A Day of Rest (Sabbath) for our Minds; and A Brilliant Mind

Today we needed some downtime, so we rested for much of the day. I hung out reading in the Rockefeller Library on the Brown campus (nicknamed “The Rock”; yet another rock in our pilgrimage – a theme emerging?). Then we went for a walk around the Brown University campus and surrounding College Hill neighborhood.

Photos: First Baptist Church in America (founded by Roger Williams in 1638); Van Wickle Gates (main entrance to Brown; opened twice a year: once inward at Convocation when the new freshman process through them, and once outward at Commencement when the graduating seniors process through them)

Photos: The Sciences Library ("SciLi"); Students playing Frisbee on the Green

Photos: Sayles Hall (1881) has the largest surviving (3000 pipes) Hutchings-Votey organ in the world (installed 1903). The John Carter Brown Library (1904) holds a world-class collection of rare books and maps relating to the European discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of North and South America.

Photos: University Hall (1778), the oldest building on campus, houses the administrative offices. It was appropriated as a barracks for American troops during the Revolutionary War. Manning Hall (1835), which originally housed the library and chapel, was inspired by the temple of Diana-Propylea in Eleusis -- twice the size of the original.

Photos: Carrie Tower (1904), a memorial to the granddaughter of Nicholas Brown ("Steering freshmen to the corner of Waterman and Prospect for a date with Miss Carrie Tower used to be a favorite sport for upperclassmen"); Robinson Hall (1878), formerly a library, the nation's third "panoptic library" -- where the librarian could see all the books from his 360-degree view of the stacks

Photos: The inside of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, a very high church which was getting ready for a Solemn Evensong for the Feast of Michael All Angels. Me standing in front of my old freshman dorm, Archibald House, in West Quad (now called Keeney Quad).

Photos: Two classic College Hill houses.

Photos: Me standing in front of Fulton Rehearsal Hall, where the Band (which I was a member of) still practices. Henry Pearce House (1898), Romanesque architecture similar to Henry Hobson Richardson's style, houses the Applied Mathematics department.

Photo: Me standing in front of the old computer center where I used to spend hours (all night sometimes) at the terminals in the basement working on my programming projects.

In the evening we went for dinner to Andréas, a Greek restaurant on Thayer Street, the little business street that runs through campus – one of the few establishments still there from when I was a student. After that, and some ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s, we took in a film at the Avon Cinema, a classic Art Deco movie theatre opened in 1938. We saw A Brilliant Young Mind. Wonderful film about a socially awkward teenage math prodigy who finds new confidence and new friendships when he lands a spot on the British squad at the International Mathematics Olympiad. Brought back memories of my days at math camp.

We've Been Through the Mill; and More Fire

This morning we left the Boston area and drove to Providence, stopping en route in Pawtucket to see the historic Slater Mill, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in America. It was really fascinating, and the tour guides were excellent. One of them, named Andrés, was from Peru; not someone you’d normally expect to be leading tours in America, but he was really sharp and clearly loved his job. He could tell that Sarah was a historian from the types of questions she was asking and said his mum was one too. The other guide also enjoyed our questions and wished he could have spent more time with us.

Before taking us into the mill, Andrés showed us the Sylvanus Brown House, which depicts the lifestyle of a typical pre-industrial family in Rhode Island.

Samuel Slater had come over from England as a young man, after apprenticing in textile machinery there. It was against the law to export the designs for the machines, so Slater memorized them and thus smuggled the technology into America, where he felt he had a better chance of making his fortune. Thus the “Father of the American Industrial Revolution” (a title coined by President Andrew Jackson), to whom America owes much of her wealth today, was an illegal immigrant! Take that, Donald Trump! In England he was known as “Slater the Traitor.”

With funding from the wealthy businessman Moses Brown (one of the co-founders of the college that would later be renamed Brown University after his nephew John Nicholas Brown), in 1793 Slater built his mill, powered by water from the adjacent Blackstone River. The dam he built across it was at the time the largest dam in America. He partnered with mechanical engineer David Wilkinson who had invented a lathe for cutting screw threads, an extremely important development in the machine tool industry. The Wilkinson Mill churned out screws for buyers all over the world, standardizing what had previously been individual products created by hand one at a time. When anyone could buy a screw that was interchangeable with any other one of the same size, it made possible mass production of all kinds of products.

