Limited connectivity!

Writing this blog, which I have been looking forward to, has become a real challenge. With only 50 lines available, a.d 800 leople on board, it is real trick to access the Web. I will try again later tonight, as we are leaving Cabo san Lucas right now...

learning life aboard

Dinner tonight was in a smallish room on the port side of this medium sized cruise ship,next to Desmond Tutu and his family. Aunt Bette said hello, and welcome. He waved back. It is enough already, but tomorrow he will speak if we can get seats in the too small Union room. But he will be around for a week, so there will be more times for real interactions...
In the meantime, we've been doing the life boat drill, and figuring out where everything is, and how to live in a very small space - us two old women who are used to living alone. The motion of the ship should be enough to put us both to sleep, but we do have ear plugs if either of our snoring becomes too unbearable.
Loading a ship like this, takes time and we have basically spent the whole day, waiting to board a bus, and then boarding the ship so it has not been very exciting - except for dinner - which was unforgettable.
(I'm still learning the best way, and what is the best machine on which to do the blog. - Yesterday's effort was on my new Samnsung Galaxy, but it is sooo sensitive, and I am so new to it, that I'm really liking the old time computer keyboard in the computer lab tonight!I'll try and figure out how to input photos tomorrow, while we're at sea, heading down the Baja coast.)

San diego fog!

Surprisingly, it is foggy here in San Diego, but not half as cold as it was in Boston this morning...though this is not news. The flight was easy and pleasant and I remembered how much I always enjoy flying across this country. Today there was a lot of snow in the sky, so not much was to be seen until we were over the Grand Canyon. And then we were over Bullhead City, and I started to think of the people I know down there.
They are old friends from early CSUMB days - Tom and Alida Fitzpatrick, Hank Hendrickson. Every other year, Tom comes home to Maine, but he worked in California most of his life. Last summer, Tom and Alida came to visit for a few days and I took them sailing during the Shipyard Cup races. (see Shipyard race blog) At Cal State Monterey Bay, he was the first Chief of Police, and when I walked into a room the first day I was there, he said,"Hi, Sally Giddings of Orono, Maine, I'm Tom Fitzpatrick of Mattanawcook Academy in Lincoln, Maine." We actually overlapped in high school, though he was a big basketball dude, and I played the flute in the band at basketball games.
We became close neighbors- Maine expats on Fort Ord, now Cal State Monterey Bay, and lived in a small, tight-knit world for a few years. But I learned that day in 1995, just how small the big world is, and now, just how small it stays when you can fly across country, look down and remember all this.
(this is the new edited version!)

off I go!

At Thanksgiving, I took the girls some new winter hats I found at the Craft Fair at the Railway Village on Columbus Day weekend. Now I know that their little heads will be warm while I am off on a Semester at Sea 'Enrichment' cruise with Desmond Tutu to Central America! I was invited to go by the Adelmans, Nancy and Cliff, whose son Jon is a filmaker hired to make a film of this voyage. Nancy's Mom, Bette Taverner, who turned 90 last spring, needed a roomate. So off I'll go, and am pleased to do it!
I purchased a new toy, a Samsung Galaxy, (like an IPad, but better), so that hopefully I can continue this blog in a warmer clime. And get email, Skype and buy and read Kindle books - all on the same machine. It should be a treasure once I figure out how to use it.
I also purchased a quite adorable iguana puppet, who should be able to help me communicate with kids - even without any good Spanish. Perhaps I will find an interpreter for 'Toad', the horned iguana.

So off I go tomorrow, in the middle of a storm, to sunny San Diego, then Ensenada, then onto the M/V Explorer, headed for Cabo first, then Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the Panama Canal on Christmas Day, with one of the most inspirational leaders of our era. It will be a special trip!

The girls, I think, will survive without me for this one Christmas. East Boothbay surely will, though we all wait with baited breath to find out what has happened to Mr. Murphy, the owner of Lobsterman's Wharf. He was in a terrible accident recently, and is still in Maine Medical Center in Intensive Care. Let us hope that everyone recovers who was in that crash!

catching the sun's last rays...

Elizabeth Edwards died yesterday. I can't help but be grateful that at least I did not develop cancer as my husband drew away from me, and left. She lived what life she had left with more grace than anyone should have, and she set an example of openess that all of us who've been abandoned should share.

But back to East Boothbay where they are blasting away again. This time, though, it is for the new Bigelow Ocean Lab being built over on Farnham Cove. The big dump trucks rumble through between 6 and 6:30, and then the blasting starts around nine. My old house shakes with each blast, but so far nothing has broken or cracked except the hand-painted Greek platter which broke last year during the water main blasting.

That project did the Town Manager in. John Anderson, beloved supplier of the Camel during last year's blasting siege, took a job in New Hampshire, which of course, pays more. His last gesture for the Town was to put two speed bumps in the road by the Post Office and by the General Store. Well, you would've thought the world was coming to an end at the resulting hubbub. The big dump trucks had to slow down to about 20, and the shipyard workers had to start to work earlier to get to the yards by 7. Time was awasting! We even had some graffiti painted on the bump by the Post Office! So no sooner than John was gone, but the Selectmen in their wisdom, had the speed bumps dug up. And now we're back to wide open spaces by the Post Office and trucks careening around the corner by the General Store.

