You Can't Go Home Again

When I visit the New Hampshire/Maine seacoast, either with Jeannine or by myself, it has always been my ritual -- usually when leaving -- to drive over to Dover, NH, and cruise past the house we rented and lived in for two years. It's a sentimental journey, for many reasons -- among them are the fact that this house was the first place where we lived together, where the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were created, and where we were married, in the small backyard in the summer of 1983… a ceremony presided over by a local Justice of the Peace, and attended by enough friends and family to almost fill the backyard (like I said, it was small).

Here's the house as it looked back then.

In the last couple of years, the house had not fared well. This past year especially, it has looked somewhat bedraggled, with a few broken windows and an air of abandonment. And there was a notice on the front door, some kind of official town thing that mentioned that it was slated for demolition.

I couldn't understand why. Aside from the broken windows, the house looked as sturdy as when we had lived there. But perhaps there was some underlying structural problem that we were not aware of. I really don't know. I considered calling our former landlady, a very sweet woman, but in case there was some unpleasant story associated with it which would upset her, I decided not to.

So when I drove down Union Street in Dover a couple of days ago, I was heartened to see what looked like a new coat of paint on the house. But… it looked different, somehow… and then, as I got closer, I realized that what I was looking at was the house BEHIND our old house. Our house…

… was gone.

Where it once stood was a rough patch of brown dirt. 

Even the lawn in the small backyard, where friends and family had gathered to see us pledge ourselves to each other on our wedding day, was mostly gone. The small garage -- which we never used -- had also vanished.

I had expected that I would be devastated if that house was torn down. I even gave some thought in recent years to buying it to save the old place, but that really made no logical sense, so I abandoned that completely sentimental plan. But when I saw it was gone, I felt very little… a small twinge of sadness, mostly.

I am sad that it's gone. I have many great memories of that house, most having to do with Jeannine and our first couple of years together.

But as she pointed out when I gave her the news, we still have those memories. We still have artifacts from those times, like this drawing I did of the front of the house. I can't remember WHY I did it -- possibly as a card, or perhaps as part of the directions to our wedding.

And we still have the photos from our wedding, and the lovely memories which go with them. 

        But most of all, we have each other. -- PL

Burlington Book Festival

We just got back from a few days in Vermont -- mostly at the Burlington Book Festival in the town of that name on the shores of Lake Champlain. Jeannine had been invited to take part in "Youthaplooza!", which was the part of the festival devoted to children's books.

     On the drive up to Vermont, we stopped in my home town of North Adams for a lunch break, and walked over to Mass MoCA, the huge modern art museum in the old Sprague Electric factory complex, to see if their cafe might serve that purpose. The menu didn't thrill me, so we decided to seek nourishment elsewhere, but there was something pretty nifty in the courtyard outside the main entrance to the museum -- an abstract sculpture made up of what must have been thousands of small, shiny spheres made of black plastic.

    The plaque on one corner of the sculpture's base identified it...

... but regardless of what obscure name was given to it by the artist, the sculpture was very impressive as a presence. And I have this personal predilection for things made up of many smaller things, so I found this very appealing.

    Here's a panoramic view of the entire piece, with Jeannine giving it the once-over.

Although we did not eat at Mass MoCA's cafe, we did find a nice place across the street. It was called "Brew Ha Ha", and they had very good sandwiches, salads, and coffee. I tried to convince Jeannine to buy one or more of their delicious-looking muffins, but she declined. What willpower!

Our original plan was to just spend two nights in Burlington, but as it worked out, we were able to squeeze in another night in Manchester, VT -- just about halfway to Burlington, and site of one of our favorite bookstores, the Northshire. I found us an inn just a quarter-mile up the street from the Northshire, so we were able to walk there with ease. Except for a little bit of rain on that first day, the weather was pretty nice for the whole trip.

When we left Manchester to head on up to Burlington, we took Route 30 instead of Route 7, which turned out to be not only more scenic but took us past the old marble quarry I'd stumbled upon during our last visit to the area. I thought Jeannine might like to see it, and she did. Here's a shot of Jeannine posing with one of the several piles of huge marble blocks.

