Blue Highways: Riverhead, New York

Unfolding the Map

The turn of a phrase can mean so much, or so little.  But when it means something, it can often fire the imagination and give life to what would ordinarily be description.  I reflect on the literary description, and compare and contrast it to photography, as William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) passes through Riverhead.  At right is the New York State flower, the rose.  Photo is by Atoma and found at Wikimedia Commons.  To find Riverhead, point your finger upstream on the map.

Book Quote

"...I went down a pleasant little road numbered 25, down the north fluke, through neat vegetable truck farms with their typical story-and-a-half houses, past estuaries and swans, to Riverhead.  I followed a pickup with four bloodied sharks laid out in the bed; it looked like a tin of evil sardines packed in ketchup."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 7

Vail-Leavitt Music Hall in Riverhead, New York. Photo by americasroof and posted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Riverhead, New York

I love it when writers pull out an image that really stirs imagination.

I have no idea what evil sardines are, but thanks to LHM, I now have a mental image of what I think they might look like.  And for some reason, I find the image humorous.

It is for these types of images that I read, and continue I will reading for these types of flourishes for the rest of my life.  LHM could have just described the pickup truck, with the four bloodied sharks on the bed and left it like that.  Instead, he added the picturesque description to accentuate its grotesque attributes, or maybe to put us inside his head a little as he processed what he was seeing.  Whatever the reason, his description is much more colorful and evocative of the imagination than the simpler description.

Sometimes that's all we need.  For me, I can digest the evil sardines in ketchup, smile about it, and move on as we continue the journey.  However, sometimes the descriptions leave you wanting more.  I wrote a complaint of this nature when I was blogging Kerouac's On the Road.  Sal Paradise, somewhere in Iowa, gets picked up by a man who is driving, in Kerouac's description, "a toolshack on wheels."  The mental image of this truck made we want to know more about the man driving it.  What does he do?  Is he a handyman who drives the truck to make repairs, or does he use the tools for his own purposes?  What kind of person is he?  Unfortunately, Kerouac does not give us any answers on this.  In the next paragraph Sal gets out and starts looking for his next ride.  I felt myself a little cheated, though I began to realize that Kerouac's intention was to not linger at overlong descriptions of things.  Still, I wanted more about the toolshack on wheels, partly because I knew people who drove similar contraptions in the town where I grew up.

I love photography, or actually I love looking at photography but I don't consider myself a particularly artistic photographer.  An image, when it captures the essence of something, can often have a similar effect in people as a good metaphor or simile, or a longer description.  But I remember, after having read John Berger or Susan Sontag or perhaps both, that photography may remove one from the experience of truly seeing the world around them.  The image may be a faithful, more or less, representation of a person, event or object at that certain instant in time, but it is the writer and the description that truly describes object, or person, or event and fleshes out meaning, symbol, or other intangibles that may not have been caught by the photograph.  The life story of the person is available, should the author choose to explore it, and may only be hinted at by the lines on the person's face or the trappings of their life around them or the expression that they wear in the photograph.  Sontag argues that the photographer is removed from the scene and cannot intervene, but the author, if he or she so chooses, can simply describe, like a photo, or take a more active role.  In LHM's case, he goes one farther, not only reporting what he sees but interpreting it for us.  Sometimes, the intervention can include the author inserting him or herself into the story.

This is not meant as a criticism or a condemnation of photography.  Sometimes, I want to see simply what the camera sees, and sometimes, especially with posed pictures or still life, the photographer does insert his or her own viewpoint into the frame.  That is why professional photographers are artists, though I do sometimes wonder if they ever allow themselves to put the camera down and really participate in the events around them or if they choose to always look at the world through the barrier of their lenses.

I thought about this topic recently on a hike through the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico.  I found myself stopping to take photos at certain points, and realized that I was so focused on getting the perfect shot of this or that, I was missing the world around me.  I started taking a photo and then lingering in the place to experience.  The photo of my wife walking through seven foot high vegetation in the late sunlight became even more real to me when I viewed it later.  The sunlight, on a more horizontal slant in the late afternoon, turned the plant flowers and leaves translucent, and gave the path a quality of a passage from some less vibrant reality to something more colorful, bright and transcendent just beyond.  The paw print I photographed, in the mud next to a river, went from a mere curiosity to a large, possibly feline monster watching from the bluffs above and waiting for its chance.  The stand of pines became a formation not unlike a line of soldiers or perhaps a sloppily arranged high school band during the last mile of a long parade.  Now, when I see the photos, they have much more meaning for me, and the extra dimensionality of my imagination turns them from faithful two-dimensional representations of the world into something even more alive and vibrant than my camera could ever capture, even were I the most accomplished and artistic photographer in the world.

