Good news, I got batteries for my camera!
Bad news, they're in the car and I'm too lazy to go get them.
OH WELL ON WITH THE BLOG POST
Chapter 9: Boston, Falmouth, Martha's Vineyard, and by the way Nantucket
After spending a rainy evening in Portland, I drove on south to get to Boston to meet up with an uncle. The rainstorm of the night was mostly over, but there were patches of drizzle and rain between the bright sun all the way down the coast into the Boston area.
I made it to my uncle's house all right, and in time for dinner, too! We visited with family members over some amazing seafood, and then went to a fantastic production of The Jungle Book. It was a gorgeous piece, with great musicians and great stagecraft all around. And I really really wanted to steal all of the costumes because they were so pretty. But I didn't.
The next few days were spent in similar relaxation. Excellent food, excellent diversions, excellent company. We went to a Cavalia show (an off-shoot of Cirque du Soleil, but with horses!) and took a day on my uncle's boat to go up the harbor. We also went to see Lee Daniels' The Butler, which was an amazing experience not just because of the movie (which I loved – seriously, that cast...) but because we saw it in this super-super-fancy "Luxe" theater. The seats reclined and you could order food from your seat and they brought food. And beer. Did I mention the beer.
It was lovely to see family and be around Boston – especially since I didn't have to drive! I can't actually figure out how people manage to get around that city. It makes no sense. But it was fun, and I'm looking forward to visiting again.
The last couple of days in the area, I got to hang out with a good friend from school, and watch movies and such. We also went to the New England Aquarium and geeked out about sea lions and jellyfish. Good times were had!
I left the Boston area on Sunday 22 September, arriving at Falmouth around lunch time. Lina, another good college friend of mine, was there because she's doing a really neat marine term thing where they go out on a ship for six weeks and do oceanography/biology/science stuff. But first they have a few weeks on land to learn how to do all the things they'll be doing. And as it happened, the weekend was fairly free on Lina's schedule, so I drove over to meet up with her and we hopped on a ferry to Martha's Vineyard.
Because you can do that on the East Coast! Their islands are actually get-to-able! How exciting is that!
Martha's Vineyard was lovely. We walked around and looked at the beautiful bungalows (pictures will be here once I get un-lazy and retrieve batteries...) and rode on the awesome old carousel they have. We also got tasty foods, and had a lovely walk around the island.
Then we got back on the ferry and went back to sleep and recharge. Monday, Lina had classes and stuff, but I didn't so I got straight back on the ferry and went to Nantucket.
I'll pause here to give a little bit of background, so you can better understand how frigging excited I was to go to Nantucket.
I've read Moby-Dick somewhere around 12 times – never for school, interestingly enough – and as much as my brain hurts when it's slogging through the science-y bits, it remains one of my favorite books. The first time I read it (rather, had it read to me by my father), I was about seven years old. I read it to myself the next year, and the year after that, and then a few more times for good measure.
Say what you will about the "real meaning" of the book (I don't have to, since I never took a class on it!) but the story is fun and the writing is poetry (better poetry, in fact, than Melville's actual poetry*). Combine that with all the fun short stories I read about Nantucketers, and the Nathaniel Hawthorne essays, and you've got the literature I occupied myself with before Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published.
Now, I don't usually use words like "longing" when describing my own feelings, because the word feels very Austen and makes me shudder, but it's the only appropriate thing to say here. For the last fifteen years I have longed to visit New Bedford, and Nantucket, and all the other whaling towns, and immerse myself in that world which so captivated my childhood.
So when I found myself with the opportunity to make this dream reality, I basically bounced off the walls for a while. I was so excited. The whole ferry ride to the island, I sort of just sat there, reading the preface to Moby-Dick on my smartphone, and reminding myself of all the fun stories I knew. And when I got there, it was exactly perfect.
The whaling community of Nantucket, of course, hasn't been a thing in quite some time. But the island's tourist community is still interested in the history, and they have a really great museum of whaling, which I promptly made my way to.
First, though, I stopped in a local pub for a snack and a drink.
And that's when my day got awesome.
Y'see, there's this scene in Moby-Dick – it happens to be my favorite scene – where Ishmael and Quequeg are in a port town getting something to eat. They see a quaint little inn, they go in and sit down, and then they find out that the way you order is that you just holler back at the kitchen which kind of chowder you want (clam or cod). So they spend a merry luncheon just yelling, "Clam!" "Cod!" etc. back to the kitchen, and eating the tasty chowders.
Since this is my favorite scene from the book, I thought, "Hey, I'm in Nantucket, I should get some chowder!" So when I'd sat down at this pub (The Salty Dog), and the friendly food-getting guy had come over, I politely asked for a cup of clam chowder.
He promptly turned around and yelled, "CHOWDER!" back to the kitchen.
I just about fell off my chair.
When he asked why I seemed so excited, I explained that he'd just enacted my favorite scene from Moby-Dick, and that it had made my day. He laughed and said it was completely unintentional, but it was interesting I'd mentioned that book.
Then my day got very surreal. And also awesome.
Bit more background: Herman Melville based the story of Moby-Dick off of a few tales he'd heard while visiting the whaling capital of the nation, but the main story he used was that of the Essex. This was a whaling vessel which has the awful distinction of being one of the goriest and unluckiest ships in history (therefore muchly storied). The Essex was stove in by an infuriated sperm whale (spoilers: that's where Melville got the climactic scene for Moby-Dick), and her crew had to try to sail to the mainland in the three slightly-damaged longboats they had.
It . . . didn't go well for them. After losing sight of each other and drifting long enough to run out of food and water, two of the longboats' crews had to resort to cannibalism to survive. Of these, one was rescued by some British sailors, and the other was found by another Nantucket whaler, the Dauphin, off the coast of South America. There were only two men aboard the latter (Captain Pollard and Charles Ramsdell), both out of their minds from exposure, both gnawing on the bones of their dead mates.
Why does this background information mean that my day got surreal, says you? Wait for the punchline, says I.
The guy who took my order for chowder and hollered it into the kitchen? Yeah, he's the great-great-grandson of Charles Ramsdell, one of the survivors of the wreck of the Essex.
. . .
I had my favorite scene from one of my favorite books accidentally reenacted for me by a descendant of one of the people who were the reason said book was written in the first place.
Cue all manner of geeking out.
Seriously, I don't think I could really say that the Nantucket trip was the best day of my tour so far, because there have been a lot of great days . . . but it was totally the best day of my tour so far. I had such a blast. I rented a bike and rode across the island to the beach, where I found some good shells and walked in the surf, and then I went back to the ferry building and got back to the mainland. All in all, an amazing trip.
And that's today's update! This is still fairly well behind the times (I was on Nantucket on 23 September), but I'm getting there. Tomorrow I'll spend my morning on another update, and see how far I can get.
From Brooklyn, NY . . .
Julia
*Which as a collection is, objectively, blah. Pedantic and ham-fisted rhyme structures, paired with an understandable yet limited antebellum subject matter, make most of his Battle Pieces very difficult to sit through.
That being said, one of them ("Shiloh – A Requiem") is one of my favorite war poems of the era. It is exactly "In Flanders Fields" (another favorite) but five thousand miles removed and fifty years too early. I will reproduce the text here because I like it.
Shiloh - A Requiem
Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the field in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh –
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched one stretched in pain
Through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh –
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there –
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve –
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.
(April, 1862)
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