Some Time Apart

When my parents headed for home last week they took Maura with them. It has become a tradition in our family for my parents to take Maura for a week or so during the summer. They’ve taken her on vacation to Maine in the past but most often they take her home to Indiana. They have her there until next weekend.

Maura always has a great time in Indiana. My parents take her lots of places when she is visiting. On this trip they’ve been to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, the Indiana History Museum and my parents’ lake house where they went out in their boat. Today they are going to the zoo. They also take her out to eat. Last night they went out for Brazilian food, which Maura loves.

More important than the places Maura goes is the time that she spends with her grandparents and with her Aunt Marcia. She sees my parents three or four times a year and my sister less often than that. Maura’s summer trips to Indiana give her a chance to get to know them she wouldn’t have otherwise. She’ll have memories of her grandparents and her aunt when she is an adult which will be part of who she is.

As important and enjoyable as Maura’s trips to visit her grandparents are for her they are also a treat for Jennifer and me. We know that she is being well taken care of so we can relax and not worry about her while she is gone. Our daily lives of work and chores go on but without the complications of parenthood. Dad’s taxi stays in the driveway. Jennifer and I can have adult conversations without interruption and we don’t have to worry about Maura walking in on us at inopportune moments. It is especially nice because our wedding anniversary is this week. We can celebrate without the need to make arrangements for Maura.

We miss Maura and will be glad to have her back. Talking to her on the phone every night is not a substitute for having her around. I feel bad for people whose jobs require them to be away from their children for long periods of time but because Maura is gone only for a little while we can enjoy her absence without any guilt.

Hammond Castle and Gloucester Harbor Fest

On Sunday we drove to Gloucester, Massachusetts, on the coast north of Boston. The trip was part of Maura’s birthday celebration and we were accompanied by my parents who were visiting partly to celebrate their granddaughter’s birthday. Maura had wanted to see Hammond Castle ever since she saw it featured in an episode of Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman several years ago.

Hammond Castle was built by John Hays Hammond, Jr. as both as a home for himself and his wife and as a display for his extensive collection of Roman, Medieval and Renaissance art. Hammond and his wife Irene Fenton Hammond moved into the building when it was finished in 1929 and lived there until their deaths (Hammond died in 1965). They first opened their home as a museum in 1930. Hammond was a noted inventor who held the second largest number of patents granted by the US patent office, behind only Thomas Edison.

Hammond Castle is worth a visit. Both the people whose home it was and the artifacts it contains have fascinating stories. It was fun to wander around the museum and its grounds for an hour or so. It’s particularly interesting thinking what it would have been like to see the inventor’s home in his lifetime when it was a combination of the very old and the ultramodern.

After our visit to Hammond Castle we headed up the road to Stage Fort Park in Gloucester for the Gloucester Harbor Festival. The Festival featured a classic car show, inflatable amusements for the kids, food, live music and a large art/artisan fair with vendors selling mostly handmade goods ranging from T-shirts to furniture and paintings. I’m not much for shopping but Jennifer, Maura and my mother enjoyed themselves. Maura particularly enjoyed looking at all the vendors who had earrings because she had just gotten her ears pierced. She won’t be able to wear any new earrings for a few months but she is interested in getting some so she will have a choice of what to wear when she can take her studs out.

After the fair we were tired. We had considered staying in Gloucester until the evening but we decided to head back to Weymouth in mid-afternoon for a rest. Before we left Maura and I took the opportunity to check out Stage Fort itself. The existing fort is a 20th Century reconstructed earthwork with a few old cannons but the first fortifications were built on the site in 1625 and the spot was used for some military purpose in every war from then until the Spanish American War in 1898. It’s easy to see why the fort was built where it was. It has a spectacular view of Gloucester Harbor and no one could sail past it undetected. There is much more to see in Gloucester and nearby towns so we may head back that way on a future trip.

The Museum of Work and Culture

Last Friday Maura and I drove to Rhode Island to check on a friend’s cat while he was away. Hobbes the cat was doing fine but wasn't in the mood for company, especially that of strangers in his home. Once we were sure he had ample food and water to hold him until his owner came back we headed out again. It was a long trip for us to take to spend an hour with a cat so I had planned a stop on the way home.

On previous trips through Rhode Island I had noticed a sign for the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket. I thought Maura might enjoy the visit and learn something while she was there. I got off at the Woonsocket exit from Interstate 295 and headed into town. On the way in we stopped for lunch at the Patriot Diner which looks like a classic place and has a menu to match. It’s the kind of place I like to eat in when I’m on the road. It’s quick and fairly reasonable and much better than fast food. Maura enjoyed her lunch of stuffed French toast. My cheeseburger wasn’t bad either.

