Post-Hoc Blog

As I've travelled around America, I've also managed to catch up slightly on the Internet Revolution and have embraced blogging. Prior to that, I was still in email mode - so for my own satisfaction I'm aggregated previous emails so that I have a comprehensive account of my explorations.

From 2nd September: Beginning at the Beginning

Writing to you from a pasture in Mohawk country now known as Massachusetts. Using my new blackberry so this is painstakingly two thumb typed. A useful constraint which encourages your otherwise prolix correspondent to record only that which is worth remembering. That said if you don't have the time or inclination to read even my edited down version if reality simply email back with "yawn" in the subject field or just ignore!

We headed out of NYC the morning after we arrived, part of the exodus over the Labor Day bank holiday weekend. The group is Jean Val my friend from my Paris days, Camille a fashion economic attache for the french government, Arnuad a Master blacksmith who hand crafts beautiful wrought iron gates for the world's wealthiest, and Karine a french girl at large in the big apple working in marketing. Our destination was Stockbridge one of the clapboard towns which record the increasing wealth of the settlers in this part of early America who could risking branching out from eking a life from the thick deciduous woodlands, the rivers, swamps and mountains of the region and to incorporate as a town. My sense of heading into unknown territory, being uprooted was compounded by the road signs. Norfolk, Canaan or Sheffield proffered one. Doubtless the souvenirs of earlier visitors who sought their comforts in memories of the past or hopes for the life to come.

The towns we pass though are loosely assembled. Generous white painted, porched houses set in well tended and equally generous plots. Even the historic centres of towns look to me like the relaxing edges of settlements. None of the huddling together of an english village. No evidence of a people who felt bounded or needing to be sparing in their division of the spoils. Could I detect therein one of the founding principles of a nation? A nation that has still perhaps not felt the need to limit itself.

We are staying in the charming Red Lion Inn. All antiques, white paneling, chintz, hanging portraits, fresh linen and excellent plumbing that could not be assumed in an equally quaint inn in the uk. Lunch in the courtyard then a hike up the nearby ridge to survey the 'Last of the Mahicans' county. We walked up through warm humid woodlands ideal conditions for a beautiful array of fungi. The best I have ever seen this side of a stall in borough market. Strawberry red toadstools out of Grimm fairy tales, velvet brown little caps, miniature yellow one, lone pristine white mushroom incongruous amidst the muddy brown humus, strange webbed green fungus growing in flaps like ivy on logs. Enough to make me a mycologist.

Back then to stockbridge for a wander around what was once a two horse town centre (handsome but small brick town hall, small row of shops and two churches) and is now a many car town. People to drive every where: to pick up morning coffee, to go the the shops, to go to the start of the hike which is maybe 1km out of town. A function I think of the shaken out nature of the urban form, even in historic places. Of note is the war memorial to those who perished in "the great war of the rebellion" in 1860 something. This can only be the civil war and the predominantly irish and english names thereon are from a different era to the modern US where even NY subway signs are in english and spanish.

Enough I think for today. Will try and send

From 2nd September: I Vant to be A Lawn

It continues but this time on a computer for a change. A release for the fingers after the two thumb typing

Next day started with a proper breakfast of pancakes cooked on the griddle in front of me in the town cafe. I had a lucky escape from an "everything" bagel which is indeed what it says on tin a bagel with sesame, poppy seed and onion flakes. Not so good with "jelly which is what I would have had.

We headed out on a bit of a road trip starting at North Adams where we went to Mass MOCA which might sound like a Brazilian dance but is the Mass (not going to spell all that again) Museum of contemporary art. The exhibition is called Badlands and one of the exhibitors is a friend of Camille. The link is here:http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=369

It was an amazing exhibition about Man's impact on the landscape and was a stimulus for us to consider whether we really understand the extent to which we have altered the land. A series of photos of visible aspects of extensive and often hidden utility, military and infrastructure installations around the State, many of them buried deep underground showed us how a place can have many hidden meanings or functions- I suppose the reservoir up near British Camp is a prosaic equivalent near Malvern. The exhibition wasn't overtly 'environmental' or activist but its effect was sobering.

