Author Archives: Pam Schwartz

August 21, 2010

A Sad Farewell

By Pam Schwartz

This is it friends; the end of a chapter and the beginning of a new one in the life of Pam Schwartz.  This will be my 14th move in 5 years, 14!  I love having new experiences but I hate moving.  I have lived at least 5 weeks or more at each of these places which has required me to take a fair amount of my things with me.  Luckily my parents are sweet enough to rent me a storage space in their home in exchange for my undying love and devotion.

I haven’t even left yet but I miss my family.  I’m glad I came home at the beginning of this year to nanny the little monsters.  I love them so much and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’ve almost called grad school off more than once because I know I’m going to be missing so much of their lives.  I’ve been spoiled the last several months getting to go the the basketball games, baseball games, to cry through the first tooth and learning how to walk.  Having close nieces and nephews is just like having your own children because you love them so much you can’t bear to leave them.

In the last year or two I’ve learned the serenity in just being with your family whether you’re actually doing anything or not. Just sitting and chatting with my grand parents and relatives, having dinner with my parents, seeing all of my sisters and brothers on a fairly regular basis have made the past several months the best ones I’ve had because now I’m old enough to realize how important those things are.

I have an amazing network of family and friends and though I know I can pick up a phone and call it’s not the same as walking upstairs into a room full of family and smiling faces.  Sixteen hours away just isn’t the same as 2 or even 5.  My Masters degree will take two years and I always thought I wanted to end up on the east coast, Virginia seemed ideal, but now I’m hoping to be much closer to home.  All three of my siblings and their families are here and I want to be a part of that and an even bigger part of their children’s lives, not to mention wanting my kids to know their cousins and to get to enjoy grandma and grandpa.

I missed time at college because I could no longer walk across the hall, down the apartment complex, or a few blocks to my friends’ places.  Now I’ll miss even being able to drive four, or however many hours to see them.  I would never take back the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on gas driving to see friends because I know I won’t even have that luxury in NJ.  I’m not scared for New Jersey, I know I’ll make plenty of friends and colleagues but they won’t have known me for years.  They don’t know that I don’t like mushrooms, that I love dessert wine, that I like bad horror movies or that popcorn is a perfectly normal supper for me.

This will be an adventure.  I have high hopes for my education and the possible experiences I will have in New Jersey/NYC. So, I bid thee all farewell for now.  This is sappy, if you didn’t like it you would have stopped reading. I love you all and I’ll miss you.  Somebody come visit me, please?

1 Comment | posted in Schwartz Athenaeum

August 16, 2010

Unpaid, Unfed, and Unhoused

By Pam Schwartz

You’ll never make money working in a museum my father told me. “Dad, people who work for The Smithsonian Institution make six figures,” was my reply. I’m 23, have a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations, am beginning my Masters of Museum Professions this fall and have been working in museums almost continually since I was fourteen. Everybody tells me I have an excellent resume, I won’t have any problems finding a job, I’ll do great things. I KNOW someday I will do great things because I want to, it’s the former part of that statement I’m worried about.

They tell me it’s an economic downturn. It’s not you, everybody is having a problem. I’ve spent numerous hours volunteering, I’ve completed unpaid internships, paid internships and minimally paid jobs without benefits because I LOVE WHAT I DO. Honestly I love it; I had a 14 hour a week paid internship that I spent 30+ hours a week working at because not only is museum work my job it is also my hobby. Last summer I finished a seasonal job working as a docent/preservationist/housekeeper/gardener/exhibit designer/gift shop clerk at a Frank Lloyd Wright designed residence, small museum workers understand how that goes. I turned down an internship at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. because it was unpaid for this MINIMALLY paid job in Iowa because I could not afford to pick up and move to D.C. without a paycheck. Spend some of my savings just to have the experience, network and put it on my resume you say? I’ve done that. I did an unpaid internship with The British Museum in London and spent my life savings just trying to eat while I was there.

I’m not complaining, all of the experiences I have had have been amazing (well mostly) and I am glad to have endured the hardships each individual position produced for me but it is beginning to get a little rough. During the middle of my seasonal position at the FLlW residence I began applying for jobs/internships in hopes of finding something by the end of my time at my current position. I’m afraid I can’t move to Montana for an unpaid internship. No, nope I can’t come to Vermont to work for your art gallery because I have no gas money to even drive there. Can I work for your museum in the middle-of-nowhere because it could potentially (but probably not) become a below the living wage paid position in 6 months? Sorry, no.

It just so happened that at this time it was convenient for me to move home and nanny my nephews and niece. I made the decision to apply for grad school for a couple of reasons;

1) I have worked for some amazingly educated and intelligent people whose footsteps I strive to follow in.