The only good news in this scenario - which is really not good news, - is that the General Store has closed for the season, i.e. until next May. It is very sad though all of us know that we alone cannot support the Store, and since the shipyards have put in vending machines, the guys spent less money in the Store anyway. But we miss Liz and Dom and little Sabine and Crystal and everyone else, and mostly pizza on Friday nights, and for breakfast. So for now, the trucks can whiz by without a pause - at least until next May 1. By then, who knows? Some of us old ladies might put a petition together to replace those speed bumps and even add another for the Camel Crossing!

I'll get an update on the steeple tomorrow night - the steeple which was trying hard to hold onto the sun's last rays tonight. It couldn't do so well as last year because it is still shorter. I'll let you know what's happening.

on Thanksgiving

After divorce, the holidays become a long series of elaborate negotiations about who will do what to whom and when. It is never a pretty process, and one that I have come to dread, even fear - that the fragile bonds of a fractured family will finally break.

So it was with great pleasure that I spent Thanksgiving this year with my oldest son, his wife and 3 daughters, up on the western side of Mt. Mansfield with ex-in-laws at their cabin in the woods. And we all had a marvelous time. Everyone contributed something, and we hiked up to the family's grave site, and said a prayer over my ex-parents-in-law.

The prayer started with a quotation from Eric Hoffer which had been sent to me on some site or other: "The hardest arithmetic we are asked to master is that which allows us to count our blessings." So we all counted, each in our own way.

One of us had lost an election that month; one was about to lose his mother-in-law; one had lost her father last summer; another of us had lost another election; I had lost a husband and friend to divorce. But each of us could feel up there on that mountain, that we had each other - regardless of blood line, marriage, divorce or whatever. They had been my family for nearly 40 years, and that was not to be lost.

So I counted my blessings, and they were all in front of me - the 5 in my immediate family, plus all 6 of my ex-in-laws. It is not an exclusive group, but it made for a very special time. I feel very grateful for that day and those people.

MassMOCA and the architecture of installations

I have loved museums since I was a child. I'd say it was mostly due to my mother who liked them, too, and would take me to them whenever we were in the vicinity of one. I like all kinds, but now, I particularly like visiting new ones, or new additions to old ones.

Last weekend, I went with a friend out to North Adams, Massachusetts, where the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is renovating a set of old, brick manufacturing buildings as a setting for art installations. MassMOCA has been up and running for a few years, but money is not plentiful in North Adams, so only a part of the plan has been developed. But what has been developed is pretty interesting.
The buildings themselves are brick shells supported by massive wood posts and beams. The building housing the major art installations has been opened up with some nice engineering so that the spaces are quite large for a non-metropolitan structure. And the exhibits fill the spaces well.

A current special exhibit by Petra Coyne has a whole tree and stuffed birds flying around in one room, but lacks much visual challenge, though a pleasure to look at - more like elaborate stagecraft for an elegant party. The real pleasure comes from the more permanent installations on the second level of the building.

The first installation comes into view as you climb the stair. Fishline - of considerable weight I'd guess - is strung from one end of the very long room to the other, in the expanding shape of an upside-down horseshoe. A spotlight shining through the fishline to the opposite wall, creates an unexpected and visually confusing series of shadows. There is a quite real light created by the reflected light of the fishline, and then there are moving shadows on the wall. The effect is to confuse our sense of reality and space. You reach out to touch the fishline but it is a shadow; when you get inside the horsehoe shape made by the line, the reflected light changes shape as you move. It is a challenge to constructed reality as we normally perceive it. Such an installation is only be possible in this size room, and is effective precisely because of its size and the ability of the viewer to get into the shape and wander through it.

Another of the large installations begins as you wander into the next room. A red wall made of hemp rope tied in a kind of fishnet knot, hangs to one side and is bordered by two white walls. It is nice to look at, with good color and texture, but makes you question its intent. However, as you step past the far white wall, you realize that the red rope continues - smashingly - into the next room and falls out in spiralling piles onto the floor, filling the room with its curly legs. It has become a huge, red, fishnetted squid, bursting through the wall into the other room, with long tentacles spreading out in the far room. It has become a metaphor for the fearful power of sea creatures, but with some humor and challenge.

Beside the giant red squid, is a series of crunched, white, paper constructions, which in the context of the squid looks and feels like a kelp forest. There is little else to define its intent until you climb the set of stairs to the third floor. There the white paper crunches are transformed into tree trunks, twisting one way and another. MassMOCA has created an aquarium with a state park on the floor above. Only in such large, industrial spaces could such an effect be possible, and actually succeed. It was a wonderful installation.

In contrast to this uniquely effective use of space, in a smallish rectangular gallery on the first floor, was an exhibit of "Dr. Spock's" photography. In reality, Dr. Spock is Leonard Nimoy, who though living now in LA, comes from the North Adams area and is a gifted photographer.
His installation of photos of individuals' Other Selves, is a powerful and often humorous exhibit. It left the two of us smiling and thinking hard about just who our alternate selves might be.

The two uses of space - the gallery with Spock's photos, and the installations' space, - are opposing ideas of museum architecture. In the gallery space, the rectangle is used as an envelope for a flat, two dimensioned exhibit. People provide the third dimension. In the installation spaces, the architecture provides a volume inside which a 3-D art form is created. People become a part of the art, and move through and around it. Both kinds of spaces are useful, and it is a tribute to MassMOCA that it has allowed for the development of both kinds of art within its architecture.
It will be interesting to see just how Norman Foster's new wing of Boston's Museum of Fine Art allows for both 2-D and 3-D exhibitions!