How wonderful to be back on the island this week!
We arrived on Monday on the 7pm ferry. This time of year, that means we reached the house still in time to see the sunset. Oh, these long days of summer!
Despite weather forecasts predicting clouds, showers, thunderstorms, rain heavy at times, humma humma yadda yadda, we had a perfectly glorious sunset, one of those sunsets made even better by an unsettled skyful of clouds.
I took my mother to Mt. Auburn Cemetery last week at her request to see the graves of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Isabella Stewart Gardner. She had a map from the Boston Globe that was–I guess I shouldn’t say that it was criminally inaccurate. Let me say rather that it wasn’t sufficient to actually find these graves. With a 91-year-old woman in tow on a hot summer’s day, the map was particularly insufficient.
The cemetery, however, was astonishingly beautiful. And interesting. I confess here that I’m not particularly interested in seeing the final resting places of notables of New England’s last century (or two). In many cases, the people we’d never heard of were more interesting (based on their memorials) than those we had. But the trees were more noteworthy than those of most arboretums. And the gravestone art–we could have wandered looking at interesting tombstones all day, if we’d had all day to do it in.
Which we didn’t.
Today we returned with a better map.
I became fascinated by those stones that showed a draped object. Mostly vases, but it began to seem that almost anything might be portrayed as draped and carved in stone. I didn’t have my camera with me that first day, but today I captured a few. Here are a small number of vases (the most popular), a sheaf of wheat, and a broken column.
And yes, we found Isabella Stewart Gardner (in a family crypt) and threw in Winslow Homer for good measure (tombstone not as art-noteworthy as his paintings, but then he wasn’t the one who designed or selected the tombstone).
I could make a coffee-table book of the trees, if no one has done that yet. Oh, the breathtaking trees! For now, I’ll show only an unexpected Dawn Redwood.
Today, my guest post about neurolinguistic programming (NLP)–and its usefulness for writers–appears on writer Jagi Lamplighter’s blog. NLP ties together speech patterns, unconscious subliminal actions and reactions, neurological processing, psychology, and self- and organizational improvement. Heady stuff–and fun.
Also, if anyone wants to know the true story about how I decided which dress to wear at the wedding, you’ll find it in that post.
Happy summer solstice! The sun has reached the northernmost point in its arc and will now slowly begin rising and setting farther and farther to the south. Summer is here, and on the island that means sweet flowers and mown grass; beach weather; and long, languid afternoons and evenings on the deck as the sun sets.
We worked hard all spring to get the house in peak shape for the season. Next week we get to relax as we hope our guests do and just enjoy the season. Well, at least I hope Dan will relax a little…
Here’s a photo from our visit earlier this month.
What with all the travel, we fell behind in brushing our mostly-Maine-coon cat Amber this spring. The knots wouldn’t come out any more with a brush, and Amber won’t sit still for a scissors. So the only thing left to do was to take him for professional grooming. And so, day before yesterday, poor unhappy Amber was transported to our nearby local “Pet Resort and Spa” for a lion cut.
Well, I did tell them to use the unscented shampoo. Really.
But whether it’s his new ‘do or his fresh, clean smell, Gwenny doesn’t recognize Amber any more. Gwenny is a Russian Blue less than half Amber’s size. “Who let this alien creature into the house?” she growls. “Get him out! Go away! Back to wherever he came from! This is *my* territory! Mine!”
She won’t let him in the same room with her. When the yowling gets too intolerable, I have to separate them.
Amber seems to find this confusing. He’s learned over the last thirteen years not to be afraid of Gwenny, and it’s probably been almost a decade since she acted this hostile. “Who, me?” he wonders. “Wazzup with this?”
Just five days from now, at 7:28am, the sun will reach its northernmost point along the ecliptic. Summer will officially begin, and oddly enough this year we have a few scattered unrented weeks during the season. The savvy reader will surmise that we are willing to negotiate a price (*) and will consider what a special vacation is a week on the island. Particularly this time of the year, when the sun is high in the sky and the island is full of the fragrance of flowers.
Meanwhile, we the owners are no fools. If the house is sitting idle, we will find a way to get there.
(*) Our managers, Ballard Hall Real Estate, can be reached at (401) 466-8883. No more self-serving advertisements, I promise!
Dan and I are just crazy about Maryland crabcakes. And it turns out, not surprisingly, that the best place to get Maryland crabcakes is, well, Maryland. And the best place in Maryland that we’ve found so far is the G&M Restaurant in Linthicum, conveniently located just a mile or so from BWI airport.
I used to bring crabcakes home all the time before security cracked down on bringing liquids in carry-on luggage. Then it got more complicated. With the ice packs, I’d have to check a bag, and I never want to do that, not if I can avoid it. Sure it’s the money (the crabcakes are expensive enough!), but it’s also the extra time at the airport waiting for the checked bag. And what if the bag damaged? What if it’s lost?
So, we were out of crabcakes and I decided it was time to find out just exactly what the TSA’s rule is regarding a material that is a liquid when at room temperature but is frozen solid when being carried through security. There is nothing about this on their Web site, so I wrote to them and asked. A response came promptly. Here is what they said:
“TSA permits regular ice, frozen gel packs, and dry ice in checked and carry-on baggage. Frozen items are allowed so long as they are solid and in a “frozen state” when presented for screening. If frozen items are partially melted or have any liquid at the bottom of the container, the ice/liquid container must meet 3-1-1 requirements.”
So in April I froze up some ice packs and prepared for a trip to Maryland.
“Better bring a copy of that email with you,” Dan advised. And so I did.
