35. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Week 35  3/25/16



It's been cold so rather than hiking in the woods we decided to visit a Boston museum. On the way to the Woodland T station, we stopped at the Holliston Public Library to borrow their day pass to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Paul says the library has changed a lot since he went there as a kid. My grandmother worked there when she lived in Holliston, which must have been in the 1930's.

We walked to the museum from the Fenway T stop. Once there, we couldn't get enough of the courtyard. Every time we exited a gallery we found ourselves gazing here. Paul and I first visited this museum in 1977 on one of our first dates. We both remembered the hanging nasturtiums and mentioned this to a guide. She told us we must have visited in April because this is done for Isabella Stewart Gardner's birthday each year. Even though the art and furnishings must stay where Mrs. Gardner placed them, that isn't true for the plantings in the courtyard. Museum staff changes the plantings somewhat but tries to keep the same tone. I asked about the two cacti that you can see below the central tiles. They don't seem to fit with the rest of the landscape. The guide said they were surprising to her also and that she hadn't been told why the cacti were being used.

Despite Mrs. Gardner's direction not to move things, the museum is able to put some of the masterpieces temporarily on display in the new wing while they renovate the second floor of the old museum. This gives them a chance to be seen in much better lighting than ever before. We spent quite a while appreciating all of this. Paul took photos which I will post here later.

I liked the furnishings of the museum a lot. We both did. The columns and windows are kind of mix and match, and we could see where they had been ingeniously made to fit. The door below caught my eye because the wear can be seen, and there are metal fixtures that look like they serve a purpose as latches or something, but it wasn't clear. And I love the knocker.

34. A Sound Journey

Week 34  3/14/16

Early spring is a wonderful time to be outdoors. There is something new every day and the blossoming weather is unfolding ahead. This day we saw many new buds and tiny leaves and were a able to see through the trees to hills and bodies of water beyond.

We started at Hopkinton State Park in an area where we hadn't visited before. This is the west side of Route 85. The first trail follows a spit of water attached to the Hopkinton Reservoir. It apparently doesn't have any other name. We found lots of this cat briar - sharp thorns - in one section. We'd never seen such a large area like this.

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Most noticeable was the sound of peepers and wood frogs. It was overwhelming. The video is mine. For more info, here is a web link to wood frogs. And here is one of spring peepers .

We had some more time and wanted to explore another area. Here is Paul at Waseeka Wildlife Sanctuary in Holliston. We have been here many times. We didn't find any waterfoul on this day but there is an osprey nest in a tree below.

33. Sudbury Path

Week 38  3/8/16

This was a very warm day, so we set out on a hike. I picked up Paul at work (Wellesley College) where we ate a picnic lunch at one of our favorite spots on the boardwalk in the wetlands near Lake Waban. We remembered watching reunion fireworks from this bench with Ben and Julia years ago.

We planned to follow one of the trails on the Wellesley Trails Grand Tour.  Maps and descriptions can be found at this link. The trails we followed were very clean and well-marked. The only exception to the latter was an marker just off the Babson College campus that was missing a nail, causing it to swing and make the arrow point the wrong way. We tried to fix this but didn't have the right tools.

The planned start to the Sudbury Path (4.6 miles) is a spot on the Wellesley-Needham town line, but an auto detour caused us to change our plans and park one of our cars at Longfellow Pond. So we began with the Charles River Path, which added less than half a mile to the total. The terrain was varied and interesting.

The Sudbury Path Trail took us along the Sudbury Aqueduct. Many times we were on a raised area as in this picture. There were also some pretty pump houses. We passed through the Town Forest.

At the Wellesley Country Club we followed the street for a short while. We had never seen this marker for the old Town Hall. The building was razed to make way for a clubhouse, so the town erected an obelisk commemorating the founding of the town and other historic events.

After crossing Forest Street and the Babson campus, we followed through more woodlands. When we reached Waban Arches we knew we were near our final destination and the parked location of our second car, Cheever House. 

