Departures: Among the Yankees: Part 4

Summary: Plymouth... Trespassing... Summary judgement of a stranger... MIT has two pipe organs... Keels aplenty... Athenaea... Sort of like Black Flag... Tea and revolutions... I have seen the Conditional Transfer Breakpoint Selector... Faience and silver... Breakdown of basic morality... Cussing and culture... You can't handle the truth...

How the White People Got In

1999.04.26 MON Plymouth

The first thing you see when you get out of the commuter rail station at Plymouth is the Wal-Mart. I walked past the Wal-Mart and a couple of miles down the road to get to the touristy part of town.

Photo: Mayflower II

I visited the Mayflower II, a restoration of the Mayflower. It may or may not be a good restoration--people weren't entirely sure what the Mayflower looked like.

I spent a few seconds in steerage and started coughing. The guide there warned me that it was very musty, and that lots of people with allergies couldn't handle it. I held my breath.

The ship didn't have a steering wheel--instead it had a steering staff. The steering staff is attached to the rudder. It's not a solid connection, though--it's a swinging joint. Specifically it's called a rowel, just like the turning mechanism on spinning spurs like in the cowboy movies.

At Plymouth Rock, I either wrote some notes or a poem; I'm not sure which.

Raked sand, pebbled with coins
The rock, repaired with scars showing
Someone has carved "1620" into it
Yet still it hunkers here

When I was there, a lot of trash had washed up on the beach next to Plymouth Rock. Make of that what you will.

Photo: Plymouth Rock, trash

My guidebook had recommended against getting food at the overpriced touristy places across the street from Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower II. Instead, it recommended the "Sandwich & Deli," which served rather unappealing sandwiches. I guess I should be glad that the book steered me away from the overpriced touristy places--if I'd had to pay a lot of money for such a sandwich, I would have been doubly disappointed.

On my way back to the train, I stopped at Pilgrim Path, which had much better food. So good that I was able to finish off a second lunch. When I arrived, there were two tables available--one by the door to the bathroom, one not. I chose not. I didn't really mind the idea of sitting next to the bathroom door. But given a choice, everything else being equal, I'll take the other choice. Only when I sat down did I realize that the main view from my chosen table was of a fellow patron's butt crack. Which just goes to show something.

A Walk on the Beach

Instead of the road, to reach the train station I walked North along the beach. I walked past a breakwater. It looked like a good place to walk out into the bay. But there was a lady already walking along out there. It looked like a place one might go if one wanted to be alone, so I instead continued along the shore, frightening a rat that had been hiding between breakwater stones. I walked along the beach. When I reached the place where water was flowing from the sewage treatment plan, there was a way to get over it, so I did.

I walked further North along the beach. It was a beach of stones. People have pointed out that Plymouth Rock not only greeted travelers, but is itself a traveler. It's evidence for the theory of continental drift--it looks like something from Europe or Africa. It doesn't look like other stones on the beach. Or rather, there are some stones there that it does look like, but most of the stones are about fist-sized. They're just the right size for twisting ankles, so I devoted most of my attention to the ground as I walked.

Ocean Spray had a "Cranberry Gallery" open to the public, but I didn't visit. On the shore by the Gallery was one of those coin-op binoculars, which I used to scan the local shore. To the North I saw a tower with some strange bit of statuary on top--it was very frustrating. I was able to see clearly enough to realize that I was looking at something unusual. However, I could not see clearly enough to figure out what I was looking at. Eventually I gave up and kept walking North.

I walked over rocky patches of beach, over sandy patches of beach. There is a distinctive clink which is the sound of a gull dropping a shell onto rocks to break it open. Looking at the sand, you learn to spot the airholes of buried mollusks.

Perhaps half a mile North of the touristy area, a double-row of old pilings crept out into the water. I was thinking that perhaps I should snap a picture of this ruin, but before I could get close, a quartet of creative-looking types had scurried up with a tripod, a camera, and a baby. Obviously, I'd been right to think that this was a good place for photos. I walked on, leaving the professionals to their work.

