Random New England

• The first leg of my trip back to Japan was on September 11, out of Boston, on a United flight from gate 19.  That's the gate next to the one through which several box-cutter-wielding jihadis boarded a flight some years ago.  A United employee made a short, and perhaps impromptu, speech that was, in spite of the inevitable clichés, quite moving.  He asked us to take a moment and "pray in our own way." 
• Boston was the only part of New England I had visited before, and it continues to seem a pleasant city, a visually pleasing mix of traditional brick architecture with modern glass and steel.  As, over three visits (going and coming on this trip plus one other), I have only spent a total of about five days in Bean Town I can't say I know the place; I do know that I would like to know it better.  Glutton that I am, the highlight for me were the chowder and fresh oysters at the Quincy Market.
• After Boston it was off to Vermont, a state I had heard a great deal about, but had never visited.  That two old friends live there in a stunning house on thirty acres, and that these friends graciously put us up, cooked for us, gave us beer and wine, and shared laughs, music,  and conversation made the trip all the more delightful.  I learned that Vermont is serious about preserving the rural beauty that characterizes it (no billboards), and that for this reason it is more or less business-unfriendly.  It seems to me a good thing that at least one small corner of a country that actually believes that "the business of America is business" is endeavoring to follow a different path.  There are however problems.  Young people leave because of a lack of opportunity, and tax revenue from business is negligible.  Thus even our friends on the paradisical thirty acres may be forced out by property taxes kept punishngly high to make up for the lack of business-generated revenue.
• From Vermont we headed to New Hampshire.  We stayed at a lodge in the White Mountains operated by the Appalachian Mountain Club, the east-coast analogue of the Sierra Club.  The lodge was comfortable (though unless one wants to be awakened by the sound of chips bags being torn open by sharp teeth it's a good idea to keep one's food in a mouse-proof container), the meals hearty, and the opportunity to chat with other outdoorsy-types at those meals good fun.  Oddly, when a woman we dined with suggested that the Appalachians were in some way superior to California's Sierra I found my patriotism, which has never gone beyond state-level, rising.  Considering I haven't lived in the golden state for a quarter-century, this surprised me.  Would I have leaped across the table and attacked her if she had impugned the Japan Alps?  She's right, though, that the Appalachians are good fun.  We enjoyed two excellent hikes, a nine-hour-extravaganza that began at the front door of the lodge, and a short jaunt up to the highest waterfall in New Hampshire on the way out to our next destination, Maine.
• The first thing we did upon pulling in at the motel a couple of miles outside Bar Harbor was walk across the street to a humble lobster-shack where we ate crustaceans that, far from humble, were majestic.  Maine lobster is as good as you hear it is: fresh and reasonably priced.  (The lobsters we ate seemed to us huge, but they used to be bigger.)  The next day, after a leisurely breakfast at the 2 Cats Cafe in Bar Harbor we headed into Acadia National Park where we had another good hike up to the tops of mountains which afforded stunning views of the surrounding ocean.  And after that hike we went down to that ocean and walked the shore path, and there encountered the next splendor: a double rainbow.
• Returning to Boston the next day we headed to the North End for an Italian dinner.  The dinner was good, but the high point of that was, while walking to the restaurant, hearing a voice straight out of a Scorcese film say to someone: "He ain't even from da fuckin' North End."
• Travel always dispels stereotypes—or at least it should.  Not knowing New England at all, I really didn't have many preconceptions about the people, but I had been told they were a crusty bunch, unfriendly and unwelcoming to outsiders.  Based on my short experience of the region this was not born out.  Everyone was friendly (the guy at the lobster shack who held up one of the monsters from the deep so I could get a picture . . . ) and hospitable.  As my friend in Vermont said when talking about a trip he had taken, it's generally the traveler's attitude that determines the reception she gets.  I like to think that the friendliness my wife and I encountered results, in part, from the openness we try to let guide us when traveling (also when not traveling).
• Pictures to follow.