fauxklore

I spent the first weekend of the year in New Bedford, Massachusetts. My primary reason for the trip was the annual Moby Dick Marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Why? Well, I fell in love with Melville’s writing my senior year of high school, when we read “Bartleby the Scrivener” in our Great Books class. That led me to read more of his work, leading to Moby Dick. Having read it a couple of times, I consider it THE great American novel. When I learned about the annual marathon reading of it in New Bedford, I decided that was something I had to experience. I had made plans to go some years ago, but the weather didn’t cooperate and a snowstorm down here kept me from flying up for it. I did watch bits and pieces of the lifestream the past couple of years, but still wanted to go in person. This year, the stars aligned. So armed with warm clothing and my copy of the book, I flew north.


I’d been to New Bedford for the better part of a day back in 1998, but I still decided to fly in a day earlier than I needed to, mostly because you never know how travel will go in the winter. Fortunately, the flight was fine. When I got to BOS, I looked at the schedule for the Peter Pan bus to New Bedford. This isn’t super convenient, since it goes via Hyannis and takes longer than the DAATCO direct bus from South Station, but DAATCO is intended as a commuter service so wouldn’t leave for several hours. So I went to Hyannis, where I needed to change buses. I had a little time to walk around downtown Hyannis, but the weather was chilly and drizzly, so that was far from optimal. (And, of course, my backpack gained weight with every step I took.) I went back to the transportation center and sat down on a bench with a crossword puzzle book to kill time. The bus was delayed, apparently due to a driver shortage, but we did leave Hyannis about a half hour late. I still got to New Bedford at least an hour earlier than the DAATCO bus would have gotten me there. It wasn’t too bad of a walk to my hotel (the Fairfield Inn), with s bit of confusion on my part about exactly where the hotel entrance was. I had a quick dinner and fiddled around on the Internet before going to bed.


I had bought a ticket to the opening dinner and lecture of the Moby Dick Marathon on Friday night, so I had pretty much all day to kill. I decided to walk over to the New Bedford Museum of Glass. This was about a mile up a moderate hill from the hotel. When I got to the museum (which is downstairs in the James Arnold Mansion, home to the Wamsutta Club), nobody was there. I rang the bell several times and tried calling the museum telephone number, but got no answer. I went back upstairs and the Wamsubtta Club receptionist called the proprietor / curator, who came down to meet me, take my $8 admission fee, and show me around the museum. It was definitely worth this minor hassle, since what amounted to a private tour was very informative. The first part of the museum is focused on glass made in New Bedford, which was a major center for art glass in the late 19th century. There are a number of large and spectacular pieces, Some of the things I found most interesting included uranium glass (which glowed under black light) and glass that was shaded by reheating only part of it, changing the amber color to a darker shade. Unfortunately, I didn’t get good pictures of either of those. I did get decent pictures of some other pieces, however.

There was a fashion for Orientalism and it applied to glass, as well as art.



These lamps are beautiful, with the paintings on their interiors of the shades. Definitely something I would love to own one or more of.



My favorite piece in the museum was this glass library by Lucy Lyon. Every piece of it is made of glass, including each of the books.



I also loved a series of pieces by Edris Eckhardt, who invented a technique for drawing with a glass pen and fusing gold leaf between sheets of glass. The museum has several of her stunning works.



This isn’t a huge museum, but it is definitely worth visiting. They have an associated exhibit of glass animals at New Bedford City Hall. That is free to visit. They have pretty much every animal one might imagine. I felt nostalgic since my best friend in high school collected glass animals. Here are a few samples.












I went back to the hotel to rest for a little while before going to the Whaling Museum for the dinner and lecture. The cocktail hour was a good opportunity to meet some of the other attendees. By an interesting coincidence, one of the other people at my table was an MIT alumnus. There were a lot of semi-local attendees, but there were other people who had come from at least as far away as California and Washington State. I was particularly amused by a group of young men who had t-shirts declaring that they were “The (Moby) Dick Heads.” The food was a buffet of Italian food, which was okay, but nothing special. As for the talk, it was given by Aileen Callahan, whose exhibition “Moby Dick in Days of Pestilence and Chaos” was on display in the upper level galleries of the museum. Her art is abstract and the talk helped me understand both her techniques her intentions. It’s definitely a timely topic, but the paintings weren’t really my sort of thing.