2) I have worked for some people in amazing museums/institution settings who are not qualified for their job, are not educated and do not care about the place they work for. I do not want to be like them. I want to be able to give the most to my institution and the publics I serve.

3) I would like to be better qualified. I have gained a variety of experience and knowledge but there is an inexhaustible amount more to learn.

I was accepted to Seton Hall University and decided to commit to being a Pirate. It is a small program with a specialization in exhibition development, not to mention its proximity to some of the world’s leading museums. In the meantime, at home I was watching the rugrats and began a part-time position with Maquoketa Art Experience, an embryo art community, as my nannying duties allowed.

Union Historical Society in Union, Maine
Having a part-time museumesque job and as I was planning to leave for school this fall I had mostly stopped looking at the job boards for a while. One late (and I mean late) night I decided just to see what was going on in the job world and randomly applied for an internship with the Union Historical Society in Union, Maine. A paid internship! What fun?! I heard back from the Board President the very next morning and from there we continued to converse throughout the application period. My persistence won out and I was granted the five-week internship for this summer. Union is a town of approximately 2,300 citizens just North of mid-coast Maine and the Historical Society is run entirely by a volunteer staff. This incredibly small, pretty much two room museum, has a wonderful collection of artifacts and archives pertaining to the town’s exceedingly interesting history. I received a $700 stipend and was housed with one of the board members of the museum. I’ll be honest, it cost almost my entire stipend just to travel back and forth from the internship but at least I broke even.

I’m willing to travel for work and I’m willing to work HARD because I love what I do but interns and entry-level staff need to eat too. I have been reading many articles lately about museo discontent with wages and benefits. One of my favorite reads is the Museo Unite blog: http://museosunite.blogspot.com/

I feel like every blog post is singing my song. Recently a post by the bloggers guided me to this article which I find frustrating:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/arts/design/10homes.html?_r=2&th&emc=th

The Director of the Museum of Modern Art lives in a $6 million condo tax-free AND makes $2 million in salary. What about having him live in a $3.5 million dollar condo (which still sounds like a fairly nice place to entertain museum guests) and using the other $1.5 million to fund the unpaid, unfed and unhoused interns and entry level staff who are trying to do what they love. Don’t get me wrong MoMA offers paid internships but over 700 people apply for one of those internships, I know because I just applied. Perhaps they could offer additional ones? Perhaps other museums with that kind of money to pay their directors could offer internships that are paid instead of unpaid with no compensation at all?

The President, Ken Berger, of a website called Charity Navigator made some excellent points:

“Many donors feel that paying the leader of a charity a six-figure salary is outrageous,” said Ken Berger, the group’s president.

Mr. Berger disagrees with the argument, popular among many nonprofits, that to attract top talent to manage complex organizations, they must compete with for-profit businesses.

“I’m not advocating poverty wages,” he said. “But arguing that those working for the benefit of the neediest people in our society should make millions and multimillions like corporate leaders defies common sense.”

Would we all like to be making $2 million? You bet your buttons we would, but, I bet many of us would settle for a fraction of that and would be willing to work just as hard. You’ll find some interesting math on possible salary redistribution done by one of the bloggers for Museos Unite in this post: http://museosunite.blogspot.com/2010/03/solutions-series-1-robin-hood-rule.html

Doesn’t it makes sense to have a better paid, better educated and happier staff across the board then to have one sumptuously paid employee? If the little Union Historical Society can afford $700 and kindly offer housing to an intern (not to mention other perks) why can’t museums like The United States Holocaust Museum at least assist interns with housing and food costs?

This is a long blog but I wanted to make some points for people working in the non-profit sector, not necessarily museums, to think about. Perhaps there will be more on this at a later date.

2 Comments | posted in Mada(M)useo

August 16, 2010

Welcome!

By Pam Schwartz

This is the start of my new blog section.  As promised I’ll be keeping it professional here so that any readers don’t have to wade through my personal blog trying to find actual posts about museum related things.   Enjoy!

Leave a comment | posted in Mada(M)useo

August 13, 2010

I did it, I actually did it!

By Pam Schwartz

Folks, I did it! I ACTUALLY did it. My friend Krista and I rode RAGBRAI (Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa). This year took a Northern route across the state measuring in at 442 miles and with 14, 584 feet of climb. By climb they mean some pretty wicked-nasty hills. The following is a summary of the daily trips:

Sunday      Sioux City to Storm Lake             68.5 Miles            3,687 Feet of Climb
Monday     Storm Lake to Algona                  79 Miles              1,083 Feet of Climb
Tuesday     Algona to Clear Lake                  59.9 Miles            1,068 Feet of Climb
Wednesday Clear Lake to Charles City         51.8 Miles            1,180 Feet of Climb
Thursday     Charles City to Waterloo            82.2 Miles           2,635 Feet of Climb
Friday        Waterloo to Manchester             61.6 Miles            2,340 Feet of Climb
Saturday    Manchester to Dubuque             47.5 Miles            2,591 Feet of Climb

I never in my life thought I would be able to ride all of RAGBRAI. We dipped our back tires in the Missouri River and rode across Iowa to dip our front tires in the Mississippi River.
I’ll honestly say that if I hadn’t been riding with Krista I definitely would not have made it. She’s sort of like having your own personal trainer that you hate and love all at the same time. I won’t tell you about the entire week because honestly…it is just a lot of biking and whining about hills.

