US Route 9 Day Two

 My two goals for Plattsburgh, New York, were to walk along the shore of Lake Champlain and have breakfast. The Golden Gate Lodging motel seemed the perfect motel for the first night. It advertised free wifi and a private beach. I reserved a room with a lakeview. We arrived after dark, so I didn’t explore but I pictured the lovely, if short (it was cold), walk I’d have along the sand next day.

When I opened our lakeview curtain next morning, I was blinded by white. And the beach access was blocked by a four-foot snowpile from the parking lot snowplow clearing. In the icy wind we walked the end of the parking lot and saw nothing but snow and ice. So I stuck my foot into the snow beyond the pavement and called that my walk.

We drove north about 20 miles to the town of Champlain. We found the geography just as Jim had scoped out: US Route 9 North becomes an unnamed state road and then a dead end. It actually terminates in a small parking lot for border officials. Just to the west, Interstate 87 forms an important border crossing with Canada—Montreal is just 43 miles away.

I took the obligatory photos of the END 9 sign and the NO OUTLET yellow diamond, then we started our official Route 9 trip at 11:50 a.m.

On the way north we had spotted several orchards with large strangely shaped trees. They actually looked like grape vines, but much too thick and self-supporting. When we passed the Chazy Orchard (largest Macintosh orchard in the world) complex we had our answer. These trees were gnarly and twisted with flat tops. I guess for orchards that specialize in pick-your-own, the trees are left visually appealing and tree-like. These trees were obviously pruned for maximum production.

We stopped by the orchard store but a hand-written sign informed us that as of January 3 the store was only open on Saturdays. But across the street (Route 9) is the Apple Lodge Café. The waitress called out, “Sit anywhere you like,” and served up some delicious seafood chowder. Jim told her he is a soup expert and that was the best seafood chowder he’s had. I was tempted by the poutine, so close to the border, but I felt carb-conscious, so I opted for grilled haddock bites. I make a mean butter pie crust so I rarely order pie in a restaurant, but in the largest Macintosh orchard’s café I took a risk. I was disappointed. But the meal was a success. The café was cozy and full of locals enjoying a meal. I was channeling Groundhog Day.

After lunch I took the wheel and Jim napped. In Plattsburgh I got lost. Yeah, sometimes a US Route isn’t well-marked (or I was asleep at the wheel). But the street was a loop, so I got to see the local McDonough Monument and a bit of the lake.

Once in the Adirondack Park, I stopped at Ausable Chasm. It offers hikes (but I didn’t bring my snowcleats), summertime tubing, and a raft trip through the aforementioned chasm. I chatted with the man in the visitors’ center and told him my crazy plan. He didn’t think it crazy at all. He grew up in Albany and married an Adirondack woman. In the days before available GPS, he and his wife picked up his two brothers in Albany and headed towards Disney World. One brother assured them he knew the best way through New Jersey, directed them onto the Garden State Parkway and fell asleep. Deep into south Jersey they realized their mistake and had to take the Atlantic City Expressway to Philly to recover.

I’ve been fascinated by Adirondack for quite some time. I’m amused by the fact that the chair has become the ubiquitous symbol of relaxation. Even the Virgin Islands feature the chairs used in mountain tuberculosis sanatoriums. I didn’t know that Adirondack  Park is not a state park but a 5.8 million acre area. About 44 percent of the area is protected wilderness. Part of its original purpose was to protect the watershed that feeds the Erie Canal from  over-logging.

Route 9 featured some dramatic mountain scenery, with rocky cliffs and cascading ice. I stopped at Schroon Lake where the pharmacist told us rich New Yorkers built summer homes on the lake in the Victorian era. There were ice-fishing huts near the shore.

Around Lake George we drove into a snow storm. Happily, Jim doesn’t mind driving through snow, so we carried on in the dusk, passing Lake George, Glen Falls, Saratoga Spa, and Albany. I chose the most inexpensive motel for lodging. I was a bit concerned when the office had bullet-proof glass, but it’s morning now and we heard no drug busts to disturb our sleep.

US Route 9 - Day One

 Ten years ago Jim agreed to help me fulfill a long-time goal. On the last day of Christmas vacation 2015, four months after our son David died of leukemia, we drove our daughter Annie to Logan Airport in Boston and headed south on US Route 1. Normally it takes three and a half hours to drive to the Bronx. On Route 1 it took eleven hours. That was Day One. (See my blog archive for other details.)

Now this blessed man is helping me with my next travel goal: to drive all of US Route 9 this week.

The timing is perfect. Jim was released from his calling as a counselor in the Cambridge Stake Presidency two days ago. For over nine years he has dedicated most of his Sundays and several hours each Tuesday and Wednesday evening, helping keep the Cambridge Stake (a collection of eleven congregations) running smoothly. Multiple times a week Jim would receive a text, email, or phone call and afterwards say to me, “The Cambridge Stake never sleeps.” So he was concerned that he would  feel a great loss Sunday night after his honorable release. Perfect time to hit the road.

The design is simple. Monday morning we packed our carry-ons, computers, and my CPAP, got in the car, and drove nearly to Burlington, Vermont. We spent a few hours with my niece and her husband, exploring his extensive woodshop and just chatting. Then we visited her mother twenty minutes away. En route we passed a Chilis Restaurant. We don’t go out to eat often, but I mourn the loss of Chilis in Burlington, Massachusetts, so after our visit we stopped in for an early supper. It was delicious.

As the sun was setting over the Adirondack Mountains across Lake Champlain, we drove to the ferry that connects Grand Isle, Vermont with Plattsburgh, New York. Crossings occur all day and night. We arrived at the dock just as the ferry was unloading and preparing for a western sail. Near Plattsburgh a huge flock of seabirds swirled up in the darkness, disturbed from their ice floe.

I had found The Golden Gate Lodging with private beach near the ferry landing. Our second floor room faces the lake which is blindingly white this morning: ice as far are we can see on the Cumberland Bay.

