Lizkdc Dislocation

East of Boston: Great Brewster Island

Sandspit at Great Brewster Island

Yesterday I travelled with the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands to one of their islandy flock, a  worn, ancient nubbin called Great Brewster Island, nine miles out from the busy bustle of the waterfront.

Long ago, Native Americans paddled out to these islands in search of fish or refuge from enemies.  For a very long time in recent centuries,  they were part of a busy, messy, fast-changing Boston culture that lived and died by the sea.  For four centuries, Boston built on these islands,  lighthouses and docks, forts and prisons, hospitals for contagious diseases and catch-alls for orphans and delinquents and those who fell under wartime suspicion.  Families lived out here on some of the islands, fishing and managing tiny farms and crafts, connected to the mainland by small boats and an incredible hardihood. On others, wealthier sorts seeking peace from the reeking city built the occasional summer home and played at boats and picnics and watercolor painting. The guide showed us old black and white photos of Gilded Age ladies in enormous hats, posed on the beach with their long skirts sweeping the wet sand.

During the Second World War, a fear of dark dangers that might track across the Atlantic caused the US armed forces to take over almost all the chain, building in great guns and mines and radar nearby the crumbling forts from the Civil War and War of 1812.

Undiscovered Worlds (At the Museum of Science)

Undiscovered Worlds: Trailer from Jason Fletcher on Vimeo.

 

My niece and nephew Milo and Annabelle were staying with Nana and I over the weekend, and because of that, I got to do things I never do. Not can't do, just, usually, don't.  Read Harry Potter out loud. Play chess on the rug.  Watch cartoons. Brush someone else's hair. And awesomest of all, go to the Science Museum.

 What an amazing constructing of the high-tech, and the low.  Annabelle put on a bee-striped cape, and climbed into a giant plastic honeycomb. Milo put on a grey squirrel cape, and raced around a climbing- fort clutching a giant acorn, declaiming MINE MINE in a way that I am sure a real squirrel would cheer. 

 A brilliant volunteer presented them with an enormous box of bones, and challenged them to assemble them back into a skeleton, without telling them what it was a skeleton of!  With coaching and handling and speculation, together they slowly made sense of the parts until it became a creature, a monster, something more familiar--a bird! A really big one! Named at last: an ostrich.   A pretty amazing demonstration of the deep satisfaction kids can get from hands, and touching stuff, and brains, and pictures in books, and a smart teacher.