Summer Road Tripping

 A friend and I make our way mid-July  from Washington, D.C., to Bridgewater, New Hampshire, stopping in a pre-Revolutionary War home outside Philadelphia and going on to multi-faceted Poughkeepsie, N.Y., headed for two nights in Stockbridge, MA., around the corner from Tanglewood, and finally reaching tiny Bridgewater (outside Bristol) on the sixth day. A total of 689 miles and no protest at all from the four-year-old MiniCooper. Philip Caputo did an even longer trip (Florida to Alaska),  creating a book out of it (see 'The Longest Road'), with homage to the wanderings of predecessor William Least Heat Moon.
 We had no vision in mind beyond a chance to drop in on familiar terrain that would remind us of the distinctly different demographic and geographic contours of the Northeast. Nothing to prove beyond the pleasure of the changing scenery, though in hindsight, Berkshire country and New Hampshire terrain (both coniferous and deciduous, ticks and mosquitoes) aren't really so different. Go with the flow and come back with new memories. Swim in a clear cool lakes and gamble on good weather (70 to 100 degrees) with history as an aside. The Philadelphia origins of our country, alongside Franklin Roosevelt's 20th century legacy laid out in the modest splendor of Hyde Park. N.Y. before coursing onto the sublimely elite Tanglewood festival scene, second home for many of New York's Upper West Side denizens .
Road trips may well be an American invention. A person doesn't think of the Silk Road in those terms. That fabled journey was meant to get you from one place to another in record time doing some commerce along the way. Modern tripping implies rambling, discovery,  escape.
It's possible, of course,  to take a road trip by foot through the city, looking up and around and poking in and out, learning as you go. There is a certain conspiratorial sense among city residents who choose to - or are forced to - stay home in the middle of summer. No better demographic view can be had of them than the barely-dressed patrons of the Olympic-size outdoor pool at Hains Point in the Southwest. Swimmers and dabblers are a mix of brown and white, sleek and slow, awkward and athletic. A cozy cross-section cheerfully engaged.

Street Scene Summer '13

The report was alarming: neighbors at dinner report elders/seniors/whoever watch the weather channel more than any other channel on TV.  (They also stated that no one reads an entire email anybody, that bullets are a necessity.) That  was enough to send me the next day out into the street again, to engage the world. First, to line up for a free preview of a new movie about STeven Jobs. Alas, all seats taken but a promise of another showing if we give the young lady our email contact. She writes it down laboriously with pencil and paper. Jobs is in the poster as a technicolor hippie guy. (The friend with me reports that her granddaughter was introduced to her first black and white movie only recently - Heidi, an old version apparently - and loved it. A touching note about generational bonding.)
So we amble the Georgetown Waterfront streets and run into a young woman introducing herself at our behest as ' Jackie', who is wearing the Google Glass and looking something like a grasshopper on patrol. She is some sort of inspector general overseeing software functioning, testing it out. This comely well-spoken friendly 30-something lass then allows us - at our suggestion - to do some testing ourselves. Glass is one-up on Jobs for sure but hardly ready for prime time. Audio is key I guess. (See Gary Shteyngart's tryout with the thing in this week's New Yorker magazine (www.newyorker.com).) I only could see strange visions in my upper right eyeball, maybe real-time looking back at me. "You have matching iPhone," Jackie notes with satisfying chirpiness. Tangerine! Yes, but what good is an iPhone when I can't figure out to take a picture of myself wearing the tangerine Glass. Jackie can do that and more when I fumble around with this old-fashioned device that uses keys...

Miami Miasma

Surely everything about Miami is a contradiction, beginning with its very existence. (I leave you to check Wikipedia or elsewhere for that great story.) But who would expect modern day restaurant codes to follow suit? Namely, a new high-end and literally sky-high eatery called Juvia, atop a parking garage on famed Lincoln Road, requires 'gentlemen' clients to wear only 'closed' shoe styles. An elegant leather sandal is entirely off limits, as my party found recently. Women, however, can come in almost naked in whatever shoe they wish and it sometimes seems that is about all they wear to show off their bodies. Shorts for men seem ok as well. Keeping off the riff-raff of the streets may be the reason but it's also reasonable to think a law suit could be in order here (as litigious action seems to be the rule everywhere these days).

Woman On a Metro Train

 The color, pattern and texture of a jacket  worn by a woman seated on the Metro train is similar to a garment I wore on my wedding day long ago.
I have a sudden shock of recognition and a memory still  clear about a peripatetic day in Athens when I spotted a long-sleeved top and long skirt designed with wonderful simplicity and appeal. A waffle weave, exquisitely made - possibly unique. Possibly silk.  Straight lines. Classic. Even tiny Chanel-like buttons down the front and a small shirt-style collar. No label name. It hung in a boutique on a side street in a fashionable part of town at a time when tourists were few. (The junta had just come into power.) I had no premonition of a ceremony; no groom in mind. But I knew then that having found the dress I would find the man. And so it happened..
 I wore the dress once on a hot July day. No jewelry and no veil. I carried red roses from a bush on the lawn of the very great old house where assorted guests had gathered. The dress turned yellowish with age and ended its wearable life in a collection of wedding dresses being assembled by a costume curator at Vassar College who intends one day to display them, with a history of each dress attached. Stay tuned.

