Boston Itself
Bus rides to and fro notwithstanding, Boston itself was perfectly fine. I finally got to see Pete's apartment (the street that he lives on is indeed too loud), had a drink with him at Bukowski's, and visited the famous supermarket that employs him.
And, like Pete, I noticed this time how Boston is overrun with irritating college kids, yakking or being drunk on the subways or flashing bright & bandwagony, never-before-
worn Red Sox paraphernalia. It's funny this never sunk in before. But at least the weather was fantastic, clear fall air with summer sun.
We watched Little Miss Sunshine — which is fantastic, go see this movie — and we wandered around the city some, but best of all was eating Indian food back in Jamaica Plain and then drinking snobby beer while watching Mr. Show on DVD.
Since Pete's moving away to an unknown destination in a couple of weeks, I'm particularly glad I saw him now.
I would perhaps address Pete in the second and not the third person, but Pete's computer monitor is broken, meaning he is probably not reading this.
While Pete was working on Saturday morning I hopped over to Harvard to see their art museums, one of which (the Fogg) has a pretty interesting exhibit of artists' sketchbooks up. You can poke through some of them online: check out George Grosz's Manhattan skyline 'n' dead mouse mix. The Sackler museum is a tidy ancient & Asian art museum, spanning many centuries, where I still found the highlight to be their one room of contemporary art, particularly a couple of abstracted ink landscapes by the Chinese artist Liu Guosong, who pulls threads out of his inked cotton paper to produce a whorled, softly marble-like effect. The Sackler had some neat Korean paintings of bamboo, too, monochromatic and calligraphic, from I think the 18th century or so.
Sunday I took a non-Greyhound and therefore non-unhappiness-inducing bus to Plymouth, near which my college friend Dan is spending his summer at an incredibly pleasant summer camp for English & Scottish folk dancing. Dan is working in the kitchen and dancing where his free time allows him. Highly reminiscent of scout camp, the place is envelopingly treesy (principally pines) and features a nice-sized lake, around which we canoed before lunch while talking about movies and music. I think bucolic is more a country word then a foresty word, but bucolic still sums it up pretty well.
The people at the camp are a friendly mix of mousy-haired college kids, couples in upper middle age, Canadians, and the other earthy-type men & women you'd expect to see doing English & Scottish folk dance in Massachusetts. Lunch, serving some 120 in a pavilion, was incredibly good. Dan is doing well, looking towards his second year of musicology grad school in Ann Arbor.
Someone connected to the camp had installed on certain interior walls (here and there, mostly in bathrooms) these contraptions made out of small bits of wood, taking up a space maybe two feet high and a little less wide. Pumping a vertical handle up and down conveys marbles, one by one, to the top of the device, from which they clatter down a compiled slalom in two or sometimes three dimensions, clacking off the wooden pieces nailed into the wall & striking glockenspiel-like metal bells, tuned in triads and boxing in some of the ramp-patterns. You end up with a whimsical little minute-serenade of marbly rolling & whacking noises, with the added harmony of the bells. It's kind of hard to explain why these are the best thing ever, but they are.
And, like Pete, I noticed this time how Boston is overrun with irritating college kids, yakking or being drunk on the subways or flashing bright & bandwagony, never-before-
worn Red Sox paraphernalia. It's funny this never sunk in before. But at least the weather was fantastic, clear fall air with summer sun.
We watched Little Miss Sunshine — which is fantastic, go see this movie — and we wandered around the city some, but best of all was eating Indian food back in Jamaica Plain and then drinking snobby beer while watching Mr. Show on DVD.
Since Pete's moving away to an unknown destination in a couple of weeks, I'm particularly glad I saw him now.
I would perhaps address Pete in the second and not the third person, but Pete's computer monitor is broken, meaning he is probably not reading this.
While Pete was working on Saturday morning I hopped over to Harvard to see their art museums, one of which (the Fogg) has a pretty interesting exhibit of artists' sketchbooks up. You can poke through some of them online: check out George Grosz's Manhattan skyline 'n' dead mouse mix. The Sackler museum is a tidy ancient & Asian art museum, spanning many centuries, where I still found the highlight to be their one room of contemporary art, particularly a couple of abstracted ink landscapes by the Chinese artist Liu Guosong, who pulls threads out of his inked cotton paper to produce a whorled, softly marble-like effect. The Sackler had some neat Korean paintings of bamboo, too, monochromatic and calligraphic, from I think the 18th century or so.
Sunday I took a non-Greyhound and therefore non-unhappiness-inducing bus to Plymouth, near which my college friend Dan is spending his summer at an incredibly pleasant summer camp for English & Scottish folk dancing. Dan is working in the kitchen and dancing where his free time allows him. Highly reminiscent of scout camp, the place is envelopingly treesy (principally pines) and features a nice-sized lake, around which we canoed before lunch while talking about movies and music. I think bucolic is more a country word then a foresty word, but bucolic still sums it up pretty well.
The people at the camp are a friendly mix of mousy-haired college kids, couples in upper middle age, Canadians, and the other earthy-type men & women you'd expect to see doing English & Scottish folk dance in Massachusetts. Lunch, serving some 120 in a pavilion, was incredibly good. Dan is doing well, looking towards his second year of musicology grad school in Ann Arbor.
Someone connected to the camp had installed on certain interior walls (here and there, mostly in bathrooms) these contraptions made out of small bits of wood, taking up a space maybe two feet high and a little less wide. Pumping a vertical handle up and down conveys marbles, one by one, to the top of the device, from which they clatter down a compiled slalom in two or sometimes three dimensions, clacking off the wooden pieces nailed into the wall & striking glockenspiel-like metal bells, tuned in triads and boxing in some of the ramp-patterns. You end up with a whimsical little minute-serenade of marbly rolling & whacking noises, with the added harmony of the bells. It's kind of hard to explain why these are the best thing ever, but they are.
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