US Route 9 is 522.73 miles long. Its northern terminus is an interchange with I-87 in Champlain, NY, near the Canadian border. It travels along Lake Champlain and the Adirondack mountains in New York State and spawns several NY state roads, including 9N, 9W, and 9A. It is signed north-south through New York and New Jersey and signed east-west in Delaware. It is one of only two US routes with a designated ferry connection: Cape May, NJ, to Lewes, DE. The other highway with a ferry connection is US 10 which has been served by the USS Badger across Lake Michigan between Wisconsin and Michigan since 1953. My kids and I went across on the Badger during our epic Cross Country Trip in 1995 (15,900 miles, 48 states, Mexico, and Canada. Our kids were ages 4-14. I towed a pop-up tent trailer and was the sole driver for seven weeks).

Patchwork of Jewels

 22 Oct 2024

A month ago I lay in bed and looked out the north window, as I do most mornings. All summer the window view is a mass of green maple leaves. But that day I saw a few tiny patches of blue among the green expanse. I realized that my beloved tree was slowly thinning.

By the time we returned from Netherlands, three weeks later, the window view was golden with many spots of blue. This morning it was a veritable patchwork of color: predominantly yellow but sprinkled with pale green splotches, gold trimmed with cinnamon, dark brown limbs and trunk, and brilliant sky beyond.

Toward evening, as Jim and I walked from his coachhouse office to our kitchen, we paused in the driveway with wonder. Our yard was a riot of gold in the late-afternoon sunlight.

I was afraid I would miss my New England autumn, planning a European river cruise for the first 10 days of October. But I’ve been home twelve days and am in the center of the glory. I don’t remember a more beautiful show, but I often say that. Driving to my psychiatric nurse practitioner’s office in Burlington today, the visual feast was intoxicating. Green, yellow, gold, orange, amber, wheat, butterscotch, bronze, cinnamon, and ginger. A hundred hues, tints, and shades. I live in a jewel-bedecked world.

Concertgebouw

 We boarded Viking ship Tuesday morning in Amsterdam. I went on a walking tour, with tour guide Anni, directly from the pier. It was neither historic nor charming: passenger ship terminal, commercial buildings, and train tracks. But she gave a good introduction to Amsterdam and gave me a crucial bit of information. We never would have made it to the Concertgebouw (a worldclass classical music venue) for the orchestra concert that evening without knowing how to walk to the Centraal Train Station AND that tram 2 and 5 go to Concertgebouw. CRITICAL! I enjoyed the mile walk, but did wonder if it would be safe at night on our return from the concert (It was).

After the walking tour, I stopped at an Albert Heijn supermarket (they own Stop & Shop, Hannaford, Food Lion, and Giant) and bought fresh herring and mild kwark (a northern European food like Greek yogurt but not sour), and a chicken sandwich for Jim. They didn't offer me a bag, but I managed to balance the three items for the remaining half-mile back.

That evening we walked to the Centraal Station, tapped our credit cards at entering and leaving, and rode Tram 5 along the west side of Amsterdam. In front of the Concertgebouw (literally: concert building) we join a stream of Koreans. They had come to hear the Korean National Symphony Orchestra perform. I wondered if they live in the Netherlands or were friends and family traveling with the musicians.

We heard Mozart's The Magic Flute Overture, Variations on a Rococco Theme in A Major by Tschaichovsky with 18-year-old cellist Joemin Han, and art songs in Italian and Korean by a flamboyant soprano, Sumi Jo. Her dress was one of a kind. Full-length colorful scarves at each shoulder and colorful fabric bunched up and hanging from the hips. Shumann's Fourth Symphony ended the program.

The Concertgebouw opened two years (1888) before Boston Symphony Hall. They are similar in design and have excellent acoustics. Both have composers' names lining the balcony ledges and walls. The walls and ceiling are creamy white and the seats plush red. We sat in the balcony nearest the stage and enjoyed the energy of the orchestra and the acoustics.

Afterwards, we followed the tram tracks and found a pizza shop for a late-night snack. He didn’t take credit cards, so I gave him a €20 to pay for €14 pizza. He handed me my change, carefully pointing out that it was three coins, two euros each. I felt he was watching over an inexperienced tourist.

Still Life with Books

Had a great European breakfast buffet at the hotel. I focused on protein: salami, cheese and eggs, with a side of potato cake.

Our walking tour guide was about our age: he studied in Amsterdam in the seventies. We walked along canals, went through a little alleyway that is gated in the evening, and learned about Amsterdam. For years Catholicism was illegal and there were ‘hidden churches.’ We went into one: it looked like a normal housefront but inside was a cavernous church that opened up like the Weasley’s camping tent.

Begijnhof, a peaceful oasis in central Amsterdam, was established in the Middle Ages as a lay religious community of Catholic women. The quiet courtyard is surrounded by houses and tucked away in the middle of the bustling city.

In the afternoon I headed off on my own to the Rijksmuseum.

When I was 16, I wanted to work on my uncle’s wheat farm in Montana. My three older brothers had all worked there and it was my turn. But my aunt replied to my inquiry with a gentle but firm no: the bunkhouse was no place for a girl. I was bitterly disappointed.

But my ever-resourceful mother had an idea. Why didn’t I write to her college friend, Paul, who worked for Nabisco and often travelled to Germany. I had studied German for five years. Paul knew a German family in northwestern Germany who were willing to take in an American teenager. I spent my savings on airfare and soon was on my way to six weeks in Deutschland.

It was a tremendous experience and more than compensated for my disappointment about Montana. My German parents were very accommodating and took me on day trips to see the sights of northwestern Germany, including medieval Celle, Lünenburger Heath, and an ancient Roman ruins at Xanten.

A year or so before my trip, my parents had hosted two ‘Dutch boys’ (as my mom always called them). They were in their mid-twenties and worked as interns at Merck with my dad. I contacted them and they picked me up for a visit to the Netherlands. We had supper and stayed overnight with Gertjan’s parents in The Hague.