I continued walking. There were some houses with back porches facing the beach. A man on his back porch stood, gazing out at the water. He stretched out his arms and roared. He looked down at the beach, noticed me, gulped, looked embarrassed. I don't think many people walk that rocky beach.

I Make a Terrible Burglar

I kept walking North. I was starting to get worried. Now the way inland was blocked by fences, by "No Trespassing" signs. Would I be able to reach the train station from shore? Would I have to backtrack? Would I end up missing my train just because I'd taken the scenic route? Scrambling up on some rocks to get over some outflow, I saw a gap in a fence, and through it some distinctive brick buildings I'd seen near the train station--they'd made up a sort of mall. There weren't any "No Trespassing" signs, so I made my way over, went through the fence.

I found myself standing on a decrepit road, looking at old factory buildings with broken windows. "Am I supposed to be here?" I was checking out the lay of the land, figuring whether I would do better to head inland here or continue on. Then the 4x4 vehicle came around a corner, headed up towards me, pulled up next to me, stopped.

The security guard inside asked me, "What are you--can I help you?" I asked him if he could tell me how to get to the train station from here. He said I could keep going along the decrepit road.

He asked, "Where did you come from?"

"The beach."

"Huh. Where'd you get on the beach?"

"Down around Plymouth Rock and all that."

"It's just that we're trying to keep--we--you know, you shouldn't really be in here."

"Oh wow. I'm rilly sorry." I ducked, bobbed my head. I was Mister Embarrassed.

He shook his head. "It's just..."

"Yeah. I should head up this way?"

"Yeah."

"I'll do that. Thanks a lot."

I didn't linger, though I would have liked to. If I'd lingered, I would have felt like I was breaking my word to the guard. Still, the old factory buildings were really rather scenic. I walked slowly, snapping pictures as I went.

Type A/Type B

I was soon back at the train station with time to spare. I had time to go to Wal-Mart. I'd never actually been to a Wal-Mart. I decided that was an experience that could wait a little longer. I walked on to the station and sat.

I was sitting and reading at the Plymouth train station when a car pulled up and deposited Jimmy Duffy. He shuffled over and sat down on the bench next to me. He asked me where I was from.

"San Francisco."

He asked me what I did.

"Right now, I'm out of work. I write computer manuals, though, so I'm not too worried about finding another job."

"Yeah, you're a Northern Californian, so I guess you'd be laid back."

I reared back. I don't really think of myself as laid back. Someone once told me that there were two types of people--type A and type B. Type A people worry a lot and run around, frantically trying to get things done. Type B people are laid back--they relax and take things as they come. Type A people tend to get heart attacks. The person telling me this seemed to imply that people should try to relax more to avoid getting heart attacks.

I look at it a different way. There are people who will relax and let things fall apart, who fail to meet their obligations. Then there are the people who were relying on the laid back people, who realize that everything's going to fall apart as a result. These are the people who get heart attacks. The laid back people are killing them.

Jimmy Duffy wasn't winning any points with me by calling me laid back.

I gulped, "Well, I wouldn't say..."

But he had put on a Walkman and was now rocking back and forth, perhaps to some raucous beat. I went back to my book.

A few minutes later, Jimmy Duffy straightened, alarmed. He pulled off his headphones, pulled out a celphone, dialed, started talking.

He was calling up people to warn them about a computer virus, a computer virus he'd just heard about on the radio. Apparently he was talking to people at Boston College. He gave his name. He was talking to people who knew something about the computer lab there. He was breathless, as if warning of something dire. He received encouraging news--yes, there was some computer virus rampaging about, but it had only affected a couple of systems. It really wasn't a big crisis.

It occurred to me that perhaps Northern Californians might seem laid back to Jimmy Duffy because we don't start panicking each time we hear reports of some killer computer virus reported on the radio.

