Restorations times four

For the past few years, Fleet Bank had sponsored free admission to selected museums in the Northeast for their customers during the month of May. Recently, Bank of America took over Fleet, but has continued the museum program.

Although the past week was rainy, we were fast running out of May, so we headed for New England anyway. It turned out to be good for us because the rain kept most (sane?) tourists away and we had no lines and more time to discuss things and philosophize with docents and other museum personnel. The weather did turn for the better toward the end of the week, but there were no crowds.

Although we didn't take our camera, there are lots of photos in the clickable links that are better than we could take and have better looking people in them.


Mystic Seaport is a re-creation of an 18th century ship-building and whaling village situated on coastal Connecticut's Mystic River. Most of the buildings are original, but came from elsewhere. As we knew that rain was predicted for the week, we were prepared and were able to visit the village in soggy comfort. The rain enhanced our visit by keeping the number of visitors down and this allowed us to get into the 18th century mood without having the t-shirt and shorts set with their ice cream-dripping children crowding the shops and work buildings.

In addition to the buildings, there are several historic, or at least very old, ships and boats which one can board and explore. With crowds down, we had plenty of time to chat with the docents. [They're a captive audience.]

The docents were dressed in period costume, but the nose ring worn by the young lady in the printshop was most likely not an 18th style for New England women.




The Charles W. Morgan, the oldest surviving wooden whaling vessel, lurched in the wind while we were aboard, giving Sarah a start. She is not happy being aboard a ship. She considers it the same as visiting a hardware store, with the added chance of drowning. [I don't know why she wants to go on a cruise.]




Watching the old crafts is always interesting. We had the opportunity to see coopers making barrels in several restorations this trip.


After a traditional dinner of broiled cod, we headed northeast to Boston. We had spent a week in Boston last fall and were there only to see the J.F.K. Presidential Library.

The building's multi-story atrium overlooking the water was impressive. The permanent exhibit takes one through J.F.K.'s presidential years as one stands on the 'floor' of the nominating convention, wanders through 1960's style streets with campaign posters, and watches segments of the Kennedy-Nixon television debates.

A section resembling a White House corridor and the Oval Office explain some of the most significant actions undertaken by President Kennedy during his term in office. Little is displayed about his assassination.

A side exhibit delves into his relationship with and the actions of both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

A special temporary exhibit of JFK's war experiences is at the entrance. It provided us with insight into his exploits in the Pacific Theater of WW II and of the PT 109 event.

As the library was an indoor activity, the outside rain didn't bother us, but watching the wind-driven surf crash over the sea wall from the warmth and safety of the atrium was an added attraction.

As the library didn't fill our day, and not wanting to have to walk around rainy Boston, we headed north to Salem, MA and the Peabody Essex Museum.

The newly redone PEM is one of the largest museums in New England and houses the largest collection of trade items from Asia. We were here last fall, but I am still amazed at the intricate ivory work and other trade items of the Orient.

The current temporary exhibit is of contemporary artists of the Caribbean I found some of the works thought-provoking, many just seemed a waste of materials. One of the exhibits, child-like paintings on the pages of an old atlas, is the first showing of a work that was created five years ago. I'm not sure why this, or any museum, would want to show it. The exhibition closes June 5th. You can visit it on line by clicking here.

An interesting feature of this museum is a multi-generational home used by a Chinese family for several hundred years that was brought from the Orient and reconstructed in the museum's courtyard. See the Yin Yu Tang house by clicking here.

Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, New Hampshire was the furthest destination of this trip. The rain stopped shortly after we arrived, but the restoration was filled with vermin. After about an hour, the vermin got onto their fleet of yellow buses and went back to school and left the town almost empty of visitors. This, again, gave us the opportunity to interact freely with the docents. The docents were also relieved that the 350+ children had left.

This small community, which was established in the late 17th century, was saved from Urban Renewal in the 1960s. I've visited here several times beginning in 1967. Each visit sees more homes and shops revitalized and opened to the public. Each building is decorated and furnished to represent a particular era. Costumed guides are in many of the buildings telling stories as if they were the inhabitants.

'Mrs. Sculley' sat at the 1943 kitchen table in the home attached to a grocery store knitting socks for her nephew in the navy as she told us us of the hardships of war-time rationing. 'Mrs. Shapiro,' in her 1905 kitchen, told of the experiences of the Russian-Jewish immigrants in Puddle Dock, as the area was known.

A home used by Daniel Webster and one built by a former governor of New Hampshire are here, as well as the large homes of wealthy sea captains. Life was not easy for the prosperous, either. A wealthy sea captain spent more than two years at sea on a voyage to China, while his wife was home alone (he hoped).

As this was mostly a restorations trip, we visited Old Sturbridge Village on the way home and spent the afternoon again visiting old houses. Something new at Old Sturbridge, and, for Sarah, most interesting, were the two lambs that were born the day before. [I don't know if the lambs were of such interest to Sarah because they were little and cute, or just not musty and old. She may be reaching her limit of restorations.]

The lambs were being bottle-fed and were still unsteady on their spindly legs. Sarah visited them several times. While the weather was good, we saw few visitors here, but it was late in the day. We were the last people out. If we had dawdled some, we would have gotten locked in and would have had to subsist on molasses cookies and lamb chops.

In Worcester, MA, we visited the Higgins Armory Museum. I thought that it was going to a museum in an armory. It was, for me, even better. It's a museum of armor. In hugh halls designed to resemble rooms in an ancient European castle, are displays of weapons, armor, and other knightly paraphernalia. As an added attraction, the well stocked gift shop had reasonable prices.

Our last restoration of the trip was Hancock's Shaker Village. The Shakers were a late 18th century offshoot sect of the Quakers that planned Utopian societies built around community work and ownership, religion, and celibacy. The 17 Shaker villages were like monasteries and nunneries, but without the walls. Men and women lived in the same building, but on separate sides of each floor, reached by separate stairs. They ate on separate sides of the dinning hall, as well. The Shakers reached their peak (about 6,000) prior to the Civil War and continued into the later 1900s. Taking in converts and orphans kept their numbers up. Villages began to decline and closed in the late 1800s. The village at Hancock closed in the 1960s. A single village in Sabbathday Lake, Maine, was the last community and may still be open. Any takers?

The Shakers are best known for their maple boxes and utilitarian furniture. They did not shun modern technology, but were unable to complete with increased competition from factories. I'll bet that the celibacy thing was a downer, too.

We visited here once before ,about two years ago in the late fall. Costumed guides and crafts-people are here from Memorial Day weekend through the early fall. The weather was great, but visitors were few. Take a 'virtual tour' by clicking here.