Then onto Williamstown - a college town. Same clapboard houses in their grounds and seas and seas of lawns. This is the land of the hidden drive-on lawnmower. I haven't seen any yet but they must exist, coming out only at night to tend to their perfect acres of grass. I thought that the Brits were the lawn experts. I was wrong! Maybe it's all orchestrated by the same bodies that respond to the "adopt a highway" scheme. I don't know if this is federal or at a state initiative but at regular intervals, there are signs stating that a particular organsiation has adopted this bit of highway: the masonic lodge was one, lots of local businesses and then a neighbourhood. Not sure what this entails. A ritual baptising with petrol drips, regular strum-alongs in praise of this bit of the open road, a group drive thru' annually. What could more symbolise the importance of driving to the American way of life than that you take a piece of road into your life!

After lunch we went over to Tanglewood to the closing concert for the Jazz Festival. Tanglewood is set amidst classic Berkshire countryside so woods and expansive rolling hills. The festival is famous I think - at least I believe that I had heard of it. What must have started as open air concerts has now morphed into an amazing hanger like hall with an opening front (like a fire station but about 3 time as high). There are seats inside but the cooler thing to do is to picnic on the sloping lawn situated in front of the doors. We were poor amateurs who turned up with nothing other than ourselves to see groups settling down in plus chairs, with picnics so large that they had to be brought in pull along cool boxes. The etiquette is to bring flowers in vases and citronella candles to ward off the swarms of mosquitoes so dining takes place in a very elegant atmosphere. The concert was interesting and a thought provoking piece - a requiem for Katrina. The link is here http://www.bso.org/bso/mods/toc_01_gen_images.jsp?id=bcat5240121

The trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard is a native of New Orleans and spoke angrily and movingly about the way the city was left to rot for days with bodies floating in the water and people stranded. At that moment he said, he felt as if he and his fellow citizens had had their US citizenship ignored or stripped from them. And lots of requests for us to pray for all the people on the move again being evacuated from their homes in the face of Gustav as we sat peacefully and comfortably on a beautiful summer's evening listening to music.

Amazing playing by the trumpeter but the orchestration fairly boring. Lots of long drawn out backing harmonies by the Boston Symphony Orchestra who can do a lot more. Glad to be there but proms better.

Have been writing this in NYC waiting for the washing to finish in the laundrette downstairs. Flats even expensive ones tend not to have washing machines in them as the plumbing and water pressure aren't up to sending water up all the stories. I think that my cunning plan of reduced packing may have a sting in the tail as I have discovered that I have 4 days clothes max so I may be spending some time waiting around for them to become clean. Still it creates good writing moments. Should go, I think washing will be ready now and I need to discover Harlem.

From 3rd September: Long Island Sound and Harlem

Camille's kind and welcoming family live in New Rochelle. It's on the way back to NY and so it was suggested we visit and hang out. Fully embracing the desire to let adventure (or the beat-up Subaru in which we're travelling) take me where it will, I was up for that.

It was a blissful day. Long Island Sound is a tidal body of water protected by or more probably created from the Atlantic by Long Island which acts as a land barrier to the ocean. I didn't get the measure of it but it must be a least a mile out to Long Island proper. The banks are variously covered with woods, some large family homes still in clapboard, jetties and marinas. The shipbuilding and industrial yards are going or gone and new condos are being built. Within the sound are small islands, mainly the preserve of birds but also hikers who cross using small bridges.

Our hang out was the Sutton Manor boat house a wooden building with a shady terrace, a boat room for canoes, surf boards, and wind sails still draped with festive lanterns from July 4th celebrations and a pier for bathing. Outside men enjoying battered clothes, weekend stubble and manly things tinker with out-board motors and perhaps forget the day job in NYC - 30 min away but eminently forgettable on such glorious days. Kids jump off the pier shrieking and laughing, peletons of geese glide around in most organised formations. It is a very expensively secured simple life and I felt privileged to share it for a day. The day passed with a languid dip, enough reading in the sun to dry off, a beer and then another dip and so the cycle could begin again. I did rouse myself for a turn in the canoe around the blue, blue and tranquil lagoon skirting buoys and small boats as the sun started to set in a warm rosy glow.

Back to NYC in the evening. Strange to have a homecoming feeling for somewhere which is far from home.