I was in love with Rembrandt (still am) and my one wishlist item was to see Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

In the last few years, as an experienced mother, I’ve wondered about one aspect of this trip. When we got to the Rijksmuseum, the Dutch boys told me they wouldn’t park and that they would stay with the car while I ran in to see The Night Watch. Now I wonder, What would their mothers think of their behavior. To bring a visitor to a museum and say, Run in while we wait in the car? Having just been to the Rijksmuseum I now understand: there is no parking at the museum. I’m sure they explained that to me at the time.

I did what I was told, ran into the Rijksmuseum, quickly found The Night Watch, and gazed at it a few minutes. As I walked out I peaked into the side galleries and found a still life that took my breath away. It was more lifelike than a photograph. I found a postcard of it in the gift shop.

Over the years I’ve looked many times for that postcard, but I misplaced it long ago. But the memory of that still life is the most precious of my day in Amsterdam.

The only thing on my wishlist this week for Amsterdam was to go to the Rijksmuseum and track down that elusive still life. I wasn’t sure I’d even recognize it if I did find it. I looked online for any Rembrandt still life, but could find nothing. I fantasized about trying to engage someone at the museum information desk. How would it go?

My walk to the museum was wet and rainy. I forgot to pack an umbrella from home, so I bought a cheap one at a souvenir shop. Very cheap: it blew inside out at the slightest wind. A tiny bit better than nothing.

As I approached the information desk, the young man seemed eager to help. I explained to him, “I was here in 1973 and I saw a still life by Rembrandt that took my breath away. Do you know how I would find it?”

He pointed out that the museum had been extensively renovated since then, so nothing was in the same place. He looked in the museum catalog. When he found nothing, he suggested I go up to the gallery and look around. “You need to find this after all these years,” he said sympathetically. He recommended I be sure and see the  self-portrait of Rembrandt as a young man. ,It is quite small, 7 x 8 ½ inches, and easily missed. I was glad for the tip.

The Night Watch was behind a wall of glass and the view obstructed by scaffolding. They are removing old varnish to restore the color. Happily, I wasn’t there to see that masterwork. My experience five decades ago was sufficient.

I strolled from work to work, enjoying familiar pieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer. In one gallery I saw a large still life above an ornate cabinet. As I studied it, I realized that I had found my masterpiece. Still Life with Books by Jan Lievens, circa 1627. 

The web catalog image doesn’t do it justice. The reflection of the glass in the pewter pitcher. The roll fresh-baked and inviting. I can almost smell the old leather.

The description on the wall explains more that I realized.

“Appearances can be deceiving. What at first sight looks to be an overturned lute is just an old wooden case for the instrument. The books, too, are a disappointment; they are merely empty bindings, limp covers of leather or parchment meant to hold bills and other documents. These are all old objects – cast off, worthless and transitory.”

I learned in high school that excellent still life studies the transitory nature of life. The cut flowers and fruit will soon die; nothing lasts. I understand now that in Lievens’ painting, these things are already worthless. (Well, the roll was fresh that day. Does anyone have some softened butter?)

Amsterdam, Day One

29 Sep 2024 

We arrived at Logan Airport, Terminal E, three hours before our scheduled flight to Amsterdam. I felt relaxed and prepared with my backpack and carry-on-sized bag. (We had bought one checked bag each, but I have a goal to pack only a carry-on and be able to lift it above my head as needed.) As we stood in line at the automatic kiosk, Jim said, I don’t have my passport. It was very difficult for me to relax at that point. He went to the counter, but the agent assured him he couldn’t check in without a passport. (Back in the 80s he once flew to Mexico knowing he didn't have his passport. I sent it to him for his return trip.) So we called a friend who agreed to drive to the airport: it’s about a 35-minute drive at 4:30 p.m. on a Saturday.

I had decided that if it she were late, I would go through security alone and get on the plane and wait for Jim at the hotel in Amsterdam. That wasn’t necessary. Our friend made an uneventful and efficient drive; Jim met her at the curb. At security there were four people ahead of us: I’ve never seen such a short line.

Shiphol Airport is huge. We walked and walked to get to the passport checkpoint, then walked even further to our baggage claim. Our two lonely bags waited for us there.

At the Victoria Hotel (my son Matt makes a game of noticing the names of his niblings (my grandkids) around the world. Victoria wins by far.) we were told, at 9:20 a.m., that our king room wasn’t ready but that one with two twins was immediately available. At first we declined, but when hearing that our original room might not be ready until 3 p.m., we rethought it and took the twin room. It was definitely worth it to be able to lie down before 3 p.m. We didn't nap long enough to disturb our night sleep.

In the afternoon we walked south (our hotel was across the street from Centraal Station) to explore. We saw canals and tall Dutch gabled houses and lots of people and bicycles, in motion and parked. Our van driver had warned us of the bike paths, but Jim still stepped into one. The next day on our walking tour a man stepped into an active tram track, which was a closer call. Bicycles, along with large, sleek trams, and pedestrians share space in close quarters. The bike paths look like brick sidewalks, so every time I turned a corner I had to study the road carefully. A tour guide told me the bikes are much more dangerous than the cars: cars will stop for you: the bikes never do. "They think they own the road," she said. I came to dread the little tinkle of a bike bell. The tram tracks present their own challenge. They are recessed, so not a tripping hazard, but they don't stand out. There are no warning yellow lines or curbs.

In Spui Square we found the Athenaeum, a large bookstore: Jim’s shopping drug of choice. Roald Dahl and The Neverending Story were in the Dutch juvenile section (I could tell by the illustrations of the BFG and the Auryn). We then had a lovely supper at an Italian Trattoria next door. I’m still on the lookout for some traditional raw haring (herring). I’ve read that the best, Hollandse Nieuwe, is caught between mid-May and the end of June. Didn’t quite make that deadline.

Since it was Sunday and our Arlington Ward doesn’t meet until 2 p.m. Eastern Time, we were able to see sacrament meeting on Zoom. I kept dozing off, but I tried.

