Boston VI: Yale

Unfulfilled dreams.  I wanted so badly, as a high school student, to attend Stanford University.  My parents were vehemently opposed, afraid I'd go "berserk" in that 1960's time of drugs and war protests.  "Go away to graduate school instead," they urged.  I married at 20 and went to law school at the University of Arizona, because that's where Dave and I were.  I've never attended a big name school, but I enjoy traipsing their campuses--the University of Chicago, Harvard, Yale--and celebrating as my descendants get educated and, sometimes, have the luxury of attending big name schools.  On June 21, 2022, we visited New Haven, Connecticut, and I enjoyed, vicariously, the thrill of upscale academia.
 

We took a walking tour of the Yale campus, along with several high school students applying to Yale next fall.  The tour leader was a charming Yale sophomore with a passion for music (he played three instruments, sang in the Yale choir, and played in the Yale orchestra), who was majoring in some variation of psychology.  “There are 80 possible majors at Yale, and each student can tailor them to what he’s interested in, so the actual number of degrees is almost limitless,” he said. 

The university was chartered in colonial days.  Many buildings are stone, neo-Gothic castles, with, of course, ivy.

Our guide told us about Yale's unique "college" dormitories.  All freshmen are assigned to a specific "college" to live in during their four years, similar to the system of Cambridge University, in Britain.  Each college has its own library, cafeteria, live-in professor, and distinctive features, such as a particularly good gym.  Students develop great loyalty to their own college, a town within the university.

We paused by the statue of Nathan Hale, of the Yale class of 1773.  "He wasn't a very good spy," sniffed our guide.  "He was captured within a week."

The leafy quadrants were graced with statues of former presidents and donors.  Rubbing the shoe of this statue is supposed to give good luck.  Students cluster around it before exam week.

We also visited the highly rated Yale Center for British Art.

I loved this gilded painting of Queen Elizabeth I.

Next to Queen Elizabeth was a painting of her alleged lover, Robert Dudley.

There were paintings by Anthony Van Dyke, from Holland, who became a popular society painter in London during the 1600s.

Elihu Yale, for whom the university is named, was a donor, rather than a founder.  The purchasing of naming rights is still alive and well at U.S. universities. 

During the 1700s Englishmen made the "Grand Tour" to Italy to get cultured, and Canaletto, a prominent Italian painter, made the "Grand Tour" to Britain to paint Warwick Castle.

Sir Joshua Reynolds was another 17th century British painter who portrayed this popular actress.

There was also modern British art at the museum, including this gripping scene of protests in Kviv, Ukraine, in 2014, after the president veered away from Europe.

We also visited the Yale Museum of Art, with its excellent collection of art from various cultures and periods.

I paused to admire this statue of Abraham Lincoln.

I spent most of my time in the museum's Africa collection, with strange, roughly hewn statues like those with which my mother decorated her family room.  I am eagerly awaiting our trip through eight West African countries next year.

Boston V: Mystic Seaport

In our guidebook, Mystic Seaport Museum was listed as the most-visited attraction in Connecticut.   This was my second visit, on June 19, 2022, and I liked it even better than when I had visited with Camille and her children many years ago.

 

Before entering the living history museum, Dave and I wandered through the port town of Mystic, on Long Island Sound.  In the 1800s, it had once been a major ship-building city.  It was now a charming tourist spot, with artsy stores, ice cream parlors, and lots of boats and yachts.  Dave bought himself another "black dog" brand t-shirt.

I sorted through the whale-patterned plates, cute fish pillows and earrings, and blue placemats, mugs, and bowls.

I brought home a lovely, hand-thrown, purple pottery serving bowl.

The treasure of Mystic Seaport is the last remaining wood whaling ship, which was built in 1834 and used until the 1920s.

We climbed aboard and wondered, once again, at the courage of men who rode such small boats across the big seas.

This volunteer was an old Navy man, who still wanted to be around ships.

The Seaport's ship-building division is presently restoring an old ferry and a Viking boat, and it just finished the restoration of the Mayflower II.  

We listened as a docent told the story of the Gerda, the boat used by Danish partisans during World War II to ferry 98% of Denmark’s Jews across the sea to Sweden. Denmark was occupied by the Nazis, but Sweden was not.

