Prelude: Willimantic

After a year of diving back into the plenary experience of graduate school, my first year of "doctoral college," with its thrill and exhaustion, my parents decided to venture down to Connecticut for a visit. UConn, as it's known here (which is often mixed up with the Yukon - people are either very polite and mention that they didn't know the Yukon had a uni, or ask me what in the hell would make me go up there?)" It's a slip I make frequently. I have the fortune to live in the small town of Willimantic, the nearest actual town to UConn, which is really a campus in the middle of nowhere. Willimantic, however, has the misfortune of being known as the methamphetamine capital of the Northeast. While it's act has been cleaned up over the last decade, its reputation manages to keep the town mostly free of undergrads, leaving Connecticut's top rated pub, the Willimantic Brewing Company (Rated 31st overall in America) mostly to the locals and carpetbaggers like me. They make some of the most magnificent brews I have had the pleasure to sample from around the world. It is enough to note that the saw about bad American beer is and old one indeed, so long as you don't buy something in a can or a 20 pack. It has an interesting history and was once the fashion capital of the U.S. leaving it with more residential Victorian homes than even San Francisco.

It also has many state parks around, and my friend Christina took my folks and me out to the woods for a great walk. I warned my parents about the tick problems in CT, and asked them to use repellent. They refused. I followed my own instructions, but was the only one to get bitten, and right on the back where it's impossible to get out. The irony of the situation is just sick, but after being bitten I took precautions so that I wouldn't be, as some ticks carry Lyme disease, which is not a good time. I had decided to go the homeopathic route, but after Kate and Joel listed all of the horrible things that could happen, I gave in to my hypochondriacal nature and went and got an analgesic.

But we did not spend too much time here, as my folks came down for a grand ol' 'Merican adventure. It is fitting that it started in Willimantic, as it's history is rooted in the French and Indian War, known by all the rest of the world as the 7 Years War. A pond had dried near the town and during the night there arose such a din of noise, the people were sure the neighboring villagers were being slaughtered. Panic grew and they sent out the militia to find frogs, hundreds of them bemoaning the loss of the water (In fairness, they are remarkably loud and creepy sounding). But the residents of Willimantic became a laughing stock for a time, and today frogs adorn many of the facades and the main bridge in town. But this was the war that led King George III of England to begin raising taxes to pay off the large debts, an event which would spark off the revolution.

Boston and the Beginning of the Revolution

So we were off to Boston, but just for the day. The forecast was unpleasant, but the weather, as it turned out, was great. We went on the Revolutionary Walking Tour with a guide named Jude. She was very funny and quite well informed it seemed. There were two very interesting pieces of information that I learned, which are not altogether pedantic. I learned that the picture of the Gentleman on a bottle of Sam Adams Beer, is not in fact Samuel Adams, but Paul Revere, owing to the fact that Sam Adams was too ugly to encourage people to drink. Second, I learned that on the site of the Boston Massacre, more people have died trying to photograph the spot than did so in the actual massacre. When will the killing end?! We rounded out our day having lunch in the oldest pub in America (which will make some of you old worlders laugh), the Bell in Hand ala 1796. We then headed back home thanks in large part to the GPS device my dad brought. We might still be there otherwise.

An Interlude: A Side Trip to DC

It took some pulling teeth to get my parents to agree to a stop in Washington, which is truly one of the more wondrous capital cities in the world. I'm sure they just didn't know what they were missing. What is more, my friend Fayette and her boyfriend Chris were kind enough to let us stay with them, which we appreciated enormously. It was great to catch up with her again, and to meet Chris. It was fun watching my parents reactions to DC, as its sweeping architecture, reminiscent of Rome dominates wherever the eye may turn, with vast marble behemoths looming large on every street, and vast swaths of land open to the hope of future monuments of great presidents and the memorials to wars yet unfought (though I hope these will be fewer indeed). I took them to see most of the monuments at night, which is when they are at their most spectacular.

