Random escapes from the humdrum of existence.
Methods used: culture, travelling, and little pretty things surrounding us. Sometimes giving way to anxiety about the environment.
As my last note here was somewhat depressing, I decided to continue with the more cheerful Cape Cod theme.
We spent the spring's first perfectly sunny and warm weekend in Cape Cod, the hook-shaped peninsula south of Boston. Going there already in March was actually a great idea; off-season, most places were still closed but Provincetown's main street was nicely calm. A park ranger later told us that in summer, it might take even two hours just to drive through the town (and I'm talking about a town of around 3000 inhabitants).
Cape Cod has been a famous travel destination since the Kennedys spent their holidays here. John F. Kennedy actually initiated the Cape Cod National Seashore protecting around 60 km of Cape Cod’s Atlantic coast, and his son JFK jr. died a decade ago in a plane crash in Martha’s Vineyard, an island next to Cape Cod. Nowadays, you don't need to be a prominent socialite to spend your summer holidays here; around 2 million visitors block the beaches and roads alike every year.
Cape Cod's coast is lined with beautiful long beaches and the nature alters between arid dunes and sea taking over the swamps. Artists praise the sun light as more intense, more blue, just like in Southern France. Cape Cod's Cezanne is of course Edward Hopper who spent 40 summers painting in his studio here. Indeed, the landscape feels somehow familiar: light houses, cottages, and the treeless land. The colour of the sky is "hopperian" and you have a sudden urge to paint as well. And there must be demand for the art as Provincetown's main street is packed with dozens of art galleries.
Provincetown is known for its art and gay scene (the first gay bar in the USA was actually opened here) but its amazing fudge industry has not received the attention it deserves. Forget about those boring vanilla or rhum flavored fudges, I'm talking about cranberry-walnut or smarties-marshmallow fudges...
On our way to Montreal we read that the Canadian government was protesting against EU’s decision to ban seal imports. The EU thinks that killing baby seals is inhumane: during a couple of weeks in the springtime, almost four hundred thousand seals (usually less than 3 months old) are killed in Canada in the largest hunt of marine mammals in the world.
Canada thinks the EU is being silly and to prove its point, the government organized a seal dinner – this action being as mature as the baby seals they were eating. Here libreal leader Michael Ignatieff is eating seal appetizers. Even he doesn't seem to be enjoying.
Had I known more about the issue earlier, I would have never bought that Canadian lobster in Cape Cod. While I have to admit that my first lobster ever was deliciousI’ll be boycotting Canadian sea food until the slaughtering stops. If you want to sign a petition against seal hunting, go to Humane Society International.
Canada was equally cruel against the other cute white animal, polar bear, in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species(CITES). In the same convention, Japan’s commitment lead to the refusal to protect bluefin tuna (the proposal for protection was supported by the EU and the USA among others). Bluefin stocks have fallen by 80 percent over the last 40 years in the Atlantic Ocean and the EU had agreed to ban trade on bluefin tuna earlier this March. So, Japan boycott, anyone??
Japan also defeated the protection of sharks in the convention. Sharks represent the greatest share of threatened marine species but only three out of 50 vulnerable or endangered shark species are protected internationally. 73 million sharks are killed every year, mainly for their fins. Shark fins are considered as a delicacy in China that is the biggest consumer of sharks in the world. So, let’s add China to our boycott list (and even if you don’t care about sharks, you can add it for some other reasons; maybe protecting tigers is your thing!).
All in all, not very successful meeting for marine creatures, in fact it was more like a Tragedy of the Oceans. Despite all these sad news, we were lucky in Cape Cod when it comes to marine life. We were able to observe a troop of endangered North Atlantic right whales from a beach close to Provincetown. Around 60 whales have been spotted there and that’s good news since last year there were much fewer whales around this time of the year. We were indeed fortunate to see them because there exist only 400 whales of this specific species in the planet. And the sunset was gorgeous as well!
Boston is proud of being the cradle of liberty and freedom, the most important American values; even the license plates of Massachusetts say “Spirit of America”. One can say that it was here that the history of independent America starts. Indeed, one of the founding myths of the country is about the Boston Tea Party, the iconic moment of the resistant movement. In 1773 as an action against the British government, heavily taxed tea was destroyed and thrown into water in the Boston Harbour. Today we are witnessing another kind of a tea party movement growing in the USA, but I hope this one is not leading to a revolution.
The replacement of the late Ted Kennedy by the hard-core Republican Scott Brown in the senate was a shock in the state that is considered as one of the most Democrat and liberal in the USA. Together with the rise of the Tea Party movement, it has been one of the big political topics of the year. I had been quite comfortable with the observations of my political environment (Obama ‘08 bumper stickers, Harvard intellectuals, legacy of the Kennedys) until I read about the contemporary Tea Party (see article in the New Yorker). Even when ignoring the goofiest climate change sceptics, creationists, and pro-life activists of the movement, it presents ideas difficult to understand from a Nordic welfare state perspective as they are against all kind of social spending.
Last Saturday, a day before yesterday’s exciting vote on the Obama health bill, some people had gathered in front of the Boston city hall to demonstrate against the health care plan that would guarantee health insurance for millions of uninsured Americans. At first, it was an entertaining sight, but eventually the horrifying reality behind it shocked me: the man carrying the sign “don’t spread my wealth, spread my work ethic” was actually being serious. What kind of people would spend the beautiful and sunny Saturday in order to manifest against everybody’s right to health care? Something I learnt already during my first year of social policy studies was that the health care system in the USA, excuse my French, sucks: it is the most expensive in the developed world and has huge gaps in coverage. Taking away universal access to health care in Europe would be unimaginable; here 50 million people are without health insurance. Hard to imagine how it is to call your parents: “Mum, you need to sell the car and the TV, I broke my arm…”
New York Times reported a Republican asking the Democrats yesterday: “Are you so arrogant that you know what’s best for the American people?” I’m out of words and I shouldn’t even bother because the whole health care discussion has been so unbelievably stupid and frustrating that no logical arguments seem to work (it’s like following the comments on newspapers' on-line discussions). Call it arrogance or elitism, but yes, those people not needing to sell their house in order to cure cancer in the future will be better off.
