Category: Uncategorized

Savannah Squares – Georgia

Savannah Georgia was another one of those ill-planned out things. Unlike most of the destinations on the list I knew absolutely nothing of Savannah other than the fact it had squares. I had no idea what this meant but I was up for enjoying some geometric wonders.

What can I say? I headed for the original square first, or at least I headed for the one my smart phone claimed was the original. Upon nearing the city I could see this place was a lot different than all the other cities I’d been to. It was green, really green, and no buildings seemed to be taller than six or so stories, except for a few church steeples. I waltzed into town, taking no time at all to find the squares. There were big arching trees going over the streets and in the square. People were playing chess out in the humid air, and there were so many dogs getting brought out for walks! The traffic was slim to nil, at 5:30PM, and everyone seemed relaxed going about their business. There were horse carriages everywhere with people on the front giving historical tours.

I got to reaffirm my inability to answer trivia questions about this city. Why was it flat, why were there squares everywhere? Why did it seem so wealthy? And most importantly, where are all the ghosts? I have no idea – this was something I’d neglected to memorize from all the crime and paranormal documentaries I grew up with. Shame, I didn’t see a single one. Perhaps next time I shall take a ghost tour and hope for the best.

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Atlantic City – Putting Class into Perspective

Atlantic city isn’t my scene, never was, and never will be but it was suggested soooo many times I felt negligent in not stopping by. It wasn’t as if I had the money to gamble and if I did I’d rather spend it on some other food source than the PB&J’s that were becoming the bane of my existence than a few shiny casino chips. I mean don’t get me wrong – if someone else wants to gamble go ahead, I couldn’t care less. I just think if I were to waste money I’d at least light it on fire or do something cool with it.

I drove in and saw the most garish, sparkly, gaudy buildings I have ever seen in my life. In letters probably bigger than the damn Hollywood sign read TRUMP everywhere. Holy crap… There’s having an over-inflated ego and then there’s that…. This must be the human equivalent of a Tom cat’s pissing contest. To make the whole thing all the better there were ghetto houses and derelicts smattered in between these glittery shiny casinos. There seemed to be no middle class at all…. Just the obscenely rich and the desperately poor. There were condemned homes, buildings that were more or less just ruins, fences everywhere… It was depressing thinking anyone even lived in this squalid manner in a ghetto that was so disparaging it looked like it was from a third world country. There is just no reason for it, but to make it even worse were the casinos right next to it all… a real smack to the face. We left feeling very melancholy. And since taking this trip we have learned Atlantic City wants to build a pedestrian bridge between the casinos so that their patrons will not have to look at the eye sore that is the poverty stricken ghetto outside. Such an American reaction, rather than redistribute the wealth in a socially beneficial way we’d rather just hide the poor people from sight and pretend there’s not a problem to begin with.

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Pointsette State Park – South Carolina

Initially I only meant to stop here as a camping site to sleep but this place is absolutely gorgeous! Even the welcome center looks like some sort of rich fancy lodge or something. Right from the start I saw a tiny weird little lizard and walking around I found two five foot long alligators basking out on a little rafty thing. There was only one other camper here and the rest were RVs. This place looks like an enchanted forest! I took all sorts of photos of the weeping trees, the alligators, lizards, deer, and weird bugs I saw, and I even took a night walk. Unlike the Pine Barons of New Jersey this place got DARK. Pitch black. A deer stalked our tent at night. And I must say the bathrooms here… absolutely spotless, though the showers were cold than ice water. The only complaint would be that there are frogs EVERYWHERE. I thought I was witnessing a mass mudslide when I walked up to the embankment of the lake. Only on closer inspection did I find out this wave wasn’t made of mud it was made from thousands upon thousands of frogs all leaping desperately away form me into the water, about three feet from there!

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Farewell Feast with Family

I was invited to go to a farewell feast at my father’s shortly before I was to leave so I decided to do this a few days beforehand. They thought it would be amusing to come up with an outrageous set of dinner courses that I may not have ever tried before. These were classic New England dishes, seafood to be exact, and although I was aware of this I still didn’t really prepare for what was coming.

