Greetings from North of Boston

I had a great maritime Saturday in Salem and Revere north of Boston, seeing ships and at the beach! The Salem Maritime National Historical Park was having its Heritage Days festival, with people demonstrating historic crafts like aspects of shipbuilding, lace-making, furniture carving, and traditional cooking, plus there was a band singing sea shanties and a Cardboard Boat Regatta which I'd thought meant people tossing models into the water but was actually cardboard boats crewed by several people in a race. 

There were food trucks (Paul got fried Twinkies) and since Salem's tall ship the Friendship is being restored, Pride of Baltimore II was visiting and letting people tour the deck. We had brought a picnic and ate it at a table behind the Custom House, which was also open for tours and had an actor dressed as Nathaniel Hawthorne talking about his work there. We got to see the scales and measuring equipment, the public stores for items no one could pay duties on, and the original wooden eagle that adorned the roof. 

Since we were in Salem, we also visited several of the witch shops -- lots of Tarot, crystals, herbs, crafts, and statues, though I didn't buy any -- and walked through the downtown before driving in the late afternoon to Revere Beach. The water was much warmer than I expected and there were clam shells, mussels, and some snails, plus many seagulls and a few pigeons looking for dinner. We were at the nearly empty north end of the beach and I got so much sand in my toes that I rode the rest of the way home barefoot.

 

We ate cheesesteaks for dinner and watched part of the terrible horrible Orioles game against the Phillies before giving up and putting on the start of the second season of A Good Girl's Guide To Murder, which is pretty well written and acted but very dark. And we discovered that the rain last week stained one of our windowsills, so we cleaned that up. Now I must sleep after a really nice day!

Greetings from Pride of Baltimore

The Canadian wildfires kept smoke in our area all day Wednesday. Fortunately I didn't have plans to be outside much. In the morning we finally got a storm door installed, less for insulation in the winter than because we wanted to be able to let light and fresh air in during the summer (no fresh air today), and even the cats seem pleased with that. I chatted with two of my high school friends after lunch, then we watched Argentina beat England in the World Cup. After that, Laurie and I watched the end of season two of Good Omens and the first couple of episodes of Staged. 

We took a very short walk after dinner when it was cooler if not clearer, and at least the bunnies seemed to be all right. Then we watched some fifth season Discovery. I posted pictures on Facebook of various places we've seen Delaware's Kalmar Nyckel, including this weekend at Sail Boston. Here's another ship we've seen all over the place, from my home state, Pride of Baltimore II, at Sailabration 2004, in Chestertown 2006, the Parade of Lighted Sail 2006, sailing in Charleston 2009, the Sultana Downrigging 2007, Baltimore Harbor 2015, and at Sail Boston this week: 

Greetings from Boston Seaport

On Sunday morning we drove to Billerica to pick up Meredith, then we headed to the Seaport District for Sail Boston, where over 50 tall ships are visiting along with dozens of local ships and a festival grounds with a ferris wheel, food, and lots of other things. The only ship we toured fully was Esmeralda from Chile, but we saw most of them, including several we've been on before (Pride of Baltimore, Kalmar Nyckel, Sagres, Mircea, Lynx, Mayflower II). The USS Constitution was afloat yesterday in the parade of sail, but we didn't see it in the water today because it back at the Charlestown Navy Yard. We got lunch at Better Bagels and took them to eat at Fan Pier Park within view of many schooners, and we got fresh-squeezed lemonade when it got warm.

 

 In the late afternoon, we took Meredith home, then headed back to Worcester, where I wanted to stop in Elm Park to do a couple of Mega Mewtwo Y raids before Pokemon Go Fest ended. (I had a successful weekend with over a dozen shinys despite not spending much of Sunday playing.) We had soup with crusty bread for dinner, then we watched the end of season four of Star Trek: Discovery -- I liked how things were wrapped up and I loved Stacy Abrams as President of Earth -- around The Vampire Lestat, which was romantic and powerful, I was so happy finally to get an episode fully focused on Louis and Lestat's relationship and how scarred they both are by what Armand did to Claudia, and then it ended insanely and I have no idea where it's going!

Poem for Friday and Marine Corps Culture

The Barnacle and the Gray Whale
by Cecilia Llompart   

 
                  Said the Barnacle,

You enchant me, with your carnival
of force.

Yours is a system of slow.

There is you, the pulley
and there is you, the weight.

Your eyes wide on a hymn.

Your deep song like the turn
of that first,

that earliest of wheels.


