Summer Comings and Goings

The last weekend of July we drove up to Boston to see our son, Chris. The plan was to check into the Downtown Doubletree, leave our car, and eventually meet up with Chris at his new apartment in the gentrified Seaport district. We used my new Uber account there for the first time. Had we known how easy and inexpensive it would be we could've stayed further outside the center of the city. After having lunch with him we enjoyed a long walk around the Rowes Wharf, only steps from his home, with a beautiful view of tall ships and small fleets of pleasure boats and pedestrian bridges overflowing with visitors.  Chris’ new apartment is in a completely redesigned building from 1899, his huge window facing directly into the Federal Reserve building with incredible views of downtown Boston, a professional building in every way.  This makes his life much easier, being able to walk to work as a data systems supervisor for an investment firm, a job he loves (how many people can say that nowadays?).  We capped off the visit with a great dinner at Smith and Wollensky.

The next morning we drove to Amherst to visit our friends Art and Sydelle who are renting a house near their daughter and her family. After meeting them for lunch at Atkins Farms, they took us to the Yiddish Book Center which houses the largest collection of Yiddish books in North America on the campus of Hampshire College.   

It was one man’s remarkable vision to preserve over one million of these treasured books.  It was truly amazing to see this literature being reclaimed and now digitized by a team of volunteers.  I had no idea that there was such an extensive trove of Yiddish literature.  When we departed from our friends, Ann and I decided to revisit The Emily Dickinson Museum, one of my favorite places in Amherst and once again signed up for their 60 minutes tour.  Since we were last there some of the rooms have been further restored, particularly Emily’s bedroom where she spent her days writing in a bright corner overlooking much of downtown Amherst.

Before the tour I had some fun reciting some of the poems I know by heart in unison with one of the docents.  I also chatted with a Chinese woman who had breathlessly arrived, fearing she was late for the last tour of the day, having driven three hours with her husband and child.  She was no stranger to Emily Dickinson’s poems, having translating many into Chinese for publication there.  We chatted about the similarities between Dickinson’s and Chinese poetry, which on their surfaces boast simplicity, with deep, meaningful undercurrents.

We returned to our hotel to freshen up for dinner with Art and Sydelle, their daughter Maddy, and her young and precocious son, Eli.  Unfortunately there was a massive thunderstorm on the way and the restaurant where we were to meet for dinner was closed that night.  Serendipitously, we ended up meeting everyone at a wonderful Chinese restaurant where we ate family style, happily sharing several delicious platters of food!

Bright and early the following day, we were on our way to The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown situated on a 140 acre campus, surrounded by the Taconic, Green Mountain and Berkshire ranges.  This was our first visit and we were very interested in seeing the new very modern entrance addition and 1 acre reflecting pool set amid expansive lawns.   

But in truth we made this special trip because they have just installed the first ever exhibit on “ Van Gogh and Nature”, using works on loan from some of the most noted van Gogh Collections in the world.  These paintings were primarily from the last 10 years of his life and were showcased in five rooms in the new wing of the Museum. 

Getting there proved more difficult than we could have imagined. It was all back roads to Williamstown from Amherst, roads I normally love to travel, but the bitter winter had left its mark on New England.  It seems every other turn was blocked with detours because of roadwork and at one point we were having difficulty getting there.  So we arrived about an hour later than we had hoped but luckily got one of the last parking spaces within walking distance to the museum.  The entrance reminds me of the monolith from the film 2001 – a granite enigma – trying to figure out how to get in!

Then there was the permanent collection of priceless French Impressionists, artwork and sculptures.  As moving as the Van Gogh exhibit was, I liked the permanent collection as much, painters I personally relate to, particularly the powerful seascapes of Winslow Homer and the scenes of the American West by Frederick Remington.  Ann, predictably and understandably was enthralled by the French Impressionist paintings, the Renoir collection in the permanent collection in particular and lingered there.

Perhaps the high point for me, though, was the display of the grandest Steinway ever made, the Model D Pianoforte Steinway which was commissioned by financier Henry Marquand in 1885.

In between seeing the Van Gogh and the permanent collection, we paused for a wonderful lunch at one of the Clark Institute restaurants.  By mid afternoon we started to think about the long ride back to Norwalk, half the distance on local roads and again we had to zig and zag, making it a long and grueling four hour trip home.

Only two nights later we had tickets to the Westport Country Playhouse to see A R Gurney’ s Love and Money, a world premiere.

I’ve written about the Westport Country Playhouse before, a venerable landmark in Westport since the early 1930’s.  Just one look at some of the old billboards and memorabilia in the lobby evokes deep and fond memories. We’ve been going there for some 45 years now, and while it has changed, it has changed to stay the same, to present plays of meaning to the community.