And then to sleep!

Kane, Pennsylvania

On our road trip last month, we stayed in Kane, Pennsylvania. Jim discovered Elizabeth Wood Kane. Her husband, General Thomas Kane, fought in the Civil War, including at Gettysburg. We are familiar with him because he was a great protector and friend of the Latter-day Saints when the federal government was hostile to them. Kane and Brigham Young became friends and Brigham Young invited Thomas and Elizabeth to Utah. They took a road trip (much rougher than any I’ve ever been on) through Utah from Salt Lake City to St. George in southern Utah. Elizabeth wrote a memoir of the journey, Twelve Mormon Homes (1874).

Besides publishing books, Elizabeth was one of the first female students at the Pennsylvania Medical School. She was also a photographer, specializing in the outdoors when most photographers were creating indoor portraits.

After her husband died, Elizabeth built a mansion in Kane, Pennsylvania. Jim learned that this building is now a bed and breakfast and made a reservation. The rambling house creates quite an impression from the street.

We strolled to the preservation society, housed in an old train depot, and were disappointed that it was locked. A young family were there at the locked door. Then a young man came down the street with keys in his hand. He was planning to do some work in the office but invited us in to look around. (The building is usually only open in the evening.)

The young man was a wealth of information. Forsaking his own plans, he spent two hours with us, sharing his great love for his small town and its history. The preservation society also owns the Memorial Chapel where General Kane is buried. A larger-than-life statue of General Kane is in the front lawn. An identical bronze statue stands before the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City.

 

We got a huge slice of a small-town charm nestled near the Allegheny National Forest.

 

The old Pennsylvania license plates stated, "You have a friend in Pennsylvania"  Now it is true for us.

Flight 93

 After South Carolina  we stopped in Maryland to see my brother and his wife. Knowing we were headed for Kane, Pennsylvania, she recommended a stop at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, PA. I found it deeply moving.

From the National Park Service brochure:

September 11, 2001, morning: Four commercial airliners are hijacked by al Queda terrorists in a planned attack against the United States. Two are flown into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York City. A third is flown into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane, United Flight 93, a Boeing 757 bound for San Francisco, California, from Newark, New Jersey, is delayed 25 minutes before takeoff.

After 46 minutes flying, when over eastern Ohio, hijackers in first class attack at 9:28 am, incapacitating the captain and first officer. Hijackers turn Flight 93 southeast, headed for Washington, DC, most likely the US Capitol.

Just before 10 am the plane is seen flying low and erratically over southwestern Pennsylvania. At 10:03 it crashes, upside-down, at 563 miles per hour into this Somerset County field. There are no survivors. All 33 passengers, seven crew members, and four hijackers are killed.

It’s a sobering story, told with TV news clips, photos, artifacts from the crash site, and even recorded voice messages by crew and passengers trying to send one last message of love to their families.

The courage of those forty people is awe-inspiring. They were just regular civilians, taking a routine cross-country plane trip. They hadn’t been trained for combat. The crew’s training against hijacking focused on negotiating and deescalating a tense situation. No one was prepared to deal with suicide pilots.

But these brave men and women, in a matter of minutes, responded to the unprecedented situation. Forced to the back of the plane, they made a plan and voted to storm the cockpit. Again, from the NPS brochure:

Recovered from the crash site, the cockpit voice recorder captured the shouts, thumps, crashes, and breaking of glass and plates. The 9/11 Commission reported that the hijackers, although remaining in control of the plane, must have judged that the passengers and crew were mere seconds from overcoming them. To continued sounds of the counterattack, Flight 93 crashed into this field.

The crash site is 18 minutes flying time from Washington, DC. The action of unarmed passengers and crew thwarted and defeated the terrorists’ plan.

May they rest in peace.

Honeybees

 Our niece keeps bees. It’s an admirable occupation. Sherlock Holmes kept bees in his retirement on a small farm upon the South Downs.

Our apiarist relative established a hive about three years ago, at the outside corner of her parents’ house in Charleston, South Carolina. She has about three pounds of honeybees, or 10,000 little winged creatures.

We recently visited Charleston and as I was lugging luggage to the front door, I heard an angry buzzing around my head. I walked all around the front yard to escape but the insect persisted in circling my head. I finally starting waving my arms around my head, beginning to feel crazed by the incessant buzzing. I felt my right hand hit something fuzzy and larger than a housefly and then that unique and familiar sharp pain that bee venom inflicts. A little whitish stinger was lodged in the proximal phalange of my right index finger. (Yeah, I had to look it up on Johns Hopkins’ anatomy chart. It’s the finger part nearest the wrist.)

Jim scrapped off the little stinger (remarkable pain from such a small puncture caused by a tiny bit of organic material) with a credit card. I knew enough not to try and pull it out: it has a sac that can release more venom if squeezed.

Over the next day. instead of improving, the swelling moved from my finger to the back of my hand towards my wrist until my knuckles and veins disappeared and my skin grew taut. The worst of it was the itching. I trained myself years ago never to scratch an injury, but I was sorely tempted. We saw Beethoven’s Third Symphony that night and I struggled to concentrate fully (we were in Charleston to enjoy the annual Spoleto Festival USA). The next day the swelling was even worse. I remembered that I had some steroid cream from a previous poison ivy rash. It took another day to take effect, but over a few more days the swelling subsided.

As I understand it, the symptoms we experience after an injury or illness are caused by our own immune system reacting to the invasion. I’m sure it would be worse if we had no defenses against microbes and poisons, but I wouldn’t mind a little downgrade tweak to my system.

The beehive, after three years of growing, is finally producing honey. Our niece gave us a little jar, which I will enjoy when we return home. My attacker will not enjoy home: when the stinger is lodged in the victim the bee suffers fatal internal injuries.

Polaroid picture

 I’m finding the stress of my life cutting into my sleep. I seem to sleep long enough, but I can tell when I wake that I’ve been worrying about my responsibilities all night long.

