Greetings from Massachusetts!
Oct. 19th, 2023 07:13 pmGreetings from Massachusetts! It has been thirty-five years since my last confession five days since I posted. Where does the time go? Well, one simply does get busy traveling…
My last day on PEI was bright and shining, a blue sky and a hint of crispness in the air. Perfect weather for a long wander on the beach, and then drifting across the road to watch the geese gather on the pond. More and more came, till the pond was thick with them, and then almost as one they rose into the sky and flew away, leaving only a tiny rear guard sharing the still quiet pond with the seagulls.
The afternoon wore away, until it was time to go to Dalvay-By-the-Sea, where I ate another ambrosial dinner as the sun set over the water. Then Anne of Green Gables by the wood fire, until encroaching dusk forced me to go. A perfect final day.
The next day I left early (and it's a wrench leaving Prince Edward Island), because I intended to cross most of Maine... on US-1, which hugs the coast, and is therefore not the most efficient route. I still maintain this would have been a good idea, if only I had allotted, say, at least two days, possibly three: enough time to stop and smell the sea air, explore the towns, have a lobster roll perhaps. (I envision Daniel and Gennady giving this a try, sometime in their latter days.)
Unfortunately (1) my plan was to do this all in one day, (2) I accidentally took a detour to Bangor, (3) when I say "accidentally" I mean that as I turned onto this detour there was a large sign saying "US-1A, Bangor," so I knew full well that I was on the way to Bangor, and also knew full well that Bangor was completely out of my way. Why not turn back? Why indeed. Sometimes the processes of the human soul are a mystery, aren't they.
But I reached my destination eventually, and the next day dawned bright and shining, and I visited two used bookstores nearby. One was devoted to military history, where I found a present for my dad, and also experienced the general delight of a bookstore that clearly began as a collecting hobby gone awry. There are a few labeled shelves, but also stacks of books piled haphazardly against the wall without rhyme or reason. Why is there a book about flower collecting sandwiched in between this history of the Korean War and that meditation on General Custer? Who can say.
And then onward to Beach Pea Bakery, where I had a delicious chicken salad sandwich on a croissant and finished Anne Lindbergh's The Worry Week, which is about three children who contrive to stay at the family beach house in Maine without their parents... only to discover that there's almost no food left in the house, so they have to forage for their rations! Delightful. My favorite Anne Lindbergh yet, and the perfect book to read in Maine.
And now I am staying with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
asakiyume! We are in process of making croissants, which are now on their third rise. Also we have been to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, which is one of my favorite museums in the world, and further endeared itself to me by having an entire exhibit devoted to Horse Tales: Galloping into Children's Books, which is mostly about picture books of course, but they also had a case that contained about two dozen editions of Black Beauty, which was fascinating!
Also in one of the other exhibits there was a place where you could try your hand at drawing a still life, which I did, and although my skills are very rusty, I did manage to produce a recognizable glass jar with three butterflies inside.
And today we went to the Norman Rockwell Museum, which was fantastic. In the basement there's a long gallery containing all of Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post covers, four high, all up and down three walls of the long, long room. We walked along, taking in all the covers, every cover telling a story, and you never get tired of them. But then suddenly at the end the Post insisted that he should start doing portrait covers - at which point the covers get boring, and Rockwell himself got bored and severed his ties to the magazine, although he'd been painting Post covers for over forty years at that point.
Then he went off and started painting covers for Look and Life, many of them on Civil Rights themes, which the Post wouldn't let him do.
Later on Rockwell got a reputation as a conservative painter, in the sense that he was popular with conservatives and therefore, one presumes, guilty by association. It was striking to realize how much of that is a result not of Rockwell's own views but of the Post's editorial policies, which demanded cheery, non-controversial covers that would draw in the widest possible cross-section of readers. More and more I realize how many decisions that are discussed as if they are purely artistic, a direct reflection of the artist's own views, are profoundly shaped by outside pressures, the need to please an editor or a certain audience in order to make money.