Sanctioned, Unsanctioned Tourist Activities

1999.04.27 TUE Cambridge (MIT)

Tuesday morning, I took the official tour of MIT. It was on this tour that I found out that I'd missed seeing Building 20 by just a couple of weeks. If I understood the tour guide correctly, then the new building was going to be the new Bill Gates building. Even doing a good deed, that man had found a way to decrease my quality of life. When the tour passed through a large auditorium, I saw some pipes. I asked, "Hey, does this place have a pipe organ?" The tour guide's eyes sparkled. "Yes. MIT has two pipe organs." I had a question I couldn't phrase, a question seeking a correlation between interests, whether the same students wanted to maintain the pipe organs--if those same students got involved in monitoring complicated systems. But I didn't know enough to phrase the question.

I stopped in at the MIT Press Bookstore. I went kind of wild on the book shopping, picking up an autographed copy of Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing; a history of IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems by Emerson W. Pugh, Lyle R. Johnson, and John H. Palmer; Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change by Wiebe E. Bijker; and an MIT Press t-shirt. So that was good.

Then I snuck into building 48 to look at the towing tank. The tank itself wasn't so much to look at. There was a big pool. There were tanks of stuff. There was sealant. Out in the hall, though, there were model keels, a torpedo-tube-looking thingy, and dangly floater balls.

Indexes and Interiors

1999.04.27 TUE Boston (near the State House)

I took a tour of the Boston Athenaeum. I'd told 'Shreck that I would visit the Athenaeum. He'd seemed surprised. He'd said that New Deal was renting space from the Athenaeum. I'd promised that I would be careful. When I'd dressed for the day, I'd left my Geoworks jacket behind, lest I be spotted. Later on, I would find out that New Deal was renting space from the Cambridge Athenaeum, not the Boston Athenaeum. My skulking was gratuitous.

The Boston Athenaeum looks like it does in books. I guess I needn't have taken the tour. Just a couple of weeks after my visit, it was going to have some massive remodeling done. I guess my visit was well timed. I always might have wondered if it looked like its pictures, otherwise.

The tour guide seemed kind of strange to me. I think the Boston Athenaeum is very pretty and pleasant. Our tour guide was not so impressed. She said that the Boston Public Library was much prettier. Later, I would go see the Boston Public Library. It had some impressive art, but it's all out on the stairways, in the hallways. The Athenaeum's got gorgeous reading rooms, bolstering scholars, giving them the strength to wrestle with lengthy tomes. Here is art for a purpose. Libraries shouldn't keep all the art in the hallways. That just encourages everyone to walk between rooms.

She also gave Cutter, an early Athenaeum librarian, credit for creating the first indexing system that didn't need to be re-numbered with each new acquisition. I did some studying on the subject, and am not so sure that he should get such a credit. I found Cutter's history somewhat interesting. He was a contemporary of Dewey's (of the Dewey decimal system), and theirs is a tale of duelling standards with echoes in the present time: Librarians of the day held off on adopting a standard, waiting to see which would win; FUD was exchanged.

1999.04.27 TUE Boston (Back Bay)

Later that day I went to the Boston Public Library so that I could compare its art and architecture with that of the Athenaeum. They had a little museum area, which at the time was showing some art by Bostonian artists living in Europe. In 1941, John Wilson did some stuff which pleasantly reminded me of the cityscapes of Gilbert Hernandez' "Errata Stigmata" comic.

As I was looking at art, the stillness of the library was broken. There was a *clack* *clack* *clack* *clack* *clack* *clack* coming down the hall. I couldn't figure out what it could be. Then a woman emerged from the hall into the room, wearing shoes with big wooden soles. I started to snicker, quickly turned away, but not quickly enough. I'd been spotted.

"I should have worn quieter shoes today."

"Mmph. Maybe."

Post-punk Ubiquity

1999.04.28 WED Boston (Chinatown)

I had breakfast at the South Street Diner. This was a chrome diner. The grill was visible behind the counter, and I sat at the counter for a better view. In the kitchen area, a necktie hung from a pipe, perhaps a sort of monument.

My server asked me, "What's that shirt?"

"MIT Press," I replied. He'd looked like he wanted to ask something else--but when he heard my answer, he slumped. I continued: "It looks sort of like Black Flag, only different."

He brightened, replied, "Yeah, I was just gonna say it looks like... I sure haven't heard them in a while."

"You ain't kidding."