With no school-aged children at home I often don’t follow weather forecasts. This morning I awoke before six a.m. vexed by a complicated issue. I got up to work on it on my laptop and when I glanced outside after about a half hour, something magical happened.

When I was a little girl I received a Polaroid camera for Christmas. (My granddaughter has a camera with the same technology.) I would take a picture and pull the seemingly blank photo paper from the camera. As I watched, a dim image in black and white would appear and details slowly sharpen before my eyes.

That’s what happened to me this morning. When I sat down at my desk, all seemed the same as yesterday. but at some point I turned my head to glance outside and realized the car seemed different. Peering down at the pre-dawn yard, I saw a blanket of white on my car. Over the next hour, each time I glanced out details of the scene deepened and sharpened into a wintry landscape. In the windless air a dusting of snow covered every maple twig. Since our coachhouse is white with grey trim, my west window framed an old black and white photo with a touch of dull brick in the Greeley Village apartments beyond and to the south a tinge of dusty pink at the office condos peeked through the branches.

David A. Bednar, an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spoke of "the tender mercies of the Lord," small blessings that we can learn to recognize and appreciate in our daily lives. As I sit here, wondering at the beauty that developed before my eyes this morning, it truly is a tender mercy. The stresses remain, the challenges abound, but there is beauty to be seen if I just lift my head and look.

Drinking from a firehose

 I just got back from a religion class at our chapel. (Adult religion classes offered during the week are called “Institute.”)

It was inspirational and reminded me of my one experience with BYU Education Week back in 1993. Brigham Young University opens its campus each year for a week between spring and summer semester. BYU professors and others offer free classes and lectures on a huge variety of subjects. I saw Stephen Covey give a lecture on Joseph Smith, using the same paradigm as he uses in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I attended a college-level art history class. (I’ve often regretted not taking one as an undergrad.) I literally ran from one venue to the next, 'drinking from a fire hose,’ to borrow the metaphor a speaker in the opening meeting in the Marriott Center used. And today I had another sip.

Shauna Seamons is generously sharing her wealth of knowledge and deep understanding of the restored gospel. The topic for this semester is “Temple Text in the Scriptures.” I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that our temple experience can be enriched by a deeper understanding of temple references in the scriptures. (For me as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, these are the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.)

Shauna has been a religion teacher for over twenty years and I was blown away both by the content of her lesson and her teaching style. I decided at the last minute to bring a new notebook. (With my hand tremor my handwriting is sometimes illegible, especially in public.) I’m so glad I did. My left hand behaved itself admirably and now I have notes to refer to as I study this week.

I love taking classes and expanding my horizons. Thank you, Shauna! And thank you to all the women who came out on a winter Tuesday morning to share in the class and contribute to my day.

Latest Autumn

 The yellows are fallen and browned. A few stubborn dark leaves, chiefly oaks, hold on.

I lived in a little town in central Pennsylvania until I was nine. I loved the rolling hills surrounding our little Susquehanna River valley. To me, after the leaves fell, the hills were covered with soft brown fur. As I grew older I realized that my impressionistic view was a fantasy. Bare tree limbs and twigs catch your jacket and scratch your face. But the childish fancy won't give way to reality. The sight of a late autumn wood is comforting and cozy.

My oldest cousin, Lola, owned a sugar beet farm in eastern Montana and we visited them in 1995, the summer of our cross-country trip, after stopping at my Dad’s old stomping  grounds in Choteau County and Fort Benton, Montana.

Lola and her husband Dick were gracious hosts. They took us in their pickup truck to view the sugar beet fields and their oldest son gave my kids rides on his horse.

Their oldest daughter had moved to West Virginia. She was quite homesick and one day called Lola and said, “Mom, the leaves have all fallen off the trees. It is so ugly here!”

Because of that report I have pondered late autumn. It would be a shock to first experience an Eastern late autumn in adulthood. I’ve grown up with them. I love the contrasts and the continual change in color and texture all through the year.

Out my kitchen window I see trees, a few small ones in the foreground and a large maple tree a block to the north. It has a pleasing rounded shape and I’m reminded of a poem I once wrote. I visualized my brain, which had failed me so utterly, as a large deciduous tree with thousands of branches and twigs. My marvelous brain, for all its failings, was as glorious as a mighty oak.

I’m very proud of the fact that I can say and even spell deciduous. I’ve often felt it was a pretentious adjective for such a familiar object. I just learned that it comes from the Latin: to fall down or off. So prosaic.

Sunglow, burnt sienna, and honey

 I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before. For the past thirty-eight years I have reveled in the simple but deep pleasure of living in New England: a place other people go to on vacation. In the fall, I enjoy walking and driving, day after day, watching the colors change from the deep augustal green through reds, oranges, yellows, and browns.

According to The Boston Globe, “Summer 2023 was the second-rainiest on record in Boston,” with more than 20 inches falling in three months.

In drought years the trees turn color early, and this year they turned late. I was happy to see that even though we were in England until October 12th, we hadn’t missed the peak in New England. Two weeks later Jim and I took a drive west to Petersham and ate supper in Barre at Red Tomato Pizza, enjoying delicious Italian food. We’d been to the town before: Barre is the terminus of my beloved Route 62.

As we headed home on this late afternoon, the sunlight on the leaves nourished our souls.

Two days later we drove to Manchester, New Hampshire, where we lived for seven years. Four of our six children were born there at Elliot Hospital. I’ve always loved the mix of deep forest green pine trees and deciduous trees in New Hampshire.

As I’ve been driving around the past few weeks, composing this post in my head, I’ve paid especial attention and tried to name all the colors of late fall. I’ve been surprised at the vibrant reds: I think of red as an early fall color. And it is. These deep scarlets are mostly single trees, obviously from a nursery and not native to the soil.

I’m also surprised by the yellows still on the trees. How to describe the colors? I went to a website website for some linguistic help. Here are some of the colors I’ve been trying to describe:

Burnt sienna, golden brown, amber, autumn gold, sunglow, golden puppy, harvest gold, sandy taupe, antique gold, cognac, aspen gold, dark goldenrod, maize, candlelight gold, saffron, honey, and caramel. Good enough to eat.

