Getting ahead of history

Today, October 5, was the culminating event of Weston's 300th anniversary celebration, a huge parade and festival on the town green. I was there staffing a booth as librarian of the Christian Science Reading Room in the heart of the village. Here are some of the highlights, as captured on my cell phone.

The parade included firetrucks, extending in an out-of-sight line of blinking lights and cacophony of blaring horns. Two ladder trucks not traveling in the parade held the giant flag for the parade to process under toward the grandstand.

Anticipation.

My church floated a car promoting our Oct. 6 youth talk.

A curious clown takes a look at Christian Science.

We also had an informational table, featuring not only the lecture, but a new biography of Mary Baker Eddy written by a former member of our church, Isabel Ferguson.

Hoppy the Clown learns something about our textbook,
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

A small pirate challenges a small Napoleon.

This was the ultimate family festival. Babies in strollers, toddlers, school children of all ages, parents, grandparents. Everyone was there. Many who had been in the long, elaborate parade wore period costumes. There were pilgrims (but no Indians), fife and drum bands, reenactment militias, modern veterans, Weston High School alumni from many eras marching together, and imaginative floats from almost every business or organization in town. I don't have more parade pictures, because I took videos.

An informal moment at the grandstand.

Next to our booth, children constructed cardboard
projects, completely oblivious to anything else.

That is, until a magician-clown set up shop on the other side of our booth.

The clown's act went on for an hour, at least,

When his first crowd left, the clown became a wandering minstrel.

Across the green, children were constructing straw-stuffed figures. Townies had donated all sorts of clothing and costume items. One onlooker fussed to me that someone -- a wastrel, evidently -- had donated a silk shirt.

Superman lies supine, awaiting a face to bring him to life.

I don't have pictures, but the rest of the town was also studded with scarecrows of every imaginable stripe.

This hotshot socialite of straw lured
passersby to the pie-selling booth.

This wistful trio caught my eye.

The culminating event of the festival was the commemorative photograph. How do you portray townies by the hundreds?

Everyone from Weston squeezed onto the other end of the green,
while a photographer perched at the top of the extended firetruck
ladder took the 300th Anniversary town portrait.

Masters of the Mountain

We did not sell the Wayland house, after all. But we are in the midst of our big move.

With three sales offers bing-bang-bing, we began packing in May thinking the house would be under new ownership in no time. Soon, with so much of our life in boxes and totes, we were camping out in our own house. No paintings or photos on the walls. Two drinking glasses. Two dish towels. You get the picture. However, all three offerers backed out, followed by a steady parade of people who liked the house, but . . .

So our big move is moving back into our own house.  Right now, Roy is putting up the birdhouse Rob and Rachel gave us last Christmas. I've opened three "kitchen" cartons, discovering two lovely sets of drinking glasses, cloth napkins, placemats, cookie sheets, egg cups (a necessity for my London cockney husband), and more. Wow.

New birdhouse on chimney.

After a summer of displaying flowers
in jars and milk jugs, we have
unpacked a decent bud vase.

To celebrate this momentous un-change in our lives, we took off early Thursday morning for New Hampshire and a drive up Mount Washington Carriage Road in Alice, my Honda Accord.

Here you go, with us. These are some of the photos I shot.

We have stopped to pay the entry toll.
Our goal is the pointed peak on the left.

Brave souls approach the edge. Clouds vie with
mountains and valleys for the "Most Spectacular" award.

Shadows of clouds race across the mountains.
Yes, we are on the edge of vertigo.

There were lots of wide shoulders in the road, where travelers
 were encouraged to stop and rest their horsepower.

Looking back down upon the road we had just ascended,
that white tracery on a green shoulder of the mountain. 

A road like this brings out the best of Roy's "Boston Coach" driving, but the worst of his wife-teasing. He was driving with one hand and shooting pictures with the other. He, being the driver, was seated over the center of the road, while I, in the passenger seat, was on the edge of destruction at every switchback and often in between. It seemed to me that as we climbed all the vehicles coming down were out-sized pick-ups or obese SUVs, giving us barely a lip of road without a single guard rail.

One last attempt to scare you, too.
But the exhilaration far exceeds the  fright.

Climbing through this mountainscape is a life-changing experience.
I suppose the immediate effect will wear off, but I still feel that my being has expanded to fill that vast space.

We've reached the top, just under the clouds. This is one
of several parking lots. Even on a weekday, there was a
steady stream of vehicles up and down the auto road.

Hot and muggy in the valley, cool and muggy a mile in the sky. Mount Washington hosts some of the world's most strenuous weather. I lost several shots when strong gusts of wind pushed at my hands.

Passengers lining up to get back into the cog railroad train
-- the other way to scare yourself silly getting to the top
of Mount Washington. Visitor center just visible.

