For April vacation we decided to visit Baltimore — partly because we wanted to see the city, partly because we knew a couple of people there, and partly because it was an excuse to ride on the high-speed Acela Express. We splurged on first class, which provided us a helpful attendant dedicated to our car, food and drink service at our seats, and (most important) wider seats with extra legroom. The food was merely adequate, and first class was occasionally bumpy (just like regular “business” class, surprise, surprise), and we didn’t really take advantage of the unlimited beverages (a glass or two of wine doesn’t compete with the four Bloody Marys consumed by each of the guys in front of us), but I suppose the more comfortable seating made it worth paying the extra fee. In any case, the Acela was mostly a very enjoyable experience — certainly much better than flying, and not just because I like trains. Avoiding all the security hassles at an airport is the #1 advantage, but there are many others; in general, going by train is just the civilized way to travel, and it’s a real pity that it’s dying out in North America. My only complaint is that the free WiFi service was pretty lame, being slow at the best of times and cutting out altogether at others.
Speaking of splurging, we decided to stay at the Hilton in the Inner Harbor neighborhood, mostly because we already have a relationship with them as we always stay at the Hilton Garden Inn when we go to Elmira. This particular Hilton provided several advantages but also many disadvantages. The biggest plus was the view from our 18th-floor room (of course they called it the 19th, since they skipped floor 13):
I suppose we would have appreciated this view even more if we had been sports fans. (The tourist info person at the city’s Visitor Center told us that Baltimoreans always appreciate visitors from Boston. “We like to take their money,” she explained, “since they always spend a lot when they come here to watch the Red Sox beat the Orioles.”) Anyway, the room was comfortable, the quality of the furniture matched the view, and the location couldn’t be beat.
Those are the advantages. The disadvantages all sound petty, but they added up when compared to the much less expensive Hilton Garden Inn: this regular (“full-price”) Hilton charges for WiFi, serves disappointing breakfasts, provides no fridge or microwave, has a sink that’s set back six inches and can be used easily only if you’re tall and skinny (neither of which we are), and features a shower head that’s too high for me to reach (and much too high for Barbara, who’s 4′9″). All of this for a single room that costs a lot more per night than our suite in Elmira. Now of course this is partly (largely?) because of the economic differences between Elmira and Baltimore, but it would be interesting to see what the Garden Inn costs in Baltimore (yes, there is one, in an almost-as-convenient location).
After walking around the Inner Harbor area, we stopped at the aforementioned Visitor Center, from which we took a 100-minute guided tour of the city on one of those fake trolleys. Despite the many errors made by our guide, a retired podiatrist, I’m really glad we took the tour and always recommend these things to newcomers to any city. They’re the best way to get an overview of the city and an orientation to what’s where. Then you know what to do for the rest of your visit.
I mentioned that our guide made many errors. Here are five of them:
- He claimed that the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore is the oldest Unitarian church in the United States. It was established in 1817. Dorchester’s First Parish Church was established in 1630. Not much of a contest there.
- Speaking of churches, he identified one as a “Lithuanian mosque”… and then compounded his mistake by observing that it’s a “Lithuanian Catholic mosque.”
- Another religious one: when we passed the Holocaust memorial, the guide referred to the “one million Jews killed by Hitler.” It’s not that I want to play a numbers game here, but one million is far from six million.
- On a non-religious matter, he pointed out the house of Wallis Simpson, who married “King Henry VIII.” Edward, Schmedward, let’s call him Henry.
- Finally, when we passed the building where Homicide: Life on the Street was filmed (see picture below), the guide observed that this wonderful TV series was directed by John Waters. Not even close!
The guide was also rather clueless about the response of one tourist while driving through the nearby German and Polish neighborhoods. “The Polish immigrants were unwilling to live next to the Germans,” he remarked.
The woman in the back of the bus said, “Gee, I wonder why.”
“It’s because the Germans invaded Poland before World War II…” the guide started to explain.
“She was being sarcastic!” interrupted another tourist.
After the “trolley” tour, we mostly got around on foot, especially when exploring the fascinating Mt. Vernon and Fells Point neighborhoods. We had to try out the light rail at least once, and we often took advantage of the wonderful new Charm City Circulator, which provides free and frequent bus service in a loop throughout the downtown area. With two routes still to go, the first route has been open for only three months and is already a tremendous success. At one point we needed to take a regular city bus, as we were going to the Baltimore Museum of Art (see next paragraph), which is outside of the downtown area. Not being completely sure of where the nearest bus stop might be, I whipped out my iPhone and checked the Maps app, which not only located the nearest stop for the #3 bus but even told us that the next bus would be coming along in four minutes! (I know, I sound like an Apple ad, but it was incredibly convenient.)
We visited three museums during our brief visit, and can highly recommend all of them:
- The Walters Art Museum has an extraordinary eclectic collection. We focused on the Egyptian artifacts, the Islamic manuscripts, and the special exhibit of Japanese cloisonné.
