Twentieth Century Howlingly Funny

 

TWENTIETH CENTURY (1934)

Directed by Howard Hawks

Columbia Pictures, 91 minutes, Pre-Code (not-rated)

★★★★★

 

 

 

It’s usually not a good thing when actors are accused of “chewing the scenery.” Then again, few actors are Lionel Barrymore or Carole Lombard. In 1934, they split a meal of film stock and made Twentieth Century, one of the funniest screwball comedies of all time.

 

Oscar Jaffe (Barrymore) is an egotistical theatre director/producer/company leader whom we first observe driving two longtime assistants crazy: his accountant, Oliver Webb (Walter Connolly) and Owen O’Malley (Roscoe Karns). In O’Malley’s case, he’s literally driven to drink. The latest camel-breaking straw is a rehearsal in which Jaffe is trying to explain blocking to his new “find,” Mildred Plotka (Lombard), who is better qualified to be a blockhead. Oliver and Owen know why he’s insistent upon schooling her; she’s a lingerie model.

 

Yet, Jaffe turns her into a star under the name of Lily Garland and they make several smash hits together. He’s too much the jealous tyrant, though, and Lily decides to go her own way upon discovering Oscar hired a detective (Edgar Kennedy*) to shadow her. As her star rises, Oscar’s sinks and the 1930s is no time to for egg-laying turkeys. Jaffe tries to create news stars but, as Oliver informs him, he can’t get backing for another flop. Oscar smells opportunity though, when he learns that Lily is on the same train as he. (The movie title derives from the Twentieth Century Limited, which plied the rails from Chicago to New York.)

 

This sets the table for a farce filled with opening and closing suite doors, exasperated characters, pratfalls, feigned injuries, and grand gestures. Oscar assumes roles such as concerned friend, suitor, wounded impresario, and schemer extraordinaire—all of which drives poor Owen deeper into his flask and the pragmatic Oliver to claw at what little hair he has left. Oscar’s goal, of course, is to lure Lily back into the fold. All he needs is to dispose of her snooty fiancé (Ralph Farber), convince Lily to rebuff an offer from his theatre rival Max Jacobs (Charles Lane), and find oodles of cash for a new production. And, of course, he needs both a concept and a script. As if there wasn’t enough mayhem, some wacko is slinking up and down the train plastering evangelical stickers on every available surface.

 

Twentieth Century is sassy, barbed, and rip-roaring funny. Barrymore* mastered the double take and had more histrionic gestures in his bag of tricks than there are stars in the Milky Way. He and Lombard also understood a basic tenet of broad comedy: if you’re going to be outrageous, go whole hog. Lombard’s “Lily” can match Barrymore’s “Oscar” vanity for vanity, ego for ego, and lie for lie.

 

They must have had a blast doing this film. The script from the exceptionally talented and rightly renowned Ben Hecht—with assistance from Charles MacArthur—is sharp and expertly timed. It’s one of those rare films in which even those in bit roles—Connolly, Karns, Billie Seward as Lily’s beleaguered maid, and Etienne Giradot as Matthew J. Clark—play their parts so well that they enhance the madness rather than appearing as mere props for the principals or background wallpaper. Twentieth Century is a model for how to make a broad comedy without descending to the lowest common denominator. Hats off also to director Howard Hawks, perhaps the best screwball comedy director in film history not named Frank Capra. Some, me included, prefer Hawks because he was less sugary.

 

Twentieth Century is nearly 90 years old, but its humor is both well-timed and timeless. Watch it. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

 

Rob Weir

 

*Note: Groucho Marx played the role of Oscar Jaffe in a summer stock staging. Groucho wanted to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor, and apparently played Jaffe that way. Interesting choice, but Barrymore owns the role. In another tidbit, Edward Kennedy was the heavy in several Marx Brothers films, including Duck Soup in which he was the lemonade vendor befuddled by Harpo. 

Oh William!= Oh, No, not More Lucy Barton!

 

 

OH WILLIAM!  (October, 2021)

By Elizabeth Strout

Random House, 221 pages.

★★

 

 

Fiction writers often say that their characters “surprised” them. It’s a mysterious-sounding but accurate way of saying that the logic of the narrative forces writers to consider what a character would do in a particular circumstance. In that sense, characters evolve personalities that are not necessarily how a writer first imagined them. That’s among the reasons why characters return for a second act, or a third or more. John Updike famously penned a tetralogy and a novella spotlighting Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom and won Pulitzer Prizes for two of them. It’s important, though, to know when to part with a character.

