Skip to main content

New England Reflections (Cont.): The Platypus Travels Part XXXII

There's a place in Massachusetts called Old Sturbridge Village.  It's a recreation of an early nineteenth century New England town composed of actual buildings from the period.  Interpreters staff the park helping visitors to understand what life was like in the antebellum North.  This is the world that produced Alcott, Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Whitman, Melville, Bulfinch, and Hawthorne.  It's a pattern of life that's left its ghost all over the New England countryside.  Take a look at how many towns have at their old center the village green with its Congregational church at one end and its Episcopal church at the other complete with burial ground.  The old colonial architecture still holds sway in the building plans of the houses, those that don't simply date from the colonial period, that is.  Sure, the downtown will be a glorious hodgepodge of Victorian brick, but get away from the old train tracks and the ghosts of the old mills and you'll see it.

My family used to love going to Old Sturbridge Village.  Mom and Dad were eager to go on our last little trip and we were happy to oblige.  Below, you can see a few snapshots of this special place.  Places form people.  No matter how rough the Yankee exterior may be, this is what is at its heart.











 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

California's Gods: Strange Platypus(es)

We've noticed lately a strange Californian dialectical twist: there, freeways take the definite article.  In other parts of the country one speaks of I 91 or 45 North.  In California, there's The 5, The 405, The 10.  Each of these freeways has its own quirks, a personality of sorts.  They aren't just stretches of pavement but presences, creatures that necessitate the definite article by their very individuality and uniqueness.  They are the angry gods to be worked, placated, feared, for without them life in California as we know it would cease.  Perhaps that's fitting for a land whose cities are named for saints and angels.  Mary may preside over the new pueblo of our lady of the angels, but the freeways slither like gigantic serpents through the waste places, malevolent spirits not yet trampled under foot.
9 comments
Read more

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...
3 comments
Read more