Last Weekend in Boston

I've been busy reading and running back and forth to Boston.  Now that the driving back and forth (5+ hours each way, depending on traffic  -  and we ran into a lot of traffic on this last trip!) is over, I have many things to catch up on at 'home'.  I say 'home' because Philadelphia will never feel as much like 'home' as New England feels like 'home'.  I've had the house to clean, after a month of neglect, and tons of small things to do that could wait until our vacation was over.

This past weekend was our last in Boston for this trip.  The big tragedy was that my Kindle went into a coma just when I needed it.  I was almost finished with India Black and didn't take another book, figuring that I'd just use my Kindle.  I charged it on Thursday, but when I opened it on Saturday, it said the battery was completely dead.  I hadn't brought the charger either.  So much for packing lightly.  (It's been fine since I charged it when we got back and is still holding a charge.  No idea what happened.)

One of the first things I did when we got to Boston was go to Bromfield Pen Shop for more fountain pen ink.  I just can't resist it!  Baystate Concord Grape and Ottoman Azure.  So, this photo is for Stefanie:

I was FORCED to go to Commonwealth Books to look for something to read.  I looked for Jamaica Inn, which Katrina and I plan to read together in June, but no luck.  I had a copy in Philly, but I thought if I could find a copy in Boston, I'd get a little head start.  However, I found four more Phoebe Atwood Taylor Asey Mayo mysteries!  I found nine over the course of our vacation in Boston, a real treasure.  But I learned my lesson about relying solely on my Kindle!  I felt very anxious without a book.

On Saturday, we met our friend Jenny, our ex-veterinarian, on Cape Cod.  We had lunch at the Old Yarmouth Inn and then she and I walked across the street to Parnassus used book store while Jack napped in the car.  I bought a Gladys Taber book I didn't own, My Own Cape Cod, and Jenny bought a copy of Ferdinand the Bull for her grandson.

Then the three of us walked up the street to the Edward Gorey House Museum.  I had my camera with me, but, as usual, I forgot to take pictures!  The house is a lovely, typical, old Cape house.  The downstairs is the only part open to the public, but there's so much to see there that it was enough for us. Gorey was one of the most imaginative and creative people I can think of.  I wish I'd known him.  He adored cats and reading and smooth, round stones and the ballet and toy mice (maybe for his cats) and too many other things to list.  I bought a T-shirt with books, the word 'Read' all over it, and cats lazing on all the books.

The docent at the Gorey House suggested that we might like to drive to Gray's Beach, one of the loveliest on the Cape.  Jenny had to get back to take care of her dogs, so Jack and I went to take a look.  It was a marsh on an inlet rather than a ripping, crashing wave, ocean beach.  But it had a long boardwalk across the marsh.  We saw an osprey nest and there was an osprey on it!  If you look closely at the photo, I hope you can see it.  The sea air was refreshing and reminded us of one of the things we miss about living inland.  We felt healthy breathing the salt air instead of the gritty stuff that passes for air in Philly.

And now we're back in Philadelphia.  We had a wonderful month in New England and hope to go back next fall.  The condo we rent for a month at a time is now like a home away from home.

Turtle, our cat, is still not sure that we won't be packing up and leaving her this weekend.  I've assured her that we're here for the next four or five months, but I don't think she believes me.  It's hard to read or use my lap top with a large, insecure grey cat on my lap!

Busy in Boston

Jack and I have been spending weekends in Boston for the last few weeks.  We rented a condo on Beacon Hill for a month, near where we used to live.  We rented the same condo last fall and had a terrific time.  Because we're self-employed, we can't just go away for a month.  But we did manage to spend nine days there, plus those long weekends.  It's more comfortable and cheaper than a hotel.  This will be our last weekend there for this trip.

We miss New England so much, but my three nieces and their families live much closer to Philadelphia than to Boston.  If I were wealthy, I'd have houses / condos in both locations, but I'm not.  So, this will have to do for now (but I still play the lottery and hope!).

It's nice to have a home away from home.  Eating out is expensive and because I'm a vegetarian all the time and a vegan 99% of the time, it's sometimes hard for me to find good, satisfying food in restaurants.  My husband doesn't eat much flesh, but even he won't eat in restaurants that serve foie gras (diseased duck or goose liver produced by torturing birds), which, sadly, seems to show up on too many menus in Boston and Philadelphia.  So, in the condo, we can cook what we like to eat.

We get to see friends we haven't seen for months or years, we walk or take the T (the subway) all over the city, we visit the magnificent Museum of Fine Arts, the Harvard museums, the Gardner Museum, and we enjoy the sea air.  We love almost everything about Boston.