But on the whole, give me an evocative piece of writing.  Give me a description that really sears itself into my imagination.  Whereas the picture does some interpretation for me, writing makes me work.  It makes me come up with the image in my head, and then interpret it.  If it makes sense to me, I am moved in some way.  If it doesn't, then it is either beyond my understanding or the author has some more work to do to capture me and gain inner attention.

Photographs fade or, now, their pixels get lost in the ether.  My imagination stays with me throughout my life, and even without the photographs, I will recall not only the image, but the smells, the sounds, the sensations and how I felt at that point in time and place.

Musical Interlude

I could only find a song, by a band I don't know, born in a time period of music (the 90s) that I usually stay away from, that relates to this post.  There are a lot of songs about photography, but the lyrics in this song, Fades Like a Photograph by Filter, have the most relevance.

If you want to know more about Riverhead

Riverhead Chamber of Commerce
Riverhead Local
Riverhead News Review (newspaper)
Town of Riverhead
Wikipedia: Riverhead

Next up: Islip, Babylon, Amityville, Merrick and Oceanside, New York

Blue Highways: Greenport, New York

Unfolding the Map

Getting gas in Greenport with William Least Heat-Moon lets us reflect over the words of the gas station attendant about what belongs where.  Does Long Island belong to Connecticut, New York, or should it just be its own state.  I'll discuss what attaches us to place, and if it really means anything.  To attach yourself to Greenport, check out the map.  At right is the Eastern bluebird, the state bird of New York.  The image is from Wikimedia Commons.

Book Quote

"Don't call me a New Yorker.  This is Long Island....

"Manhattan's a hundred miles from here.  We're closer to Boston than the city.  Long Island hangs under Connecticut.  Look at the houses here, the old ones.  They're New England-style because the people that built them came from Connecticut.  Towns out here look like Connecticut.  I don't give a damn if the city's turned half the island into a suburb - we should rightfully be Connecticut Yankees.  Or we should be the seventh New England state.  This island's bigger than Rhode Island any way you measure it..."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 7

Greenport, New York. Photo by americasroof and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Greenport, New York

With whom and with what place does one identify?  For many of us it is easy.  Our ties to home, to family and friends, make our identities pretty strong and ones that stay with us throughout life, despite where we live.  You can take some boys and girls out of _____ (fill in your place name here) but you can't take the _____ out of those boys or girls. 

I grew up in such a place.  Everybody I know who lived or currently lives in my home town thinks its a little slice of God's heaven on earth.  It is a small town, situated on the coast of Northern California, north of San Francisco and just south of the intriguingly named Lost Coast.  It's rugged and beautiful.  People have continued to live there despite economic slowdowns and loss of industry.

Of course, we all thought that the north coast of California was the best place to be.  If you couldn't live in my home town, at least you wanted to be somewhere in the north coast region.  The Bay Area was nice but too crowded, so you wanted to stay away from there.  But if you couldn't live near the coast, being in Northern California was good enough because it is beautiful and not too crowded.  The Bay Area was crowded, it is true, but it was certainly preferable to Southern California, which was way too crowded and busy and all that traffic.

But hey, California, even with southern California, was preferable to anywhere else in the country.  Where else could you find such coastline, such mountains, such wonderful farmland, such variety, such entertainment?  So don't mess with California, it is the best place on earth!  And even if you couldn't live in California, then at least if you lived somewhere in the west you were doing better than if you had to live in the harsh Midwest, the steamy South or the uptight and overpopulated East Coast.  But you had to feel lucky that you were born and lived in the United States of America, the best nation on earth.

And so on...

I could go backwards to, down to the very street and acreage on which I grew up.  The point is, our thought processes about places resemble concentric circles.  I have put a graphic below...