For many years Paul Newman’s restaurant, The Changing Room, stood adjacent to the playhouse (both Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were active in the theater’s success).  Now Positano -- which had been near the beach -- moved into that space and Ann and I had dinner there before the show, an enjoyable dining experience.

What better place to premier A.R. Gurney’s Love and Money than the Westport Country Playhouse, near the center of the universe of the play’s subject, the enigma of the WASP?  Cheever had defined the very species and Gurney has now attempted to dramatize its fading years of glory.

Gurney has been heavily influenced by Cheever and in fact as a tribute to the great short story writer he created a dramatization of some of his stories some twenty years ago, A Cheever Evening, one that I read when I was working on my own dramatization of some Raymond Carver stories.

Gurney used more than a dozen Cheever short stories to create his vision of what Cheever might have composed himself if he were a dramatist.  I’ve never seen the play performed but maybe it will be revived on the heels of Gurney’s new play.  Cheever and Gurney are students of this privileged, melancholic, frequently inebriated class, one to which it is time to say goodbye.

Unfortunately the play is not primetime ready yet and although the cast includes the consummate actress Maureen Anderman, who not long ago we had seen at Dramaworks in A Delicate Balance, her presence is not enough to save what we thought was a very contrived plot intended to mark the passing of the WASP species. Unlike Cheever, whose characters mostly aspired to money or had the pretense of money, this is about real money and how it alters relationships.

Cornelia Cunningham (Maureen Anderman) feels tainted with loads of WASP money from her deceased husband.  Her two children had directly or indirectly been destroyed by their wealth and/or alcoholism, and she is determined to leave most of her money to charity.  Against the advice of her attorney, Harvey Abel (“ably” played by Joe Paulik), she has no intent to leave the money to her two "zombie" grandchildren and then, suddenly -- a young black man arrives on her doorstep claiming to be the child of her deceased daughter – and thus another grandchild has been added to the mix.  Let the drama and comedy begin! – or at least attempt to begin.   From there a number of non sequiturs that don’t seem to be organic to the plot are thrown at the audience, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and a number of zingers at the encroaching political oligarchy and foibles of modern day life. 

Cole Porter of course is emblematic of the WASP culture and a couple of his songs are suddenly introduced as a young Julliard student, Jessica Worth (Kahyun Kim), comes to inspect Cornelia’s player piano which is programmed to play only Porter, Jessica bursting into song.  The young black man, Walter Williams (played by Gabriel Brown) who is after his own fortune, claims he is nicknamed “Scott” because of his love of Fitzgerald (who ironically lived in Westport briefly with Zelda) and in particular his affection for The Great Gatsby.  

While Love and Money is billed as a world premiere production, it is a play in development, gearing up for an off-Broadway run at the Signature Theatre.  It needs work -- an organic fluidity that seems to be lacking and a more believable plot.

In the program notes Gurney says at the age of 84, I assumed this play would probably be my last.  As its various characters leave the stage at the end, I felt I was figuratively going with them.  But now that the excitement of an actual production is taking place, I am reminded of an adage from the Jewish culture, which is in many was replacing us: “Wasps go without saying goodbye.  Jews say goodbye and won’t leave.” So now, in my golden years, with perhaps another play or two already churning around in my head, I’ve decided to be Jewish.   Let us hope one of our great social-comedic playwrights has a few more plays up his sleeve, and improves the present work.  Perhaps he should reread his own A Cheever Evening?

 

To conclude our busy week, Ann’s niece and nephew Regina and Angelo visited with their growing children, Forest and Serena last weekend.  We haven’t seen them in a year and a half – what a difference time makes when kids are approaching their early teens.  Jonathan and Anna were here as well, for lunch and then a boat ride on a beautiful day.

 

 

Dock Life -- and Loss

I've written before about living on a boat, something we've done now for the past 13 summers in their entirety and before that, on weekends and summer vacations.  In spite of traveling on the boat, much of the time has been spent at the dock, either getting ready to go out, returning and cleaning up, or in bad weather, just staying there, rain, wind, lightning and all.  How many days of our lives have been at the dock? Probably, in the aggregate, it measures several years.  A brief video of awaiting a storm at the dock is here:

Dock life is unlike any other.  It's close living and on weekends, when we were younger, it was a party atmosphere, someone was always hosting cocktails or sometimes there would be a dock party, everyone putting out something and dock mates strolling past, and filling up on finger food, libations. and good cheer. When we were younger, it was a family affair, the kids running up and down the dock under the watchful eye of the community. 

