Mistakenly, I began this blog thinking it would be about day-tripping with our guests from North Carolina. I envisioned putting together an adventure that would be an opportunity to explain ourselves, to put our best foot forward for our guests. Fact is, we don't get many visitors from the South. The Mason-Dixon Line stops more people than the Berlin Wall ever dreamed of stopping. Perhaps, it isn't really about the Civil War as I suspect. However, I must admit that when I go back to visit in the South people tend to bring it up a lot. People that I knew before that hated history, the Civil War included, suddenly have opinions. Especially opinions about Southerners turned "Damn Yankee" and liberal. That makes my Obama stickers pretty vulnerable.
The fact that the first sentence for the blog was so elusive should have been evidence enough that it wasn't going to be just about entertaining guests. I realize that now. This blog is about my retirement ... about who I am now. I ran across line in a poem I was reading today that says it all ... this blog is about an "inexplicable thirst that needs quenching"(The Little Book of Modern Verse). I seek the holy grail of understanding ... that feeling of closure when the jigsaw puzzle piece clicks into place ... a vision of life's Gestalt of past, present, and future and a yearning to cradle that knowledge in my hands if only for a moment. Perhaps what I seek is to know the unknowable.
The simplest is the inexpressible;
The heart of music still evades the Muse,
And arts of men the heart of man suffuse,
And saddest things are made of silence still.
(The Little Book of Modern Verse)
Another way of looking at it is that I am just full of crap. Either way, to quote a modern day sage, let's "Git 'er done".
We would journey together, an ad hoc accumulation of life experiences (bruce, anne, louis, susan, and peyton) squeezed into a borrowed SUV. Crusaders al ...venturing forth ...clicking coconuts reverberating in our ears. Proof-positive that multiple realities exit even if the Grail does not. We would step back in time. We would converse with genius and walk in their footprints. We would dine with legend and stroll arm-in-arm with history. We would walk and stand and gawk until our backs ached, our thighs burned, and our ankles spilled into our shoes. All the while, we'd be humming "Ain't we got fun". Our Quest pointed us toward the Berkshires of Massachusetts.
One of the things that we have especially enjoyed since retirement has been to visit the homes and studios of famous artists and authors. Where better than the Berkshires for such an undertaking? I decided to begin in Stockbridge. There we would find Naumkeag, the gilded age mansion of the Choate family. This architectural masterpiece is, at its heart, a family home.
Joseph Choate, a leading 19th-century attorney and prosecutor in the famous Boss Tweed trials, had the 44-room
“cottage" built. It would serve as a summer retreat for three
generations of Choates. One of the highlights of Naumkeag is the view of Monument Mountain from its stunning collection of
gardens created by Joseph Choates's daughter, Miss Mabel Choate, and
Fletcher Steele, the famed American landscape designer. For all its grandeur, it was just one more of roughly 80 mansions in the area, many far more splendid. That alone speaks loudly and clearly as to the nature of the "gilded age".
The showcase of the Naumkeag was clearly the gardens ... about eight I believe. They varied from from settings with pools and fountains surrounded by immaculate hedges to smooth curving lines of walls fitted like a glove to the topography.
One of the stories we heard at the mansion spoke to the life of the privileged during the gilded age and concerned the construction of Steele's 1938 Blue Steps, a series of deep blue fountain pools flanked by four flights of stairs climbing up a gentile hillside and overhung by birch trees. It seems that Mabel Choate didn't like the difficult climb up and down the hill to her cut flower garden. Enter Fletcher Steele and the showpiece of Naumkeag. Conclusion. It's good to be the rich and famous during the gilded age.
Honestly, Naumkeag was exactly what I had hoped it would be and I savored the thoughts of what it might be like for those who experienced such a time in history. Our second stop, however, would focus more on the man than the place. Nearby, was Chesterwood, home and studio of Daniel Chester French.
French, along with Augustus St. Gaudens, was one of the most noted sculptors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He grew up in Concord, MA amid the influences of family friends such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Louisa May Alcott family. One of his first major works was the Minute Man sculpture that can be seen today in Concord.
Although he was also encouraged to join the Cornish Colony at St. Gaudens, French chose to locate at Chesterwood, his summer home and studio in the Berkshires.
Like many sculptors, much of the work of French is recognizable, but not identifiable. His pieces are viewed in public spaces around the world on a daily basis by thousands of passers-by, but for the life of them they couldn't tell you who did the piece. However, one exception is his Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. People know it to be a monument both to Lincoln, the man, and French, the artist.
French's most stunning work might be his Andromeda. This piece reveals yet another dimension of French seldom seen, but every bit as powerful.
Although his studio was locked due to restoration, we were able to peek in the windows and look around it. One look at the massive windows told us that it was all about the light.