I tried to sleep in a bit on Saturday morning, but failed at that. So I ended up going to part of the pre-marathon “Stump the Scholars” session, which featured two teams of experts (The Cods vs. The Clams) answering pre-submitted questions. In short, people can get fairly obsessed about trivia. For example, there was a particularly long discussion about pitchpoling (chapter 84) and whether it is even possible.

There was a little time before the reading started. I used it to do two things. I checked out the scrimshaw exhibit in the museum, because scrimshaw is something I’ve liked since I was taken to the whaling museum in Sag Harbor, New York as a kid. One particularly impressive piece is this violin with scrimshaw fittings.



And I listened to a couple of the Toward the Sea short concerts by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. Those were played by two students from the Berklee Conservatory of Music, Jessica Lynch and Eric Puente. They were quite evocative and enjoyable.



The first part of the marathon reading itself was the extracts that precede the actual novel. For this, the team of experts took turns reading the quotes about whales from the book. Then it was time for the main event. The opening reader was actress Taylor Schilling. The first hour and a half was quite crowded, by the way, and there were even people sitting on the floor. At 1:30, people who had won a drawing for seats went across the street to the Seamen’s Bethel for the chapters set there, culminating in Father Mapple’s sermon. The rest of us went back downstairs to the auditorium, where that part of the reading was live streamed. There was a glitch at the beginning with the microphone being placed too far away from the reader, but it was fixed. We had been handed song sheets and everybody rose to sing along with the hymn. The lecture itself was performed particularly well.

Then everyone went to the gallery we’d been in for the dinner on Friday night for the rest of the reading. Things had thinned out some, so it was easy to snag a good seat. The readers were a mixed bag. Some of them were hesitant, while others were too dramatic. I can’t completely fault people who mispronounce words they’d learned entirely from reading, but one would think that someone who signs up to read Moby Dick publicly would at least look up how to pronounce “leviathan.” There was also considerable disagreement about how to pronounce the name of Queequeg’s idol, Yojo. I heard Yo-Jo, Yo-Ho, and even Yo-Yo! Over the many many hours there was one girl (who appeared to be a teenager) who was nearly inaudible, despite the microphone, but most readers could at least manage to be heard. One person went on for a bit after being told to stop. There was also some confusion over how to handle footnotes. I had my copy of the book to follow along with and spent some time catching up after I took breaks to use the bathroom and to get snacks. (They had a concession stand with various things, most importantly coffee! I suggest bringing granola bars and trail mix.) I also took another break to go downstairs where they were serving chowder and selling beer and talked with a few people, leading to a longer time catching up. I also needed some breaks just to stand up and moe around and stretch, since the folding chairs got fairly uncomfortable after a while. Also, Chapter 40 (“Midnight on the Forecastle”) is presented as a play, complete with sea shanties and dances, which was fun. That was done back down in the auditorium so provided another break.

As the night wore on, the audience thinned out, though there was at least one family who set up sleeping bags in one corner of the room for their children. There were several children at parts of the event and all of them seemed quite well-behaved. (Or, at least, there parents were alert enough to remove them if they were going to be disruptive.) There was one woman who read in French, while the next reader repeated her section in English. (They had a separate Portuguese reading on Saturday afternoon, by the way. I don’t know what parts of the book that entailed.) Early on Sunday morning, you could go down to one of the classrooms and get coffee and malasadas (Portuguese fried dough).

Somewhat to my surprise, I managed to make it through the entire marathon! You could get stamps every four hours on your program and redeem that for a prize, which consisted of a few books (a comic book version of the story, a collection of maritime prints from Melville’s collection, and a book of the Captain’s specific orders to his officers and crew), as well as a magnet. They announced that 1500 people had attended some part of the events, while about 100 completed the marathon.

So was it worth it? For me, yes. I got a renewed appreciation for the book, and, in particular, a good reminder of how funny Melville could be. I also firmly believe that being around people who are passionate about something is always a good way to spend time and this was definitely an event in that category.

On Monday, I walked to the bus station to get the DAATCO bus back to South Station in Boston. While waiting for the bus, I talked with a young man from Dallas who had also come in for the Moby Dick Marathon. He was also a traveler and we had a very nice discussion about various places we’d been. He had also been to the Moby Dick Marathon in Mystic, Connecticut and said this one was better because they don’t have concessions in Mystic.

I think I’d still like to go to the other Moby Dick Marathons. Mystic, Sag Harbor (Long Island), and San Francisco are the ones I know of. Sag Harbor would be the easiest one physically since they break overnight. It’s also a place I like a lot, having gone to the Old Whalers’ Festival there with my family when I was about 9 or 10 years old. But, for now, I’m satisfied.

