Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

A Nuclear Family Takes Me Down in Stanley Park, Vancouver

I was taken down and injured by a nuclear family in Stanley Park (Vancouver) this week. Let me set the scene. There is a good reason why, in 2014, “Stanley Park was named ‘top park in the entire world’ by Tripadvisor, based on reviews submitted” (Wiki). It is a magnificent mix of six miles of accessible bike and walking trails, fabulous landscapes, and resources galore. At 20% bigger (1,000+ acres) than NYC’s Central Park. Although it is a peninsula, it also borders on a bunch of Vancouver’s neighborhoods. Rather than being designed by a landscape architect, it evolved organically in response to the natural geography and the peoples’ usage.

Together with Barry and David, I rent an ebike to explore. I had already done a test drive in Boston thanks to the bike shop Wheelworks, and fell totally in love with ebiking and with the thin, small, swift model they provided. However, the rental shops near Stanley Park offer “one-size-fits-all” (and we know whose size that is) step-through ebikes, with handlebars wider than twice my comfortable arm span. As the bike shop person on the phone said, “Our bikes are made for 6’ German men.” Luckily David was able to adjust my seat so that I could be reasonably comfy.

I speed ahead of the two men, who prefer a leisurely pace. It is tourist season so the trail is packed with bikers and ebikers of varied abilities and attitudes. As people pass each other, they say, “On your left” – a seemingly universal method of giving a heads up.

I am about half-way around the trail which follows the waters of Burrard Inlet and English Bay when I sense someone coming up on my right. It is a youngish woman passing me against the rules, and I move slightly to the left to give her room for this rude maneuver. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, her husband has slipped past me on the left, tangling my front wheel and taking me down with the bike on top of me. When I look up, I see that the man has an infant in a little seat on his ebike and all I can feel is grateful that the baby is ok. “You drifted to the left,” hubby says accusatorily. His wife says nothing. Neither of them had made any indication of passing.

Barry and David pull up. They right the ebike and then help me stand. Each of them has a story about being incorrectly passed by this same family before I was. The adrenaline keeps me going for the rest of the 6 miles, but my left knee is sliced and bleeding, I have the start of what will be a half dozen large, ugly bruises on both legs, and both knees are swollen. I am 75 and have opposed the institution of the nuclear family since the late 1960s. I have successfully avoided being part of any nuclear family since I was 17. I did not foresee, in my dotage, that I would be ambushed by one in such enchanting surroundings on such an agreeable trip.

I am dealing with the injuries using a combination of Epsom salt baths (thanks Barry), Arnica cream (thanks Vicki), frozen moist washcloths for icing (thanks former days in Tae Kwon Do), and a cane for walking. I will elaborate on the attractions of Stanley Park when I publish my Vancouver travelogue.

Book Review: Cheating at Canasta by William Trevor

I’ve just come back from a trip to Ireland, and perhaps the biggest thrill along the way was my purchase, in a second-hand bookstore in the seaside town of Kinsale, of a collection of short stories Cheating at Canasta (2008) by William Trevor, who is considered one of the all-time greatest Irish short story writers.

William Trevor (24 May 1928 – 20 November 2016) spent much of his adult life in England, but identified as "Irish in every vein." He wrote novels as well and won the full array of literary prizes.

The first story in this collection, “The Dressmaker’s Child,” haunts me still. It combines elements that run through many of his stories, but does it with a deep grey brilliance. There are troubled characters who become entangled inadvertently. There is trauma that lingers unspoken. There is human connection that is as painful as it is sustaining. There is a cloudy environment expressed with mastery prose.

Many of these pieces, not the least the title story “Cheating at Canasta,” plumb alienation and a sense of difference that perhaps only an emigrant or a person in mourning can convey. There is love, but too often it is lost, even squandered. Writing in the third person, Trevor creates a novel’s-worth of a world in each of these short stories, and, as a voracious reader of short fiction, I leapt hungrily into them.