Everybody wants to know if I partied? If by partied you mean I ate, showered, iced my knee and slept then YES I definitely partied. We were more focused on reaching our goal then partying. I don’t understand how people can party all night and all day and be drunk for a week straight and still be able to ride their bikes. No thanks, not me. I had a beer on a bike ride once upon a time and it made me feel awful, though that may have had something to do with eating too many GOO Gels and not enough real food. Yuck.

You see some pretty amazing things on RAGBRAI, there were an estimated 21,500 riders at one point during the week. Some riders ride partial days, some only ride part of the week and only a small fraction do the entire ride. You see people on lot of interesting rigs, you have the; elliptical on wheels, unicycles, six person tandems, three bikes attached by trailers with a grill, bar and luggage stacked between. You also meet a lot of people with some very interesting personalities such as Mr. Ruuuuummmbbbllleee Strips Man who made our day by singing and rolling his R’s every time we went by rumble strips. Unfortunately, you see a lot accidents and people who just haven’t taken care of themselves during the week as well.

Highlights:
1) Ham Balls in Plover – Krista loves ham and we were lucky enough to get to Plover in time that they still had ham balls left. They were delicious and were served by Seven Smiling Grandmothers.
2) Mr. Ruuuummmbbblleee Strip Man, all ready mentioned.
3) All of the excellent people who let us shower in their showers and sleep in their houses. WE LOVE YOU, you absolutely made the week more bearable.
4) Amazing Tan Lines – Enough said.
5) The “YOU MADE IT” sign in Dubuque.
Not Enjoyable Things:
1) Breakdown in Communication- It is hard for three people to keep on the same level when there are only two cell phones and a bajillion people in the way of getting anywhere. We managed.
2) STUPID BIKERS, there are plenty of these out there unfortunately and some of them like to pay more attention to their beer than to not run their bike into me and gouge my ankle open.
3) Potter’s Hill- Hell. No. The last day was terrible, a TON of elevation smushed into a very short distance means ouch. Potter’s Hill is located between Graf and Dubuque and is a mile long hill with parts at a 19% grade. Krista and I both somehow in Baby Jesus’ name made it to the top without walking but there were an estimated 2/3 or riders who walked. This made me feel a little better.
4) Nasty Health Food – Chocolate Protein Shakes, Powerade and Goo Gels. I ate them because my trainer told me I needed them, I disbelieve this statement.
5) Sitting in the Saddle all Week – It hurts for days after, not to mention during.
6) Waiting in line FOREVER for the KYBO, aka Porta Potty. There can never be too many bathrooms with 21,500 people around.
I can now officially cross completing RAGBRAI off of my things to do before I turn 30. Next, I’m working are getting my Masters and running a marathon (or any race longer than a 5k, been there, done that, it’s crossed off).

 

1 Comment | posted in Schwartz Athenaeum

August 11, 2010

I’m a Little Behind, Back to Canada

By Pam Schwartz

I know I’m a little behind in blogging. I apologize for any boredom or concern about my welfare this may have caused but I am back, hopefully full force. I’ve had a busy few weeks and have a lot of catching up to do. The main portion of this blog will contain a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago during my travels home from Maine but was lacking an internet connection to post. You can expect in the next few days a rapid fire of catch-up, no not KETCHUP or Catsup blogs for that matter. Next on the agenda is my RAGBRAI adventure.

Other new news in my life is that I’m starting a second blog. I have to realize my audiences. People who read this blog may not care about museums/what I have to say about museums and people who may want to read that stuff do not care about my personal life/adventures etc. I will be separating the two at least to some extent; there will still be overlap as much of my life is consumed by museum stuff. If you’d like to read both please feel free I’ll be posting the link soon. This is also a way for me to potentially start a blog professionals (the people who don’t care what I ate for lunch like you do) to read, follow and comment on.
Remember I wrote this blog a few weeks ago and don’t care to go through and alter it, the drive home the rest of the way from Canada via Michigan was uneventful but I had an excellent driving partner! Lil’ Lads Popcorn!
Today was a lovely jaunt through Canada (also Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont). I must say that traveling 401 through Quebec and Ontario is much better than the Mass Turnpike and MUCH CHEAPER. Gas may be a little more expensive but there are NO tolls and Canada knows how to move some traffic, even in Toronto at rush hour. Seriously there are 14-16 lanes of traffic through there at any given time, that is more than I like to deal with. I just stuck to the far left lane because it gave me some space. The one place I intended to stop today was Screw Auger Falls near Bethel, Maine but there was construction going on all over that road so I was unable to stop at that particular point. Not slow me down traffic thank goodness; I hit all the one lane traffic just as my side was getting to go.