 

 Elizabeth Strout wrote two Olive Kitteridge novels, won a Pulitzer for the first, and praise for the second. In 2016, she published the acclaimed My Name is Lucy Barton and followed the next year with Anything is Possible. Now, four years later, Oh William! is book three of the Lucy Barton cycle, though it’s ostensibly about her aging first husband. I was underwhelmed by Anything is Possible and less so by Oh William! One reason is that I find Lucy as relentlessly annoying as William is self-centered. Though she’s now in her 60s, a feted author, and the mother with two adult daughters, she remains a girl-woman. Were this a male character, I’m sure some reviewers would be screaming, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, grow up.”

 

Those who’ve followed Lucy know about her impoverished childhood and emotionally distant parents. Having grown up financially strapped myself, I’d not deny that such experiences can scar and carry over into adulthood, but most of us manage to move on. Not Lucy. As we meet her now, she’s recently widowed. Her first husband, William Gerhardt, now wants more from Lucy, though not in the way you might think.

 

William, an accomplished parasitologist, still goes to his university lab every day, though he no longer teaches. At 70, he’s not the womanizer he used to be either, but he remains the same emotionally challenged egoist that prompted Lucy to walk out on him and her young family decades earlier. He’s partnerless again as Estelle, his third wife, has left him. Although Lucy and William remained friends–he calls her “Button” and he is “Pillie” to her–neither is looking for any sort of made-for-each-other redemptive winter romance. What William really wants is for Lucy to go northern Maine with him.

 

Courtesy of an Ancestry.com gift from one of his daughters, William has learned he has a half-sister. He has no idea what he wants to do with that information except make his way to Houlton, a down-on-its-heels town on the U.S./Canada border in the middle of potato country. He hopes to figure out his next step when he gets there. Inexplicably, Lucy agrees to come along. There’s really not much to suggest why she would do so, other than the fact that his late mother, Caroline Trask Gerhardt, was one of Lucy’s early adult mentors.

 

The trip to northern Maine yields surprises about Caroline, William’s German father, and his half-sister, though surprisingly little about our two protagonists. Suffice it to say that those old enough to remember the Gerhardts don’t have much good to say about them, and that includes Lois, William’s previously unknown sibling. Alas, William and Lucy are the same woe-is-me whiny individuals we’ve seen before. I doubt it was Strout’s intention, but this part of the novel’s most revealing parts concern how places such as Bangor, Presque Isle, Fort Fairfield, and Houlton are closer to despair than to the American Dream.

 

The book’s title reflects the fact that Lucy repeatedly utters the phrase “Oh William!” She uses it to express surprise, sympathy, frustration, and futility. From this reader’s perspective, this repetition is more of a reflection upon a paucity of fresh ideas than any sort of emotional roller coaster. Still another indication is that Strout resorts to having Lucy explain things by referencing her novels; that is, she’s speaking in Strout’s voice rather than her own. Strout seeks to build parallels between Caroline and Lucy, but it ends up as a mechanistic contrivance rather than probing Lucy’s psyche. Perhaps that’s because Lucy doesn’t have much depth. For a character who has allegedly become a renowned author who has traveled extensively and feels at home among the chaos of New York City, Lucy is akin to a frightened gray rabbit. Lucy Barton was interesting to contemplate the first time, but not a second or third. Strout needs to move on. Lucy Barton is no Rabbit Angstrom.

 

Rob Weir  

The Lowering Days a Stunning Debut

 

 

 

THE LOWERING DAYS (2021)

By Gregory Brown

Harper, 268 pages.

★★★★★

 

Lowering days are those of gloom and foreboding. One origin story, possibly apocryphal, holds that the phrase came from the spring day on which those who died in winter were removed from storage and buried. Gregory Brown's stunning debut novel borrows the concept for a ghost story without ghosts. It’s a spin-the-generations story about violence that reaches across time to look at debts never fully repaid and hard deaths in a hard place.

 

Brown hails from the Penobscot River basin of northeast Maine. The river bears the name of Native Americans who, along with the Passamaquoddy peoples, were the original inhabitants of the land. They still reside there, as do numerous mixed blood individuals. Courtesy of Maine’s Indian Land Claims Act of 1980, they stand to reclaim vast tracts of the sparsely populated region southeast of Bangor.