- The B&O Railroad Museum is perhaps of more specialized interest, but it has a fine collection of vintage locomotives and railway cars that visitors can explore (many cars are restored to their original condition), as well as a couple of well-done model railroad layouts.
- The 600-pound gorilla is the astonishing Baltimore Museum of Art, which has to be one of the top art museums in the country. Most fascinating was their temporary exhibit about Cezanne and his influence on American modernism, which I found both enjoyable and informative. The Antioch mosaics, the European art in general, and especially the Cone Collection all deserved more time than we had. If you’re ever in Baltimore, don’t miss this museum!
Finally, we can’t go anywhere without mentioning restaurants. All in all, we were a little bit disappointed in the food we had in Baltimore, and I’m sure we could have done better. Although we were told that it was silly for us as Bostonians to go out for seafood, it seemed sillier not to. Why go somewhere and avoid their specialty? So we mostly — but not exclusively — ate seafood. One dinner we ate at Phillips Seafood, which started with two strikes against it because of being both touristy and a chain, but it turned out to be perfectly adequate. We also ate at the famous Bertha’s Mussels, still touristy but at least local; it was good, but definitely not gourmet. On the gourmet side we did have an excellent meal at the Marie Louise Bistro, but we concluded with an overpriced and unimpressive experience at the LDS restaurant our last night. We went there because it was raining and we were exhausted from all our walking, so we found the closest restaurant to our hotel. At first we thought that the sign meant that it was a Mormon restaurant, but it turned out to stand for “Luna del Sea.” This hybrid of English and fake Italian turned out to represent the cuisine all too well, and neither the service nor the ambiance made me comfortable. Don’t bother going there the next time you’re in Baltimore.
Oh — two more things. First, it’s worth noting that there are many instances of public art in the downtown area. Here are a couple of examples:
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| Finally, on the right we have what purports to be the narrowest house in Baltimore: the visitors’ info claims that it’s only nine feet wide, and it certainly looks to be no more than that. If you look carefully, you’ll see from the brick that there are different row houses almost immediately to the left and right of the doorway. |
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I am sure that we are going to return.
Barbara and I highly recommend a small Bed & Breakfast in Amherst, the Stone House Farm. Right on the northern edge of town, a mile or so beyond the end of the U.Mass. campus, it’s convenient to get to but still feels secluded. Aside from all the beautiful flowers (Candy, the innkeeper, is a commercial flower grower), notable features are the two beautiful guest suites, delicious personalized breakfasts right in one’s suite, and all the animals: two cats, two goats, two ducks, several guinea pigs, and countless chickens.
We had a relaxing but too short vacation in the area, including visits to several museums, the gorgeous campus of Mt. Holyoke college, half a day in Northamptom, and a day in Historic Deerfield, which is a not-to-be-missed opportunity for anyone interested in New England history. It’s too bad that the day we were in Deerfield was muggy and in the 90s, thereby limiting the amount of walking around we wanted to do.
We had lunch today at Beijing Garden, a reasonably good Chinese restaurant in Elmira. Why were we the only customers using chopsticks? Why was everybody covertly looking at us?
And why wasn’t this restaurant open yesterday (Christmas Day)? I guess there isn’t much of a Jewish population in Elmira anymore.
If you can’t travel to Venice in the real world, the next best thing is to travel vicariously in the novels of Donna Leon. Formally speaking, these novels are squarely in the mystery genre, but Leon devotes as much attention to her locale (Venice, of course) and her characters (primarily Commissario Guido Brunetti and his family) as she does to the plot of the mystery. Some readers might find this balance disappointing, but the books are much the richer for it.
The Girl of His Dreams is the latest in Leon’s Brunetti series. The characters continue from Blood from a Stone and Death at La Fenice, both of which I read last year; the stories are independent. This time we have a lot about religion: the Roman Catholic church, Catholic priests, and a somewhat vague alternative but Christian religion that might be a cult or at least a scam. The teenagers are a little less stereotypical now, perhaps because they’re older. There is also a continuation of two themes from Blood from a Stone, ethnic prejudice and the presence of foreigners in Venice. This time the foreign group is Gypsies, who have fled from the former Yugoslavia during the conflicts there. Political issues infuse the novel, ranging from the treatment of Gypsies to the word itself to the Venetians’ attitude toward the Church. Leon’s pace is fairly slow and deliberate, but the book is never boring. Do read it.
