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Published: October 6th 2006
Whale Jaws
Shelly at the entry arch to a Cape Cod whaling captain's house: the lower jawbones of a fin whale at the Capt. Penniman House.
Chatham, Cape Cod, Mass. - Chicago, Ill.
20,143 miles to date
1,792 miles this leg We’ve been squinting a lot in the last two weeks, now that we’re traveling west into the setting sun. Our generally southern route through New England took a decided right-hand turn when we departed Cape Cod, Mass. All the months we spent driving east, the roadway was nicely backlit during our preferred afternoon driving hours. I remember thinking how bright that same low-slung sun would be when we reversed direction.
You'll notice our odometer rolled over the 20,000 mile mark since beginning this trip. Also, our outbound track crossed our inbound track on Sept. 21, near Olean, N.Y., and Allegany National Forest. We couldn’t have made a continuous circle out of our trip because we made the decision months ago to head north into Canada before we’d reached our easternmost point. The reason we picked up our former track in western New York instead of further south is because we made a point of revisiting some particularly memorable hosts in Amish country there.
Speaking of the Amish… You know I limit my commentary on current
Atlantic Sand
Surf on the eastern coast of Cape Cod, Mass. Our last look at the Atlantic before turning our backs on it. events because this is a travelogue and not an "ideologue," but a story about an Amish community hit the national news on Oct. 2 that so shocked and saddened us
because of our recent contact with their culture.
Not far behind us in Pennsylvania, a school shooting occurred at an Amish one-room schoolhouse in which 10 girls were shot and five were murdered by a non-Amish gunman with no clear motive before he turned his gun on himself. I have to say we’d heard about a similar shooting at a public school in Colorado a few days earlier, and somehow we could accept that as a tragic but inevitable outcome of our violent and alienating society, the shortcomings of which are well-known by psychologists and social workers but ignored by policy-makers and budget-setters.
But the Amish are
pacifists who don’t even believe in violence as self-defense, and it sickens us that their close-knit community should have been violated in such a raw and random way. Our hearts go out to the Amish who are struggling to understand their God’s will in this event, and who, we just heard in an NPR interview, are already reaching out to the
Cape Codder
A typical weathered-shingle Cape Cod cottage, this one with a red nun and green can marking the entrance to the white-shell driveway! shooter’s distraught family as they would one of their own, with gifts of food and assistance. They are a people who truly live as Christians, and to think that they have already been moved to forgive! We hope this is a harbinger of healing.
Just a week ago, we were on the receiving end of that generous spirit when we detoured back to western New York to revisit the family we’d met in July that lives amidst the Amish in the beautiful Conewango Valley, N.Y. Not one, but two plates of homemade cinnamon rolls were delivered to the house we were staying at simply because the Amish family up the hill heard we were visiting. And were they delicious!
In the past two months, we hadn’t been able to forget our short time in Amish country, and so we returned to learn more about these people who seem to us to be the most contented Americans we have met on our journey. We asked more questions, got more answers, bought a book about child-rearing and education, watched the corn harvest, attended a crafts auction, and marveled some more at the healthy state of their intentional communities.
I’m
Cape Cod Hosts
Our Chatham, Cape Cod, hosts were Jennifer and Eric and their children Haylee, Kaia and Nate. Jennifer is the sister of a Port Townsend friend. sure an Amish elder could tell us a thousand ways that his people are not able to live entirely apart from the secular world in which they are embedded, but we never expected to hear about a school shooting by an outsider to their secluded world. We pray the Pennsylvania community survives this mournful event, and that perhaps through it, more Americans will come to appreciate the diversity that the Amish add to our nation.
It’s hard to segue out of this, so I’ll just start back at the beginning. We began this leg of our journey on magical Cape Cod, staying with a family headed by the sister of a Port Townsend friend. Jennifer and her husband Eric are very busy parents to three energetic school-age children: Haylee, Kaia and Nate. They told us we were welcome to stay in their Chatham home—overlooking a cranberry bog!—as long as we wanted, so long as we didn’t mind their hectic schedules. One night we went along to observe their tae kwon do class, and another night we played music in the living room when the homework was all done. Haylee, Kaia and Nate win an award for being the first
Tae Kwon Do Treat
Jennifer and kids are all enrolled in the same tae kwon do class, which we went along to watch. Afterward it was treats at A&W for all. “Cows with Guns” audience to attempt interpretive dance to this silly song.
