Part of the fun of letting my travel companions decide the locations is the fact I end up in even more bizarre places than I would normally. The puppetry museum was definitely one of these! We’d both had an interest in such things but I probably would have avoided being a lone person wandering the halls looking for creepy dolls. Even though I kind of love creepy dolls. And he is particularly endeared to Jim Henson creations. We both appreciate the creativity of this unusual hobby.
Still, neither one of us knew a thing about the museum. As it turns out it’s run by the local college – UCONN which provides classes… for puppetry. I was speachless. I had no idea you could attend college and study puppetry. That seemed soooo…. out there. I could imagine the parents of these kids, “I threw us all into debt to pay for you to study what now?!” What good IS a degree in puppetry? What can you do with that? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.
But first we found ourselves in the city of Storrs, surrounded by campuses, largely empty. Most of the colleges in these parts have been shut down since the pandemic and it’s… a little apocalyptic to look at them so lifeless and sad. There’s a parking garage nearby but I ended up just putting the car in one of the many empty street spaces that I imagine were normally full pre-pandemic. From here we made our way to museum and in typical fashion I decided to make a total scene of myself by diving into the pavement as I crossed the street. I haven’t taken a spill like that since childhood! Ripped a hole in my pants, ended up with two bloodied knees, and two bloodied palms, but I got up without skipping a beat none-the-less. It’s best to do an impression of a cat running headlong into a wall. I did that on purpose! Stop looking at me.
The museum bragged about a collection of 2,500 puppets. Normally I have avoided museums since the pandemic buuuuut who would even be here? I was expecting a tiny little place devoid of human life except perhaps one lonely guy who really loves them puppets and probably hasn’t seen other human life in quite some time… I wasn’t far off.
The museum is free but they do ask who you are at the door and donations are always welcome. Part of me wanted to donate a puppet but I’m sure that’s probably not what they mean.
As we walked in there was a large display of all sorts of culturally diverse creations. There was a Sesame Street character and another Muppet I didn’t recognize that called to my travel companion. I didn’t realize how small they were in real life! Surrounding them was a metal mask of a goat man, a bunch of marionettes, and something called a water puppet which confused me greatly. A shadow puppet also shyly dangled from above. It was a nice display!
In the next room we found a disturbing display that seemed to be two probably haunted ventriloquist dummies, a plastic baby doll “Cherub” with cheap butterfly wings glued to it, and two partially decapitated dolls, one with no arms, and the other with a sword through it’s head. The plaques didn’t offer much in what was going on other than these were somehow supposed to be puppets used to tell the story of Hamlet. I’ve seen a production of Hamlet before… I remember none of these. In fact the whole room was dedicated to Shakespearean puppets which was hard not to laugh at but I would totally go see Hamlet as portrayed by two anthropomorphic chicken puppets. Who wouldn’t?!
The final room was filled with soulless black dead eyes staring at me from beyond vibrant clown make up. It was the stuff of nightmares. So much so that it threw me off and I didn’t take a photo of the eyes. Those piecing black iris-free eyes…
We were a bit sad this place didn’t have more. But the neighboring bookstore did. They had a bunch of garish giant papier-mâché heads all over the place, spill over from the puppetry museum. The cashier there told us the puppetry museum is in fat larger, that beyond the displays is a performance space used for puppet shows. We made a note to come back to see one after covid blows over…
And so ended our adventures to the day as I left with still-bloodied hands to go wash up with hand sanitizer in the car. Woot woot!
After being laid up for two days with a migraine I was just about crawling out of my skin this morning, desperate to go somewhere, anywhere. I’m still in central Maine with my mother and she’s still none too keen on going for a hike in 85 degree weather soooo I offered to bring her to a museum, which I figured had to be climate controlled. Usually I drive but since we were so close anyway, and she does need practice driving, I climbed into the passenger seat and off we went.
It was an uneventful drive until we were almost there. Then the GPS insisted we had to go down Rangeley Road to get there. Only problem was the road was closed due to construction. So I took the GPS down, zoomed out, and found an alternate route through the college campus. It was, after all, a museum on the college campus. And wow. I don’t want to sound critical but all I ever knew of Central Maine was poverty and a lack of education, so to stumble upon such a crazy expansive campus here, nestled in such a well kept little town…. well I was shocked. This was not the Maine I grew up with. I must have fallen through the Twilight Zone again.
The museum has a range of art and utilitarian items from the native peoples of both North and South America, everyone from the Inuits of Canada all the way down to the Mayan and Aztec Empires. It was actually quite impressive! Funerary dolls, textiles, baskets, and a series of interactive displays for children that my mother kept herself entertained with (as she forgot her reading glasses at home and couldn’t read any of the plaques anyway.) They even had a bunch of South American dress up clothing and a wee wigwam. OK, even I went inside that one… Because when else do you get to play a wigwam? All and all it was a lovely little trip and was happily surprised. If you’re in the area and into museums its well worth a look!