There are two wonderful used book stores near the condo.  Commonwealth Books has two stores within blocks of each other.  I bought an Angela Thirkell book (County Chronicle), four Mary Stewart paperbacks (that look like they've never been read) for a dollar each, and a handful of Phoebe Atwood Taylor's Asey Mayo mysteries in those atmospheric newish paperback editions.  I won't mention the other well-known used book store where I bought many, many interesting and fine books back in the 1980's because it's not what it used to be.  What a disappointment.  But I did buy two books there:  a Trollope Society guide to Trollope and a nice little 1901 travel book about Hampshire, England, with intact pull-out maps.  I love these old travel books.

There's a wonderful pen store in Boston, Bromfield Pen Shop, also close to the condo we rented.  I love fountain pens, ink, notebooks, etc.  Jack bought me a black Waterman pen there for Mother's Day and two bottles of Noodler's ink:  Walnut and Navajo Turquoise.  They have such beautiful colors and lovely bottle labels.  I need a different pen for each gorgeous color!  My journal is starting to look like a rainbow!

I'll post more photos of our trip to Boston last fall, but I think this is enough for now.  Excuse me, but I must go read!

Books I've Recently Read or Am Currently Reading

     I had planned to write more about books, but I've discovered that I don't like reviewing books and I  don't like reading detailed reviews.  I don't want to know every plot line or character.  I want to read the book (or not) and find out for myself.

     I just finished reading The Smell of the Night by Andrea Camilleri.  When I read the first book in this series of detective novels set in Sicily, I wasn't enchanted.  But I kept thinking about the book and found myself looking for the others.  Inspector Montalbano is a strange guy.  He loves good food and never seems to miss a meal.  He has a long-distance, long-suffering girlfriend.  I'm happy to be an armchair traveller these days, so I love being taken to Sicily.

     The Count of Monte Cristo has me in its thrall, but it is a long, long, long, long, long book.  I've been reading it on my Kindle for months.  I don't read it every day.  I read it in chunks.  I'm a mood and place reader (I only read paperbacks in the bath), so unless I can read a book in a short time, like a day or two, I read several books at a time and jump back and forth between them.  The Count of Monte Cristo is full of adventures and excitement, almost on every page.  I think I can see where it's going, but I like the trip.

     I also just finished One Writer's Garden, recommended by another blogger.  I'm a former gardener and I enjoy reading gardening narratives.  This book is about the garden created by Eudora Welty's mother, Chestina.  As Eudora grew, she helped her mother in the garden and took over its care when her mother became unable to.  As Eudora aged, she wasn't able to tend the garden either and it fell into disarray.  She arranged for her house to be given to the state of Mississippi and a restoration of the  garden began.  The books is a biography of the garden, of Ms. Welty and her mother, and of the gardening trends of the early to mid 1900s.  With lots of gorgeous photographs.

     My husband and I are renting a condo in Boston for the month of May.  We're running back and forth between Boston and Philadelphia, where we live, because we had to leave our old cat in Philly in the care of a pet / house sitter and because we can't leave our business for an entire month.  We used to live in Boston and miss it very much.  But my family is closer to Philadelphia, so that's where we've chosen to live.  While in Boston, I thought it would be fun to read a Boston-based book.  So I just finished the second of Dennis Lehane's Kenzie and Gennaro detective books, Darkness, Take My Hand.  It's full of actions and evil.  The author grew up in Dorchester, a part of Boston I don't know well, and sets his books there.  There are forays into the parts of Boston I do know well and that's always fun.  I don't particularly like Robert B. Parker's Spencer books, but I love the local detail in them (I know exactly where that ship-shaped restaurant is on Route 1!).

     There are several other books that are partly read, but I'm writing this in Boston and don't have them in front of me.  It seems unfair to tell you that I'm reading a biography of Ngaio Marsh without telling you which one.

     I'd love to know if you've read any of these books and what you thought of them.  If you have any recommendations for me, please share.

I Miss Old Women - Oh, Wait! Am I an Old Woman?!

I was born in 1952, so I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, though you could argue that I'm still growing up.  My grandparents all lived over an hour's car ride away, a long trip in those days, especially for a kid who got car sick.  But Mr. and Mrs. Seiders and their dog Butch lived across the street from us.  Mr. Seiders was a retired English teacher.  No one liked Butch because he barked a lot.  I loved Butch and Butch loved me.  That's a story for another day.

Mr. and Mrs. Seiders were my surrogate grandparents.  I would ask my mother to take me over so I could see Butch, and I ended up spending many days with the Seiders, helping them in their garden, drawing with the paper and crayons they provided, playing with the tin soldiers that were kept in the closet.  Mrs. Seiders and I would sit on the back porch with glasses of tea and freshly made cookies.  Butch and I would sit on the back porch eating dog biscuits (I preferred the cookies but I didn't want Butch to feel left out).

