We’ve now been to this particular antique store a few times because I never managed to blog it and keep forgetting we’ve already been here. That being said its totally worth being blogged!
This is a very decently sized antique store with a great assortment if oddness hailing from its multiple vendors. Being so close to where a lot of whaling history went down I’ve also found it to be one of the best antique stores to find scrimshaw and sometimes old maps and photos of the area. There seems to be a lot of old, er, very racist advertisements and portraits of creepy Victorian children as well. If either of those is your thing then this is a good bet! And it has never been disappointing on the haunted doll scale.
Deffinately worth a looksie if you’re in the area!
Sometimes it’s really neat to go somewhere so different from where you live that even the plants are unfamiliar. That was what our last trip to Cape Cod was like.
Salt marshes are such unique and interesting places full of gorgeous views and neat wildlife. But this place was special in an even more inspiring way for there was a short trail at the beginning that was dedicated to the blind. A rope provided guidance down a series of small steps, knots in the rope allowed for the hikers know there was something more to experiance – usually a braille plaque next to something worth feeling – perhaps the trunk of a tree or something else nature-y.
I’m not blind so I don’t really know how user friendly or helpful this trail was but I did find the very idea of it absolutely innovative.
Beyond the braille trail there were other easy trails that meandered for quite a ways and showed us absolutely gorgeous views. It was a very pleasant day and I’d suggest this place to others looking for a peaceful stroll.
Good news is I am getting very close to my goal of posting one Catching Marbles entry per day for the whole month of October! Bad news is my body has really not been happy with this aforementioned goal and now I am near the end I’m really scratching the bottom of the barrel for easy entries.
This one was supposed to be a hike but when I got there I realized it’s more of a cute oasis and meditation spot. The driveway into the parking lot was so sketchy I wasn’t even sure it was a driveway and the parking lot? Hilarious. A cute little grassy area that was trying so hard and allowed for way more parking than anyone could possibly want here.
There was a big bulletin board and trail maps — of other trails in town, heavily spattered with mold, dead spiders, and debris, clearly no one had come by to change them in a dog’s age.
Beyond the parking lot was a field full of birdhouses and the scrappiest cold weather flowers I’d ever witnessed. Beyond that was a little bench that overlooked a tiny, cute pond. To either side were big old farmhouses so I suspect this plot may have once been that too before being turned into a tiny bird preserve.
Is this spot adorable? Yes. Is it a good place to enjoy a slice of nature and unwind? Yes. Beyond that though it’s probably not anything to write home about. If you live in Rindge by all means check it out but it’s not worth any farther a drive
There is supposed to be some huge Halloween light display up on Monadknock View Road but I ambled over there and nothing seemed to be going on despite the Facebook post that led me to believe there would be. That being said I have been keeping my eye out as I’m driving around and this display on Foliage Way is just growing and growing. I felt they deserved a shout out.
Every year around my birthday I end up at B F Clyde’s Cidar Mill and then Old Mystic Village to celebrate. We were a few weeks late this year but I was super happy to see a few new shops in the village, one of which was this anime shop, the likes of which I’ve never been in before.
We were immediately greeted with life size Dragon Ball statues (and look at me knowing where they were from! There’s hope for me yet.) The ceiling was adorned with paper lanterns and the isles were full of anime inspired plush toys, including a whole Hello Kitty corner which I’ll admit had a squishmallow type plushie that was sooo soft I almost lugged it home!
From here the back wall was one big bookshelf for comic anime and the other section of the store was all noodles and novelty snack foods. I couldn’t identify most of them. Maybe next time I’ll be brave and try something, on this day I was already stuffed to the gills on apple cidar doughnuts.
Main street antique stores with well-arranged display cases are fun but as for myself I prefer the quirkier establishments – basement antiques, mill antiques, and of course barn antiques. Much to my delight this store was in a barn out back of a cute little B&B. It was so quintessentially White Mountain-y.
And for being a barn it was WELL ventilated and cool. We saw all sorts of antiques, most of which were clearly linked to the local area. Ancient toys, old farming tools, a couple accordions, even a wooden opium pillow. What wasn’t to love? It was halfway like shopping and halfway like visiting a roadside country museum. I loved every bit of this place from its rustic inventory, to the chickens out back, to the cute little inn next door. It was the perfect way to end our journey into the white mountains and if you’re in the area go check it out! It’s a lot of fun!
As we all grow older and hopefully wiser we began to take on the gentle wisdom of phrases like, “Let lying dogs lie” but Caroline Cutter may have been an exception to this philosophy. You see after her death in the mid 1800’s her husband spent what I can only guess was a decent bit of money on a scathing 150 word headstone that called out several members of the community by name, accusing them of harassing his beloved to literal death.
Basically, this was a petty feud between a church and a couple who once attended services with them. According to the church Caroline’s husband Calvin Cutter was little more than a shyster. They accused him of bullying other church members into helping him fund his own church across town – a church that ultimately was never built. For these grievances they excommunicated both Calvin and Caroline and Caroline apparently took the blow to her reputation very hard and despite her better efforts was never able to get back into the good graces of the church.
After she died Calvin took it upon himself to make her headstone into one of the pettiest monuments ever carved. In it he claimed the excommunication destroyed his wife’s life, threw her into poverty, and eventually killed her while she was already down. That’s quite a bit of drama. Drama I don’t even think the town wants over 200 years later as a completely unrelated monument/plaque stands two feet from the stone nearly completely blocking it.
Now I don’t know if Calvin really was a na’ardowell, nor do I know if Caroline was really as dramatic as her husband. It seems as if social ostracization may have made both of them a little nutty. And maybe, just maybe, dear old Calvin wasn’t a grifter but just someone with ADD who let his rejection sensitivity spill over into his grief for his deceased wife. Anything could be possible!
But no matter what you believe the stone still reads thusly, Caroline H., Wife of Calvin Cutter, M.D. Murdered by the Baptist Ministry and Baptist Churches As follows: Sep’t. 28, 1838; aged 33 She was accused of lying in church meeting by the Rev. D. D. Pratt and Deacon Albert Adams. Was condemned by the church unheard. She was reduced to poverty by Deacon William Wallace. When an exparte council was asked of the Milford Baptist Church, by the advice of their committee, George Raymond, Calvin Averill, and Andrew Hutchinson They voted not to receive any communication on the subject. The Rev. Mark Carpenter said he thought as the good old Deacon said, “We’ve got Cutter down and it’s best to keep him down.” The intentional and malicious destruction of her character And happiness as above described destroyed her life. Her last words upon the subject were “Tell the Truth and The Iniquity will come out”
This stone is SUPER easy to find, though there is no parking in the cemetery or roadside. I parked at the gas station across the road but I guess there’s also a park around the corner with even more appropriate parking. The cemetery gates are behind a little park monument out front and should be open if it’s daylight hours. As for Caroline Cutter’s stone – it’s in the first row almost in the center right in front of someone’s barn and behind another completely unrelated monument.
Of all the free little libraries I have visited throughout New England the one at Pickety Place has the most endearing back story and dare I say it’s also by far the most whimsically beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
The story starts in 1786 when this sweet little cottage was built in what I can only guess was wilderness. I don’t have any idea how it’s managed to stay standing (and so loved!) throughout all these years but it still there proudly in the middle of nowhere. It is such a charming and unique setting that Elizabeth Orton Jones used it as the model for her illustrations in Little Red Riding Hood (Little Golden Books, 1948).
Currently it stands as a restaurant and museum surrounded by the most delightful little flower and herb gardens. It has remained burned into the memories of locals because it’s not just a restaurant, it’s an experience. When I went to find it (looking for the library on the grounds) I was wound down a series of increasingly sketchy dirt roads until I was sure the Prius and myself were going to be eaten by bears. And then out of nowhere appeared this property and it’s weird Byzantine parking lot amongst the trees. Seriously the parking lot was the strangest I’d ever seen.
I did not go on a day the restaurant was open because I was only looking for the library and… well to be frank, I’m way to poor for this sort of thing. I can’t even afford McDonalds on my own much less an experience, but that being said I am told the food is out of this world. I’ve literally never heard anything bad about this place which brings us to the library – that sweet, ornate, library just bursting with love.
The library is made from the stump of a very old and very beloved tree which succumbed to the forces of nature and split in twain during a particularly egregious snowstorm. The tree could not be saved but the mourning process brought forth an idea – what if what remained could somehow be repurposed and given a new sort of life? And that’s how this stunning little library came into existence. The stump was deprived of its bark, stained, hollowed out, and artists were commissioned to create exquisitely carved doors, a stained-glass window for the back, and a roof. I can’t tell you how mesmerized I was by this creation. And I was so honored to leave a signed copy of my book Achilles in Heels in it! But you know what was even more amazing? Someone “caught” my book and left a wonderful review on BookCrossing before “releasing it into the wild” to be captured by someone else. I have donated signed copies of my books to dozens of libraries at this point and this was the first one someone publicly claimed through the Book Crossing program. Can you say my heart nearly exploded in warmth and joy? Because it totally did.
