Journal of a Sabbatical

June 10, 2001

glimpses of the sea

Today's Reading: Tibetan Trek by Ronald Kaulback, Pilgrimage for Plants by Frank Kingdon-Ward, WPA Guide to Massachusetts by Federal Writers Project

Today's Starting Pitcher: Hideo Nomo

Photos top to bottom:

the unusual steeple

a glimpse of the sea through archway and trees

In Manchester by the Sea the narrow alleyways between old houses offer glimpses of the sea from the winding hilly streets. According to the WPA guidebook Manchester is a sleepy village noted for its church with unusual steeple, a fine postcolonial door knocker on the historical society's building, and a powder house on a hill overlooking the town. Except for the door knocker that's exactly what I noticed. The steeple is different from most New England church steeples, looking kind of like an elongated gazebo on top of the church. And the powder house is obvious looming like a castle above a medieval village. Nobody seemed particularly sleepy though.

As we ramble around Manchester by the Sea checking out the views down every alleyway, we stumble on a bookstore, a used bookstore, called Manchester by the Book (how quaint). They have a book by Kingdon-Ward in the window! Forget the winding streets and narrow alleys, this is the first Kingdon-Ward of any kind I have seen in a used bookstore ever. Yesterday I'm jabbering about Frank Kingdon-Ward and today I find Pilgrimage for Plants in the window of a used bookstore in a town I've never set foot in before. Almost makes you believe in Synchronicity. The book once belonged to a former editor of Horticulture magazine and president of the Mass. Horticultural Society. It now belongs to me.

Nancy finds a poem by William Cullen Bryant about Rhode Island coal. It's too funny to have been written by the same gloomy guy who wrote To a Waterfowl and I disbelieve her, but there it is in a nice edition of his complete poems. She also picks up a collection of Gwendolyn Brooks' poems, which to me are infinitely more appealing than William Cullen Bryant.

We read aloud to each other at a bakery/coffee shop with exquisite cannoli and no air-conditioning. We wander around the boat yard developing a yearning for a yacht and getting a good view of both the unusual steeple and the powder house.

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