 

Brown’s protagonists are the Ames and Creel families. David Almerin (“Almy”) Ames narrates events we infer occurred in the 1980s. He is one of three sons born to Arnoux and Falon, he a Vietnam war deserter-turned-boatmaker, and she an attractive woman with a spine of steel who starts a local newspaper titled The Lowering Days. Lyman was a war hero, the father of two–daughter Wren and son Galen–and is husband to Grace, also a stalwart presence though she was something of a rebound wife. During their shared adolescence, Falon was pursued by three boys: Arnoux, Lyman, and Billy Jupiter who was part Native American. In the logic of small-town USA, Arnoux is now more popular because he made amends with his past through his craft, and Lyman is forever known as “Indian Killer because of a single drunken night in which all three boys were goofing around a cliffside raven-filled apple tree known as the Ghost Tree. They were trying to impress Falon, but Lyman's antics sent Billy over the side. In the here and now, Arnoux and Lyman barely tolerate one another.

 

Not much happens in such a hardscrabble region, but Japanese investors have shown interest in buying a long closed papermill. That is, until Molly, a 14-year-old native girl inflamed by environmentalism and an understanding of history, burns down the mill in protest for how it poisoned Penobscot waters. It probably would have been an unsolved crime had Molly not written an unsigned letter to the paper. Should Falon publish it? She knows that doing so has a high possibility of providing locals with enough clues to implicate Molly and maybe put her life at risk. There’s also the fact that family friend Moses Jupiter, a distant relative of Billy, is Molly's grandfather.

 

Many subplots emerge from this setup. Molly and her father Adam are on the lam in an area described as "water and wind so heavy and present, you screamed to escape it." The feud between Arnoux and Lyman reopens, spins out of control, and filters down to some of their children. Among other things, Arnoux’s sons Simon and Link commit an unthinkable act in a region in which fishing is the only real livelihood. How to heal such rifts? How to keep Molly safe? Lyman doesn't help matters when he lets his anger get the better of him and reminds locals of his old nickname.

 

The Lowering Days is so rich and so vivid that it's very hard to summarize it. Its themes and props include recurrent patterns of losing parents, premature death, mystical links to ancestors, banshees that cross oceans, cycles repeated and broken, race, fragmented love, ravens, a Penobscot legend of a woman who cut her husband to pieces in the name of love, and individuals pushed beyond their limits. Above all, it's a coming-of-age tale that could be subtitled “How Almy Became David.”

 

David's path to becoming a doctor begins when his uncle Reggie rebuilds a cabin near East Grand Lake Falls Lake on the Maine/New Brunswick border. David has serious issues to work out and a stint as a clinic doctor in the middle of nowhere helps. But this is by no means a summation or even a major theme, aside from a more general one of hurt, healing and redemption.

 

By far the most spectacular thing about a novel lies with Brown’s elegiac tone, which transforms remote places into a mystical and magical lands. The book is also filled with wisdom. When Arnoux explains to his children why he abased himself to Lyman he explains, “Because I want you to be able to remember what the right thing looks like.” David comes to grips with inner hurt when he begins to realize, “Sometimes love can't call love back…. People come and go and sometimes the debt to the departed ones long outlast their presence.” Moses punctuates this when he remarks, “Death is a circle. But they made it a line. Over time the link between the world of the living and the world of the dead got broken in people’s minds.” Reading The Lowering Days will help you repair that misconception.

 

Rob Weir

September 2021 Artist of the Month: David Byrne

 

DAVID BRYNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA (2021)

Directed by Spike Lee

HBO and Universal Pictures, 105 minutes, Not-rated

 

For September’s Artist of the Month, here’s something different, yet familiar. David Byrne has been a household name since his days as lead singer and guitarist for Talking Heads. In case you weren’t into post-punk music—yours truly went full folk and Celtic for much of the 1980s—Talking Heads was perhaps the most beloved of “new wave” bands. New wave groups took punk’s DYI approach to music, but didn’t totally reject commercial rock and pop. It mined them and created an arty hybrid.