Of course, our boating life has been defined by the fact that we are "Long Island Sounders," berthed in Norwalk, CT. Over the years, we have cruised to most of the ports in Connecticut, to the north shore of Long Island and as far east as Newport, Block Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket.  As we grew older, the amount of cruising and distances traveled diminished to the point of now spending most of our time at the dock or the occasional short cruise to the Norwalk Islands. 

Our boating is also different because we live in Florida, and our boat in Connecticut is now our home up north.  That changes everything.

When we had a home in Connecticut, jumping on and off the boat was easier and the boat was less cluttered.  Taking the boat out now means stowing much more and unplugging all of the umbilical cords to the dock for power and water.  Easy when younger, but more challenging now.

 

We also have a small boat in Florida. Boating is different here, primarily because many in Florida have their boats, as we do, behind their homes.  There frequently is no marina or dock life.  Of course, there are people from up north who bring their boats to Florida for the winter.  I see lots of Canadian flags coming down the Intracoastal.  Many of those boats, though, wait out cold fronts to make a crossing to the Bahamas.

So, my comments are more "northern boat" centric, not Florida or Bahamas focused.  I could divide the boaters at the two docks we've lived at into several categories: fishermen (rarely saw much of them, they were up early and off to Montauk), cruisers (we fell into that category until I retired), liveaboards or people who rarely took their boats out (that's us now), and, strangely, people who have boats but never seem to use them.

For a long time we thought we wanted to live on a boat 24 x 7 x 365, selling our house and ties to land.  Our good friends Ray and Sue felt the same way and when towards the end of the 1990s it looked like, coincidentally, both Ray and I would be out of jobs, we fantasized about pooling our resources and buying a big yacht, something that would be comfortable for all, a ship that four experienced boaters could handle.  We looked at large Hatteras motor yachts, and some high maintenance ships such as the welded aluminum Burgers.

In our mutual excitement, we went to boat shows searching,  thinking up names for our fabled new home such as 'Moments to Remember,' 'Four Happy Hoboes,' Four Seasons,' Summer of our Lives, 'As Time Goes By,' and the overly cutesy 'Home Sea Home.'  But things have a way of taking care of themselves.  Ray and Sue were gravitating toward a sport fish style boat and we were also looking at homes in Florida.  It seems we both came upon our own individual dream places for our next phase of life simultaneously, wisely abandoning the idea of sharing a yacht, they buying a 56' Ocean sport-fish and we our current Florida home.  It worked out better this way, and we remain close friends.

They are still to this day true liveaboards on 'Last Dance,' having no other home, spending part of the year in Norwalk and the other part in the Abacos, Bahamas (usually stopping at our dock in Florida before heading out to the Abacos, and we've joined them a couple of times, stayed for awhile and then flying home from Marsh Harbor to West Palm).  Thus, we still have our own independent boating lives in Norwalk during the summers on our 'Swept Away' and that is when we try to catch up with all of our former boating friends.

Our dock life has changed as we ourselves have become summer liveaboards. Aside from Ray and Sue, we know few people who are year-round liveaboards.  But one such person was our friend, Lindy, who I referred to a couple of entries ago when he was entering a hospice.  Lindy succumbed to cancer shortly after I wrote that entry.

It occurred to me that we shared the same dock for 26 years, first at Norwalk Cove Marina, and then at the South Norwalk Boat Club.  We knew each other well and relied upon one another, checking the other's boat if one of us was away, picking up something at the store if we were going there, having a quick bite at the Club and sharing the same table at regularly scheduled boat meetings.  Lindy was somewhat of an enigma, typical though for a man who lived alone on a boat, even through the harsh winters in Connecticut, shoveling snow off the dock to get to his car. 

To Lindy, his boat was a sacred refuge and as much as he talked about leaving it behind for the winter, staying with one of his sons, or renting a place in Florida, he stuck with his boats, in the northeast, through blizzards and ice, awaiting the thaw of summer, until the following Fall when he would talk about not living another winter on the boat and then just do it again.

Lindy was an optometrist during his working years.  His boats were appropriately named 'The Optimist,' and if a sign of optimism is to have a joke du jour, he was the supreme optimist.  He always had me laughing and for most of the time I knew him as a live aboard, he had but two boats, a 42' Post, a beamy boat which I think he later regretted selling, and then a 42' Bertram. Both are classic sport fishes and, indeed, in the earlier years that I knew him, he would plan one big trip to Montauk each summer with some friends or his sons to "fish the canyon." But as he aged, his boating stayed more local until he rarely took the boat out as well.