A small linguistic note:
Leon is an American living in Venice, so she wrote the book in English, though Italian and Venetian are sprinkled lightly throughout to add an air of authenticity. The linguistic issue arises when two characters decide whether to call each other by the familiar or the polite second-person pronoun. I’m familiar with this issue in French and German, and I’ve asked Spanish-speakers about it in Spanish, but I don’t know much about it in Italian. Nevertheless, I understand that an Italian author could simply make a point by having a character say “tu” or “voi.” This distinction is nearly impossible to translate into English, thereby requiring some sort of circumlocation or paraphrase. But the English-speaking writer can simply have her characters say something like, “Shall we call each other tu?” or even “Shall we use the familiar form of the pronoun?” The latter, of course, would be unbearably pedantic and implausible, so we have to assume that the reader will understand “tu” from context or from familiarity with other Romance languages.
One day I walk into a Russian grocery store in Watertown, and the owner starts speaking to me in Russian; I don’t understand a word. Another day I walk into a Russian grocery store in Waban, and the employee at the register starts speaking to me in Russian. Waiting to check out a book at the Boston Public Public Library, I can’t understand a question from the next patron in line, because — you guessed it — the question is in Russian. Buying new glasses at LensCrafters, I remark to the optician that I assume from his name that he must be Russian, and he says yes and that it’s clear that I am too.
Do I look Russian? Apparently I do, though I never thought so. I suppose it isn’t surprising, since that’s what most of my ancestry is. But I speak only about 20 words of Russian, and the only phrase that’s really useful to me is, “Я не понимаю.”
Barbara and I just got back from spending a week in Elmira. Actually it was just five days, it only felt like a week. Mostly I played a bunch of computer Scrabble, took some walks in the surprisingly nice weather, and caught up on my reading. We also spent a very pleasant half day in Corning; I recommend the old part of town, recently renamed the Gaffer District. Oh, well, I guess I needed the vacation.
Barbara and I spent a few hours yesterday evening in Jamaica Plain. First we walked to the Axiom Gallery, which is hosting an intriguing Math and Art exhibit through April 27 right next to the Green Street T station (confusingly on the Orange Line, not the Green Line). Most of the art is worth seeing for its own sake, but the special appeal for me was the large number of connections with some of the topics that my precalculus class has been studying this year. The sculptures of Bathsheba Grossman are particularly striking. For example:
The works of Kevin van Aelst were also vividly related to what we’ve been studying, as his Dragon Curve, Sierpinski Arrowhead (made of Triscuits!), and Cantor Set made out of a fractal egg all show:
  
I was also intrigued by the works of Keith Peters, which could readily be modeled in NetLogo or StarLogo, even though he apparently used neither, and also by the works of J. Michael James, whose fractal condor was especially beautiful as it swooped around on a large screen.
All in all, definitely a worthwhile experience. I just wish the exhibit had been more extensive, so that I could have justified recommending it to my Weston students. Barbara and I spent 45 minutes there, but I think most of my students would feel done with it after 20 — hardly worth the trip from Weston. But it would be worth the trip from Dorchester, even if we hadn’t already been in JP (where Barbara works).
Anyway, after visiting the gallery, we walked to Cafe D, where we had a pleasant and delicious dinner. Crispy calamari followed by a fish taco and salad for Barbara; arancini followed by duck confit with a cassoulet of braised white beans, portabella mushrooms, and pancetta for me. With wine, tax, and tip, it all came to just under a hundred dollars, which seems to be par for the course these days. It might or might not be worth the trip from Dorchester (on the edge, in my judgment), but, as I said, we were there anyway.
Delayed post (originally written 9/10):
If you say you’re going to the Berkshires for vacation, nobody bats an eye. But say that you’re going to Pittsfield, you get some very odd looks. Who ever vacations in Pittsfield? It can simply be, of course, a convenient base for day trips throughout the Berkshires, so now you can relax.
But that’s not all it was. In fact, Barbara and I really did take a short vacation in Pittsfield — on purpose, even! That’s because of the Dorchester Historical Society (DHS), you see.
You don’t see the connection? Well, the DHS headquarters is the William Clapp House, and our historical connections are heavily imbued with the Clapp and Blake families. One of their branches went “out west” to Pittsfield, and their family house there is now a B&B: the Thaddeus Clapp House. So naturally we had to stay there. It turns that not only is it a truly excellent B&B, but the owner, Rebecca Smith, is a veritable gold-mine of information about the Clapp family and the history of Pittsfield.
And Pittsfield itself turned out to be surprisingly interesting. Currently undergoing something of a renaissance, it is recovering from the devastating loss occasioned by the departure of General Electric. In its former condition it had little to offer visitors, but its industrial basis was economically sound; now the industry is gone, but there’s beginning to be a replacement. Public art is sprinkled throughout the downtown area, lending life and interest to it. There are a few excellent restaurants, such as the Trattoria Rustica, though we found the better known Spice to be definitely overrated. The small Berkshire Museum has some interesting exhibits, including a cool one on toys. Self-guided walking tours are available and worthwhile.
