Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum

The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) is a Baltimore treasure housing the art of self-taught artists – many of them working class, some with histories of mental health breakdowns, of exile and genocide, of poverty and exclusion. This is outsider art that leaves you gasping with awe at the dazzling work people can create out of matchsticks or crocheted yarn remnants or broken dishes. Many of the exhibited pieces are sparkly and intricate and wrenching and extreme. This museum honors, among many others, the intuitive art of an American truck driver, a Ukrainian farmer, a Turkish baker, and an English laborer. These artists are not Fine Arts graduates: they are plain, often troubled, folks whose talents plow through the obstacles in their lives.

       The photos are by Dan Meyers and courtesy of AVAM.

Recovery by Anonymous

Stanley Wright constructs from telephone wire a nude life-size self-portrait illustrating the first time he heard and danced to music at age 54. Vanessa German uses found objects to celebrate Minstrel Blood for her Menstrual Show. One well-known AVAM piece is a self-portrait figure whittled from a single apple tree trunk by a British mental asylum patient. His deeply concave tubercular chest and the way his hip bones protrude produce a troubled feeling in the viewer. This anonymous sculptor committed suicide just two years after having been released by the hospital.

When James Harold Jennings’ nerves “went bust” on his tobacco farm, he began constructing complicated large whirligigs from the bits and pieces of machinery laying around. Although his witty work got media attention in 1976, he still lives on the land with no electricity or running water.

Minstrel Blood by Vanessa German

Perched over the main wall in the permanent collection is a quote from Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” But Mary Proctor had a bit of both. When three family members burned to death because of doors that wouldn’t open, she began creating auto-biographical artworks using the doors as canvas, her grandmother’s broken plates as paint, and her grandmother’s wisdom as content.

Emily Duffy’s Bra Ball is a collaborative effort. 18,085 women sent in their bras – and their stories – and she wrapped them around each other to create a ball that is five feet round and weighs 1,500 pounds. If she proved one thing, it is that women hate bras. But then we knew that already.

A “Truth and Reconciliation” project supported by Desmond Tutu gave illiterate women a chance to record their personal testimonies of “the worst day of their lives under Apartheid” via the needle and thread. Quilted, embroidered panels relate potent factual narratives. One self-taught artist who has gained a serious reputation, Ted Gordon, is the headliner in a room entitled OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). A California mental health worker until his retirement, Gordon works with pen and pencil, drawing obsessively detailed self-portraits, his only subject.

Divine by Andrew Logan

The campus of the American Visionary Art Museum is itself a work of art. The exterior is wrapped in a mosaic of broken mirrors and in front of the entrance stands a matching bus, a big piece of mechanical confetti that sparkles and entices you to love it. Inside is the lovely restaurant/bar called Mr. Rain’s Fun House and a museum store, Sideshow Shop, packed with bric-a-brac and shiny objects. Outside is a wild flower garden and a barn of oversized camp pieces, including a 10-foot statue of the actor Divine by her friend Andrew Logan, and a 15-foot fluffy pink poodle. Altogether the mix of outsider aesthetics with playful decorative arts and profound emotional exposures makes AVAM a museum that delivers a magnificent and unique impact.

The photos are by Dan Meyers and courtesy of AVAM.

http://www.avam.org/
American Visionary Art Museum
800 Key Highway
Baltimore, Maryland 21230
P: 410-244-1900

Upside-down Computer

It is the evening before I leave for a writing retreat in L.A. and I’m wrapping up some work before meeting Stephanie and Bambi for our bi-monthly three-way – as in dinner, tonight at my local Turkish restaurant. I’m just finishing the formatting for a complicated newsletter when suddenly my whole screen – or rather what I see on the screen, that is, the visual, not the hardware – goes sideways.

Sideways! I’ve owned my own personal computer since about 1985 and have never before seen the visual on my screen take a 90 degree dive. I lay my head on my worktable to try to manipulate the mouse cursor to the “undo” button and eventually succeed only in undoing the last work I did on the newsletter, which had been a big cut and paste. I am desperate. This is my new, expensive laptop and I’m going all the way across country tomorrow to write on it, but it has laid down all horizontal and won’t budge. I’m in trouble. The girls call from their car to say they are approaching the restaurant. I must abandon my dizzy screen to go meet them.

At the near-empty restaurant we are settled into our table by a sweet young waiter named Mahmut – I’d put him in his early 20s – who has arrived from Turkey only three months ago. His tentative English is heavily accented and his service is impeccable. I chat with him about Istanbul, where I’ve visited two or three times, and he is overjoyed to hear how I loved it. I order stuffed eggplant, which I have had many times here, while Stephanie has the veggie moussaka and Bambi gets grilled lamb wrapped in roasted eggplant.

My phone rings. It is one of the students from my senior fitness class to say that another student, Connie, who has been in intensive care since a seizure on Friday, has died. This is the 9th or 10th student I have lost in the past half year and so much loss has been depleting my emotional stores, and making me all the more determined to write.

Once I unload this news on my friends, we go around the table with our personal updates, and I tell them about my computer and how I have no idea what I’m going to do about it being askew. And I complain about the approaching snow storm which threatens to delay or cancel my flight. Bambi and Steph also “share” – to use the modern vernacular – as we eat. We are the last customers in the restaurant and when our coats are already on, Mahmut reluctantly speaks to me in a quiet voice.

“I wasn’t listening in. I hear you. About your computer screen. I can show you how to fix it.” His reluctance to offer is a fear that we will think he was being nosy about our conversation, the sweet lad. He takes me over to his laptop – an Asus just like mine, with Windows 8 as well – and explains that he is a software engineer. “Look,” he says, hitting control+alt and the directional keys. He makes his screen view lay down, stand up, turn over – just using those arrow keys. My life will never be the same. One more miserable, redundant monster, one more imposed threat from the beyond has been eliminated. I will forever know how to return my computer to the upright position. Well, until Windows 9, I guess.

We now spend time chatting with Mahmut, exchanging blog/twitter/email/linked-in info. He says helping us with our computer problems would be a great way to practice his English. Stephanie asks him why her laptop is not being read by any printer since she updated her antivirus. She also tells him that she is a career counselor – and then explains what that is and how she might be of use to him. I feel he is lonely and that he’s had fun with us, three loud short-haired American women of a certain age. I rush home to straighten out the picture on my computer and to focus my angst on the storm.

Travelogue: Fernandina Beach, February 14-18

Feb 14

My friends Susan and Gilbert from Vermont took a condo for January-February in Fernandina Beach, a town in the NE corner of Florida on Amelia Island, right on the Georgia border. I arrive on Valentine’s Day after a grueling flight that takes me in and out of redundant time zones, the details of which experience are best left to decay.

Amelia Island, named for the daughter of George II, is only 13 by 4 miles. Fernandina Beach, one of the two towns on the Island, has a population of under 12,000 and is situated about 25 miles northeast of Jacksonville, where I flew into. Fernandina Beach has a 50-block area of Victorian homes and buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.

It’s famous for having been held by so many successive colonial powers, and for its smuggling of slaves north despite the fact that the slave trade had been abolished, during the period between the 1783 Treaty of Paris that returned Amelia Island to Spain and 1821 when it became a part of the USA.

Because both of my hosts are ridiculously good cooks, meals are a major high during this visit. For dinner, Gilbert broils a delectable steak and a perfected baked potato and Susan adds two magic salads. Their pampering goes a long way to chill me out after months of successive deaths in the fitness classes for elders that I have been teaching for a decade. We have had a tsunami of dying, after a pretty good run over 10 years, but when people are in their 80s or thereabout, 10 years makes a big difference. My life – our lives – have been dominated by visits to hospice and funerals. Last weekend, I had to brave the aftermath of the blizzard to drive an hour across town to deliver a memorial for one of our youngest, strongest, most popular students who, at a robust, handsome 75 got an unexpected diagnosis of cancer and failed fast.

Feb 15

This morning I join my friends for the second half of their walk on the beach and it is good to be here in February when one can feel quite private. Susan points out the pelicans and Gilbert shows me the skimmers, a black and white type of seagull with a longer, lower bill.

An historically Black beach here was known as American Beach, a 200-acre ocean-front community established in the 1930s. Although it was a popular vacation spot for African-Americans, too often barred from white-only beaches, by the 1970s people had many more choices and it was no longer the only dance in town. There remains a Black community on Amelia Island.