Much of Cape Cod is designated National Seashore, and we explored the federally protected area around Eastham and Nauset Light on our bicycles. Seagoing traditions are strong on Cape Cod, and you might not know that the modern U.S. Coast Guard evolved from the Lifesaving Service established to help the victims of the shipwrecks along Cape Cod that averaged
three per month in the mid-1800s.
We learned more about Massachusetts’ maritime history in New Bedford, where we explored the only national historical site to focus on the nation’s whaling legacy: the
New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. The 13-square-block waterfront district was authorized by Congress in 1996 and was an inspiring act of historic preservation and interpretation. The district includes the oldest continuously operating U.S. Custom House, the Durant sail loft, a spermaceti candleworks, a whaling merchant’s mansion, the Mariner’s Home, the Seamen’s Bethel (an actual 1832 church described by Herman Melville in
Moby Dick as having a pulpit in the shape of a ship’s prow—so after many years of receiving disappointed visitors, such a pulpit was installed!), and the big and modern New Bedford Whaling Museum. An amazing statistic: at
Newport, R.I.
The Pell Bridge and a crowded harbor in Newport, R.I. the height of whaling in the 1850s, more whaling voyages sailed from New Bedford than from all of the world’s other ports combined.
We swung through Newport, R.I., en route to Mystic, Conn. The 29th annual Williams-Mystic Alumni Weekend (Sept. 16-17) had been marked on our calendar for months, and I was thrilled to be able to make it back for an all-class gathering of my college maritime studies program. Reuned one other member of my Spring 1997 class—Catherine, who now teaches geology at Bryn Mawr College in the Philadelphia area—and reconnected with many former teachers, staff, friends, and their partners and children. Jeff and I competed against each other in the alumni whaleboat races (OK, his boat won…), and enjoyed special lectures and an outdoor dinner and auction. I continue to be impressed with the quality of the
Williams-Mystic program graduates and encourage any college-age person with an interest in the maritime world to consider applying.
We were fortunate to be hosted in Mystic by Jon and Jenny, two fun and energetic entertainers who threw a Sunday brunch (sort of in our honor) and arranged for us to borrow their neighbor’s kayaks so we could paddle on
Newport, R.I., Mansion
One of the overly large and ornate mansions in Newport, R.I. the Mystic River, which lies just beyond their marshy backyards. Jon was the chief mate on the schooner
Adventuress the season I also sailed aboard, but since then he’s earned his master’s degree in wetlands biology and just started teaching 8th and 9th grade science at a private school. For those of you who know Jon, you’ll be happy to know the sideburns haven’t been shaved, but he does wear a tie most days!
Being so close to New York City, we thought we should at least pop in for a day to give Jeff a feel for the nation’s densest “traditional neighborhood.” We accomplished this by arranging to park Matilda in the Stamford, Conn., marina where the schooner is moored that I worked on the summer after college. The schooner
SoundWaters programs are still going strong, and the current crew was very welcoming. I was cheered to see that SoundWaters has achieved its goal of opening a shoreside environmental education center. Check it out
here. So we spent two nights in the marina lot and took a 45-minute train ride into Manhattan the full day in between.
It was Jeff’s first visit to the Big Apple, but
Williams-Mystic Reunion
We made it to Shelly's maritime studies program all-class reunion in Mystic, Conn., and reuned with one other member of her class: Catherine (second from left) and her partner Kira (far left). not mine, and as we strode out of Grand Central Station, I advised him, “Prepare to have your senses assaulted.” But once we were out on the street, the city seemed calmer and more orderly than I remembered it. I could be growing more worldly, but I think it also helped that it was a cool day. Sunny, but breezy and fresh. (NYC in the summer heat can be unbearable.) And the first New Yorker we asked directions of was friendly to the point of delaying us by his kind questions about our trip. Jeff humphed to think of all the warnings we’d received about how dangerous NYC could be, and was decidedly charmed by the city’s transit-oriented streets. Hardly any private cars at all, just buses, trolleys, yellow cabs and bike taxis.
We took the subway and buses ourselves, but also hoofed it around to various sights: Central Park, Times Square, the Empire State Building (yes, we took in the view from the 86th floor), Battery Park, the Brooklyn Bridge. We visited the Former World Trade Center Site (as it was marked on our tourist map) 10 days after the 5th anniversary of 9/11, and while the hole
Whaleboat Race
We competed against each other in the reunion whaleboat races. Jeff's in the first boat in the blue shirt; I'm following closely in red. Jeff's boat won! in the ground where the Twin Towers were anchored has been completely cleared out, there’s not much to look at since construction of an eventual memorial has only just begun. However, the
Tribute Center across the street presented a very moving remembrance of the events of 2001. What’s most tragic to me is how the Bush administration has waged meaningless wars in the years since, so that tens of thousands of mothers of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq have now suffered as much as the mothers of the World Trade Center victims. But I'll not go on, since I’ve already used up my political commentary for this blog entry…
Two maritime experiences rounded out our day. We took the free round-trip ride on the Staten Island ferry to get a closer look at the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and then we strolled up to South Street Seaport to view the ships moored along the riverwall. We were gazing at the enormous bulk of the famous
Peking when I idly said of a far-away figure on the docks, “Gee, that looks like Dan from Port Townsend.” “It
is Dan!” Jeff affirmed. So I yelled his name
Shelly & Herma
Shelly reconnected with Herma, a Mystic Seaport staffer whom she had known as a Williams-Mystic student and who happens to be the mother of a friend of ours in Port Townsend. and it echoed off the ships’ sides and Dan (for sure enough, that's who it was) turned around. “It’s Shelly and Jeff from Port Townsend!” I continued shouting, waving my arms around so he could locate us against the busy skyline. Was our friend ever surprised to see us! “I ran into someone I know in Manhattan,” he chuckled. “Never in a thousand years did I think this would happen!”
Unbenownst to us, Dan had left Port Townsend last spring to take a job in Boston and then this fall was offered the captaincy of the Seaport’s schooner,
Lettie G. Howard. He is an amazing sailor and educator, so NYC is lucky to have him. The small-world syndrome flared up again when Dan led us into the Seaport’s blacksmith shop to say hello to Gillian, another former Port Townsend resident and sailor. Unfortunately none of our schedules jived, or we would have extended the encounter, but it sure was fun to meet someone from our hometown of 8,500 residents in a city of 8 million people!
We went sailing the next day on the Hudson River about 60 miles upstream from NYC. We drove to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to meet the
Mystic River Rower
Shelly shot some pix on a kayak paddle on the Mystic River. Here's a rower near the bend in the river where Mystic Seaport lies. sloop
Clearwater and go out for an afternoon sail with two classes of 5th graders. The current captain is a former shipmate of mine from
Adventuress, and it is thanks to Scott that we had the true honor of sailing on the 106-foot sloop Pete Seeger raised the money to build. This was in the late 1960s, when the Hudson River was terribly polluted by heavy industry, but thanks to
programs like the Clearwater’s, the river has been cleaned up to the point that we caught two healthy fish in our short trawl to fill the aquarium tank: a catfish and a type of flounder called a hog choker. It was just such a treat to be out on the Hudson on this vessel.
The road from there led to Conewango Valley, N.Y., where Pat and Jennifer and their three children welcomed us back to stay a while longer. They had been introduced to us through a mutual friend in Port Townsend and our first visit in mid-July was so delightful that we wanted to return. In addition to more Amish activities—like a fascinating crafts auction where I bought three rag rugs to take home—we were there for very special occasion: daughter
Charles W. Morgan
The oldest American whaleship still afloat: the Charles W. Morgan at Mystic Seaport. Meara’s one-year birthday! She didn’t want to wear the balloon hat I made for her, but she happily chewed on it and her slice of chocolate cake, until she was prettily smeared with the latter. See the photos!
We enjoyed reconnected with big brother Donald, 4, and sister Aine’, 2, and helping Pat and Jennifer with some chores, like weeding the flowerbeds, installing new panes of glass in the greenhouse, and turning a bushel of MacIntosh apples into apple sauce. Life seems simpler and more wholesome in Conewango Valley, and we like it there. The trick will be to take some of that essence home with us. Wish it was as simple as transporting a glass jar of applesauce, but we did make two promises to ourselves that should start the simplicity cycle: (1) We are going to plant a vegetable garden, and (2) rig a pulley clothesline. We purchased two heavy-duty clothesline blocks from an Amish general store that should withstand the Port Townsend winds.
Our next stop was near Akron, Ohio, which we didn’t realize was very near the largest population of Amish people in North America. Our host took us on a day trip to
Elvis Sighting
Mystic, Conn., hosts Jenny and Jon with their swank Elvis lamp. Holmes County on Sept. 27 and we admired Amish-crafted furniture, quilts, and cheese. Many of the shops and restaurants are oriented to the tourist buses that come in droves, but we got a recommendation for a local eatery in the town of Berlin that served a delicious native fried bologna sandwich! Another fun stop was
Lehman’s Hardware, a huge store that sold all sorts of non-electrical appliances for Amish homes, like wringer washing machines, oil lamps, copper kettles and hand-cranked food grinders. A large number of Mennonites also live in Holmes County, and the women in their white prayer caps were quite conspicuous.
We came to Akron to visit Polly, my first cousin twice removed, her husband Tom, and her mother Louise. They live in a little pocket of paradise on one of the Portage Lakes called Long Lake, and we toured their lake by pontoon boat and the nearby Ohio & Erie Canal by bicycle on a towpath trail. One funny thing that happened on that bike ride is that Polly’s pedal fell off, and in the absence of a wrench to screw it back on, Shelly volunteered to “ride” it back, towed by Jeff pedaling alongside on his
Mystic River House
Jon and Jenny's apartment is in the white house, second from right, that backs up to a salt marsh on the Mystic River. A great place to launch a kayak! own bike. “A Bicycle Built for Two” was the song that came to mind. Tom is a recently retired accountant who still does some consulting work on the side and Polly’s latest career is interior decoration, so you can imagine how comfortable their house was.
But we had to move on to Monroe, Mich., the hometown of Gen. George Armstrong Custer, because Jeff had heard that we could catch the start of Custer Week on Saturday, Sept. 30. For a lifelong Civil War history buff, this was not to be missed! And the events turned out to be well worth it. At the opening reception at the county museum, we heard lecture and then got to chat with Ernie LaPointe, the great-grandson of Sitting Bull, the Lakota elder who was at the Battle of Little Bighorn where Custer was cut down. Representing Custer throughout the week was Steve Alexander, a dead ringer for the general, who has the added distinction of living in the 1820’s house where Custer’s wife Libbie Bacon grew up, and where the two of them stayed in Monroe after they were married. We attended wreath-laying ceremonies at Custer’s equestrian statue and at the family grave
Jon in Chemistry Lab
Jon, who sailed as mate on Adventuress when Shelly was an educator, is now an 8th & 9th grade private school science teacher. And he wears ties, although they are funny ones like this. plot (Custer himself is buried at West Point), enhanced by the Civil War re-enactors of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade, but the highlight of Custer Week for us was a private tour of the Custer home by Custer himself. Spurs clanking and buckskin jacket fringe swaying, Steve Alexander was kind enough to show us around the house he and his wife are lovingly restoring. The décor includes several original pieces, so we can now say we’ve held Custer’s balls—croquet balls, that is! Check out Steve's website at
www.generalgacuster.com.
Monroe was also where we spent our first night in a hotel on this trip. Excepting the North Carolina mountain hostel where we stayed a night as a birthday present from my parents (and they paid for that), we have not paid once to sleep indoors. But not for any didactical reasons, so when Jeff found a tickets-accommodation package online that would buy us admission to The Henry Ford and a night in a Holiday Inn Express for a mere $18 more than we would pay at the state park down the road (where we stayed for two nights), we didn’t really think twice. Besides, I was getting over a cold and
Long Island Cemetery
A seaside cemetery on a foggy morning near Mystic, Conn. sure appreciated a soak in the hot tub.
The Henry Ford (that’s a noun, not an adjective) is a complex of historical attractions established by the Ford Motor Co. founder in Dearborn, Mich. It can’t all be seen in one day, so we chose to visit Greenfield Village, a collection of more than 100 historic buildings relocated from elsewhere in the country or else reproduced on site, with a focus on American innovators like Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, and the Wright brothers. Jeff also took a tour of the
Ford Rouge Factory, where 2,000 workers per shift construct F150 trucks on a 10-acre assembly floor that is covered by a “green roof.” He said it was very impressive.
Also in Dearborn I delved into a research project I’ve been considering ever since our visit to the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. It was there I saw a small exhibit on Alice Huyler Ramsey, the first woman to drive across the country in 1909 (a couple years after the first man accomplished the feat). I decided I would like to learn more about this plucky adventurer in anticipation of pitching some magazine stories for the 2009 centennial of the
Schooner SoundWaters
In Stamford, Conn., we visited the educational schooner that Shelly had worked on right out of college. It's a three-masted steel-hulled oyster sharpie replica with two centerboards! drive. Alice wrote a memoir but no biography has been published, so there’s lots of digging to do. First stop was Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where Alice went to college and where her trip photo album is archived. I definitely got a feel for 22-year-old Alice by looking through the black-and-white photographs she had carefully pasted up and labeled in an exuberant hand.
The
Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn had a treasure trove of a file on Alice—scores of original news clippings, some dating back a hundred years, and correspondence in her hand with the organization’s president, a personal friend. Alice was the first woman inducted into the Hall of Fame, in 2000 (shamefully late, if you ask me), and there were living relatives at that ceremony that will need to be tracked down next. I mention all this because it is my earnest belief that sharing news of a research project is the surest way to gather more leads!
Kalamazoo, Mich., is where Jeff met up with a high school classmate, Aaron, his wife Elise, and their polite and articulate daughters, Brittney and Caleigh. We could only spend one evening with them, but it was packed with reminiscing
SoundWaters Captains
Met both of the schooner's captains: Justin (originally from Tacoma) and Shane. The crew was very welcoming, too. and news of Aaron’s good work as a music worship leader in the Kalamazoo Valley Family Church.
It started raining that night and poured most of the next day that we had slated to visit Chicago. So we did a driving tour of the city’s famous skyscrapers instead of walking around, per usual. The aquamarine of Lake Michigan amazed us, even with storm clouds o’erhanging. The night of Oct. 2 was spent in a Chicago suburb with the friends of a friend: Emily, a high school math teacher, and Jose, a computer technician. The noisiest thunder-and-lightning storm I have ever experienced hovered right over their house for hours, it seemed. At one point, nickel-sized hail rained down; the rest of the storm, it just rained rain. Emily and Jose’s suburban street was a concrete-curbed river by the time we went to bed, but Matilda stayed high and dry in their sloped driveway.
I’ll close with a thought we can identify with, as elucidated by John Steinbeck in
Travels with Charley in Search of America, a book I’ve been reading as we somewhat retrace Steinbeck’s round-the-country route of 40 years ago. (Charley was a standard poodle, by the way.)
WTC Skyline
We spent one day in NYC, which Jeff had never visited. This is the view south from the Empire State Building, where the World Trade Center towers (black rectangles) once dominated the skyline. “This journey had been like a full dinner of many courses, set before a starving man. At first he tries to eat all of everything, but as the meal progresses he finds he must forgo some things to keep his appetite and his taste buds functioning.”
We’re getting close to the end of our meal, so we're loosening our belts and passing up some of the side dishes at this point in our travels. Please forgive us if we are bypassing
your favorite part of the country as we skim homeward. As Jeff has said to me in recent weeks, overwhelmed by the constant stimulation, “I feel full!” We just can’t eat it all, but
bon appetit to you as you digest this entry.
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Dad and Mom
non-member comment
Looking Sooooooo Good
Just finished reading and looking at the photos of the latest blog. Wow, what a nice write up and photographs. We relive some of our travels every time we see your travelog. What a great experience you are having. Looking forward to seeing you both soon. Love, Dad and Mom