The third way up and down is to hike. Hikers generally
swagger through the crowd, flashing their outback hats
and walking sticks. Someday I'm coming back to sit in one
of those log chairs for an hour to watch the weather change,
and change, and change again.

Part of the business end, a weather
and communications station.

Ditto.

Could be an alien spy fortress.

Roy (wearing the shades) awaiting his turn at the very summit.
Actually, he never got that turn, but he took a picture of me behind the
summit sign. You won't see that photo here -- maybe on his Flikr page.

Here is a bit of summitry, conviviality between proud drivers. Roy, the former executie car driver, and this couple who had pulled up beside us at a viewing point parking lot in their exceedingly shiny, 
red classic Mustang.

Taken from the l-o-n-g stairway to the summit.

We began our descent. On the way down, the turn-outs
are for cooling one's brakes.

Looking down at the base camp 8 miles back and
almost out of this picture, the atmospherics
make this a hazy, unretouched  photo. 

One last look at the mountains. 

Apparently, I didn't take any photos of the lower parts of the road, nor any that would confirm that we made it down. No, wait! I can take a proof-shot or two now.

Our certificate. Roy inscribed both our names,
his qualifies as "master", mine as "survivor."

You'll never see this glued to Alice's bumper, but it's for real!

All kidding aside, I highly recommend climbing Mount Washington. Perhaps nowhere else on earth can the average citizen get such an eyeful of scenery and a chance to look at the earth as it once was.

Idylls of the Queen

My parents' philosophy was, that with all of Maine's natural resources right at our door, my brother and sister and I had no need for children's summer camp. And it was true. We were within walking distance or a short drive of several lake or river swimming holes, picnic spots, and hiking trails. The ocean, whether sand beach or rocky shore, was only an hour away. But with all respect to you, my parents, I now know that EVERYONE needs to spend at least one week a summer at a cabin by the water in Maine. And I learned that this summer.

My daughters and our families rented a cabin on Highland Lake in Bridgton, Maine, in July -- a first for us. None of us live in Maine at present, yet we still think of Maine as the summer Place to Be.  As always, I have some pictures to show you. 

First of all, the beach. Sandy. Warm water. A nice balance of sun and shade. I raked bushels of waterlogged pine spills off the bottom to make more of the clean water available for water play.

Rachel and her friend Margo, with Leah's children, Kaleigh
 and Gavin, on the water monsters. 

Rachel's friend Marguerite watches as her little Jacques
patiently fills and fills, and fills his ditch with "cho-it milk".
Kaleigh is in the process of constructing a sand turtle.

One hot morning we climbed to Emerald Pool,
somewhere (I'm not tellin' where) in the White Mountains.

The scale is that the ledge in the upper left corner of the photo is about 12 feet above the water, but the pool is so deep and the rocks so configured that it is safe for people to jump off. If they do, they receive a shock at the icy coldness of that beautiful water. My style is not to jump in, so I get no credit in the "adventuresome" column; but I gradually accustom myself to the cold (self-induced hypothermia, I suppose), enabling me to stay in the longest.

We had the pool to ourselves for our splash time and lunch,
then several groups of campers stopped by.
Though out of focus, this shows how much the pool
is beloved by hikers hot from clambering mountain trails.

Daughter Leah (far right, below) is an artist and art teacher, so part of the week's fun was for her to give a master class for the rest of us. 

Left to right: Rachel, Gavin, Rachel's Rob, Kaleigh, and Leah.
We are on the town green in Waterford, sketching
old New England residential architecture. 

A long-time family friend, Ruth Fearon, lived year-round on Highland Lake. Every day during the swimming season she and some friends would swim across the lake and back, guarded by Ruth's husband, Wendell, in their canoe. My daughters can remember some fun times at their house, including joining Ruth on that swim. I cannot truthfully remember if I did that swim 'way back then, but Rachel and Leah got the idea that I could -- and should -- do it now. Rachel, herself a long-distance swimmer, made it over and back lickety-split. Leah accompanied us in Elaine Gallant's kayak, trying to keep watch over the aquatic hare and turtle. It took me at least an hour, but I DID IT.

Sara and Rachel at the mid-point of their big swim. Photo by Leah.

I had a nice picture of the view from the deck of our cabin, but I cannot find it. We loved it. The neighbors called it "the upside-down house" because the bedrooms are on the ground floor and the living rooms on the second floor. We found that design ideal, however. 

The cabin was across the street from the lake, so the second floor deck gave us almost as good a water view as though we had been in a waterfront cabin. Lots of fragrant trees, loons and other birds galore. We could eat in the dining room or on the spacious deck. Great place to entertain friends and family, which we did all week. 