Sunday evening Katherine and I chilled for a while after our adventures earlier that day and said hello to my brother and his girlfriend before eating what was left of our deep fried s’mores and attempting an early bedtime so we could get up and head into Boston, a little more than three hours away, in the morning.
I can’t say my history with Boston has been the best… I mean it’s a tough city, big, full of rude people and aggressive drivers, statistically the worst in the country, but maybe it’s not their fault. As my brother said, “Those roads aren’t meant for cars.” He’s right. Boston is filled with impossibly narrow roads and streets, many of which sport one sharp curve after another, and none of which make any logical sense. To add insult to injury half the roads are underground where the GPS no longer works and when you finally get where you’re 
going there’s no parking anywhere. And if that’s not bad enough the drivers… wow. They’re called Mass-Holes by the rest of New England. They’re real peaches. I felt like I was playing Russian Roulette at every intersection. But here too is proof of my personal growth in the past year. I only started driving myself to unfamiliar places less than a year ago and Boston was on my “uh-ah, not going to do it” list. But this time around I barely took notice, volunteered to head into the bowels of Hell without a second thought, I think shocking my brother and everyone whom I told. I used to spend my life constantly engulfed by panic and anxiety. These days I wake up and have to check my pulse because I wonder if my heart is still beating when I can’t feel it slam against my chest walls. It’s really odd but so peaceful and wonderful. Even babies don’t thwart me anymore. They used to make me super nervous but just recently I realized they’re not really made of glass. Now instead of being like, “Shit don’t get that thing near me, I may break it.” I actually find them kinda cute. Except infants. They’ll always look like raisins to me.
Back to the story… Katherine asked if we could take an adventure on the way and I said sure, why not. She chose Walden Pond because she wanted to see where Thoreau wrote 
Katherine put it. It was $15 admission and seemed to be… A swimming hole for Bostoners. There were paths around the lake, none marked very well but it didn’t much matter as there were roads and civilization everywhere. No one was going to die out here. A replica of Thoreau’s cabin stood near the visitor center where there was both information and oddly, a gift shop. We discussed how morally strange it was to have a gift shop honoring a man who was all about simplifying one’s life and cutting out materialism… Though this spirit did seem present when we found the sight of his original cabin. Here was a large pile of rocks (just like the rest of New England…) where people had made some sort of weird piled rock memorial to the man. Some used Sharpies to doodle messages and pictures on the stones they left behind.
It seems as if almost the entirety of the lake had been made into one big sandy beach. The one at the front had the shallow bits cordoned off like keeping a mass of people in a big fish net! Further out there was more nature-friendly bits, kayakers seemed to be enjoying the day on the water, and other people had found more isolated spots to swim. Katherine and I were not dressed for this, having no idea there might be swimming involved, but we decided it was a nice hot day and the water did seem rather nice. I pulled off my trusty Chuck Taylors and knee high nerd socks, rolled up my pants, and waded in. Katherine followed suit. OH! The water was so shallow it was warm and clear as the day is bright. Fish immediately came to my shockingly white calves and tried to nibble on them. These fish were weird though…. as they appeared to be a school of African Cichlids. Perhaps this lake was the “farm up North” fish disappear to when they’re no longer wanted. All I knew is these things did not look natural with their bulky silver bodies and fluorescent blue tails.
We stayed in the lake enjoying the day for quite a while, neither one of us really wanting to leave. We had found the site of the original cabin and stared at it’s sad foundation earlier on and now we were watching people stare up at the sky to witness today’s solar eclipse. A little girl near by reminded us about this and although it was slightly darker than usual neither one of us really noticed what was going on behind a large swath of fluffy clouds. Ah well, no eclipse for us, we wandered back to the car and continued on to Malden where a friend was waiting for us.
Surprisingly there was enough time after 
It was another hot day but luckily I was in a car with air conditioning, which was a nice change. We had been together now for long enough that our happy burbling had gone from the usual pleasantries to discussing in depth only the most fucked up subjects we could think of – like what we thought was normal when we were kids that really wasn’t, what left the deepest psychological scars, and what was rotting behind each white picket fence in the small towns we grew up in. It was all in good fun and I think we were both enjoying it – though I have to wonder if my company is extreme when I keep eliciting gasps of horror. Perhaps next time I will keep nail clippers in the car so that when I flip a nail inside out and get it bleeding I have something a little more appropriate to remedy the situation that a rusty set of needle nose pliers… maybe. 
Anyway, we got stuck in traffic for a bit where I got into a fight with another Prius who would not let me move over into the exit lane I actually needed… but we survived and no one was shot so it’s all good. When we drove up to the fort the tiny parking lot was almost filled to capacity with cars. People were here with their kids and dogs and we could already see a few pieces of the fort and the boat filled harbor it guarded. Unlike 
It was a small property but so lovely to wander I enjoyed snapping photos and Katherine relaxed with the smell of the ocean wafting in. We picked a couple locations to just stand and watch the waters as we talked, not really wanting to leave until it got dark. We outlasted almost everyone there and when there was only one other guy wandering about we managed to scare him off with our frank discussion of birth control. Always nice.
