They’re Here

We drove into Vermont under a bower of yellow, orange and red to spend the day “leaf peeping.” To prepare our taste buds, we stopped for wine tasting at Honora Winery. The wines were quite good, probably because the grapes came from Paso Robles, CA.

Our search for ever better photographs took us 2400 feet up to the Mt. Hogback Lookout, through charming Jacksonville and Wilmington, and along the Harriman Reservoir (aka Lake Wilmington). Locals recommended dirt roads and we complied. The color is at near peak, meaning not a lot of red. A summer of rain and the current cold spell are accelerating the changes. Our only complaint was that our California blood is chilled by the sudden drop in temperature. That will probably mean a shopping trip for some warmer things to wear (oh dear).

Hancock Shaker Village

The Shaker’s came from England to America in the late 1700s. Along with their deep religious fervor that included celibacy, they were excellent entrepreneurs who were continually developing methods and machines to make production easier and quicker. From a beginning of eight members, they grew to about 5000 with villages throughout the Northeast. The industrial revolution tempted members to enter general society and began the end of the order. Today the remaining village in Maine has a handful of aging members. The museum contains buildings, furnishings and machinery bought and saved by the Andrews family, non Shakers who respected the society.

More Family Fun

We returned to the Troy and Albany, NY area spending the weekend with Jeff and with cousins (son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren of Jo and Rich in Denver). Continuing the celebration of Hudson’s coming to the New World, we had a chance to see a replica of his ship the Half Moon. The boat was manned by costumed actors. Along the bank were settlers and natives sharing their own customs and lifestyles.

We enjoyed seeing all this through the eyes of eight-year-old Edan and six-year-old Liat. Following the celebration we enjoyed the best Vietnamese food we have had outside the actual country.

Monday was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and a day of complete fasting (no comment about all we have eaten so far, please). Jeff joined us for Kol Nidre (the Sunday evening start of the holiday)at a conservative congregation. On Monday, we three went to a younger reform congregation. The Rabbi and Cantor are both women. The cantor and choir were magnificent. The rabbi had the ability to give a special meaning to the day. Even Jerry was reluctant to leave at the end (we left early to break the fast with our cousins).

Anna Lee is rather proud of herself. She came up with a great break-the-fast meal and then sat back and watched Ed (a trained chef), Leora and Jerry prepare it. We had traditional foods including blintzes (Jerry’s), stuffed eggs (Ed’s), kugel (Leora’s) and pear crisp (Jeff’s) and more than made up for not eating for over 24 hours.

We left with two pumpkins decorated by the children and the warmth of having been with family.

The Clark

Our drive west through The Berkshires along the Mohawk Trail teased us with the hint of trees turning yellow, orange, and red. We anticipate being immersed in color but still wonder when. Rain and cold weather play havoc on predictions.

We stopped at The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. These two people amassed an outstanding collection American and European art. As heirs to the Singer sewing machine company, they collected such artists as Monet, Renoir, Degas, Homer and Cassatt. We had moments when we were all but hypnotized by paintings or sculpture. Our pictures are pale hints of what we experienced.

Sir Edwin Manton, formerly CEO of AIG (when they were a successful company), was an avid art lover whose collection of Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner is on temporary display. When he discovered an artist, he would collect all the pieces he could find. Along side paintings are comments by Manton telling of his personal experiences in finding and acquiring his art.


The Clark is expanding and has opened another building, The Stone Hill Center. It currently has three rooms of Japanese art, two with scrolls and screens hundreds of years old and the third with modern ceramics made in traditional style. This collection was minimalist as befits Japanese art.


Our walk to the center took us through trees beginning to change color.

A few years ago we read Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky about the MacArthur Award winner’s lifelong commitment to rescue from loss and destruction books written in Yiddish. In the 80s, Lansky, then a college student, tried to solve a a simple problem, finding books to read in his Yiddish class. This project grew to a full scale rescue of millions of volumes. He tells the stories he learned from elderly Jews who feared that books collected over a lifetime would be thrown out by children and grandchildren who did not care and could not read them. The center is a repository as well as a center for the study of Yiddish.


