I do bean-town

10/18/05
My trip to Boston (the Hub, Beantown) and Cambridge was pretty good except it rained for 8-9 of the 11 days I was there and when I say rain, I mean lots of
it! Not like Seattle's drizzle! Maybe you read about the flooding and deaths in N.H. and Mass. In Boston, it was windy but at least not cold. Oh, and the Red Sox lost, which I was happy to hear about since the city is just too obsessed with this team and it was getting tiring already! My friend L. doesn't get out much at night--one night she left 11 year old V. at her mom's a few blocks away and we went to hear live jazz at Toad, this great place across the street in Cambridge that plays live music for free seven days a week, and we had a drink. She must have been gone a total of 45 minutes, maybe an hour tops! Another day we saw a matinee together, "Broken Flowers"
with Bill Murray and Jessica Lange and others. I liked it--I think!

I saw an old S.F. friend, Rick C., who has lived there for 10 years; Rick was missing his old dog and wanted to take Marley out on our walk and I agreed reluctantly. The dog attacked at least 4 other dogs and a jogging man! I felt so bad! I thought it was a leash free area but also didn’t know
that Marley has not taken well to the change of location.

I also got to see a cousin who I haven't seen since my days working at the Penn Women's Center--1976, maybe? She is friendly, funny, and finally an "out" lesbian and very much against Bush. She is a newspaper editor. Also my Seattle library world friend S. who moved to the Bay area six years ago is now on the move and her son just started at Brandeis University outside of Boston so we were able to spend a couple of afternoons together—went walking at Walden Pond and bought postcards of Thoreau (who I was surprised to learn pronounced his name like the word “thorough”!). She has an apartment in Portsmouth, NH and is determined to learn how to live on her own for the first time but suffers from “empty nest” syndrome and grief after B., her longtime boyfriend died suddenly of a heart attack at age 54 in January. They had plans to marry and
travel around the world and she is doing her best to keep up some part of the plan.

I went on four tours walking tours (after one tour L's daughter V. said, “What? You’re
going on ANOTHER tour?”): Beacon Hill masterpieces with a cute woman named
Saba of Iraqi descent who concentrated the tour on photography and the best
shots and we were lucky to have perfect sunlight; Harvard U. tour by a pretty
and very chipper Harvard student who juggles her studies with doing tours,
maintaining a boyfriend, working on the school paper and being a student
advisor; and a tour of the Boston Athenaeum (http://www.bostonathenaeum.org/)
by a somewhat inarticulate rare books cataloger with just Stephanie and me;
and lastly, a tour in the wind and rain of Literary Landmarks of Boston by a
Boston by Foot volunteer who was a writing professor. I went to two art
museums and the botanical part of the Peabody Museum at Harvard with the
famous Glass Flowers (http://www.peabody.harvard.edu/museum_botanical.html)
that Rick and I swore up and down could not have been made with glass and who are they trying to kid? I also went to the African American museum and was
invited on the tail end of a tour and had the opportunity to see the African
Meeting House and eat refreshments from a lecture about John Rock (the first
African American to be admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, was
a teacher, a physician, a lawyer, and a freedom-fighter).

I heard live music five nights (mostly folk or pop folk/rock and all very
good—Boston is a much better scene to hear music than Seattle), saw an author, Gregory Maguire, read from his new book Son of a Witch with L. and V. (she was in the stacks, actually), and also with L. saw the Mapparium at the Christian Science Monitor main building
(http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0928/p14s02-alar.html) which was fun (though I
liked the sound effects the best, where you can whisper and a person at the
other end can hear you very clearly), and the side trip to their library to
talk library talk with the knowledgeable and friendly “assistant librarian”
and their gallery extolling the virtues of Mary Baker Eddy. I also went to the
Boston Public Library which had a great exhibit about the abolitionist William
Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator (masthead:” Our country is the world,
our countrymen are all mankind.”). I took L. and V. out for dinner one
night at Machu Picchu, a Peruvian restaurant. A good time was had by
all--except V., who was grumpy as usual and then had an incredibly noisy
coughing and choking fit afterwards. Too much “aji” (hot sauce)? I was glad
when they dropped me off at Johnny D’s in Somerville to see the Scottish group Tannahill Weavers and meet my date (who never showed nor called). It’s bad enough when they show but even worse when they don’t!

L. and V. and I went up to Maine on Columbus Day and, of course, it was pouring. We walked a bit at the Nubble Lighthouse near York and L. treated V. to her first lobster for lunch. It was messy and V. is a very messy eater even with normal foods. I was being treated to my first visit to Maine and was amazed at the number of tourists, even at this time of year! We tried to find the outlet stores in Kittery but ended up in Portsmouth, N.H. and got a little look at where S. will be living for a short time. It was charming. Finally found the outlet stores and I bought some new “cross trainers” (hey,
they’re just sneakers!) for $30.