OK, so this post has been sitting in my draft folder since December… Whoops. Time to let it see the light of day!
Middleboro Antique Co-op was another delightfully large mall adorned with a life size Betty Boop! And since it was the holidays she was surrounded by three big Ho Ho Ho’s. I’m sure nothing was meant by this. (Seriously though, I fucking love Betty Boop in all her salaciousness. You go girl!)
ANYWAY. This place does not look that big from the outside and initially when you walk in it still appears pretty small with a bunch of little rooms off to the side. It was very spacious once you got around some of the corners and everything was laid out very professionally. Being that it was right before Christmas there was also a surprising amount of people. We walked through looking for our usual taboo items but this all seemed pretty tame except one really odd book called “Pepe was the Saddest Bird” that ended with an ad to buy war bonds. Weird. Will have to look into that later.
Another absolutely bizarre find was what I am GUESSING was an ad for baby food where two toddlers were bareknuckle boxing??? Obviously, the bigger fatter baby was black and wearing a potato sack. You know, got to get that racism in over the initial shock of forcing babies to fight to the death or whatever.
At some point my travel companion went to the bathroom and then disappeared. No idea where he was. I walked back to the front where the bathrooms were and nope… no one. Turns out this place has a basement and it’s sprawling! And also has a lot more of the odd and cheaper stuff down there where I am guessing vendors pay less for less than prime real estate. And that’s where there were booths full of terrifying dolls and I was loving every second of this. I think there may have even been one there with actual human teeth which is something I just learned some dolls have. Isn’t that a comforting thought!
Anyway, this place took a couple hours to go through and we could have spent more time there if we weren’t both getting a smidge hangry by this point. We left after marveling at a decrepit Gothic pram.
Apologies this blog entry is two weeks late. I am trying to clean up my “haven’t actually posted” list. ANYWAY, it’s been a very long time since I have done anything athletic. I used to be very fit when I ran a farm but these days? Yeeeeeah. Between trying to stay put to avoid covid and not having a farm to run I’ve become quite “domesticated,” as my father once said about his overly rotund cat. It was time to change things up.
That’s why when my mother and myself were invited to join the Muddy Princess Mud Run we went for it. And then spent months not preparing. I was a little concerned because I’d done the Warrior Dash at the same location some years ago and that was proper hard. When I was way more muscular. I had learned I was afraid of heights that day – as I had one leg over a 17-foot A frame and the other on the opposing side – and that was anything but fun. My shitty ex balked and sighed in annoyance until two complete strangers helped me down. Bless those people. They were so nice it totally overrode the red flags my ex was waving so proudly. BUT ANYWAY…
Thankfully the Muddy Princess was not nearly so hardcore. At its heart it was a fundraising event for breast cancer. And a women-only space for the day. Which is good because the Warrior Dash sounded like something to accomplish but the Muddy Princess Mud Run just sounded like someone’s weird fetish. And with so many people in tutus I continued to ponder this even after arriving.
I’d been talked into a tutu too and was feeling ridiculous but I guess that’s part of the fun. My mother was already having a hard morning. Her stomach was upset even before we left. So imagine how happy I was to find the first few obstacles on this obstacle course were insanely easy – like walk through the bubbles! I breathed a sigh of relief. I was going to smoke this course.
Some of the obstacles got somewhat harder – go over the wall, climb the tires, that sort of thing, but I managed to do all of them except one which I’ll get to. We were probably a third of the way through the course when my mother started looking like absolute dogshit. I felt she was overheating but every time I asked her she insisted she wasn’t. But she was getting weak.
Halfway through the race I called out to the rest of the group to wait up. I’d found her some shade and she needed a good long rest. As we sat there one of our team members got a text alerting her that her partner who was fine just minutes ago was now being rushed to the hospital. It had nothing to do with the event but thank goodness it happened there where there were so many people to help! She was rocked. We all were. But there was nothing any of us could do so we continued on. My mother was doing better again and ready to go.