The books, both religious and secular, were the literature of Jews in the shtetls, ghettos, of Europe and brought to American by Jewish immigrants through the 1950s. The language contributed such words to American English as shlep, chutzpah and tush. With assimilation came a waning in the ability of third and later generations to speak and read the “mother tongue.” In Israel, it was displaced by Hebrew. The Book Center is reversing the decline and saving the literary piece of a rich culture.


A woman at the center recommended Atkins (not the doctor) Farm, a Whole Foods, local market, gourmet store, bakery, farmer’s market all under one roof. We are glad we do not live closer as we would be unable to resist the wonders in the aisles as proven by the bags we rolled out in our cart.

The Mohawk Trail

Today we moved from Foxboro to a bit farther north and west to the Highway 2 known as the Mohawk Trail. The road was lined with trees teasing us that fall is here and the colors we came to see are awaiting.

The Trail is one of the oldest known routes in US history. We visited two covered bridges, a Bridge of Flowers, and glacial potholes. These are but a few of the sites we intend to explore along the trail.

Newport

To stoke up for a full day, we decided to try out the Modern Diner, one of the first diners in the Rhode Island where they first appeared. The place took us back to the forties with its green vinyl seats and chrome accents. Breakfast was good and not wastefully (waistfully) filling.

Roger Williams was a Founder Father who truly believed all people had a right to follow their own religion. He put that belief into practice in founding Rhode Island. In the 1600s, Jews who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and wanted to leave the Netherlands, sailed to the new land and established a community in Newport, RI. There they built the first synagogue in the US and brought a young rabbi, Isaac Touro, from Amsterdam.

We learned from a congregant the history of the Touro Synagogue and saw the Judaica items that have been preserved as well as a 600 year old Torah inscribed on deer skin. It is the oldest US synagogue to continue to provide for its members. The synagogue is orthodox, keeping men and women separate, and Sephardic, Mediterranean in practice and observance.

I have to announce that we have put our house up for sale and are debating which of the many homes along the Cliff Walk of Newport to purchase. We will be upsizing but it’s worth it for the spectacular view and the classy neighbors.



We took a Living History Tour of the Astor’s Beechwood Estate. The “cousin,” “housekeeper,” “butler,” and “maid” were all actors and musicians in residence in the home for the season (a year). Their tour was excellent, treating us as guests invited to dinner the next evening. They shared intimate gossip and details of managing a home for the leader of The 400.


Our walk along the wall let us see the view the owners of these mansions enjoyed on a regular basis.

JFK Library

We toured the JFK Library designed by I. M. Pei under the direction of Jackie Kennedy. The well-planned walk through the building chronicles his life from being a senior at Harvard through his legacy. The most interesting part was about his time in Europe prior to the start of WWII and the books he wrote before and early in his political life.

We then rode the first US subway to the first US park. The Boston Common and adjacent Public Garden were lovely for a mild fall stroll. The Garden is filled with sculpture as well as flowers. The most charming are based upon Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings. Most of the others are tributes to the famous and obscure, from George Washington to the use of ether in surgery.

Lowell, Mass

Sometimes he is allowed a good idea. Today was one of those days. Instead of another wonderful art museum, which sadly gets a bit redundant, we headed to Lowell and the center of 19th century textile manufacturing. But first there was lunch as recommended by a volunteer at the visitor’s center. We had a sampler plate of Greek food that was so big it was also dinner when we got home, with a little baklava to top it off.

The food represented Lowell, a town that has many ethnic communities and boasts of their uniqueness. It has the second largest Cambodian community in the US, Irish, Italian, Lithuanian, African, Middle Eastern and, of course, Greek neighborhoods.

It is this diversity that caused the US Park Service to establish the old mill corporation buildings as Lowell National Historic Park.

Our education of early to middle 1800s textile labor included a ranger narrated ride on an old trolley car where we learned why Lowell became the textile center for the US and, maybe, the world. It was the water, water power that turned the belts that powered the machines that wove the fabrics. A complex system of locks and canals diverted water from the Merrimack River to the textiles plants.

