Picture Post part trois: SALEM BABY
All right, I can't believe it's taken me so long to post these photos, since Salem was definitely my favorite part of the trip. I was super-excited to go to Salem, because it's Hawthorne's hometown. (Nathaniel Hawthorne's grandfather, John Hathorne, was the judge at the Salem Witch Trials, which is about as close to witches as we got during the trip.)
Basically the first thing we saw in Salem after Austin so expertly (and annoyingly) led us in from the train station was this little number.
You know that book, The Scarlet Letter? You've heard of it? Yes? And do you recollect that introductory material, "The Custom House Preface?" Ok, less likely, but still yes? With me? Ok, well, that's the Custom House! THE CUSTOM HOUSE, PEOPLE!!!! Salem used to be (according to my brother) a huge shipping town, and the custom house is where they added all those huge shipping numbers up. Also, this guy Nathaniel Hawthorne used to work there in between, you know, writing books.
OH MY GOD it was so cool! I'm standing on the steps dying of excitement in the photo.
Also, as a nod to the shipping I suppose, they have a ship in the harbor. We scoped it out.
Great. Or whatever. We ended up walking out to the end of the pier to fool around, and fool around we did.
"Oh noooooooo!"
"The windswept look!" Haha once again Colin's mastered the pose, and I'm clearly not thinking about my windswept-ness. I would totally get kicked off America's Next Top Model. Were I, you know, to somehow get on it. ANYWAY:
That house? With all the gables? IT'S THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES!!!!!!!
I was so excited that Austin had to practically break out the smelling salts. I still can't get over it. We read THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES in my Am.Lit class this past semester, and I really enjoyed it, and would recommend it over The Scarlet Letter if you don't like, you know, adultery.
That would be me actually hugging THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES!!! Oh my goodness.
Austin with the house--excited, but not as excited as I was!
Me again, with THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES!!!
We walked around the grounds and saw, among other things, Hawthorne's Birthplace:
So, ok, Hawthorne wasn't really born right next to THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. His birth home was moved to the grounds after a real estate deal threatened to tear it down.
That's THOTSG again. We took a tour, which was not that informative, but still got us inside. The tour guide was maybe 16 and she kept saying "is there any questions?" which took away from the literariness a little bit for me, but what can you do? We did learn a bit of history about the house. When Hawthorne wrote the novel, the house only had five gables. But today they've added two more so as not to falsely advertise.
We weren't allowed any pictures inside, but I did get one bootleg photograph of the interior's secret staircase:
Cool. Also, I bought a Hawthorne bookmark in the gift shop that has a pic of the man himself and a quotation from the novel: "What other dungeon is do dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!"
Very uplifting, no? Motivational man, that Hawthorne. (I really love that they picked that quote for the bookmark--wasn't there anything about dementia they could have selected that would have been more uplifting?)
Then, all too soon, our sojourn at THOTSG was over, and we had to go eat lunch. But we did get another example of anguished English which made me smile:
Absolutely no busses! They really don't like PDA in Salem, I guess. I gave Colin a little buss on the cheek to see if anything would happen, but nothing did (except him making a face). We then had lunch at a place called In a Pig's Eye, which was pretty good, and then we saw the Peabody-Essex Museum, which featured a very eclectic selection of art.
And that was basically our day. We got back on the train and went home, and had dinner in Northeastern's dining hall. Oh, and went to a Harvard Law party, which turned out to be like Harvard morP, which is weird. But yeah, good times. Anyway, I recommend Salem to any Hawthorne fans or any fans of literature in general or fans of, I don't know, historic New England towns.
Basically the first thing we saw in Salem after Austin so expertly (and annoyingly) led us in from the train station was this little number.
You know that book, The Scarlet Letter? You've heard of it? Yes? And do you recollect that introductory material, "The Custom House Preface?" Ok, less likely, but still yes? With me? Ok, well, that's the Custom House! THE CUSTOM HOUSE, PEOPLE!!!! Salem used to be (according to my brother) a huge shipping town, and the custom house is where they added all those huge shipping numbers up. Also, this guy Nathaniel Hawthorne used to work there in between, you know, writing books.
OH MY GOD it was so cool! I'm standing on the steps dying of excitement in the photo.
Also, as a nod to the shipping I suppose, they have a ship in the harbor. We scoped it out.
Great. Or whatever. We ended up walking out to the end of the pier to fool around, and fool around we did.
"Oh noooooooo!"
"The windswept look!" Haha once again Colin's mastered the pose, and I'm clearly not thinking about my windswept-ness. I would totally get kicked off America's Next Top Model. Were I, you know, to somehow get on it. ANYWAY:
That house? With all the gables? IT'S THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES!!!!!!!
I was so excited that Austin had to practically break out the smelling salts. I still can't get over it. We read THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES in my Am.Lit class this past semester, and I really enjoyed it, and would recommend it over The Scarlet Letter if you don't like, you know, adultery.
That would be me actually hugging THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES!!! Oh my goodness.
Austin with the house--excited, but not as excited as I was!
Me again, with THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES!!!
We walked around the grounds and saw, among other things, Hawthorne's Birthplace:
So, ok, Hawthorne wasn't really born right next to THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. His birth home was moved to the grounds after a real estate deal threatened to tear it down.
That's THOTSG again. We took a tour, which was not that informative, but still got us inside. The tour guide was maybe 16 and she kept saying "is there any questions?" which took away from the literariness a little bit for me, but what can you do? We did learn a bit of history about the house. When Hawthorne wrote the novel, the house only had five gables. But today they've added two more so as not to falsely advertise.
We weren't allowed any pictures inside, but I did get one bootleg photograph of the interior's secret staircase:
Cool. Also, I bought a Hawthorne bookmark in the gift shop that has a pic of the man himself and a quotation from the novel: "What other dungeon is do dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!"
Very uplifting, no? Motivational man, that Hawthorne. (I really love that they picked that quote for the bookmark--wasn't there anything about dementia they could have selected that would have been more uplifting?)
Then, all too soon, our sojourn at THOTSG was over, and we had to go eat lunch. But we did get another example of anguished English which made me smile:
Absolutely no busses! They really don't like PDA in Salem, I guess. I gave Colin a little buss on the cheek to see if anything would happen, but nothing did (except him making a face). We then had lunch at a place called In a Pig's Eye, which was pretty good, and then we saw the Peabody-Essex Museum, which featured a very eclectic selection of art.
And that was basically our day. We got back on the train and went home, and had dinner in Northeastern's dining hall. Oh, and went to a Harvard Law party, which turned out to be like Harvard morP, which is weird. But yeah, good times. Anyway, I recommend Salem to any Hawthorne fans or any fans of literature in general or fans of, I don't know, historic New England towns.