If you think of the middle, small circle as the point of origin, such as your neighborhood or your town, then it is a small part of a bigger area, such as your region in the state.  We belong to many different localities and identify with many different places.  That's why I could proudly be a Fort Bragger, but also a Northern Californian, a Californian, a westerner and an American.

I think the next big concentric circle that is in the process of becoming part of our identity is regional, or perhaps continental.  Europe took that big leap starting in the 1950s, but while many people who live there consider themselves European, most of them identify more with their country of origin.  There has yet to be forged a consistent and strong pan-European identity.  However, you see baby steps toward this regional identification in places like Asia and even in the Western Hemisphere.  The identification is loose because the integration is occurring economically, not politically.

In the end, borders are just made up markers on a map.  As the Long Islander who identifies with Connecticut and New England more than New York in the quote above demonstrates, borders don't often truly delineate who belongs where.  This is especially true in countries where borders were haphazardly drawn, such as in the Middle East, or where borders were defined by acts of aggression or the taking of territory through war.  Much of the Southwestern United States fits this description.  I've been told that the US-Mexico border in Texas is just a place where guard stations are erected.  The real border is a fuzzy zone stretching from San Antonio to somewhere inside Mexico.  Southern California is as much Mexican as it is American.  Except for a different systems of government, and excepting Quebec, much of Canada looks like the northern U.S. states it borders, and its people have remarkably similar appearances and values.

Will people one day identify with each other on a planetary basis?  I've been watching the old Star Trek series lately, and the idea of a Federation, in which humans identify with each other and the Earth as their common home, seems very far away.  I suppose it's a historical process, evolving just as our awareness of what constitutes our "neighborhood" evolves also.  At one time most people couldn't imagine what lay beyond their sight.  Now, we can imagine, so much so that I see writing about our neighborhood in our galaxy.  As our ideas and goals get bigger, so does the sense of what and where we belong.  And I think that's all for the good.

Musical Interlude

Here's a wonderful song by a group named Pangea, consisting of the US band Flying Machines, and musicians Cheng Lin from China, Kailash Kher from India, Khaled from Algeria/France and King Sunny Ade from Nigeria.  The song is called Citizens of the World.  Enjoy this global music supergroup!

If you want to know more about Greenport

New York Times: Greenport, New York
New York Travel Magazine: Greenport
Village of Greenport
Wikipedia: Greenport

Next up: Riverhead, New York

Blue Highways: Orient (Point), New York

Unfolding the Map

The demise of the full service filling station is the subject of this post.  We have just sailed in to Orient, New York on the ferry with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) and are back in New York for a quick trip through before beginning the trip west and back to the beginning.  Do you remember full service filling stations?  I miss them.  To find Orient Point, click here to see the map.

Book Quote

"If you want to hear distortions and misconceptions laced with plenty of dogmatic opinion, you have a choice of three places...bars, sport arenas, and gas stations....As filling stations cease to be garages and community centers, as they become nothing but expensive nozzles, they too are losing ground.  But, in the past, an American traveler depended on the local grease pit boys to tell him (a) the best route to wherever; (b) the best place to eat...; and (c) what the townfolk thought about whatsoever....

"Orient Point, Long Island, was a few houses and a collapsed four-story inn built in 1810..."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 7

Orient Point Lighthouse in Orient, New York. Photo by hatchski and hosted at Flickr. Click on photo to go to host page.Orient Point, New York

While visiting my hometown recently, I had an experience that was so unique in this day and age that I took note of it.  I had to stop for some gas, and pulled into a station on the main street to fill up.  As I got out of my rental car to open up the gas tank, a guy came out of the office and said "What do you need?"  Puzzled, I told him I was going to gas up.  He grabbed the nozzle and asked what type of gas I needed.  Then, he gassed up the car.  After he was done, I handed him my credit card, and he took it back into the garage, and then brought the credit card and slip out for me to sign on a clipboard.

He didn't check the dipstick under the hood, but I bet if I had asked him, he would have.

I remember when, and it seems like a long time ago, gas stations regularly provided that type of service.  When I was growing up, someone employed at a gas station always came out and filled the tank as well as looking under the hood and adding oil or water or wiper fluid as needed.  They also washed the windows, put air in the tires if needed, and sometimes gave your car a wash or a detailing.  This was the kind of service provided in 1963, the year of my birth, when gas cost 30 cents a gallon.

