Back for the Final Sprint

When we catch our breath, I’ll go into detail on how great the South of France was, but then again, most people already know that it’s a beautiful, elegant and epicurean delight, so I won’t go sprinkling this blog with any more clichés. Besides, pictures are definitely worth a thousand words in this case, so if I get about 50 of them up on Flickr then I think our vacation will be better shown.

The fact that it was so easy to forget our imminent departure from Cambridge made Saturday’s reentry all the more of a shock (not to mention the 95°F heat and the cab had no famous American Air Conditioning!). So we’ve thrown ourselves into packing once more. It feels as if it will never get done, and always be in a state of near chaos.

I’m still a bit jet lagged, getting up before dawn and near exhaustion at this hour (9:30 PM), and I’m a night person! So, I’ll make this entry a bit short.

I think I should acknowledge the new set of right-wing bloggers who have discovered me. Apparently I’m just a man without a country, because even Cambridge, MA is too American for me. I had no idea that ‘leftists’ (which I guess, is what I am) had appropriated the term ‘liberal’, and that 9/11 taught us that the left had destroyed the country. There’s more, but just read the comments on the previous entry to get the rest of it.

OK, without getting too much into a debate, the way I see, it, 9/11 was indeed a tragedy. It was an awful, horrible, hateful thing and the people behind it are the worst excuses for human beings the planet has produced for a long time. But the bigger tragedy is that the US populace got so scared, so screwed up, that they were willing to follow anyone who said that they had The Answer and would Make Them Pay for What They Did. The Republican leaders who claimed they knew what to do, in black and white, confident and heroic language then took advantage of that vulnerability and gullibility to drag the country into war with Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attack (yes, that’s a fact and we all know it now - only the truly deluded dispute it) . So it’s a tragedy, but not the kind of tragedy of 9/11. It’s something more farcical, showing how easily an uneducated and irrational population is persuaded. It’s a tragedy that the country I grew up in just doesn’t exist any more, not because of 9/11, but because of what the shock of those falling towers allowed people to get away with.

Final thought: I’m thinking about how to explain that I really do feel as if I’m being forced out of this country. If I stay and fight, I fear eventually that I’ll end up in jail or worse. I’m not contemplating anything illegal, but these days people are really getting spirited away in the night, the way it used to be in the old Soviet Union. It’s mostly just people who have some connection to the Middle East, like that poor soul who at one point worked for an Islamic charity that it was revealed had funneled funds to the terrorists.

Let me put it this way. It’s not as if I went off my rocker and became an underground activist. But I feel like a passenger in the subway car, sitting still on the tracks, but the train going by the opposite direction is moving with so much force and dominating the windows, so I feel as if I’m drifting forward (we’ve all felt something like this optical illusion at some point in time). So I feel the country lurch further and further to the right, and hence, I also feel that my place within it is less and less clear. If being American means being ultra-religious, intolerant, arrogant and wasteful, then I guess I don’t want to be one of those. Call me crazy.

Packing, Selling and Packing

We’ve now reached the point where sold (or packed/disassembled) household items are no longer the ‘fat’ of our lives, but some ‘muscle’. In other words, stuff that we actually used day to day is now either unavailable or gone. I can still cook dinner (fewer pots) and connect to the Internet (laptop), so I’m OK, but things sure feel different.

Yesterday the Microwave cart and TV (and components) each went to their respective purchasers. Today we took apart my office desk, and the desktop computer, screen, peripherals and other attachments also had to be taken apart so they could be moved of it. It took a long time and we had to clean a lot of accumulated dust, fur and sticky residue. Everything in this house eventually gets a bit of a sticky film over time, probably from cooking food. It’s funny (and a little sad) to see remnants of Socrates (and perhaps even his sister Steffi, although she’s been gone for much longer) show up as little hairs and balls of dusty fur in the corners of furniture and at the bottom of table legs. Socrates loved to lounge on my desk while I worked, and left much of himself in the seams over the years. Those cats lived their entire lives in this house, and when we leave, it won’t be just memories of them we leave behind, but lots of genetic material. Probably not enough to clone a cat from, but certainly enough to make any person with a cat allergy react. I hope the new tenant is not allergic to cats.

There are boxes everywhere, in every room. The bedroom is flanked by large garment boxes. The room that I used to call my office consists now mainly of small boxes and scattered computer and peripherals. The first floor is dominated by a pile of boxes and other items where the piano used to be. It’s a good thing, too. In 19 days, the truck pulls up and the movers load all of those boxes. In the meantime, I’m also packing for our trip to France. Probably won’t be able to blog from there, but I’ll update when we get back, for sure.