 

Talking Heads recorded eight albums before disbanding in 1991. Byrne subsequently busied himself with solo albums, collaborative work with artists such as Brian Eno and St Vincent, and scores for everything from TV and film to dance and art installations. American Utopia was his 10^th solo album and inspired a Broadway musical of the same name. In 2020, Byrne joined forces with director Spike Lee to film the show, which went into (very) limited theatrical release before being released on HBO. The limited release was probably designed not to harm the theatre box office, but the show has been a smash hit and opened a new season earlier this month. For those who don’t live in the Big Apple or don’t wish to sell body parts to buy Broadway tickets, Spike Lee’s film is the next best thing to seeing Byrne in concert.

 

Posters for the play generally render the word Utopia upside down. In many ways that’s appropriate. Although the Scottish-born Byrne has long been a US citizen and a devoted New Yorker, the play is simultaneously critical and optimistic. As he puts it, “We need to change. I need to change.” Appropriately, he utters this before launching into “Hell You Talmbout,” a Janelle Monáe song and litany of black people unjustly killed, such as Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Trayvon Martin. If this sounds as if Byrne is getting political, it’s not that simple. The show opens with him holding a (rubber) brain and musing on connections, including brain pathways, the molecular structure of the universe, and those between people. Byrne wants to explore ways in which we can become more fully human. The tone is set by the second song, the Talking Head’s “I Know Sometimes a Man is Wrong/Don’t Worry about the Government.” Byrne wants us to save ourselves from everything from climate change and racism to arrogance, isolation, and being lazy (including intellectual and moral laziness.) 

 

The show, the film, and the music are jaw-dropping amazing. The play is not the same as the album. There are 21 songs plus a reprise of “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” the hit single from the American Utopia album, but only five songs come from that recording. The production makes you think, makes you anxious, makes you want to purify your social sins, and makes you boogie. It includes eight Talking Heads songs—including “Burn Down the House–and before the curtain drops, audience members are literally dancing in the aisles. All of the songs were penned by Byrne except the aforementioned Monáe composition and Fatboy Slim’s “Toe Jam.”

 

The production dazzles. Choreography was done by Brooklyn-based dancer and producer Annie-B Parson and is full of energy, verve, and nods to marching bands. Byrne loves marching bands, so his musicians are untethered. Thanks to wireless technology, even electric keyboards, bass, and electric guitar are free to roam. So too are the percussionists. All 12 cast members bang, scrape, or shake percussion instruments at some point, but half of them are primarily drummers. Lee’s overhead and back-of-stage camera work highlights both the simple (line marches) and the complex (weaves, zigzags). And let’s give a shout out to the principal dancers and backup singers, the lithe and stunning Tendayi Kuumba and the incredible Chris Giarmo. I don’t know why the bearded Giarmo is so heavily made up, but his pas de deux with Kuumba are so well-executed that they make Dancing with the Stars look like a junior high sock hop. Also heap praise on cinematographer Ellen Kuras, who makes us aware of the dynamic stage lighting that enhances American Utopia.

 

Byrne is, of course, front and center of the suited but barefooted ensemble. He is the draw and lead vocalist, but he’s also a fully engaged cast member. When he sings “I Dance Like This,” he indeed moves well for a 69-year-old, but he knows he’s no Kuumba or Giarmo. Our ears are on Byrne, but our eyes on the professional dancers, and the groove comes from Karl Mansfield’s portable keyboard, Bobby Wooten III’s bass, and Angie Swan’s electric guitars. Everyone sings. Byrne remains in fine voice, though there is a notable falloff in places, understandable for a soon-to-be septuagenarian.

 

You might not notice that last point and who could fault you? I return to the point that Byrne wants us to enjoy ourselves and to think. That continues through the coda, where he leads the entire bundled up crew for a post-show winter bike ride through the theatre district. Byrne’s both an avid cyclist and an advocate of a post-fossil fuels world. The only sour note is the pre-film “conversation” between Lee and Byrne. If only it had been. It was more a short-on-information mutual admiration/chuckle fest that stands in marked contrast to the show’s carefully constructed arc. It’s a good time to grab a bowl of snacks, sit back, and prepare to get connected. You will come away hopeful that our upside-down utopia can be righted.

 

Rob Weir

The Madness of Crowds, Louise Penny 's Latest

THE MADNESS OF CROWDS (2021)

By Louise Penny

St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 432 pages.