His social life on the dock was spent visiting us and a few other couples, but mostly with a couple of guys who no longer married, ones who were on their boats a lot, particularly Harold, who remarkably boated into his 90s, having a 42' Bertram as well.  Harold predeceased Lindy by only a little more than a month.  I think it was one of the final straws for Lindy, who had been struggling with esophageal cancer during the last year.

Lindy's closest companion for many happy years was his beloved black Labrador, Charlie, a large dog to have in the confines of a boat.  I am convinced that no one knew the man better than Charlie, an exceptional dog, keenly intelligent, and extraordinarily well trained by Lindy.  That dog would sit in the cockpit of the boat and NEVER leave it until commanded by Lindy.  There could be a litter of cats parading by and Charlie would stay fast.  If Lindy was walking down the dock, Charlie would follow him with his eyes. He did not pace or whine like so many dogs missing their owners. He waited patiently as the photograph below attests (ironically, I have no photos of Lindy as he usually vanished when he saw my camera out).

Once Lindy said watch this:  he walked down the dock, Charlie keeping his eyes on him.  At the end of the dock, Lindy turned and just stood there, looking at Charlie.  He raised a finger and his eye brows, and Charlie came bounding out of the boat towards his master.  That was the sign.  Otherwise, Charlie would have stayed put.

It is strange, all those years on the same dock, knowing the man well, but not closely, and having to acknowledge that his dog knew him best.  But that is the way Lindy wanted it.  During the last few years I urged him to spend more time with his son, John, and family during the winters rather than the hard life on the dock in the winter.  He was the ultimate maverick, though, and felt that would be an imposition.  This summer, when we saw him for the last time in early September, we had a prescient feeling that that would be the last time, even though, as the perpetual optimist, he felt he would get better. 

But the operation to remove the cancerous tumor from his esophagus had taken its toll.  He wasn't able to eat, and had lost a lot of weight.  He was unsteady on his feet and we worried.  Ann had sent over quite a few meals and we had been shopping for him, but we were then going back to Florida.  Lindy, I said, why don't you make arrangements to go to New Hampshire to your son, establish doctors up there, the winter here will be impossible for you.  We'll see he said.  I spoke to him in early December and he said he was going to go to his son's for Christmas.  Great, I said, you are staying there, right?  Make arrangements with local Doctors?  He said that he'd like to get back to the boat. 

I called him on Christmas Day and I could tell he was in bad shape.  The cancer had metastasized in his lungs and the plan was for him to start chemotherapy after he had hoped to put some weight on. He said he would like to see the boat one more time.  On Dec 26, though, John had to call an ambulance, over Lindy's protestations.  He had pneumonia and it was then, according to his son, that he "realized that to continue to try to fight the cancer would only extend his life a short while but at the cost of his dignity and his quality of life. He decided to discontinue nutrition and enter hospice." And so finally at the end he was with family for a compassionate, comfortable passing. 

I remember getting up on Jan. 4 and looking at the clock.  It was 6.00 am.  I didn't think anything of it -- about 15 minutes earlier than I normally wake up now. Later that day I got an email from John, about Lindy's passing at approximately 6.00 am. Indeed, Bon Voyage, Lindy.

His death has had a big impact on us, not only because of the years we spent on the dock together but because it reminds me, and anyone connected with him, of our own mortality.  I wish I was a religious person and could say with conviction that there is some sort of heaven, but I believe in the here and now and, when dead, especially after such a horrible disease, one is indeed in another better place.  As Susan Jacoby quoted 19th century Robert Green Ingersoll in her article in last week's New York Times on atheism -- when Ingersoll had delivered the eulogy for a child who had died -- “they who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave, need have no fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be, tells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest ... The dead do not suffer.”

Many years ago when I used to go down to our boat to check on it during the winter, the boatyard which during the summer was such a bustling place, became one of stark desolation.  Most boats were up on land for storage and the early morning winter sun and wind made it an eerie place (I think of Emily's Dickinson's poem that begins, "There's a certain slant of light, / On winter afternoons, / That oppresses, like the weight. / Of cathedral tunes."). On one such day I felt compelled to write my own poem about the experience, not a very good one, I'm not a poet, but it expressed my feelings.  I include it here in memory of Lindy.

Wintry Moorings

Halyards slap

in the winter morning’s

northwest wind.

The boat yard

is a lonely place.

Hulls are awkward hulks

beached on parking lots,

stringers and fiberglass

settled on blocks and cradles.

Some boats still endure the water,

lines urging

finger slips to test pilings;

ice-eaters drone in the briny dark.

On land they are shrink-sealed in plastic

or framed under bulky tarpaulins,

riding out the wintry bombardment,

awaiting next summer’s voyages.

