Chapter 12: Can't Find Your Birth Certificate? No Worries!

Day 6: Thursday, June 29
20 miles 
North Adams, Massachusetts to Pownal, Vermont

The first thing you come to upon entering Williamstown is the campus of Williams College. We knew we were on campus when we bicycled past lots of old brick buildings surrounded by well-manicured green lawns, kind of like every other New England private college. Not to belittle them, they are all equally picturesque and New Englandy. 

We saw a couple about our age walking down one of the sidewalks. They looked like locals so we stopped and asked how to get to the downtown. The man pointed down the street and said to go a couple blocks and turn right. "You'll find Tunnel City Coffee at the end of the street."

I said, "How did you know we were looking for a coffee shop?"

"That's what everybody is looking for," he said. Guess we're not all that unique.

We found it at the end of the only commercial street in town, nestled within the college campus. Clearly the town exists only to serve the college.

We spend a lot of time poring over our maps.

I was very excited to see this sign outside the bathroom of the coffee shop. At least here I didn't have to worry about bringing my birth certificate along when I go to the bathroom. Because you know, as we get older, we lose those hormones that guarantee we will not be mistaken for the opposite gender. Think of all those old men with boobs and old women with beards. 

The above sign came from the bathroom in Tunnel City Coffee, which I'll remind you is in Massachusetts. But what do you expect from the most liberal state in the country? You're talking about the home state of Elizabeth Warren and Barney Frank, after all. 

But I saw this one in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, after we finished our trip. How about that? A state that just passed a voter ID law requiring not only legal proof that you are who you say you are when you go to vote, but now you can't even register without proof that you are not only living here but that you are going to make New Hampshire your home. I don't understand that. Isn't your home where you live? Even the lawmakers who voted for it admitted that they want to make it harder for college students to vote. But at least you don't need a birth certificate to pee. Thank you, New Hampshire.

After enjoying tea, pastry, and a trip to the bathroom, we headed slightly out of town to the Clark Institute. What a find! Over two dozen Renoirs, one room devoted solely to Winslow Homer - thirteen paintings in all - plus works by Pissaro, Inness, Monet, Manet, and a myriad assortment of other great painters, all in this sleepy little corner of Massachusetts.

See all the crowds in that picture? Neither do I. What fun to discover an almost-empty room filled with great art. You can stand back and see each painting in all its glory, move in close to read the plaque about it and examine the brush strokes without having to elbow aside grandpa and his walker, then stand back and gaze lovingly at that one painting that would knock your socks off if you were wearing any.

The Clarks were rich. Stirling Clark's grandfather was a founding partner of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Stirling and his wife bought a lot of art. They bought a bunch of stuff by Degas at an auction after he died. Stirling later regretted that they hadn't bought more. Don't you wish you could have those kinds of regrets?

Then they built a museum so they could share their love of art with the public.

Some people who are born rich feel no urge to do anything significant with their money. They just buy lots of yachts and other expensive toys and have lots of parties with their rich friends. But the Clarks bought all this wonderful art and then gave it to the rest of us to enjoy. And not just the art, but a beautifully landscaped piece of land. Check out the reflecting pool where we sat and enjoyed our lunch. What a legacy!

After our brief foray into the art world of northwestern Massachusetts it was time to head north, back to Vermont and on to Montreal. 

Before leaving Williamstown we asked around for a grocery store so we could pick up something for dinner. The only place was Spring Street Market & Cafe, a small shop on the one main street in town that sold sandwiches and chips and a very limited supply of groceries, including nothing we could cook for dinner. We picked up sandwiches.

Not all art lives in art museums. We passed this on our way out of Williamstown. I love it when people take the time to decorate their front yards with beautiful creations. Whoever you are, thank you.

We rode out of town on country roads in search of Pine Hollow Campground and, wouldn't you know it, we had to climb a steep hill to get there. This made three out of four campgrounds requiring a hill climb. And this was supposed to be our day off. At least we had our dinner with us so we wouldn't have to do it twice.

The campground didn't offer discounts for tents, so we got electricity whether we needed it or not. (It turned out to be handy for charging my phone.) But we did get a waterfront site, situated right on the spring-fed pond with its a fountain shooting up out of the middle.