★★★ ½

 

 

 

The Madness of Crowds is Louise Penny’s 17^th Armand Gamache mystery. Is she running out of steam? Perhaps, though the new novel, set once again in her fictional village of Three Pines, is an improvement over last year’s All the Devils are Here. Longtime readers will find familiar characters such as bistro owners Olivier and Gabri, artist Clara Morrow, African-Canadian psychologist Myrna Landers, Gamache’s godfather Stephen Horowitz, and cranky poet Ruth Zardo and her pet duck Rosa. Needless to say, the Sûreté du Québec team of Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and Isabel Lacoste is aboard, as is Gamache’s family. His wife Reine-Marie plays a role, as does his daughter Annie, who is married to Jean-Guy.

 

The Madness of Crowds is another of a spate of Covid-inspired novels. The title derives from an old book (1841) that once graced my bookshelf: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. As that title suggests, Penny takes a look at the phenomena of misinformation and the mischief it brings. Mischief comes in the form of Abigail Robinson, a university statistics professor. Stats profs aren’t generally the sort who make waves, but Robinson is an overnight social media sensation because of her controversial data linked to Covid. As we know, Covid has been particularly deadly for the elderly, those with compromised immunity systems, and those with physical challenges. Robinson’s data suggests that the best thing society could do is let such individuals die–a Darwinian culling of the herd that would reduce Covid transmission. She ups the ante by implying a form of modern-day eugenics and raises more ire by coopting a message of hope lifted from 14^th century mystic Julian of Norwich. She wrote during the Black Death and is credited with assuring Christians that all shall be well again, rendered in Quebec as ça va bien aller.  

 

It's easy to imagine why millions would be angered by an argument that it would be best to let loved ones die, kill off grandparents, euthanize the weak, and take steps to make sure that fetuses with birth defects such as Down syndrome children are aborted. Robinson insists she’s merely reporting what the data tell her, but half of Canada would like to lynch her. The problem is that the other half see her as a prophet and applaud her ideas. If you think such a plot device is farfetched, listen to what many otherwise “nice” people are saying about those who refuse to get Covid vaccinations. Robinson wasn’t on anyone’s radar screen in the Three Pines area, though, until she’s invited to give a lecture at the nearby Université de l’ Estrie (possibly obliquely patterned after the branch campus of Bishop’s University in Knowlton). When Gamache learns of the firestorm flaring around Robinson’s research, he asks an old friend, Chancellor Colette Roberge, to use her influence to stop the lecture lest it degenerate into violence. She declines on the grounds of protecting academic freedom and shocks Gamache by revealing she was the one who invited Robinson! Gamache cobbles together a Sûreté security detail but, sure enough, someone fires shots at the stage. Luckily no one was injured.

 

This is the opening act of what will eventually involve a murder, discussion of the 100^th monkey theory of innovation, a trip to McGill University’s Osler Medical Library, skeletons lurking in various closets, and way stops involving the CIA and MKUltra. Not the most pleasant way to welcome in the New Year in Three Pines! Plus, it’s personal for Jean-Guy and Annie, whose daughter Idola is Down syndrome.  To the mix, add Haniya Daoud, a young Sudanese woman nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Myrna and Clara instantly regret their decision to host her as Haniya is an intensely dislikable and judgmental person who voices her views that Quebec is unlivable and its inhabitants are privileged idiots.

 

Once the murder occurs, Gamache and Isabelle must deal with too many suspects, not too few. Among the possibilities are Jean-Guy, the Tardif family, Daoud, Roberge, and Vincent Gilbert, the disgraced scientist/humanist that Penny readers recognize as the “asshole saint.” Nor can Gamache dismiss the possibility that everything, including the murder, was a plan to bring sympathy to Abigail Robinson’s burgeoning movement. The madness of crowds indeed.

 

The novel’s strength lies with questions it raises over popular delusions in the age of volatile news networks, the Internet, and impression management. Penny’s recent works have, however, suffered from drifting into histrionics, implausibility, and action thriller plots that aren’t Gamache’s métier. (He’s more of an Hercule Poirot type than a Bruce Willis action hero.) There is also a sense that Three Pines could use a few new actors, as the current regulars (sans Ruth) are growing stale. In the interest of full confession, though, I’ll admit that I’m such a fan that I ripped through the new book like a newly opened bag of Oreos.