But mostly we really did use Pittsfield as a base for day trips. MASS MoCA in North Adams is a must-see, as much for the buildings as for the art in them. We arrived during the tremendous controversy about the Büchel exhibit, getting to hear all about it and glimpsing bits of its through the half-hearted attempts to shield it from view. We liked some of the rest of the art, were puzzled by much of it, but definitely felt that it was worth seeing. (And their restaurant, Cafe Latino, was surprisingly good! Try the calmari, the fish tacos, and the anticuchos.)
The small Crane Museum in Dalton was also a surprising hit. You might not think that a museum dedicated to the history of paper would be fascinating, but fascinating it was.
So now the museum count is up to three. But there were two more big ones on our list: it’s always worth devoting significant time to the Clark Institute in Williamstown, where we saw a wonderful Monet exhibit including large numbers of works that were totally different from the ones with which we had been familiar. And the much smaller Williams College Museum of Art had an entrancing exhibit about Sara and Gerald Murphy, about whom we would have known nothing if it weren’t for reading a New Yorker article about them. (And now we’ll have to watch De-Lovely again, since we discovered that they had a pervasive presence in the life of Cole Porter, which we hadn’t noticed.)
Finally, on our way home, we spent half a day at Edith Wharton’s estate, The Mount — a stop that we highly recommend.
All in all, hardly a typical vacation, but it all turned out to be both fun and educational!
Continuing my inadvertent theme of reading books with a strong sense of place, I just finished The City of Falling Angels, by John Berendt of Midnight in the Garden or Good and Evil fame. In this case it’s not a coincidence, as it was recommended by an Italian teacher with whom I was discussing Blood from a Stone. Like that book, The City of Falling Angels is about Venice; unlike that book, it is non-fiction. As Berendt points out in an interview that constitutes the afterword, Venice shares many characteristics with Savannah, even though they’re actually totally different: both are unique, bound by their history, and inward-looking.
Berendt recently spent several years living in Venice, and this leisurely book is the result. Don’t read it if you want fast-paced action! Although it’s written in the form of a novel — with a story line, three-dimensional characters, conflict, and resolution — it’s definitely not a novel. And it’s not a comprehensive view of Venice and Venetians; some reviewers justifiably complained about Berendt’s focus on upper-class Venetian society, but read the book for that particular perspective, that slice of life in Venice. It’s not only not a novel, it also isn’t a sociological treatise. What it does is bring Venice to life, along with many of its fascinating characters. (Unlike what he did in Midnight, Berendt has created no composite characters and no fictionalized events: this is totally non-fiction.) The principal narrative arc is the famous arson fire in the Fenice opera house, which frames the story line but in no sense dominates it. Yes, you do find out who (probably) set the fire, but that’s not the point: you have to enjoy hearing in depth about the many people Berendt meets or learns about in Venice, thinking about them as forming the big idea of the book, not as asides. There is a lot of focus on the ex-pat community — not surprisingly, since Berendt was temporarily one of them. Peggy Guggenheim and Ezra Pound may not spring to mind as true Venetians, but they’re an important part of the story. Read it before you go.
Speaking of professional development…yesterday was Global Awareness Day in the Weston Public Schools. Unlike Art Day, this was an eight-hour endeavor — very elaborate in planning, development, and conception.
We began with a presentation about the forthcoming visit to Weston by seven teachers from Kasiisi Primary School in Uganda. Only one has ever been out of Uganda (he has a Ph.D. from Michigan State), so we expect a lot of culture shock for the other six. We were also reminded that Weston is not a typical segment of the United States.
Then there was a geography bee, which was a lot of fun; the contestants were divided into four teams, one each from the three levels of schools and one from the central administration. The Middle School won. But the High School came close.
Next was an amazingly diverse choice of seminars run by teachers who volunteered to share their knowledge and expertise. Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother to cite the entire list, but in this case it’s worth doing:
- Africa Today
- An Afternoon in South America
- An Introduction to Multicultural Folk Dance
- China’s Minority Peoples
- Examining the Chinese Cultural Revolution through the book Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
- Global Communications and SKYPE
- Global Warming
- Globalization of Indigenous Food
- Introduction to Mandarin
- Making Multicultural Books in the Classroom
- Pandemic/Avian Flu — Info for You
- Revive Your High School Languages
- The VERY Abridged Japan
- Uechi Ryu Karate Do
- Views of Cameroon
- Welcome, Uganda!
- What’s in the world’s water?
- Writin’ Numbers
I participated in #4, presented by a teacher who had traveled along the Silk Road last summer from Xi An to the border of Pakistan. Everything about the seminar was interesting, but I was most struck by how the Western Chinese terrain, architecture, and people all looked much more Turkish than Chinese. And indeed that’s what they are.
