We gather together: Things to be grateful for

I hope the end of the Thanksgiving holiday break finds you and yours well!
I have had a number of adventures in recent weeks, and I intend to share a smattering of them in mostly visual form:

On Monday I took the commuter train to Manchester-by-the-Sea. Just repeat that name several times and let the romance wash over you. The name describes it – nothing more need be said.

My favorite things about Boston are: 1) People move so much here and no one has cars, so they leave their used furniture on the street. And it is socially acceptable to pick it up and take it away! And furnish your entire bedroom with it. And paint it. And create a little Anne of Green Gables bedroom because the roof is slanted. (As soon as I finish painting my new pieces and get my mother’s old lace curtains at Christmas, the resemblance will be charming – it is how I plan to cope with winter.) 

Manchester-by-the-Sea

2) The food (everyone raves about the canollis and ice cream so much you think it can’t possibly measure up. But then you try it). 

Manchester-by-the-Sea

3) Charlestown. It has a boardwalk and a classic New England harbor, the USS Constitution, and a ferry into North End.

A well-mannered Thanksgiving dinner at my cousin's with 13 people from church, a colleague from my work, and my cousin's classmates at MIT. I made the mashed potatoes and a British version of stuffing called Derby pudding.

Outside of Boston: I have done a reasonable amount of traveling considering my resources. My favorite place in Massachusetts is Concord. It has everything nice and is utterly charming, especially when covered with fall leaves. Salem was OK, but we went to an LDS Church camp up in New Hampshire that made me feel like the Earth had already received its paradisaical glory. We went rowing on a lake in the morning! 

Black Friday was free day at the beach in Ipswich. Naturally we ran along the beach playing "Chariots of Fire" on someone's phone, had a picnic of Thanksgiving leftovers, and were the only humans on the whole beach who dipped into the water.

I fulfilled a dream and visited Quincy to see the tombs of John and Abigail Adams. This is where John Adams was born.

Finally, in case anyone reading this wonders if all I do is play, I am including a few of what I consider some of my best articles for The Christian Science Monitor (You might have to go to this blog site to use the links.):
How does a Brazilian spider reveal our connection to Middle Earth?
Mormon mass resignation over LGBT rules: A big deal for the church?
Scientists tally Earth's hidden mega stashes of groundwater 
'Goodfellas' mafia trial: How mobsters became history's latest has-beens 
Puppy diplomacy? Why Russia and France work together against ISIS

Haymarket

The scent of fish pervades the makeshift market, and the sea creatures in question sit on long tables in the open air, split open to display their pink insides and tempt the passerby. Big baskets of fresh blue crabs decorate the doorway to the cheese shop - open to crowds and offering samples of feta, both cow and sheep, if you smile right.
Asian students from Harvard and severe-looking Bostonian women with gray hair in buns and long, khaki coats amble or stride past the low tables of produce, and the vendors hawk their wares - fresh and otherwise - in a cacophony of Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, and undiluted Bostonian.

Just a few steps off the "T" metro system and a stone's throw from the old quarter where the Sons of Liberty planned the Boston Tea Party is a market where enterprising Bostonians barter their way into a semi-honest living. They come every Friday and Saturday of the year, except Christmas and New Year's Day, and historians say they've been setting up on the cobblestones since the 1600s.
It's hard to know, though; in Haymarket nothing is sacrosanct.
"Does anyone heyah know what this fruit is?" one of the Bostonians holds up a strange-looking orange fruit no one was buying because it looked like a dinosaur egg. "This is called a keen-seh. This is the fruit that Eve gave to Adam in the Garden of Eden. This heyah is what got us into this mess."
Other vendors try more practical appeals, seizing on the good old-fashioned traditions of New England joint enterprise.
"Just one dollar here!" calls one, brandishing a cucumber in one hand and a stack of dollar bills in the other. "Pah-ticipate in the system, spend a dollar. Grow the economy, this is about free enterprise."
Catching my slight smile while I survey his fruit, he puts the cash away. "Christmas is coming, you know," he says, nodding seriously.
Other vendors are not above direct appeals.
"How can I help you, honey?" a young man asks me sweetly.
I tell him I am looking for celery. His colleague must think I am not good influence on sales.
"Try down there, Miss, those Chinese guys always have celery," he says and waves me off.
For all the chaos, rule of law prevails with astonishing rigidity. The prices are all written in permanent marker on bits of cardboard torn from the boxes the fruit came in, but usually operations are self-serve. I suppose if I really took off with a bunch of broccoli someone would notice, but perhaps when they see me wrestling with my grocery list and purse, arm already covered in bags of carrots and lettuce and my pencil skirt twisting up around my hips, they figure I'm a bigger danger to myself than a prospective parsley pincher.
I clumsily drop my quarters into a box of squash as I pay for the long-awaited celery.
"Just go on, I'll get it later," says the man with tattoos all the way up his arms.

