The Eagle has (re)landed

Tenth trip to Blighty, and one of the smoothest journeys so far. I landed at 6:25 am and was at Spooner's front door by 8:15. Absolutely no queue at immigration, which is unheard of. There's something to be said for coming into Terminal 4, though I'd still rather be on Virgin Atlantic than on Delta (DEfinitely Lacking Travel Amenities). 

I'm now cleaned up and caffeinated and ready to head out to explore. We're off to the East End to go to the Moniker Art Fair, to see the new streetart in Shoreditch, possibly to take in whatever is at the Whitechapel Gallery, and then to eat at Tayyab. It's a bit chilly, but the sky is blue and the sun is shining.  Full report to follow. 

Yesterday's stats:
3127 steps (1.23 miles) and a lot of sitting
$2.40 for Mass Pike toll
$22.00 for return ticket on Logan Express airport bus

A Daytrip with a (Re)purpose

All summer, I’ve been on a mission – which I’ve approached with great (secular) zeal – to repurpose stuff that’s been hanging around my house far too long. While I still have my physical and mental faculties, I want to de-clutter in a responsible, and even creative, way. So far, I’ve given my mandolin to a music camp, a chair that came from Ellen Emerson House and a mirror frame (no glass) to a friend who does whimsical furniture painting, a garden cart and a few tools to the new organic community garden near me, and a perfectly good (though hated by my cats) litter box to Dakin Animal Shelter. I’ve taken dead electronics to two recycling events, and two boxes of documents, including cancelled checks going back to 1976, to the Council on Aging’s shredding fundraiser. This week’s mission was to haul my old darkroom equipment out of my crawl space in the cellar and up to Brattleboro to donate it to the Vermont Center for Photography’s upcoming tag sale. So yesterday, I loaded up the Mini and headed north.

Brattleboro hasn’t changed much since the last time I was there, which must have been 10 years ago. The Common Ground, a worker-owned vegetarian restaurant upstairs on Elliot Street, has closed. I remember going there with a friend from grad school who ordered vegetable juice, and the look of horror on her face when a hippie handed her a frothy glass of liquid the color of beets. On Main Street, you can still find a proper hardware store, a big old post office, the Latchis hotel and theatre (a real movie house, which sadly Northampton doesn’t have any more). There are lots of little shops selling second-hand LPs, books, furniture and clothes. Tattoo parlors, a music store, various hippie/mystic emporiums, a few bars and non-chain coffee houses fill in the rest of Main, Elliot and High streets. What I’d forgotten is just how hilly and precipitous Brattleboro is. The buildings on the east side of Main are perched above the Connecticut River, with porches, decks and additions looking like they’ll topple into the river when the waters rise with the spring thaw. Every street to the west of Main heads uphill with an incline made for a goat. I cruised through a couple of stop signs for fear that the Mini would roll 20 feet backwards downhill, or that I’d pop the clutch and stall out. O, for the flat hills of my homeland! After dropping off the darkroom gear on the aptly-named (thank goodness!) Flat Street, I landed the Mini in a relatively hill-free parking space off the High Street.

A tasty lunch at the Blue Moose, plus use of their loo and free wi-fi, calmed my flatlander nerves. I headed downhill on foot, exploring various alleys off Main Street. I found a lot of graffiti and broken booze bottles down by the railroad tracks. Not great streetart by Shoreditch/Spitalfields standards, but a bit more interesting than the stuff I see in Northampton.

I ended the day with a stop the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, which I’m ashamed to say I’d never visited. They have a fab exhibition of Stephen Hannock’s paintings on right now. The museum is located in the lovely old train station.

The station itself is now just a waiting area next to the tracks.

We Yarnbombed the Bike Path

In observance of International Yarn Bombing Day, Riot Prrl (a knitters’ league for positive mischief) turned out yesterday to decorate a section of fence along the bike path in Northampton. We chose a particularly desolate spot, behind a disused car dealership, that looked like it needed a bit of cheer and love. As we were putting up our pieces, a couple of grumpy bikers (who clearly needed to feel the love) told us to get out of their way, but most of the people who came by seemed genuinely appreciative of what we were doing, whether or not they’d ever heard of yarnbombing. I hope people whizzing by on bikes or rollerblades slow down for a few seconds to let our joyful creation brighten their day. And I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the city doesn’t take it down and that no one nicks our work.

Here are some of my creations spread out on my patio before the big day:

Work in progress:

The results:

We’ll be adding additional pieces over the next few days or weeks. More photos (with location map) here. If you’re on the bike path, and see some bits of color come into view, please stop to smell the flowers and say hi to the wee bluebird.

Test post

I really hate the new Blogger dashboard and post composer, so I’m trying out Windows Live Writer (an offline post editor and uploader) to see if it works any better for me. This is just a test. Stay tuned to this station for further information.

Carrot Island

It wasn't a three-hour cruise, and we weren't marooned, but JJ and I were definitely the only humans on the (charted) desert isle. Carrot Island is one of several small islands off Beaufort that make up the Rachel Carson Reserve. (Rachel Carson spent time in Beaufort in the 1940s, and did studies on the islands.) We actually spent our time in the part of the Reserve called the Town Marsh.


View Carrot Island in a larger map

Our ferry landed on the beach on the north side of the island, and we walked inland from there. The island is mostly scrubby bushes and sand dunes, with little wild flowers and the occasional jasmine bush full of butterflies. When we got to the south side, we could see out to the Bird Shoal and the Beaufort Inlet Channel, with fishing trawlers heading out, beyond.

It probably would have been a good idea to bring binoculars, but not being a bird watcher I didn't even think to suggest that JJ bring theirs along. We mostly saw little shore birds hopping around in the shallow pools and on the sand bar. But what we really came to see were the feral horses. They were introduced to the island in the 1940s by a local physician; the herd now numbers about 35.

After 45 minutes of tromping along the trail and through the brush, we saw some horses way off in the distance on a sandbar. Then, we rounded a bend and saw two of them practically in front of us, and then another a little ways off. They were shy and the one in the photo kept a watchful eye on us, but they didn't seem spooked or run off immediately. Neither we nor the rather feeble zooms on our cameras could get very close, and my photos are mostly rubbish except for this one.

If they ever taught us anything about how to hike a marked trail in Girl Scouts, I must not have been paying attention. JJ and I were so interested in the horses that we lost track of where the trail markers were. I had a moment of panicky flashback to the time I got lost at Fitzgerald Lake, unable to find either the red or blue trail markers, as the sun was setting and the woods were getting dark. But here, fortunately, it was easy to go to higher ground and see exactly where we were. We blazed our way back to the beach with just minutes to spare before our ferry arrived to fetch us off the island. Timing couldn't have been better, as it started to get cloudy and windy just as we got to the dock in Beaufort.

On the way back to New Bern, we passed Martha's Favorite Things and saw that it was open, so we stopped in to look at the antiques and collectibles. She had two Elvis cookie jars that were pretty great but wouldn't have fit in my luggage or my budget.

I had a great time during my four-day stay in North Carolina. I saw fine art and supreme kitsch, photographed buildings ranging from palatial to derelict, soaked up a lot of history and a bit of nature. JJ and Tim might be northerners by birth, but their hospitality rivals that of any southerner you could shake a stick (or a dead possum) at. And there's lots to do in the 2-5-2!

Stats:
10, 883 steps (4.29 miles)
$10 for ferry to Carrot Island, plus $2 tip