The seminars were followed by an amazing lunch. We were greeted by a cafeteria in which every table had been set with regular place settings — that is, if “regular” includes chopsticks, a large crock pot at each table, and a variety of ingredients. The lunch came complete with documentation at each place, as lunch always should. The menu was listed this way:
- Vietnamese Pho Chicken/Vegetarian
- Salad
- Naan
- Cookies
But the important part was the comprehensive instructions:
HOW TO MAKE YOUR SOUP
You will need to work together at the table. Each table should be set with a bowl for all diners. In the center of the table you should have a pot of soup (chicken-based), cut-up chicken, noodles, scallions, cilantro, bean sprouts, hot sauce, hoisin sauce, lime, and some bread (naan).
- Each person should place any of the following in his/her bowl: chicen, noodles, scallions, cilantro, and bean sprouts… (Those who are vegetarian will need to take their bowls to the front of the cafeteria to get vegetable-based soup.) You can further garnish the soup with hot sauce, lime juice, and/or hoisin sauce. ENJOY! Feel free to take seconds or to ask if you need more.
- Each setting should have a salad.
- etc., etc.
Wow!
All of this had been organized and prepared by the Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Alan Oliff, along with the other administrators in the Weston Public Schools!
Anything after this lunch must be an anticlimax. We followed it with 6–12 department meetings and a high school faculty meeting. At the Math Department meeting we discussed a variety of topics relating to global awareness in math — more on this subject later, but I’m skeptical.
I recommend Blood from a Stone, by Donna Leon. If you look at the photo on the opening screen of her website, you’ll immediately see what I liked most about this novel: it makes the reader feel that s/he’s in Venice. For some reason I seem to be picking mysteries with a well-developed sense of place lately, and this book is no exception. You can see, hear, and smell Venice as you read it.
That’s #1, but Blood from a Stone has other strengths as well. For one, it deals with issues of prejudice and illegal immigration, familiar to us here but pleasantly jarring in the context of northern Italy. Also, the characters and plot are three-dimensional. The teenagers in the book are a bit too much stereotypically teenagers, but I suppose many teenagers are — and the recurring presence of the protagonist’s family life humanizes him in a way that nothing else could do. The book is somewhat leisurely, so don’t read it if you want a fast-paced mystery. Pick a time when you can be a leisurely and thoughtful reader, and you won’t regret it!
We have recently been discussing ethnomathematics in the context of Weston’s global awareness emphasis. Here are some thoughts on this subject:
It’s worth studying number systems other than our own familiar Hindu-Arabic one. Years ago I developed quite a number of activities on different number systems — such as Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Chinese, Maya, etc. — including a computer program that probably doesn’t work any more since it was developed for Mac OS 9. I’ve used these activities with a wide range of students from grades 4–11, and they seem to work well. The mathematical ideas that pervade these activities include bases; numbers, numerals, and names of numbers; the concept of zero; alternative algorithms; and unit fractions. These topics are worth studying for many of the same reasons that foreign languages are worth studying. In particular, they give perspective on our own system, which is often so familiar to us that it becomes transparent.
On the other hand, I believe that we are correct in thinking that math is much more nearly universal than it is culturally specific. (The role of proof is the only really deep difference I can think of.) The tiny number of usually superficial differences are important for mathematical reasons, not for cultural reasons. It’s worth knowing that there were parallel discoveries of the Pythagorean Theorem in India, Chinese, and Greece; we don’t have one theorem in one country and a different one in another. The same goes for Pascal’s Triangle. And negative numbers. It’s worth knowing that there are different algorithms for multiplying, but the more important lesson is that all cultures above a certain primitive level of technology do multiply. (I know, it’s not PC to say “primitive”.) Human similarities are more important than human differences. (Likewise, language differences are illuminating, but human languages are more alike than different.) In both math and language, Plato was right. Ethnomathematics is a rich field, but it’s going to teach us much more about appreciating similarities than about appreciating differences.
On the third hand, the real problem with taking a Eurocentric view of math is that it limits our understanding of the contributions of the rest of the world. Years ago I referred to the wall of mathematicians at the Museum of Science as the “wall of dead white European male mathematicians”; it has gotten somewhat better since. I can recommend several excellent resources on multicultural approaches to math, such as the following:
But be suspicious of anything by the late Claudia Zaslavsky!
This year’s trip to Elmira was not nearly as interesting as last year’s.
If you’re not going anywhere for vacation, how about being a tourist at home? That’s what Barbara and I did this year as a consequence of having unfortunate summer calendars: we ended up having a total of one week’s vacation time, which would have been nine days if we include the weekends at each end, but was actually seven because Barbara had to work two of those days. For a variety of other reasons we also couldn’t even take the weekend at a B&B that we had wanted, so we decided to limit ourselves to local day trips, pretending we were out-of-town tourists in the Boston area for a brief visit. So we went to the Museum of Fine Arts [see my post of August 21] and various other museums, historical sites, and the like.