In the plants toiled, first, young women off the farms seeking to earn their own money, and, later, immigrant women mostly from eastern and southern Europe, seeking a better life. The women worked twelve-hour days, with everything managed by the clock. Many wanted to return home but others found they enjoyed the “freer” life in the town. The mills were owned by corporations, based primarily in Boston. Eventually, labor conditions led to work stoppages and the intervention of emerging labor organizations.

The last mills closed in the 1950s. Today they have been transformed into apartments and condos, in addition to the Boote Cotton Mill Museum.

LaShaha Tova (For a good year)

It is Rosh Hashona, the Jewish New Year (5770). We spent the morning in services at Temple Beth El in Providence. It is a large, beautiful temple with some very good art. The Rabbi’s sermon was about Life, Liberty and Good Deeds and was very inspiring.

We continued the art theme at the Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum. It is a complex of many multistory buildings. Their exhibits are few in number and outstanding in quality. They include impressionist, Hudson River, furniture, metal work, and contemporary installations. We tagged along on a general tour and lucked out on a docent who was very informative and very interesting.

One of the viewers (J) did find an installation to critique, (actually, he felt it was a fine example of what he fondly refers to at the "King's new clothes) but even he felt it was one museum we wish we had many more hours to tour.



One of our dinners (A.L.’s) at Parkside was so large it may make two tasty leftover meals. Following dinner we made a bee line for the Providence River to watch Waterfire, the lighting of a series of barrels on a raft in the middle of the water. To the accompaniment of drums, then orchestration, and finally, opera, a fire juggler danced from barrel to barrel setting logs ablaze over the water. It was quite impressive.

Battleship Cove

Anna Lee decided that she had seen enough of the water (she decided that when we owned a boat) so Jerry went by himself to see Battleship Cove in Fall River. This park is a collection of six decommissioned ships including two PT boats, a destroyer, a submarine, and their crowning glory, the battleship Massachusetts. They also have a Russian missile corvette. The area is laid out so that you see the PT boats first, go to the destroyer, sub and corvette and then end up in the battleship which gives an extensive tour.

Most of the ships saw action in WWII, then varying conflicts including Korea, Viet Nam, and the first Persian Gulf war. Most impressive was the display of arms that were on the battleship where you visit a room where the 16 inch shells are stored. These things were BIG. And they could be shot over ten miles. Each barrel could be used for up to three hundred shots then it had to be replaced. They had the equipment to accomplish this on board. That had to be expensive.


The tour of the submarine was also impressive. The fact that a bunch of guys went out on a patrol in such confining quarters also told of the determination of the crew. The fact that they did not, at the end of the tour, want to kill each other showed their determination to achieve a good result.

Time Out for Adjustment

As with any “home,” things can go wrong. We spent our morning in the repair shop tending to, if you can believe it, a toilet problem before heading to Foxboro, our home for the next few days and home to some football team. To help us recover from the past two days, we did some retail therapy at the local outlets, goodies to bring home.

Dud Days

We took an hour and a half drive to Provincetown at the end of the cape. There we discovered bus loads of tourists and shops our friend Harold refers to as “JJ,” Junky Joe’s. We remembered the town from a previous trip as a great art center but it is now overrun with T-shirt shops and pricey restaurants.



We did spend a brief time visiting Nauset and Three Sisters Lighthouses. The wind was beginning to blow and we admired the hearty sunlovers who remained to bask on the beach. A friend recommended a book written by a naturist who lived for a year in this area. It is always special to share a place through someone else’s eyes.

Unfortunately, the drive home took over three hours. Between road improvement and two lane roads, driving is awful for visitors and must be a nightmare for the locals. Fortunately, we had an bit easier drive and a great time on our days in both Sandwich and Sagamore, so the cape will still be well remembered. Even our dud days have pretty views.

Jamming

Thornton Burgess, creator of Peter Rabbit, is from Sandwich. In addition to writing, he had a deep love of nature. The Green Briar Nature Center and Jam Kitchen is in tribute to his commitment. The nature center includes a lovely garden, a few rabbits (of course) and turtles and an education center for special programs. It also has a 100+ year old jam kitchen open for tours and selling yummy goodies.


A diet of jam alone will not do and we have been waiting for great Atlantic fish. At Joe’s Seafood Shop, we stocked up for several dinners. Best of all we bought fresh cod which we last enjoyed on our trip to the Maritimes. As before, it just melted in our mouths.

