what are we losing?

A few weeks ago I visited Newport, Rhode Island, where I enjoy visiting the mansions periodically. There were a few more houses I had not yet visited, so I spent the day touring three of them. One of the houses, somewhat more modest in size and decor than, say, The Breakers, neighbors a strip mall.

Our tour guide explained that the original house next to it was demolished to make the parking lot for that strip mall, and that the city had intended to demolish the still-standing home to build a CVS. Their reasoning? The CVS would be paying higher taxes than the historic home. But really, who travels to Newport to visit the CVS? Clearly, the city came to and got their priorities straight by choosing a different location for that store, but it is saddening to think that a structure with such significant historic importance could be so easily cast aside in favor of a redundant national business.

But it is not only CVS, and it is not only Newport. Residents in Turkey felt similar sentiments when their city attempted to turn their beloved community park into a shopping mall.

photo by Eda Gunay

And in Lhasa, Tibet: another shopping mall is currently being built over the oldest and most well-known part of the city, the Barkhor Market.

 

photo by Tsering Woeser

We humans are already so destructive. We don’t need more. We have everything we need. My wish is that we learn to favor new experiences and self-improvement in the form of education and physical well-being over material goods.

night sky

 

Star of the Hero, Nicholas Roerich

I may just have the best view out my bedroom window that I have ever had, or at least the most serene. Each day I can look out onto the pond and watch beautiful white swans resting on the still water, as a pair was tonight, with a golden sliver of the moon and Venus by its side in the sky above. There is little development on this end of the pond and being at the end of a long sandy road, it is completely void of traffic noise, except for a boat or two going by during the day. Tonight the air is very still and I hear only some evening insects. The night time sky fascinates me. In fact, it is the subject of my favorite painting, Night Flight of Dread and Delight, by Ethiopian artist Skunder Boghossian:

One of the most beautiful things I ever saw consists of a night I experienced in Tibet last year:

    I was walking up the hill after dark toward the house in which I was staying and I could see the full moon rising through the valley between two mountains. There were clouds, none covering the brightness, but simply intensifying the illumination throughout the sky. I came around the corner from my favorite restaurant and saw the moon reflecting off one side of the white stupa, lighting everything between it and moon. I had never seen a brighter night sky. The air was so calm and the stars so close, I felt as if I were in a dream. 
 

                                                             (That was the moment I realized why they call it the roof of the world!)

big boat, small boat

It seems as though I have been going non-stop for the past month. There’s just so much to do during the summertime! After a trip to Colorado for a cousin’s wedding, another cousin joined me in flying home to Cape Cod to spend a few days at the beach. Since then the museum and gardens have been very busy with everyone enjoying their last days of summer vacation. It’s been fantastic weather, too! Once I finally had a few days off, I ventured to The City once again. I love New York!

Day one was a trip to Central Park to ride in the row boats. Kayaks, canoes, and small sailboats I am familiar with, but these row boats with their attached oars I am not! They were slow and bulky, but very fun. 

 

The following day, we transitioned to a larger boat bound for Liberty Island. The Statue of Liberty is finally open to visitors after Sandy came through almost a year ago. However, Ellis Island is still closed unfortunately. I wasn’t sure what I expected of this famous statue, but it seemed different than what I had imagined. We boarded the ferry early in order to skip the crowds, and even though our boat was packed, Liberty Island was not—until later in the day anyway.

The water was choppy that morning, and for me, seasickness seems to take hold more easily than being on any other type of transport, so I was more than ready for it to be moving once everyone was on.

Tickets to walk to the crown sell out months in advance, but we were able to make it as far as the memorial inside the base of the statue. Like with anything, being there is so much different than seeing it in a photo. I loved having the chance to walk all the way around and see the statue up close, and the mainland in the distance.

coast to mountains

The day I leave the East Coast is the day it finally cools off to where I need more than a single sheet on me at night. It was down to about 60 which caused a moment of pause this morning as I left the house thinking I might not have packed enough layers for the mountains of Colorado. We'll see. I'm currently sitting in the Boston airport, having woken up at 3 am to take the bus from 1.5 hours south. The bus was freezing, the airport is freezing, so I am now wearing half the contents of my suitcase.

The past few days I spent on foot, for once, in the territory that is usually reserved for my cycling. My New Yorker friend JJ and I had planned to ride bikes down to swim at the beach, but it was a bit stormy, and so we did a walking tour instead of all the pretty churches, gardens and houses in Falmouth that I often pass by while on my bike. It was great to see them up close.

The plane just pulled in to the gate and unloaded, so it won't be too long. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pop a Dramamine and proceed to my torpor state for the duration of the flight.

the traffic nightmare

The traffic is really a problem around here, and people on Cape Cod say it's been even worse this year. On the 4th of July holiday it was backed up 13 miles down the highway. Just this year, they started a train running from Boston to the Cape for weekends, and it's very reasonably priced. I hope it catches on because at this point it seems people are spending as much time in their cars getting to their vacation homes as they are actually on vacation. Some of my co-workers who live off-Cape spend nearly 2 hours one way to get to or from work-- a drive that takes 20 minutes in the off-season.

I drove into a suburb of Boston today, hoping to take the commuter rail into downtown before my meeting in the evening. Well, of course due to traffic, that didn't happen. I arrived at the station just in time to see the train going by. Since it only comes through every two hours, I wouldn't be able to go into Boston and so stayed on the outskirts until my meeting. 

After two hours sitting in Barnes & Noble, I finished my current book, The Orphan Master's Son. I'll be happy to move on to a more upbeat book, even though I found a fictional story on North Korea to be fascinating. It seemed like the author really did a lot of research, especially while visiting the country.

The highlight of my day was finding a Brazilian restaurant that served feijoada. I didn't even realize that was what was spooned onto my plate until I tasted it. There was sort of a buffet, with a server, who determined the price based on "proportion" rather than weight. It was delicious, and tasted just like my mom's version, so hers must be pretty authentic. It was like comfort food to me, even though it must be strange that someone with no Portuguese or Brazilian background would feel that way, but it truly does remind me of my childhood. When I told my sister about it later this afternoon, she and I both commented that even though my mother has shared this recipe with us, it never quite turns out the same way when my sister or I make it!

the past week

I'm getting accustomed to a new house, and with that, I'm having to adjust to the internet being less available. That's alright. It's leaving me plenty of time to read real books, study up on my languages, and enjoy the outdoors. I'll have to get back into typing out blog posts offline, then pasting them like I did last summer. For now though, some photos.

The trio of young geese are still hovering around the museum grounds. They follow anyone, which mostly ends up more along the lines of chasing everyone. We have tried herding, but you physically have to shove them along to steer them back to the pond-- most stubborn! These are not my mother's ducks.

 I was playing Mama Goose here, as you can tell.

 walking after work one day, when it was still foggy from rain

 I love coming home to these five sheep. They always greet you with 

a loud bahhh! The lightest brown one is the friendliest and always comes up looking for something to eat, or a rub on its patch of forehead wool.

 And of course, Woods Hole, my favorite!

Wordless Wednesday

 US Coast Guard Station, Woods Hole, Mass.