Gilbert and I drive into town, both to visit the produce stand, which features whatever the farmers bring in that day, and to tour the town. Built around 1850, the wooden houses have gingerbread ornamental porches, not unlike New Orleans. It is one of the sweetest towns I have ever seen in the States, with a decorative color palette and the landscaping of loving hands.

I snap a photo of Kate’s Tree. It’s a massive oak around which city employees were forced to build a split road, instead of removing it, when Kate Bailey defended it with her shotgun.

Did I mention the remarkable plethora of second hand and consignment stores, organized by size and color, all items spotless and clean? We make the rounds, starting with Swamp, a combo art/antique store run by two women, one of whom carves portrait mermaids from driftwood (see above). Thoroughly remarkable. We continue our shopping – I pick up three items for $5 at the sale at Buy Gones – until we’re peckish. Tasties is calling. It’s the super-popular hamburger/fries/beer joint where a burger is $3.50 and fries are $2.

The evening back at the apartment is calm. Gil makes braised pork, delicious fresh farm corn (in February!), and Susan’s salad. Susan, a book maker and teacher of bookmaking, shows me the complicated, intricate, meaningful book she has constructed for the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts in 2013. The Athenaeum collaborated with the Philadelphia Center for the Book to produce this exhibition and Susan’s multi-media work is a moving expression of the exhibition’s theme "From Seneca Falls to Philadelphia: Women of the Centennial."

This vacation is going to be filled with art. Both friends agree to read the short stories in the collection I’m working on – giving me valuable, informed feedback, and when they retire early, I follow soon after, taking with me for reading the first chapters of a memoir that Gil is writing about his harrowing, courageous youth.

Feb 16

I’m the first awake and I use the time to read. I’m recognizing that despite my best intentions, this is going to be a vacation, not a writing retreat. That’s okay because I have been needing to relax, desperately, and what could be more therapeutic than hanging out with dear friends and eating their fine food in this fab setting.

I’m always reluctant to go walking – I have a particular strong laziness that way. I could dance salsa or swing or cha-cha all night long; I teach fitness to at least four classes each week; winning an Olympic medal for my trampoline expertise is at the top of my bucket list. But I’ll do a lot to avoid mounting a single flight of steps or walking two blocks.

However, today we go to Egan’s Creek Greenway, a public park with a path along huge marshes (Susan calls them “the lungs of the sea”) at high tide, and I walk for two miles. The white egrets are huge and graceful. The blue heron (left) standing so close to the path is not fazed as I photograph him/her. The ospreys soar super-high. And I’m with friends who know one from the other. We don’t go down the path where they ran into an alligator last year, but Gil teaches me that I should approach one boldly, pet its head with one hand while kicking directly at the teeth. Right.

I’m most mesmerized by the Spanish moss, something I have always found magically ethereal the few times I’ve been near it. Tomorrow they’ll take me to the part of the park where the moss is even more prominent.

Lunch is a lamb barley soup Susan has somehow whipped up with a plate of cheeses and baguette, and as always a gorgeous salad. This comfort food soothes me as I work on one of the newsletters I produce as part of my professional portfolio. As it were.

We go out to dinner, primped up in the couture we got at the 3-for-$5 sale at Buy Gones, looking smokin’. Susan and Gil have already been to Espana a few times and so we are greeted as regulars. Susan has her fave: Spicy Snapper; and Gil and I split a meat paella and a chicken dish with lemon and garlic. We come home for dessert and they retire at 9:30. I am reading a how-to book on self-publishing on my Kindle, which you would think would put me right to sleep, but I find my slumber sketchy at best.

February 17, 2013

It is only 30 degrees, but Susan, always the bravest, goes for a very long beach walk nonetheless. Gilbert and I head back to the Greenway, but enter from the opposite end where he promises me (and delivers) many trees dripping with Spanish moss, a plant that literally lives on air, or rather on rainfall. It is too cold for the turtles to be out or even the alligators apparently, but the birds – egrets and huge storks among them – put on a dazzling show, whether they are fishing for breakfast, lifting off for a flight, or hanging out with their buddies.

The afternoon is lazy – I nod out as I persevere with my self-publishing book – although we stop to nibble the raisin oat cookies Susan makes, in between her preparations for an eggplant curry for dinner. Tonight is a big night: we’re going to put the TV on for the first time and Susan and Gil (he, only reluctantly) and I are going to stay up to watch the Xmas special episode (ie, in the UK) of Downton Abbey, a kind of add-on to season 3. While dinner exceeds all expectations, the show is an absolute dud with the main character Mary being a shit to her single sister and then on to the predictable death of Mary’s husband Matthew, shortly after the birth of their newborn– predictable only because we see him speeding along in a convertible singing and smiling, his white-boy hair blowing in the wind as a truck approaches. The actor playing this character wanted out of the show so this quick exit was provided. Julian Fellowes, the creator, is flirting with NBC over a new series “The Gilded Age,” and clearly has tired of Downton.

February 18, 2013

Good grief. I wake up to 29 degrees. Thanks, Florida. And then I hear from Boston friends who are digging out from 5” of snow and my thanks become sincere. It’s time to launder the sheets and clean the bathroom and pack my suitcases and face departure later today.

First we visit the local historical museum, which traces back to the days when Amelia Island was inhabited by the matrilineal and matrilocal Timucua Indians, whose ancestors first came here in 11,000 B.C.! European disease, warfare, slave trading, and hard labor all contributed to the demise of the Timucua, I learn from the museum exhibition, and the last known Timucua left with the Spanish for Cuba in 1764.

I learn too about a Jewish man named David Levy Yulee who was the first US Senator from Florida and the first Jewish Senator. He was also a Confederate who was convicted of treason and served 10 months in prison. The museum itself was the former county jail, and we are shown evidence of the racist distinctions in the accommodation of early prisoners.

We have a last quiet hour at home, reading and writing, before we set out to the airport. As always, I can’t help but note that my greatest skill is vacationing and I can’t understand why no one has paid me professionally to do it full-time.

Except for the archival painting image, I took all photos with my iPhone.

Hartford Neighbors: Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain

In the posh 19th century neighborhood of Nook Farm in what was then the most affluent town in eastern United States, Hartford, Connecticut, both Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain built their dream homes – literally next door to each other. The two houses have been restored and serve as magical museums of their literary times. Each house offers frequent tours, but on weekends it is possible to enjoy a 90-minute joint tour of the beautiful homes.

By hearing the stories of what went on in these rooms we visit, it is possible to get an intimate picture of the lives of these icons of American literature. It provides a context for understanding the changing ideas of race and gender in pre- and post-civil war America.

Harriet Beecher Stowe made a good deal of money, not only from her mega-hit Uncle Tom’s Cabin,  but also from her 29 other books. She was raised in a well-known and highly respected – if poor – family of 11 children. Her father Lyman Beecher was a popular progressive minister who believed in educating his daughters with the aim of ensuring that they would have the tools to improve the world. His sons all became preachers, the most famous of whom was her brother the anti-slavery preacher Henry Ward Beecher.

Lyman Beecher moved the family to Ohio where Stowe met and married her husband Calvin Stowe, a theology professor, and had six of her seven children. Cincinnati was the western frontier of the US and just across the river from the slave state of Kentucky. It was there that Harriet Beecher Stowe saw slavery, met fugitives, and learned of their hardships. The death of her son from typhoid at 18 months gave her empathy, she felt, with women slaves separated from their children.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (first edition cover on left) changed the entire discourse on American slavery both in the States and in Europe. Begun as a few episodic newspaper chapters, it ended up running for 42 weeks before being collected into a double volume. The only book that beat it in sales was the Bible. In Great Britain alone it sold 1.5 million copies the first year and was then translated into 60 languages. When Stowe later visited the UK, she was greeted not only as a celebrity, but also received an anti-slavery petition of 500,000 hand-signed women’s signatures filling 26 bound volumes, one of which is on display at the Museum’s Center, to present to Washington.

With her own income, she built this comfortable Victorian cottage of 12 rooms in 1871 with modern plumbing and heating. There were no closets for these were taxed as additional rooms, but she included many innovations for health and safety – including a new-fangled closed oven, which prevented the prevalent problem of long skirts being set alight. She remained there until she died in 1896, running both the house and her writing career with the help of her twin daughters – who shared a room with twin beds. They had made the choice to stay single in order to enjoy the greater freedom as mother’s daughters than as men’s wives – with no rights to property, independent travel, or even decisions about one’s children.