"You never hear them now. You hear Henry Rollins, but no Black Flag."

I had the banana pancakes. They were glorious.

Revolution is So a Tea Party

1999.04.28 WED Boston (Fort Point Channel)

I walked past the Beaver II, a reconstruction of the ship involved in the Boston Tea party. It looked like a tourist trap--there was a place where you could get your picture taken next to an old-looking tea crate. Whoop-dee-doo. I decided to skip it; I didn't think much about it.

Weeks later, I'd think about it again. My hands and feet were glommed on to the nose of my friend Veronica's kayak, and my butt was dipping in the water, for I was taking a kayak lesson which included practicing what to do if you fall out of your kayak. My rented kayak bobbed upside down in the water while my friend Veronica set about righting it. To do this, she maneuvered the nose of my kayak so that it was close to the middle of hers--where she was sitting. Thus she was able to get ahold of the kayak close to its axis so that she could turn it over easily.

When the nose of my kayak was close to the middle of hers, they formed a "T," and this maneuver we learned is known as a "T Rescue." As I watched her roll my kayak right-side-up, I noticed that the "T Rescue," like that historical "Tea Party," leads to a revolution. I wondered if I should mention this at the time. I decided to skip it. Instead, I decided to examine my toenails and decide if I should clip them.

Ferrite Cores:East Coast::Mummy Beads:Egypt

1999.04.28 WED Boston (South Boston)

I went to the Computer Museum.

I saw part of the old Whirlwind system. It was made up of several boards. One board was about 20cm x 70cm. It held 8 small vacuum tubes and one large vacuum tube. It was labeled "Program Counter Serial #4". I guess they needed at least three other boards that size just to keep track of the Program Counter register on this machine. I wondered at the total size of such a device, at its expense. Surely a troupe of abacus operators would have been cheaper, smaller.

I looked at the control panel of a UNIVAC. One switch was labelled "Conditional Transfer Breakpoint Selector". Oh yeah.

I beheld the yellow-beige plastic of a System/360, live. I saw COBOL's gravestone, and prayed that it be put to use soon.

One exhibit was a mocked-up "hacker's garage" of the 1970s. Among other things, it featured an Altair, a teletype, and a copy of Herb Alpert's "South of the Border".

The main thing I wanted to see at the Computer Museum was the giant computer. I wanted to type by jumping from key to key on its giant keyboard. They keyboard's a mockup, doesn't do anything. I was pretty disappointed.

Still, the history section was pretty cool, if you're into that sort of thing. Which I am.

High-stakes Art Interpretation

1999.04.28 WED Boston (Fenway)

My next stop was the Isabella Stuart Gardner museum. This museum was set up by Ms. Gardner, and she had some particular ideas of how the museum should be organized. Nothing in the museum was to change--nothing was to move, no new acquisitions. She didn't want any interpretive text cluttering up the place. Culturally uncultured fellow that I am, I had only the vaguest idea of what I was looking at. This hampered my appreciation--or perhaps unleashed it. Ms. Gardner said, "Don't spoil a good story by telling the truth," and so I started making up my own interpretive text for the exhibits.

• "They killed a whole whale just to get the ivory for this bookmark."
• "This cabinet's contents represent the cycle of birth and death. The silver ostrich egg holder (itself in the form of an ostrich), suggests the form of life encoded in life's vessel. Surrounded by muted silver pieces, the bright blue faience ushebti warrior draws the attention, as if out of place. This tomb relic's sheer garishness reminds us of the upcoming interruption: death."
• "Crafted of wrought iron, we have the world's first go-go cage."
• "In Cabinet A are letters and seals of celebrities of the day. Cabinet B holds those of statesmen. Cabinet C, those of artists. Cabinet D, those of people with terrible handwriting."

Some Gödellian graffiti artist had placed little signs on pieces of antique furniture, signs saying, "Place no object here".

This Modern World

1999.04.28 WED Boston (Back Bay)

I got a late lunch at the Kebab 'n' Curry which was good despite its name. I picked up comics at Newbury Comics. I sat and read comics in the Public Garden for a while. It was very pleasant.