We spent a pleasant evening sitting on the waterfront eating our sandwiches and potato chips. I had a veggie wrap with avocado and other assorted healthy stuff; Rob had one with turkey and bacon and healthy stuff to make him feel okay about eating all that meat.

After dinner Rob was futzing around by the bikes when some people stopped by and were asking him about our gear. I heard someone say something about how he should make me carry more stuff, and I shouted, "I already carry more than him!"

But, you know, I don't want anyone to get the idea that Rob is a wuss. Heck, I don't know what it is like to have pulmonary hypertension, but I can only imagine how hard it is for someone who loves to exercise to suddenly find himself struggling to catch his breath when his friends are having no trouble at all. And he never complains.

I turned around and followed up with, "He has lung disease." The man who had spoken had a beer gut. I said, "Gets ya' thinkin', doesn't it?" He laughed.

See that hill at the end of the day?

Chapter 11: Just Follow the Instructions

Day 5: Wednesday, June 28, 2017 (continued)
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA)

When we planned our trip we weren't sure if we would want to spend one or two days exploring the art world in this northwestern corner of Massachusetts. Modern art resides at the Mass MoCA in North Adams and classical art can be found at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. They are practically next door to one another. Certainly both can be seen in one day, even when traveling by bicycle. But not if you are likely to immerse yourselves in an art museum, which we sometimes do.

While writing this I was curious to see if there is a statistic on how many miles you might cover while seeing everything the Mass MoCA has to offer. My search took me to Trip Advisor where, although I didn't find an answer to my question, I did find many rave reviews. And this one, giving the museum just a single star:

Waste of time and money. Perhaps it's me, but I just don't get it... Way too far out there, glad my wife liked it though. Guys, here's a tip - let the wife go and you can wait at Bright Ideas Brewery located on the premises. No admission charge and the beer and food are excellent!

I hit the jackpot when I married someone who is not only a tremendous bicycling companion but also doesn't allow himself to be lumped into that all-inclusive "Guys" category. About an hour into the morning, I said, "I don't think we're going to make it to the Clark Art Institute today," and Rob readily agreed. We didn't even stop long enough to explore any of the cafes on the campus, just had a quick lunch at the outdoor patio, eating food we'd brought with us from our panniers. Then we stepped into the building that houses Sol LeWitt's Restrospective.

A lot of contemporary art, and especially large art installations, challenges you to think about the world from a unique perspective, or to confront social injustice head on. It can be exhausting. But Sol LeWitt's art was just fun, the perfect antidote to the thought-provoking art of the morning. Wall after wall of enormous abstract paintings took up the entire buiding,  




When we entered the exhibit we caught a young man giving a lecture about the artist and his work. He said that LeWitt didn't actually paint the works currently on display. What the artist did was give the specifications for a piece and it was up to the museum to create it according to its own interpretation. There were several videos throughout the gallery showing the creation of some of LeWitt's works. Here's an example of a simple one: "Wall Drawing 381: A square divided horizontally and vertically into four equal parts, one gray, one yellow, one red and one blue, drawn with color and India ink washes." 

Here are the directions to another piece:

And the finished product:

Here are a couple more.

Wall Drawing 1260
"Scribble: Square without a square."
This one looked so 3D it popped out of the picture.

Wall Drawing 51
"All architectural points connected by straight lines."
You could try this at home.

Just like seeing pictures of a place like Glacier National Park in no way prepares you for the awesomeness of the actual scenery, these pictures cannot possibly show you how incredible Sol LeWitt's art is in real life. So get yourself to the Mass MoCA. You have until 2033 to see this fabulous exhibit. But the glaciers in Glacier National Park may have all melted by then so take a vacation to Glacier first, then come here.

I had to walk up to this one to make sure it was actually a two-dimensional painting. It is.

Our original plan had been to camp about ten miles north in Vermont while we visited the Mass MoCA and the Clark Art Institute. But as we were leaving the museum, while Rob popped into the restroom I struck up a conversation with a security guard who told me about a campground right in North Adams, Historic Valley Campground, just a couple miles from downtown. He'd grown up camping there with his family. He even pulled out his phone to show me where it was.

When Rob emerged from the restroom, I said, "Rob, there's a campground nearby. How about we stay there and then go out to dinner?" The little bit of North Adams we saw on our way to the museum looked like there might be some good dining possibilities.