The Fascinators and the Rip-Off

As I watch the Queen’s funeral in the background and the women in their particular head-gear, I am reminded of my neighbor in the Holloway neighborhood of London. I was quite new in town and needed to escape a nasty living situation. I was offered a sublet in a converted church on Chillingworth Street. The former church had been painted black in contrast to its white columns, and two stories of flats were built on its top. The main church area was divided into artist studios. My apartment was two rooms on two stories – one up and one down. I lived there alone, except for large chunks of one year when I shared it with my chosen niece Oona who came over as she turned 21 from Vermont.

Down the hall was a brilliant Black gay milliner who designed fascinators and hats, one-of-a-kind confections that were worn by women at formal events, most famously the Royal Ascot, a British racecourse which has high-falutin’ events. My neighbor was a freelancer, struggling for customers, and all the time turning out magnificent hats to order. For a visual of this genre, I have featured some examples of such items that Meghan Markel has worn since her marriage, as she frames them so well.

Before I found this apartment, I had lived on my arrival to London for several months in a moldy, smelly bedsit – that is, a poor person’s version of a studio apartment, a bed, a dresser, and a hot plate. The bathroom was down the hall. It was in the Hackney home of a “friend” and her dreadful partner, a coarse man who persisted in opening the bathroom door whenever I was sitting on the toilet. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly. They refused to put a lock on the door, her the pathetic enabler and him the sleaze-ball.

So when someone introduced me to the Canadian woman who wanted to sublet her flat in the Holloway converted church while she returned to Canada, I was hugely relieved. I lived there for a couple of years until my milliner neighbor, who had become my friend, warned me that an inspection was coming. Inspection? Yes, all this time I had been staying in a Housing Association apartment, low-income housing that my “landlady” had managed to qualify for despite her actually being a professional of some wealth. Of course I have seen parasites who have the resources to get themselves benefits intended for people without resources. Governmental institutions often make the process of obtaining these benefits so laborious and convoluted that it is the folks who hire lawyers and experts who score them. Ask any American who has applied for disability benefits.

And to top it all off, my “landlady” was charging me market rent, about twice what she herself was paying to the Housing Association, not only ripping them off, but ripping me off in the process. And now, back to the ornate, dour, and regimented spectacle of the Queen’s funeral, as the procession heads from London to Windsor Castle, where I was once, by the way, a keynote speaker at a European Union conference on volunteerism.

Discovering Camp Life

I'm staying on a lake in mid-Maine with sweet friends. It is another world for me – but a staple of New England culture. I am a stranger in a strange land, but I put aside the irony of celebrating “independence day” in a country built on the theft by white men of everyone else’s independence. As white men shoot up the world, steal our bodies and our wealth, and face little effective opposition to their increasing fascistic success, I am learning of a part of American culture that is rather new to me.

Yesterday morning we were part of a festive July 4th parade of residents' boats - pontoons (especially ours full of varied queers waving rainbow flags, wearing sequins, and blaring Whitney Houston), row boats full of kids being pulled by parents on a jet ski, speed boats, a big boat captained by a loud Santa Claus, and two dozen more lake-worthy vehicles.

In the afternoon, we were invited to a BBQ with our pontoon posse, at their “camp.” A camp is a lakeside cottage suitable for summer holidays. Many of these were built by grandparents or great-grandparents, originally without electricity or plumbing. Usually they were located fairly close to the family home. Subsequent generations added power, dug a well, or built on a bathroom. Many are remodeled with great charm, while only a few have been sold to people who turned them into McMansions. These camps are not connected to a water or sewage grid, so the water in the sink and shower is directly from the lake and people who don’t have a well, bring in their drinking water.

Between one’s camp and the water, everyone has a dock with a boat or three, a deck with lots of chairs, and a fire pit. The homes have a sun porch with screens and maybe windows, often just yards from the water. My friends also have a hammock and a little motorboat from the 50s that is a wonderful ride, as long as the wind isn’t churning up the lake. Late spring and dusk and nighttime are plagued with mosquitoes, but that’s what the sun porches are for – escaping these ravenous creatures.