Slick City Touts

An accomplished urban man of distinction,  who likes to answer to the description of 'flaneur' (which Webster's translates miserably as 'an idle man about town'), can be easily engaged in a name game about cities he has known and loved. He fancies ranking them in terms of the 'it-ness' of the moment - their individual allure based on what might in other people's minds be simply subjective impressions from a recent visit. He appears very firm in his judgments and by no means volunteers them to gain effect. He has traveled the world, lived at separate times in a number of celebrated places, and feels justified in his conclusions.
Take heed then: Paris is 'over.' The city stifles creativity chiefly because government policies and regulations discourage innovation. The talented young especially are all going to London. He says a friend reports recently that the language she heard most often in London was French. Berlin has replaced Paris as a continental city worth inhabiting. More verve and excitement. Sydney has it in spades over Melbourne, the latter being "tired" and mainly a refuge for - well, he can't exactly say but it isn't really alive. Forget Rome, Lisbon, Madrid, Moscow, Tokyo - though he might give the latter some praise.
 His own choice is New York - and the upper East Side of Manhattan, which has lost its allure for the luxe crowd  (Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue excluded). Rents are cheaper, live is easier since small service businesses still exist in the neighborhood. He can close his small apartment at any time and leave without regret for any wanderings he fancies. He is giving away most of his possessions and relying on digital devices to make his way. "Seven bus lines between New York and Washington," he exclaims - a lark for the last minute unencumbered traveler, even one on a day trip. 

BRAIN WAVES: Minding What Matters

• Neuroscience minds talking June 5/13 at an AAAS (www.aaas.org) Capitol Hill luncheon forum titled "Mapping the Brain" provided more details on efforts to decode that  three pound complicated mass of gray matter - those 186 billions of neurons, synapses, circuitry, what have you. Projections call for a 15 year target date to understand more than the rudiments of brain behavior, thanks in large part to the developing world of nanotechnology. (A nanometer, the customary measure in the field, is 50,000th of a hair width, if you dare to imagine it.) There's much to learn, with humility the guide, since isn't the task really the mind studying itself?  The search involves the invention of new tools - even new terms - well beyond very advanced MRI now providing  impressive insights into  the organ's functioning.
•  We need to learn about the "electrical, chemical, mechanical" elements - "what happens at every moment," in the words of Dr. Michael Lee Roukes, founding director of Caltech's Kavli Nanoscience Institute. He uses the word connectome  for understanding regional processes, spoke of connectivity gates (wiring), and said currently scientists have charted some 1000 out of a possible 50,000 channels. It's new worlds and worlds out there...
• Curiously, on the humble front, what we might begin to learn at the outset is why anesthesia works. We know how - patients and doctors know the effects - without understanding the intricacies within the brain that allow a person to lose consciousness and withstand pain. Further studies could lead to new treatments for relieving pain and depression. One study has focused on the after effects at different ages of  propofol, according to Dr. Emery Brown, of MIT, and a member of the NIH BRAIN Working Group. In what was almost an aside, he noted work done by Dr. Terri Monk of Duke University showing that up to 13 percent of the elderly (60 and over) have some mild cognitive impairment as long as six months after receiving such drugs in non-cardiac surgery. 

Helena Who?

How many US cities (much less state capitals) are named after women? More than you might think, although origins of many are somewhat obscure. Take Helena, the capital of Montana, that a Wikipedia account notes was possibly named after another town in another state or even another country.
Let's be charitable and a bit imaginative in believing the name was that of a miner's sweetheart since the city was the site long ago of vast fortunes - a treasure hunter's paradise. (The state's motto is Treasure State, and Helena's main street is called Last Chance Gulch.)  These days, the town of some 30,000 boasts both a huge civic auditorium, a symphony and an art museum, with the latter's new executive director just six months out of Washington, D.C.,'s Corcoran. It just so happens that much of the art collection belonging to that august institution on New York Ave. and 17th St. NW came from a former  US  Senator  from the Big Sky state named William Andrews Clark, one of the so-called Copper Kings. Mr. Clark's last surviving daughter died last year at the age of 104, a recluse in New York's Beth Israel Hospital, and left behind legal mess  over her disputed will.
Helena also boasts a capitol building  even Texans would envy if they didn't have such a prominent one of their own: an elegant edifice set on a hill with a view of distant mountains - definitely more mountains than Austin has.
Alas, the mighty New York Times neglected recently to include a single mention of the artistic ambitions of any of Montana's cities in a recent state alphabetical listing of the nation's cultural activities during the coming summer months. Why the lapse?