Slater also started the first Sunday School in America. He provided education on Sunday afternoons to the children (ages 7-12) who worked in his mill, This was before the days of child labor laws, and even before industrial safety laws. Slater didn't tolerate laziness on the job, so if you had a workplace injury or other illness, you still had better come to work (using crutches if necessary). Slater's reputation around the country was such that if you had worked for him, you could get a job anywhere else, unless you had been dismissed from his service, which would be a black mark against you for hundreds of miles.

There were all kinds of fascinating machines that our guides demonstrated to us – many still in working condition. One of them was a mechanized loom that was controlled by cards with pegs in them – an early precursor of computer programming, similar to the Jacquard loom.

We had lunch (including more New England clam chowder) at Hemenway’s, a classy seafood restaurant near the Brown campus that has been there since I was a student, and then checked in to the Old Court B&B, our home for the next three days.

This evening we went for a walk down the hill to enjoy WaterFire, a special event that the city puts on several Saturday nights in the summer along the Providence River. In the center of the river they place burning cauldrons that are lit by men in gondolas poling their way up and down the river, and stoked with wood by boats. There is music piped in to speakers along the river, and people meander up and down the river, listening, watching fire-juggling acts, taking in the smell of the burning wood, and poking around at the tents with food and various artisans’ crafts.

We also came upon a very lovely and moving Holocaust memorial. It was a short pathway lined by candle-lit lanterns, with an image of railroad tracks in colored bricks. At the beginning of the path was a receptacle of clear glass pebbles which you could pick up one or several of (e.g., for the memory of any ancestors who had died in the camps), and carry it along the path to place on top of a smooth stone at the end. I placed three for the memory of Olga Perera Pincherle (my grandfather’s cousin) and two of her children, Emilietta and Samy.

Minds and Arms on Fire

Today we were tired and needed to get some laundry done, so we only spent a short time in Concord, mostly just viewing the Ralph Waldo Emerson House (a National Historic Landmark) and having lunch in the charming town (met up with my sister Jane and cousin Ro Pinto at the favorite local hang-out, Main Streets Market & Cafe; no idea why they pluralize "Streets" in their name; must be more to it than just a missing apostrophe). The Emerson house was interesting, but I was disappointed that they didn’t say anything about his Transcendentalism. The guide told us afterwards, when we asked, that the Emerson family (who still own the house) have asked them not to discuss his Transcendentalism because there are so many interpretations of it. Sounded odd to us. We have more exploration to do on our own. At least they did recommend to us a biography of Emerson by Richardson (Emerson: The Mind on Fire), which discusses his philosophical development, so perhaps we can read that and slake our curiosity. Our minds are on fire!

I also popped my head inside the Colonial Inn, an establishment that has been around since 1716, well before the Revolutionary War broke out nearby on April 19, 1775 (we didn’t get around to visiting the site of that, near Old North Bridge). It’s about to celebrate its tercentenary next year. The hotel is proud of its history and has a free sheet about it at the front desk. "In the days leading up to the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the middle portion of the Inn…served as an arms and provisions storehouse for the local patriots. When the British soldiers arrived to seize and destroy all their supplies, the Minutemen were gathered at the North Bridge (just a half mile from the Inn). They were alerted [to] the British presence by the rising smoke and came to defend both their town and supplies." After the battle, the local doctor used rooms in the Inn, which he lived and worked in, as a hospital and operating room to care for the wounded Minutemen, and a morgue for the ones who didn't make it. "Today, the Colonial Inn is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a proud member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Historic Hotels of America."

Witch Way to Newburyport?

Today’s itinerary included Salem, site of the famous witch trials of 1692, and Newburyport, the last town where the famous itinerant evangelist George Whitefield preached and where he died and is buried. We had planned on a few hours in Salem, but ended up quite disillusioned after a very short time. The history is sad – it was a period of mass hysteria where people denounced other townspeople as witches in order to get off being hanged as witches themselves. If one confessed to being a witch and named someone else who had led them astray, then one would be exonerated and the other would be pulled in for questioning. In the end 20 people were killed (19 hanged, one died in prison), probably most of them innocent of any witchcraft. Since then the whole town has turned into a massive commercialized exploitation of the idea of witchery, in all its variations. It really made us kind of ill. I suppose it was worse being there in October, in the lead-up to Halloween, than it would be any other time of year. But we were ready to move on after we’d seen just a sampling.