A scuffle breaks out among the apples and asparagus. The Arabs and the Hispanics are fighting; the Arab young men have infringed upon the space of the Latina young women. A cardboard box has changed hands, and young men have taken off running in the direction of North End.
The venerable Hispanic matriarch puts her hands on her hips and shouts in Spanish at the venerable Arab patriarch, who looks strokes his beard in consternation and directs a milder Arabic remonstrance at the retreating backs of his progeny.
I watch for a moment until they sort things out, but the crowd keeps moving.

I walk on in search of onions, nearly ready to leave just $10 poorer, with bags full of produce from Haymarket. 

Pawk yo' cawr

"Meg, I give you your faults."

"My faults!" Meg cried.

"Your faults."

"But I'm always trying to get rid of my faults!"

"Yes," Mrs. Whatsit said. "However, I think you'll find they'll come in very handy on Camazotz."

- Madeleine L'Engle, "A Wrinkle in Time" 

Barefoot in Boston

One surprising aspect of my education has been that as I explore the the new heights of man's intellectual achievement, I have also traveled unsteadily into the low places. In the two weeks since I arrived in Boston, I have had several misadventures, a few of which I recount here for your enjoyment.

1) I went to my first day of work in the sort of dangerous high-heeled dress shoes to which I only submit my feet on such occasions. By the time the day was done, my feet were painful and bleeding, and I was anxious to head home at once. When I returned to the subway - called "the T" in Boston (for those who remember my travels in Washington, D.C., I must report that public transit here is somewhat inferior) - I found that the place where I had arrived only traveled one way! I returned to the surface to try and find a station that would go back to my new home in east Cambridge. I walked and walked around the square, bleeding heels staining my shoes red. At long last, I pulled off my shoes and socks and carried them, making quite a sight as I trudged up to a Boston University student and asked for directions barefoot.

2) The street where I live now, when walked at night, looks disturbingly like a cross between the "Shoeshine Girl" and Gotham City. It was probably a lovely neighborhood 60 years ago. We live across the street from an Italian Catholic Church with a historical marker where they had a wild festival with a marching band that brought the saints home at 10 p.m. last Sunday night. I dashed out to watch the parade in my pajamas.

3) My home is starting to look like a home, and we even have internet at last! (This is the explanation for my long delay in writing.) It is furnished primarily with pieces pulled by yours truly from the garbage as they waited for pick-up. Apparently this is such a transient area and transportation so difficult, that it is considered quite acceptable to find and reclaim a nightstand, a living room chair, a clothes rack, and a desk chair from the rubbish heap of others. Most of the pieces have obviously had long, full lives with at least two sets of owners previously, but I wipe them down with disinfectant wipes and hope for the best.

4) At my amazing cousin's (featured above) suggestion, I went to a grocery store located inside the underground tunnels of the subway. Although a true low point in the technical sense, I was thoroughly impressed with both the grocery options - everything from a florist to a very tempting bakery - and the idea of an underground grocery store.
5) I spent this weekend at a ward camp-out at a beautiful church-owned camp in New Hampshire. We woke up at 5:30 a.m. to go canoeing, did a triathalon, helped clear a trail for a service project (though the forests are so gentle here that further clearing was barely necessary), and - to my great amusement - helped pre-crack graham crackers and set them up on trays with chocolate, because the good sister in charge of snacks could not stand the thought of ward members making s'mores that might be messy. I was a little ashamed that after spending all week writing about the world's broader problems, I was spending my Saturday placing carefully cracked graham crackers in neat rows on a foil-lined tray, no less, but I got to eat all the rejected graham crackers.

I loved being in the forest. After just five minutes there I felt more myself than I have since arriving here, and I got my best night's sleep in New England on my little mattress in the cabin. I may be braving the city by necessity, but friends, I remain a country girl at heart!

Boston Lucy

Once upon a time in the early twentieth century, in a place called Boston where a great many important things had already happened, a newspaper was established. This paper was unique; it was established, funded, and managed by a church, but its news reporting was intended to be of general - even international - interest. Its founder was a woman named Mary Baker Eddy, who had started a religion known as Christian Science. This religion (which has no relationship with Tom Cruise) was vilified in the press, and the goal of this newspaper was to set a standard for honest reporting, especially in the area of religion. This newspaper was called the Christian Science Monitor.

I do an Eve impersonation on a ward apple-picking venture outside Boston.

This newspaper flourished, and one of its reporters did a great deal of work in South Africa and and Indonesia, among other interesting places. Some of his work earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1967, and he later became the paper's editor. He had many other adventures, including working with the Ronald Reagan administration, but the most relevant was that he traveled to BYU and became a journalism professor. There he taught and inspired a journalism student who had particular ambitions for international journalism, giving her far more time and attention than she deserved (perhaps because she amused him with idle threats of knocking down the office doors of uncooperative sources).

This is my vantage point as I compose. The internet where I live is non-existent as yet, so this is Harvard University.

And so, when she graduated from BYU, the journalism student spent a wild summer full of travel to South America, lost passports, lost Jordanians, an Olympic opening ceremonies, and a beautiful and happy wedding. Then she flew to Boston, and liked the airport very much. And the city of Boston, where a great many important things had already happened, seemed to give her - if not a warm hug of excitement - at least a gracious nod of welcome. And where the story will go from here, remains in God's hands and is very much yet to be seen.