Then we came to the giant inflatable pink sofa wall. It was STUPID. Only two on my team even attempted it, one being me, and we both failed HARD. The damn obstacle was only halfway inflated making it impossible to grab ahold of and even more impossible for it to stand up long enough to allow people to climb over it. It rocked violently back and forth. People were flying through the air. The women who did go over seemed to accomplish this through pure luck and had to be pulled over from the other side by someone else as there was not a goddamn thing to hold onto at the top to hurl yourself over. We left this obstacle super annoyed. Later we’d be talking to the EMT’s on duty and they said this wall was killing them. That in two hours they’d attended to around ten injuries from this damn thing – mostly broken arms but also a few broken legs and a dislocated shoulder. None of these maimed people allowed for themselves to be driven to the hospital by ambulance. All wanted to drive themselves and only asked to be driven to their car and released. Why? Because ambulance rides are expensive!! If this doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the American healthcare system I don’t know what does.
We had gotten around 2/3rds of the way when my mother started to crash again. Fortunately, we were just outside a new obstacle that had to have participants go through one by one instead of by group so there was an obscenely long line. I left her in the only bit of shade I could find and she sat on a log recovering and waiting for us. She knew where I was in line by my crazy orange hair. My cousin kept her company. Eventually I noticed an event truck making it’s rounds and I ran back to my mom to ask if she needed me to hail them down and get her back to the beginning but she insisted she was feeling better. So I went through the obstacle – which was a 2-foot-deep puddle of “mud” water that I am sure just smelled like cow poop, which we had to go through on our back. A chain-link fence was above us to grab and propel us forward. It was fun! And I was soaked and cool. I wish my mother hadn’t skipped this obstacle. She might be cool too!
She joined us again after and we completed the rest of the course. When the last big obstacle came up my mother did try it. It was a tall adult sized inflatable slide that you had to climb up and slide down. It was easy. She should have been able to make it but I guess she lost her grip on the last rung and fell to the bottom. I was concerned but she didn’t try it again. The last obstacle was another climb under something kind of deal. There were a lot of those on that day and earlier on I happily hummed Bridge Over the River Kwi as we went. I thought it was funny. My cousin looked up like she was trying to figure out what that damn tune was. Just a stupid military reference, my little hint of joyful chaos.
And then we were gathering our medals at the finish line – so close to the air-conditioned car that I could stop worrying about my mother. But first we had to gather our things and go get a bottle of water and maybe something to eat. In full sun. Outside a food truck. Mother found shade next to the food truck in a tent but it wasn’t enough. After a few bites of fruit leather she was on the ground dry heaving. Weak and unable to say much we tried to give her water. The teenagers who were running the food truck were wide eyed and terrified of what was going down. This was beyond their pay grade but they gave her a cooler to sit on and so much free water.
And then before I had any idea what was going on word got out there was someone overheating over here and I was suddenly surrounded on all sides by off duty nurses who were putting water-soaked napkins on her neck and forehead and telling her to lie down on the ground with her feet elevated. They asked if she could get to the shower station not far away but she was too weak. Instead they took her T-shirt and soaked it and came back. One nurse in particular refused to leave her until she’d proved she could eat a whole hot dog bun given to us for free by those same freaked out teenagers. And a piece of candy which was manifested from the crowd. She struggled but got it down.
By then the EMTs arrived. Two who came in and tested her blood sugar and took her temperature. By now she was recovering but another member of our crew was down. Same reason. Heat stroke. Although she decided to stay in direct sunlight even when being attended to by the same nurses and EMTs. Why? Because the tent smelled weird. I shit you not. Mother on the other hand had gained enough stamina to be led to a golf cart and driven to the shower station where she was doused with ice cold water. The color came back to her face. She was speaking coherently again.
It took quite a while but eventually my mother was able to make it to another tent halfway between this one and the parking lot where she rested again before making it to the car. She spent most of this time lamenting how stupid and weak she was but we told her she was doing fine, it happens to the best of us. Even me. Heat stroke was so imminent during my trip to see Rhode Island’s only covered bridge that I had to send my travel companion out to bring the car back to me. It was either that or an ambulance. I knew I was teetering shockingly close to needing that.
But hey this whole experience gave me lots of tips on how to cool down should it happen again! Put cold on the back of the neck, the forehead, the armpits, and possibly even the crotch. Soak your clothing if you can. Lay down with your feet elevated. Drink. Drink some more.
Despite all the drama it was fun and I don’t regret the experience at all and quite frankly it was a nice way to kick my own ass as far as getting back into shape. It’s time. And hey, I’m sure the charity part of this event means something too. Anyway, if you find yourself thinking about doing one of these runs you should try it! And if you need encouragement here’s a few photos of me getting through the course with all the elegance of a drunk buffalo.