We wandered through a number of shops and museums, including collections of scrimshaw, decorations for ship bows, and model ships, as well as shops showing how rope was made and how blacksmiths forged metal parts for ships.

This was a general store, selling supplies for ships.

This was a forge for metal ship parts.

And this was a "cooper", or barrel maker.

Each ship had a decorative sculpture on its bow.  Many were works of art.

 

After walking past all the ships, shops, and museums, we rode a boat around the harbor, as the skipper described Mystic Seaport's treasures from a different vantage point.

These boys were part of a summer camp, learning all about ships and boats.

Dave and I relaxed and ate dinner at a lobster pound along Long Island Sound.

We ordered the "captain's sampler", with clam chowder, shrimp cocktail, a bucket of steamed mussels, and a lobster.  Ymm!

And we enjoyed yet another memorable seascape.

Boston IV: Father's Day , with Homemade Rolls

This photo of Camille reminds me of the photo of my Aunt Sally, below, holding a homemade pie.  Aunt Sally was the ultimate cook and hostess, warmly welcoming family, friends, and strangers into her home.  Aunt Sally held her pie, as an offering to her guests, with the same expression of expectation and generosity as Camille held her rolls.  Dave and I were well fed, physically and emotionally, as we celebrated Father's Day with Camille and her family on June 19, 2022.  Some day I'll find the original photo of Aunt Sally, floating around the internet, which shows the whole pie!

 

Steve and Dave were the honored fathers on Father's Day.  We attended church at Camille and Steve's Belmont ward, where we heard talks extolling the wisdom and goodness of fathers.  We congregated in the Ebert home to recognize Steve and Dave.  Except that I didn't capture Dave in any of the photographs of the dinner.  Woops!

As dinner was being prepared, I checked out Camille and Steve's comfortable apartment.  They bought their Boston furniture second hand or heavily discounted, since they planned to use it for just the year they spent in Boston.  Still, their living room was stylish.

They have a stylish dog, as well.  Ollie has the body I want some day--lean and sleek.  He also has my red hair.

Ezra helped prepare dinner, supervised by Ollie.

It was a treat to spend time with Emilie, temporarily home from her business consulting job in Dallas with Oliver Wyman.  Emilie will be back in Boston soon to attend Harvard Business School.

Steve identifies himself to his little nieces and nephews as "The Joker."  He gave me some great "Joker" looks as I snapped his photo.

Mia is entering junior high this fall, and is already a pretty young lady.

Sophia will be a senior at Olympus High School this fall.  All of Camille's daughters are good cooks, and Sophia is an especially good baker.  The Father's Day dessert was a toll house pie, made by the Ebert daughters.

The Eberts' Sacrament Meeting didn't begin until 2 p.m., so I spent the morning overdosing on art.

I made a second visit to the Museum of Fine Arts and spent three hours working my way through the three floors of the new American Wing.  In the basement, there was a stunning collection of prehistoric sculptures and jewelry from Central and South America.  Ever since Dave and I visited Chitzen-Itza and other Mayan ruins many years ago, I have been fascinated with Mayan art and the other prehistoric cultures of Latin America.

The museum even had a collection of the pure gold jewelry and art objects which were prized in early Latin America and which lured the Spanish conquistadores to steal it all.

The Museum of Fine Arts also has a first rate collection of colonial American art, including this painting of Paul Revere by John Copley.

John Copley and other prominent colonial American painters lived in Boston.  This is a painting of John Copley's family.

The museum had many other famous American paintings.  I believe this one was painted by society artist, John Singer Sargent.  It is repeatedly analyzed in art history textbooks.

The top floor of the American Wing included modern paintings from all over the Americas.

I love this sculpture from the 1920s or 1930s.  It looks as if it adorned a grave.

One of my favorite modern American painters is Kehinde Wiley.  He paints young black men, using poses and backgrounds which are "classic" or "heroic," but which aren't usually used with young black men.  He challenges our stereotypes.  The background of this painting looks like wallpaper from a wealthy home.

There has been much brouhaha, lately, over how gender should be categorized and who can use what bathrooms.  Next to the museum bathrooms were posters discussing the position the museum is taking in the controversy.

One restroom was designated for "Women (self-identified)" and the other for everyone else!