Stowe became one of the country’s first snowbirds, moving each winter with her daughters, her furniture, and her pets to Jacksonville, Florida, a 10-day trip. She always returned to her house in Hartford where she was so productive. One oddity about the house: there was not a single corner dedicated to her writing in the whole building, while her husband had a large comfortable study of his own where he managed to produce one book. Her 30 she wrote wherever she found a seat as she raised her seven children with no nanny. Apparently Harriet and Calvin got along so well that contrary to the habits of that period, they shared a bed their whole lives.

One famous story was her meeting with Abraham Lincoln who at 6’4” towered over her 4’11”. As he looked down at her in 1862, he said, “So you’re the little lady who wrote the book that started this Great War.”

Samuel Clemens – known by his pen name Mark Twain – built his dream home just yards away and lived there with his wife Olivia “Livy” Langdon for his 17 happiest years from 1874 – 1891. A generation younger than Stowe, Clemens built the grander edifice largely with his wife’s fortune. A lousy businessman and a poor money manager, he outspent their income and when they left this beloved home, it was because of near financial ruin. It is 11,500 square feet, 25 rooms, and all the lavish downstairs public rooms are in the style of one country or another – from Turkey to India to Moorish Spain. (see house below)
Like Stowe, he did not come from a lot of money. He was born in the relatively new state of Missouri‚ the sixth of seven children. His father owned a slave and his uncle owned a number of them. His father died when he was 11 and Sam worked as a printer’s apprentice, a river boat pilot, and then traveled as a newspaper reporter. Livy was a decade his junior, but her parents were Abolitionists in Elmira, NY, and had a strong impact on his own thinking. He and Livy had four children, but their only son died of diphtheria at less than two years of age. They seem to have had a lot of fun with their daughters. Susy, the eldest, became his copyeditor. The Clemens paid Clara, the naughty middle sister, three cents a day not to bother her sisters.

On the third floor of the house, Clemens built a man-cave with a billiard table, his writing desk and table, three porches, and even a bedroom for when he was up too late with his chums or his pen. There too he smoked his 20-40 daily cigars and pipes, although he did promise Livy never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. He was particularly close to his butler, a freed slave named George Griffin, who, when the Clemens family left Hartford for a decade of lecturing around Europe in order to stabilize their finances, became a banker. But it is in this dream house that Clemens wrote Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Life on the Mississippi, Connecticut Yankee, and more.

Hartford, Connecticut today no longer boasts of being one of the most attractive destinations in the East, but these beautifully restored homes are a treasure for anyone who cares about the social reality of 19th Century America, about the literature that is still part of the national canon, and about the ways in which these writers also expressed themselves in the construction of their residences.

Photo credit of two restored houses: Barry Hock

Writing My Way from LA to Portland

Writing My Way from LA to Portland (8/28 - 9/19/2012)

LOS ANGELES
I have spent over three weeks moving from one absolutely beautiful home to another – none of them mine - but all of them perfect writing settings.

I first pass two weeks in L.A., most of it alone, in the home of my dear friends and writing facilitators Tracy and Lisa. Once they leave for a vacation and I am the sole inhabitant, I feel a bit lost for a day or two. In Boston, I live in two rooms, or rather I sleep in one room and live in the other. The bedroom is for slumber and storing my clothes. My main room serves as office, library, dining room, living room, guest room, and entertainment center with my TV and stereo. My kitchenette is an alcove off this main room. Anything I want or need is literally just a reach away.

Tracy and Lisa’s (pic) home is expansive, with many halls, which adds to the sense of space. This means that I need to get up and hike to whatever I want. Along the way I pass exquisite artwork and uncounted precious Mexican crafts. The colorful house has a very specific and individualized aesthetic of people who really know how to nest. In contrast, my rented walls back home are all white and every corner is crammed with piles of stuff.

Tracy and Lisa’s L.A. home has a swimming pool so private that we skinny dip, which is the only way to swim, really. There is a powerful jet stream to work out against or frolic on as well as a hot tub. Instead of chlorine, the pool water is a saline solution, identical in its pH to tears so that you can comfortably open your eyes in it. It keeps the water hygienic and is, apparently, not an uncommon method in southern California. The pool is surrounded by the most luscious landscaping and bordered by a loggia (pic) (a structure that bridges the inside and outside) – a sensuous leisure room of comfortable seating, a lush lounge. I spend a good deal of my time naked, which sets the tone for my whole vacation: no bras, no make-up, no tight waistbands, and shoes as infrequently as possible.

Anyway, I have three days to hang out with my hosts before they depart. Tracy takes me to the ONE Archives where she is on the Board and to which I am donating my papers. It is the oldest LGBT archive in the country with a fascinating history. I peek at the collection of t-shirts, of buttons, of leaflets, as well as the extensive pulp fiction library. Founded by Jim Kepner, who “began his collection in 1942 with the purchase of Radclyffe Hall’s book The Well of Loneliness,” today ONE holds the archival collections of personal papers of over 600 LGBT individuals and organizations. If you want a place to donate all those old leaflets from ’72 and the hand-written draft of your big lesbian novel, consider ONE.

I attend a special Shabbat service at Rabbi Lisa’s shul, Beth Chayim Chadashim (House of New Life). This was the first gay and lesbian synagogue ever, about which I’ve written a number of times. Finally I get to see the new building (Yay Tracy, one of the fundraiser team!), a conversion of a row of shops into a wired, cutting edge synagogue that is at once modern, artistic and meaningful. There is a commitment to accessibility on many levels. For example, the Torah ark is clear glass – you can see the Torahs all the time.

I am always spooked at BCC because I do not believe in God (I'm an anarchist), I do not pray (I rage), and I never understand how all these smart, kind people appeal to ghosts. But at BCC the sense of community and the vision of the volunteers is remarkable. It is the last Friday of the month, when they have an event named Ruach Chayim (Spirit of Life) which emphasizes singing and psalms, rather than spoken prayers. The young cantor on his guitar is accompanied by an amazing percussionist, a flautist and an occasional pianist as more than 80 congregants – the most diverse crowd in terms of age/race/ability/sexuality that I have been part of for years – sing and clap and laugh and dig each other. And eat, of course. Fabulous evening.

At first, when my friends leave, the L.A. house feels too big on me and I can’t figure out how to live in it – although I have lived in it for past writing visits. I have to adjust to the space, learn its systems, and solve how to write. It doesn't help that I have a not inconsiderable amount of paid work I must do on my time off because other people were tardier than I had planned.

My breakthrough comes when my friend Sarah Forth, the author, takes me to see Shakespeare in the park and the joy and wit and good writing of A Midsummer’s Night Dream kick-starts my flow. (I blogged about it here.) I’m motivated, too, by my chance to read the brilliant draft manuscript of an upcoming novel by one of my favorite writers Richard Schweid. I write.

Other than a delectable lunch in Hollywood with Addison (pic), one of my oldest friends (from high school, no less), a delightful scone with the sweet writer Danny Miller, and an evening spent talking about social media with the L.A. members of my National Writers Union, the only time I leave the house and my keyboard is when I am driven by hunger. And even then I have the use of their cars and quickly re-learn the route to Trader Joe’s.

While here, I polish five of my stories about old people and sex and love, so that I can turn them into a small self-published book as soon as I get a grip on the process. I try to work with the chapters from a book on alternative sexualities among those over 50 that my agent never sold, but I find the material very out-of-date.


VANCOUVER, WA
I stop for one night with my friend Flo in Portland, but I’ll talk about her house later. I then spend a day and night with Kim Murton (pic), a brilliant artist known both for her pottery (she sells everything she makes) and her Facebook “Worry of the Day” series which everyone begs her to turn into a book. It’s been a quarter of century since last we met in Vermont at The Farm. She and her very cool partner David (artist/retired steelworker) and son share a rambling old home in Vancouver, WA, over the Columbia River from Portland, that is a constant work-in-progress, not the least a set of outbuildings that her partner is expanding by building a sophisticated tree house.

This was a day I took off from writing as Kim drove me around the Columbia River Gorge area, from one State park to another, from waterfall (pic) to volcanic rock. I took a bunch of photos with my new iPhone including of the nude beach sign at Rooster Rock State Park (pic). In fact, a surf boarder who passed as I was focusing my phone said, “You know that you’re not allowed to take that photo unless you’re nude.” Kim and I never stopped talking, right through a delicious Mexican meal at one of her favorite Vancouver spots. I stayed overnight, trying to get through a pile of children’s books by her favorite illustrators which she assembled for me, and I was sad to leave her the next morning.