Anniversary: November 5, 1995

 On November 5th of 1995, I went crazy, bonkers, insane, out of my mind. Literally.

I once heard Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse Five and other sixties (and seventies) classics, talk about his family history of mental illness. “Bats in the belfry,” he said cheerfully. I loved his bluntness. I don’t judge anyone else’s sensibilities, but I personally don’t like euphemisms, if for no other reason than that they don’t have the intended effect. New terms for old conditions can’t keep up with popular culture turning them into insults.

So on that first Sunday in November (I’m on deadline here), I stood outside the kitchen in the warm autumn sunshine as a kind older mother combed out my long hair to remove head lice nits. I stayed home from church, a very rare occurence, because some of our family were infected with lice. Later that afternoon I started wandering around the house making no sense to anyone but myself. I was convinced evil men were trying to kidnap my daughter. I thought I could read Jim’s mind by studying his facial expressions (and did pretty well with that). When my bizarre behavior escalated a good friend took me to her house. Later a few friends drove me on Route 2, a four-lane highway, to Lahey Hospital. On the way I unbuckled my seatbelt and said I’d get out. Luckily I still could be persuaded by my friend as she said, “You don’t have to do this, Mary,” reaching across my body and calmly buckling me back in the minivan seat.

I spent several hours in the emergency room and then about four days in the psychiatric unit on the 5th floor of Waltham Hospital. I was so naïve that it took me a day to realize the doors were locked.

It was a memorable weekend. I review parts of it most weeks at the newcomers meeting of my support group: DBSA Boston: Depression Bipolar Support Alliance. Just this past Wednesday I told part of my story again. Later, as the other Zoom participants introduced themselves, a young woman thanked me for my story. It gave her hope to hear me share and see that I had survived and flourished despite my illness.

When I woke up from the anti-psychotic-drug-induced sleep twenty years ago, I was in my right mind and shattered. I knew no one, NO ONE, with mental illness. Intellectual disability, (we respectfully called it mental retardation in my childhood), I was intimately aware of. My little brother, Michael, was born severely disabled and I lived with him daily. I knew his classmates and later I trained as a special education teacher.

But I had no such history with mental illness. Soon after my first hospitalization, a woman we met at church generously shared her experiences with Jim and me. I vowed that I would be open about my illness. I wanted to be the person a 'young Mary Johnston’ could turn to. I often have that privilege at DBSA Boston.

I talked on the phone today with my brother, who has been sober for as long as I’ve been married. He started an NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting in Butler, PA, many years ago. He told me, with passion, about a man he knew whose life was changed by NA. It reminded me of something I sometimes forget in the administrative throes of being president of DBSA Boston. We do what we do because it changes lives. It makes a difference. That’s what we are here for.

Prayer

 As a young girl, I was quite a Pharisee. I wanted very much to be religious but even more I wanted to be seen as religious.

When I was about 10, our pastor at Holy Trinity Church in Westfield, NJ, where I lived from age 9 till marriage, gave everyone a challenge: spend more time praying in church. Wanting to be spiritual and very attuned to challenges from teachers (I was a pathological grade hound), I made a promise. I’m sure I wanted to please my parents, and was disappointed that they never mentioned it.

So, on Sundays, before Mass started, I stayed kneeling longer than my parents and siblings did. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to pray for more than about two minutes, so I just knelt in mind-silence, wondering if anyone knew I was faking it.

This morning I went to the Bethesda Ward since I’m visiting my older brother, Steve, and his wife, Maria. I rolled into the parking lot at 10:07 a.m. for the 10:10 sacrament meeting. The lot was empty except for a row of about seven cars in the corner. The building had  a sign: Washington DC North Mission office down the stairs and in the rear, so I assume these are extra ‘mission cars’ up for sale.

I walked around the building to verify what I already knew: all the doors were locked and the chapel empty. Probably it is stake conference here, the semi-annual meeting of all the congregations in the stake (like a diocese). I pondered whom I would communicate with to suggest a change on the Church global website. I’m sure it would cause huge technical challenges to list stake conference dates for the 3,500 units worldwide. I know in our Cambridge Stake the dates change from time to time.

We’ve had this experience before. I guess it indicates how often we travel. A memorable time was in June of 2001. All eight of us flew to Paris on our way to Florence, Cinque Terre, London, and the Orkney Islands. We had found the address of the Paris church and found our way to the door. But it was locked. It was a commercial building, not a free-standing church building, and we wondered if we had the correct address. A large window in front with a curtain had a Book of Mormon on the windowsill, so we were confident of our location. But no meeting.

We did attend church in French once. We all were visiting Quebec City, one of my favorite places in North America, and found the small branch, also in a commercial building. The American missionaries were pleased to see us and became impromptu interpreters.

So, this morning, as I sit in an impromptu private devotional on a red metal bench with no cushion, I am creating a Primary lesson for my grandkids in the Bronx. They are about the age I was when I made a promise to pray more and then felt guilty for never fulfilling it. I want them to know that like a good conversation, sincere prayer takes effort and focus. A friend of mine once observed that God isn’t a ‘cosmic bellhop.’

In preparation for our lesson, I read an article on the Church website I happened to see after logging onto the chapel’s Liahona network. (Every church building I know of uses the same network name and passcode.) "God Knows and Loves You" It became the basis of my lesson. I'm also going to play a clip of Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World," and a karaoke "I Am a Child of God."

I'm still learning about prayer myself. I often 'shoot beyond the mark.' I'm not all that good at conversation, so I have that to overcome. But  I'll keep trying.

Smorgasbord

I was sitting in the ‘cultural hall’ (aka gym for those of you who aren’t LDS), waiting for stake conference (the semi-annual meeting of our stake (like a diocese: a group of eleven congregations in the Boston area)) to begin.

For some reason, I thought about service, and being the perfectionist I am, I focused on all the good deeds I’ve left undone.