Here is ton end of Waban Arches.

And the view toward the south from the middle of Waban Arches.

32. High Tide and Fun Times

Week 32  3/5/16

The Riverside Fishing and Poker Club, established sometime in the 80's I think (someone please send me this info) takes an annual weekend sojourn to The Gatsby House in Chatham. We think this might be the 12th year of the trip.

On the way to Chatham, this year, Paul and I decided to stop at the Lowell Holly Reservation in Mashpee. With a light snow, the walk was beautiful. American Holly trees, as seen in this picture, were especially pretty this day. We reached one of the two lakes and began walking around, but the wind was strong and we got cold.

The Gatsby House is large and can accommodate our group, which has been as large as 19 people. We have had a mix of weather, from very warm to snowstorms. The beach is within walking distance and everyone walks there at some point to collect shells, take pictures and bird watch. This year there was an especially high tide and there were more shells than usual, including some large ones.

Here are some friends with Paul - Jon and Ron - taking turns looking at several species of ducks and other water birds through Ron's scope.

The Gatsby House is visible from Chatham beach. It is the left house in this picture.

My interior photos were pretty blurry because I forgot to bring my camera battery and used my iPod. But I had to include this picture of Liz's chocolate bombe. We all enjoy food and there are several excellent cooks in the group, whom we all appreciate.

31. Hall-Hoag Collection

Week 31 2/24/16

Some of you know that my mother, Grace Hoag, spent many years volunteering for Gordon Hall, a Boston-based researcher, writer and lecturer on American political extremists and dissenters. Together they amassed a huge collection of newspapers, pamphlets, posters, letters, handouts and other ephemera which Grace spent many years filing and cataloging. She also attended meetings, wrote letters, collected handouts and made many phone calls for the cause of the collection. Other volunteers helped as well. I often wonder what Gordon Hall would have made of the current presidential situation.

All my teen and young adult years, Gordon and Mom's work was very prominent. I went to the office on Boylston Street at every opportunity and sometimes was sent off to various headquarters such as the Black Panthers in Cambridge. In those days, political newspapers and handouts were everywhere, and I picked up whatever I was offered. Some of the groups turned out to be rather mainstream and some were already or became extreme, but all was interesting -- and the whole point was the collection of information for the future. I remember one time attending the New England Rally for God, Family, Country in the early 1970's which was run by the John Birch Society. Gordon asked me to dress conservatively. Several of us shared one conference registration with the first name Chris, so it could be used for Gordon's colleagues, male or female. I dropped the tag in the hotel elevator. Someone saw me drop it and called after me: "Chris, Chris." It took me several seconds to remember that this was my name that day.

When I majored in Sociology at Wellesley, I used materials from the collection for some of my own research. I hope these papers are in my attic somewhere.

The collection has found a home at Brown University's Hay Library as The Hall-Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda. On our visit, the librarians were very welcoming to Paul and me. We had called ahead for an appointment, and several boxes were pulled for us to look at. But the best part was hearing about how the collection was being processed during a three-year grant, and the enthusiasm of both the library and the patrons for the availability of these materials which might have been lost forever if Gordon and Grace had not carefully saved them.

I'm sorry this photo is so blurry, but I want to include Tim Engels, Senior Library Specialist, Jordan Jancosek, Project Archivist (Hall-Hoag), and Holly Snyder, Curator of American Historical Collections.

First we viewed some American Nazi Party stickers and other handouts from this very extreme group (as you can see here).

The next box we went through contained Black Panther papers. I think some of these might have been collected by me!

I found these rules, particularly interesting. They were printed over and over in each issue of the newspaper. 

Our visit to Brown's Hay Library was a reminder to appreciate that a vast array of resources such as these are made available to scholars, researchers and the general public for the asking, by librarians through institutions all over the world. These resources are more accessible than ever before, thanks to the Internet, but  a personal visit to see and feel materials that are historical, beautiful, valuable and inspiring is an experience that can't be matched.