Here's Mike Peters' cartoon (in the New York Times) mocking the country's possibly greatest idiot, the conservative libertarian Glenn Beck who hosts a TV show (Fox News Channel, of course) where he presents his dilusions about a maoist-nazi-stalinist plot that is taking over the USA in the form of Obama government (What more do you need as proof than a proposal for almost unversal health care? Of course, discourse on social justice leads to dictatorship.) Jon Stewart dismantles his arguments using Beck's own corrupt logic in Daily Show (a part of it shown below), it is hilarious. Or actually, it is pretty shocking, because Glenn Beck really exists and lots of people probably believe in what he's saying (and not just probably because his book "Arguing with Idiots" is a New York Times #1 best-seller, though, I don't know if the title is referring to himself and his followers in the Tea Party movement) even if he sounds more like a parody in a sitcom.
I'm embarrassed (but also slightly proud because I know this will make anyone, or at least any girl, jealous) to admit that the highlight of our visit to New York was spotting a celebrity. But not any kind of celebrity; as we were crossing Central Park on our way to the Metropolitan Museum, Matt Damon jogged around the big pond on the same path. I missed him as he passed us the first time (I was busy taking the photo above), so we waited for his second round to see him again (naturally, he was fast!).
Matt Damon, oh, Matt Damon. I thought I was above this kind of Hollywood euphoria but no, seeing Matt Damon made my day and during the rest of our trip I just hoped to see more famous people (I understand how sad this is as I write it down). While the huge posters of Matt Damon, advertising his new film Green Zone, hunted us all over the city, the only glimpses of celebrities we got were those of the Oscar ceremony. Matt – I think it is appropriate to call him by his first name by now – was there as well showing his big white smile (we couldn't stop singing the Sarah Silverman & Matt Damon duetto during the rest of the day, the video is below).
You could think that visiting a museum after seeing Matt Damon couldn’t possibly be interesting. For a moment I was hesitant as well (“couldn’t we just go hang around near the Hollywood actors’ places?”) but visiting the Metropolitan Museum proved to be an excellent occasion to remember that there’s more in life than Matt (yeah right, I still prefer having Matt in my living room than a Rembrandt…). Honestly speaking, the MET is probably one of the greatest museums I’ve ever been to. It has an unbelievable collection of European 19th and 20th century art – actually, you almost feel annoyed that an American museum should have such a huge collection of the painters that you are happy to see every now and then in the European museums. It is overwhelming and the four hours we spent in the museum were certainly not enough to explore even some of the collection’s masterpieces. I have to say that I enjoy discovering art in smaller quantities; like the Louvre, the MET just exhausts you and you feel frustrated that you cannot contemplate each painting with the concentration it deserves.
Later, we also visited the Frick collection, an interesting private collection of Mr. Frick in a beautiful house next to the Central Park. While the size isn’t as impressive as in the MET, you can carefully go through the collection with the help of an audioguide and without an immediate museum fatigue.
Instead the Guggenheim museum was (again) a disappointment. The architecture of the museum in itself is exciting (above) but there’s hardly anything on the walls. There were no Kandinsky’s or Miro’s works on display (and that is obviously the reason why visitors go there), instead we saw a boring performance of a young couple doing some kind of a sexual interaction dance on the main lobby. So 15 dollars for seeing Frank Lloyd Wright’s white walls… I missed Matt.
Added 13 March: Reading today's New York Times, I realised what we actually paid for in Guggenheim. When we entered the museum, a young boy of around 8 years old came to talk to us: "Do you want a guide?" he asked us in his slightly shy way. We refused his sweet offer and continued the spiral way upwards thinking how courageous he was to ask us. However, it wasn't just some kind of a school exercise but the most talked-about artwork of the season (according to the NYT). After reading the article this morning I understood that we had missed Tino Seghal's artwork where visitors are supposed to discuss the idea of progress with child, teenager and adult guides in the museum. The show has apparently been extremely popular, gathering more than 100 000 paying visitors: I just wonder how many actually understood that they were part of an artwork. We weren't the only ones to turn down the unexpected offer, as one of the guides put it in the article, many visitors replied: "I think we’re here for the art". Unfortunately, the walls were emptied for this particular interactive artwork. Instead of Kandinsky, you got a philosophic discussion with an 8-year-old (I'm sure all the parents were excited about this exchange...).
Cape Cod's coast is lined with beautiful long beaches and the nature alters between arid dunes and sea taking over the swamps. Artists praise the sun light as more intense, more blue, just like in Southern France. Cape Cod's Cezanne is of course Edward Hopper who spent 40 summers painting in his studio here. Indeed, the landscape feels somehow familiar: light houses, cottages, and the treeless land. The colour of the sky is "hopperian" and you have a sudden urge to paint as well. And there must be demand for the art as Provincetown's main street is packed with dozens of art galleries.
Provincetown is known for its art and gay scene (the first gay bar in the USA was actually opened here) but its amazing fudge industry has not received the attention it deserves. Forget about those boring vanilla or rhum flavored fudges, I'm talking about cranberry-walnut or smarties-marshmallow fudges...