LINCOLN CITY, OREGON
I drive my shockingly flashy rental car (pic), a Ford Fusion (good little size, but the car’s skeleton obstructs the driver’s view front and back so that one is dependent on their good mirrors) to Salem, Oregon, to the astounding home of Mary Lou and Alan, friends of Kim. They are a couple with amazing vision and skills to match. She is an artist-turned-gallerist and he is a retired school teacher (shop) and they have turned a plain house into a magic fantasy home using reclaimed materials from the most imaginative sources. Mary Lou takes the time to show me the brilliant photo albums she does for her family, not the least of their recent trip to Cuba where, she says, despite the beautiful but peeling buildings and some level of poverty, absolutely no one is homeless, begging, or denied an education or healthcare.

Mary Lou gives me a big basket of sheets and towels and the keys to their vacation home on the central Oregon coast in Lincoln City. I have brought my GPS from home and it guides me dependably through beautiful hay-colored farmland to the coast, with one stop at a café that makes dreamy pies from Oregon’s fabled berries.

The house itself is another creation by this couple with the remarkable touch. The floor in front of the shower stall is a bright mosaic by Mary Lou (pic); the banister is constructed of baseball bats (pic), a witty, unique touch; they’ve added-on a loft-bedroom; the enthralling window shades are made from world maps (pic). The only challenge for me is the pot-bellied stove, for the first two days are too chilly to forgo a fire. I have not made a fire since my Girl Scout days, although I’m certain I never was a Girl Scout. I do succeed more times than not. In any event, the weather warms up the last two days.

The house is situated one door away from the beach: Oregon law protects the public’s free, uninterrupted access to the shore. The first evening I run into a flow of neighbors, many holding glasses of wine, as we go down the path to the sandy beach dotted with giant pieces of driftwood, some of them hunks of huge trees. We watch the sun go down, exchange a word or three of pleasantries, and return to our own abodes.

I write like crazy in the kitchen, but finally force myself to take advantage of what is reputed to be one of the finest coastal areas anywhere. I take off in my fire-engine red car down the coast. While it is a gas to have the use of a new car, I haven’t rented a car for many years – perhaps not since the early 90s in the south of France with Allison. I’m a sucker for the paranoia that the car will get scratched and I’ll be in a spiral of charges. I’m haunted by the given wisdom that rental cars are broken into and the contents stolen more than other cars. (Kim warned me about the “ugly underbelly” – criminals – that accompany tourism.) Or that if I break down I won’t be sure how to go about finding a remedy.

I drive south and stop at every lookout and every State park and photograph the amazing rock formations and cliffs and inlets. I have been gone a couple of hours when I see another little cut-off road, which I assume takes me to one of these lookouts. Within moments I realize that instead of a pull-off, I am on a narrow one-way road going up and up and up. The view below of the powerful waves breaking on the stunning rocks fades as a massive fog descends on me and my red car. There is nothing to be done but to keep going and I climb and climb endlessly.

A thousand possible endings to this adventure pass through my nervous mind and yet I am still negotiating this mountain path in fog that prevents me from seeing how far down I could plunge. As evening approaches – it is 5:30 – I see no other cars, just me winding up and up with no options. Without warning I come into a clearing, dare I say into a parking lot, and there, hanging off the side of the mountain is a tourist shop. And it is open. There is a sign indicating that I’m 500 feet above sea level at Cape Foulweather, I kid you not. It was named by Captain James Cook in 1778. Other people are arriving or have just arrived and are dazed and staggering down the path to the building, as I am. In gratitude at landing somewhere, I buy three postcards, and pee.

I get very explicit directions on how to get out of there from the girl at the cash register who has obviously met many like me. And I head straight by the house, stopping at a restaurant Mary Lou recommended. I sit at the bar, strike up a warm connection with the waitresses who make me a homemade lemonade despite its absence from the menu, and who serve me a delicious mini-hamburger with home-made potato chips that have been sprinkled with truffle oil for a truly special kick. I return the next night and try other things on the bar menu, and enjoy hanging out with these young women.

I have been working on the book of short memoir stories that I was to publish back in 1991with the very superior Sheba Press in London (they published Audre Lorde, Joan Nestle, June Jordan and many other fine writers). I was working with their editor on the final polish when Sheba had to shut down – like so many feminist presses – for economic reasons. Although a few of these stories have been published over the years, I have never touched the book again. I am surprised to discover how much fun it is to work on these stories, like remembering my own history, and I am determined to prepare them for publication. The first story is about how I lost my hetero virginity as a college freshman at 17. Then there are stories about meeting a lover in the dorm bathroom, about the pre-gay-rights bars, and about a very loud lover and more.

PORTLAND, OREGON
The initial impetus for this whole trip west is my reunion (pic) for three nights and four days with Jaya Schuerch the sculptor who lives in Tuscany, and Sandy Oppenheimer the collage portrait painter, formerly of Italy and now of northern California, at the home of Florence Hochman arts maven and long-time activist. Yet again I have the privilege of staying in a spacious home that has been lovingly and tastefully shaped, so that no matter where you look, you find a treasure from Flo’s life – a painting, a sculpture, a soap, a bowl – everything crafted for its beauty and delight. The four of us find a haven together here. It has been five years since our last such reunion (in this same home).

We meet up from our various directions on the eve of Rosh HaShana and after dipping slices of apples in honey to start the New Year off sweetly, we go around the table and each talk at length about how the past year has been and what we want from the coming years. Like best friends everywhere, we are hoping to grow old together, but we’ll be damned if we can figure out where and when as we are different ages in different countries, each with our own other commitments and connections.

As is our tradition we exchange little gifts and Flo out-does herself by presenting me with a can (by Heinz, no less, one of the prime local companies of my hometown) of Spotted Dick (pic). Many photos and dirty jokes later, it is now sitting on my table back in Boston, where I have returned with excessive reluctance to immediate stress, aggro, and hassle. The checkout girl overcharges me and won’t rectify it. The garlic I went to buy is nowhere in my bag when I get home and so I have to go out again. I make a big pot of chicken soup as a prophylactic against the cooties that too often greet people on their return from heaven to daily hell. I have the weekend with my partner and then I return to the life of a writer with eight jobs.

PS: All the photos were taken with my new iPhone by me, except for the synagogue, shakespeare (he wouldn't sit still) and the vintage postcard. This is the first time I've taken my own photos, more or less ever.

Dear JetBlue CEO Dave Barger

Dave Barger
Chief Executive Officer
JetBlue Airways
27-01 Queens Plaza North
Long Island City, NY 11101

Dear JetBlue CEO Dave Barger:

I know you think it is all the fault of the 200th anniversary of the war of 1812, but I think it is your fault and I’ll tell you why.

Picture this. I am flying on July 4th from Boston to Pittsburgh on the 10:30 flight B6 1295. Its status is “on-time” until boarding time at the gate, when the big screen next to the desk says that in fact the plane will be departing at 11:15. Oh damn, we passengers mutter to each other, a 45-minute delay.

All around me in the terminal people are texting and calling folks in Pittsburgh to tell them about the delay, as I do myself. A waiting passenger sitting near me reports that the Jet Blue representative promises that the plane is coming over from the hangar. I ask her, “What, is it walking over?” There are, we later find out, mechanical problems. No passenger delights in seeing those two words linked.

I’m getting peckish and go off to forage for a snack. I steel myself with limits: I will only permit myself to be annoyed by one thing at a time (the delay), so I will meekly mortgage my car and pay $2.99 at the Hudson News for a miniscule bag of chips and $2.99 for a small bottle of cheap lemonade. I remember the days when delayed passengers were given food vouchers to spend around the airport.

I return to the gate to find the big display board announcing that we will be departing at one friggin’ o’clock. But wait. A Jet Blue supervisor takes over the announcements, telling us something like this: “Due to the war of 1812,” he intones, “we need to ask for your cooperation. The plane is being towed from the hangar in 15 minutes and we need to board you as expeditiously as possible. To celebrate 200 years, they are closing Boston airspace between 11:45 and 1:00 for a flyover by the Blue Angels. We want to start that show by getting you out of here before 11:45.” The display board continues to indicate that our flight is delayed until 1:00 as does Jet Blue’s website, a time at which countless held-up flights will likely be competing to get in and out.

I approach Joel (non-supervisor) at the desk to ask about the contradiction between what they are saying and what the board is saying, but he cops a rude attitude, saying he doesn’t control the board and can’t answer for its errors.

