Category Archives: New Bedford, Mass.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Road trip

Heard while eating lunch today in New Bedford: “I never go to Boston. It’s too far. It’s like going to a foreign country.”

Got in my car just after two, drove to Concord to see Nancy James, the insurance agent I used to use when I lived in Massachusetts before. This past Sunday, she was at the big celebration at the Gloucester Universalist church, the first Universalist church in New England (according to some historians). Nancy’s ancestors were among the people who signed the original charter. So if you want to play the “I-was-born-a-Unitarian-Universalist” game, just remember that it’s almost impossible to beat Nancy.

After spending a year in the midwest, I’m used to driving an hour or more to go shopping. As long as I was in Concord, I slipped over to Maynard, to the Maynard Outdoor Store. I’ve been going there since I was a kid, and some of the same people are still working there. As usual, they had everything I wanted, and cheaper than you can get things through mail order. Still family-owned, too. (Someday I’ll do profiles of “real stores” on this blog….)

Met Carol in Cambridge, where she stays during the week for her job. We had sushi at Whole Foods Market in Cambridge. Great people-watching — from classic nutty-crunchy aging Cambridge hippies, to Muslim women in veils, to tanned-and-fit yupsters, to students — and the cutest little baby sitting at the next booth while we were eating, whose parents apparently were speaking some East Asian language.

Driving back, listened to WUMB, the folk radio station in Boston (which has a repeater in Falmouth, at 91.9 FM, so we also listen to it in New Bedford). It was dark and late, and I was in one of those meditative states you get into sometimes when you drive, and the announcer said, “Neil Young has a new record out, blah blah blah,” and Neil Young’s quavery, slightly out-of-tune voice came on the air. Wait, isn’t Neil Young dead or something? You mean he’s still singing, and sounds exactly the way he did in the 70’s when I used to sit in front of Dad’s big stereo set listening to Captain Ken Shelton play Neil Young every Thursday on the Top 40 Countdown? Either that, or I’m suffering from some kind of hellish flashback to the miserable 1970’s. I turned the radio off.

Stopped at the Bridgewater service station off Rt. 24 to top off my tank. As I pulled in to the gas pumps, I noticed an attractive middle-aged woman pumping gas into her Ford Explorer right in front of me. I took my time getting out of the car, fiddled with my credit card, eventually started pumping gas into my little ’93 Toyota Corolla. She finished filling her tank just after I finished filling mine — I hate to think how much gas she had to put in her SUV, or how much she paid at $2.87 a gallon. And hey, I sympathize with her, I’m feeling it at the pump too. My poor little Toyota used to get forty miles per gallon on road trips, but with age now it’s down to thirty-five miles per gallon.

Tropical

It’s pouring rain right now. Ten minutes ago it was drizzling. Ten minutes from now it might stop. The air is warm and thick and humid. One of those warm intermittent rain storms you get in New England in September, after the worst heat of the summer is done and before the cool air comes in for good. Not even a tropical storm or a hurricane, like the one pounding Cape Hatteras right now and headed our way tomorrow. Just a drenching rain storm, warm and humid.

We have a drum in our apartment with a goat-skin head on it. Over the weekend, the head was taut and smooth. Today, the head hangs loosely in the rim. You can see all the places where I didn’t stretch the head evenly when I was putting it on the rim.

With the rain, not many people at the farmer’s market today. The woman from Quansett Farm had winter squash this week, pretty deep-orange hybrid squash I’ve never seen before. She said she’s got Hubbards and Butternuts, too, but she didn’t bring them. It still seems too early to bring them out, it’s still too warm. We can ignore them, but the squash and these September rain storms are telling us: Autumn creeps closer every day.

Gulls

Our apartment is right in downtown New Bedford, a ten minute walk from the harbor. Needless to say, there are lots of gulls in the neighborhood. A couple of mornings ago, a group of gulls set up shop on the roof of a building near us, and had what sounded like a knock-down, drag-out, sreaming fight over something. My guess is that they were fighting over some little scrap of half-decayed fish guts. Gulls seem to love to fight over that kind of thing.

I don’t mind the gulls fighting and screaming. It adds to the character of the neighborhood. But I do mind the fact that they were doing it at 5:30 in the morning, awakening me out of a sound and blissful sleep. I also mind that the kept up screaming at each other for what seemed like half an hour.

Stupid gulls.

Candlelight vigil

First Unitarian hosted a candlelight vigil this evening, sponsored by the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry (RCFM). The Traviglini/Lees amendment is being voted on tomorrow by the state legislature, and there were eight such candlelight vigils around the state to show that there are lots of religious people in Massachusetts who support equal marriage rights. Over a thousand people showed up at the Boston vigil.