Now, as I write this, gas currently averages $3.51 in New Mexico where I live, and the most expensive state to buy gas is California, where I grew up, at an average $4.12.  And yet, when I pull into the pumps, I have to get out and fill up my own tank.  I have to check my own oil, and if I need some, I have to buy it and put it in myself.  If my tire is low, I have to pull the car over to the air compressor, if the station has one, and pay 50 to 75 cents to get the compressor started.  If my windshield is dirty, I have to hope that there is fluid in the containers provided near the pumps, or that there is a squeegee to use. 

I'm told that self-service gas stations are convenient, but it seems to me that it was more convenient to sit in my car and listen to the radio while someone else did the work.  I'm also told that self-service gas stations keep the price of auto fuel down, but then again, gas prices have risen anywhere from 1056-1323% since I was born.  Thirty cents in 1963, according to an inflation calculator which calculates at the average inflation rate of 4.18%, would have the same buying power as $2.23 today.  So gasoline has become more expensive yet less convenient over time, and I'm not sure what the savings has actually been.

But convenience and pricing isn't the only reason I'm writing about this.  LHM also points out that these businesses were an integral part of the community fabric.  People met at the gas station, not only to fill up but to exchange news, gossip and opinions.  Station attendants saw everyone in town and were often the source of important information.  Not only that, but they knew your car personally.  Did your car have a funny knock?  They knew which gas would minimize or eliminate it.  Did your car have a leaky hose but you didn't have enough money to replace it right away?  They could help you nurse it along until the last minute or until you could the money together to fix it.

When I go to fill up my car now, it's such an impersonal experience.  Gas stations have become pumps that sit outside small convenience stores.  It is rare to find a garage attached to a station anymore.  The convenience stores are usually staffed by clerks who seem to rarely smile (and would you for the paltry pay?) and who rarely even look at you.

I've written about this before in my posts, as have others who have bemoaned the loss of community in our country.  Today, people rely on their smart phones to get directions, on the internet for restaurant reviews, on Google to find anything and everything and on Facebook to share what they've found.  People socialize over the Web, buried in a wall of sound on their headphones in the middle of a crowded coffee shop, oblivious to each other and only aware of what is on their screen and in their ears.  We don't socialize with each other, but with a virtual community that can always throw information at us from behind its electronic walls, but can never provide us with real face-to-face contact and authentic human interaction.

And yes, some of these advances are convenient, and I use them.  But I don't think it's hypocritical to say, even in the midst of human advancement, that I miss some things about the past.  And one thing I miss, even as I bemoan that we rely so much on fossil fuel today, is sitting in my car like I did as a little boy and being fascinated as attendants so quickly and efficiently provided service to my parents' car and with a friendly wave sent us on our way.

Musical Interlude

I found a fun and funky song called Service Station Song (Let Me Pump Your Gas) by Mean Gene Kelton and the Die Hards.  I wonder what the song is getting at?  Unfortunately, Mean Gene is no longer with us.

If you want to know more about Orient Point

Cross Sound Ferry Services
LighthouseFriends.com: Orient Point
LongIslandLighthouses.com: Orient Point
Wikipedia: Orient

Next up:  Greenport, New York

Blue Highways: New London, Connecticut

Unfolding the Map

I heard something that shocked me recently.  Those children born 18 years ago have most likely never known cars with anything other than a CD player. Being 48 years old, I remember 45 rpm records.  I also remember the Cold War.  Something as distant in time as those events and the threat of nuclear annihilation only registers on the minds of those younger than 30 if they read it in history books.  About 10 years ago, a young friend, then in her early 20s, asked my wife "so what was this Berlin Wall thing all about?"  For those of us that lived in the Cold War and remember, it was a shadow of terror over our lives that were otherwise lived normally.  This post, as we wait with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) for a ferry in New London, remembers some of that time period.  To pinpoint New London, target the map.

Book Quote

"...I asked where they built the submarines, and he pointed to a dagger of a shadow.  'That black thing is the Ohio.  She's the first Trident.  The orange bull on blocks is the Michigan.'

"'How can anything that big move under water?'

"'They're longer than the Washington Monument.  The Ohio will carry twenty-four missiles, each one with a dozen warheads: two hundered eighty-eight atomic explosions.  One hell of a bitch with twelve sisters coming along behind at a billion dollars each.'  He offered a Chiclet.  'They used to name battleships after states because they were the dreadnaughts of the sea, but there's your dreadnaughts of the next war.'

