Page 3 of 4
Boston, Massachusetts
If I had a boat I'd go out on the ocean, and if I had a pony I'd ride him on my boat
Even if you can't stand Boston, can't stand architecture, can't stand baseball or can't stand the Red Sox, you still have to think that the green monster seating at Fenway Park is pretty damn fun. The seats hang right over the field, come with a convenient little ledge for your snacks and alcoholic beverages but unfortunately are priced in such a way that they are not accessible to average fans (for reference, weekend games are going for over $700 a seat on stubhub right now).
A better view of the green monster and its wicked green monster seating. I toured the stadium as part of a special AIA event called "Breakfast in the Ballpark" which included a rather disgusting breakfast of some sort of sausage thing on something which was a purported bagel but may have instead been some type of new composite cardboard product that still somehow vaguely tasted like sausage. The tour was self guiding and included free range access to most areas of the stadium, from club seats and boxes to the very pleasant outfield seats. In between AIA sponsors (ok, just those lumber people) tried to get you to specify their product by somehow forgetting how their big, ugly banner was wrecking all of your otherwise wicked green monster pictures.
Designed by I.M. Pei, the Christian Science Center features a reflecting pool (that according to one of my professors in architecture school) is so long that in order to keep the water level the design team needed to factor in the curvature of the earth into the calculations. I have yet to find trustworthy corroboration for such an otherwise fantastic story, and ever since my third grade teacher Mrs Duffy told me with a straight face that with the exception of Bermuda and the big island of Hawaii all other islands actually floated (yes, FLOATED) I have had a bit of a mistrust for such seemingly fantastic uncorroborated stories.
As part of my all day AIA bus tour up to New Hampshire to see the Exeter Library (see page 2) a side trip was included to Manchester, New Hampshire to see the Currier Museum and Frank Lloyd Wright's Zimmerman House. The house (now owned by the Currier) was completed toward the end of his career (in 1950) and almost reads like a best of Wright, with an odd (though well done) mash up of both his Usonian and Prairie Styles. The rather small house is considered one of the best preserved of all of the surviving Wright houses and the Currier Museum certainly plans to keep it that way- visitors are forced to wear booties, restrain from interior photography and touch nothing- not even the exterior unglazed brick.
As for the Currier Museum itself, it was interesting although certainly not as spectacular as the Exeter Library or as interesting as the Zimmerman House, although I guess such comparisons are a losing proposition to begin with.
While I have visited Acadia National Park many, many times in my life, this past trip was the first time I had ever visited the generally unpopular Isle au Haut section, located on an isolated island five miles at sea off Stonington, Maine. About half the island is private (mostly depressed lobstermen) but the other half is part of the National Park and crisscrossed by poorly maintained trails. There is a certain wonder about the place- it is so quiet and so isolated (I only saw two groups of people on the trails during my all day visit) but there is also none of the magic that you get at the other far more popular sections of the park.
To visit Isle au Haut, you first need to arrange passage on one of the twice daily mail boats that depart Stonington for the 45 minute trip and you also need to prepare to do a lot of walking. The main section of the park is about a five mile walk (each way) from the "town" pier and visitor services are, well, non existent (the only store in town is only open two hours a day every other day and was closed throughout my one day visit). Even the National Park Ranger didn't bother to show up at the Ranger Station, although in his or her defense I was the only person that day hiking on the island so I guess it probably was a good day to take off.
The trails are fairly well marked but not maintained (lots and lots of fallen trees all over the place), the coastline is interesting but not spectacular, and the mountains are not especially high and all underneath the tree line. In my nine hours there I covered somewhere north of fifteen miles, saw everything I possibly could, got one hell of a blister on my left heel and came to the realization that despite its deafening quiet and its often splendid isolation, it is highly unlikely I'll ever feel the need to return to the island to rewalk those fifteen miles again.