Then there was Mrs. Stoner.  My mother had been friends with her daughter, Hilda, who had multiple sclerosis and died fairly young.  But my mother and I continued to visit Mrs. Stoner, a widow.  She had a wonderful grandfather clock with a moon face that revolved according to the time or day or month or something.  She also had a long, narrow overgrown garden behind her house.  There was a fountain that was activated by pushing a T-stick.  And she had parakeets.  After getting my mother's ok, she surprised me with my own parakeet one birthday.  Pepi, a little green guy all my own.

Rhoda Tuck was the head librarian at the library in Elizabethtown, PA, where I did most of my growing up.  Mary Karnes, a neighbor, introduced me to volunteering at the library when I was a young teen.  Mary knew how much I loved books and thought this would be a good way for me to help out.  She was right.  Mrs. Tuck had great stories about driving a bookmobile through the wilds of  Chester County.  She and Mary encouraged me in my reading and with my curiosity about the world, showing me how I could satisfy it with books.  (By the way, if Mary happens to read this, I didn't consider her an old woman back then.)

Jean Withers was tall and smoked a lot and wore trousers.  My mother never wore trousers, so I saw Jean as worldly and exotic.  She was also a widow and lived with a woman friend on a small farm,  where they raised sheep and had dogs and cats.  Animals were always a magnet for me.  Mom would take me out in the spring to see the lambs frolicking.  I was too young to know that shortly they'd be tiny lamb chops.  How could I have waited so long to become a vegan?!

My point is that I think I was lucky to have had all these old women in my life.  These women were all kind to a little girl who talked too much and could get into trouble at the drop of a hat.  They all had time for me and took the time to share their stories and to listen to mine.  I look around today and don't see old women like that anymore.  Old women now seem to stay active if they're able, playing golf, travelling, doing things they put off while raising families.  Or they're in poor health, tucked away in a nursing home, as my mother finally was.  But even if they were around, would children today, with their electronic buddies, their sensory overload, be interested in spending time with them?

I'm glad I grew up when I did, where I did, and with all those wonderful old women.

Out and About - But I Do Read, Too

This has been, for me, a busy week.  I'll be the first to admit that I no longer like travelling, even short trips.  There are lots of reasons, but I won't bore you.

But on Sunday, we took the short drive to Wilmington, Delaware, to Winterthur, the du Pont home and museum.  It's a huge country house, 145 rooms, most of which are not on the tour.  The house is preserved as it would have been in about 1929  -  roughly the same post-WWI time period as the past season of  Downton Abbey.  Henry du Pont, the collector, was also a horticulturist, and the grounds and gardens reflect his skill.  It was rainy the day we went, so we'll have to go back on a nicer day to enjoy the gardens.

In fact, until next January, there's a wonderful exhibit of the costumes from the TV show Downton Abbey.  Photos except videos were allowed, but I never remember to take them.  You'll have to go here   to get an idea of what it's like and when to go see it.  I highly recommend a visit if you're in the area.  See the exhibit before you tour the house or you may come down with museum fatigue, as we did.  The exhibit compares life in a house like Downton Abbey to life in the country home of a wealthy American family at the same time period.  I'd love to have been a weekend guest at either home.

Tuesday, we went to the National Clock and Watch Museum in Columbia, PA.  Go here to find out the particulars.  This is a fascinating place if you have any interest in clocks or watches.  We both like clocks.  I love mechanical clocks, the kind you see in Europe, with little people popping out and about.  I have a cuckoo clock I bought when we were in Germany in 1988 and I will admit to standing in front of it with a stupid smile on my face  when the little bird comes out to cuckoo.

This museum currently has an exhibit of James Bond watches, which is fun.  The clock you can't miss is the Engle Clock.  A local inventor and watchmaker spent twenty years making this masterpiece, from about 1850-something until 1876.  It's 11' tall, 8' wide, and 3' deep.  At various times, Jesus and the Apostles appear, the three Marys appear, the devil pops out, the three stages of man (don't tell Shakespeare) come rotating out, angles sing, and Molly Pitcher reviews the troops.  I'm sure I've forgotten some of the figures.  It's awesome!

But I prefer reading to travelling.  I've come full circle.  I read voraciously as a child and youth, really all my life.  Then I decided it was time to do or see as many things as I'd been reading about.  I was fortunate enough to be able to travel a lot in the 1980s, so I'm satisfied that I've seen as much of the world as I care to see.  I've returned to reading.