 

Rob Weir

Museum of Russian Icons a Nice Surprise

MUSEUM OF RUSSIAN ICONS

Clinton, Massachusetts

Thursday-Sunday 11-5

 

I have a book on my shelf titled Signs and Symbols in Christian Art. It did me no good whatsoever for my visit to the Museum of Russian Icons (MoRI) located in the pleasant Worcester County town of Clinton (13,435). It wasn’t useful for the simple reason that Roman Catholicism dominates Western Christian art and most Eastern Europeans were Orthodox, not Catholic. (Protestants often tend to be leery of art, especially in Pilgrim/Puritan New England, where adornment was often associated with unholy worldliness—still another reason why they seldom get invited to parties!)

 

St. Basil

 

For those who don’t know, Eastern Orthodox Christians made a definitive split from Roman Catholics in 1054; they were the heirs to the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), as well as the intellectual traditions of ancient Greece. There are some similarities in the art of the East and that of the West: Jesus figures prominently in each and both venerated the Virgin Mary, but things begin to disintegrate from there. Orthodox Christianity rejects the supremacy of the pope and its leadership is more decentralized -- Armenian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, etc.­—rather than concentrated in a pontiff in Rome. 

 

A Russian St. Nicholas

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orthodox Christians also favor icons—representations of people or sacred events—over other religious trappings. They often build impressive churches—Hagia Sophia in Constantinople/Istanbul is one example, Moscow’s St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square another—but its followers were generally more literate and did not need as many visual representations as Roman Catholics. Small icons often accompanied worshipers to church, though they were not viewed as sacred in and of themselves. As the MoRI Website puts it, they were seen as “windows” to the sacred realm but are “purely functional.” In like fashion, Orthodoxy has saints, but they are not intercessors between congregants and God. If you know how to recognize Catholic saints, that won’t do you much good with Orthodox holy men unless they are Apostles. For instance, they have several named St. Nicholas, but they are not the ones you’re accustomed to seeing.

 

Gordon Lankton photo, 1956

By now you might be wondering why there is a museum to Russian icons in Clinton, a small town that used to be known for its mills, especially those connected to the plastics industry. Like many (ahem!) unorthodox museums, it has much to do with the vision of a single individual: Gordon B. Lankton (1931-2021) who was an engineer in a Clinton plastics injection plant. Like many professionals, he had a pre-life before becoming financially successful. He went to Cornell, where he developed a deep interest in Russian culture. In 1956, he bought a motorcycle, put himself on a $5/day budget, and motored across Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa and Asia. He bought his first icon during a 1989 business trip to Russia and eventually collected more than a thousand of them before his death earlier this year. The MoRI is currently displaying a superb photo exhibit of Lankford’s 1956 sojourns. 

 

Cathedral Sized Icon

 

It turns out that Lankford also knew how to capture amazing images in the lens of his travel Leica. It is, though, the icons that are the museum’s raison d’être. Perhaps you imagine that two floors filled with religious art would be either boring or too much of a good thing. That was exactly my fear before I entered. I don’t intend any sacrilege when I say that a visit to the MoRI is trippy. There are small icons that can fit in the watch pocket of a pair of Levis, metal-encased ovals suitable for homes, and multi-paneled paintings on wood that once graced churches. 

 

 

Because icons are functional liturgical items, most are unsigned and all are stylized rather than works of imagination. At first glance they bear resemblance to Venetian religious painting and appear to be standardized. Actually, that’s more true of Western religious art. If you look closely you will notice that two icons produced during the same period vary, especially in small ways. They are, of course, imbued with symbolism. Be sure to start in the basement for a crash course in some of the basic symbols and a primer on how to “see” icons.

 

Not Made by Hands? *

 

The MoRI has been on my bucket list for years. Like all things that are roughly 90 minutes from one’s front door, actually go there was also on the dreaded “I can do that any old time” agenda of things that have an annoying tendency to never happen. Now that I’ve been there, return visits now top the bucket list. 

 

Confession: I had never heard of St. Nil!

 

By the way, a trip to Clinton also entails driving along the Wachusett Reservoir. The only larger fresh water body in Massachusetts is the Quabbin, though Wachusett is more open and it takes your breath away when it first comes into view.

 

Rob Weir

 

*The above Not Made by Hands image of Jesus is a Russian take on Western legends such as Veronica's Veil and the Shroud of Turin.

Small Towns: Stockbridge, VT to Waterbury on Vermont Route 100

 

 

 

Route 100 is the spine of Vermont. Its 200 plus miles run smack down the middle of the state from the border of North Adams, Massachusetts to the U.S./Canada boundary near Newport, Vermont. It’s no exaggeration to say the route is rural; just two settlements—Morristown and Waterbury—have more than 5,000 residents and it’s just barely so in both cases.