Traveling through this area of Vermont gave us a small hint of the damage wreaked by Hurricane Irene, although we did not run into any closed roads. Impressively, repairs seem to have progressed at a pretty rapid clip -- it was clear that some of the roads we drove on HAD been closed until just recently, where normally placid brooks and streams had earlier turned into devouring torrents and torn through earth and pavement alike. Virtually every glimpse I got of river banks along the way showed gouged-out banks and large, tangled piles of debris, mostly trees and branches.

We stopped in MIddlebury and found a nice deli with outdoor seating for lunch, then pressed on to Burlington. There was one more stop, though, in Shelburne -- Elizabeth Bluemle, a friend of Jeannine's and a fellow writer, as well as proprietor of a very cool bookstore in Shelburne called "The Flying Pig", had expressed interest in trying out my Elliptigo (the stand up, elliptical machine-like bicycle I bought last year), so I had put it in the back of the truck along with our two bicycles (which I hoped we would use on the bike path along the lake in Burlington). 

Elizabeth got a kick out of trying the Elliptigo, but I think she was somewhat more smitten with the RANS Fusion "crank forward" bicycle. She found it comfortable and easy to ride, and said she suspected it would be more practical than the Elliptigo… and I concurred. (I think she may be ordering one right about now.)

Here's a slightly silly "mash up" photograph I created in Photoshop from two shots of Elizabeth with the bikes, the RANS Fusion on the left and the Elliptigo on the right. Thanks for posing, Elizabeth!  (And for letting me put this on my blog...!)

While in Shelburne, I thought I would see if the shop just around the corner from "The Flying Pig" might still have some of the cool bamboo salad bowls like the one I bought for Jeannine there last year… and they did! So now I have my own beautiful bamboo bowl from which to dine on salad. (And I did just that tonight.)

Our hotel room in the Hilton in Burlington had a great view of the lake... 

... and turned out to be just across the street from the Main Street Landing building where Jeannine was going to be appearing in the three events she was scheduled for.

But the first night in Burlington featured a dinner at a noisy restaurant called the Farmhouse Tap and Grill (with good food, I have to add), with five other writers and one other tagalong husband (like me) named Scott, who is married to author Kara LaReau, who sat across from Jeannine. He and I were the only guys in the group, and sat opposite each other. We had an interesting conversation (when we could hear each other over the din), and he turned out to be a really nice guy, a former car racer and a Mac user, among other things. 

Jeannine didn't have to do anything at the Festival until well after breakfast the next day, so we took our time getting up and walking over to a breakfast place called Magnolias, which I'd found on a tourist map. Jeannine had found another breakfast place called August First, so we figuratively flipped a coin and decided to go to Magnolia's on Sunday, then August First on Monday.
      Magnolia's turned out to be a somewhat funky place in a basement, but with good food. I wish I'd ordered something different, though… I was taken in by this intriguing-sounding item on the specials menu: "Carrot Cake Bread French Toast". I'd never heard of such a thing, and I spent the next few minutes trying to figure out how they had managed to combine carrot cake and bread.

Well, it turned out they really hadn't… and what I got was a HUGE pile of what was, essentially, crumbly carrot cake fried up French Toast-style. It was okay, but way too much for me to eat, and to be honest a little disappointing. I should have gotten the traditional eggs and homefries.
     (We did end up going to August First the following morning, and found it somewhat less satisfying than we thought it would be, given what we'd read about it online. I had a decent "breakfast sandwich" (eggs, cheese, bacon), but Jeannine's order of peanut butter on toast was a big let-down -- given the kind of home-made, earthy vibe the place had, she expected some kind of robust, fresh-ground peanut butter with an interesting texture... and what she got looked (and tasted) suspiciously like Skippy peanut butter out of a jar from the supermarket.)

While Jeannine headed off to the Book Festival for her first appearance (during which she read one of her picture books), I got my bike out of the truck and pedaled across the street to see what the bike path by the lake was like. It had turned out to be a beautiful day, and there were some views along the path of the lake and the mountains beyond which were quite spectacular. But other than that, it was your basic paved rail trail, with some slightly sketchy sections. Still, it was nice to be out and bicycling, seeing a few new sights. I did stop at a few places to take some photos, including one on a little beach. I liked the look of this gnarly little tree against the expanse of water.

I made it back in time to catch the last part of Jeannine's first panel discussion, which was about teen literature. Here's a shot of the three panelists -- Jo Knowles, Tanya Lee Stone, and Jeannine -- during that discussion.

That was pretty interesting, as was the next event she was part of, the "Super Panel" featuring about ten children's book writers.