"'....You think war is finished?  Whatever peace we'll know will come because of things like those devils...Those Tridents are the new Peacemakers...'"

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 6

New London, Connecticut. Photo by Ralph Thayer and hosted at Wikipedia. Click on photo to go to host page.

New London, Connecticut

Recently, on a work trip to San Diego, I took time out from the conference I was attending to spend some time at the Maritime Museum with my wife.  The harbor's star attraction was the USS Midway, a decommissioned and historically important aircraft carrier.  But for me, the highlight of the visit was a tour of a decommissioned Soviet submarine.

I've been, at least somewhat, a fan of submarine films.  Movies like Das Boot, The Hunt for Red October and U-571 are filled with drama and tension.  I suppose such tension comes with the tight, cramped and even claustrophobic environment of a long metal tube submerged for days and weeks beneath the surface of a deep, dark and unforgiving ocean.  One mistake, one faulty rivet or plate, or one engine (or nowadays nuclear reactor) accident could mean a cold, dark and unpleasant death.  In wartime, the stakes and terror can be even higher, and death could come in the form of a torpedo or a depth charge.

The most recent movie I saw on submarines, K-19: The Widowmaker, was about a Soviet submarine much like the one I toured in San Diego.  But only by going into such a submarine can one really get a sense of the conditions in one.  Touring through the sub, I understood why the pay was greater and the honors greater than in other parts of the Soviet Navy.  Pipes and valves stick out in odd places, guaranteeing that if you don't watch your head you will probably crack it open on something.  There were cramped toilets where the sailors had only weekly shower privileges.  Other features: a tiny kitchen with a cook trying to stretch stores as far as they will go, helping men forget with an unauthorized shot of vodka or beer; miniscule berths that sailors shared - one used the berth and slept while the other did his duty; everywhere the smell of diesel and hot machinery.  When I did my tour, I realized that the mother and her son passing through the sub behind me were Russian, and they spoke Russian with each other while looking into cabins and berths.  I closed my eyes and imagined that where once a chorus of Russian voices filled that ship, the strains of Russian now probably echoed infrequently off the inner hull.

It is easy to forget, or not even realize, that from the end of World War II until 1989 the world was at the mercy such metal tubes, whether they rode under the waves or rocketed through the air.  As my studies in international relations remind me, many scholars believe that these engines of war were what saved humanity.  Submarines and missiles, goes the argument, were what kept the peace between two of the most powerful nations the world has ever seen.  Such subs. loaded with nuclear missiles and nuclear-tipped torpedoes, were the trump card of the Cold War.  If a devastating attack was launched, even if the enemy was taken by complete surprise and completely annhilated, its subs could launch a similarly devastating counterattack from off the coasts, destroying the other nation in a matter of minutes.

That was the world I grew up under - nations held hostage to peace under the threat of weapons of mass destruction pointed at each other.  It was called a peace, but it was a damn frightening peace.  Just as two gunslingers, hands at their sides, face each other in the dusty street in movies about the Old West, the United States and Soviet Union stared each other down, weapons in plain sight, each knowing what the other was capable of, each waiting for one to either move or back down.  Think of the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the Soviets decided to station nuclear missiles in their ally Cuba, and the United States responding with a blockade.  It was steely-eyed feint and counter-feint, each probing for weakness and backing off if there would be disadvantaged.  For almost five decades, these gunslingers, the US and the Soviets, faced each other until finally, the Soviets blinked, turned and walked into the sunset.

But we who grew up under this peace had no idea that, unfathomably, it would end so peacefully.  When I was old enough to understand the international situation to a degree, I began to have nightmares involving flashes and mushroom clouds.  Nuclear tests were common until banned by international treaty.  Small wars often sprung up in far-flung and distant places, leading to sharp words and threats from the United States and the Soviets.  The Soviet government was painted as evil and ruthless, the Soviet people were described as dour, wretched, and lost.  I thought, like many others, that when the standoff did end, it would end civilization as well.  We just didn't know when.