There before me in a bowl was a set of “steamers” or little necked clams as the stores called them. I must have given off quite an expression of repulsion although I was trying desperately to do the opposite. I don’t make a habit of offending the cook. Wendy must have picked up on this as she started to immediately tell me I didn’t have to eat them. Well, they were cooked, who cares if I was plucking the remains of their cousins off the beaches of Maine just a few weeks ago.

I opened up the little shell and there was this gelatinous completely alien-looking piece of flesh staring up at me. It had a rubber band like “body” a bulging soft “stomach” and a hard brown “neck.” None of these labels struck me as being particularly anatomically correct but who am to say? This creature was utterly strange and seemed to be composed entirely of just a digestive system in a shell. I bit into the belly, it was delicate in flavor and texture and honestly wasn’t that bad. Texturewise it was most like a scallop but a lot smoother and softer. A pile of green goo that must have been its last meal spilled out onto my plate. Oh, look at that, the stomach might actually be a stomach. I couldn’t eat the fibrous ribbon-like body, just touching a piece of it with my teeth almost resulted in me ralphing all over the table but hey look! At least I can say I tried!

The next course was rice and shrimp. I have always loved shrimp, but currently I was keeping one as a pet. I mentioned this and Wendy immediately spat out an apology, but it wasn’t necessary, I thoroughly enjoyed the dish.

The next dish was lobster. This I expected.  I snapped mine’s tail off with a loud crack and pulled out its meat with a fondue fork. I devoured the tasty morsels in butter and moved on to its claws were it soon lost a thumb with another loud crack and then to add insult to injury we took a nutcracker after the lower claw. I was told all the legs come right off in a clump if we wanted to eat the guts in the main body… I didn’t… I still ripped mine off… more green goo… I sucked on the little ant-like legs with a morbid sort of glee, maintaining this was the most amusing part of eating lobster.

I was past full but there was more. Now it was two slices of seedless watermelon which was so good. Then I was given fresh raspberries on top of a canned pear, everything swimming under home-made whip cream. Now that is a dessert I can appreciate, simple and delicious! More watermelon. Then marshmallows, the big ones, toasted on the fire in the drizzly rain.

I showed Wendy that you could peel and eat the big marshmallows numerous times. I also dropped a marshmallow on the coal and watched it turn into a giant blob of white lava ooze. Wendy was horrified and fascinated, guess she’s never done that with a marshmallow. Her reaction amused me.

I also visited the horses while I was there and checked up on their three wee poodles, all so much better behaved than my mothers. SIGH. All and all we had a fantastic dinner, good conversation, and nothing was too awkward as it sometimes can be.

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Washington DC – A Total Bust!

Off to DC! I couldn’t wait! I wanted to return to the Museum of Natural History, as I only began to sink my teeth into it as a twelve year old and now still thought about going back to see the fossils with glassy eyes. Admission to any of the Smithsonian museums is free, including the Museum of Natural History, however they have no parking. Parking can be found in nearby garages… however these garages are not tall enough to accommodate a Jeep with a storage container on its roof… I tried two garages and was sent immediately out. I drove by others and read their clearance heights which only got lower and lower, to the point I fund one as small as six feet. I attempted to look for parking but everywhere I looked was only for two hours at the risk of being towed and if I had to walk half an hour to the car and half an hour back that left me with one measly hour to run through an enormous museum I could probably spend a solid week in. Frustrated I eventually left, but not before passing the usual monuments and snapping photos. I stopped when my camera battery died…. Its been doing that a lot lately and never used to. Seems Murphy might be following me again. SIGH.

I decided that someday I might return to DC without a filled roof rack and just spend a week or so looking at all the Smithsonian museums… and perhaps the new American Justice museum I spied from the street. It looked neat. Isn’t there also a spy museum somewhere? Shame DC… I was a day ahead of schedule passing you. You could have held my attention so much longer if you only had a place to park!

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The Baltimore Aquarium – Maryland

I was told that the Baltimore Aquarium was a pretty good aquarium and although I’ve seen a lot of salt water fish at salt water stores and other aquariums I decided to go and check it out.  The place was pretty infested with children of all ages – none listening to a damn thing their chaperones were saying. I expected this and am somewhat used to it, although I’m not much fonder of the little squirts.

The first thing I came across was an enormous tank which I could stand over at many points. It was devoid of plant and coral but absolutely filled with all sorts of rays, a three-legged sea turtle, a zebra shark, a guitar fish, and some other interesting things. I tried to take photos with my camera but it told me, “In this lighting?! Are you kidding me?!”