Probably the most interesting (to me, anyway) question asked during that panel was something like this: "How long was it between the time you realized you wanted to write children's books and the time you actually sold one?" The answers ranged from a few months to a decade -- a good illustration of the vicissitudes of publishing, and also how timing and luck are almost as important as talent in this field. Come to think of it, in a LOT of fields.

After that panel, Jeannine signed a bunch of her books which were on sale in the lobby, and mingled with other authors and readers for a while. 

     We had discussed going for a bike ride together after her part in  the Book Festival was over -- Jeannine was curious about the bike path -- but we ended up just taking a walk uptown, to Church Street. 

Church Street is one of the neatest things about downtown Burlington -- a stretch of about four or five blocks on one avenue which have been closed off to car traffic and converted into a pedestrian mall, with lots of shops and eateries along the way. We happened upon a restaurant with some outdoor seating and took a chance on it for dinner… and it turned out to have really good food. I cannot, at this time, remember then name of the place, sadly.

We followed that up with a nice stroll back down Church Street and down the hill to the lake, where we discovered that the little ice cream and frozen treat shack near the aquarium was still open, and treated ourselves to a couple of small soft-serve cones before heading back to our hotel room to enjoy a sunset lake view.

On the drive back home the next day, we couldn't help but stop at the Northshire in Manchester again, this time so Jeannine could get in some of her morning writing time while enjoying a latte and one of the Northshire's cafe's baked goods. While she was doing that, I went off on a mission to find more Abe Lincoln stovepipe hats.

Let me back up for a minute -- the previous year, we had visited the Hildene estate, the former home of President Abraham Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln, which is not far from the center of Manchester. It's a very cool place, and in the gift shop there, Jeannine found something she'd been looking for -- an inexpensive version of Lincoln's famed stovepipe hat. She has since used it as a prop when she does talks about her book "Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon", about the young girl in Lyme Regis, England, who discovered some of the earliest and best specimens of prehistoric ocean life… and while prospecting for these fossils in and around the cliffs of Lyme Regis, would wear a stovepipe hat to protect her head from falling rocks.

The hat Jeannine got last year has held up well, but she has been concerned that it might suffer some kind of damage or get lost, and she has not seen these types of props for sale anywhere else. So I figured, why not look where she'd found the first one?

So, while Jeannine was writing, I did… and sure enough, they had five of the hats in the gift shop at Hildene. Success! I ended up buying all of them… and some maple-flavored popcorn for the rest of the ride home, as well. -- PL

MOOSE!!!

For a long time, I have been wanting to see a moose. 

Not in a zoo, but in the wild… or what passes for "wild" in this area. I have heard other people's stories about seeing mooses -- Steve Lavigne says they are fairly regular visitors to his neighborhood in Maine. I've seen many a deer, but never a moose.

One of Emily's favorite children's books when she was young was Jan Brett's "Annie and the Wild Animals", and in it a girl makes corn muffins and feeds them to various animals, including a moose. Em was, for some reason, really into the moose thing, and I think it may have influenced me. I recall that when we would drive around in the more rural areas out here, we would look at every pond and marsh and swamp to see it there might be one of these majestic creatures lurking within.

Well, a couple of days ago Jeannine and I decided to take a day trip up to Williamstown to see the Camille Pissarro show at the Clark Art Museum, and also do a bicycle ride on the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail which stretches from Adams to Pittsfield. We weren't sure which to do first, so, to give us more time to ponder the options as well as optimally situate ourselves so we could go either way at the last minute, I decided to take Route 116 up to Adams instead of going the usual way to Williamstown, which would be to head up to the Mohawk Trail and go through North Adams.

And I'm REALLY glad I did.

Because as we were driving through Plainfield, past a small swamp which extended on both sides of the road, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye on the north side. Could it be…?

I slowed down, looked back, and sure enough -- it was a moose!

As quickly as I could, trying not to lock up my brakes and noisily SCREECH to a moose-frightening stop, I did a three point turn in the middle of the road, and eased the car onto the verge of the road as close to the moose as I dared, about thirty feet away. I fumbled with my camera, trying to get it out before the beast got spooked and left. Fortunately, not much fumbling was required, and rolling down my window, I got several decent shots.

The moose did not appear to be overly nervous about us being there… it just kept dipping its large head into the water of the swamp and pulling up various dripping water plants, which it casually munched on.