With the addition of Wifi around the lake, families were reunited during Covid, as it was the perfect spot to build a small, safe community, and live a life – at least during the warm half of year. Most camps have no heat beyond a wood stove and the unpaved road is not plowed. But when the camps were opened, adult children returned and life went on.

On the evening of July 4th, individuals around the lake set off fireworks, which Maine has apparently legalized after a history of neighboring New Hampshire dominating the market. It was hard to stay awake for the sky to darken, after such an eventful day, but soon impressive fireworks began in three different private spots around the lake. I insisted we go outside to the water to watch them, but after a couple of snapshots I faced the reality that the mosquitos owned the nighttime outdoors, reducing me to the status of their dinner. I retreated with the hope that I am more easily persuaded to surrender to mosquitos than I am to fascists.

 

Parker River Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island

The year I was born, 1947, Rachel Carson wrote a 23-page piece for the USA Department of Interior titled Parker River: A National Wildlife Refuge. You can access it here.

The first line reads: “The Parker River Wildlife Refuge is New England’s most important contribution to the national effort to save the water fowl of North America.” During my recent visit to the Refuge, nature proved Carson’s point. And as we drove down the main route, a flock of huge black birds suddenly occupied the leafless branches of the trees around us. A birder passing by identified them for us as crows. Crows apparently are not shy and were happy to be photographed. Later we saw blue birds and red birds and other migrating birds on their wise way to warmer climates.

The Refuge makes up much of Plum Island, which is 11 miles (4,662 acres) of barrier island north of Massachusetts’ Cape Ann. Conservation became a priority in 1679 when settlers’ livestock were stopped from ranging free on the island, eating up all the vegetation. The first house was built in 1752, but a bridge over the estuary separating it from the mainland was established in the early 1800s, mainly to service the new hotel. There is no longer a hotel on Plum Island, but the level of construction is slightly insane.

It used to be a neighborhood of beach cottages and as the years passed people added a room or a second floor or a big porch. Today, there is an alarming proliferation of McMansions, the more recent ones built on stilts, most of them massive and ugly, some of them four stories high. But the kicker is that many are built on the edge of the marsh, cutting off the view of the traditional cottages, throwing unwelcome shadows over multiple houses.

However, Parker River Refuge is the Island’s jewel and, in my opinion, should be considered one of the wonders of the world. Its undulating dunes, dramatic beaches, four rivers, bog, swamps, and the magnificent Great Marsh sit under a Big Sky. I first encountered a Big Sky when I was in Kenya in about 1996. Of all visual and physical experiences I have had while traveling, the Big Sky over Kenya’s Masai Mara ranks as my most euphoric. Likewise, here at the Refuge, the great expanse of over 3,000 acres of salt marsh with its waving grasses, crisscrossed with tidal pools, met the changing sky in an exhilarating view. I realized with a start that I was downright happy. I was breathless with a visceral joy that contrasted with my feelings these last years in which I’ve been living in basically one room watching the world suffer.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has done a sublime job in making this huge Marsh and the acres of dunes accessible. They have built many handsome boardwalks, the majority with explicit accessibility, but all with smooth faux-wooden paths elevated above the marsh and the dunes. Some of the boardwalks climbed over the dunes and descended to the sea. Some wound through the high grasslands, with creeks underneath turning into puddles, and black water nourishing reeds. All of these boardwalks are beautifully done and took me to places I would never otherwise consider climbing up or scrabbling over. Even the observation tower was only three flights of steps and I was easily able to mount it.

The rolling dunes were decorated with thickets of beach plum (thus Plum Island!) and grasses. Between the dunes are black pines and eastern red cedar trees, which reminded me of eucalyptus trees with their shedding bark. The brilliance of the walkways is that they allow visitors to be closer and deeper in the dunes and marsh than one anticipates, without any damage to the environment.

On the other hand, the Joppa Flats Education Center and Wildlife Sanctuary, apparently operated by the Massachusetts Audubon Society, offered an unpaved road and heaps of garbage at its entrance. We turned around and went back into the Refuge instead of visiting it.

