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Why I carry my sketchbook and notebook with me. When our feet get tired and it’s time to sit and rest, I can write or draw, which makes the extra several ounces in my backpack very worthwhile. Yesterday, when the heat and elevation forced a rest, this nopal cactus across the street from the Santo Domingo church caught my eye.
I think I’ve probably adjusted to the elevation now. I used to dream of going to Macchu Pichu, but I don’t know if I could now. A jump from sea level to a mere 5,800 feet–Oaxaca’s elevation–takes me a couple of days. As with so many things, sufficient water and sleep help a lot.
I was headed to a café several blocks from our place, but gave up–I think Google Maps is out of date–and went to the local huge supermarket for oat milk and other necessities.
We had breakfast at the house and then headed to the centro. Altars and special decorations for the fiesta are everywhere.
What pictures can’t capture are the smells, like the heavenly scent of tortillas cooking all through the neighborhood. The feel of the round bumps of paving stones underfoot, and the necessity to duck now and then where a guy wire crosses the sidewalk. The sound of the very annoying truck driving all around with a recording of a woman speaking that was loud yet unintelligible. When the truck passed close by me as I explored, I realized she was listing all the tamales the truck driver sold. Yum. Maybe tomorrow I’ll flag it down, though I hate to reward such an obnoxious method of advertising. And then there were the sounds of dogs distantly barking, roosters crowing, people chatting with their neighbors. It all adds up to a place so familiar and beloved, I can’t believe we stayed away for six years.
Thanks to friends of our family who owned a house near the Headlands in Rockport, Massachusetts, I got to visit this lovely town once when I was a child. All I remember from that visit is a house with circular rooms, the quality of the light in the house, and a feeling of complete delight.
When we got the chance to visit Rockport this month, I knew I had to find that house. It turned out to be easy to find online: my mother confirmed my memory of its being round, so I put “round house Rockport” into a search engine and was immediately taken to a vintage photo of the studio of Harrison Cady, who was a well-known illustrator in his day. I hadn’t remembered that it was once his house, or that he had lived in Rockport, but I knew he was related to our friends, so there you have it: that’s how they came to have a house here. Joy and I walked up to it on my first day here.
It’s right on the water:
The view from the place we’re staying is no slouch either:
From the Harrison Cady house, we went on to the Headlands, which looks out across the harbor and out to the Atlantic, which is located where an ocean ought to be. I’m sort of joking, since after 20 years living a few miles from the Pacific, I’ve stopped thinking of it as being on the wrong side, but it still feels more natural to have the water “on my right” as I face north.
Another difference between here and California is how much longer Europeans have been here in New England. You don’t see buildings from the 17th and 18th centuries in California.
This house was constructed more recently. In the period when our daughter had tiny imaginary friends everywhere, she would have loved it.
Also on my first day, we walked around the corner to the Unitarian Universalist Society. I didn’t expect it to be open on a weekday morning, but when I tried the front doors anyway, a man waiting in a car called out that he was a member, and could he help us? That question is used so often to mean “What do you think you’re doing?” that it’s hard to convey that he really meant it, but he really meant it. He and his wife had stopped by to take care of a couple of things, so they immediately gave us a tour. In the lovely, sun-drenched sanctuary, we discovered that, like UUCPA, they have a chalice shaped like a tree. Isn’t it striking? I like the nest for the flame.
They have beautiful rooms upstairs too, especially the tiny room for the tiniest children, with its windows on three sides giving views onto the ocean and town. We also got to see their solar panels, installed just last summer. Sadly, I am fitting this vacation in between Sundays, so I can’t attend a service. But it was great to meet a few UUs, who were as warm and friendly as could be.
Joy, the Munchkin and I have been in London for a week. This makes us experts entitled to generate a list. Originated by Joy and compiled by all three of us, here it is:
Things at which the British excel:
Smoked salmon. Specifically, the smoked salmon at the Mall Tavern, conveniently located across the street from the Kensington Unitarians–eating that salmon was a religious experience of its own–but elsewhere too.
Playing the xylophone the fun way in the Sound Garden of the Diana Memorial Playground (Photo: Joy Morgenstern)
Playgrounds, and we’re not just talking about the astoundingly fantastic Diana Memorial Playground in Kensington Gardens, though it is astoundingly fantastic. There are four or five playgrounds within an easy walk of our flat. It’s not just outdoor space where they grok kids, either. It seems like every museum has highly developed children’s activities (watch and learn, San Francisco).
Coming up with creative pronunciations of non-English words. Yesterday we encountered a name that is pronounced Joe-a-kim, probably spelled Joachim.
Parks and gardens. Joy theorizes that while the men were off expanding and shoring up the Empire, the women had time to garden like mad.
Drinking.
Writing plays. Acting in them too, especially character roles.
Double-decker buses. Why doesn’t every place have them? This is the way to see a city, as Doggie attests.
Self-deprecation and understatement. I love the ad I’ve been seeing on the buses for a moisturizer. After the tagline comes the hard-selling line, “This moisturizer isn’t the whole answer, but at least it’s a start.” Where I come from, the right moisturizer makes you beautiful, wins you the love of a sexy partner, gets you that dream job, and brings about world peace, so this is refreshing.
Takeaway food. In fact, food in general. We haven’t had a bad meal yet. (Though even one of the best places, where Joy got a delicious roast dinner, boiled the carrots into flavorlessness. Roasted carrots are so yummy that it seemed like a particularly sadly wasted opportunity.)
Ethnic diversity. Of course, most big cities have people from all over, but it’s really striking here. It doesn’t hurt the food situation, either.
Funding museums. Admissions are mostly free.
Sweets. Fortnum and Mason’s toffees are just one shining example (I hope our dentist isn’t reading this).
Tea, the beverage and the meal. Again, why don’t all other countries have a meal that consists of tiny sandwiches, rolls, cakes, and tea? Such a brilliant idea.
Not so much:
Quitting smoking. Man, do Londoners smoke. I thought San Francisco was bad (people smoke there so much more than twenty miles south on the Peninsula, you would think the surgeon general’s warnings didn’t apply to city folk), but London leaves it standing. I am starting to suspect that every twenty-something who comes to London is issued an Oyster card and a pack of cigarettes. And while the restaurants seem to have a smoking ban, people can and do smoke at the tables just outside the doors, which are open for the summer so that the indoor diners can breathe the fumes. England, your food is unfairly maligned, but to have great food you have to remove the tobacco smell.
Not acquiring head injuries while biking. To be fair, maybe they don’t fall off their bikes often. I hope not, because almost none of them wear helmets.
Still and all, well done, Brits. You’re showing us a lovely time.
Sermons in Stones 
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