It wasn't until another driver also stopped to peer at the moose that it apparently decided it was time to seek another place to eat, and ambled off into the woods, doing that amazing thing that large wild beasts can often do -- within a few seconds it was lost to sight in the dappled shade of the trees.

As Jeannine put it later, "That's one more thing you can cross off on your "bucket list"!" -- PL

A wedding anniversary trip

Jeannine and i celebrated our twenty-eighth wedding anniversary this past week, and took a trip to an area of New Hampshire we'd driven through once or twice, but never explored to any significant degree -- the "lakes region", specifically Lake Winnepesauke. Searching online, I found an inn which looked like it had nice views of the lake, and got us a room with a balcony. And it turned out to have a beautiful view of the lake, as you can see here.

Unfortunately, the weather was not terribly cooperative -- it rained much of the time that we were there. And I had not realized until the morning we left for New Hampshire that it was the beginning of "Bike Week" in that area, so we had to put up with a greater-than-normal number of Harleys with modified exhaust systems (which seemed to be about ninety percent of them) blasting down the road by the inn.

So we didn't go swimming in the lake, which we'd had fantasies of doing during the warm and sunny day we drove up there (the ONLY warm and sunny day of our stay), but we still managed to have fun. 

On our first full day there, which was rainy, we took a drive north about fifty miles to Franconia, NH, to see the "Robert Frost Place", a small home once owned and lived in by the poet Robert Frost and his family, and now a museum devoted to Frost and his life and work. It's off in the woods down a dirt road, and probably a spot very conducive to writing poetry (or anything else). Here's a view of the house, with Jeannine taking a photo.

 (This image was made from several shots stitched together in Panorama Maker 5, and as such exhibits the odd distortion of perspective often typical of these things -- the road that Jeannine is standing on does not bend like that, but is instead a straight road.)

Her'e another view from the back side of the house.

And here are a few views of the inside of the house.

I'm pretty sure the desk in the center of this photo was Frost's writing desk.

There was also a short "poetry trail" in the woods behind the house, where every so often one would find markers with appropriate poems (or segments of poems) of Frost's. Jeannine and I took this walk…  

… and spotted these beautiful little flowers near the end of it.

This is the second Robert Frost home that we have visited in the last year -- now there's only one more to go, in Derry, NH. I suspect we'll get to that one soon.

(I have to include this photo -- I took it through the side window of the car as we were driving up to Franconia and saw this dramatic vista of raw mountain rock.)

The weather on the following day was nicer, though still intermittently sprinkling. I suggested we go to visit the so-called "Castle in the Clouds" in nearby Moultonborough, NH. The "Castle" is the main building on the former estate of shoe manufacturing magnate Thomas Gustave Plant and his wife Olive, and is now a tourist attraction. It is situated on top of a mountain which has spectacular views of Lake Winnipesauke. (For more information, go to http://www.castleintheclouds.org/)

When we paid our admission at the bottom of the mountain, we were told of a beautiful waterfall not too far off the road about a quarter of a mile ahead of us. As both of us love waterfalls, this was something we had to see, so we parked and walked the short trail to the first waterfall, which you can see in these photos…

… and then decided to clamber up the steep and slippery stone path to the second waterfall, which I actually liked more than the first. Here's a shot of Jeannine taking a photo of that second waterfall.

Continuing our drive to the top, we stopped at a scenic overlook where I got several photos I used to create this panoramic view of the lake.

Actually, to say that we continued driving to the top is not entirely accurate. About four-fifths of the way up, all visitors have to stop and park near what was once the carriage house for the estate (now a visitors' center and cafe), and board a tram to complete the ascent to the "Castle".

The house was lovely, and although I don't think I would fairly call it a "castle", it was certainly distinctive, occupying a spot which afforded it commanding views of a landscape of great beauty. Here are some views of the house, inside and outside. Unfortunately, I only got one decent shot of the outside, and I am not sure why I didn't take another shot or two so you could see the whole house. But this image of the exterior shows about half of it, and gives you an idea of what kinds of views are to be had there. 

This is one of the guest rooms...

... and another bedroom...

I liked the pattern in this wooden flooring...

Jeannine pointed out to me the neat decorative painting of the ceiling in the dining room...

I'm not exactly sure WHY this kitchen sink is shaped the way it is, but I thought it looked cool...

