Sunday, November 29, 2015

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

Saturday, November 7, 2015

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.