We got a late start planning our vigil here in New Bedford. We had managed to get the word out to a few sympathetic local religious groups, and I was hoping for at least fifty people. But yesterday (Monday), there were reports in the media that the amendment was not going to pass — after those reports I fielded one phone call from someone who wanted to know whether or not they should even show up, and I’m sure there were people who just decided to not come.

At 5:45 p.m., fifteen minutes before the vigil was supposed to begin, I went out to unlock the front gates, and I saw city workers blocking off Union Street and County Street in front of the church property. Now, RCFM had pulled a permit for us to use the sidewalk, but we had not expected to have the streets blocked off — in fact the whole point for having the vigil on the sidewalk was to make sure people saw us. I didn’t pull the permit, so maybe there was confusion and we got a permit for a street demonstration or something — or maybe it’s just a standard public safety measure — or maybe someone thought we were too controversial and wanted to protect us. Who knows. But traffic sure got backed up, and if you got stuck in traffic because of our little candlelight vigil, you have my sincere apologies — it wasn’t supposed to be that way!

With traffic getting backed up, nearly everyone was late to the vigil, including the field coordinator for RCFM. But we got going at 6:15.

Rev. Ann Fox, minister of the Fairhaven Unitarian Universalist church, gave the opening words. Mark Montigny, our state senator, spoke about his support for equal marriage rights. He said he sees no reason to mess with our “beautiful state constitution,” which has upheld human rights for centuries. Tony Cabral, another one of our legislators, showed up unexpectedly, and he told us that the fight to preserve equal marriage rights has just begun, for even though it’s likely the Traviglini/Lees amendment will go down tomorrow, the next step will be a voter referendum that will be heavily financed by rich interest groups from outside Massachusetts. John Bullard, former mayor of New Bedford, spoke next, telling us that equal marriage rights is one of the inalienable rights, a part of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Of the nine mayoral candidates here in New Bedford, only Matt Morrisey showed up to voice his support for equal marriage rights, saying that he felt all New Bedford citizens deserved the right to marriage. Amy Mello, field coordinator for RCFM, finally made it by about 6:30, and she filled us in about what RCFM is doing (and to find out more about RCFM, visit www.rcfm.org).

By the time everyone who wanted to got to talk, it was 6:40, and dark enough to light the candles and stand out on the corner of Union and County Streets. I should say, the blocked-off and eerily quiet corner of Union and County Streets. We had about 35 people by that time, far fewer than I had expected, but a nice group — Catholics, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Jews, Pagans, Unitarian Universalists, and maybe some others that I missed — ages from 13 to 70’s — women and men, gay and straight.

Right at seven o’clock, we put out our candles (we wanted to be good citizens, and end right on time so the city could open up the roads again). Rev. Karen McArthur, the pastor at Pilgrim Congregational Church, offered the closing words, pointing out that while some states still had laws prohibiting interracial marriages up into the 1960’s, Massachusetts ended those laws in the 1840’s. Massachusetts, said Karen, has often been at the forefront of equal rights issues.

It wasn’t the most organized candlelight vigil I’ve ever been to (you could say that it was an improvisational event rather than strictly choreographed). But I felt it was well worth my while. We may not have made much of a public statement, but the fact that people from so many different faith traditions got together to support equal marriage rights made it worth my while. And it was good to have politicians, an ex-politician, and an aspiring politician with us. Seems like there is hope for equal marriage rights in this state.

By the way, no one from the press showed up (and yes, RCFM did send out press releases). So this blog entry may be the only report you will read of this event.

Bridge

Carol and I walked to Fairhaven along the sidewalk beside US 6, which leads over a short, low bridge, then Fish Island, then a swing bridge, then Pope’s Island, then another low-to-the-water bridge to Fairhaven. You pass three or four marinas, on the two islands, along the way. But the best part is the swing bridge section, which I have to explain to my readers who don’t live in the area. The bridge rotates about its center axis so that it lies ninety degrees to the main highway, thus allowing two channels for shipping to use to access the inner harbor. Since the bottom of the bridge is only abouteight feet above the water (depending on the tides), it has to be swung open to shipping regularly.

On the walk back to New Bedford, the bridge operator was climbing up to the control room at the center peak of the bridge just as we were walking across it. We stopped just over the bridge on Fish Island. The gates across US 6 came down, and traffic came to a stop. Most drivers shut off their engines. We watched as he unhitched the bridge roadway from the main roadway, spun it slowly around, watched the large pleasure boat cruise through, and then he swung the bridge slowly back.

My inner five-year-old was immensely pleased to watch this whole process, all ten minutes of it. Heck, my inner adult thought it was pretty cool and wanted to explore the machinery under the bridge and later sit up in the control room and learn how to run it. The small pleasures of living in a working port city.