How sweet is this?

While visiting Provincetown I bicycled past this house each day. Doesn't it look like an Edward Hopper painting?

I totally fell in love with this house, which was built in 1870. It is right on the Cape Cod Bay waterfront in the East End of town.

Pity it's on the market for nearly 3 million dollars though...

Yikes!

Center Theatre Group Brings Kids to Live Theatre

White House threatens to veto hate-crimes bill - CNN.com

White House threatens to veto hate-crimes bill - CNN.com

The house recently passed a bill adding sexual orientation, gender identity and disability to federal hate crimes laws. The bill clearly specifies that it applies only to violent crimes, yet right wing Christians are flooding the talk radio airwaves with a drumbeat of distortion claiming it will muzzle their "free speech." Under this bill the hate mongering speech of "Christian" pastors remains just as protected as that of the KKK or the American Nazi party.

This is the type of bizzare emotional manipulation being put out against this bill:

""If your grandmother is mugged, it won't be a big deal [unless she is a lesbian]," Knight said. "And the law-enforcement authorities may have to put more of their revenues toward the mugging, say, of a homosexual guy walking down the street."

Veto this bill or the cops won't care when your sweet Grandma is mugged? Huh?

In a cheesy sop to his evangelical Christian base, Bush has threatened to veto this bill if it passes the Senate. Once again the Bush regime is capitalizing on homophobia to manipulate the political process for thier own gain.

This is almost unbelievable. How could any thinking person oppose this legislation?

View the HRCF hate crimes bill public service announcement.

(If you have a soul, it'll make ya cry.)

down the primrose path...

Or the daylily path actually. This is the path that leads to the guest house I am staying at in Provincetown. Is this adorable or what?

As I spend more time on the Cape I am aware how much my sensibilities have been shaped by the time I spent on Cape Cod in my childhood.

When I was looking for my house in Lost Angeles there were all sorts of very "un-LA" criteria that seemed random to me at the time. (Clapboards or shingles, mature deciduous trees, working fireplace, front porch, etc.) I realized after coming back to the Cape that they were all characteristics of houses here. I'd move back in a heartbeat if it wasn't so freakin' cold in the winter...

Red Sox ballcaps for my Sister...

My sister asked me to pickup a "not MLB, but more girly" Red Sox cap for her while I was in Massachusetts. This picture is so she can virtually window shop...

Pilgrim Monument at Sunset.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Pilgrim Monument. This morning I toured the local Masonic lodge and learned that the Monument's cornerstone was laid by Teddy Roosevelt using a masonic trowel forged by Master Mason Paul Revere.

How cool is that!

The Fourth of July

I'm sitting on the dock of the bay. (Literally!) It's the Fourth of July. The twilight is deepening, spreading over the bay as the fireworks start down in Harwich.

I've been thinking about freedom, and what this holiday means in our post 9/11 world.

Thinking about the President's mantra that “They hate us for our freedom.” I don't think it's freedom they hate, but rather the results of freedom. One thing Don Rumsfeld was right about – freedom is untidy.

Free people loot pension funds, and they wear risque clothing. They drink and smoke, and their kids shoot up schools. Some of them have gender reassignment surgery. They also lay down their lives to save people they've never met from fires, and give food to strangers who have none.

A lot of them gave their lives to defend this experiment we call America.

Notice I said "to defend" this experiment. There was time when wars were undertaken to defend freedom, either ours or someone else's, not to instill it where it never existed. It's a shame we've allowed our leaders to try to roll this idea out to the rest of the world in such an incompetent way.

One thing I am sure of – freedom gives me the right to be who I am, even if it annoys the $%@# out of you.

My third grade teacher used to say - my right to swing my arm ends where your nose begins. Before the right of freedom comes the responsibility of tolerance. This is why our experiment won't work in the middle east just yet. This is also why our homegrown fundamentalists who insist that we should all do as they believe are dead wrong.

Tolerance has to come first, the the untidiness of freedom can begin.

Pleasant Bay, Cape Cod Mass

Ahhhh, Pleasant Bay. This is what I just drove 3000 miles for.

Barlows Clam Bar, Rt 6, Bourne Mass.

My final stop before arriving on Cape Cod is Barlow's Clam Bar on Rt 6 in Bourne, overlooking the Cape Cod Canal. I just discovered this place a few years ago. They do a very good lobster roll, one avoiding all the more common pitfalls. They also have lobster "photo ops" where you can stick your head though and be photographed as a giant lobster - which is a big hit with the two to four year old set.

A few worlds on the lobster roll -

It MUST be on a New England style hot dog roll, ideally split and buttered, and toasted to a golden brown on the grill. A hamburger bun is NOT ok, nor is (gasp) a bulkie roll, a grotesque perversion of the New England classic common to expat New Yorkers. (The Bulkie is way too chewy, and overpowers the lobster meat with its floury-ness.)

All that goes into the lobster roll is lobster meat* and a leaf or two of lettuce, ideally Boston lettuce, but butter lettuce will do in a pinch. Romaine is icky in this context, and Mesclun way too gourmet, and thus liable to incite ridicule. A generous gob of Mayo is traditional (and yummy) but may be omitted by the phobic. It is usually served in a cardboard sleeve, and may be accompanied by fries, onion rings or chips.

If the lobster has been too salad-ized with the addition of celery or god forbid scallions the proprietor should be spanked early and often.

Barlow's meets all these criteria, has a great view of the canal. It is just about two minutes south of the Sagamore bridge on the West side of the canal. It's a good deal too, at $2-3 dollars less than most places over the bridge, and it includes fries. (I remember when Lobster rolls were $4.99 on the Cape. Sigh!)

* A good lobster roll won't be all claw meat, but a generous mix of the whole beast.

Barlows

Lake Erie

The view of Lake Erie from a bluff side park near the White Turkey.

White Turkey Drive In

Today I had lunch at the The White Turkey Drive In, in Conneaut, Ohio. This place was founded in 1952, and hasn't changed one bit since. It was by far the most charming and atmospheric of the joints I visited on this trip, and had shady picnic tables out back surrounded by a beautiful perennial garden.

I had the the turkey sandwich called the "Large Marge." (No, it's not named for the lesbian ghost trucker in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, but for the restaurant's original proprietress.)

I can only describe the sandwich as a "pulled turkey" sandwich. It is startlingly like North Carolina BBQ, but made with white meat turkey instead of pork. It was topped with bacon and American cheese. It was delicious, and very vintage-y in character as you'd expect from the looks of this place. It was accompanied by a delicious real milkshake, freshly made and with globs of vanilla ice cream still slightly unblended. The onion rings were good, but of the crumb breading type, which is not my favorite. (My mother's onion rings were arguably the gold standard, closely followed by those at Liam's on Nauset Beach in Orleans Mass on Cape Cod.)

This place was so sweetly retro-Americana that I was nearly moved to tears while waiting for my sandwich. (I'm funny that way.)

I suddenly understood the much vaunted charm of the Midwest. I confess this has previously largely escaped me.



Plus the state flag of Ohio is a pennant, the only one in the US, which is way cool.