As I wandered away from the tank I walked into a hallway filled with fresh water fish, brackish fish, salt water fish, and ocean fish. These things looked familiar and unimpressive and I figured the rest of the aquarium would be the same. I was happily surprised to find tanks filled with almost all the familiar salt water hobbyist favorites (except a Moorish idol!) as well as weird things. We came across a number of fish that weren’t immediately identifiable. As usual the big boney fish freaked me right out and at first I didn’t want to go anywhere near them! But I forced myself… as I often do with things I’m afraid of. Some of the little tanks had real corals, unlike the plastic corals you saw in some of the larger tanks.

I got to see my first nautiluses! But they were in a tank with no flash photography and we just couldn’t get them… we also saw a fairly big octopus, a tank full of lion fish, some shrimp, and then we started getting into the different kinds of habitats. We walked into a rain forest exhibit and took all sorts of photos of the adorable poison dart frogs and a snake or two. They also had a rainforest room filled with plants you could walk through. I must admit it kinda smelled in there… but there was a pair of shy juvenile monkeys, a pair of Amazon parrots, some cute turtles, and a tarantula. Eventually I found my way to the giant winding shark tank. There were all sorts of sharks including two huge saw fish I couldn’t get a photo of because they were too close to the glass. Most were active and swimming around and like the rest of the aquarium they were being fed. I think I came at just the right time for this. I think my heart pitter-pattered when I spotted the baby hammerhead! It was just the cutest little fishy! Hammerhead sharks tan when they are in the sun which turns them from gray to black. This little guy was in the dark with no light at all and was just as pallid as I was – faux albino buddies! Forever!

I then wandered into the dolphin area. They were working with their trainers but there was no show due to the recent birth of a wee one (we didn’t see him or her.)

In the end I got to see a bunch of jelly fish tanks. They were eerily beautiful. I have been always a bit skittish of jellyfish… they also creep me out… but I was transfixed to these guys. Some of them looked like moving mushrooms. Others they put the light at the bottom of their tank so they’d swim against the floor and show their little tenticled backsides.

Did I forget to mention I saw some of the biggest, fattest, most bloated colorful starfish I have ever seen? They were absolutely grotesque!
I left having seen not only the best aquarium I have ever been to but also seeing the last surviving rescue ship to serve at Pearl Harbor. It was parked out front.

***I apologize for any missing photos and galleries as I continue to work getting Catching Marbles fully migrated to a new host. Please come back soon for restored photos and thank you for your patience!***

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Tidepoolin’ in Maine

Why not begin the journey at the very top of the country in “vacationland,” otherwise known as Maine. Sure, I’d been there probably hundreds of times before (as I have a great deal of family up there) but that’s no reason to ignore it on this epic journey. Besides I had a place to stay and could wander at my will without having to return four hours home. Granted that’s four hours if you speed like a demon and don’t listen to the GPS which will take this opportunity to wind you around strange routes and make sure you can’t remember your way back up there. Secrets.

I hadn’t been on the road long when I noticed a horse lying on its side in the pasture. I’d never seen a horse lie on its side and it didn’t look like it was breathing. I wondered if it was alive or dead. Either way its pasture mates seemed unalarmed as I drove by.

When I came to from my daydreaming I found myself at the swankiest gas station I had ever seen. It had high ceilings, wide isles, and off to the sides it has its own gourmet deli and bakery. It was very white and clean and the whole front of the store was windowed like it was some sort of fancy high-rise or something. The products here ranged from the routine to the strange, with Grandma’s Homemade Applesauce sitting in Mason jars near the counter. Apparently candy bars are not tempting enough to the regular crowd here, only organic applesauce made by a vague old woman could provide the temptation needed for one last sale! It was weird. Never did I expect to find a gas station in combination with anything labeled, “gourmet.”