Instead of waiting for the tram to take us back down to where our car was parked, Jeannine and I opted to walk the short trail back down to the carriage house, where we decided to try the cafe. And I'm glad we did, because it lived up to its billing as an "award-winning" eatery. 

The cafe is actually situated in the old horse stalls in the carriage house, and they have left many of the original fittings, including the iron bars separating the stalls…

 ... the drains in the floors…

 ... and even the horses' water troughs, one of which was right near our table. 

And the food was great! I highly recommend this as a place to visit, and eat.

We packed up the next day, and left the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee behind. But there was one more place Jeannine wanted to stop before we got home, and that was the Shaker Village in Canterbury, NH. It was an interesting place, and the people there were very willing to share their knowledge of the Shakers and their history. 

I wish I had some shots of interiors and Shaker artifacts I could share with you here, but they had some curious restrictions on photography. I asked a woman who was working in a woodshed, building the oval boxes the Shakers were known for, if she could explain the "no photos" rule, and she told us it was because of the potential for theft. As she explained it, the people running the museum were concerned that people could take photos of some of the valuable Shaker artifacts, post them on eBay for sale, then come back and steal them when they had sold. I asked if this was a big problem in reality, and I think she said that it had happened at least once… she wasn't too forthcoming with details.

I could sort of see the logic… sort of… but the restriction on the taking of photos for THAT reason seemed kind of, well, silly… given the nature of cameras these days, which can be easily concealed and surreptitiously operated. You can even get a camera which looks like a pen, stick it in your shirt pocket, and walk around taking video with no one the wiser. It seems to me that this "no photos" policy just punishes innocent people who have no intention of stealing anything, but just want a record of the interesting things they'd seen… and it does not at all prevent malefactors from sneaking photos if they really want to.

Regardless, it was an interesting place to visit. -- PL

... to Dover, NH, and points north in Maine

So, after escaping from Boston, Jeannine and I headed north, to our old "stomping grounds" of the Dover/Portsmouth area. We were pretty hungry, so instead of heading directly to our place of lodging -- the Cliff House in Ogunquit, ME -- we stopped off at one of our favorite seafood restaurants, Newicks, in Dover. We got great seats near a window and had Newicks' always-fresh seafood.

It had been some time since I'd stayed at the Cliff House with Jeannine, and it had changed quite a bit, including a whole new building (which is where we were staying). We had a nice view of the ocean from the balcony off our room, even though -- at least early each morning -- the ocean was covered in fog, as you can see in this view from the balcony.

But within a few hours, it cleared up and we could sit out there and watch the waves. I spent quite a bit of time wandering around on the rocks -- not on these vertical rocks…

… which are the cliffs from which the Cliff House derives its name, but on the safer, more navigable rocks to either side of the cliffs. I took many photos of interesting rocks, and did a little bit of sketching. Actually, I only did two sketches, and here they are.

I was hoping to do more, but I was too lazy.

I did manage to capture a few decent shots of waves -- here's one I shot from our balcony using the camera's zoom lens (love the colors)…

… and another bit of "crashing wave action" caught by the camera's high-speed "burst" function.

I even got myself in one shot. 

I never get tired of looking at these rocks by the ocean. They fascinate me with their shapes, patterns, and colors.

At one point -- I think it was on our first day there -- I was out on the rocks looking for good angles in the morning, while there was still quite a bit of mist on the ocean, when I heard the sound of a boat engine, and this lobster boat came slowly chugging out of the mist.

It's certainly not a rare sight on the coast of Maine…

… but I thought it was kind of cool.

Sometimes the rocks can seem barren, almost a moonscape, devoid of life… but then you look a bit closer, and there is quite a bit of life. This large spider (one of many on the rocks) paused in its rapid scurrying to and fro to allow me to snap a portrait shot…

… and one day on the way back to our room, I spotted these bluets growing among the rocks…

… and this bright lichen growing ON the rocks.

We had a great time, and ate lots of good food -- even went to "Johnny's Oarweed" in Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, the restaurant at which a pre-TMNT Kevin Eastman once worked as a lobster cook, and we had a lovely meal on a beautiful day sitting outside by the ocean.

However, I neglected to do one important thing while we were there, and I regret it -- I didn't call my pal Steve Lavigne to see if we could get together. Sorry, Steve! -- PL