Others lay abandoned

by Captains who are no more

Literary Concord

Several years ago Ann cut out an article in the Palm Beach Post about Concord, Ma. and its rich literary and revolutionary war history. As we were visiting our son, Chris, in nearby Worcester, it was an ideal opportunity to push on to Concord for a couple of days, stay at a B&B (North Bridge Inn, highly recommended) and see for ourselves. We decided to concentrate on Concord’s literary history, and its place at the crossroads of Transcendentalism with Emerson as the center of that universe. To walk where Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, and Hawthorne walked is awe-inspiring. They were all contemporaries, living near each other. This is indeed a sort of holy ground of American literary and intellectual history.

There is no better way to start such a trip than to visit the Concord Public Library, dedicated by Ralph Waldo Emerson when it opened in 1873. In this day of the Kindle and the iPad, it was refreshing to be in a traditional library, befitting the literary community which it is at the center. Inside one can find Daniel Chester French’s sculpture of Ralph Waldo Emerson. French’s tools were given to him by Louisa May Alcott.

In the Concord Museum Emerson’s study is perfectly preserved, moved there after there was a fire in the Emerson home.

The Old Manse was home at one time or another to both Hawthorne and Emerson. Here Nathaniel Hawthorne and his bride Sophia rented for three years beginning in 1842. While on tour, we were able to see the following etching in one of the window panes using Sophia’s diamond wedding ring:

Man's accidents are God's purposes. Sophia A. Hawthorne 1843
Nath Hawthorne This is his study
The smallest twig leans clear against the sky
Composed by my wife and written with her diamond
Inscribed by my husband at sunset, April 3, 1843. In the Gold light.

One can still see the smallest twig leaning “clear against the sky.” It would have been interesting to eavesdrop on conversations between Emerson and Hawthorne as Hawthorne was not a Transcendentalist. Henry David Thoreau (pronounced “Thorough” by the natives) is said to have planted the garden at the Old Manse as a wedding gift to the Hawthornes. The garden still blooms there. From the Old Manse Emerson’s grandfather witnessed the “shot heard around the world,” the opening volley of the American Revolution on the Old North Bridge.

The Old Manse also houses a 1864 Steinway piano and I was surprised when the docent invited anyone on the tour to try it. Most items on these house tours are of the “look-but-do-not-touch” nature. As no one volunteered I stepped forward to play a few bars of Memories by Andrew Lloyd Webber, my apologies to 19th century sensibilities. It was out of tune, but all keys functioned, more than 150 years after this piano was built.

This is how life was before the “conveniences” of modern life. Parlor games and music, plays written and performed by the residents, writing and philosophical discussions, and books read to the family by candlelight. (Hawthorne read the entire works of Sir Walter Scott to his children while living in Concord.)

The nearby Wayside is now a National Park property and tours of the home and the nearby North Bridge are conducted by Park Rangers. We were lucky enough to have had a private tour of this home. Louisa May Alcott spent her childhood there and many of the scenes from Little Women were set in her memory from that home. It is also the only home ever actually owned by Nathaniel Hawthorne who gave it the name, Wayside.

The tour of the Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott actually wrote Little Women was inspired. The docent enacted several quotes from the novel, leaving one motivated not only to buy the book (once again) but others as well in the gift shop.

Alcott’s father, an educator who struggled to make ends meet, was an enlightened man, encouraging his daughters to learn, building a small desk for Louisa May (unheard of at the time), and having the pleasure of watching his daughter become one of the best selling author’s of her time, certainly making the family wealthy. That small, plain desk has been perfectly preserved. Father Alcott was devoted to Louisa May and she was devoted to him. Eerily, as the New York Times reported at the time in 1888, it is a noteworthy fact in connection with her life and death that Miss Alcott and her father were born on the same day of the month, and that they died within 24 hours of one another.

A couple years ago we had the pleasure of touring Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst. She is probably my favorite poet. I wonder whether her relative isolation in Amherst, while the literary hotbed of New England was not far away in Concord, but far enough to remove her from that scene, might have contributed to the quiet loneliness of her poetry. I am not aware of Dickinson ever meeting the Concord group.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is now the resting place of the Alcotts, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Emerson, Thoreau’s grave just simply inscribed, “Henry.” I cannot visit such a graveyard without thinking of Emily Dickinson’s poem I Died For Beauty which I never forgot since reading it in college and in fact recited those words at Dickinson’s gravesite in Amherst:

I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our name

Our wonderful tour of Concord was concluded by having dinner at the Walden Grill with my best friend from college, Bruce, and his wife, Bonnie, residents of nearby Sudbury, and both dedicated teachers of literature. Perhaps learning, teaching and literature are in the water of Concord, Ma. and its environs!