We spent a too rare evening sharing a fire with neighbors. One problem with motorhomes is that they are too home like and people hunker down for the evening. Tonight it was fun to meet new people and just talk.

Time Out

Sometimes one just has to stop and smell the roses, or in our case, sit and read along the canal. We are parked in the loveliest spot so far and we took a morning to enjoy the view, the great weather and good books.


Along both sides of the WPA project canal are bike/walking paths. These are much like the American River Bike Trail in Sacramento but have greater use.

Cape Cod

We started our exploration of Sandwich, Cape Cod, on foot with another volksmarch. This one was like a cruise past places we needed to stop and visit, so we plan to return for a more in depth view in the next few days.



One of the places on our walk was the boardwalk to the Atlantic, our most eastern stop on this trip.

Of Horses and Clocks and Music

Bristol, CT is the heart of carrousel country. Carvers immigrated from Europe and settled in the area, creating those wonders of our childhood, the carrousel horse. At the New England Carrousel Museum we learn their origins as training tools for knights who rode them while practicing their aim at the brass ring. Though rarely labeled, each of the carvers had a recognizable style. American horses went counterclockwise (English clockwise) and the right side of the outside horses was called the romance side because they had the best carvings and paintings. The left side was generally carved and painted by apprentices. Our tour filled us with nostalgia and made us wish to go round and round again.




The town of Bristol is past its glory as a center of manufacturing. But in the 1700s the names Seth Thomas and Elgin were part of the success of the town. With thousands of clocks and watches going back to the 16th century, the American Clock and Watch Museum honors those artists for their beautifully carved clocks as well as Eli Terry for his revolutionary change to the clock. Who knew that the industrial revolution was started by a clock maker here. Terry, apprenticed to a local clockmaker, had a dream that clocks could be for everyone, not just the rich. He fulfilled his dream by inventing the jigs and fixtures to create interchangeable parts. No longer making each clock by hand, Terry produced thousands of affordable clocks and we have all been cursing him since.

Norwich was holding a Greek Food Festival and a Taste of Italy. With the promise of fireworks for dessert, we chose Italian. The park was filled with hundreds of people of all ages and backgrounds. Maybe it’s the small town atmosphere that made it seem idyllic in the way people behaved. Everyone seemed to have a good time and the fireworks were great.

In Hartford we saw Katherine Hepburn’s birthplace. In Old Saybrook, we were in the town where she grew up. At a theater named in her memory, the Capella Cantorum Men’s Chorus performed a concert including Berlin, Handel, Puccini and Robert Frost. The solos from South Pacific were excellent. After the concert we drove to find her home. We didn’t succeed but the homes we saw had great views of Long Island Sound.

Following the advice of the couple seated near us at the concert, we dined at Dock and Dine. It is doubtful we will ever have bouillabaisse or crab cakes as good as these. But we will keep trying.

A Misty Day in Old Mystic

Jerry keeps saying that the greenery we see is due to all the rain that falls around us. Today was another day to water the plants, but rain did not deter us from our adventures. Since it was wet we went to the sea to visit the Groton Submarine Museum and tour the Nautilus. Homage was paid to Jules Verne who shared his dream in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.


The stories of subs during WWI and WWII were shown. But of greatest interest was the story of the passage under the North Pole in 1958 by the Nautilus, America’s first nuclear submarine. A video of this daring adventure and its intrepid crew was narrated by Edward R. Morrow.


A self-guided audio tour of the decommissioned sub took us deep inside the cramped quarters detailing the life and work of the sailors.


We wandered wet, not weary, through touristy Olde Mistick Village. Hungry we decided to Go Fish and our forks caught some really good cod and salmon for lunch.

The actual town of Mystic is also touristy but in a better and more expensive style. The shops were lovely though not too tempting, except for the book store. Vendors were setting up canopies for A Taste of Mystic but were we distracted by two groups of bagpipers from local firemen’s brigades. They were performing in memory of 9/11.

A Taste of Mystic whet our appetites for more dinner which we enjoyed at Bravo Bravo where Jerry’s seafood stew was truly bravo.