Maggie's Farm

When you go to places like Cape Cod or the Berkshires (as I do), you have to put up with this sort of stuff. I maintain my sense of humor, but these sorts of things bug Mrs. BD because she is intolerant of idiotic females who make her gender look retarded, and rightly assumes such vehicles belong to women.

If they really loved Gaia, would they be driving?

No. They would be walking to volunteer at the Turtle Abortion Clinic. "Every Turtle A Wanted Turtle." Sheesh. If you ask me, we cannot have too many turtles. Maggie's loves turtles of all varieties, races, species, and religions.

Truth is, I brake for turtles too:

Roman Coin Hoard Found in Somerset. What fun to find something like that.

I found a Massachusetts Pine Tree coin (1700s) on a Wellfleet Harbor beach a few years ago, with a hole through it (for stringing one's money, I suppose), and thought I had found something wonderful. I don't know where I put it.

Low tide, Cape Cod Bay, way out on the western shore of Great Island this weekend. Heaven. You can even bring your doggie. No people there, either, except me and the Mrs. and the rare beachcomber.

A dune knitted together by a clump of Bayberry overlooking Cape Cod Bay, near Duck Harbor:

I know many readers may tire of my New England travelogue photos, but I am the Editor so, if you don't like them, don't look at them. It will take a while to complete this photo dump. Meanwhile, catch up on our holiday weekend posts which were rich with stuff.

Your Editor and Mrs. Editor have been on lower Cape Cod ("lower" means upper on the Cape. You go "up" when you go down to Hyannis. Figure that out. Less confusing to call it the "outer" Cape, but that's too easy) for an extra-long soul-feeding  weekend, as we require an annual immersion in the smell of hot Pitch Pine, hot sand, salt air, chilly baptismal salt water, beach grass, and the endless clams and oysters and raw Atlantic Bluefin tuna on which we feed. Our goal is eternity as a Great Black-Backed Gull, sitting on sand bars, staring at the horizon, and feeding on whatever gets washed up by the sea.

However, these first pics are for our pal Sipp. Newcomb Hollow, sunrise this past weekend, and ye olde Beachcomber in the early morning light. The local Cumby opens at 5, and I am always there by 5 with the fishermen - and I mean the pros, not the amateurs. The rough gnarly guys in boots who ain't askeered of drowning and who shamelessly hit on the gals at the counter with promises like "We could have lotsa fun tonight when I get back if you would just give me a nice smile."

I like to make my early morning rounds to see what is going on.

If you squint and stare straight east, on a clear day you might see the coast of Portugal in the far distance, just over the horizon.

I'll wrap up my Newport photo dump with a few pics from the Flower Show, which is the main reason Mrs. BD dragged me to Rhode Island last weekend. The Newport Flower Show is what the gardening and arranging ladies term an "important" show. It attracts garden club competitors from as far as Texas, and it raises lots of money for the Preservation Society of Newport County.

Mrs. BD did not have an entry in the show this year, but she likes to keep a finger on the pulse of things.

Last weekend's show was held at Rosecliff, one of the loveliest Newport cottages. Guy who built it was a Comstock Lode heir. My photos do not capture how crowded the place was with flower people and their tolerant husbands, mostly, like me, feigning deep interest and appreciation while furtively glancing at one's watch.

More pics of the show below the fold -

Quote from an essay of the above title by Roger Scruton in City Journal:

Until recently, European architects have either connived at the evisceration of our cities or actively promoted it. Relying on the spurious rhetoric of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, they endorsed the totalitarian projects of the political elite, whose goal after the war was not to restore the cities but to clear away the “slums.” By “slums,” they meant the harmonious classical streets of affordable houses, seeded with local industries, corner shops, schools, and places of worship, that had made it possible for real communities to flourish in the center of our towns. High-rise blocks in open parkland, of the kind that Le Corbusier proposed in his plan for the demolition of Paris north of the Seine, would replace them. Meanwhile, all forms of employment and enjoyment would move elsewhere. Public buildings would be expressly modernist, with steel and concrete frames and curtain walls, but with no facades or intelligible apertures, and no perceivable relation to their neighbors. Important monuments from the past would remain, but often set in new and aesthetically annihilating contexts, such as that provided for Saint Paul’s in London.

Citizens protested, and conservation societies fought throughout Europe for the old idea of what a city should look like, but the modernists won the battle of ideas. They took over the architecture schools and set out to ensure that the classical discipline of architecture would never again be learned, since it would never again be taught. The vandalization of the curriculum was successful: European architecture schools no longer taught students the grammar of the classical Orders; they no longer taught how to understand moldings, or how to draw existing monuments, urban streets, the human figure, or such vital aesthetic phenomena as the fall of light on a Corinthian capital or the shadow of a campanile on a sloping roof; they no longer taught appreciation for facades, cornices, doorways, or anything else that one could glean from a study of Serlio or Palladio.

Read the whole thing. 

Photo below: The charming, friendly, safe, and human-scale Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, which was a crime-ridden "slum" one generation ago, part of Hell's Kitchen. Ripe for massive demolition and "urban planning" and "urban renewal." The social engineers are almost always wrong because they are oblivious to human nature. This one-time slum is a very pleasant place to live in, provided that your neighbors behave themselves.