The Piano has Left the Building/What I Will and Won’t Miss

The piano movers came yesterday and took the piano. I put up the sequence of pictures I took on Flickr. So one more piece of our life is no longer in Lilac Court. I wish I’d played it more, but I’m glad that it’s going to stay in the family, so I won’t miss it quite as much.

Speaking of missing things, I’ve started to think about the things I’ll miss from here (besides friends, of course). Here are the things I’ll miss, the things I’ll be glad to leave behind, and the things I really won’t care either way:

Things I’ll Miss

1. The Red Sox - now that they are ‘winners’. Still, the whole silly ‘curse’ thing was fun, but if I really missed that, I’d move to Chicago. I also liked the Patriots, although it’s hard for me to get all weepy about football. I will miss SuperBowl Sunday at my friend Andy’s house. It became an annual culinary and social event that we regulars looked forward to. Thanks, Andy.
2. Cod. What a wonderful, tasty fish, so mild and comforting when baked with herb bread crumbs, butter and lemon. On the other hand, from all the over-fishing that’s going on, I may not be the only one who’s going to be missing this fish in the near future. While we’re talking food here, I’ll also miss Emma’s Pizza, a pizza parlor famous from glowing writeups in Newsweek and Zagat, which had to good sense to relocate to a nearby corner. Pizza most people would drive hours for, and I got to walk home with it before it got cold and wash it down from Microbrewery beer, also from across the street. It rarely gets better than that.
3. Speaking of food, I will also miss all the fabulous Ice Cream, including Toscanini’s , Christina’s, Emack and Bolios, Steve’s, JP Licks, the White Mountain Creamery and all of the other incredible dairy confectionaries we have here. Some have called Boston the Ice Cream capital of the country, maybe even the world. They’re right.
4. Haymarket. I love farmers’ markets and this one was so authentic and cheap, it’s the way some families make ends meet. Where else could you get a bushel of peaches for $2.50 ? Never mind that you had to throw out a third of them because they weren’t so good.
5. Harvard Davis Square. Harvard Square used to be a place to hang out and just people-watch, as well as go to nice bookstores. There’s only one bookstore left (of the same name), and my favorite was Wordsworth (ask someone who’s been here a while and they’ll probably shed a tear as well). Harvard has now become pretty much a shopping mall and cluster of banks. What Harvard Square used to be like is now, Davis Square (small, independent book stores, cafés, restaurants, and the Somerville Theatre). Much livelier.
6. Living in the Intellectual Capitol of North America. No other city, anywhere, has as many colleges as Cambridge, MA. Yesterday was Harvard Graduation. Everywhere you looked you saw people in caps and gowns, flowers, happy parents, and lost drivers with out-of-town license plates. The week before it was MIT. Those are the big ones, and there are many smaller ones, many of which, on their own, could be the centerpiece of a University town.
7. Memorial Drive. Nothing more beautiful than a Sunday in the late Summer or Fall walking along the Charles River. In the evening we’d take bread crusts to feed the ducks. Sadly, pollution has since has caused them to leave.
8. Speaking of Fall, the Fall colors were something to ooh and ah about every year. I love that season, and late September was always a treat.
9. Being close to Vermont. The thing that probably makes me the saddest about leaving the US is leaving Vermont, one of the country’s saving graces. I’ll also miss Tanglewood and Dublin, New Hampshire. Where I got my music fix each summer visiting The Walden School, a fantastic summer program I attended as a student eons ago, and taught as a faculty member not much more recent than that.