A new and comforting thought came into my mind unbidden. Perhaps service opportunities are like a smorgasbord. (How often have you heard that word in the last fifty years? They were all the rage in the seventies.)

A smorgasbord is a Scandinavian way of serving food at a party. Instead of one entrée, many different kinds of food are presented at a huge table and guests are invited to sample those that look appealing.

When I was in college, a sweet and generous older man invited a friend and me to his favorite restaurant, which featured a smorgasbord. I was in seventh heaven. So many choices! I wanted to try all of them. The result was a memorable meal.

But in life, with that same attitude of trying to sample everything, I often feel discouraged and down on myself. When I fail to step up to a service opportunity, especially one that has no appeal to me or will be difficult or awkward to time-consuming, I feel like a failure.

I don’t mean to excuse myself for the things left undone that I really should have done. But life is a smorgasbord. There isn’t time to sample it all. A skill I’d like to develop is the ability to enjoy the fact of choices coupled with the wisdom that I must choose and that happiness lies in the direction of making good choices and being content with the outcomes.

In the October 2007 General Conference of the Church, Dallin H. Oaks gave a memorable talk, "Good, Better, Best." (I just googled Dallin Oaks and the first fill-in was ‘good better best.’) He talked about the many choices we have in life. Like the old Sears catalog he and his farming family pored over before Christmas in his youth, the choices can be labeled good, better, and best. The question is, are we making the best choices or are we satisfied with good ones.

I took the message to heart and I still recognize great good in it. But my interpretation can sometimes be toxic.

I recently listened to President Oaks’ talk to refresh my memory. It is interesting to note that much of his talk is geared towards official Church activities and over-scheduling children and youth. Those have nothing to do with my current personal life choices.

Jim and I often talk about choices, emotional paralysis, and time use. Since he is self-employed and I’m an independent homemaker, our schedules are largely our own. The freedom can be exhilarating; it can also be paralyzing. Sometimes we make a priority list and then avoid working on what we named as our priorities.

Today I have 328 unread emails in my inbox. It’s a backlog from our two-week trip to Oxford, Cornwall, and London. When I got home it was over 700. I also have undone DBSA Boston work (I’m president, remember?), an unpublished blog (obviously I chose to post if you are reading this), work to do on my memoir, as well as laundry, food preparation, and a myriad of other worthwhile time-use choices.

Writing that list raises my anxiety. Can I really relax and enjoy the smorgasbord?

Meadows of Clover

1 Oct 2023

We’re staying with some friends who moved to Kennington, England, a village outside Oxford. I think Harry Potter used to live here.

We went to a baptism this morning and I ventured out myself in the afternoon. I walked around the village cemetery, St. Swithun, which had only fairly recent markers (it was established as a civil parish in 1936), then the Sandford lock and weir. From there I found the Thames foot path and further along walked a mile or so on a country lane. In two hours I walked over five and a half miles.

I realized that my walking makes no more sense than golfing, which I’ve disparaged. (apologies to any golfers reading this: I’m repenting today.) Long-distance walking is not productive, except as healthful exercise. Golf can also be healthful, if one walks the course. But just as golf enthusiasts I know can be obsessed with pushing a little pock-marked ball around a large field, I’m obsessed with mileage.

I don’t particularly enjoy hiking in the woods and positively would not enjoy wilderness hiking without a knowledgeable guide. I once got lost in Lower Vinebrook conservation land in Lexington. Seriously lost in an area that was probably much less than a half square mile in area.

As you can see from the map, it’s not large. It was a Sunday morning about twenty years ago and as bishop Jim would be at church all day. I felt like calling 911, but decided I’d rather die in the wilderness. I prefer well-defined paths. Urban hiking is my forte.

The Thames foot path has a great advantage: as it meanders alongside the river it is clear where you are. I didn’t have my hosts’ cell phone numbers and Jim and I both have our phones on ‘airplane mode’ to avoid accidentally incurring the $10 travel fee our carrier charges. So there was no way to let him know if I needed help.

Along the way I found a large field of purple clover, more than I’ve ever seen.

It reminded me of the old children’s song, “I often go walking in meadows of clover; and I gather armfuls of blossoms of blue.”). Delightful.

(Learn a bit more about British time zones)

Sadness at McLean

 I had a sobering experience. My DBSA (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance) office key has been dodgy for years. Last week it finally wouldn’t work at all. Our office is located in the cafeteria of McLean Hospital, a world-renown psychiatric hospital that was founded in 1811.

I decided to call my husband, Jim, to see if he had any suggestions. The reception in the cafeteria was poor, so I walked outside towards the parking lot to talk.

A woman came walking by with a companion who was obviously a McLean staff member. I recognized the woman: an acquaintance from long ago at DBSA. She always had a ready smile.

The change in her was striking. She walked very slowly. When I called out her name, she stopped and looked at me. I wasn’t sure she recognized me, so I reminded her of our connection. I rattled on about how DBSA has been on Zoom for three and a half years and how we missed being in person.

She looked at me intently but never said a word. Then I said I had to go (because I had run out of things to say) and she continued her slow walk.

It was tough. I know nothing of her history the past several years. I know nothing of what brought her to McLean this time. She acts so differently from the friendly person I knew way back when.

It made me realize anew what a serious condition mental illness is. I have been blessed: the medications, for all my love-hate relationship with them, have allowed me to have a full life. They are far from perfect. Sometimes I feel like we are in the era that general medicine was in before antibiotics and chemotherapy drugs. Like chemotherapy, psychiatric meds are a blunt instrument with serious side effects. Although researchers continue to learn more about mechanisms, many of the drugs are decades old. I think there are many kinds and causes of mental illness which makes it very difficult to find effective medications that target the specific cause.

Whatever the reason, psychiatric drugs are, in the words of David Anderson, TEDxCaltech presenter, Your Brain is More Than a Bag of Chemicals (January 2013), like trying to change your car’s oil by pouring oil all over the engine hoping some of it reaches the right place.