The highlights included the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, the Newton Historical Society, the Quincy Historical Society, and the Adams National Historical Park. All were worth it in their own way, and I got a number of ideas for our own Dorchester Historical Society. I felt like a Manhattanite who has never seen the Statue of Liberty, since this was my first visit to the Adams National Park despite having lived in the Boston area for the past 41 years.
Part of our at-home mini-vacation (more on that later) was an all-too-rare visit to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, all-too-rare since we’re members and ought to be taking more advantage of that opportunity. Anyway, we wanted to see the Americans in Paris exhibit, so that prompted us to go to the MFA. And we indeed enjoyed both the paintings themselves and the contextual information about the artists. When we are about 90% of the way through the exhibit, and all was well…suddenly…
A loud siren went off, and a voice on the PA system said that there was an emergency and everyone was to leave the building immediately by the nearest exit. No explanation, nothing but repeats of the message over and over again. There were a lot of foreign visitors, many of whom were understandably confused. We got to the escalators, with a couple of hundred people ahead of us, and noticed that everyone was slowly lined up waiting patiently for the down escalator, while the up escalator was dutifully carrying nobody on its way upstairs. So we promptly pushed the red stop button and walked down, followed by half of other guests. Why didn’t anyone else think of that?
Outside we found that most people were clustered all too close to the building. What if it was a real fire? Well, the building looks pretty fire-proof. But what if there was a bomb? Surely standing fifty feet from the building wouldn’t be good enough. And then a fire truck appeared. And another. And another. But still there were people standing right in the fire lane!
By time we gave up and left, six fire trucks had arrived, including a hook and ladder. One firefighter rapidly ascended the ladder onto the roof of the museum, axe out in his hand, and promptly disappeared.
Oddly enough, I could find no follow-up anywhere. So what really happened?
First I was told that Churchill said it. Then I was told that it was Wilde. But actually it was Shaw who described England and America as “two countries separated by a common language.”
Language is part of culture, so we’re also separated not only by a common language by also by a common culture. In both cases the differences are striking and interesting. The following observations are based on a mere week in England, so take them with several grains of salt — although I did spend several weeks in England several decades ago, for what that’s worth.
- Everybody’s whining about gas prices in the U.S., but petrol in England was up to a pound per litre on my last day there, and that works out to about seven dollars per gallon. Frankly, that’s a good thing, as it discourages driving.
- This ad appeared in many Underground stations and elsewhere:
- Fortunately our gracious hostess was willing to drive us around everywhere, so we didn’t have to cope with driving on the wrong side of the road. After a year in England, she has gotten used to it. The roundabouts (rotaries) were my principal worry — well, actually, they were #2. It was making a right turn that always seemed the worst. There was also this concept of “mini-roundabouts” or virtual roundabouts, as I liked to call them. Imagine an ordinary T-intersection with a circle painted in the middle of it; the circle makes it a virtual roundabout, which changes the right-of-way rules so that whoever is “in” in the virtual roundabout has the right of way, instead of the usual rules.
- Despite all the influences of American culture, the Brits still seem to queue up more often than we do. Probably not as much as 40 years ago, but still…
- It’s not clear what the situation is with the double-decker buses. My guidebook claimed that they are a thing of the past. A report on NPR claimed the same. But there they were, all around London. Hmm…
- There were security cameras everywhere. I suppose it’s a reaction to the terrorist attacks in the London Underground a year ago. Surprisingly, it didn’t bother me, and I din’t feel that my privacy was being invaded.
Food and drink:
- Food was definitely much better than I had expected. We had to try the ubiquitous fish and chips, which wasn’t bad, and most of the other meals were downright good.
- But there were chips with everything (sounds like the title of a play); even an Asian or Greek meal that came with rice was also accompanied by chips (“half and half”).
- Surprisingly, almost every restaurant we went to offered at least one vegetarian entree, usually marked with a V.
- Also surprisingly, many of the restaurants were totally non-smoking, and most of the others had non-smoking sections. At the end of this calendar year the entire country is going non-smoking in restaurants and bars, following Ireland’s example.
- Coffee is still bad in most restaurants — usually instant. But Starbucks is everywhere, and many restaurants and cafes are serving excellent brewed coffee.
- We had an excellent Asian meal in London — mostly dim sum — at Yauatcha, an Asian restaurant with a Japanese ambience but mostly Chinese food.
We’re staying at 22 York Street, a lovely B&B just off Baker Street in London. Of course it’s foolish to try to make a dent in the to-do list when one has only a short stay in London, but we did enjoy the little we were able to see. This was my fourth time in London, but it was Barbara’s first.
We started out at New London Architecture, which provided a huge scale model of all of London along with an overview of architecture around the city (not to be confused with The City).
Otherwise, museums were the highlight:
The Wallace Collection (the museum, not the band) was new to both of us, but the British Museum was an old friend of mine. I had to revisit the Egyptian Collection, especially the Rosetta Stone, as they were the source of a life-changing experience for me, kindling my interest in ancient Egypt and my decision to study the Middle Egyptian language, best known for its writing system (hieroglyphics) and holding a continuing fascination for me for the past 38 years.
