Care packages

What is it that gives people the gift of presentation? The dainty little packages of sweets that arrive from family – the way the cookies are wrapped and arranged in paper cups and tissue, full of fruit and crumbling butter and sugar, the way the bread and muffins hold together just right, topped with sugar that does not melt or become sticky and berries that hold together, saving their juice for the bite rather than leaking it out into the dough. It is more than flouring and sugaring, it is as though the ingredients know who is forming them and understands their responsibility to perform just so.

The birthday card constructed out of leftover mailbox letters and a paper bag, with a tiny line drawing that makes it suddenly, unexpectedly art. It is another kind of composition where mind and hand have instructed the materials perfectly.

Some of us can learn and copy the tricks, but imitation as flattery can only take us so far. Eventually we will be found out. When do we learn what we have inside ourselves that is organic, when do we know what we can do that is truly ours to give?

Time flies

Nobel Aspirations

If your phone ever rings at 5 a.m. in October, answer it. That's when they award the Nobel Prize and as this morning's news proves, you just never know, it might be you. Many Octobers ago my phone rang before dawn with Nobel news about two professors who won the prize in Physics. The call came from the Director of the MIT News Office, and as the Interim Assistant to the President of MIT, it was my job to know help him prepare to recognize and celebrate the awards such.

At a place like MIT, where 63 people have won the prize, people talk about Nobels like the rest of the world talks about a really great promotion - to people accustomed to extraordinary accomplishment, a Nobel is a distinct possibility, and some get to the point where they plan their careers around it. One gentleman declined the presidency of the Institute based on his expectation that he was a contender for the prize and that accepting an administrative position would hurt his chances. (He did win the Prize, eventually.)

So, given that this event was oddly commonplace and extraordinary, we set about honoring the winners while tip toeing among the winners (there are over 60 as of this writing) and losers that roam the Infinite Corridor. The President, intent on doing the right thing, asked me to visit the Dean of Science to invite him to the press conference honoring the winners. He specifically instructed me to walk down to the office and extend the invitation in person, rather than via phone or e-mail. I knew that the Dean of Science, an imposing and square jawed man with a laugh that reminded me of Beavis and Butthead, was still smarting from being passed over for the Presidency and then the Provost’s position. It became quite clear to me how much he was smarting when I asked to see him personally on behalf of the president and he did not only not rise from his desk, but only glanced briefly over his half glasses at me and inquired what I wanted. I felt more like a child in a principal's office than a presidential envoy, and was both terrified and furious. I extended the invitation as best I could and backed out of the office. When I told the President what happened he realized his mistake in sending a staff memer and, ever gracious, apologized for his colleague's behavior. The winners themselves were wonderful, one charming and affable, the other more quiet and dignified, but both humbled and delighted by the acclaim. I generally found this to be true; that those with the greatest accolades were the most gracious and rewarding to work with.

All of this came back to me this morning when I learned of the Barack Obama’s own Nobel phone call and his daughter’s reactions that this was a great way to start a long weekend. So many laureates in so many disciplines toil in quiet libraries and busy labs, driven by the pursuit of a single idea or narrative, trying to explain something that has never been seen or told before in quite the same way. The award may or may not come, but they work on, devoted to an ideal often only known to them. Those prizes are awarded for moving us forward in a way we might not have expected; they shine light into corners we did not even know were there, and the prize turns up the wattage for the world to see. But Obama has been awarded the beacon itself, and is asked to make good on his promise to further illuminate the world, to take his message of hope and make it a reality. Whether history with judge this as and enlightened choice or a colossal act of hubris we will soon see for ourselves.

You just have to learn to look in the right direction at the right moment

This photograph was taken while I was standing in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, where I pulled in with hopes of getting some nice views. Behind me were acres of parking lot lined with tractor trailers and a number of parked RVs - truckers making deliveries and leaf peepers on the move. So, behind me, big box blight, and in front of me, a vison of New England worthy of Raphael's brush.

48 Hours in September

Opening Windows

Over the years I've taken hundreds - thousands, probably - of photographs of windows. I used to take days off from work in Boston and photograph all of the windows of the older buildings in Back Bay, the Financial District and at MIT. They give me a sense of place, I think, because once I have them I never know what to do with them, but they each have a story, real or imagined, and I suppose my intention was that sooner or later I would get around to writing it.

This window is in downtown Ayer, Massachusetts, and each morning as I drive through town, there are flocks of birds, Barn Swallows, I think, that swoop over Main Street again and again. Ayer is a town stuggling to reinvent itself after the nearby military base was closed, and sometimes I imagine that the birds are trying to breath new life into these too quiet streets.

Ayer looks a little like a Western town, with false facades on some of the buildings squaring them off at the top, and wide covered porches over the walkways. Fort Devens is where the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918 broke out, and I have read Groton's Town Diaries about the World Wat I soldiers who brought the virus and carried it far and wide, the deaths and quarantines and the great infirmary on the hill where the local folks went to recover. But that's another photograph.

Rocks in my Pockets

It was the middle of summer vacation at the end of an afternoon at Long Nook Beach in Truro. The sun cast long shadows and golden light on the low tide. Everyone was meandering in the surf and the tide pools and I was doing some meandering of my own up and down the beach, keeping everyone in sight, soaking up the final warmth of sun and letting the coolish water wash over my sunburned feet. Long Nook is not a good shell beach, and with boxes and boxed of Outer Banks shells languishing in my attic I had given up collecting all but the most unique shells.

Over the years my husband has always brought me bits of translucent beach glass in lovely hues of green, white brown and the rare red or blue; with the advent of recycling collecting the bits of colored glass has become more of a challenge. It is trash turned treasure. At first I saw it as litter spat back by the sea, but now I am charmed by the weathered surface of a shard of old Sprite bottle or the rare bit of cranberry glass. And on that day in 2006, the amber lenses of my sunglasses made the green tones in everything pop out, and, with no beach glass in sight, I began to pick up the greenest pebbles and drop them into the deep pockets of my hiking shorts.

After a long spell of patrolling the beach, squinting at the surf to watch everyone swim, it felt nice to hang my head, let the sun warm the back of my neck, look down and wait for something pretty to catch my eye.

In those days, and sometimes now, vacations could be exhausting. Even though it is good to get out of the stale routines of home life, breaking that rhythm creates the sort of tension with which I am often uncomfortable. There are too many choices and five people to keep happy, and they all have expectations and needs that I am compelled to meet. Most of the time I am exhilarated by the challenge, but there are moments when it rankles.

And so, with everyone happily occupied I allowed my mind to float with my eyes as I followed the tiny streams pulling the salt water back to the sea. I thought about my own childhood vacations of Midwestern swimming pools and city museums, about my Iowa born and bred father and his passion for the sea, about the gift of the Edward Hopper's light on these steep toasted dunes, about my mixed and intense feelings about the Cape. And with each new train of thought, a pebble made its way into my pocket. I considered that afternoon as it might form itself as memory in my children’s minds, about how it conjured all of the best things about childhood for my husband, whose very soul is fueled by salt air and sand between the toes, my desire to provide a hundred more days just like it to all of them and whether that might somehow assure that they are happy and fulfilled ten or twenty years on.

My pockets were getting full and heavy. I mused if I would be able to get up the narrow path to the parking lot with such a load in my pockets and a heavy beach bag and cooler. I worried how much longer I could carry around all of the stories without collapsing under their collective weight. I asked myself if writing them down would make me feel better or worse.

And in 2009 I finally have my answer.