A common phrase taught to me as a child was "believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see."  When my parents took our family on a cruise to Alaska on a Soviet cruise ship in 1980, I saw Soviets for what they were - people.  I even got a crush on our server, a young Russian girl named Larissa.  At the time, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, and I had trouble reconciling the words of our government condemning the Soviet government and the incredibly friendly people, sharing their rich culture with us, staffing the ship.

My studies taught me that the international drama of the Cold War was, in many ways, carefully stage-managed.  Knowing that they faced annihilation and that there would be no winner in a major conflict, the United States and the Soviet Union minimized the opportunities for direct conflict and instead fought through proxies.  The argument that these nuclear-armed antagonists deterred each other from direct conflict therefore has much merit. 

I often hear the same argument made for arming individuals in our society.  The argument goes that if someone knows or suspects that you are armed, they won't harm you because it could lead to harm to themselves.  However, there is a difference between national action and individual action.  Nations are collectivities of people and therefore the risk of irrational action is less.  Nations are rarely impulsive - even the actions of Hitler and the Nazis was a well-thought out plan, and based on self-preservation.  All nations will choose self-preservation over destruction - even Nazi Germany made some overtures toward peace at the very end to try to preserve itself. 

Individuals, however, can have moments of irrationality with no cultural and collective filter to put the brakes on those thoughts.  I think of the times when, in the heat of passion or disappointment or anger, I have done irrational things.  The United States and the Soviet Union managed their conflict in a rational manner and usually considered the potential consequences of their decisions carefully.  The person who kills, or the person who feels threatened whether or not there is an actual threat, can often behave irrationally and give in to impulsive actions.  That's why I cannot buy the argument that a safe society is one where individuals are armed.

But back when I was growing up, I didn't understand such.  And I feared, greatly, that one day my life and my world would end in a flash of light.  It seems that the chances of that were, and remain, low.  I might have more to fear from a greater number of individuals packing heat within my own country than a nation-state packing a nuclear bomb.  I hope I never experience either.

Musical Interlude

The first song for the musical interlude is Yo La Tengo's Nuclear War, a remake of a Sun Ra song.  I like the images the creator of the video put in to accompany the song, as well as the clip of J. Robert Oppenheimer, lead scientist on the Manhattan Project, at the very end.

Of course, leave it to The Beatles to turn a weapon of destruction into a children's song in Yellow Submarine.  The video uses clips from the movie Yellow Submarine, interspersed with footage of swimming Beatles.

If you want to know more about New London

City of New London
Connecticut College
TheDay.com (newspaper)
Mitchell College
United States Coast Guard Academy
Wikipedia: New London

Next up: Orient Point, New York

Blue Highways: Mystic, Connecticut

Unfolding the Map

If you are feeling a presence that you can't quite explain, something mysterious and unknown, yet full of meaning, it may mean that you have entered a mystical place, or what you think might be mystical.  We'll find out in this post if Mystic is mystical.  To find this place where the name might mean everything, do some divining at the map.

Book Quote

"I headed toward New London, through Mystic, where they used to build the clipper ships."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 6

Downtown Mystic, Connecticut. Photo by boboroshi and posted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Mystic, Connecticut

I like movies, and my first introduction to Mystic, Connecticut was through the movie Mystic Pizza.  Before that movie came out, I had not been aware of the place.

The word "mystic" has always been, for me, one of those words that almost completely describes what it touches, and yet doesn't describe it at all.  Mystic is a mysterious word (notice that it has the same root, "myst," as mysterious), that conveys a lot of below-the-surface meaning.  It is a word that I have been drawn to every time I read it in print or hear it in conversation.  I think that it probably has that effect on many people.

The title Mystic Pizza therefore caught my eye.  I didn't quite know what to expect, but it turned out to be a coming-of-age film about three young women.  Julia Roberts had her first notable role in it, as did Annabeth Gish and Lili Taylor.  It was a nice movie, and I enjoyed it.  I later learned that my wife did a play as a young girl with Annabeth Gish (who is about her age) in Iowa, and we have recently seen Ms. Gish's parents at events in Albuquerque, where we and they now live.

This tale feels somewhat disjointed, but there's a point here somewhere.  On a trip to visit friends in Connecticut in the mid-1990s, I decided, on the basis of the name of the town and the fact that I had seen Mystic Pizza, to drive down to Mystic and see what all of the fuss was about.  Mystic, as I remember it, was a pretty little town trading on its historical shipbuilding heritage.  I bummed about, looking at things, and of course eating at Mystic Pizza.  Perhaps I thought that the beautiful young starlets would still be hanging about, ready to serve me a plate of hot, steaming pizza slices.  Of course, they were long gone.  But the town was still there, and its name was still an attraction, though it didn't seem any more mystical to me than anywhere else.