The objective of the next day was to discover Harlem which is where Jean Val lives. The Harlem renaissance or I suppose you could say gentrification has being going on for some ten years at least so the urban chaos of crime, drugs and crumbling buildings has been receding. Interesting that in our western world at least, the urban dystopias of science fiction and super hero novels don't quite become embedded. Something pulls them back from the brink as the economic cycle elsewhere pulsates out waves of economic growth and governments are spurred or shamed into action.

So I set out on what was a very hot day, a beads of sweat down the back of the knees, scuttling over to the shady side of the street, longing for a shower, visiting shops just for a burst of air con kind of a day.

First stop was up through Morningside Park to Columbia Uni campus. It is set around a huge square with two monumental libraries acting as the book ends. Built around the turn of c20th I guess, the style is distinctly classical with the names of the greats of western canon carved in the building if one. The young turks of American literary life - Poe, Melville, Hawthorne and Twain merited much smaller letters in a less prominent place. I am not sure whether the lionising of Western heritage as the crucible of American heritage still persists or whether America now looks within to define the roots of the nation. What do you think? I shall ask my American friends and report back.

Then on through a further Park - Riverside Park to inspect the Hudson River. This part of New York is wonderfully endowed with parks and with layouts which optimise shadiness, they feel like wonderful and farsighted gifts to the city. It is as if as the city expanded and the initial colonial frenzy subsided that city fathers felt inclined to be more generous with space. However the parks are not maintained just by government largesse. There are sections all over the parks I've seen which are identified as volunteer maintained areas. I think I've been a little glibly acerbic about some aspects of US life in my emails and on the basis of relatively little info (but when has this ever stopped me?) But credit also where it is due. The US notion of direct civic involvement noted by De Tocqueville back in the c19th is still going strong even in a global capital based city and I think it's laudable.

At one end of the park is the Grant Tomb - am ashamed to say that I didn't know that he was one of the most successful generals of the Civil War. For the benefit of other ignoramouses, he accepted the surrender of the Confederacy from General Lee and enforced a magnanimous peace then went on to be president. Readers, this is a deficiency which is being remedied. I have bought the idiots guide to the Civil War and am now making my through strike and counter strike and a bewildering array of generals. As the book points out at the outbreak of war, no Americans had experience of commanding large armies and over 2 million men eventually were under arms so the job interview was basically leading a battle. If you survived you got the job.

Grant's Tomb is a sparkling marble temple with a dome, columns, a flight of steps to the sombre interior and an avenue of trees as the approach. Just what the departed Grecian hero would have ordered.

On then into Harlem proper where I visited several neighbourhoods that were built by speculators towards the end of the c19th to tempt the wealthy middle class away from the unsanitary conditions of Downtown. The gamble never paid off and so the decline began but that legacy left some good built stock which is now supporting the regeneration. There are handsome rows of brownstones with sweeping front steps taking you immediately up to the first floor elsewhere in Hamilton heights are intricately embellished facades reminiscent of art nouveau Brussels. The gentrification is business in progress. Many of the houses are buffed up but others are still dilapidated or in the process of redevelopment. There are sudden gaps in rows where houses were probably pulled down when the structures became too dangerous in the 60s. Some of these areas have become community gardens and I hope they endure the new property boom. Then you'll come across numerous residential halls most likely subsidised housing, some affixed with NYPD's "Clean Halls" logo and severe barred windows. Regular signs command No loitering, No sitting. All speak of a less glittering, upbeat side of Harlem.

Amidst the "row houses" as they are called, are remnants of the time before the speculators when the area housed the country residences of the New York elite. They have been preserved as monuments but in typically American way, only so far as it suits them. Hamilton Grange which was the 18th century home to one statesman appears currently to be being relocated and rebuilt in a "new home" as an information panel cheerily stated. Never mind the authenticity, just look at how old it is!

With a respectable amount of adventure accomplished I headed downtown in the wonderfully air conditioned subway for a bit a retail therapy in the trendy shops around Greenwich Village. I met Jean Val for an excellent dinner in Cafe Pitti a superb Italian where JV who is a regular hailed the owner and secured us a table ahead of the queue. Or maybe it was the power of my new top which I wore out of the shop deciding that I was otherwise too bedraggled for the cool NY nightlife.

We headed home stopping off for ices in a pocket park where beside an illuminated fountain, couples danced tango slowly, precisely and skillfully. Thumb ache coincides with the end of another day to report. More to follow when inspiration strikes.

Love to all

E x