Currently, I'm back in history with The Count of Monte Cristo, I just finished the latest Elly Griffiths Ruth Galloway mystery, I started a Val McDermid mystery, Retribution, but I can't always stomach her books.  I'm also reading a biography of Ngaio Marsh and the letters of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell.  Several people have read, reviewed, and enjoyed the newly republished John Bude mysteries.  I have them on my Kindle and am looking forward to trying them.

There Was a Young Cowgirl ....

                                           
This is me when I was an aspiring cowgirl.  Do any of you have pictures like this, taken by a photographer who travelled around with his pony and a set of western duds and took photos of horse crazy kids?

I remember hearing the clop of hooves and running to see where the horse was and why it was coming down my street in a town that normally had no horse traffic.  I may actually have been whinnying while hunting for the horse.  I ran inside and badgered my poor mother until she came out to supervise the shoot, make sure I wasn't being kidnapped, and pay the photographer.  We moved to this house in 1961, so I'm guessing the photo was taken in 1961 or 1962.  

I still shamelessly throw myself at any horse I find (actually, any species I meet, equine or other), despite being stepped on, thrown, and kicked in the chest.  I don't think I've ever been bitten.  I used to know the names of the police horses in Boston and will never forget the thrill of seeing palomino Cassidy galloping across Boston Common.  

I'd love to hear from you if you have a photo like this stashed away.  Were you bewitched by horses?

Of Shoes - And Ships - And Sealing-Wax

So today I want to tell you about two terrific ships, both in Philadelphia.  They're two of the things I forgot about when I was trying to think of the few things I like about Philadelphia.

The first is a story that I hope will have a happy ending.  The S.S. United States is the country's flagship, named for the nation.  She's a passenger ship, an ocean liner, currently rotting away on the Delaware River in Philadelphia.  You can read more about her and see photos of her here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_United_States  and here:  http://www.ssusc.org/.  This is a truly beautiful and amazing ship, one that we, as a country, should restore and be proud of, a piece of our history.

She's the kind of ship that looks like she's flying even when she's docked, as she has been for almost twenty years.  She's sleek and fast and still holds records for fastest Atlantic crossings.  Who else can boast that?  Her maiden voyage was in July 1952, a little more than a month before I was born, so maybe she holds a special place in my heart because of that.  I don't really think so, though.  She's a piece of living history.  Restoring her would provide jobs to idle ship builders in the area (Philadelphia still occasionally builds ships) and a restored S.S. United States would attract tourists and make history come alive for bored school children.  She could be used for functions, as a restaurant, or for parties, like the next ship I'm going to tell you about.

Moshulu is also docked on the Delaware River in Philadelphia.  Have you read Eric Newby's book The Last Grain Race?  I read it before we moved to Philadelphia and you should have seen my head spin when Jack and I walked down the river for the first time and  -  there she was:  Moshulu!  She's privately owned and well-maintained as a restaurant and bar.  We've sat on her deck drinking ice cold beer on hot summer days  -  the very decks that Newby trod during the Last Grain Race, which Moshulu won!  Things like this make me tingle!  Here's some more information about her:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshulu

Although I never particularly enjoyed my days as a sailor's wife (too much racing, not enough lying about drinking beer, occasional sea-sickness  -  please, just put me out of my misery!), I still love to look at beautiful boats.  These are two rippingly gorgeous boats.

I should say something about shoes and sealing-wax, shouldn't I?  I'm mourning the demise of my favorite pair of boots.  This happened a few years ago, but I'm still grieving.  I have them tucked in the bottom of my closet, but I dare not wear them because I'm not Johnny Depp, who sometimes  wears a favorite pair of taped-together boots.  Mine were from Tuk Shoes and I've been begging them to reproduce (or whatever it's called when you re-make boots after they've been discontinued) them, but to no avail.  They were non-leather (I'm a vegan) black cowboy boots with white stars and white piping.  They were so ME!  Well made, easy to pull on, attention-getting without shouting, and comfortable.  I've trolled the internet for secret stashes, but I think I have to let them go.  (Unless there are elves out there willing to make me a pair.)

I used to use sealing-wax and would again if I had anyone to write to.  It seems so Medieval and regal.  I love fountain pens and ink, and sealing-wax goes with those things.  I love the colors, I love the stamps to leave your own personal impression.  But if I started writing letters again, I'd have to improve my penmanship.  Currently, looking at my handwriting, most people think I'm a doctor.  I can't even read my writing sometimes.  I'm always dashing off things and then I have no idea what I've written.  (I'm using Lewis Carroll's spelling of 'sealing-wax';  it's normally spelled as two non-hyphenated words.)

Let's all take a breath and slow down.