But what is a mystic, and how might this moniker fit to Mystic, Connecticut?  After all, mysticism and mystics are very specific things.  Mysticism is the attempt to reach different states of awareness awareness, and sometimes a union with the Divine or a Supreme Being.  In this sense, a mystic is a person who practices mysticism.  All major religions that have existed have had elements of mysticism in them.  Anything that brings one to different states of consciousness, or anyplace beyond what we normally see and hear, is mysticism.  Simple prayer is a form of mysticism, as the goal is to somehow come in contact with a deity or deities.  Meditation can be another form of mysticism in certain faiths.  In my imagination, this definition of mysticism conflated itself with the naming of Mystic, Connecticut.  New England was one of the flashpoints of religious confrontation in the New World as it was being settled, as various forms of Christianity, including forms of mysticism based on Christianity, battled among themselves and also with the harsh environment and the native traditions. I just assumed that Mystic, Connecticut reflected that history.  I also made assumptions based on the literature and history of the times, where people who might have been practicing mysticism were denounced as witches and either driven away or often killed.

Well, it turns out that Mystic, Connecticut sits at the mouth of the Mystic River, and is named for the river.

That still didn't disabuse me of my notions.  In fact, it made my imagination wander even farther.  The Mystic River sounds even more fantastic, more magical, more mysterious, than Mystic, Connecticut.  Certainly, all that history and religion came together to lead to the name of the river.  I tried to imagine how the name of the river came about.  Perhaps settlers, newly arrived to the area, saw the Mystic River heading into the dark forests and hills of Connecticut, areas where mystery reigned, shadows concealed unknown terrors and perhaps wonders and realities that only the imagination could conjure.  If you've ever read Washington Irving or Nathaniel Hawthorne, you know that the areas beyond the settlers' front doorstep were unknown and sometimes terrifying.  Thunder could easily be giants bowling, men could fall asleep for 100 years, and the Devil, bad spirits and witches roamed the dark forests.

Alas, however, I was was to be disappointed.  The Mystic River was a derivation of the Wampanoag Indian word for, quite simply, "big river."  The only mysticism attached to the river and to Mystic, Connecticut was the imagination that I attached to them.

Despite my disappointment at learning the truth, I have to admit that places where our minds wander are often influenced by place and by the labels we attach to them.  Would Mystic Pizza,  Mystic, Connecticut and the Mystic River have captured my imagination if they were entitled Big River Pizza, Big River, Connecticut and Big River River?  Probably not.  In that sense, I got my money's worth out of Mystic even before I saw it and if the reality didn't match my imagination, well, that happens in life.

On the other hand, often the name of a place belies the mystical and amazing experiences there.  For the incredible natural wonder that it is, the name "Grand Canyon" seems to be a little under-descriptive for a place that inspires such awe and wonder that it can almost put one in another level of consciousness.  The near religious experience I had hearing the call to prayer for the first time in Istanbul (was Constantinople) was not something I prepared for in going to a country called Turkey.  Romantic encounters that send one to unimagined heights of love and pleasure often occur with people whose names are simply Fred, Mary, Joe, or Karen.  Names are only identifiers, and the true mysticism of a place or person will come through despite how they are called.  I may have found that Mystic did not live up to my vivid imagination, but I know Mystic is mystical to many.  It certainly is a lovely town with a wonderful seaport museum.  Every place and everyone has the potential to be mystical to someone, and that is what makes our universe special.  You never know when something or someone will bring you to a higher level of awareness, and make you feel like you've touched the Divine.

Musical Interlude

If one song captures the mystic for me, it's Van Morrison's Into the Mystic.  It is one of those songs that feels like it just came out perfect from the beginning, and that it was conceived somewhere on a higher plane.  Simple, but multiply layered and beautiful.

If you want to know more about Mystic

Greater Mystic Chamber of Commerce
Mystic Aquarium
Mystic Country
Mystic Seaport
Old Mistick Village
Wikipedia: Mystic

Next up:  New London, Connecticut