The newly renovated British Library provided a couple of first-rate exhibits, one on the history of printing and another containing many dozens of historically important books from around the world.
We tried to see the Jewish Museum, but unfortunately I had forgotten that it was still Passover, so they were closed. Sigh.
The National Gallery was of course much too large to see, so we contented ourselves primarily with the Impressionists and related artists: Monet, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Seurat, and the like.
No time for either Tate or for the V&A, unfortunately.
A totally amazing structure next to St. Pancras Station is currently being renovated. Check it out the next time you’re in London.
Since we’re in London, we couldn’t pass up going to theatre at least once. We saw Smaller, starring Dawn French, a black comedy about all-too-familiar family dynamics. Reasonably good. A bit predictable, but that’s because it’s so true-to-life.
We also met up with our Norwegian friend Elin, who was coincidentally in London at the same time as we were. She shot a lot of photos, including this one of me.
Since we’re staying right by the Baker Street station on the Underground, we though of paying a small visit to the Sherlock Holmes Museum and to Regent’s Park. We changed our mind about the former, since the description made it clear that it wasn’t worth the $11 admission, but we did enjoy our walk in the lovely Regent’s Park.
Barbara and I are in England right now, visiting our Dorchester friend Ardis, whose company has sent her to Market Harborough for a period of over a year. She volunteered to be our kind chauffeur, so we don’t have to cope with driving on the wrong side of the road. So far we’ve gone to Cambridge (see previous post), Burghley House, and Rockingham Castle (see below).
Ardis characterizes Market Harborough as the Wellesley of England — an apt description, enhanced by a feature that Wellesley doesn’t have: the Grand Union Canal. Ardis lives right at a marina on the canal, so she took us and five of her English friends on a day-long leisurely voyage in a narrowboat along a bit of the canal. In order to fit into the locks, these boats are only seven feet wide, although some are as much as 72 feet long! (We rented a 28-footer.) The reason that I say “leisurely” and “a bit” is that the boat moves very slowly; we were able to get off periodically and walk alongside on the towpath, easily keepii=ng up with the boat. We went as far as the fascinating Foxton Locks, where the change in canal level is so dramatic that ten consecutive locks are necessary. I wore my map jacket, which engendered a lot of interest among random passersby, including a man from India who was excited to find that his home city of Thiruvananthapuram was right there in the middle of my back. (Don’t ask me to pronounce it.)
Unlike Wellesley, Market Harborough also has about a dozen charity shops where one can buy used items cheap, and all for a good cause: Oxfam, Cancer Research, etc.; I suppose that’s because the regular prices in England are about double what they are in the U.S. these days.
Burghley House was well worth the journey. This unassuming country house features over a hundred rooms and a castle-like appearance. Most of what we saw dated from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, so we were startled to see a photo there that was shot in Swampscott, Massachusetts, in 1927. It turned out that a relatively recent Burghley — David Cecil — won the 400-meter hurdles at the 1928 Olympics, and the photo showed him at a track meet the previous year in which he competed for Cambridge against Oxford, Harvard, and Yale. One of the characters in Chariots of Fire was based on Lord Burghley.
Market Harborough is in the Midlands, a quick one-hour train trip from London. Everywhere you look there are sheep, rolling hills, more sheep, and more rolling hills — along with a surprising wind farm at one point. On the outskirts of Market Harborough we visited Rockingham Castle. It boggles the mind that this building was actually the work of William the Conqueror, and is a private home today! Here in the U.S. a hundred-year-old house is considered old. The place was packed with tourists, including many families with kids. Some of the kids were a bit confused by the introductory video — which included simulated newscasts from 1066, the British Civil War, and other important events — and by the wax figures that represented a prisoner and a kitchen worker.
Barbara and I spent the day with our host, Ardis, visiting the other Cambridge — you know, the one in England. Seeing 600-year-old buildings still in active use and walking in the footsteps of Isaac Newton never cease to astonish. Unfortunately Trinity College was closed, but we got to see King’s, Queens’, and St. John’s. (Be sure to get those apostrophes right!)
For quite a while we watched — but never tried — punting. It’s clearly harder than it first looks, as only the experienced punters were successful: the amateurs kept running into other punts and the shoreline. And of course we had to walk across the Mathematical Bridge.
Aside from the University, the other two interesting tidbits about the city were an unusually good lunch served to us by a Polish waitress at a Greek restaurant (which of course also served Indian food), and an excellent Arts and Crafts Fair, where Barbara couldn’t resist buying a hard-carved wooden bowl.