                  Said the Whale,

I have seen you, little encruster,
in that business of fouling the ships.

Known, little drum machine, you
to tease out food from the drink.

Little thimble of chalk and hard water.

You could be a callus of whiter skin.

You could be a knucklebone. You
who hang on me,

like a conscience.

-------- 

Thursday was cooler and less humid than earlier in the week -- a beautiful day. It was mostly a chore day for me, but we took a walk in the afternoon to enjoy it and several baby bunnies were out! We caught up on LEGO Masters and The Flash -- so glad it's the season finale, I basically lost track of everything that happened after Speed Force Mom stopped being evil -- and had grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner because we were in the mood. 

I chatted with fannish friends in the evening around those TV episodes, after which we watched the end of the Yankees-Red Sox game, which Boston tied in the 9th and won in the 10th so that was pretty enjoyable. Here are some cultural souvenirs from the National Museum of the Marine Corps, including a violin that belonged to John Philip Sousa, Olympic riflery medals won by Marines, an Oscar won by the Marine Corps in 1944 for a gritty documentary, and a model of the USS Constellation: 

Poem for Saturday and Baltimore Harbor

Spoiled Child
By Pages Matam

English is your fourth language

the baby of the family

the one your mouth spoils

favorite by default

who may one day be sold off by its siblings

in hopes to never return

all of your other tongues have grown jealous


your country has over 200 dialects

that's over 200 ways

to say Love

to say family

to say I am a song

to say I belong to something

that does not want to kill me

& does not want to siphon the gold from my

blood or the stories from my bones

--------

"English is one of five languages I hold fluently in reading and writing, and...I thought to myself, how can I reconcile the traditions and culture as a Cameroonian born and raised writer in the current wave of immigration and oppression of those who are not 'American'?" Matam told Poets.org.

Friday was my least eventful day of the week, mostly because I ended up spending too much of it fighting with computers -- first my desktop, which has an awesome replacement keyboard but decided that I wanted adaptive screen lighting no matter how many times I turned it off and kept dimming my screen, refusing to let me use the hardware buttons to brighten it again, then my old laptop, which has decided that it's own power cord is not a Dell power cord and keeps demanding that I get it one. (It will use my new Dell power cord, so it's definitely a cord issue, not a laptop issue.) It was pretty hot, at least, so I didn't mind spending a lot of the day indoors.

We had dinner with my parents, came home and watched some baseball and college football, then I put on A Simple Favor, which was quite enjoyable and not predictable -- every time I thought I knew where it was going, Anna Kendrick's character would say something like, "Are you trying to Diabolique me?", which is both funny and a pointed comment on expectations of women in film noir (this one starts out meeting one set of expectations, then does a big amazing flip, and while I wouldn't call it a feminist masterpiece, it doesn't offer good-and-evil judgement on women who make some very unconventional sexual choices). Around Baltimore's harbor earlier this month:

Greetings from Baltimore

We spent most of Saturday in Baltimore with Paul's parents plus his brother Jon, wife Brooke, and their twins, which was very nice since we haven't seen them in a couple of years. We met at the Indian buffet Kumari, which is down the street from the Baltimore Museum of Industry, which I'd never visited before and really enjoyed -- I had no idea Head tennis rackets were from Baltimore, nor the linotype machine, and they had a blacksmith working and Congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley's maritime reporting videos. Plus we got to build catapults out of popsicle sticks and spoons.

From the museum we went to the Inner Harbor, where my in-laws wanted to sit for a while, so they went to have drinks at Barnes & Noble, while my nephews did some shopping and we walked around to Harborplace with their parents (and I did a couple of Suicune raids during the three-hour event). The boys really wanted Shake Shack for dinner, so we went there, and I have now had cheese fries two weekends in a row after not having had them for years! We're seeing them all again Tuesday for dinner, so we came home afterward and watched the first episode of On Becoming a God in Central Florida.

Poem for Tuesday and Rainy Baltimore

Wishes For A New Year
By John P. Read

Brush away old heartaches.
Learn from our mistakes.
Another year is finally over.
A new dawn awakes.

--------

Happy New Year! We took Daniel to Baltimore to meet up with some friends -- it was so rainy that instead of sightseeing, we went out for hot chocolate, then went to Barnes & Noble and browsed end-of-year clearance books for a couple of hours. When we got home, we watched the season premiere of The Orville, which we missed on Sunday, then watched Thor: Ragnarok because it came up in conversation and is really the perfect end-of-year film when you think about it. From the Inner Harbor, holiday lights and ships in the rain: