After 2 days of muggy humidity, Sunday dawned in DC, weather glorious. Arrived safely by train from Boston - a totally different world! Imperial DC.
Went for a lovely walk along the canal in Georgetown. They were hauling a canal boat along the Chesapeake and Ohio canal in Georgetown and then had it pulled by Mules: the people were dressed in 19th Century clothes. It was very pretty.
We then walked over the Key Bridge where Emma and I watched the fireworks on July 4th, then down along the Potomac to Arlington Bridge, then back across the Potomac to the Lincoln Memorial, and up 23rd street past Hilary Clinton's office.
Lovely temperature. The Presidents Helicopter flies overhead regularly, very low. DC is a very subdued city, it has a quiet but but very subtle sense of power.
The barber on Beacon Hill quoted from the poem "How shall I love Thee?" as he cut my hair. He spoke also rather philosophically about the Azores, where his grandparents were from, about God, and life - he was a bit of a philosopher. I got a little uncomfortable once or twice as he admired and complemented my hair. It was slightly worrying, as he said "if you look good, I look good", speaking Portuguese, as he cut my hair, sat in his small, wood paneled barbers, with memorabilia from the Titanic hanging on the walls. "John's Hairstyling Shop" . It was a different experience from the usual.
That evening we get free tickets to Cutlers Majestic Theatre in Boston for the Opera, "The Bartered Bride" by the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana; a story of love, an arranged marriage, greed, contracts, the circus, and a bashful bear. Set in Spillville, Iowa in 1934 during the depression, magically transported from Czechoslovakia in the 19th Century, and translated to English. A happy ending, and a great circus sequence in the middle.
“In America my name is Shirley, but in my tribe I am the only one with the name Green Water”, she said.
“I use my name when I speak to the Creator, in my own language.”
Dressed in a loin cloth the young boy was chopping wood. The man in the communal “three fire” tree bark covered hut told stories of his people's historic and contemporary way of life, sitting on animal skins with a quiver full of arrows hanging beside him. All the sturdy huts are covered with bark. Outside a couple of fires burn on the edge of the small clearing, in the middle the soil had been prepared and earth mounds waited for corn, pumpkin, squash and potato to be planted.
They are all playacting in this small oasis in the woods, demonstrating the american native way of life, but talking as contemporary native americans. American Native, or Wampanoag as the leaflets, signs and orientation movie asks us to call them - not Indian; Indians are from India, and definitely do not call them Chief, Squaw and whatever you do, do not say How! There are no feathers, nor tepees. They answer questions from the tourists almost defensively - American and European. We are all visitors to this lost world. You almost feel stupid for asking.
“Where did the women have their babies?” one visitor asked.
“Here, of course. Where did you think?” said Shirley.
(No hospitals, stupid).
Everyone looked at the dirt floor and animal skins. “Grandmothers helped; they knew what to do” she added matter of factly.
Outside, the man whose home this represents, Hobbamock, was talking to more visitors. He is a big man, in a loin cloth and moccasins, so big he gets about in an 'shop mobility' type electric wheel chair.
We leave this small forest clearing of a lost world, and walk along a wooden board walk, up a small hill and through a wooden gate built into the wooden palisade that surrounds the Pilgrims Plantation village, a historically accurate recreation of the village built at the site of the abandoned Wampanoag village Patuxet. It was reconstructed to look like it did 7 years after the Mayflower landed and changed everything.
Its another wet saturday afternoon on Beacon Hill, in early April. The wall has a hand painted image of dog, lying on its back, with a drink being poured into it by what looks like a drunken colonial patriot, and alongside is written:
“Sevens: A Beacon Hill Pub.
Here on the shores of the fetid swamps of Boston’s Back Bay , Otis Brewster Hogbottom III of the Beacon Hill irregulars the most revolting troop in the Continental Army, expired of an excess of Patriotic Spirits and he was promptly interned inan outhouse on this spot, 7/7/1777, Let him RIP.”
signed Omer ’91.
There is a couple playing chess at the table in the front bay window, the chess board is in the table, the pieces from behind the bar. A good selection of American rock playing, and occasionally reggae, and the tv is showing baseball - the Los Angeles Angels vs the Boston Red Sox. No american bar is without at least one tv; even those that have restaurants, most often showing sport, usually baseball (Red Sox), if not baseball then basketball (Celtics) or ice hockey (Bruins). They sell Bratwurst and Chowder, but this is primarily about Beer. The Sam Adams tastes good here!
A sunny Friday evening in Harvard. Charlies Diner, juke box rock and roll, red leatherette seat covers, stools at a bar that runs the whole length of one wall, along the other are booths and tables with formica tops, black and white tiles on the wall, and a mirror above, along the length of the wall. Beer, burgers and budweiser neon signs in the window. Buddy Holly look alike waiter, black glasses, black t shirt and trousers. There’s an outside and an upstairs all crammed on this Friday night, the music and conversation loud and american, all age groups, children to people in their 90s. In the corner another circular neon sign, off white, written across it in electric blue, ‘blue moon’. Ceiling fan turning slowly overhead - it feels like a movie. There is even a burger on the menu for just $5.
Plymouth Massachusets. The Mayflower replica is a couple of blocks away on the seafront. Round a corner, down a quiet residential street is the British Beer Company. Everything British (and, it appears, English) - on the wall are pictures of John Lennon and Joe Strummer, bagpipes in the corner, English Beer from the pumps; London Pride, Fullers ESB. it is packed, on the tv is ..... baseball, otherwise this could be a small pub in England. The town is quaint, with clapperboard wooden houses, old, reserved - even with the Harley Davison bikers cruising Water Street along the sea front, by the the Mayflower. The contrast with Boston is stark.
The American story starts in Boston with the revolution - not in Plymouth - the Pilgrims were English, after all.
