conditioning?” Her voice was rising a little at the end.

Dick walked in at this point, and when he was filled in, he laughed. But my sister doesn’t let these things get to her.

“Actually, in some ways I like it better without air conditioning,” she said. “You really feel like you’re driving, not speeding along in this hermetically sealed — thing.”

Dick rolled his eyes and walked out. There’s only so much brother-sister talk you can stand before it gets cloying. Then Jean said, “Do you have some good music?”

“Well,” I said, “The cassette player is kind of dying, so –”

That was too much for Jean. 465 air conditioning is one thing, but cassettes? I promised I would get a portable CD player, which we can plug into my antiquated car stereo.

“Cassettes,” she muttered, shaking her head.

Whereas I don’t care so much about cassettes, or CDs or DVDs or iPods. What I want to know is where I can get free wifi access. Jean’s laptop doesn’t even have a wifi card! — that’s where I start shaking my head.

Actually, I think what all this shows is that we both have the same father, an electrical engineer and quasi-audiophile, and someone who would talk to us about good writing and about journalism when we were kids. Do I even need to add that, like Dad and me, Jean has a wireless LAN in her house? — which I think is cool.

By such strange things do we sometimes define our relationships.

(By the way, Jean, “wifi” (proper acronym is “Wi-Fi) does stand for “wireless fidelity.” How do you like that?)

And counting…

Geneva, Ill.

With any kind of luck, the PODS people will come early tomorrow morning and pick up the moving container. I could be gone from Geneva within 24 hours. Wow.

First step — drive to my sister’s place in Richmond, Indiana. She says she’s going to take me to a county fair, and we’ll go see her horse, Buddy. After that, we start driving east.

Will post again when I can. While we’re on the road I’ll be looking for Panera’s, so I can get free wifi access along with lunch (note to big corporations like Starbucks — you want more business from me, get free wifi).

More soon….

Why craigslist is more than classified ads

Carol and I decided to get rid of our couch (which we got for ten bucks), so we put it on Craigslist for free. I heard from a few people who didn’t really want it, then a fellow named Gary who lives here in Geneva emailed and said he’d like to look at it. He came over with a friend, took one look, and said, “What a great couch, I’ll take it.” His friend, who was pretty quiet, said they were moving out to Sycamore, to a bigger apartment, and they liked the couch.

It is a great couch, comfy and friendly. “I’ll have a truck late Saturday, can I pick it then?” But I hope to start driving on Saturday, so he said he’d find a friend with a van.

Phone call next afternoon. “Dan, it’s Gary, I’ve got the van, can I come over now?” Fifteen minutes later a 10 year old Dodge Caravan pulls up. The driver is a woman named Sunny, who’s wearing a tie-dye tank top.

Gary and his friend wrestle with the couch, while Sunny and I move things out of the way. They’re trying to get it through the door, it won’t quite fit, and Sunny reaches over and unscrews the legs on the bottom of the couch. She’s the kind of person who knows to do things like that, and does them at just the right time. Her personality matches her name, too.

“Need rope to tie it in?” I ask. But no, of course Sunny has bungee cords.

As she’s bungee-ing the couch into the van, the three of us chat (the quiet friend leaves as soon as the couch is in the van). “Hey, if you’re not doing anything on Friday night, come on over to Sycamore Speedway,” she says. “I’m driving in the Demolition Derby.”

“What a blast,” I say, “what are you driving?”

“A mint-green Ford LTD,” she says, one from the mid-70’s. What a great car to do a demolition derby in. “I’m racing as the Menopausal Maiden from [and then she gave the name of her cleaning company, which I promptly forgot].”

Then the conversation turns to the Rainbow Family of Living Light. Do I know about them? Yes, I say, my cousin the Deadhead got involved with them for a while.

“People say, what’s the difference between the Deadheads and the Rainbow Family,” says Sunny, “They both wear tie-dye, right? –but I say, just look at the parking lot after a gathering of the Deadheads, and then look at our site after we leave. Trash everywhere with the Deadheads, but with ours, you wouldn’t even know we’d been there.”

She has pictures of this year’s gathering, and she shows them to us. “Hey, that guy’s naked,” says Gary, laughing.

“Peace, pot, and microdots, that’s our slogan,” says Sunny. “This one’s my husband. And this picture, you can’t really see it but this is looking across the meadow and that’s part of a circle of ten thousand people holding hands. I took like a panorama of pictures, one after the other, but the others are on another roll of film. And this couple got married at the gathering, on the Fourth of July.” I say, his shirt must be handmade. “Yes, and her dress is too.”

Sunny says a famous novelist often attends the Rainbow Family gatherings, which I didn’t know. I happen to know this writer’s daughter, and I ask Sunny if she has met the daughter, but she says no. She goes on: “I always say there are two most important jobs at the gathering: the shit diggers…” she pause, and Gary and I nod, of course they would be very important — “and the pocket trash people. I like the little kids who go around saying, pocket trash, and we all come out with our pocket trash.” Gary asks, what about the rest of the trash, but Sunny says, “What we pack in, we pack out. We all take our own trash out with us.”

“It’s all about healing the earth, and healing each other,” she says, “and having a good time.” We’ve been talking for a long time now, and Gary is clearly getting a little anxious, which I point out, and he says, yes he’s got a lot to do before he moves. So we all say good-bye. And maybe I’ll head up to Sycamore tomorrow, and look for a mint-green Ford LTD in the Demolition Derby driven by one of the nicest people I’ve met in a long time.