On the way back to the hotel, I saw lots of people aggressively jaywalking, which I was getting used to. The activity at one intersection jarred me, however--I saw pedestrians jaywalking and blocking an ambulance in the process. This ambulance had its lights and sirens going, the whole nine yards, but these people were in such a hurry that they were blocking its progress.

This shook me. I hung back, didn't hamper the ambulance's path, peer pressure be damned.

When the ambulance was past, I continued on. I wondered what it meant when people cared so little about one another that they wouldn't wait a couple of seconds to help a community member in danger.

As I was thinking this, I walked past a man. This man was lying on the sidewalk, crying softly. I didn't do a thing to help him.

Everything Goes with Hot Sauce

1999.04.28 WED Boston (South End)

'Shreck and I were eating dinner at Jae's. They had a tofu-based bi bim bap. (People ask me if I, having become a vegetarian, miss meat. I don't, I guess. But I miss some kinds of Korean food. I miss bi bim bap. If it's made right, you can't even taste the meat--the flavor of the hot sauce overpowers it. Jae's served up tofu with hot sauce, and it was mighty fine. The world needs more restaurants willing to experiment with vegetarian Korean food. Sorry, what was the question?) 'Shreck let me try a sip of his Guiness. I don't like beer, but it turned out that I liked Guiness.

'Shreck said that he'd been a victim of road rage. He'd been driving. Some car up ahead had been stalled. Actually, it wasn't stalled, the driver was talking on a celphone. 'Shreck had driven around the stopped car. This upset the driver of the stopped car. In fact, when 'Shreck stopped at a light, the driver of that car (which had meanwhile unstopped and caught up) got out, walked over to 'Shreck's car, opened up 'Shreck's door and started yelling at him: he was going to beat 'Shreck up, 'Shreck had better get out of the car right now, blah blah blah. 'Shreck had dialed 911 on his celphone (though he hadn't pushed the send button, and the maniac backed off.

Upward with the Arts

1999.04.28 WED Boston (In Between Places)

We were walking North when I laughed at the banner. 'Shreck asked what was so funny.

"It's--Dude, they never say 'Boston Symphony Orchestra'. It's always 'BSO'. They never say 'Museum of Fine Arts'. On the, like, shopping bags, on the posters, it's always 'MFA'."

"Yeah?"

"Dude, the whole time I'm here, I'm thinking of all these people going to go see the BullShit Orchestra and the MotherFuckin' Arts museum."

"Yeah."

"And maybe that means they got the right attitude or the wrong attitude, y'know?"

"Yeah. Exactly."

1999.04.28 WED Boston (Back Bay)

'Shreck wanted some new music, and we were soon back at Newbury Comics. I was full up on comics, but was in the grip of consumer fever. "Dude, should I get a Black Flag t-shirt? I don't know anything about their music, but it would contrast nicely with this M.I.T. Press shirt."

"Sure, man, then you'd be like all the other people with Black Flag t-shirts who never actually listened to the band."

"Dude. Good point."

It was then that I noticed that this establishment was selling candy cigarettes over the counter. I had not seen this since my youth. Perhaps a year earlier, I'd had a hankering to taste candy cigarettes. I'd looked at various stores, had found nothing. I'd eventually discovered that like other wares for the depraved, it was available almost nowhere other than the internet. Here was a store that would prove me wrong. Here was a place that would sell me candy cigarettes. I bought about eight packs.

Soon we were back on Newbury Street.

"Dude, That building--did that used to be M.I.T.?"

"I don't know, man. I know it used to be in Boston."

"Yeah, dude. That duck tour guy, I think we were around here when he pointed out which building it was."

"Well, man, it's a restaurant now."

That's when the rat ran out of the bushes, across the sidewalk in front of us, and into the street.

"Dude, aggh!"

"Yeah, man."

A woman was walking towards us, coming the other way. She'd seen it, too. She asked, "Was that a rat?"

'Shreck answered, "Nope. It was a chipmunk," in a don't-you-worry voice.

I said, "It was a rat."

She nodded. Everyone kept walking.

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