Unique to his studio, were the huge side doors and the tracks leading out of the studio. Frequently, when he was working on one of his huge sculptures he would roll the piece out on the rail in order to check how the it would be affected by the light and shadow at different times of the day.
Since 1978, the work of contemporary sculptors has been displayed along woodland paths on the grounds of Chesterwood.
Oh my, how I do love visits to places like this. I confess it brings out the anti-social in me though. Please don't ask me to stay too long with the group. Galleries, and especially studios fill my head with questions ... questions as equally served by imagined answers as factual ones. There is no getting around it, I am in awe of artists and authors. How ... how ... how do they do it? How do they know the whole story when the story does not exist? How do they look into a huge block of marble and see the nude figure peeking out at them? How do they pour and pile paint upon a canvas knowing at day's end a flower lies there? I admit it ... I am a want-a-bee. How do they make it seem so easy, so natural? Contemporary art may be the worst. How many times have I heard it said, and said myself, "Anybody could do that" and then I tried it ... only to discover disaster. All this makes me anti-social. It instills in me the patience of a third-grader. I flit from thing to thing ... gathering the questions ... oblivious to the group I came with ... mesmerized!
The next day, we shifted gears and headed to Lenox to the Mount, the home of author, Edith Wharton.
A prolific writer, Wharton is best known for books such as House of Mirth, Age of Innocence, and Ethan Frome. Her novels depicted, for the most part, the life of the idle rich and the gilded age ... stories that describe her own life to a large measure. However, the story we heard was about Edith Wharton, the home designer and landscape architect, not Edith Wharton, the author. Gilded age novels may have paid the bills, but the design and construction of the Mount and surrounding gardens was her passion. The Mount is magnificent ... my favorite of the adventures. Check it out for yourself.
They say, best laid plans of mice and men who own pink fishing rods sometimes go awry (not to be confused with the maple flavored rye we tasted at the distillery). The Master Plan was to visit the studio of a couple of abstract artists next, but the studio was closed. We resolved this dilemma with a well-executed U-turn, re-directing us back to Stockbridge. Louis had, in just a few days here, mastered the art of the U-turn and practiced it ad nauseum. The cheers and hurrahs from the group when we discovered the studio to be closed led me to wonder if secretly others preferred to see the Rockwell Museum rather the abstract artist studio I had chosen. Granted everyone had spoken fondly of the Rockwell Museum on several occasions earlier. If someone really wanted to challenge my schedule ... my Master Plan ... if someone really wanted to declare open rebellion to pure logic and discard hour upon hour of exhausting research done on behalf of the group ... for their own good, then ... if, if so ... there are proper channels ... protocol ... and retribution!
Okay, I was less than enthusiastic about going to the Norman Rockwell Museum. In my defense, I had been to the Rockwell Museum in Arlington just last week ... and he was an illustrator ... and he wasn't really gilded age ... and I don't trust him with Grandma Moses, he and his Hugh Hefner pipe. And don't forget how the group reveled in the obliteration of my Master Plan.
Did I act the spoiled brat? Hardly. The high ground was my path and I spent my time in Rockwell's favorite studio and enjoyed myself immensely. Even if he was obsessively neat and nauseatingly orderly in his studio ... unlike my studio ... or the studios of real artists.
We finished our visit at the Rockwell and loaded Pittsfield into the Garmin as our next destination. There we would find the home of J.P. Morgan's sister, Sarah. Given the relationship to JP Morgan, I was certain that all the other gilded age mansions we had seen would pale in comparison to this one. The mansion was called Ventfort.
As we walked toward the entrance from the parking area, I noticed that there didn't seem to be extensive gardens surrounding the house like we had see in other mansions. Certainly, the grandeur of the interior would more than make up for the missing gardens. We entered to the sounds of hammers banging and saws whirring. There seemed to be workers in every area. We soon discovered the reason why. Ventfort was not the Mecca of the gilded age restoration ... instead, it was in significant decline and we would suffer with it.
Thanks to the efforts of a local benefactor, Ventfort was rescued twelve years ago and had been in the process of restoration ever since. They had gotten a good start. but there was much to do. I feared this stop was destined to be a dismal failure. And then, we met the docent. She was a character and a visit in and of herself. There was no doubt that she loved Ventfort and thus, the tour was great, despite the construction debris and clamor.
The docent's enthusiasm was never more evident than when she took us through the room of dolls. There was an exhibition of dolls (about 3 feet high), Les Petites Dames de Mode, dressed exquisitely in costumes of the gilded age. These costumes for the 59 dolls had been designed and sewn by John R. Burbidge, retired Senior Designer for famed Priscilla's of Boston. Each outfit was done with the same exacting detail and eye for fashion that Burbidge had utilized when he created the wedding dresses he was so noted for at Priscilla's. Each doll had a story, and our docent knew every one of those stories ... and relished the telling.