My encounter at McLean reminds me that mental illness is a terrible illness with huge costs to those who aren’t’ treated successfully. My heart goes out to all who still suffer.

Oil tanker or trim little schooner

The night before our Bahamas cruise, in our Tampa Bay hotel, we slept in a king-size bed. I have never understood the appeal. It feels like an oil tanker: I’d rather ride to sleep in a trim little schooner.

When we’d been married two years, Jim was offered a job interview with Ford in Detroit. We were such hicks then, even though Jim had grown up near the University of Chicago in Hyde Park and I in the sophisticated suburbs of New Jersey. Very budget-conscious, we packed canned food for the trip, bread and peanut butter and crackers, not expecting an expense account. The secretary in charge of reimbursements couldn’t believe we had spent nothing on food.

We chuckle about it now. We were such babes in the woods.

The hotel was fancier than any I’d ever stayed in, perhaps to this day. I felt bad getting cracker crumbs on the carpet. The bed was enormous. I suppose many people in America had a king-size bed, but it was new to us.

I still don’t like king-size beds. We started married life in a sublet studio apartment of a Princeton grad student. Our honeymoon trip, at Camp Liahona, the family campground owned by the Church, was kiboshed when our Nova’s water pump broke just outside of town. Back to the sublet we went, where we had a wonderful first week of marriage, soaking up reunion lectures at Jim’s alma mater.

In August we drove to Chicago and moved into married student housing at the University of Chicago. Jim’s dad had negotiated the purchase of much of the furniture of the departing tenant couple. A white vinyl pullout couch, four painted oak chairs, a drop-leaf table, and a double bed with wooden headboard and foot board. We were told that the mattress was old and needed replacing. They were embarrassed to sell it to us. We kept it for six years. When we did finally carry it out on the curb for trash pickup, it started to rain and as I watched out the window I realized with a pang that there was no going back.

Each of our six children was conceived between those head and foot boards and we still have the frame to this day, though I think we’re on our third or fourth mattress. (The current one is from Bed In A BoxBedInABox and came wrapped in strong plastic. When we unwrapped it, the foam unrolled and inflated as we watched. Within a month my chronic back pain had disappeared.)

The few times we have slept on king-size mattresses, when we stay at an upscale hotel, have left me mystified. What do people see in them? Perhaps because I have slept on a small bed for forty-four years, I’ve developed the habit of only inhabiting a few square feet of mattress. King-size beds are wasted on me.

And too, isn’t a point of sharing a marriage bed to be close to each other? There’s plenty of room in our bed for no-contact sleeping, but it always feels very cozy.

I mean no criticism to those who need more space to sleep. And it is fortuitous that I prefer a double bed. Our 1895 house was not built for king-size beds. To get even just the double-bed box spring up the staircase when we moved in in 1993, our friend, Marc Butler, had to remove the window frame at the stair landing. Four people were needed to hoist the box spring into the window from the garden and pull it through the window frame. If we ever do get rid of it, we’ll have to chop it up first.

 

A Perfect Day

 Our Summer Retreat, the annual reunion with our children and grandchildren, just concluded on Saturday. This year was a first: we took a cruise with Royal Caribbean to Key West and the Bahamas. I’d been to St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, many times from 1992 to sometime in the teens. My mom bought a shore-side condo in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, in about 1989, and my parents invited their children and grandchildren to spend time with them in paradise.

I was intrigued with the idea of the Bahamas, especially after I listened to The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard. From 1706 to 1718, a loose confederation of privateers turned pirates wrought havoc on international sea trade. Their headquarters were the Bahamas, favored for its many small islands and cays (keys or quays) among shallow waters and dangerous reefs that offered protection from larger navy ships that couldn’t navigate there safely. The pirates practiced a form of democracy: all the crew members voted on their leaders and could oust them at will. Plunder was distributed evenly.

Each year that I visited St. Croix, usually in February, we watched a cruise ship arrive on Wednesday. I concluded that my situation was far superior. I was able to really get to know the island and while the cruise passengers were hurrying back to the ship at 4 p.m. I was going out for my late-afternoon swim. We would often enjoy supper on the veranda, watching for a green flash at sunset. I like to avoid full sun, so having scheduled island time be between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. would have cramped my style.

But here I was, on a cruise. And it was fine. I especially enjoyed visiting new places, conversations with family members, the nightly entertainment, and the delicious food I didn’t have to prepare or clean up after.

After a day in Key West, we cruised to a small cay (a small low-lying island composed of coral rock and reef) owned by the cruise line. Evidently the staff aboard the Grandeur of the Seas are trained to say “Perfect Day at Coco Cay.” I never heard them refer to the destination simply as “Coco Cay.”

For me it was a fine day, but not perfection. The beaches featured row upon row of lounge chairs and beach umbrellas and expensive souvenirs. I borrowed mask and snorkel from Annie and R’el (I forgot to pack my own) and swam for over an hour in the turquoise waters. Then I walked along the whole beach area and around the cay, thus including two of my favorite activities.

The next day was closer to a perfect day. In Bimini, I talked some of our party into walking along the only road in search of a beach less crowded than the one next to the cruise pier. It was a hot walk, and we weren’t certain what we would find. The third person we asked directions of gave a clear description of our route (we had already walked for over a mile): up the hill, past the Catholic Church and Anglican Church, and onto a beach.

And what a beach! White coral sand, the shade of a tree, gentle waves, and no other people. (This was not perfection for my grandson. He spied some people far down the beach and asked, “Can’t we go over to them?” But he was overruled.) Again I swam over an hour and was in paradise. When I came back to shore I discovered that I had worried Jim. He wasn’t concerned about my swimming ability but about what would happen if I had a seizure or some accident.

For me it was an echo of my time in St. Croix. I used to swim the mile to the Fredriksted pier. Before 2001 I would sometimes touch the cruise ship below the water line, just because I could. And then I would head back to my parents’ condo. I always stayed close to shore, but I loved the tranquil loneliness.