Things I’ll be Glad to Leave Behind

1. Logan Airport. They should never be forgiven for letting the terrorists on not one but two planes on 9/11. I wouldn’t be so hard on them, but for the fact that it was later revealed that the head of security for the airport at the time had gotten that cushy job by being the Governor’s chauffeur. Favors for family and friends put the whole country at risk. On a more trivial level, the place is still filthy, ugly, difficult to get around in, difficult to land on, and an all-around disgrace. The best thing they can do is to shut the whole thing down. Build an airport off-shore on an artificial island like the Chinese did (hey, why not another Big Dig!) I’m going to be thrilled not to have to return home via Logan. It’s a pity so many do.
2. Republican Governors. Now admittedly, I did vote for William Weld, but that was because the only alternative was a maniac named John Silber, who was so disagreeable that I would have voted in Ghengis Kahn over him. (Well, almost). Unfortunately, after Weld (who was stopped in mid-career by none other than that Neanderthal, Jesse Helms), there have been a succession of GOP governors in Massachusetts (Celluci and now Romney), and each one has been just as bad
3. Living in a User-Hostile City. Boston has an attitude: Signage is for sissies; you should just know where you are, so don’t bother asking for directions. That includes roads as well as the T (subway). If you’re with luggage and come in via AMTRAK at South Station, you’ll never be able to find an elevator. Take if from me, I couldn’t, and I’ve lived here nearly 20 years! I also probably don’t need to mention that Boston drivers are known throughout the country for being the among the most aggressive and rude. I suspect that I’ve picked up some of the driving style and will have to work to tone it down.
4. The Winters. In fact, the weather in general is far from pleasant. Not only were winters very cold and snowy, but summers were not that comfortable either. Boston also seems to lack any kind of a Spring, temperature-wise. You go from too cold to too hot in a day. I wish we could have gotten more than 1 or 2 days of 72°F/22°C per year. It’s currently a steamy 79°F/26°C, and it’s only June!
5. Government Center. Well, no one likes that place. It is truly one of most unattractive buildings ever built. Everybody in Boston knows it’s horrible, but in all the years I’ve lived here, not a soul has been able to get any concensus on what to do about it. What a waste of space and a lost opportunity!

Where I Won’t Care Either Way

1. The Big Dig. It never affected us, and now that it’s done, depending on who you ask, it was either a marvel of engineering or a shameful piece of political pork (or both). I think it’s just a big tunnel. And although the Bunker Hill/Leonard Zakim bridge is pretty, we’ve actually never driven on it. Big Deal. What really needs help are the roads above ground. The potholes outnumber the pigeons.
2. Living Amongst Colonial History. While I did once participate in what I’d like to think was an important digital media project around the Boston Freedom Trail some years ago, I have to say that I’ve just had it with the city’s attempt to turn itself into Ye Olde Yankee Theme Parke. As the local government and builders preserve one of the ugliest buildings in the city (the old City Jail) as part of a Medical Center building project just across the river, I’ve come to the realization that too much reverence of the past can be almost as bad as not enough.
3. The Boston Accent. Sure, it’s easy to make fun of, and I can certainly do a version of it, but having that Boston ‘pahk your cahr’ sound neither enhances nor detracts from peoples’ impression of you. At worst you sound like an idiot. At best, (as Jon Stewart of the Daily Show has sometimes said) you sound like Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons. Who knows, I might get all teary-eyed when I hear one years from now, but thanks to the fact that NPR’s Car Talk is heard everywhere from Constantinople to Timbuktu, I don’t think that will happen.
4. The Kennedys. Pam saw Ted Kennedy once at the airport. I stood next to Bill Weld and Michael Dukakis (at different times) on the T, but never a Kennedy.
5. The North End. This small Italian neighborhood was supposed to be famous for great food. Frankly, I was disappointed more often than not. The sandwiches at Il Panino could be very good though.

Those are the lists I could think up in these last few days. There will be more that I discover, and Alison Rose (who has left some nice comments here) has a running appreciation in her blog of things New England, Everything’s SFNE. Here’s to only remembering the good things, which memory always does for us.

What Might have Been and Another Canada Tip

My friend Sooz took this great picture of Howard Dean a few years ago, when he came to Boston for a special Rally called ‘Democracy, Freedom, Action’ in Copley Square. I remember it well, because I designed the T-Shirts for the event. (the front of the shirt had those words in white type on a blue shirt, the back had the date and ‘I was there’). The picture brought a lot of nostalgia for me for the recent past. This was perhaps near the height of Dean’s popularity. He had enormous crowds in New York, Seattle and Philadelphia. His picture appeared on the covers of both Time and NewsWeek. As you can see by the picture, there was quite a wind. I remember that well too, because I was pretty far back in the crowd, holding up one pole of an enormous sign (forgot what it said, but it was probably something like the ‘Beantown is Deantown’ sign at the podium). The wind threatened to pull us down, so there were some moments of excitement not entirely due to the speaker. In just a short time, Dean would lose the Iowa Caucuses and then crash to earth as a result of his famous ’scream’ (which was really just a pep talk with the directional mike for the Public Address system fed directly into the news coverage source input).