Another absolute treat was staying at the comfortable, luxurious Airbnb which the owner titled “My Dream house with views of the marsh and sunset.” I am a literal person and that is also literally my dream view. The apartment did not disappoint. It was a bit too cold to use the marsh-facing porch, but when sitting in the living room chairs, I looked straight out the sliding glass doors to the marsh and its sunsets. These are so stunning that car after car of locals pulled up to watch the sunset before going on their way.

A late November trip was just what the doctor ordered. There were few folks around. Even more important, we avoided the infamous summer greenhead flies. We didn’t have to deal with ticks, mosquitos, or poison ivy, all of which flourish in the summer. Plum Island is known as a gorgeous beach destination and becomes heavily congested, I was told. I’m not a big beach lass, but now I can’t live without the Great Marsh. So let the others stretch out on the exquisite plum sand. I’ll be visiting when I have these wonderlands more or less to myself.

Acton Arboretum

The Acton Arboretum is yet another jewel sparkling locally in Massachusetts. Two decades in the Boston area, and I only discovered it rather randomly on Google maps. It is like a condensed, human-sized version of Harvard’s world-famous Arnold Arboretum. Well cared for and diverse, it offers a spectrum of trails and types of gardens. The Butterfly and Pollinator Garden was obvious by the cloud of butterflies hovering over it. We ate nice little apples, piled on rocks for passers-by, from Crabapple Allee. There’s a Hosta Garden, an Herb Garden, a Fragrance Garden, a China Trail Garden, more gardens, bogs, ponds covered in florescent algae, wooden bridges, and most of all, copious benches.

The solid teak benches were placed with frequency and in scenic settings, making the whole place more accessible and pleasant. All the paths were easily walkable; none of the inclines were too steep; and although there were lots of folks out, there wasn’t a shred of garbage anywhere to be seen. The Acton Arboretum promises to be special in all seasons and I’ll be back.

For an extra treat, stop at the nearby NARA Park where non-Acton seniors can swim for $3 or rent a paddleboat for $10, where the outdoor amphitheater features cover bands, and where the tiny library is on a stand so tall that I would need a ladder to see any titles. In a conversation with the groundskeeper, who has done an amazing job, I had a sense of the loving creativity that has gone into the explosions of flowers around the property. There were a gazillion kids there – clearly the pond is well-used, even though the summer season formally ended in August.

 

 

Travelogue - Lake Champlain, Vermont

GUILFORD, VERMONT
We start our first long vacation since the inception of the pandemic with a stop in Guilford, VT, to visit with some of my dearest friends, including the special treat of seeing three generations of my oldest friend Verandah’s family. Gilbert and Susan feed us with Gilbert’s famous (indescribably tasty) chicken thighs, corn he has obtained from a gay-owned farm in a different town, and a remarkable bounty of beans and of tomatoes from Susan’s luxurious garden. We sleep in their renovated historic schoolhouse.

BURLINGTON, VERMONT
The next morning drive a couple of hours to Burlington, where the key architectural elements are originality and color. Every house is quirky and each is different from the next. One common theme is what might now be described as attached town houses, but which were once, I assume, workers’ row houses. The outside of the Airbnb was a riot of greens and the inside appeared to have been designed by Escher and decorated by Mondrian.

To me Burlington has the vibe of Portland, Oregon, without all the baggage of Oregon. Until, that is, I learned about its size. At 42,000, Burlington is what passes for the most populated metropolis of Vermont. It runs entirely on renewable energy, and has done so since 2015. The beautiful, wide open University of Vermont campus anchors the town, and the splendor of Lake Champlain adorns it. We have dinner overlooking the Lake at The Shanty the first night and a picnic the next evening at Perkin’s Pier with my dazzling friends Valerie and Mark, who have returned to live in Burlington. At Valerie’s suggestion, we get ahold of the weekly Seven Days news magazine, with complete listings, stories, and love ads, one page of which is for people who prefer letters to online communication. I thought that was sweet.

