3rd House Journal

Snapshots

Long day yesterday flying down to New Jersey with colleague for a client pitch, then back by train in the evening. No camera as my tote was full of binders we were handing out and my purse weighed down with what no longer fit in my tote. But lots of snapshots - the rolling tapestry of misty fall foliage seen from the air in the morning, sunset glow backlighting Manhattan framed by train windows on the trip home, and myriad train station scenes - so concrete and earthbound compared to airily lit airline terminals, the food vendors nearly entombed in their stalls, businessmen and women emerging from the semi-darkness and disappearing through gates, downtrodden souls you'd never find waiting to board a plane, and even the large open waiting rooms weighty with wooden benches and iron-railed high windows.

The weather was unseasonably warm and we were comfortably coatless even late last night as we waited for our ride outside the station in Boston. Alas, it's cooled down and is expected to rain all day Saturday, though possibly clearing on Sunday. At any rate, I'll be in the city this weekend, taking in the scene with or without the aid of a camera.

Noho and snow

[Viva Fresh Pasta, Northampton MA; 10/17/09]

We took a drive out to Northampton on Saturday, about 100 miles west of Boston, straight out the Mass Turnpike. D had never been there, so I showed him around campus at my alma mater as well as the many shops and restaurants downtown. After our wanderings, we ended up at Viva Fresh Pasta for an early dinner. We'd passed the place a couple of times but ultimately couldn't pass up the sweet potato ravioli with maple walnut saute on the specials menu. At least that's what D chose, quite happily. I started with a bowl of butternut squash bisque followed by grilled chicken with romesco sauce and asparagus, with fresh garlic-parsley fettuccine - all scrumptious. As the name implies, Viva Fresh Pasta makes all their own pasta, but everything else we sampled was excellent as well. We were also lucky to snag a great table in one of the two front bay windows (see above).

[Paradise Pond view, Smith College campus]

It was a rather gray and chilly day, but at least we had none of the rain that was predicted to wash out the entire weekend. On Sunday afternoon, however, it went beyond rain to fat wet snowflakes that fell all afternoon and into the evening, although generally melting on contact, at least where I live. Out in Foxboro, the New England Patriots played at what I first thought was a hockey rink when the game came on the TV because of the white field (a ridiculous blowout over the Titans, 59 to 0). We had considered going to the Head of the Charles regatta in Cambridge on Sunday until we saw first the cold rain in the morning and then the snow in the afternoon. So after running errands by car, we stayed in with the football game and I puttered in the kitchen making a turkey meatloaf (see leftovers tonight for dinner, below), warming up the house with the hot oven.

Seascapes

[Marblehead Harbor; 7pm, 8/25/09; click for larger]

On Saturday afternoon, we took a short drive up to Salem to go to the Peabody Essex Museum. It's one of my favorite local museums, both for its beautiful building and its excellent exhibits which often reflect its historical roots as a repository of maritime art and treasures that sea captains brought back from travels to Asia, Africa and India. The latest large exhibit is The Golden Age of Dutch Seascapes, which ends in early September. The exhibit features more than 70 paintings from Dutch painters during the 1600s. Lots and lots of ships in sea battles, roiling waters and gusty glowering skies. There were also some calmer paintings of harbors, which is what I thought of when I looked at the harbor scene above, taken in Marblehead later that evening. We also enjoyed the current photo exhibit, Surfland, featuring modern tintype portraits of surfers.

After the PEM closed, we walked around Salem a bit down, past all the tacky witch-themed shops to the waterfront, where one tall ship, The Peacemaker, was docked and open for touring. We didn't feel like boarding, but watched a couple of small motor boats navigate the choppy water in some serious headwinds from Hurricane Bill out in the Atlantic. The rough seas explain why the harbor was full of moored sailboats; beaches along the New England coast were all closed to swimming, too.

[The Peacemaker, on Derby Wharf]

[Yellow Salem water taxi coming in on choppy water]

Although there are a number of restaurants on Pickering Wharf in Salem, it was early yet so we decided to drive down to Marblehead, a rocky peninsula just south of Salem. There, after some inadvertent scenic side trips, we found a local hangout appropriately called The Barnacle, attached to a rock on the side of the harbor. We were ushered past the noisy bar and restaurant out onto the narrow porch out back for a nice dinner overlooking the water.

Seaside

[Juvenile gull, Crane Beach; 8/8/09]

I would feel like I missed all of summer unless I got my fair share of sun and sea. June was a bust, and July spotty. But this past Saturday was a beautiful day for heading seaside, sunny and warm, though not hot, with the wind blowing off the cool Atlantic. Crane Beach is probably my favorite beach, a lovely stretch of white sand along Castle Neck in Ipswich, north of Boston, surrounded by a salt marsh and wildlife refuge. Fortunately it was just past the season for greenhead flies, nasty biting horseflies that invade from the salt marsh (although I hear the bad weather early in the summer kept them to a minimum). The other most visible wildlife are the gulls, which coexist much more peaceably with beachgoers, helpfully cleaning up after us and sometimes not even waiting for us to leave before helping themselves to our lunches and snacks if they're not safely under wraps or being guarded. Mostly they're pretty cute.

After we'd had enough of the beach, we headed north to New Hampshire to Portsmouth, another favorite summertime hangout for me. My parents used to live just south of there for many years before they moved away, and we went there in all seasons to enjoy the food, shopping and port-town scenery. There are umpteen wonderful restaurants in town, but I've always navigated to the Old Ferry Landing, which I've been going to for at least 25 years (they've been in business for 33 years), from when it was not much more than a clam shack on a dock on Portsmouth Harbor. They still serve fish and chips and fried clam plates, but they long ago upgraded their menu to more sophisticated fare. I had grilled swordfish over quinoa with a cucumber salsa and D had shrimp and scallops with pasta in a thyme-red pepper-tomato sauce - both excellent. We were also lucky to snag a table outside on the dock overlooking the tugboats in the harbor.