Don't blame the old buildings.

Newport, RI has the largest number of pre-Revolutionary houses and buildings in the USA. This one is odd. A saltbox with a ? gambrel roof. WTH? Name the year it was built:

I'll take you for an architectural stroll from around Kay St down Bellevue, with structures of all eras, beginning with this Victorian:

More pics (from last weekend) below the fold -

No photo dump today; just this one pic from the Cliff Walk of what is now part of the campus of Salve Regina College in Newport. The family of the owner donated the grand if gloomy cottage overlooking the ocean to the college which now owns some good hunks of priceless Newport real estate.

Naturally, they needed more space and had to build that thing on the left in a style I refer to as Jesuit-Stalinist. Note absence of any windows facing the sea - and the flat roof which always is a genius idea on the rainy, snowy, and stormy Northeast coast.

Relevant, from Driscoll: Corbu: The Meshugeneh Man Who Built ‘The Machine for Living In’

There seem to be just a few things a 3-day visitor to Newport can do to get the most out of the visit. (Like a real travel writer, I like to figure out the essence of a place quickly. I know that is not really possible without friends who live there, so I may BS a bit.)

Here's what I figured out:

1. Take a stroll down Thames St. and look at the boats and all of the cool piers and pubs.

2. Bike or take a hike down Bellevue Ave. from town out to the end, or, better, continue on and make it a bike ride all the way around the Ocean Drive back to the harbor. It's only about 12 miles.

3. Walk a few segments or more of the Cliff Walk. Do it early in the morning and beat the rush. 

4. Scout out the antique areas of town where the tourists and drinkers don't go, and there are no shops. The Point is one such neighborhood. Also, around Spring St. Probably plenty more nooks and crannies we didn't find.

5. If you must, check out the interiors of one or two of the grand "cottages." ("Cottage" means that they aren't really winterized. Summer places.) I don't really like them or want to see the insides, but it gives one an idea of what life could be like for an ambitious entrepreneur before the income tax, the corporate tax, and the SEC. And with 20-30 servants to keep things functioning smoothly.

6. Rhode Island seafood always seems to have a Portuguese spin on it. Even a bowl of steamers has hot peppers, red peppers, chorizo, and onions in it. Not bad at all, but not my favorite. Mrs. BD loved her grilled salmon with sweet barbecue sauce on a bed of pickled red cabbage. People say The Mooring has the town's best seafood. It is housed in the old Station #6 of the New York Yacht Club, which has moved to a quieter side of the harbor.

7. On a rainy day, I'd probably stop by the Tennis Hall of Fame, right on the main drag.

Photo from along the Cliff Walk, facing the Atlantic Ocean on the right. I think that is the charming Little Compton in the distance.

More random Newport pics below the fold.

If I claim that there is no more saiboaty place in the US than Newport, RI in June, I know somebody will argue for San Francisco or Annapolis. All I can claim is that I have never seen as many lovely or majestic sailboats anywhere as I did in Newport this weekend.

I will share some of my pics this week, at the risk of producing boredom. It's an interesting salty 3-day getaway spot with plenty to do besides sitting and watching the scenery.

For those not familiar with this famous New England seaport summering spot, it sits on the southernmost part of Aquidneck Island (once known as "Rhode Island"), helping to define Narragansett Bay. It's about 30 miles south of Providence. Newport has a giant, well-protected harbor and, in the 1700s, was one of the 5 busiest harbors in North America - a major factor in the "Triangle Trade," in privateering, piracy, and general trade.

Newport, like all of Rhode Island, was settled in the 1600s by refugees from Massachusetts. The town was fortunate in having had no major fires during its history (although the Brits were tough on the town until the French navy chased them off), so large parts of its entire architectural history is well-preserved - predominantly early to mid 1700s dwellings and taverns. 

Because it sits on the Atlantic, but guards the entrance of the Bay, it has been a naturally air-conditioned popular and fashionable summering spot since the 1730s. While it may be most famous for its Gilded Age summer "cottages," these ostentatious European palace imitations are not of much interest to me (but I don't mind the Shingle Style ones). However, Newport still has a considerable High Society, old money contingent. It's a good mix, but free of low-lifes and hippie-looking people. Preppy and wholesome mostly, but with a hedonistic flavoring to it. Nothing tacky about it.

Because of its night life, charm, and excellent harbor facilities, Newport remains a standard stop for those cruising the New England coast. Thames St. along the piers is one pub or open-air bar or restaurant after another. Lots of seafood, and Kobe beef for the rare seafood-avoidant. The boaters are known to get rambunctious at night: it is expected. John Hiatt and his group were playing at one of the open-air places on Sat. night, and you could hear him for blocks. Not bad at all.

Beaches? Newport has only a few, but the best are small and are owned by exclusive private clubs. It is not a very beachy place. It's a rocky coastline. People swim by diving off docks and boats.

Photo on top is a 1720s dwelling in the Point area, near the causeway to Goat Island. Photo below is the rear view of one of the Gilded Age cottages along Bellevue Avenue, from the Cliff Walk.

More later when I find time to organize my pics.