I must be getting senile because I found it all to be fascinating. I think we all did. Fascinating ... bordering on giddy!
Pittsfield still had more to offer. Arrowhead, the home of Herman Melville was also there. We headed there and signed up for the first available house tour.
Outside, while we waited, we amused ourselves with pictures of the exhibit in the yard in tribute to the Union Army's 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the all-black regiment under the leadership of Col. Robert Shaw during the Civil War. The unit had mustered in Pittsfield prior to deploying to battle.
Melville's house was modest and quite the change of pace from the the mansions we had already visited. Inside, the furnishing were period not personal, but we were still able to get a feel for the style of life that Melville would have lived. We were lucky again to get a good docent. The first thing we learned was that except for Moby Dick, none of us had much of an idea of anything Melville had ever written. Turns out he wrote a lot of excellent short stories and even some poetry. Another novel, Billy Budd, was published after his death.
We were again reminded of how everywhere we went, we discovered how interconnected the influential people of this era were. Nathaniel Hawthorne frequently met here to discuss literature with Melville and St. Gaudens had tried to lure him (like he had French) to join the Cornish Colony as well. Though Arrowhead had been a good stop ... I began to suspect that the thirst for knowledge for some of our group had been quenched.
A guy just knows ... I sensed it was time to head for home. The only thing was that I had one more item on my Master Plan. Susan B. Anthony's home was in Adams ... on the way home. Rather than destroy the integrity of a perfectly good Master Plan, I decided, that at a minimum, we could do a drive-by visit. The fact that we got there after the house closed fit the plan perfectly.
The girls definitely got into the spirit of the moment and posed for a few pictures. It was like ESP ... they simultaneously struck a pose somewhere between suffragettes and Ros
y the Riveter. Unless, of course, those muscle shots were meant for someone else. Later, when Peyton purchased a riding crop at the flea market, my suspicions were even greater!
Well, that's about it for our big adventure. We tossed in a few local thing just to fill the gaps ... like the Medieval Fair, the Grafton Food Festival, Grafton Cheese, Chester, Woodstock, Queche Gorge, the Farmer's Market, lobster, Dim Sum, Simon Pearce, Putney, Basketville, rock stacking, Emerald Lake, Manchester, Bromley, Stratton, kayaking, hiking, Orvis, Ollalie, The Black Goat, Sunset Lake, the distillery, Teo's Hot Dogs, Rick's ice cream, Hap's Pond ...
and of course a nice cool dip in the Rock River.
Hope the guests weren't too bored!
We made sure that we brought our funky straw hats with us. We always try to bring good hats on days that it is supposed to be sunny. I decided on the Farmer Brown look. I realize now that my parents must not have allowed me to play dress up as a child. I will dress up at the drop of a straw hat these days and don't seem to care how stupid I look. My parents must have forgotten to talk with me about my pride as well. Anne, with a bit of persuasion, goes along. Seems like her parents must have talked to her a lot about pride and looking stupid because stupid seems to be a better fit on me.
Before I realized it, it was lunchtime. At first, I thought it was thundering, but Anne assured me that it actually was her stomach rumbling. Heading back to the launch, I assured Anne that just because there was a dam and waterfall beside the launch spot was no reason to believe that we would be swept over it when we tried to land with our kayaks. In Anne's defense, I must say that she is still a little ticklish about boats due to that unfortunate incident with a 12-foot waterfall on the Missisquoi River up north. In that case, it was an unfortunate oversight on my part but we were not actually swept over the fall as much as we paddled over it.
We landed without incident and before I knew it the kayaks and all the gear was again loaded on the vehicle. Anne was an invaluable source of inspiration and suggestion. I made a mental note to teach her some of the intricacies of kayak loading for future trips.
We soon found our way to the Harrisville General Store, one of our favorites. There was scarcely room to turn around in the store. Clearly, the secret is out! It is a great place for breakfast or lunch. For me, another cup of coffee topped my list and for Anne, iced tea. We sat back and enjoyed our beverages while we watched the crowd and waited patiently for our orders to be prepared. Sandwiches and chips would suffice and we were soon on our way to the second Chesham Pond for our special picnic. I had fished the pond a couple of days earlier and had picked out a small island there as the spot for a picnic. 
We paddled directly to the island forthwith and before we knew it, the cloth was spread, the candelabra and candles were in place and the banquet was spread before us. Lunch was served. (As an aside, I do keep a picnic spread, candelabra and candles in my vehicle at all times for emergencies. It seems the only civilized thing to do.)
