They do this regularly.
Here’s the video:
Wednesday
8
Jun 11
St. George’s, Bermuda
That’s my boat. We’re on the Celebrity Summit. Here it is docked at King’s Wharf, Bermuda. We got off of the ship and caught a ferry to St. George’s. Cruise ships used to go there directly, but modern ships, like the Summit, are too big for a narrow pass. And Summit isn’t even the largest vessel in the fleet.
That’s the wharf itself, which is dominated today by two cruise ships, many smaller vessels, public transportation and the Clocktower Mall.
This is in St. George’s:
Everything here is incredibly well-manicured. No blade of grass seems out of place. Life is good.
But this is troubling. The Yankee’s parents have been here several times and they notice what the locals have seen lately, part of the economy here is drying up. One part of the problem, they believe, is that there are fewer cruise ships — because of that narrow pass — and the other being general economic woes. A man we spoke with later in the day, though, said those cruise ships would return. The local government is widening that inlet to St. George’s.
Need a brick?
I’m guessing these bricks found there ways here like a lot of nautical towns: as ballast in ships from wherever. There are bricks stamped here from Massachusetts, New York, Australia and who knows where else.
St. Peter’s Church, in St. George’s Bermuda, is the self-proclaimed oldest Anglican church outside the British Isles and the oldest Protestant church in continuous use in the New World. Nice, cozy church. The walls are covered in monuments and memorials to dead church members.
In the back they store the historic silver.
Above is part of the famous St. George’s chalice set. Charles 1 silver is very rare, and dates to 1625. The engraving is the Bermuda Company’s coat-of-arms and the ship Sea Venture, striking a rock at full sail. This is functional art and history, really.
This is a piece from The King’s Set. It was a gift from King William III to the chapel and are engraved with William’s Royal Arms and Cypher. It dates to 1697 and is more pure and softer than sterling silver.
They know how to do mailboxes, don’t they?
The flag unfurled. This is a flag of the Bermuda government. Blue is unusual for British commonwealths, but keeps with former Canadian and Union of South African ensigns. British flags are too complex for Americans which is, I’m sure, part of the plan.
Our unofficial, helpful, drunken, mumbling tour guide. You could catch about every five thing he said while we traveled on the ferry. Who knows if he was right. But two or three of things you could hear did sound close enough.
More to come from St. George’s.
1
Jun 11
New York, Day 2, Part 1
Remember: we’re doing a two-day tour of Manhattan over the course of four days on the blog. The first part of Day One was yesterday, and is found in the previous post. This is, as the title indicates, the first part of Day Two. Day One’s finale is tomorrow, and we’ll wrap up Day Two on Friday. Clear?
Every time we’re in Manhattan we stop to visit St. Patrick’s. Beautiful church. I tried to do a pan-around photo with a free app I downloaded, but I’m still trying to figure it out. I thought I’d nailed it, when looking in the phone, but on the monitor it was full of flaws. So here you go. Also, search around and you’ll find plenty of other mentions of this beautiful church elsewhere on this site.
We also hit The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which we visited only briefly. Just about the time I found the sections I’d like to see it was time to go. Next time, perhaps. Meanwhile, men in armor:
We walked by here at lunch time. I didn’t have the heart to tell all these New Yorkers that chickens don’t really chirp all that much.
Yesterday we checked off an item from Wendy’s list, which was to get a hot dog from a street vendor. Our friend who is from Brooklyn, says street vendors are for tourists. We needed to go here:
And I love everything about the place. I had the depression special, two dogs and a drink for under five bucks. I had the papaya juice, because that’s the name of the place and also because we had a little communication mix up. I was looking for the condiments and he wanted a drink order. But, as a general rule, you can always order the thing similar to the name of a restaurant.
Get the onions on the hot dog. Definitely.
We visited St. Thomas in Manhattan for a service that marks the Eve of the Ascension. St. Thomas is beautiful. And — perhaps an audiophile can discuss this at length — I believe there is such a thing as a perfect acoustic. If St. Thomas doesn’t have it you’d be hard-pressed to find somewhere with a better sound. This is a clip of a small men’s choir singing Bach. There were maybe a dozen men, but they filled their sound filled the entire church.
The picture was taken with the iPhone, the audio was recorded on the sly with a free app called Recorder. This was the first time I’d ever been in a church wearing shorts.
The Yankee got in trouble, though. She got caught trying to record a little of the singing and a priest pointed at her. Very sternly.