The board then changes its mind and says that we are departing at 11:40, cutting it very close to the supervisor’s stated fly-over deadline of 11:45. But hang on! Now it says that we will actually be boarding at 11:10. That would certainly make more sense, if it wasn’t already 11:27.

We do actually board at 11:45 – turns out the real deadline is noon – under an atmosphere of harried pressure. The supervisor makes tense announcements for everyone to hurry, quick, fast, let’s do this thing. Then the on-flight personnel push us to rush, stow those bags up, get out of the aisle, turn off your items, seatbelt yourself with all due hysteria, let’s start these engines.

But no, oh no, too late. No, we won’t be flying until after the air show.

We have just been told we cannot take off, says the pilot, but we’ll give you free water. Plus, feel free to use your digital devices. Almost immediately the four Blue Angels take off on our left, but that’s all we can see. The hapless lone flight attendant takes to the microphone and says that if anyone at all wants to get off the plane, ring their call bell and we will return to the terminal. Bells ring and others scream, “No! No!” Although no one really knows what he means, he says let’s try it again. Peer pressure imposes an unhappy silence.

Soon enough the pilot announces that he is going to taxi the plane to the harbor so that we can see the show. The water is filled with historic boats, the planes are doing maneuvers in the sky, and we will enjoy it all. Except for one thing. The pilot parks the plane directly facing the action in the harbor. He and his cabin mates have exclusive front row seats. Passengers see none of it. We on the left side of the plane are staring at concrete, and at a gaggle of airport employees who are out of their vehicles enjoying the show. We cannot see a plane or a boat, but the captain is having a great time. I am furious.

To add insult – literally – to injury, he offers to explain what the Blue Angels are. “They are blue and they are jets,” he says with great erudition, “And if you were more interested, you wouldn’t be flying out of Boston on the 4th of July in the first place.” I have my notebook out and take down this outrageous statement. At the end of the show, the pilot will sneer, “I hope you enjoyed the show.”

I would be remiss not to note that this happened in the same week that another Jet Blue pilot, Clayton F. Osbon, was found innocent of “interfering with a flight crew” on the grounds of insanity during a mid-air meltdown. I think a bit of serious training and vetting of your pilots might help you weed out the troubled men that seem to be plaguing your service.

Meanwhile, the cabin drama is unbearable. A cacophony of voices are once again calling disappointed Pittsburghers whose 4th of July plans are getting screwed up as a result of their friends and relatives being stuck in 1812. The families are freaking out: “Just tell us when we can light the charcoal!” Emotions are splashing all over the cabin. For example, there is the vociferously weepy woman across the aisle one row behind me whose “date” in Pittsburgh is furious that she had not anticipated this hiccup and flown in the night before. One cannot escape the general atmosphere of gnashing and gnawing caused by the airline’s unreliable communications and unrelenting rudeness.

When at last we land in Pittsburgh, the captain is at his door smiling at all of us as we exit. I tell him that he has some gall to drag us to the harbor for his personal entertainment. Without awaiting a response, I swivel to ask a flight attendant if a supervisor will be waiting for us. After all, this flight is significantly late and has been handled with a remarkable lack of professionalism.

Yes, there is Edward. Slovenly, uninterested, lolling against the wall as I deplane. “Are you the supervisor?” I ask. “Yeah,” he says. He doesn’t ask, “Can I help you?” He doesn’t even apologize for the delay. He seems downright annoyed that I’ve bothered him as he hovers right in the exit passage. I ask him how Jet Blue is going to compensate us and he says, “For what?” He seems to have no idea whatsoever that we’re regrettably late due to Jet Blue’s initial delay, but after he mumbles something about “airline ops” getting in touch, he settles back against the wall, his shirt askew, his face blank.

Edward may have been referencing your quite narrow “Customer Bill of Rights” (http://www.jetblue.com/flying-on-jetblue/customer-protection/) which offers miniscule payments for huge chunks of time. There are many more elements than time to good customer care, as I’ve tried to point out, but if you prefer to follow a strict hourly system, then please allow me to submit an invoice for my usual rates.

Dear Jet Blue CEO Dave Barger, the flight attendant in the cabin, the fellow at the door as I got off, and the supervisor all told me, when I asked about contacting a senior customer care expert at your company, to call the 1-800 number. I don’t want to devote more of my time to waiting for attention from Jet Blue. I want to talk to someone with enough punch to ensure that there is mitigation for passengers and consequences for the company. Please have your people call my people to arrange a talk with your top person. I don’t want this incident to launch the War of the 200th Anniversary of 1812.

Sincerely,

Sue Katz

Revere Beach Throws a Party

I’m determined to have a summer. Most summers pass in shade at my keyboard, working and writing. I want to get in water. I want to have fun. I’ll be on Medicare in a few months and life is short.

So when I saw that it was time for the annual National Sand Sculpting Festival at Revere Beach, I thought I could kill two summer delights with one trip. On the advice of my beach-savvy friend Stephanie, I didn’t set out for the water until 4:00, and in fact I did find a parking spot at the far end of the beach. The tide was just coming in and the placid water had been heated by a couple of weeks of 90 degree weather, so I went right into the H2O and had summer fun. I coulda wished for a few waves to distinguish itself from my bathtub, but maybe next time. The flat beach itself is rather plain – no gorgeous rock formations or sensuous dunes. Just the famous Kelly’s (for inventing the roast beef sandwich in 1951) across the street.

On my way down the beach a mile to where the sculptures were fenced off for safe viewing pleasure, all of humanity seemed to be assembling in this otherwise faded working-class and immigrant beach town. The Festival is a big party, complete with food trucks, rides, boardwalk vendors, and, the piece de resistance, major fireworks at 9:00. The World Premier Band (“Funk-Pop, and R&B”) rocked the thousands – somehow perfectly bridging the musical needs of babies to elders from a plethora of ethnicities and races. This was the kind of affectionate congested mix, speaking a riot of languages, that one rarely sees in the Boston area. I smiled at more babies, with their bubble guns and wonder, than in the past decade.

This congeniality is not new: “In 1909 beachgoers were described as ‘industrious, well-behaved, and a really desirable class of people, of many nationalities to be sure, but neighborly and polite . . . with one another.’”

While the absence of alcohol surely contributed to the remarkable feel-good community sensibility, as my companion pointed out, it was a shame to see so many young people smoking. But I was moved to notice two women in their late teens holding hands and being a couple with an apparent utter lack of angst, and arousing, as far as I could see, no special interest from the crowds.

The sand artwork has gone downhill from previous years, devoid of imagination or complexity and giving us, instead, kitschy images like “The Dark Side,” in which we see the back of a naked woman kneeling, her shapely buttocks on her heels. Shuffling through the sand and crowds around the fence to see the front (i.e., her breasts), we are given instead a comic-bookish skeleton. The sculpture most showcased was produced by a Massachusetts artist, Meredith Corson, who sculpted a tribute to 100 years of the Red Sox (and its sponsors, oddly enough), using 100 tons of sand. You can see an interview with her here.

The fireworks were big-time and I even got a seat on the beach wall (made of particularly hard concrete, my butt told me) to watch, when some young people scooted over to make room.

Revere (named for Paul, a local lad) is a town of about 50,000 in the middle of land that used to belong to the Pawtucket Tribe. It brags of having this National Historic Landmark: the oldest (1896) public beach in the country. In the first half of the 20th Century it was famous for its amusement park, not the least the Cyclone roller coaster, and its dancehalls and roller skating rinks. But by the 50s it all went downhill and in the 70s took a near knock-out blow from the Great Blizzard of 1978. The town too seems very down-at-the-heels, sloping porches, tar paper siding, ugliness on one street after another. It is definitely not one of greater-Boston’s tony baubles, but it has a special magic. I have never felt in Massachusetts such a sense of shared joy by people from so many different worlds. Revere Beach is doing something right. Very right.

TRAVELOGUE: To Maine with Tomer

Although Tomer has been living in the States for a couple of years, we have only met a few times briefly and not alone. So we decided to use the long weekend to see a part of the country he hasn’t before seen: the southern coast of Maine.

I have known Tomer since he was my Tae Kwon Do student in Israel at age 8, but at 17 he insisted that we convert our relationship from teacher/student to friends and that’s how it has been ever since. Now he is doing a prestigious post-doc at the National Institute of Health in D.C. and in a year he will be taking up a professorship at Haifa University.