Once we finished lunch we drove into downtown Woonsocket to find the museum. I promptly got lost and drove around in a strange town for a while before we found the museum. There were signs pointing the way but they were easy to miss in traffic. I should have printed out directions before I left home but that would have made things too easy.

Once we found the museum it was worth the trouble of getting there. The Museum of Work and Culture tells the story of the French Canadian immigrants who worked in the textile mills of Woonsocket. There are exhibits on their reasons for coming, the difficult conditions they faced in mills and in crowded tenements, on the labor movement that eventually helped to improve the poor conditions, and on the communities that the immigrants built centered on churches and schools. The exhibits had strong audiovisual elements and some interactivity. Maura enjoyed the visit as I expected she would. She enjoys history when it touches on the lives of ordinary people.

We left the museum after an hour or so. We had to be in Quincy, Massachusetts by 5:00 to pick up our weekly box of CSA vegetables from the Stillmans’ Farm stand at the Farmers’ Market and Jennifer from the T-station. It was a long day by the time we got home but an enjoyable one.

Harvard Museum of Natural History

Last weekend was the first weekend of the month and therefore Free Museum Weekend for those of us Bank of America credit cards. The Harvard Museum of Natural History is one of the Boston area museums that participates in the program which means that we only have to pay for Maura as both Jennifer and I have cards from BoA. Free Museum Weekend is probably my favorite credit card perk. Because we had not visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History recently and we were in the mood for a family outing we hopped on the Red Line Sunday afternoon and traveled to Harvard Square for a stroll across the Harvard University campus and a visit to the museum.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is a traditional museum with exhibits in glass cases. It has extensive collections illustrating vertebrate anatomy, botany and mineralogy as well as some mollusks and arthropods and an interesting collection of fossils. The collections were intended for research and for educating students but they are also a draw for the general public. The stuffed and mounted animals are probably the most popular exhibits but I find them a bit sad. Maura is sometimes bothered by the fumes from the preservatives that keep them in good shape.

My favorite collections in the museum are the glass flowers and the mineral collection. The glass flowers are reproductions of living plants in imperishable glass. They are both accurate and beautiful. I’m not much of an expert at botany so I find I learn more from the glass plants than I do from other exhibits but I also marvel at them. I’m not sure Maura has much interest in botany but she doesn’t mind looking at the flowers because they are works of art.

The minerals are also beautiful and fascinating. I’ve always had an interest in geology since I was a small child and it was one of my majors in college. I could probably stare at the mineral samples in the cases for hours, partly filling in gaps in my knowledge of minerals and partly reminiscing over college days. Maura likes minerals and I think she would love to collect them herself though she gets bored of them before I do and wanders to the edges of the room where multimedia presentations cover other aspects of Earth science. 

Connected to the Museum of Natural History is the Peabody Museum which houses Harvard’s ethnographic collections and archaeological collections from Mesoamerica and the United States. I find them interesting but I never get to spend as much time exploring them as I would like. We never get to the Peabody early in our visit and Maura doesn't enjoy them as much as I do. On this trip Jennifer and Maura left me to explore the Peabody Museum on my own for an hour or so while they went back to the Museum of Natural History. It was a good compromise. Maura was saved from boredom and I got to see some things I enjoyed that I would have missed otherwise.

Going to the Movies

Last night our family went to see a movie, a rare treat these days. We went to see Brave at the Patriot Cinemas in Hanover, Massachusetts. Maura had wanted to see it all summer and Jennifer and I had no objections. We generally enjoy animated features, particularly the films made by Pixar.

We were not disappointed by Brave. I was happy to see an animated movie about a young woman that did not revolve around her relationship with a man. Visually the movie was stunning. I was particularly impressed by the animation sequences in some of the important scenes that slipped effortlessly between a cartoony style and a more realistic one. I noticed the transitions not because they called attention to themselves but because they were so artfully done.

I also enjoyed the movie because it fit so clearly into the fantasy genre that I love. While the setting was based on Scotland it was in no way a historical one and the plot featured plenty of magic and swashbuckling action. It was fast paced but the movie still took enough time to develop the characters beyond mere sketches and to allow them to change emotionally in significant ways.

Maura enjoyed the movie at least as much as I did. She has inherited her parents’ taste for the fantastic. When the action hero is in fact a young heroine it is all the more exciting for her.

We may find the time and money to see a few more movies at the Hanover Patriot Cinema. We will probably be back on a Tuesday night. Tuesday is a bargain with $5 tickets all day. With snacks thrown in we managed the evening for around $30 and if we skipped the overpriced treats we could managed the evening for $15. On our tight budget we couldn’t manage that every week but it is reasonable enough that we can afford to go occasionally, especially if we plan for it.