Day 65, Year 7: Out and About in Cambridge
Date: Thursday, January 12, 2012
Weather: Rain All Day, Temp in the 40’s
Location: At Home with John and Sue Reed, Cambridge, Massachusetts
The weather today was just nasty. It was windy and rainy and dreary, so we
decided to stay in Cambridge until tomorrow. We saw no need to fight the
weather. It is supposed to rain tomorrow as well, but we are hoping that
forecast will change. The good thing is that it is not cold, but the cold
is coming this weekend. Mark is still feeling great but he stayed in all
day due to the weather. Sue and I, on the other hand, were out and about
Cambridge both morning and afternoon. We went to hear a special speaker at
one place in the morning, brought a friend of hers home for lunch, and then
went back out this afternoon to hear another speaker. So it was an
intellectually stimulating day for me.
This morning Sue took me as a guest to the Thursday Morning Talks for the
benefit of Mt. Auburn Hospital. Today’s speaker was Ellen Fitzpatrick,
Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire and commentator on
PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. She has recently published a book called
“Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation.” She started her
presentation by looking at the audience and stating that she could tell by
the color of our hair that each of us could probably instantly recall
exactly where we were on November 22, 1963, when we heard that Present John
Kennedy had been shot. There were head nods all around the room affirming
that we all remembered. She then thanked us for coming out on such a dreary
morning, but she added that we were probably happier to be listening to a
speech about condolence letters rather than sitting at home writing one, or
worse yet, having someone else writing one about us. That got a chuckle
from the audience, but the remainder of her presentation easily brought
tears. Fitzpatrick has chosen 250 of the 1.5 million letters that were
written to Jackie that exemplify the “heart-wrenching grief and soul
searching of a nation in a time of crisis.”
The afternoon presentation was not emotionally charged, but it was most
interesting. This was a meeting of the Thursday Mothers’ Club of Cambridge
which started in 1920 as the Mothers’ Query Club. It was then mostly the
wives of Harvard professors who met “to promote discussion of subjects of
interest to mothers, and to secure a better acquaintance among its members.”
Although it keeps the name of “Mothers’ Club”, today you certainly don’t
have to be a mother to attend. The topic of this afternoon’s presentation
was about the Shosoin, a treasure house in Japan that belongs to Buddhist
temple/monastery complex of Todai-ji in the ancient city of Nara. Todai-ji
has a Buddhist temple that houses the world’s largest bronze statue of
Buddha Vairocana in the world’s largest wooden building. The Shosoin, which
is built in the azekura log-cabin style, is in the same complex and dates
back to 701 AD. The title of the presentation was “Treasures of the Silk
Road” and the speaker, Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis, former professor at Boston
University, did a wonderful job of explaining the importance of the Silk
Road which led from the Far East to the Middle East. As I listened, I got
inspired to put together a presentation based on the textiles of the various
places we visited on the Voyage of Windbird-the molas of the San Blas
Islands in Panama, the tapa cloth and woven fine mats of the South Pacific,
the songket and ikat weavings of Indonesia, the recelet from Madagascar.
And we were leaving, the hostess of the meeting said to me, “Welcome back
from the World.” That sounded like the title of a book and has rekindled my
desire to write about our adventures. So maybe some of this will get done
in 2012.