SHELBURNE, VERMONT
We take a 7-mile detour to Shelburne, but the Museum campus that houses 29 historic buildings of Vermont is closed for the day. We go to the non-profit Shelburne Farms where the store is open and I buy some jam and some maple syrup. The land, which they call their campus, is a 1,400-acre working farm, forest, and National Historic Landmark. The lane to the seashore is closed to most cars and people are asked to walk because of Covid (I guess to keep the crowds down). Two miles in 95’ heat through a flat field? Not happening. I wave my disabled parking placard and we are given a smile, a map, and a welcome to drive through. It seems like more than two miles of flat farmland until we turn a corner and come upon the lake shore and as beautiful a landscape as I have ever seen. I really feel transported to another realm of being as I stare at this piercingly refined view. I have fantasies of planning a stay at the Farm’s 19th century guesthouse with views of the Lake when it re-opens post-pandemic, hopefully in 2022, until I learn that it has no heat, a/c, TV, or wireless in the rooms.

NORTH HERO ISLAND, VERMONT
My Guilford friend, Lana, was the first to recommend The North Hero House Inn & Restaurant and then it turned out that several other friends who had visited at her suggestion were equally enthusiastic. First, a bit of geography. North Hero is one of four islands in an elongated archipelago in the middle of Lake Champlain, a scenic body of water that separates Vermont and New York and reaches 100 miles up to the Canadian border. The Lake and islands were carved out by receding glaciers. Today over 200,000 people get their drinking water from the Lake.

There are many working farms on the islands – corn and apple and grape vines especially – but the main economic motor is tourism. Numerous state parks and swimming, boating, and water sports appeal in the summer; ice fishing is popular in the winter. The population is 803 people, including Bernie Sanders who has a summer home there, and it is 97.5% white. There is an avalanche of tourists in the summer – and many of them looked to be 60+. The commercial hub of the Island is the complex called Hero’s Welcome, where you can pick up a “Feel the Bern” sub sandwich, a joke keychain, a kayak, home-baked pastries, housewares, sporting goods, and picnic equipment. It’s got everything.

The North Hero House Inn & Restaurant comprises a central building where we went daily for a fulsome complimentary breakfast (don’t miss the potatoes). It was built in 1891 and bragged of the island’s first flush toilet. There are three two-story guest houses with screened-in porches on the water. I stayed in the Cove House, built as a private residence in 1811. It’s the far right building in the photo; my room was last on the right on the 2nd floor. The porch hung over the water and was equipped with a table and two chairs plus a hammock. I got a little fridge on request, and would have been fully content if only the room had working wireless. Turns out that it is the worst room for wireless in the complex. I had called twice to ensure internet access and they bullshitted me. It’s not that I wanted to be on Facebook or play with Tik Tok. It’s just that when you are traveling, a tourist needs the interwebz to find the address of a particular restaurant or to check which days a museum is open. In the end, no biggie. Still, I woulda had liked to know.

We visited the Farmers Market on South Hero one day at the recommendation of its charming organizer Liz, whom I met through Verandah. She knows her islands, which she proved by sending us off to the Blue Paddle restaurant, where I followed her instructions and ordered the filet mignon. It was out of this world. The kick-ass owner and the French-speaking server were gracious and amiable women. The duo performing music were melodious, and it was clear – as greetings flew among the tables – that everyone knew everyone in town.

I could never live in a town of 800 people without exploding the social fabric. Rural living requires continuous compromise, tongue-biting, forgetting and forgiving, and excusing questionable behavior. These are not, unfortunately, skills I ever developed. But they are necessary in order to build and maintain community in small places where neighborly support is vital to survival. If you fall out with the librarian or with the leadership of the reproductive rights group or with the owner of the only restaurant big enough to hold events – you’re up shit’s creek. They may be the only game in town.

Speaking of the library, there was a new one in South Hero, but we visited the old public library in North Hero, built in 1907. A volunteer was sweetly forthcoming about what it was like to retire to the island (she’s on at least a half dozen committees) and about the politics of the library. She sent us downstairs to a massive collection of used books for sale, where I bought one by Anais Nin. You can tell so much about a place by looking through such piles, and my conclusion was that this was truly Bernie turf, with a healthy dose of feminism.