He flies in on Friday and we set out on Saturday, driving up 95 until the first tourist info rest-stop, where we switch to Route 1 to drive along the shore, making my obligatory stop at Leeward Landing Thrift Store where I only find a good book and a couple of greeting cards. Last time I was there was in the summer with my London friend Sue O’Sullivan. Then I bought a stunning but stained pink silk jacket because Sue knew how to eradicate the stain. Tomer stayed in the car playing with his iPhone. He does not lust after objects. He used up all his shopping hormone when much younger.

This is such a strangely mild winter with the trees in an uncharac-

teristically long period of nakedness – wearing neither their leaves nor their snow couture. So when we thought about destinations, I opposed the mountains. Everything flora looks emaciated and brittle, washed out and weak.

But the coast of Maine is gorgeous no matter what the weather with its lumbering black rocks, blue water, and mix of pebbly or sandy beaches. We are aiming for Ogunquit via the coastal route, but stop at Stonewall Kitchens (photo on left), on the recommendation of my friend Stephanie, for coffee and a scone. Known for their jams, we spend a bit too much time at their tasting tables trying to choose among the sour cherry, the seedless raspberry, and their classic blueberry preserves.

We stop at none of the wonderful historic sites of York, like the old Gaol, because it is winter and most tourist sites are shut. It is the coast we long for and by following the Shore Road we are treated to some rocky delights. Our longest stop is at the Nubble Lighthouse, reputed to be the most photographed lighthouse in Maine (photo at left). There is something about the tumble of huge, dark Maine rocks that reminds me of the Irish coast. The seas are calm throughout our weekend so instead of the thrilling white water of stormy days we have the bluest, placid calm. It is an acceptable trade-off.

We climb around the rocks at Nubble to ensure some dramatic photographs, and stop on our way out to get a shot together at a Christmas tree (photo on left) constructed from lobster traps, teddy bears and red ribbons. I’ve never seen a xmas tree I admired more.

In Ogunquit we stay in a spacious double-queen room at The Admiral’s Inn. Other than a glitch in their wireless provision and some young people partying in the halls at all hours, it is a clean, friendly and reasonable accommodation. Many Ogunquit restaurants are closed, but a 10-minute stroll through town leads us to one with a triple menu: bar food, restaurant food, and a bistro menu which seems to be a cheaper alternative with smaller portions – i.e. the kind of portions you would get elsewhere in the world, and quite appropriate for travelers who don’t want doggie bags.

The morning is clear and cold and we pull down coats over our sweatshirts and set off to the Marginal Way, as people have been doing for 85 years. Is there a more splendid walk? The sun is so strong we could’ve come out with a layer or two less. Not a single cloud dulls the perfection of the sea. It is high tide so the water-covered rocks below add a shadow effect to the blue while the wet rough black rocks lining the shore shine with particular drama. There are 39 benches along the way with bronze plaques representing a loving memorial gesture and we stop to see the especially precious views at rest.

It’s a magic mile from Ogunquit to Perkins Cove, where we are planning to have a coffee, but the usual, immediate establishments are closed for the season and we walk deep into the Cove to find the one café open in winter. While it costs us $13 for two hot drinks and a croissant, we get to use the bathroom – a privilege not to be treated lightly during winter in this area. At first we sit outside (photo at left) over the Cove, but that becomes too chilly so we huddle inside in the warmth.

Back at the hotel the well-meaning clerk spends an inordinate amount of our time wrestling with Google maps to give us an insider’s little-known seaside route between Ogunquit and Portland, our next Maine destination. At a certain point, surely well past the 30-minute mark, I have an ominous feeling that I’m going to be standing here so long that I miss signing up for Medicare next year and I say, “I’m going to the car,” and do so. Eventually Tomer joins me with a print-out, but the route turns out to be a torturous exploration of ranch-home suburbs that are closer to the sea than, say, Rt. 95, but not close enough to actually see water. Another hour or so of my life down the drain and I insist that we just get on a road that will actually take us to Portland.

Tomer got us a great deal at the waterfront Hilton, but they don’t let you into the room until 4:00 and they make you pay $15 to park your car, not to mention tips to the person who parks it and the person who returns it to you – from the lot about three feet away from the door. We go for a walk in the historic district, but my feet are mounting a severe rebellion. We already did the whole Marginal Way and back, they complain, what’s with pounding these city streets just hours later? It might not be so painful if, in fact, we actually find the supposedly exciting exhibition we are looking for, but alas, we don’t.

The brightest moment of the afternoon is running into very dear Boston friends of mine Gail and Donna. (I was best man at their wedding.) They are, it transpires, on their annual winter getaway to Portland. However, they are in a rush to catch the three-hour ferry around the islands and we promise to meet up for dinner.

Once we all assemble in the lobby, we stroll to a massive ship restaurant that is a further walk than my feet consent to, only to be told that we have a 75 minute wait to get seated. Gail and Tomer volunteer to return back up the street to see if what turns out to be a seafood greasy spoon has a free table and they do. So Donna and I make our way back towards the hotel to join them at Gilbert’s Chowder House where we are served on flimsy paper plates and given the cheapest plastic cutlery to deal with our food. Tomer’s lobster is decidedly insulted by its paper setting (photo at left). The waitress is sweet, the company unparalleled, and the antacid plentiful.

Monday morning Tomer, Gail, and Donna are as one about having the $12 breakfast at the Hilton. (Of course it’s over $15 what with the taxes and whatnot.) I personally want a scone from the lovely bakery next door, but the majority rules. To ensure that we get our money’s worth, the first thing I do is secret a couple of bagels in my bag for lunch, along with butter, cream cheese, a couple of fruits, and a muffin. Then I get started on eating a pig-farm’s worth of bacon, piles of fruit salad, pancakes, toast, scrambled eggs and hot water, into which I drop my own tea bags.

My stomach and I spend the rest of the morning in the room while Tomer walks and swims. We check out, hide our bags in their baggage room, and tootle over for a lovely 45-minute Casco Bay ferry ride to and from Peaks Island (above), the closest one to Portland. It is a utilitarian vessel into the middle of which vehicles are loaded (photo at left), while we people sit in two tatty long side-rooms above. Tomer and I spend the trip to the island out on the deck. It’s a cool diversion for just $4.30 for him and half that for senior fare.

Our last tourist moment is a side trip to Fort Williams Head Light in Cape Elizabeth, also the most photographed lighthouse in Maine, we are told. Apparently the lighthouses in Maine attract the cameras. This lighthouse is, in fact, astoundingly beautiful and in a setting to rival the Marginal Way. It was built in 1787 and is surrounded by 90 acres of park. We arrive during the last hour of light and so the cold is prohibitive, but the former Keepers' Quarters – now a museum that is closed for winter – is an architectural pearl and the lighthouse itself a perfect specimen. It is just the visual to wrap up our trip to the southern Maine coast.

All photos by Tomer Shechner

Cape Cod Canal and Hyannis September 2011

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 17
My first stop is at the Cape Cod Canal that connects mainland Massachusetts to Cape Cod. I have many times passed over the Sagamore Bridge, one of three bridges that were part of the same canal construction project, on my way to Provincetown on the tip of the Cape, but I have neglected to understand the history of the canal underneath.

The day is exquisite, although its beauty is painfully more like the start of autumn than the end of summer. My big writing plans for this summer have remained largely unfulfilled, so this final four-day escape is important. Nothing better than to begin it strolling on the scenic bike path along this broad canal, with the electric blue sky reflected in the deep turquoise water.

Like the bike path I ride on at home from Cambridge to Bedford, there are walkers, riders, skaters and joggers, passing those who are fishing and those who are sitting at the picnic tables. The friendliness among strangers that I thought was particular to my bike path is apparently universal. I am watching a bird with a long beak floating on the water when it takes an unexpected, dramatic dive down deep, rising up to fly in a great arc just a foot or so above the water. A grey-haired woman walker stops to explain that it is a cormorant, a bird that has no oil on its wings, necessitating a wide spread to dry off its feathers after a dive.

Although just such a canal had been a twinkle in the eye of Captain Miles Standish of the Plimoth Colony in 1623 and although Massachusetts had passed repeated proposals to build it after that, no one could really figure out how to tackle such a massive job. The first attempt by the private sector at the start of the 20th Century produced a narrow, shallow version in 1916, but because of its limitations they could not make it profitable. Eventually the government took it over. “The purchase price was $11,400,000, and $21,000,000 was spent between 1935 to 1940 increasing the canal's width to 480 feet, and its depth to 32 feet. As a result, the canal became the widest sea level canal in the world.” Three bridges high above the canal were also constructed.