 

In the best of times, Route 100 is the take-your-time way to see Vermont, but in a few weeks it will be wicked slow. It’s the drive during foliage season and traffic won’t subside until Mud Season, as it passes through ski country, with Stowe perhaps the most famous of its resorts. (Serious downhill skiers don’t rate it the best, but I’m strictly a snowshoe guy so I wouldn’t know.) During its peak times (pun intended), you’ll need binoculars to spot a New England license plate.

 

Now is the time to go if leisure is your goal. I’ve written before of southern Vermont on or near Route 100, so let’s highlight the section that passes through the Mad River Valley. On a recent trip to Burlington and the Champlain Islands, Emily and I left I-89 North at Royalton and took Route 107 to its intersection with Route 100 near Stockbridge. The first part of that journey is farm country, which means it passes through no-nonsense villages that cater to local needs, not traveler wants: Talcville, Rochester, Hancock, Granville…. It skirts the eastern edge of the Green Mountain National Forest.

 

 

As the elevation rises and you begin an ascent through a gorge, you will pass Moss Glen Falls just beyond Granville. It’s not signposted very well, but the falls are smack dab beside the road. There’s a small pullover and from there you can walk on a short boardwalk for various views of the falls. At 35-feet, Moss Glen isn’t tall, but it’s wide and picturesque. If you’re part goat, there’s also a 5-mile hike above and around the falls but you don’t have to don boots to enjoy the site from the sneakered comfort of the boardwalk. 

 

Warren Covered Bridge

 

 

Warren and Waitsfield are the two most-visited villages on this section of Route 100. They are both around 1,700 people and are quite different in character. Warren is pretty sleepy until Sugarbush opens and ski season gets underway. Even then its local businesses cater mostly to the après-ski crowd. In the “off” seasons, most folks take a drive past the Warren Covered Bridge, take a few snaps, admire the not-so-broad Mad River and make their way to Waitsfield.

 

Waitsfield Covered Bridge

 

Waitsfield is like a smaller version of the southern Vermont Route 100 town of Wilmington. By this I mean there are also things to do if you’re not hurtling your moral self over the edges of very tall mountains. You can do that if you wish—Mad River Glen is nearby—but Waitsfield also has art galleries, restaurants, a walking trail beside the river, and other attractions. Though it’s the same size as Warren, its three-season energy makes it feel much larger. The Waitsfield Covered Bridge is longer, more scenic, and the Mad River is deep enough there for swimmers to enjoy. Artisans Gallery is a good place to find superb art from local crafters, painters, and sculptors. If you want a light bite, you can sit in a small garden by the river at Three Mountain Café, though I’ll warn you that service can be slow. They do have New York-style bagels, though. 

 

 

 

Also recommended is a short drive away from the village to see the self-descriptive Round Barn Farm. It’s a meticulously gentrified building that’s more of a destination setting and banquet hall these days, but there are lovely views of meadows and the Green Mountains. Plus, the grounds have been beautifully landscaped. If you’re hungry, on your way out of town you can enjoy the counter cultural ambience and tasty offerings from American Flatbread. (Insofar as I can tell, flat bread is pizza with a funkier shape. Good though!) 

 

Near Waitsfield

 

 

You could wait until you get to Waterbury, though most folks don’t want to spend much time in its past-its-prime center until it’s for brews. Waterbury has become so famous for them that it has been nicknamed “WaterBEERy.” I wasn’t so inclined in late morning, but apparently the Prohibition Pig has frothy delights on tap. Waterbury is also home to Green Mountain Coffee, though I must confess that I’m not a fan—too many wimpy roasts for my tastes.

 

We popped back onto the interstate at Waterbury, but if you continue out of town on Route 100 there’s the remnant of an old mill, numerous shops that cater to tourists heading for Stowe, a cider mill, and the town’s biggest attraction, the headquarters of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. We’ve been there many times, so we skipped it this trip. It is, however, one of the most fun “industrial” tours in America. Although the company was sold years ago, the place retains airs of cheekiness, social awareness, and lack of pretension in keeping with the values of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.

 

As a small aside, it was something of a fluke that Ben and Jerry’s is in Waterbury and my coffee buddy Steve Herrell is in Northampton, MA. They were all trawling for sites to start a business at about the same time and were looking into the same turf.

 

Rob Weir