We traveled one day to Saint Anne’s Shrine on Isle La Motte, on the spot where Vermont’s oldest settlement was built in 1660. I was put off by the huge statue of Christ nailed to the cross – a disturbing image I have never been able to look at unruffled. There is a chapel and some cabins for spiritual retreats and a big gold statue of Saint Anne.

We hit several of the state parks, but I was most delighted by Sand Bar with its gorgeous 2,000 foot beach. The park was established in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Copious picnic tables make it just the place to spend the day at the Lake. We also drove down many roads marked “private” – I often feel compelled to do so – and saw some of the more expensive lakeside homes. But what we couldn’t help notice was that throughout the islands, the architecture was thoroughly unremarkable. Uninteresting. Kinda ugly. There was no particular style (like the Capes on the Cape) and in fact no style at all. Most of them were relatively new and all were abjectly bland. What a contrast with the beautiful nature all around, not the least the copious willow trees.

QUECHEE GORGE, VERMONT
After three nights on the Island, we headed home, but stopped overnight in a boring Airbnb in Lebanon, NH, which was the halfway point on our return. We visited the Quechee Gorge, often called a Little Grand Canyon, formed by melting glaciers about 13,000 years ago. One stands on either/both sides of the bridge 168 feet above the Gorge, and looks down. I was surprised at how dry the river at the bottom of the mile-long chasm was. There are trails down for hikers.

To my surprise, we drove past Fat Hat, a clothing company I’ve been ordering bright thick cotton jackets from online ever since I discovered their twice-a-year 50% sale. It was right on 1 Quechee Main St. I just had to stop and say hello. There were tons more garments than are featured online, but I ended up buying the same sweater/jacket as always – but in a sky blue color. Behind the store was Chef Brad’s Food Truck, the summer version of his Crazy Stop Café. The whole property was draped in greenery and bamboo skirting, full of baubles and bangles and bits of decoration and a school bus turned dining car and picnic tables and tomato plants and myriad signs about controlling children and trash disposal. I had potato and chive soup and a side of fries.

The next day, we drove through impoverished rural areas to Woodstock, Vermont, a wealthy shire town full of exquisite historic buildings, handsome tree-lined boulevards, shops with expensive this and that, and a long wait for our late lunch at the highly organic Mon Vert Café. We stopped at the well-known Village Butcher Shop where I failed to stop myself from buying a fresh cherry pie. Before you judge me, it was a little one. It was truly the cherry on the top of a magnificent week-long escape.

Photos from Barry Hock, Dr Random, and me

Danforth Museum in Framingham, Massachusetts

If I have learned anything during the pandemic, it is that eastern Massachusetts is filled with wonderful hidden pearls, especially the many parks and ponds I have discovered during my weekly Saturday explorations. Now that I am able to go inside museums, I’m trying to identify and visit the variety of little museums in surrounding towns.

The Danforth Museum in Framingham is housed on the second floor of the arts building of Framingham State University. Among the 3,500 objects in the permanent collection are the works of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877 –1968.) Fuller was an African-American sculptor who was a protégée of Auguste Rodin and initially built her reputation in Paris. (Her self-portrait is above.) A contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, her work centers around injustice and struggle. Even her very studio is displayed at the Danforth along with about 100 pieces of her work.

There were other exhibitions to see as well. A recent acquisition by Mia Cross called “Another Girl Who Sat on the Couch Too Long” tickled me. Dana Filibert, one of the featured artists in a special exhibition called “Wonderscape,” showed many collaged pieces using repurposed objects, epoxy, carved foam, and paint (see below). Her unique art, she says, aims for “playful mischief.”

We were the only guests on a summer Saturday. Entry was $6 for seniors. The bathrooms were convenient and the air-conditioning was pumped way up (take a shirt or sweater to put on). I recommend searching out these little museums and galleries, especially if, like me, you are feeling that you have been heavily deprived of art for over a year.