Celebrity Death Watch: Peggy McKay was an actress, primarily in soap operas. Carol Hall was the composer and lyricist for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Sue Hubbell wrote books about natural history. William Coors was an executive of a company that makes something that passes for beer in Colorado. Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft and then used the money he made to buy sports teams. Todd Bol invented the Little Free Library. Anthea Bell was a translator, notably of the Asterix comic books. Charles Wang owned the New York Islanders. Earl Bakken invented the pacemaker. Dorcas Reilly was a home economist who invented the green bean casserole. Apparently the original recipe card is in the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame.


Jonathan Richman: I fulfilled a musical bucket list item on Saturday night by going to see Jonathan Richman at the 9:30 Club. (Hence, the punning title for this entry.) I was reasonably intelligent and went upstairs right when I got there, enabling me to snag a seat on the balcony level. That and an Irish coffee (hey, it was a cold night out!) made for a relaxing evening.

Anyway, I have listened to Jonathan since maybe 1980 or so, back in the days of the Modern Lovers and his early punk efforts with silly songs like "Pablo Picasso (was never called an asshole)." As time went on, he pretty much focused on acoustic music, apparently to protect his hearing. Every now and then there is some song that completely grabs me and I listen to over and over for hours. "Give Paris One More Chance" (from the album, Her Mystery Not of High Heels and Eye Shadow) was one of those songs and I probably listened to it during every waking moment for three or four days in a row. I have no idea why that song speaks to me so deeply, but it does and I still end up playing it over several times in a row when I listen to that CD. Which is all a bit besides the point, as he did not play it Saturday night.

What he did play ranged from "No One Was Like Vermeer" to "He Gave Us the Wine to Taste" to "People Are Disgusting" to "Dancing at the Lesbian Bar." And songs in French, Spanish, Italian, and what I assume was Sanskrit because it was based on the works of Kabir. Seeing him live, with just Tommy Larkins on drums as accompaniment, I felt a greater appreciation for Jonathan’s actual musicianship. That is, I had usually thought of him as a bit of a novelty act, with some great songs but more known for weird lyrics and concepts. But in person I could appreciate that he really can play the guitar damn well. There are flamenco and jazz influences. And, most of all, he was having fun, as was I.

I am so happy I went to see him and I hope I will get the chance to do so again.

By the way, top of the music bucket list now is Luka Bloom. But he doesn't appear to have anything scheduled that I can get to in the near future. Maybe next year.


Profs and Pints – Origins of Vampires: I like the concept for Profs and Pints, which puts on lectures at bars in the D.C. area. I finally actually made it to one of these Sunday night. The topic was vampires and the speaker, Bruce McClelland, emphasized the linguistic origins of the word, which he said originally referred to outcasts, rather than to the undead. He was rather disorganized, though reasonably interesting. For example, there were reports of flying bags of blood, but nobody could verify them because seeing one would kill you instantly. Most of the evidence for early belief in the undead has to do with mutilation of corpses. Which makes it interesting that he didn’t cite Lawrence Durrell’s account of the burial of a vampire in Corfu (in Prospero’s Cell) but I gathered that his literary knowledge was not up to his knowledge of Slavic languages as he attributed a lot of things to Bram Stoker that Stoker borrowed from John Polidori, who wrote "The Vampyre" nearly 80 years before Dracula. One would expect a vampirologist to be familiar with Polidori.

As an aside, Dracula is not really about the supernatural if you know anything about Stoker’s background. What makes it an interesting book is that Mina, as the modern woman, is the only complete character, while Lucy’s three suitors together each have only one aspect of success. Stoker’s mother was an early feminist and that almost certainly led to his rather conflicted views on femininity. But I digress.

McClelland’s other interesting point was that the association of outcasts with the supernatural came to be associated with live women (witches) in the West versus dead men (vampires and werewolves) in the East. That was something I’d never thought about before.

Overall, even with a few quibbles, it was worth going to the talk. And, as I said, I like the concept behind the event and will certainly try to get to other Profs and Pints lectures in the future.


Don’t Analyze This Dream: I was at some sort of spa. But, instead of staying at the main hotel, I was at some cheaper accommodations on the other side of the town square. There was a fountain in the middle of the square and a lot of spa-goers were standing around, dressed in white bathrobes, watching the fountain.