Sure enough. When I went through security, they saw the ice packs in my bag. "It's ice packs," I kept explaining. "Frozen ice packs." They ignored me. They pulled my bag out for detailed searching. The person checking my suitcase was a supervisor. “Are you aware of TSA regulations regarding liquids?”
“Yes sir.” I whisked the TSA email out of my pack. “They say it’s okay to carry on a frozen ice pack”
He read it carefully, frowning. Finally he figured out what I had done wrong. “You have to declare this kind of thing so that we can check it. I checked it. It’s okay. You want to pack up your things?”
And so I was able to carry my ice packs aboard and to bring my crabcakes home. Yesterday I went through the exercise again. I packed three ice packs, two thicker, newer ones, and an older one that was nice and thin, good for slipping into the suitcase. All solidly frozen. I put them in ziplock bags and “declared” them separately as I’d been instructed. And it turned out that the older ice pack has some air in it, so that even frozen it’s just a little squishy, not perfectly solid.
“This one’s not frozen,” the security agent said. “It’s squishy. What’s it for?”
“I’m going to be bringing back crabcakes. Also frozen.”
“This one’s not frozen.”
“Yes it is. I just took it out of the freezer half an hour ago.”
“It’s supposed to be only for medication.”
“That’s not true. I wrote to the TSA about this and I have an email from them that puts it in the category of foodstuffs. They said I could bring it as long as it’s frozen.”
“This one’s not frozen. It’s squishy.”
“It’s frozen. Really it is. There’s just some air in it. I took it out of the freezer less than an hour ago. Been in there for a week.”
“Well, I’ll let you on with it this time, but if it’s squishy it’s not frozen.”
I am effusively grateful. “Oh, thank you so much.”
Gaahh! These frozen ice packs just don’t mix well with airport security contractors. I wonder what adventure awaits me on the way home.
I wrote this in April but somehow neglected to publish it back them. Please allow me to rectify this situation now.
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I am in a meeting with some two dozen people. We are on a break. While quietly checking my email, I can’t help but overhear a conversation between two of my colleagues standing behind me. I’m not really listening, so the conversation wakens into my conscious slowly. It seems to concern where a person might want to live. One of the people lives in what I believe may be upstate New York, in a rural area not far from a town or city. She says, “It’s the best of both worlds.”
I don’t interrupt the conversation, but what I’m thinking is: “Good as far as it goes, but what about the cold?”
The best of both worlds. As if there were only two of them! How narrow our expectations are. I’m not arguing for a Panglossian “best of all possible worlds” but surely we can do better in our optimization than just two.
This Sunday Dan and I finally got around to our celebratory thirtieth-anniversary dinner. We were about three weeks late, but we have a long tradition of being late in celebrating our anniversary. This is because we have a long tradition of not being in the same city on our anniversary. Heck, there were times we weren’t even on the same continent. So we’ve gotten used to a certain degree of freedom when it comes to important celebrations, preferring to fix them in space rather than in time.
In this case, we decided to return to The Atlantic Inn on Block Island. This decision was a blend of nostalgia and a really tempting new menu. The nostalgia part dates to the early years of our marriage: The Atlantic Inn was where we stayed on the island before our house was built. The inn’s porch is still one of our favorite places for a drink because of its stunning views over the rooftops of the town and over the harbor to the long sweeping curve of the northern neck of the island and out to sea.
But the restaurant is a different story. At some point the menu switched from a la carte to a multiple-course prix-fixe-only menu with disappointingly few choices for pescatarians like us. On the few occasions when we ate out on the island, we always ended up going somewhere else. But now the menu had changed. A-la-carte options had returned, and lots of them. The menu sounded wonderful.
I wish The Atlantic Inn would get around to posting a current menu on its Web site. But they haven’t yet. I actually considered scanning the entire menu and posting it here because it ought to be posted *somewhere*. But this is not the right place. Are you listening, Atlantic Inn Webmaster?
I will, however, post the menu items and descriptions of what we had.
First, I do have to say that I told them it was our anniversary dinner. I did this so that we could get our favorite table, the one in the corner at the far end of the room overlooking the sunset, the harbor, and the sea. And they were happy to oblige us in this. But we weren’t expecting the complimentary celebratory glass of champagne. This is a class act!
We also weren’t expecting the amuse-bouche of a tiny glass of powerfully delicious gaspacho with a lime froth.
Here’s what we were expecting, and ate with pleasure:
Appetizers
Frisee aux Lardon (sans Lardon)
Baby frisee, slow-poached Blazing Star Farm egg, housemade pancetta lardons (omitted for us), grapefruit and truffle vinaigrette
White Tuna Sashimi Tasting
“Sea essence”, citrus-galangal pearls, ikura, dashi-hijiki, served with prawn crackers
Entrees
Spring Bounty
Polenta cake, wild mushrooms, spring peas, fiddlehead ferns, Fontina Val d’Aosta, garlic essence and baby greens
Halibut Cheeks
Lightly seared, garlic bagna cauda, escargots, English peas, fiddleheads and wild mushrooms
(Note: These two items sound similar but in fact were quite different, and both delicious.)
Dessert
Lemon-Chamomile Pound Cake
Fresh blueberries, lemon curd sauce and honeyed creme fraiche
When you’re celebrating your thirtieth anniversary at a restaurant that has been a recipient of the Wine Spectator‘s Award of Excellence for the last nine years running, how can you not splurge on the wine? We selected a Far Niente 2005 Chardonnay. The wine was as wonderful as the meal.
Our heartfelt and full-bellied congratulations to newly promoted Executive Chef Aaron Wisniewski and to pastry chef Linda Rondinone for an evening we’ll remember for a long, long time.