However, we didn’t leave town before stopping in for a quick visit to the Peabody Essex Museum, a really fine museum which houses (among other things) collections of porcelain from the China trade, which my great-great grandfather Francis Blackwell Forbes was involved in. I didn’t see any mention of his name, but I did see a piece of china that had been donated by a Dr. and Mrs. H. A. [Henry Ashton] Crosby Forbes, founder of the China Trade Museum (which merged with the Peabody Essex), a distant cousin. I also saw one lent by Mrs. Frederick Winthrop, another cousin.

The big treat for me was seeing that the PEM had an exhibit of Theo Jansen’s fabulous “Strandbeests” – wind-propelled animal-like walking machines that he designed to perambulate along the beach (“strand” in Dutch). I had seen one on a viral YouTube video before, and was fascinated by the concept. The video they had showing in the museum was amusing, because Jansen had to drag the machine back in the other direction after the wind helped it walk along one way. These “beests” don’t walk in reverse!

We left Salem and drove north to Rowley, where we stopped to see Pulpit Rock, an outcropping of rock in the woods from which George Whitefield had preached to some 2000 listeners (evidently the trees had grown up since his time; it probably would have been an open field back then). We tried out the acoustics and could see why Pulpit Rock was such a great place to preach from. I spied a toad listening to our impromptu sermon.

We continued on from there to Newburyport, a lovely seaside town where Whitefield spent his last days. He preached at Old South Church there, died in the parsonage, and is buried in the crypt under the pulpit. The church was closed, and anyway it wasn’t the original building he preached in. But we did see the house next door that was the birthplace (in 1805) of William Lloyd Garrison, the prominent abolitionist and social reformer.

As we meandered around town looking for a place to eat, we met a friendly man (named Mark, it turned out) who was doing some work outside a house. We asked him for a recommendation. He told us about a really good casual place called Angie’s (where we ended up eating) and also raved about Cider Hill Farm a few miles away, from which he’d just gotten some fresh-made cinnamon donuts the day before. He said in fact he still had some of them left, and would we like to try them. I said “Sure!” and he went to get the bag. They were the most delicious cinnamon donuts I’ve ever tasted. I’m just finishing off the last one now.

Another Rock

           Today we made an epic voyage down an obscure track through the woods to find Pulpit Rock. It was definitely worth the trek. A humble brown sign marked the entrance to the woods. If Rosie had not programmed the coordinates into her GPS, as any good Geek would do, there is no way we would have found the place.

           Being Boffin and Geek when we arrived at the Rock, one of us spoke from the rock while the other carefully tested the acoustics in the surrounding area. The basin under the rock forms a remarkable natural amphitheatre. From the top the sound carries with clarity and ease in a wide semi-circle.

           All my life I have labored under the belief that George Whitefield trained his voice from infancy to achieve the remarkable feat of speaking to a crowd of 2,000 without a microphone. Whilst conducting fierce elocution lessons in our living room my Grandmother told me if George Whitefield could do it – so could I. She told me he had learnt to speak with pebbles in his mouth in order to strengthen his vocal cords. I tried it once – just once.

           But today I saw for myself that the physical terrain provided all the amplification that a person could want. I felt slightly cheated by my grandmother. The worst of it was when I stood on Pulpit Rock faced with a true opportunity for authentic re-enactment I couldn’t think of anything to say. I stood there tongue-tied and anxious, imagining Whitefield in his white wig and black attire with his hand in the air full of eloquence. I felt a great deal more comfortable standing under the rock and imagining myself listening!

           From Pulpit Rock (there is definitely a rock theme on this trip) we headed to Newburyport. There we saw the church where Whitefield is buried. He died in the parsonage next door at the age of 55. The Church is as unassuming as Pulpit Rock. Having inhabited the Wesley Room as my office during my days at Lincoln College and having spent many hours imagining the Oxford of Wesley and Whitefield’s day, I couldn’t help thinking about the faith it must have taken to voyage to such a distant place and preach with confidence and boldness. An obscure wood is a far cry from the linen-fold paneling of 18th century Oxford. Whitefield did not know what America would become but he played his part in forming the nation.

           I was inspired and awed today. Whitefield headed off the beaten track and we followed him. Perhaps obscurity is a necessary part of pilgrimage?