They were pretty funny on the metro (the subway) I have to say. I got the first glimmer of what it might be like to have elderly parents. They were terribly confused and befuddled by the process of getting a ticket, putting it in a slot, and walking through the turnstile. It was amusing to say the least. A few days later my dad left the gas cap dangling in the wind as we drove off. Message to Mom and Dad: Don't get old yet, I'm not ready ;)

Historical Re-creation: Mystic, Jamestown,

Self-Starter
I just want to congratulate my dad on taking a great first self-photo.

Williamsburg, and Yorktown

Known more famously for it's Pizza, thanks to the Julia Roberts film Mystic Pizza, Mystic is home to the historical whaling village that had it's heyday in the late 19th century. We were lucky to have a personal tour by a friend of my advisor's named Elisa, who does some excellent historical work at Mystic Seaport. It is an excellent working village, with some great exhibits, and currently houses the Charles Morgan, a massive whaling vessel for its time and the Amistad, famous for its slave rebellion upon the ship, which was turned into a movie staring Morgan Freeman.

Jamestown was interesting and had a very good museum and some okay historical acting, but it struck me that the Powhatan natives were depicted in the recreations not by Powhatans, nor by any natives, but by white people. Which although the museum seemed to cover their story, I left a bit cautious in my praise, thinking why it might be that no self-respecting American Indian would represent the life lived there. We went to Yorktown, famous for signaling the end of the Revolution, on the same day, and were entertained by museum folk who told us tails of army medicine which make even a Canadian thankful for a modern American health system, and I learned that hardtack can be kept for so long that they dug up stores of it nearly a hundred years later for use in the revolutionary war. Impressive, n'est pas? The movie showed at the museum was dreadful and hilariously patriotic, which although that should make sense given the nature of the site, it was done in such a schlocky way as to make it seem just corny.

Williamsburg, the mother of all historically re-created villages in North America, was very well done and highly entertaining for the nerds that we are. My dad was like a kid in a candy shop, and excitedly pressed on when even I had grown weary of seeing yet another old house. My mom, like me, was growing tired at the sme time, but dad giddily urged us on. With some caffeine pumped into my system I was good to keep going. What Williamsburg does very well is it's historical acting, which is made to be interactive. At the town hall meetings I was able to give Thomas Jefferson (impersonated of course) a tough time about his diatribe against slavery, noting that he did not practice what he preached. He criticized my Connecticut connections to slavery, but it was not I who was preaching. In the end he answered as I think Jefferson would, saying that he had passed a law allowing for the masters to release their slaves but that they would have to put up a bond for them, and as he was in debt, he could not do so. Hmmm, how convenient. In essence he told me

I would love to free my slaves, but the law that I wrote makes it impossible for me to do so. Drat.

It is easy to write him off as a hypocrite, but I also recognize that my own expressed sentiments against capitalism are fully and sincerely meant. Yet I own stock and am invested in the system. But like Jefferson, and indeed Washington, I am aware that to forsake the system before its time is to cut off one's means even to begin affecting change. So if my work is to come to consequence in the future, posterity will surely look upon me as a hypocrite in the same vein. I suppose I should be so lucky. It is one reason that I have so admired his work and why the Jefferson memorial, more than the larger, more magnificent ones, is something of a pilgrimage site for me.

My one standing criticism of Williamsburg is that it so thoroughly sanitizes slavery, that one leaves with the impression that slavery wasn't THAT bad. I understand that this is a family park, but I am displeased with this aspect. It may be the result of various controversies from the past decade where the park's depictions led to protest and even violent reactions against park 'slavers' playing the role. An interesting article from the Washington Post in 1999 speaks to some of these issues. I think Williamsburg may have swung to far and must again rebalance to find a middle ground.

In the end, we had a great time. It was wonderful spending so much time with my parents and I am happy to note, that while my mom did win one game of threes, I delivered what would be to a less resilient (or less delusional perhaps) person, what would be thought of as a crippling defeat. Then, as I seem to do so often, I abandoned them, and began my 14 hour drive to Ypsilanti, MI via West Virginia and Ohio to deliver my paper on Democratic Education from an anarchist perspective, visited the Albany Free School in New York (free schools and democratic schoolsare a wave of the future to be sure - these sites are just the gist of it) on the way back. After 4600 km (that's almost 2900 for the metrically deficient) and am now home for a holiday from my vacation until Tuesday when I leave for Europe.

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