Oh, and I also spoke to V.’s 6th grade Spanish class about my learning
Spanish and my travels in Latin America. I made a special effort to get up and out in time for
her 8:55 class. Turns out the class is at 10:25 and I had some time to kill.
At the neighborhood deli I was surprised at the cost of the frittata and said
I wasn’t used to the Boston prices. The young woman, maybe in response to my
"Visitor" button given at the school, asked if I was a visitor from outer space.
I said that was snide and she said, oh, maybe you aren’t used to the Boston
sense of humor either. The other employee apologized for her later. Some
Bostonians are indeed quite unfriendly. I tried to talk to a young woman
reading Gregory Maguire’s new book on the “T” (subway) and didn’t get a word
for my effort, just a suspicious look and a nod. While walking, I stopped at the corner for
the red light and a business suited man ran into me and didn’t even say he
was sorry. I guess no one is supposed to stop at a red light but just be as
aggressive as the drivers. Another time a young man was standing at a corner
and I waited for the light and joked how I didn’t want to get killed crossing
a street in Boston. He sort of gave me a light push and when I turned to go
back to the safety of the corner he ran into me! On the other hand, some
people were very friendly, though they were mostly employees doing their jobs.

At the class, I think only a couple of kids actually paid attention. At the
question time at the end, one girl asked me my age! The teacher said, “Don’t
you know you don’t ask a lady her age?” I said I would answer in Spanish.
V. thought it was a guessing game and trading on privileged information,
said in English “51?” A boy who couldn’t keep his arm down kept asking me
about the French language. I spoke about visiting Buenos Aires and a few
minutes later a girl asked me if I’d gone to Buenos Aires. She had been
doodling with a friend. Turns out she was born there and already speaks Spanish fluently but
Spanish class is compulsory!

So, I have to unpack, shop for food, catch up on my email since L. didn’t
have Internet access. I went to a place for homeless and the public
library and her mother’s to check my email.L.'s husband, P., stayed at my house and took care of my cat. What? Yes, he is working here on a 3 month contract with Microsoft, a
contract he got right after they moved there. Life is strange...and the way
Microsoft works with temporary contract workers, he may be there a lot longer
than 3 months if they like him. I had a time last night finding my favorite
pillow I’d been missing which he’d oddly stuffed in with another in a big pillow case.
I later discovered the burnt and destroyed tea kettle which he had had a run-in with,
probably expecting it to whistle which it doesn’t. But my cat seems well cared
for, and that’s what’s most important!

I have a cold (L. and V. had colds) and called in sick yesterday and today. My flight back was very long. The woman sitting next to me was restless and very big so every time she moved her sleeve would brush mine and wake me up. She was a smoker and hadn't gotten her fix and also had sciatica and was in pain (how do I know all this? from her conversations on her damn cellphone when we landed). The man in the window seat (I was in the aisle seat) didn't ask us to get up even once for him. He must have an iron bladder! I heard my name paged as I reached Baggage Claim and it turns out I'd left or dropped my $10 pair of reading glasses (my purple ones so they are special) and they were trying to make sure I got them back. How nice! The American Airlines employee even went all the way back to the gate to get them for me.

L.'s husband P. was there at the airport, waiting for me, with S.'s trusty pick up. Lovely homecoming which somehow always seems smaller on my return!

Halloween 2005 I get creative
Six days before Halloween I had the inspiration to dress up as the joke I’d always thought was funny: librarian during the day, hooker at night. As I worked on the costume, I realized it could also be the dichotomy that perhaps all women live with: good girl/bad girl, virgin/whore. Although there were unexpected challenges, such as discovering that symmetry in clothing also helps with the gravity problem, my costume was a success. The reactions were amused and puzzled. Are you schizophrenic, somebody asked me? Well, yes, but isn’t that the normal state of being? I found the best clue when asked who I was supposed to be was, they are professions. The oldest…haven’t there been librarians as long as there have been prostitutes? Maybe not…

It was not hard to choose which side would be my prostitute side—the right. It was the side of my nostril I picked to be pierced two years ago. I am right-handed, yes. The left side, on the other hand (ha ha), was the side that was paralyzed for three weeks as a side effect of Lyme disease, called Bell’s Palsy. Can one have a sexy side and a less sexy side? It would seem so. I never thought of dividing myself up horizontally so I would have a prostitute top and a librarian bottom or vice versa. That doesn’t seem like it would be as much fun nor as obvious!

We had a strange patron at the library while I was wearing my costume. That in itself is far from unusual. But it’s the first time my male co-worker had to deviously send me to the back office to make the young man go away. As soon as I turned around to leave the reference desk, hearing him ask me how old I was, he turned and left.

The high heeled gold boot on one foot and the low heeled black shoe on the other made it too difficult to walk. I hobbled around and felt very off balance. Similarly with the glasses I made, one half wire rimmed and the other pink sunglasses. How very disconcerting to have one eye shaded and the other not! Half a wig did not feel nearly as strange and having different earrings on didn’t bother me at all.