I went to Boston on Saturday to spend two nights with Anthony and Jane. I didn't arrive until around 8:30, and Anthony and Jane had dinner well underway by the time I walked through the door. It had been rainy and windy in New York and due to some complications with my bus ticket (which I won't go into here but am happy to describe at length if you care to call) I stood waiting in the rain on the sidewalk for far longer than I'd anticipated. I managed to dry off completely on the bus, but the few blocks I walked from the station the Anthony and Jane's apartment negated all of that. (Umbrellas work only when the water is coming from above, not from the sides.) Oh well, we had salmon and polenta and brussel sprouts, all washed down with wine, so I was content. After dinner, we braved the rain again to go to a movie theater on the other side of Boston Commons. We met some of Anthony and Jane's friends and watched "Shutter Island," which was disappointing at first but moderately intriguing by the end. Not sure that I'd recommend it. I certainly wouldn't if you're home alone on a dark and stormy night.
We went home and awoke to more rain the next day. After a delicious, late brunch at a nearby restaurant, we sipped coffee and tried to figure out what to do with the rest of the day. We hated to sit around, but it was pretty awful out, so a museum seemed to be the thing to do. But Anthony and Jane had been to the Museum of Fine Arts recently, and we were all sort of at a loss until Jane suggested the Salem Witch Museum. Anthony and I were game, and I added that, to keep the theme going, we could rent "The Crucible" to watch after dinner. So we got directions, piled into Anthony's car, and drove half an hour to Salem.
Jane slept through the drive, and Anthony and I chatted. Visibility was awful, and the lane nearest the median had unexpected, deep puddles periodically which yanked the car to the left each time we hit one. The directions were tricky, and it was a relief to pull up to the somewhat creepy-looking church-like building in which the museum is housed.
This picture is from the Internet, not my camera. Our weather was not nearly so nice.
We paid $7 each and looked at a few placards in the lobby for a few minutes until a young, heavy-set blonde peered through dark swipes of eyeliner and announced that because there weren't many artifacts from this time period, the "museum" consisted of a presentation and then a guided tour. She cautioned us that the room we were about to enter would be dark and that there were steps, then led us down some steps into a dark room. On raised platforms around the perimeter were darkened dioramas. I could make out what looked like a courtroom on one side. The presentation began, and we endured 20 minutes of cheesy narration. Different dioramas lit up periodically to illustrate the story and occasionally townspeople's words would be delivered by the voices of decidedly talentless actors. In a corner, a large figure of the Devil lit up when he was mentioned (which was often), his eyes glowing red.
At the conclusion of the performance, we walked with the two other groups that had endured the presentation into an exhibit called Changing Perceptions, or something like that. It documented public opinion of witchcraft through the years, and there were yet more unconvincing, full-sized models of people who spoke when our guide pushed a button on the wall. She briefly waved her hand at display cases filled with placards, then ushered us past them so that we had virtually no time to read the information. Jane pointed out that it was the last tour of the day and that they were probably anxious to get us out.
We picked up frozen pizza dough and other supplies on the way home, rented the movie, and spent the evening eating mostly homemade pizza and watching "The Crucible," which I think is fantastic. Jane said that it all seemed so implausible that she would have disregarded the movie as being poorly done if she didn't know that it had all actually happened.
Monday morning, I left a few minutes after Anthony and Jane took off for work, maneuvered my way through another bus ticket fiasco, and got back to New York safe and sound. It's gray, but the rain has mostly stopped, and I've got a final 13-mile run scheduled for tomorrow. It'll be my last long one before Sunday's race. All in all, a good weekend, and now it's back to my masters project.
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