Just got back from Narragansett, RI, where we attended the wedding of two of my former students. They became high-school sweethearts ten or eleven years ago, and now they’re married! And so we have another B&B to report on (see also my post of December 28): Barbara and I stayed at the Blueberry Cove Inn, a warm and lovely B&B that unfortunately suffers by comparison after the Painted Lady. It’s not that there’s really anything wrong with it, but a room of 200 square feet can’t possibly match a suite of 575 square feeet — and a pretty but ordinary house can’t really match Victorian splendor paired with a billiards room, a jacuzzi, a DVD player, etc. (We also had to pay $25/night more at the Painted Lady than we paid at Blueberry Cove. The difference was well worth it.)
Despite the general lack of excitement in Elmira, it does boast two great attractions: the Arnot Art Museum and the Chemung Valley History Museum.
Walking into the history museum, I was immediately taken aback by being offered the senior citizens’ admission fee.
“Really?” I asked, not thinking of myself as old.
“You’re over 55, aren’t you?” replied the considerably older man at the desk. I had to admit that I was. But how did he know?
Anyway, the museum has a well-done permanent exhibit on Mark Twain and the history of the Chemung Valley (southern tier of New York and northern tier of Pennsylvania). It also currently has three temporary exhibits, one on the Underground Railway (and the general history of black residents of the Elmira area), one on the history of Route 17 (which is currently being turned into I-86), and one on the history of patriotism in the Chemung Valley. This last one was surprisingly interesting, containing far more than the solutions to geometry problems represented by U.S. flags with various numbers of stars. In particular, it emphasized the roles of voting, citizen participation, and dissent. Above the whole exhibit was a quotation from General Wesley Clark: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
A refreshing view in these days of the religious right and the current administration in Washington.
When we go to Elmira (see yesterday’s post), Barbara and I usually stay at the Hilton Garden Inn in Horseheads. (Yes, you heard that right: Horseheads.) Like any of the low-end Hiltons, it is boring, predictable, and perfectly adequate. So for 2005 we decided on a more exciting option: a high-Victorian Bed & Breakfast in Elmira, the Painted Lady. Our beautiful suite at this warm and friendly B&B was only slightly more expensive than our room at the Hilton would have been, but it returned many times the subjective value.
There is, of course, always a trade-off when choosing good B&B’s over average hotels:
- In a B&B — in the right B&B, at any rate — you get personalized service, great breakfasts, comfort, an atmosphere completely free of residual smoke, and a home-like feel.
- In a hotel — in the right one, again — you get room-service, fresh towels and sheets every single day*, a 24-hour front desk [who cares?], a swimming pool, and a microwave oven in the room.
The B&B is clearly worth the trade-off, especially when it’s the Painted Lady, which provides elegant but comfortable surroundings, restaurant advice and reservations, a jacuzzi in each guest room, a billiards room and a lovely piano room on the first floor, and a real featherbed. Like the hotel, they also provide a fridge in each room, and Wi-Fi with free Internet access and a VCR/DVD player, so there’s no need to suffer technology withdrawal. These modern necessities come amidst the 12-foot ceilings and exuberant ornateness of the peak of the Victorian era, where “too much is never enough.”
The good proprietors of the Painted Lady (who are originally from Massachusetts, by the way) claim to provide
refined elegance, luxurious surroundings and pampered relaxation.
And they really do! I highly recommend their B&B.
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*The B&B norm is purportedly every two or three days — though our towels were changed and our bed made every day except for Christmas Day itself.
Here I am, enjoying my vacation in the tropical paradise of Elmira, New York. No, wait! I must be thinking of someplace else. Elmira isn’t a tropical paradise — it’s a cosmopolitan urban center with hundreds of exciting cultural opportunities to choose from.
Well…no…it isn’t that either. It’s merely where I have to go to visit the in-laws.
But perhaps you’ll detect a certain theme to some of the people I ran into during this visit:
- The scruffy-looking man hurrying past me as I’m unloading the car, pausing only to ask, “I just found a VCR; do you know anyone who would like to buy one?”
- The guy in front of Barbara and me in the cashier’s line at the drugstore who tells us (over and over again) how he couldn’t find an electric menorah anywhere else.
- The helpful customer in the super market who looks at the Bounty paper towels in our cart and proceeds to tell us why we should buy Viva instead, going into great detail about their coefficients of absorbency and the exact differences in unit prices between different types of Viva.
- The library patron who gets my attention as I’m about to enter the public library and proceeds to say, “Did you know that somebody died from a hangnail on this very spot earlier today? He was standing there bleeding to death, and I tried to call 911 but couldn’t get through.”
- Another library patron who proceeds to ask me questions until I say that I’ve only been there for ten minutes, whereupon she apologizes and said that she assumed I was a librarian.
- A third library patron who walks up to me to tell me that he had found a wallet-sized calendar and asks me whether it’s mine.
OK, enough of that. Stay tuned for posts on our B&B and the Chemung Valley History Museum (the two truly interesting things about our visit).
Perhaps a Venn Diagram would help.
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