A Four-Museum Day

Boston, Massachusetts

Museum: A place to muse? Archaic. to gaze meditatively or wonderingly.

 We take the train in to Boston and buy day passes on the subway. Our first stop is the Harvard campus to visit the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum. I later surprise Mrs. Phred with a stop at the Semitic Museum in the Divinity School.


We've been told that the "glass flowers" collection in Natural History is unique. Perhaps it is, but to me they look just like regular flowers so I leave Mrs. Phred to muse there and move on to look at the insects, minerals and old bones. She later informs me that that is exactly the point; the precision and attention to detail is amazing. I still liked the bugs better.


The Peabody has a definite "Indiana Jones" flavor. There are things here from expeditions to remote places in South America and the Middle East back in the 1930s. The Semitic Museum has exhibits of Ancient Cyprus, Nuzi and the Hurrians and The Houses of Ancient Israel during the Iron Age as well as other small collections.


We have lunch and get back on the subway to visit the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.


The library building is impressive. It's on the Boston Harbor on the flight path for incoming aircraft to Boston International. It's on the campus of the University of Massachusetts.


We've been collecting Presidential Libraries over the past several years, so this visit is mandatory. I like the sailboat display. The sailboat was given to JFK on his 15th birthday by his father, Joe Kennedy, Ambassador to Great Britain. JFK sailed this little boat as long as he lived. JFK visited Berlin, Moscow and London in 1938-39. They have a movie, as you enter the museum, about his life. It's interesting to see him with his eight siblings, smacking a tennis ball at age 20, driving a PT boat in the Solomon Islands or running for his first elected office. He reminds you of Obama in some ways (aside from being born rich and white).


We didn't have time to see the MIT Museum and Campus or the Boston Museum of Fine Arts....Maybe next time.

Boston: Non- Rhoticity

Boston, Massachusetts

 
The traditional Boston accent is non-rhotic; in other words, the phoneme [r] does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant, as in some types of British English. Thus, there is no [r] in words like park [pahk], car [kah], and Harvard [hahvəd].

The train into Boston takes us about 55 minutes. On both the departure and return we get onboard 30 seconds before the train leaves the station. We also purchased a pair of tickets on a Boston sight-seeing trolley, but the first 45 minutes all the trolleys are full so we decide to walk.

Yeah, the train left the station, it had two lights on behind,
Well, the blue light was my baby and the red light was my mind.

We hoof it to the town center. While we are staring at a map, a nice lady stops and gives us a tip on a local basement restaurant. I have chicken farfella. Mrs. Phred has gazpacho soup with a big blob of goat cheese and bread sidedish.


We wander though the Boston Commons, past the State House, up to Beacon Hill, back though the Commons, to the theatre district and then into Chinatown.


We decide to walk some more and do the harbor, the aquarium and the market. All told we walk five hours, maybe ten miles. My heel hurts the whole time. Strangely, this morning it hurts less than it has since we were in Colorado, two months back. Maybe I’m onto something?


We want to see Harvard. I received a letter of acceptance there in 1962. My father was a house-painter and didn’t see how he could swing the cost. My life would have been completely different. No Air force or Viet Nam. No Mrs. Phred. No son or grandchildren. Maybe I would be running for President now? Maybe not.


I’ve got a walking plan that includes Harvard and ten museums. The plan only requires a mile of walking.