The second part of Day One will be here tomorrow. The rest of Day Two, including another museum, a moment of drama and more.
25
May 11
Bad news baseball
Baseball, oy. Auburn drew the eighth seed in the SEC tournament, this after being in contention for the SEC West Division championship until the final weekend of the regular season. Problem: everyone in the West was similarly eligible. Result: Auburn played the top-seeded, defending national champion, could take two-of-three from the New York Mets, South Carolina in the first game of the conference tournament today.
Going in, Auburn needed two wins to be eligible for the NCAA Regionals — they have this pesky rule about being above .500 — and after today’s loss to South Carolina Auburn still needs two wins. Fortunately this tournament uses a double-elimination format.
The last time those two teams got together:
Auburn started with an eight-run first inning. The Tigers started the ninth inning 11-5 and looking for the (series) sweep.
After nine runs (on three hits!) including two bases-loaded walks and a grand slam UGA leads 14-11. Tigers need a rally (and a bullpen).
Oy.
18
May 11
Warmer and just as perfect in every way
Nice ride on this sunny, warm morning. Down the hill that is daring to wreck me. I hit a big bump there this morning I hadn’t discovered before. It was so big, and the speed so great that I swerved and wobbled the rest of the way down the path. And this is how I know I’ll never be a good bike rider: the speed I reach on this downhill is what the best bikers in the world do when they are simply pedaling hard.
So there’s that. Up the subsequent follow-up hill, through the stores of temptations — the cupcake boutique, the ice cream shop, the donut factory and more. I meandered back toward campus, turning by the old dorm that is now an apartment complex and work my way into a road full of traffic, including an intersection where I almost became a hood ornament. And then back to the quieter roads, past a golf course and the airport, onto another big road and then down the slow, gentle hill that means you’re almost home. There’s only one more big stretch after this, and that’s where a truck decided to get as close to me as possible and honk his horn. I passed him later and it was tempting to return the favor, but I didn’t. He was in a big truck, I was on a carbon frame.
Somewhere midway through the ride I challenged two guys on Harleys to a race. They just laaaughed.
One day I’m going to do a video of all of this. Nothing like a little multimedia humility as you work your way through the gears.
Went to Niffer’s tonight, because I wanted steak fries. I was going to grill, but I had no charcoal. The realization of which also made me think Grilling for one is silly. I’d watched an episode of The Pacific last night and at one point a Marine gets a little reprieve from the horrors of island fighting and goes back to a hospital and is talking with a psychiatrist. There are fries. The Marine picks one up with a curiosity and amazement that turned into this bemused expression “I just saw all of the things I saw. Here’s a fry.”
Whenever a food is reduced and elevated like that, I figure you have to seek it out. So I wanted steak fries and Niffer’s provides. The waiter took my order — and I am the guy that orders without need of menu, so this is easy on him — and disappeared. A young lady brought my food. Another waiter offered me a refill. My guy was gone until it was time for the check. Behind the pole, above, you can see his arm. He was complaining of having less than $200 of sales for the night. “How is that even possible?” Oh I have an idea.
But I enjoy Niffer’s, this guy aside. It is the town’s quirky decor, with cutesy names on the straightforward menu place. It is one of the remaining locally authentic places found on the ever-shrinking list of “Places where we hung out when I was in school.” They are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year. I’ve ordered pretty much the same thing every time. Their first menu is hanging on the wall. That sandwich would have cost me about four bucks in 1991.
I suppose my first visit there was 15 years ago. Keely, the owner, was on the floor then as she still is now. Seldom is the place not hopping. Tonight was one of those nights, but I got there late, on a Wednesday and the university is between semesters. She comes to visit our table every so often. She doesn’t know me from anyone, but every so often she brings free food with her. Not much has changed about her place in most of that time.
Towns change. Businesses thrive and fail. People retire or get bought out or the rent gets too high or whatever. Graffiti is painted over. New people come and institutionalize their memories as being The Memory of how it should all be just so. You can’t begrudge them that, but you’d like it if a few more things had remained, all the same.
Learned the magazine to which I submitted an article last night is going to run another essay I wrote earlier this year. It actually relates to the idea above, which is both coincidental and sad. Not every part of my day is like that, I promise. Re-reading the thing, though, I cringed at a few points and beamed with pride at a few others. I wrote that. It is a running goal, write something with sentiment that doesn’t become maudlin.