There is a visitor center with amazing information at the side of the canal. There I learn that the bike paths along both sides were derived from the utility roads used during construction. The canal has a long history – and as I read of its final triumph, I can’t help but get depressed.

The project was part of Roosevelt’s public works vision – a Depression-era effort that changed America with its roads and bridges and parks and poems and photos. The hazards of sailing around the Cape had limited commerce. This single project employed 1,400 men (sic) who brought money back into the economy, improved trade, upgraded local security and created a recreational and commercial waterway now used by 20,000 boats each year.

Why did all of this get me down? Because as I read in the visitor center about the amazing amounts of investment by the government in job creation, infrastructure and cultural improvement projects during the Depression, I realize that with Roosevelt’s New Deal, at least there was hope. Hope that one could qualify for a government job, even for writers and artists. I find myself thinking the irrational thought that I would’ve been better off during the Great Depression than now when we have no leader or actual governing party, only an opposition being dominated by its most repulsive flank.

For those who say, but look what Obama is up against with all those crazed Republicans trying to stop him, check out what Roosevelt faced:

“Alarmed by Roosevelt's plan to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, a group of millionaire businessmen, led by the Du Pont and J.P. Morgan empires, plans to overthrow Roosevelt with a military coup and install a fascist government. The businessmen try to recruit General Smedley Butler, promising him an army of 500,000, unlimited financial backing and generous media spin control. The plot is foiled when Butler reports it to Congress.”

I return to the hotel where my request for a quiet room has been granted, but where the chair at the desk is some wonky vanity seat that when I sit down brings me about clavicle-height to my laptop. I ask at the front desk for a real desk chair and, to my astonishment, I get a marvelous specimen. Life is sweet.

I go exploring this “family” hotel whose claim to fame is a “wave pool” – yes, it really waves, with an accompanying hot tub and nearby slides (“Yes,” the 15 year old lifeguard assures me, “we even had a 400-pound old man go down them once.)

For dinner, I drive with my companion into Hyannis center to take up the recommendation of my writer friend Jeannette de Beauvoir to eat at the Brazilian Grill on Main Street. Unfortunately, we are told on arrival, the first available table is at 9:00pm – three hours hence. “I am,” I tell the hostess, “a journalist from Boston writing a travel piece on Hyannis and you were so highly recommended to us.” As we assure her we don’t mind, she immediately seats us at one end of a long table where a small party is dining at the opposite end.

The food is impossibly plentiful and delicious. There is an endless buffet of salads and side dishes of every sort, although my focus is on the fried plantains. If you keep your green “Yes” card up near your plate, the solicitous wait staff – or gauchos – bring you endless rounds of meat on a skewer – from divine beef ribs to filet mignon with bacon; from chicken wings to linguica sausage – in all, 16 different choices. When you need to take a break, you turn the card to a red “No.”

I happen to meet the owner Maximiliano – the only casually dressed member of the staff – at the buffet table and he tells me that the restaurant has been going strong for 11 years and that while the economic atmosphere has definitely had an impact, summer is still a very strong season. The buffet – without drinks or dessert – is a reasonable $28, reasonable that is if you happen to have an extra $28. We have desserts too, brought on a cart piled with abundant choices. When we leave, there is still a line out the door and it is clearly not only a tourist fave, but a local stop as well.

We saunter down Main Street, ducking into a Joke/Sex/Head Shop where I pick up some sexy greeting cards and a bumper sticker that says: “Since I Gave Up Hope I Feel Much Better.” Of course, that’s a lie. Paying for it is torture. Literally. The cashier hands me a pen to sign my credit card receipt which, when I pull off the cap, explodes. I nearly lose my cardiac ability, although the customers standing around find it hilarious. He apologizes and hands me another pen which, when I click it, gives me an electric shock. They like that too.

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 18
Again on Jeannette’s recommendation we head for the Cape Cod Central Railroad which asks riders to “Step Back in Time for a Never-Forget Experience!” I wonder why they don’t just use the ready-made word Unforgettable, but climb aboard nonetheless. The train was saved from erasure in 1999 by a private entrepreneur. The majority of the people involved seem to be retired women.

There are brunch or dinner rides to choose from, although we take the non-food scenic train with the edifying commentary by a guide named Madonna. She talks us through the 40 mile route from Hyannis to Buzzards Bay and back at 15-30 miles per hour. A retired kindergarten teacher, Madonna (left) tells me that this job is no different: give them some useful information in an entertaining way so that they will stay in their seats and behave.

We learn about the 365 kettle ponds on the Cape, dug out in the glacier age by ice; about the beautiful golf course we pass early in our journey that is the oldest on the Cape and has an intimidating waiting list; about how the early white settlers depleted the original forests, leaving the area with almost no maples and too many ugly scrub pines; and about the fascinating process of growing and harvesting cranberries as we pass numerous bogs. She explains the ecology of the copious marshlands we pass. Madonna also tells us of so many tempting attractions in Sandwich, where she now lives, that I put it right on top of my must-see list: from a church designed by Christopher Wren to a glass museum to the Dunbar Tea Room.

I chat with the conductor Kay, a life-long pilot, who is spiffy in her handsome uniform. She’s been involved since the 1999 save of the railroad, apprenticing as brakeman and conductor. An air force brat, she started flying with her father in 1945 after WWII and after finishing her education (MBA), she began buying into planes. The role of conductor, she explains, is like that of the captain of a ship: She is responsible for whatever goes on. The brakeman, on the other hand, is like a co-pilot, responsible for switching couplings when the train reverses direction on the way home.

When the ride finishes, I set out to see the JFK Museum in Hyannis, but once inside I find myself less than motivated and satisfy myself with the lovely bronze statue outside of a young JFK strolling barefoot through the dunes.

I lunch at the execrable Spanky’s Clam Shack down at the harbor where I have, late in life, my first face-to-face confrontation with a non-Kosher hot dog, paler than beige and too gross to bite. The reconstituted french fries can only go down on a stream of ketchup and even the view of the harbor is less than impressive. The much-publicized “artists shanties” turn out to be pre-fab boxes where commercial artists try to make a living serving tourists. I ask one what happened during Hurricane Irene. “They made us remove every last thing from inside,” she explains in some disgust, “and they lifted up the shanties and stored them in a parking lot away from the water. And nothing much happened. Just some wind and rain, nothing out of the ordinary.”

For dinner with friends, I take the safe route of a salad at the hotel, and back in my room I catch the end of the Emmy’s where everything seems bland and tame, other than Jane Lynch’s great line (paraphrased): People ask me why I am a lesbian… And now, the cast of Entourage.

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 19
Finally, after lunch on the hotel’s porch with friends consisting of untastey wraps bought at Traders Joe’s in one of the many strip malls in the neighborhood of the hotel, my dream comes true. This Cape Codder Hotel, at the blighted corner of two busy box-store roads, bills itself as a “family” destination with all sorts of entertaining extras. I have been dying to try out the wave pool and the water slides – two experiences my rich life has been lacking. Unfortunately, the wave pool is a bit underwhelming, although perhaps if I were 6 years old and a slip of a girl I’d feel like the waves were significant. But I do like those water slides – both the curvy one and the straight-down faster one. Ten minutes in the hot tub settles me down and I return to the hotel room to dine on an apple and pistachios while watching the season premiere of Dancing With the Stars. Go Chaz!

The evening is bittersweet as I know that tomorrow morning I need to pack and return to the real world of selling my labor for far too cheap a wage.

Thanks to Barry Hock for all photos (except Depression-era and wave pool)

Newport Mansions: Squinting at The Gilded Age

Entering Newport, I’m surprised by how old and beautiful it is. Founded in 1639, the town is full of tourists, twee shops and handsome 18th century houses. Down many side roads are views of the yacht-laden harbor and always-nearby shore. There are renowned attractions we won’t get to – from the popular Cliff Walk to the peculiar collection of 800+ living sculptures in the Victorian Green Animals Topiary Garden.

No, we’re keeping our eye on the prize. We stop at the Preservation Society – the owners and care-takers of 11 ornate mansions that the descendants of the Gilded Age residents can no longer afford to maintain. And no wonder. These extravaganzas, now deemed National Historical Landmarks, were constructed in an age without income tax, so the Robber Barons had nothing to do with their looted millions but compete with each other by building their imitation European follies on Bellevue Avenue. Mark Twain coined the phrases “conspicuous consumption” and the “Gilded Age” (the interiors are all drenched in gold) with a sneer. My companion observes:

“The income tax of 1913 stopped their avarice and it’s taken them less than 100 years to get it all back.”