New Bedford & Mattapoisett: Art & Nature

We are continuing our pandemic tradition of going somewhere beautiful every Saturday. We’ve easily identified this past year’s worth of discoveries, and now that we are in the most exquisite Spring I’ve ever experienced, there are plenty more treats out here in Eastern Massachusetts.

Yesterday we set out to New Bedford, about an hour south, towards Cape Cod. I ordered tickets ($5/seniors) for an exhibit at the New Bedford Art Museum entitled “Uncommon Threads: The Works of Ruth E. Carter.” Carter is the costume designer who won the Academy Award for designing “Black Panther.” She’s designed clothes for many important films, from “Roots” to “Malcolm X” to “Amistad” to “Selma.” She is a local talent, born in Springfield, MA. It is a small exhibit, and I was particularly interested in the pieces from Malcolm X. It was, though, disappointing to learn that the museum could not afford to include clothes from Wakanda.

There was a plethora of Pride flags everywhere in New Bedford. Around the corner from the museum, the Alison Wells Fine Art Studio and Gallery was flying the flag. The charming and talented artist/owner, Alison, gave us a quick education about being an artist in New Bedford. She said it was an art-friendly town, with reasonable rents, attracting artists of all sorts who have dominated the town’s cultural landscape. Alison’s gorgeous work is a combination of collage and paint. Here is a photo of a painting I particularly loved. She is prolific and impressive and no trip to New Bedford would be complete without a visit to this gallery.

New Bedford was a whaling town at a time when whale oil was the equivalent of fossil fuels today. So executives and owners of whaling businesses made a pile of dough and their former mansions reflect that wealth, although they are now surrounded by shabby neighborhoods. While New Bedford was considered the richest per capita city in the world during the 19th Century, it now has twice the number of people living below the poverty rate than the rest of Massachusetts,

Only one of the big houses has been fully preserved as a museum. We explored the Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum, with its exquisite formal rose garden of 350 rose bushes and traditional pergola. The roses are at their peak right now. Then we took the self-tour of the house ($6/seniors).

Finally, we drove eight miles to the 1837 Ned’s Point Lighthouse in the harbor of Mattapoisett. This town started as a ship-building and whaling town, but soon became a resort for the elite. I must confess to love a good drive around beautiful old homes – although too many rich neighborhoods are now full of nasty McMansions – but these were tasteful Cape-Codders with lush landscaping and a certain unity of grey shingles. The Lighthouse is situated in a very large grassy circle surrounded by huge rocks and just feet from the rocky shore. There is a launching area specifically for windsurfers and they were amazing to watch.

I returned home to a broken elevator in my apartment building in 94 degree weather and a car full of stuff to bring up eight stories. I chose the strawberry rhubarb pie and the two bouquets – none of which would have a chance to survive, and abandoned my laptop, two loads of wet laundry I had done at my friend’s place (I don’t use dryers for my clothes), and many other sundries. After the sun set, I went back down to retrieve the laptop, as who knows when the elevator will be fixed and we’re expecting the heatwave to continue in the mid-90s for the next few days. The bad news is that my knees have lodged complaints about the climb of eight stories, but the good news is that my air conditioning is working just fine.

Photos by Barry Hock

Mid-Cape Cod Redux - May 2021

For my first vacation after 14 months of staying home, my pandemic partner Barry and I recreate our last trip to the same Hyannis Harbor Hotel, eating (outside) at the same nearby Black Cat Tavern, and driving to some of the same beauty spots. But it feels like a very different trip. We are figuring out when to mask. People are declaring themselves fully vaccinated before engaging in conversation. And we are experiencing a refreshed post-pandemic sense of freedom in the outdoors.

Heritage Museum and Gardens
We get advance tickets ($20) to the annual rhododendron festival – 100+ exquisite varieties! – at the Heritage Museum and Gardens in Sandwich. Besides the picturesque landscaping and the explosive colors of the blooms, my favorite amenity is the people-mover that continuously circles the 15-minute loop around the 100 acres of soft hills and steep inclines. There are seven stations to hop on and off which makes the entire Gardens accessible for those of us who want to save our steps for the “good parts.”