Dean is now chairman of the Democratic Party, but already the press is trying to portray him as a hothead, and that other Democrats are ‘distancing themselves from him’ because he dared utter the words “I think Tom Delay ought to go back to Houston, where he can serve his jail sentence” at the Mass State Convention a month or so ago. I admire the fact that Dean still has the guts to stand up to the Republicans, but as you can see, he can’t win against a media and government dominated by the forces that continue to marginalize him. He would have made a hell of a great President (not just a good one), and now he’s just painted as a snarling crackpot who the rest of the party claims does not represent them.

Back to Reality
The tag sale is over. We sold most of what we needed to, and it was better than leaving it on the curb (although not much). The remaining large items, with the exception of our bed, are already spoken for. I think I might just leave a message on Craig’s list detailing where the bed will be on the morning that we leave, and hope that some sharp-eyed netizen will pick it up. With the exception of the bag and the frame, it’s like new, so hopefully it will be a nice find. My parents graciously bought the piano — it’s being shipped to my brother in Seattle, where he will be able to play it - as I will when I visit him.
More Immigration Tips
Another in my series of tips to those who want to emigrate to Canada:
Get your driving record, which you can order directly from your local Department of Motor Vehicles. Do not use drivingrecord.com, who utterly botched my order and actually cancelled it. Good thing they did, as I was nearly stuck paying twice as much by relying on their little (if any) added value.
Why do you need your driving record? Two reasons:

1. If you want to get a Canadian driver’s license and want to avoid having to first get a learner’s permit and then having to take a driving test (and pay the fees for these), the driving record comes in handy.
2. If your driving record is good, it can help get you a discount on your auto insurance. Apparently this can add up to $50 a month in savings, according to one report I saw.

The Incredible Lightness of Moving

Pam is really excited about the idea of casting off all these old and inherited posessions. She sees them as encumbrances: We never use that second pitcher. We’ve used that Fondue pot 3 times in 15 years. I never liked those candlesticks or that set of cups. (Some of that was from me, too) Away they go, tossed aside like so much extra clothing by a person entering a nudist colony. Pam claims that she won’t miss any of them, and I’m hoping that she doesn’t change her mind. I’m certainly not someone who hangs on to every item I’ve ever come to own, but I have to admit that it will be some time before I can be as ruthless regarding the shedding of memorabilia as she can be.

As we sell off these possessions (often at just a hair above giving them away), our poundage on the van moving across country goes down and down. Soon it will be just the living room furniture, some books, computer equipment, and some small appliances. This is good because as I’ve mentioned before, movers charge by the pound.

We lost some major poundage today, but not by selling it. It became clear that the bed can’t go. Well, it could, but it would be highly impractical. Here’s what happened:

We have a water bed. Not one of those groovy velvet bags that sloshed their way through the Ford and Carter eras, but a waveless variety that had a ’shell’ that fit over a wood frame sitting on a platform and a plastic bag within the frame filled with many gallons of water. We got it 15 years or so ago from ‘Big John’s Beds’ in Cambridge shortly after moving into our present home. The ‘bag’ for the water is the original that came with the bed (never replaced, as often is the case) and is well beyond its projected life expectancy.

The bag was a pain to fill and even more of a pain to drain. In fact, when you drained it, the polyester (or some other polymer) fibers that negated the wave motion inevitably would get tangled up and we’d have to bring it into Big John’s shop to have someone unknot the gnarled ball they had become. So we thought: great, we’re due to get a new bag, and we’ll just get a brand new one, drain the old one on the morning we leave, and leave it on the curb, for the garbage men to pick up, and take a new bag, with 15 years of life now to go.

Wouldn’t you know, our bed’s manufacturer realized what a pain it was to move the bed (with the aforementioned knotting of it’s innards), and if it sprung a leak, the whole bag had to be replaced, etc. . So they stopped making them years ago and started making the bed out of a series of separately fillable tubes. OK, we thought, why not just replace the big old bag with the new tubes. No dice, Big John (or rather his helpful salesperson) said. The frame and shell for the new tube-style beds are completely different. We’d essentially have to buy a brand new bed. So we could buy the bed here, and pay for the shipping/moving of it, but it hardly makes sense. So, we are going to leave the bed here and buy a new one in Canada. We can’t even legally sell the old bed in Massachusetts because of health regulations. So our load just lighted considerably. No mattress, no bed, no bed frame. We’ll buy that when we get there. In fact, it does make some sense, because we’ll probably arrive and start setting up house at least a week and a half before our furniture reaches the Canadian border from Washington State. Every day that we can stay in the apartment and not in a hotel is money saved. So a new bed pays for itself in a fairly short amount of time.

Still, I loved that bed. Hope we can find one that is at least as nice.