The personable woman at the Preservation Society’s desk, Lila, has my press pack all ready. Through the day I am to meet a stream of well-coiffed, well-dressed white women who have chosen Newport as their retirement destination because it is small enough to walk and there are lots of activities. Lila sends us to the crown jewel The Breakers first, and there we receive the first of the audio tours that are included with the rather expensive ticket of $24.50 (each). I am to find these tours uniformly insipid, lacking much inside gossip, social critique or the substantive analysis one often gets at good museum exhibits. I am to be disappointed too, that none of the three houses we visit (too many – stick to two per day is my advice) includes a single staff bedroom on their tour.

THE BREAKERS
The Breakers was built by Cornelius Vanderbilt II, one of the richest of a total of 25 NYC millionaires. He was the grandson of Cornelius, son of William, and inheritor of railroads. The Breakers combined opulence with the latest technological advances, like central heating and lots of bathrooms. It has 70 rooms including 33 on the top floors for the help, 750 doorknobs, an unheard-of 20 bathrooms, and it cost $12 million ($310 million today, according to Wikipedia) to build. It required 20 servants to keep it going. In fact, 2,000 servants worked the big houses of Newport each summer, many of them immigrants. Some things never change.

For just a little contrast, I found some annual salary figures for working class people in City Journal:

“To understand what a million dollars was in 1892, consider that a factory worker earned about $446 a year, a railroader $563, and a miner $393. Clerks took home about $885 annually, schoolteachers a paltry $270. A family could live in middle-class comfort with servants on $2,000 a year.”

Between the European marble, the rare woods, the Tiffany wall sconces and the amazing massive crystal chandeliers, a visitor is hard-pressed to take in the details of the different rooms, not the least the 500 year old French stone fireplace in the library, the walls of which are made of gilded wood that looks like aged leather book covers. Now why didn’t I think of that for my “library” – i.e., my twin Ikea pine bookcases.

And then there is the bathtub, carved from a single block of marble and so thick that it had to be filled up several times in a row in order to warm the stone. It also has four taps – two each for fresh and salt water, thought to be a healthy bath medium.

When you’ve got 70 rooms, you break down activities so that each (music, reading, eating breakfast, eating dinner, etc) has a room of its own. The servants too were specialists. Footmen were on their feet all day for their job was to deliver messages. To look impressive, they were required to be over 6 feet tall. Male servants like butlers and footmen were visible, a sign of the wealth of the household.

Chambermaids were generally invisible, traveling along the back corridors and staircases and slipping into rooms by hidden doors. They spent their days dusting, plumping up pillows, changing bed sheets twice a day and switching towels after every use.

MARBLE HOUSE
It is time to move to our next destination, a perfect cube named the Marble House and famous as the home of Alva Vanderbilt, a suffragette. In fact it was the first of the over-the-top “cottages” (i.e. predates The Breakers et al) and changed the lazy summer resting spot of the rich into a hyper-competitive struggle between old and new money. The old money cottages were wooden structures, impressive on their own but nothing like these new palaces. The new money people raised the bar so high that those still holding their noses, like the Astors, were forced to socialize with such riff-raff as the  Vanderbilts. This house started it all. Marble House cost $11 million ($260 million in 2009 dollars says Wikipedia), much of which went for the marble. Alva oversaw its construction on the understanding that her husband would give it to her outright, which he did on her 39th birthday.

The Grand Salon is covered entirely in 22 karat gold, a la Versailles. Every doorknob is a unique dolphin design. The art gallery’s light is dimmed by the astounding stained glass windows liberated from a European church. The house is a mix of French rococo style (library), medieval French doors (art chamber) and fluffy fantasy ruffles for her own princess-like bedroom.

Alva felt herself excluded from the rights and privileges of the wealthy because of her gender and she had raged against such restrictions since childhood. She was a tomboy – riding bareback, punching boys and considering herself, she said, “a law unto myself.” A couple of years after Marble House was completed and turned over to her, she got fed up with her husband William’s philandering. She decided to divorce him, which was considered scandalous. William and everyone in their circle pressured her to just effect a separation, but she insisted on a complete break. “I longed to be a pioneer in my class,” she said.

She further shocked her peers by marrying her ex-husband’s buddy Oliver Belmont shortly after her divorce kicked in, moving a couple of doors down the road to live with him until his death in 1908. She kept Marble House simmering – it was known as her very expensive extra closet, but after being widowed she moved back and began using Marble House as a center for suffragette meetings, supposedly open to women of all classes. But she charged $1 for women to sit on the grass listening to speeches and $5 for a tour of the house (excepting her own bedroom) – a sum that surely was beyond the reach of shop girls and servants. One wonders what her own laundresses and housemaids thought about the extra work these movement gatherings caused. She was certainly a problem for progressive suffragettes who needed Alva’s wallet but could have done without her extravagance and arrogance. And racism

Wikipedia notes:
“By this time, organized suffrage activity was centered on educated, middle-class white women, who were often reluctant to accept immigrants, blacks, and the working class into their ranks. Belmont's Political Equality League only partially broke with this tradition. She established its first "suffrage settlement house" in Harlem, and she included black women and immigrants in weekend retreats at Beacon Towers, her Châteauesque style castle in Sands Point, New York. However, she also contributed to the Southern Woman Suffrage Conference, which refused to admit blacks.”

The relationship between Alva and her adored daughter Consuela gives some insight into Alva’s deep conflicts. She decided very early to marry Consuela off to a European aristocrat, even decorating her daughter’s Marble House room like a muted English castle chamber. Playing on Consuela’s obedience but against the younger woman’s better judgment, the wedding to Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough took place the same year of the divorce. In fact, it was a huge party for the visiting royal suitor that manipulated the snobby old-money Astor family to finally see Alva socially. Luckily, the marriage was later annulled by joint agreement and Consuelo married a second time for love, finding for herself real meaning in social work.

I’m curious: Where do Anderson Cooper and his mother Gloria Vanderbilt fit into the family tree?

THE ELMS
We concluded our visits with a spin around The Elms, built in 1901 for the Pennsylvania coal baron Edward Julius Berwind – thus of particular interest to a Pittsburgh girl like myself. A copy of a French château, it cost $1.2 million (or $22 million today) and was meant both as an art gallery for Berwind’s growing collection and a place to entertain befitting the captain of an industry that was then the number one producer in the world. Being one of the most powerful men of America meant that he had buddies like Teddy Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Berwind was big on new technologies and The Elms the first of the houses to be fully electrified.

When Berwind’s wife, Sarah, died some 20 years later, he moved in his sister Julia as hostess. After all, he was busy making millions and only visited The Elms on occasional weekends till his death in 1936, so Julia happily held down the fort until her death in 1961, probably the last of the old school Gilded Agers. For example, she hosted a bridge game each afternoon, but if she was lacking a player, she would draft in her butler to make up the fourth. He, however, would have to stand throughout the game. Julia conducted her social events according to the most traditional rules of etiquette, such as the dictate in one of her reference books, “Do not use a classical saying in front of a lady without apologizing or explaining.”

When guide books (and the audio tours) tout Newport as a woman’s town where women ruled, the evidence is an odd assortment of points, focusing on their hosting duties while their husbands stayed back in NY to do business. The steps of the grand staircase at The Breakers, for instance, were shortened by two inches so that women descending into the Ballroom appeared to be gliding. Women were the social definers, delineating with their visits which households belonged to which lofty social spheres. But they had time for little else as they changed clothes at least a half dozen times per day, with separate outfits for breakfast, day dress, luncheon, an outing, dinner and evening activity.

The grounds of The Elms include some the most beautiful gardens in town, all very 18th century French, but despite the name, no elms are to be found, having succumbed to disease. For compensation there are the most glorious, enormous weeping beech trees, like giant tents dotting the lawns.

As we finish our tour with a stroll through these grounds, I am reminded of perhaps the most telling, if enraging, comment on the audio tour. The melodious voice, without even a hint of irony, tells tourists from around the country and the world that Edward Berwind successfully guided his business through three cataclysmic events: World War I, the Unions, and the Great Depression.

Nuff said.

Thanks to Barry Hock for all the outside photos of buildings and grounds.