Tomorrow: the croissantening! If all goes well, the croissants will be ready for elevenses, to be taken with a nice hot cup of tea.
My last day on PEI was bright and shining, a blue sky and a hint of crispness in the air. Perfect weather for a long wander on the beach, and then drifting across the road to watch the geese gather on the pond. More and more came, till the pond was thick with them, and then almost as one they rose into the sky and flew away, leaving only a tiny rear guard sharing the still quiet pond with the seagulls.
The afternoon wore away, until it was time to go to Dalvay-By-the-Sea, where I ate another ambrosial dinner as the sun set over the water. Then Anne of Green Gables by the wood fire, until encroaching dusk forced me to go. A perfect final day.
The next day I left early (and it's a wrench leaving Prince Edward Island), because I intended to cross most of Maine... on US-1, which hugs the coast, and is therefore not the most efficient route. I still maintain this would have been a good idea, if only I had allotted, say, at least two days, possibly three: enough time to stop and smell the sea air, explore the towns, have a lobster roll perhaps. (I envision Daniel and Gennady giving this a try, sometime in their latter days.)
Unfortunately (1) my plan was to do this all in one day, (2) I accidentally took a detour to Bangor, (3) when I say "accidentally" I mean that as I turned onto this detour there was a large sign saying "US-1A, Bangor," so I knew full well that I was on the way to Bangor, and also knew full well that Bangor was completely out of my way. Why not turn back? Why indeed. Sometimes the processes of the human soul are a mystery, aren't they.
But I reached my destination eventually, and the next day dawned bright and shining, and I visited two used bookstores nearby. One was devoted to military history, where I found a present for my dad, and also experienced the general delight of a bookstore that clearly began as a collecting hobby gone awry. There are a few labeled shelves, but also stacks of books piled haphazardly against the wall without rhyme or reason. Why is there a book about flower collecting sandwiched in between this history of the Korean War and that meditation on General Custer? Who can say.
And then onward to Beach Pea Bakery, where I had a delicious chicken salad sandwich on a croissant and finished Anne Lindbergh's The Worry Week, which is about three children who contrive to stay at the family beach house in Maine without their parents... only to discover that there's almost no food left in the house, so they have to forage for their rations! Delightful. My favorite Anne Lindbergh yet, and the perfect book to read in Maine.
And now I am staying with
asakiyume! We are in process of making croissants, which are now on their third rise. Also we have been to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, which is one of my favorite museums in the world, and further endeared itself to me by having an entire exhibit devoted to Horse Tales: Galloping into Children's Books, which is mostly about picture books of course, but they also had a case that contained about two dozen editions of Black Beauty, which was fascinating!Also in one of the other exhibits there was a place where you could try your hand at drawing a still life, which I did, and although my skills are very rusty, I did manage to produce a recognizable glass jar with three butterflies inside.
And today we went to the Norman Rockwell Museum, which was fantastic. In the basement there's a long gallery containing all of Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post covers, four high, all up and down three walls of the long, long room. We walked along, taking in all the covers, every cover telling a story, and you never get tired of them. But then suddenly at the end the Post insisted that he should start doing portrait covers - at which point the covers get boring, and Rockwell himself got bored and severed his ties to the magazine, although he'd been painting Post covers for over forty years at that point.
Then he went off and started painting covers for Look and Life, many of them on Civil Rights themes, which the Post wouldn't let him do.
Later on Rockwell got a reputation as a conservative painter, in the sense that he was popular with conservatives and therefore, one presumes, guilty by association. It was striking to realize how much of that is a result not of Rockwell's own views but of the Post's editorial policies, which demanded cheery, non-controversial covers that would draw in the widest possible cross-section of readers. More and more I realize how many decisions that are discussed as if they are purely artistic, a direct reflection of the artist's own views, are profoundly shaped by outside pressures, the need to please an editor or a certain audience in order to make money.
Tomorrow: the croissantening! If all goes well, the croissants will be ready for elevenses, to be taken with a nice hot cup of tea.
