Clarendon Springs

The Clarendon Springs Hotel, also known as Clarendon House.  Built in 1834.  One of many hotels and “curative spas” that thrived in Vermont in the 1800s, capitalizing on the  purported benefits of the local spring waters and a thriving railroad industry, which brought Southerners and city dwellers north in great numbers.  An article in the August 29, 1867 edition of the New York Times describes the village of Clarendon Springs as “one of the pleasantest places to which [one] can resort during the summer, to avoid the heat, and dust, and noise, and other great annoyances of the Great City.”  The hotel is long closed, and gutted -- the Southerners and city dwellers, the picnics and music and dancing, long gone.  The springs remain, along with just the husk of this once fine hotel.

  

On Golden Pond

Morses, actually.

Postcard from L.A. - No. 1

Stairway to heaven.

The house that everyone owns

   Take a ride through these New England towns.  On Main Street, just off the village green, you can find at least one great, commanding house with gables and porches that run the length of the house both west and south and seem to hold the sun all day.  It is the type of house the town takes pride in, for its cool white elegance in the green summer, for its rich warm glow on black winter nights.  It is the kind of house that dresses up for Christmas, with electric candles in each window, and delicate white lights on the evergreen shrubs in the yard.  It is the type of house the people in the village speak about as if they all own it together.  And so, in a sense, they do.

Just a few pieces of wood

   When I go walking in Manhattan I see the wealthy, older women out on the street in their fine, expensive clothes.  It is not their fault, really.  Still, they should leave their poodles at home and drive up into the hills for a bit.  Meet their sisters.  Move a few pieces of wood from the porch to the bin in the dining room, next to the wood stove.  Just a few.

Feral hogs and snowy owls

      We were driving on "the big island," through the great Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.  I was thinking about the wildlife on the islands and said out loud to the ladies, "Boy, I would really like to see a guinea hen or a feral hog."  As if on cue, a guinea hen promptly stepped out of the forest and ran across the road.  Everyone laughed.  I shouted, "Boy, I would now really like to see a feral hog.  I said, a FERAL HOG!"  Everyone laughed again.  There was no hog. But there was the next best thing -- a family joke to be rolled out from time to time. 

 

   On a cool, gray Sunday in early March, KC and I drive in to South Boston to take a walk along Pleasure Bay, out to Castle Island and Fort Independence, before driving back across the channel for lunch at the No Name.  One of the papers posted outside the fort notes that Snowy Owls like to frequent the grounds.  I say to KC, "Boy, I would really love to see a Snowy Owl," looking up into the nearest tree, at the top of which sits a big Snowy Owl.  I snap a couple of pictures, wishing it would stop napping and spread its wings, but happy indeed to see it.  As we walk around the corner of the fort, I just can't help myself.  "Boy, it would be great to see a feral hog!" 

   

American Elms

   A fine piece in the Sunday Times calls New Yorkers to contemplate the elegant American Elms that grace Fifth Avenue and portions of Central Park.  Our writer Guy Trebay touches all the bases -- citing Olmsted, quoting Dickens, interviewing a vice president of the Central Park Conservancy -- and scores at the end with this simple wisdom:  "Look up."  

   I have done it.  And taken two pictures in Central Park not so different from the one in the Times this morning.  Like thousands of others, I'm sure.

 

This is the one from the Times.

Salt cod

   It's a fine thing that in the North End, in 2014, you can find salt cod being sold out of a rough, wooden box.  

Ice in the river, tracks in the snow

   A new year.  A fresh snow.  A cold morning.  A man needs to get out of the house.  To move some air and blood.  To see what the ice looks like in the river, what tracks have been made in the snow.  

Private party

Back in New York for a conference, I head out of my disappointing hotel for dinner, which I plan to have at A Dish of Salt –- the Chinese restaurant where I had dinner the night after I took my first deposition ever, in Rockefeller Center, on a snowy night in December, just days after I was admitted to the bar.

I set off down 5^th Avenue, past the places that I know.  FAO Schwartz, Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s.  Along the way I angle around a bit, looking for stores or buildings or anything that catches my eye and triggers some memory of a place I walked to just once before, years ago, in the same way that I can walk up a stream for just the second time, years after the first, and remember riffles between the rocks where I found trout. 

Sure enough, by following the little things that catch my eye, I come right onto A Dish of Salt.  “Closed this evening for a private party,” the little sign says.  Ah well.

I set off down the street again, looking now for inspiration.  Along the way I remember reading something in a magazine about the Oyster Bar at Grand Central, so off I tack in that direction. 

And so, at my little table among the other crowded little tables, I have a Brooklyn Pilsner, some Duck Point oysters, and then a plate of grilled smelts, which I sprinkle with sea salt, and coleslaw.  All of which seems fabulous.

You can have your private party this evening.  And I will have mine.

I only have eyes for you

You are here and so am I.   

Maybe millions of people go by,
   

But they all disappear from view.

And I only have eyes for you.

Ramble on

  

   Picking apples on a perfect Saturday afternoon in October, we saunter down a dirt road between Courtlands and Macouns.  