Dunbar Tea House
From there we go straight to Sandwich’s famous Dunbar Tea House where a crispy tender Duck Leg Confit has been added to the menu. The bad news is that the strawberry/rhubarb pie is sold out; the good news is that there is a pudding-like strawberry/rhubarb layered concoction to substitute. Barry’s Guinness Braised Short Rib Stew isn’t as tender as he would like, but we are both gratified by the outstanding service we receive at the hands of our server Elaine.

Bass Hole Boardwalk
Another day we return to perhaps my favorite spot on the Cape, the Bass Hole Boardwalk at Gray’s Beach in Yarmouth Port. Each plank of the long sturdy boardwalk is playfully inscribed – from celebrating a kid’s graduation to a 50th anniversary; from honoring a favorite pet to blowing kisses to a beau. On one side of the suspended boardwalk is an exquisite green salt marsh, unusually lush and grooved. On the other side is a long stretch of sandbars leading to the ocean, where fowl and kayaks intermingle. (Photo by Tammy Nolan)

Scargo Tower
Last time we tried to visit it, our drive up to the Scargo Tower was blocked for some sort of renovations. This time we actually see it. First constructed in 1874 by the Tobey family who hoped that its location atop the highest mid-Cape hill would turn it into a lucrative tourist attraction, the wooden structure was soon blown over in a gale. Once rebuilt, it burned down. Finally in 1901, a 30-foot version was assembled from cobblestones and surrounded by a parking lot, which the town of Dennis manages. They say that from atop the Tower the views reach from P-town to the Sagamore Bridge, but it looks like the Tower hasn’t been open for a long time. Stuck up there like a sore stone thumb, it seems quite the folly.

Hyannisport
I love driving around places I don’t know, sneaking up the “private, no trespassing” lanes of the one-percenters to see their mansions, sometimes gorgeous and often gross, and then winding through the streets of the neighborhoods of those who clean those mansions. Although I have never been an environmental activist of any sort, I do know about the problems of clean water faced by many on our planet, not the least the people of Palestine. So the acres and acres of bright green lawns surrounding the bloated homes in Hyannisport make me considerably crazed. Blocked access to the sea and security guards in giant pickup trucks telling us to “move along” when we try to momentarily stop near the yacht club for the view add to my irritation.

Spohr Gardens
We drive the loop to Falmouth before our departure in order to stop at the Spohr Gardens – I had never heard of it before. It was developed on 6 acres along Oyster Pond for over forty years by the owners Margaret and Charles Spohr. He was a high-flying civil engineer; she graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and served in the Army Nurse Corps. Charlie and Margaret, who were the ages of my parents, evolved these Gardens together.

Charlie added his growing collection of items he thought of as “decorations” – “planting” them throughout the gardens. Big metal bells, massive millstones, and giant old anchors predominate. His prized possession is well-displayed on the edge of Oyster Pond: it is reputed to be the 1760 anchor meant to be used on the H.M.S. Bounty (i.e. Mutiny on the Bounty), but left on shore for repairs. It is 14’ long and 2,476 pounds.

We run into a Trustee named Bill who talks to us for a long time about Spohr Gardens. He tells us that their old renovated cottage is rented out by the year – usually to rich city folks. His particular job at Spohr Gardens is preparing the Butterfly Habitat, and he points out the varied plants that serve as breeding grounds for the different butterflies. The whole estate was donated by the Spohrs as a Trust with funds to maintain it on the condition that it remain open every single day and be free to the public.

As we are leaving the Spohr Gardens we run into a couple who live nearby. They are watching an eagle’s nest on top of a tree on the other side of Oyster Pond and they lend us their binoculars (“We’re fully vaccinated,” he says as he hands me the binoculars) and tell us about the eagle and its wingspan of six feet! Then he tells us something spooky. That for the first time at the nearby Otis Airforce Base, bunches of paratroopers have lately been seen parachuting from low-flying military planes. The locals are mystified by why that is going on.

We climb the exit path lined with azaleas and hydrangeas and vow to return for the daffodil festival next April.

 

Photos via Barry Hock