"Sure."  Rob has never been known to turn down a dinner out.

But we weren't warned about the hill we had to climb to get to the campground. This was reminiscent of Brattleboro. We climbed a steep hill to the campground, only to ride back into town and then have to climb the hill again. This was getting to be a pattern.  

The campground was on a lake and seemed nice enough but we didn't take the time to explore it. We paid $20 for a tent site in the low-income district, way back in the woods, no electricity and not even a view of the water. We set up our tent, cleaned up, and rode back into town - downhill - to search out dinner.

The streets of North Adams were surprisingly quiet, no restaurants spilling over with hungry tourists waiting for a table. In fact, we had trouble finding any restaurants at all. After asking random people on the streets for a recommendation we settled on a restaurant called, simply, Public. Rob had fish and chips. I don't remember what I ate but  I do know that we both enjoyed our meals as well as the good beer selection and casual atmosphere.

Chapter 10: Thinking About Race

Day 5: Wednesday, June 28, 2017 (continued)
Mass MoCA

Someone had told me that we wouldn't need to spend much time at the Mass MoCA. It contains contemporary art, after all, which can sometimes leave you asking, "Really? This is art?" And  in the first exhibit we looked at I did ask the security guard, "What makes this art?" Because I do genuinely want to know why splotches of paint on a large canvas that aren't especially pleasing to the eye and don't look like much more than, well, ugly splotches of paint, get a place of honor in a major art museum. The young man shrugged and said, "Honestly, that's what I ask about most of the works in this museum." 

But the museum is enormous. Filling a half dozen old mill buildings, it contains a huge variety of artwork and, if some of it didn't strike our fancy, we found plenty that did. Here's a current article about it, with a great picture taken by a drone: https://dailygazette.com/article/2017/07/23/with-building-6-mass-moca-doubles-in-size.

There are many women who, if they want to enjoy themselves, will not go to an art museum with their husbands. Happily, I am not one of those women. Rob doesn't just tag along to keep me company. He immerses himself in careful scrutiny of every work on display, so much so that I sometimes have to pull him along to the next exhibit.

We were both mesmerized by this installation titled "Until" by Nick Cave:

I bought one of those dazzling things at a market in London when I was visiting our daughter during her semester abroad several years ago. It hangs all by itself on our porch, rather lonely. The collection of so many, multicolored and reflecting light in a multitude of directions was captivating. But contemporary artists often aren't about making something beautiful, but instead use their art to inform social issues. Hanging among all those wind spinners were images of guns and targets. This is from the museum's website:

“A paradisiacal landscape where [black-faced lawn] jockeys appear — made from the crystals that would normally go into chandeliers, on a raised platform accessible via four ladders — is the heart of “Until.” “I had been thinking about gun violence and racism colliding,” Mr. Cave said. “And then I wondered: Is there racism in heaven? That’s how this piece came about.”

Here's a picture of the raised platform where the black lawn jockeys hung out.

Finally, here's a link to an article about this work: New York Times.

Later in the day I saw a piece by Lonnie Holley called "Climbing to Better Understand the World." I didn't take a picture because I didn't think I'd be allowed to post it (I found out later that I could have), but here's the description:

There was a ladder with all the tools of an education stacked on it - books, computer, etc., and it was all wrapped in barbed wire, effectively blocking access to those tools.

Lonnie Holley is African American and grew up around the same time I did. I thought about how I have always taken for granted the education I received. Then I thought about other things I take for granted, like riding around the country on my bicycle.

When I was in my twenties I rode 3000 miles through Canada and the western United States alone. You would think that it could be worrisome for a young woman to travel alone but mostly I felt very safe. People looked out for me. Of course, I was traveling in Canada and the United States. I'm not sure I'd feel so safe in other parts of the world. So, yes, sometimes I do feel that being a woman constrains me in some ways. 

But these exhibits and the recent murders of people of color by our police forces got me thinking. What would it be like to be a person of color touring the country on a bicycle today? Would people you meet treat you with the respect and curiosity that Rob and I experience? Or would they treat you as a threat? Would you be safe from police interrogation and citizen vigilantes? Would you dare stop at someone's house to ask for water or directions? I wonder.