Boston Never Disappoints

What we love most about Boston is that it is a college town. Like Berkeley and Boulder and Nashville and Ann Arbor it hums with academics young and old discussing current events and imaging a better world. But unlike other college towns, Boston has many colleges, 33 to be exact, and everywhere you turn there’s another institution of higher learning, a library, or a plaza filled with people reading books. And when we find informed communities we find folks that use alternative transportation like subways and bikes and create wonderful connecting green spaces like the Emerald Necklace. We also find people concerned with global issues like climate change and dependence on fossil fuels. Harvard University is currently embroiled in a challenge to divest their endowment of funds pertaining to coal and petroleum and we look forward to staying tuned to find out how it all turns out. On our last day in Boston, after jamming ourselves on a rush-hour subway filled with conversations about graduation and summer jobs and career choices, we enjoyed hanging in the Harvard/MIT COOP, a bookstore to die for.

Janna discusses climate change with Kate

We spent time in Boston on our 2003 motor home trip but this time around we had the most excellent company of our dear friend Kate Toomey who lives and works in the city as a bicycle tour guide. Kate squired us about by either joining us on the T (which is the subway also known as the MTBA) or putting us on the right train and then waiting for us at the other end on her bike! (Do you remember the song Charlie of the MTA? This is the subway that inspired it and the history is most interesting.) 

Still a spark between us after all these years

Kate got us free passes into some of her favorite museums and we enjoyed getting to know the Institute of Contemporary Art with its expansive view of the Boston Harbor and the fourth floor galleries that included Nick Cave’s “Soundsuits,” full-body outfits crafted from objects found in antique shops and flea markets. We also ran out of time playing with all the interactive displays at the Museum of Science and loved the quilt exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. Liz’s favorite moment was the impromptu singing a duet of “Calon Lan” in the acoustically perfect Maparium of the Christian Scientist Mother Church.  Janna loved revisiting the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum which, since we visited 11 years ago, has added a new wing and a fabulous cafe.  We recently read "The Art Forger," by B.A. Shapiro which centers around the still unsolved Gardner Museum art heist, still evident by the empty frames on the second floor. (Great book.)

Great seats for less than $30!

Then there was the last of Janna’s birthday treats: a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. What a wonderful, well-loved ball field! The city embraces it and walking into the stadium is like walking into the store next door. There’s very little parking near the field so folks stream in from all directions to converge at this historic place. And when their team does something right (which they had a hard time doing the night we were there), the crowd is indeed deafening.

Enjoyed great fellowship at Glosta UU

We left Boston in time to attend a musical service honoring Pete Seeger at the Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church. It is a beautiful old church, in fact the very first Universalist church in America and we were made to feel most welcome by the small but friendly congregation. People who knew Pete were there, and stories about him brought tears to our eyes. A week earlier we had stopped at Beacon, NY, his adopted town on the Hudson and paid our respects at an Arbor Day event, met the Mayor, ate funny piles of sticky rice and listened to a pretty good band made up of mostly middle school children. We thought of Pete as we drove through the historic Hudson River downtown and noticed every little shop was open, folks sitting on the sidewalk outside of cafes, and every parking slot filled. Down by the river there were huge brick factories from bygone industries, decorated with graffiti, but they, too seemed to have new life and purpose. 

On May 3^rd Pete Seeger would have turned 95 and all across New England communities are trying to figure out how to reflect his legacy. Pete taught us that progress is all about rolling with the changes, claiming historic urban architecture for current needs, encouraging young people to go back to the land and grow good food, and finding ways to clean up industries and make them accountable to their customers, workers and neighbors. People everywhere like to speak up about either how it was, or how it should be, and we try to listen. Pete seemed to believe that both messages have value, and so do we. He had an ability to communicate compassion because he could see that life everywhere is hard, and yet had an unfailing message of hope and optimism.  So we try to keep in mind what Pete would have said and done and what he would have wanted us to do. And when things get too hard, there are always the songs he left behind. Indeed, how can we keep from singing?