Special commendations go to Leah's Eric, who only had two days at the cabin before he had to return to work in Missouri, and to my Roy, who gave Eric a ride to Logan Airport and stayed the rest of the week in the super-hot suburbs of Boston, working on the showings of our house. It was super-hot in Maine, too, but we were equipped, not only with the lake and mountains, but with air conditioning -- and dishwasher and washer/dryer, making this the easiest vacation outside of Club Med. Hence my otherwise unexplained post title, "Idylls of the Queen." That's exactly what I felt like, queen-mother of all I surveyed. 

I should put in a good word for our rental agency, Krainen Realty of Raymond, Maine. 

A Hot Day Amongst Cold Marble

The next week there was another real estate showing at our perennially For Sale house in Wayland. So again, Roy and I went to the morning service at The Mother Church. Then, How to pass the time this week, while we cannot return to our house?

I asked to go to Mt. Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge. I had been there only once before, in the late '70's when I lived in Boston with my first family. At that time, former husband Tom and I took our two small daughters and the neighbor's little girl, Stephanie, on an outing to Mt. Auburn. Rachel was small enough to still be using a stroller, one of those small, fold-up, "umbrella" models. Leah and Stephanie were playmates. We parked, then pushed our way into the labyrinth. How fascinating, the age and variety of stones and monuments! Also, the place is an arboretum, displaying new beauties at every turn. With its rolling terrain, Mt. Auburn Cemetery is a great place to take the family for a stroll.

Roy and I, on this hot, humid Sunday, drove the driveways of the cemetery at random, looking at everything, but looking for one thing:  The Mary Baker Eddy monument.  I couldn't remember where it was, but I knew we had walked down a slope to the water's edge. This day, Roy and I saw engraved reminders of everyone else who'd ever made Who's Who in metropolitan Boston (so it seemed), but no reminder of Mary Baker Eddy. Where was that elusive monument?

We stopped to take pictures, though neither of us had brought our real cameras -- just cell phones -- so I have only a few shots to show you.

We were just about to give up our search,
when we came upon this marker -- the only sign
pointing to a person's tomb I noticed that day.
And there, just glimpsed across the water . . .

Driving around to the far side of the pond and parking, we got the up-close view.

Roy, giving scale to the monument. On the earlier visit,
little Stephanie had spontaneously dropped to her knees
on these steps, crossed herself, and said a prayer. It was then we realized
what church her family attended. Not The Mother Church.

On each side is a tablet inscribed with pivotal quotes from Mary Baker Eddy's immortal words. I had never really appreciated this tomb before, but this time I realized that if something drastic ever happened to the in-town church, there was exactly enough text at this obscure tomb to secure her place in history and keep her knowledge of God and the universe alive.

A view of the tomb from the road. Her name and
authorship are inscribed around the frieze.

Another Massachusetts must-see gets checked off my list.

This time, we continued on to IHOP for lunch, then home to the now-empty house. Had there been there any action at the open house? Tune in next week . . .

Sundays with Roy

What to do when we must clear out of our house for a real estate open house? Since open houses seem to happen at midday on Sundays (church goers don't buy houses???), we first go to church together at The Mother Church in Boston. Then we must find something to do to pass a couple of hours. This is easy in Boston!
The Church had obliged us on a recent June Sunday, by hosting an outdoor sculpture show on the Church Plaza. Here's some of what we saw. Although the title of the show is intellectual, "Convergences: Boston Sculptors Gallery", most of the creations were whimsical or humorous. To wit:

Andy Zimmerman's Liminal Bloom. The red rig in the background is not an antenna on the Publishing Society, but a crane working on the new tower at Berklee School of Music, up Mass Ave.

Joseph Wheelwright, Loving Stones. I should have included a passerby to show their scale, human height.

Eric Sealine, Arabesque. These dancers almost take off on pointe over the water of the reflecting pool.

Marilu Swett, Water Forms.  Squid in the sky? 

One of Donna Dodson's Tiger Mothers watches over children playing in the ever-popular fountain. The other Tiger Mother watched from the across the spectacular play of water.

Laura Evans, Bag Lunch.  We were told the concept: A group of children had stopped here to each their lunch during a school field trip, but something happening over yonder caught their attention, they dropped everything and ran to see.

Yours Truly, with Templum, by Margaret Swan. Just around the corner behind me is the entrance to the Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity.
(photo by Roy)

This overview was selected, although it does not show any of the sculptures, because it hints at the way multi-styled buildings have crowded in around the spacious Church Plaza, looming over the Church buildings to keep a curious eye on what the Christian Scientists -- and myriad others who use the plaza and buildings --
are doing.

We enjoyed this outing, and the lunch afterwards at Mel's Commonwealth Cafe, in Wayland.
Another real estate showing must occupy another blog, another day.