   A less used lane bears off to the left, along a small swamp and up a hill.  "Let's go that way," I say.  But no one in our little group wants to.  There are plenty of apples right here.  And who wants to lug them so far.  And besides, we want to get cider doughnuts.  

   This is how it is.  And why, forgive me, I like sometimes to travel on my own, going for great rambling walks, letting my eyes pull me down the next lane, up the next hill, around the next bend.       

   Ah, well.  I give the lane one last look and stay with my little tribe, happy with the day and time with family.

   And the next day, Sunday, is a fine day, too, with time enough to ramble before brunch.  

   "Leaves are falling all around.  It's time I was on my way."

  

Moxie

She has it, all right.

Lost and found

Found:  one lost mojo.

Motif Number 6 - Rockingham Meeting House

     The Rockingham Meeting House sits on a hill above Route 103 between Chester and Bellows Falls.  I must have driven by it hundreds of times, thinking I should take the quick detour up Meeting House Road and have a look around.  Never did.  Always on the way to something else.

   But I stopped this weekend on the way back from fishing in Vermont.  A lone car was parked in the shade of a tree out front.  A side door was open.  A caretaker sat in a chair just in side the door, squeezing every word out of the thin local papers.  

   You can wander about as you will.  No velvet ropes here to keep you out of the pulpit or the balcony.

   It is spectacular. 

   The National Historic Landmark plaque out front describes it as a "rare 18th century New England Meetinghouse of the 'Second Period,' styled in the Georgian manner and unmatched among surviving New England meetinghouses. ... This is the most intact 18th century public building remaining in Vermont."The brochure tells us that the meetinghouse was built in the village that was the first focus of settlement in the town of Rockingham.  The town expected to expand rapidly and built a large meetinghouse to meet its needs, but as time went on settlement in the town shifted to Bellows Falls and Saxtons River.  A Congregational Church used the meetinghouse for services until 1839.  Annual town meetings were held here until 1869.

Much of what you can see today is original to the 18th century, including many glass panes in the twenty-over-twenty windows, interior plaster work, and most of the material in the box pews.  The pulpit was reconstructed in 1906, but the sounding board above it is original. The surrounding burial ground contains over one thousand graves, the oldest dating from around 1776, many with fine gravestone art.  Along the picket fence are a series of stone hitching posts.  A hearse shed and burial vault are also on the grounds.  I snap my photos.  Happy with some of them.  I need to come back, though, and get some other ones.  Different seasons and light.  More details -- door handles, cornices,  and such -- as Megan were do if she were behind the camera.  She has the eye for detail  while I'm always taking simple step-back photos, just trying to keep cars out of the frame.  So I'll be back.  The odds seem good that the meetinghouse will be here for a while.

     

At Reading Terminal Market

     In a quiet corner of the Reading Terminal Market, away from the crowded main corridors, an Amish girl takes her lunch break from selling pies and jams.  A small sandwich is on the table in front of her.  Her head is bowed, her hands in her lap.  I wonder - briefly, stupidly - how it is that this Amish girl could be texting on a smartphone.  Then I realize she is saying a brief prayer before she takes her meal.  I take my coffee - just milk, no sugar, no grace - and move along.

What someone is drinking now

   The Sunday Times Magazine is running a feature "What I'm Drinking Now" by the celebrated chef Mario Batali.  It's a one-paragraph description of a drink that is right for the moment (first day of Fall, Super Bowl weekend, reverting to daylight savings time).  Today's offering, "a Widow's Kiss with a kick":  In a mixing glass filled with ice cubes, stir 2 oz. Calvados, 1 oz. each of Chartreuse and Benedictine and 3 shakes of Angostura bitters, then strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with an orange twist.  

   I will not be making this anytime soon, as the only ingredients I currently own would be the ice cubes and the martini glass, which I think I could manage to chill.  I don't even know what Chartreuse or Benedictine is.  I owned a bottle of Calvados once.  I have owned, I think, two bottles of Angostura bitters in my life.  I've got to do better than that.  

   I would like a drink, but I have a cold, and so I leave the house for the first time in four days and go for a slow walk up around the pond at the train station.  I take my camera, hoping for I might get one of the neighborhood cardinals set off against snow, and because you just never know.  

   And you don't. 

   I find what someone who is not Mario Batali is drinking now. 

Summer night in Williamstown

    A warm, hazy summer evening in Williamstown.  I roam the roads that wind around the village proper, windows down, camera on the passenger seat, inhaling the countryside.  It feels, not surprisingly, like Vermont, which is just up one of these roads.  As the light finally fades in the summer sky, I roll back in to The Orchards, have a cold pint of Berkshire Brewing Company IPA in the bar, before strolling across the lightly creaking boards of the lobby and the lounge to my room. The plain girl sitting behind the reception desk says "Have a good night" as she rubs lotion into her hands.  I wonder if she and the maids make use of the little bottles that the guests leave behind, the ones that have been opened.  I wonder if she wonders who will hold these soft, soft hands.

An Eastern Comma butterfly

... visiting the little herb garden I put in behind the house a few days ago.

A dog and his man

   On a fine Saturday at the end of May, when the whether finally is warm enough, and you finally have enough gumption to get up and do it, this is what you do:  you get your human to take you out in the kayak.