I’ll admit from the get-go that I was extremely tired all day having had two nights of really dreadful sleep so I was struggling to keep my eyes open, not wanting to fall asleep.  By the time I hit Kennebunk and decided to drive off into it I was really trying not to nod off and finding it increasingly difficult. I was however startled awake by one house I passed which had to have been the butt ugliest house I have ever seen. It was enormous, with a Victorian base and turret that had apparently been added to, much to the house’s great displeasure. Instead of having a normal amount of Victorian trim it was garishly decorated with a trim that seemed to ooze off the house, nearly touching itself it was so wide, heavy, and gobbed everywhere in sight, almost like a wedding cake that’s been left out in the sun. To the side of the house was a large second part with three medieval looking archways stretching up two floors and creating the most bizarre garage I have ever seen in my life, as if they just reclaimed an old cathedral or something and tacked it half-hazardly onto the house. If this clashing architecture wasn’t bad enough the whole thing was painted the most god-awful dark blue green, the sort of color you might find on a misprint army fatigue and hugging that from all sides was the off-white trim and the spikes jutting up from the rooftop. This was the house with someone with no tastes or respect for aesthetically pleasing art whatsoever. I wondered if this mad person knew their home looked like something that should be a special feature on Cake Wrecks. It seemed to be melting.

I meandered onward until I found a beach and I figured a nice walk on a blustery beach would wake me up a bit. Blustery was not a word that would cut it. I felt like I’d just walked into a bucket of dry ice. Wind whipped around me so hard that I could have sworn I saw a woman on a bicycle fly over the beach followed by some suspenseful music, dun dun dun dun nun! Besides being cold this beach offered lots of sand, no shells, and a superfluous gathering of dog poo, but even so it was pretty! The waves came crashing in one after another and were as blue as could be.. Even so I decided to move on. A little down the road I saw some cragged rocks jutting out into the ocean so I decided to go tide pooling. Though this place was within sight of the last beach it was so much more interesting! At the top there were two little benches and a little circular mosaic under them. The plaque there said this little place was dedicated to some town worker, perhaps a clerk or secretary, I can’t remember. The rocks beyond were hugged by a massive clump of gnarled, half-decayed seaweed. Amongst the greenery could be seen bits of things that once lived in them. After poking at one particularly strange bit of something I walked out to the rocks. It was less windy than the open beach and nestled amongst the crevices were numerous little tide pools all teaming with snails of every type and guarded by one obese sea gull sleepily perched at its highest point.  Upon closer inspection there was algae, bits of crabs eaten by the birds, and a number of smaller sea plants. Then in some little dried puddles I found all sorts of tiny shells and bits of bleached coral as well as fragments of driftwood. The farther I went out the more beautiful the scenery got. Though I was very cold, and very tired, I liked this spot and could see myself sitting here in quiet meditation for hours, completely content. It was time to move on though, to go to the famed Biddeford Tide Pool.

I had been to Biddeford as a ten year old. I stayed for a week at a camp with my new school chums. I hated almost every minute and wrote home every day, “I know you probably won’t get this letter until Wednesday but could you please bring me home?? I hate it here! It’s cold and I am roomed with a bed wetter and two catty bitches who hate me!” the next day, “I know you won’t get this letter until Thursday but please come get me. One day away from this place would be just reward for dealing with all these damn kids.. and my camp counselor who says ‘sweet’ every other word and annoys the shit out of me.” On Wednesday I knew the game was over. “So I know by the time you read this letter I’ll probably be on the bus home. Thanks a lot. I still hate it here.” You’d think I’d give up after that but I decided to use Thursday and Friday for guilt letters. “I know you can’t pick me up anymore but I sill hate it here, just thought you should know.” I made my opinion also known to my school. We were forced to keep diaries and tell our favorite part of each day. On Monday and Friday I stated the best part of the day was the bus ride.

So if I hated camp so much why on earth would I want to go back to one of its highlights? Because the Biddeford tide pools were actually very interesting at low tide. You could see all sorts of neat little wee beasties living in the estuaries and rock pools. I guess the place is renowned for bird watchers too. Funny how I didn’t remember the whole place is absolutely infested with crazy mansions, private properties, and signs reading, “no parking” every three feet. We did find a place for 10 or so cars to park, all oddly empty, with a sign stating it was for permitted cars only… We looked longingly out at the shore we couldn’t reach. It still looked interesting… and familiar. I spotted the little bridge my murderous ten year old mind told me to lob one of my feral peers off of. I didn’t. Sort of regret that now. The kid deserved it.

Anyways…. By this time I was tired to the point I was almost hallucinating trying to keep my eyes open, hungry, had a stomach ache, and was cranky to boot. “Lets give up and just go get something to eat.” I was asked what we should get… As usual I didn’t care and this set off my boyfriend’s new game of making me decide on something, anything, based on my own wants and opinions. This game is torturous because I fail to have wants or opinions to begin with when it comes to things as inconsequential as what to eat for lunch. I really wasn’t in the mood for this.

We ended up at a non-existent pizza place. I think it was called TJ’s Fifties Pizza Joint or something similarly tacky. I’m pretty sure it was closed, my boyfriend thought we tried the wrong door, either way we both went into the Jeep and darted across a suicidal intersection into a parking lot the size of a refrigerator box. It was Papa Johns. I have never been, and taking one look at their topping board I decided I still didn’t want to be. What a weird list! I think the only thing I could identify and knew I liked was cheese. That seemed retarded to order a cheese pizza so we ended up walking out. I was getting super cranky, trying to hold it back, and my boyfriend was getting a head ache from the blinding glare of the sun we had been driving into all day. By the time we ended up at Burger King we both just wanted to sit down and chill. Food! Glorious food! And Tylenol.

Both feeling better we wandered out of there ready to go hit some other beaches now it was low tide. We ended up at Old Orchard Beach… which apparently in the colder months is a really creepy ghost town of sorts with closed up sea food shacks on every corner and an amusement park filled with stationary rides just creaking in the breeze. The beaches here were beyond the rides and the touristy bullshit and were composed all of sand. The waves were tepidly lolling in the distance. Finally we found a beach that seemed to be just that, a beach, no silly gimmicks. It was completely devoid of shells and dogs ran loose everywhere, ecstatic to be out on the sand. I found a single shell sitting alone in the dirt far up the beach. This place was boring! We left.

At 8PM we arrived at the house we were to be staying. It was quiet, so intensely quiet. We were both exhausted but too stubborn to go to sleep at the same hour the people in the old folks’ home do. Today we’ve been to the local Wal-Mart for some grub. I have no harrowing stories to tell of that so I guess Ill leave off here.

 

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Love Park – Philadelphia PA

I’d never heard of Love Park but I suppose it makes sense that the city of brotherly love would have a Love Park. At the entrance there was a big LOVE, spelled with a heart. I stood in front of it for the usual photo op. Behind this there was a big fountain with very pretty blue water. I felt like jumping in. I wore a sweater because it was cold and somewhat raining but all this walking overheated me a bit. Jumping in, of course, is not allowed. I walked by. I imagine in the summer the plants there are probably blooming and pretty but it was the wrong time of year for that! We walked onwards!

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The Italian Market – Philadelphia PA

Katherine and I walked down a little ethnic street market near Pat’s after this. They were selling everything here from cheap dollar store crap to live pigeons and fruit I’ve never seen in my life (sadly unlabeled, though I think one was a pawpaw.) The most bizarre part of this was all the street signs advertising various meats… instead of reading “fresh pork” they had cartoonish paintings of pigs wielding meat cleavers or smiling. There was something slightly off with that… I only found one sign with three melancholy animals sadly looking downwards. One looked suspiciously like a poodle though I guess it was supposed to be a sheep.

It was a nice walk with interesting people, different things to pick at. There was even a place selling old vinyls for a buck a piece. Neither of us felt like carrying anything so we merely poked at them a bit. It was a good way to get rid of our cheese steaks too. By the time we were done walking our little lunch was riding safely in our bellies.

We walked a little bit from here to reach the subway which we were on and off of all day. Somewhere along the route we ran into a woman walking a dog that I swear was a cross between a pit bull and a Jack Russell. Ugliest little thing I have ever seen! But he seemed well behaved. The people on the other hand… most were friendly and docile but there was one guy yelling at his little 3-4ish year old son for crying. “If you keep crying you’re going to bed!” Kid was crying about his leg hurting, he just wanted to be picked up for Christ’s sake, you’re right in front of your place of residence, just pick the damn thing up! I’m bad with kids but even I knew this one… small children make for crappy walking companions, expect to have to carry them. I suppose bad parenting is everywhere. Got into a discussion about how people who would be good parents never seem to be able to have children or don’t want any. I know I sure don’t want any, especially after going to the Mutter Museum and seeing what happens with other little bundles of joy who happen to be genetic fuck-ups. I know my family’s genetics are completely wonky, why tempt Murphy?

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Mutter Museum – Philadelphia PA

I had a friend living in Pennsylvania who offered to show me around Philadelphia so I took her up on the offer. I got up early and drove to Philly where I found her text messaging me in front of the station. Traffic forced me away from her before I could yell out the window and I spent the next three rounds circling the block to regain contact. She jumped in and I set off to find parking, which was really easy.

Katherine had planned a visit to the Mutter Museum, which is a museum of biological oddities, originally intended to educate physicians-to-be. It’s not real obvious from the side walk but Katherine had been there before. We walked in, paid our admission, put on our little visitor tags and continued on. I had wanted to visit the Mutter Museum since I was 11 or 12 and saw a segment on TV about it. Here you could see a plaster death cast of the first famous Siamese twins, Chang and Ang (I’m hoping I remembered that right.) Also was their pickled uni-liver. Other things I had already known about was a ginormous bowel from someone who literally died of constipation, the skeleton of a giant and a dwarf, and a bunch of drawers full of things surgically removed from people who had swallowed them. Who knew safety pins and campaign buttons were that tasty! It said most specimens were extracted from people under fifteen years of age. Well let’s hope so! I can’t imagine at sixteen little Johnny’s friends are egging him on to eat big sweater buttons.

The museum was full of other things that were just as fascinating. There were skeletons of Siamese twins, all babies, the rib cage of a woman who warped her bones wearing a corset, many pickled babies with birth deformities. There were spines bent and fused at odd angles from people with kyphosis. That scared the hell out of me, having the condition myself I hope I don’t end up that way!

There were castings of things that could happen to your eyes… gruesome things… like a splinter to the eye, cancerous growths, extreme conjunctivitis. Even more horrifying was a collection of antiquated gynecological tools that would send any sane woman screaming for the hills and what I can only describe as a baby scooping spoon. They also had surgical tools, embalming tools, and a brain slicer, which looked disturbingly similar to a bagel slicer. One poor man had a cast done of his face with a weird horn-like growth jutting out of it. There was a skeleton of some poor teenager whose muscles and ligaments turned to bone and fused him in this horribly awkward position. Then there was the case full of skulls. I’m not sure what the intent of the display was but each skull had its ethnicity and manner of death labeled. We were horrified to find a thirteen year old who had committed suicide “after a discovered theft.” What kind of theft would warrant that reaction?! The wording to many of these were trite and outdated and in some ways even comical. One read, “Hydrocephalic imbecile.” Another read something like, “Attempted suicide, lived for 15 more years but was never cured of melancholy.” My favorite was, “At 70 attempted suicide, died 10 years later at age 80.” I wondered why attempt suicide at 70? Hell, he’d been lucky to live that long in the first place…. Still the bone structure was different depending on age and to some degree ethnicity. There weren’t many women, there were a lot of suicides, one murder, several executed prisoners, really the people whose bodies were not cared for after death during the time.

I saw just how much the human body can put up with… bones broken and fused in awkward ways, a ninety pound ovarian tumor, bottles of tape worms, a skull and a femur suffering bullet wounds and the most shocking of all were the syphilitic skulls, one didn’t even have a face anymore, it was completely eaten away. How anyone could have lived that long with such a horrific condition I don’t know. At the end was a special exhibit, a soap mummy and a bunch of presidential stuff… including a presidential tumor! And a piece of John Wilkes Booth. Just a bit yucky…

Then there was an art exhibit… I mean how could you top the fetal dance macbres that were already in the display cases out with the actual human specimens? Well! There was a great deal for abstract art using wigs and old medical supplies and hypodermics… there was also a comic, in a brilliant pink, describing in vivid detail human menstruation. I couldn’t read it… quite frankly I don’t want to know my own cycles in quite so much detail… This was the entrance to the gift shop, which was a hoot. It was tiny but hilarious, a book case flaunting titles like, “1001 Ways You Can Die.” There were more poster, pens that looked like hypodermics, two-headed gingerbread men cookie cutters, and a bin full of germ-inspired plushies. A magnet found it’s way home with me, how could I not get a souvenir?

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