 

I drove through the White Mountains in New Hampshire and it is an incredibly beautiful area; big looming mountains with clouds ringing around the top and little lakes strewn about here and there. Originally I thought I would do more sightseeing through Canada but for the first big part of it I don’t remember enough of my French to get around. I remembered enough to get me through Quebec and the beginning of Ontario but I didn’t care to stray too far. Also Mapquest is terrible, I’ll stick to my atlas any day. Mostly though, I’m ready to be home. I’m ready to see the family and NOT being driving for twelve hours at a time… instead I’ll be riding my bike for that long, eesh!
I found a room at the Mohawk Inn right off the highway that is cheap AND clean! How often does that happen? It’s in Campbellville, Ontario. There is a pretty hopping restaurant attached with pretty usually pub food and lots of seafood. I’m feeling lazy so I just ordered a pizza take-out style and a Canadian beer of the counter lady’s recommendation and I’m in for a relaxing evening at the Mohawk. It wasn’t a very eventful day, just a lot of driving.
Exciting Points: There is a place in New Hampshire called Santa’s Village and it is sort of like a mini amusement park and they BLARE Christmas music so that I’m pretty sure I heard it for a mile on either side of it.
There are two men playing bagpipes in the parking lot of my hotel.
Episode #2 of “You look like…”
1. “You look like Julia Roberts.” I get this more than any other you look like ever. I think it’s because I have big teeth. I wish I looked quite a bit MORE like Julia Roberts and got to make out with Richard Gere, but I don’t want to be a ginger..

2. “You look like you have some Native American/Indian/Injun in you.” I get this a lot, apparently it’s my skin color, the shape of my eyes and my high/strong cheek bones? I have no idea, this is what people tell me. Supposedly it was rumored I have some Native American somewhere in my blood line but as I work on my family genealogy I’m finding this to be a prevarication. The Lakota Sioux I met on the reservation even thought so.

1 Comment | posted in Schwartz Athenaeum

July 21, 2010

Last Days in Maine

By Pam Schwartz
I leave my peaceful little place with Elaine in Maine to go to my HOME!! tomorrow. I’ve made the decision to drive through Canada because it will A) be an adventure and B) I can avoid Massachusetts traffic. I met a guy here from Massachusetts and I complained to him about his kind, he replied, “They don’t call us Massholes for nothing.” I love it, I think my father will also appreciate this comment.

 

Five weeks is up all ready but I feel like I accomplished quite a bit while I was here. Sunday morning was spent cleaning up decorative bunting off The Common from Founders Day and then I had the afternoon off. It was a beautiful day so I skipped on over to the Owl’s Head beach and had it all to myself. There is a sign going to the lighthouse and a sign going to the beach, I went to the beach on the other side of the lighthouse you have to climb down a ridiculously steep bushy hill to get to. It was worth having the beach to myself for the afternoon. It was nice and relaxing even though the water was plenty cold while swimming.
I shouldn’t say I had the ENTIRE afternoon off I had to be back at a quarter of five to go hiking with Dave and Suzy. We had plans to go out in the woods and attempt to locate where Joel and Mima Adams (original settlers and characters in Come Spring) had their cabin. We had no luck but I’m going to figure it out someday. We did however see these cool Indians’ Pipes plants which Dave tells me are the only plant that doesn’t have/use chlorophyll. On the way home from the beach to meet Dave and Suzy I grabbed a sandwich at The Market Basket in Camden. A-W-E-S-O-M-E and huge. Stone-ground wheat bread, oven-roasted turkey, onion, three colors of pepper, dill Dijon mayo, lettuce and goat cheese! It was terrific. I also stopped at MicMac gas station and got Fresca in a bottle! In a bottle! You can’t get that in Iowa. Also a peanut butter no-bake, way better than a regular one but I’m also not a big fan of chocolate. Have I mentioned how much I love food?
Monday, Keri (last year’s intern) and I took a research trip to the Maine State Archives. They were very helpful but Keri didn’t want to spend the whole day like I did so I only managed to get pictures of about 20 pieces of Civil War correspondence that dealt with Union. Lunch was at the A1 Diner. Totally Dive and Diner and Guy Fieri has even been there, no surprise. The place is like a old cart up on stilts and is super swanky inside. I had a mexi-turkey sandwich unfortunately loaded with cilantro and I HATE cilantro, but after scraping it off it was fairly tasty.
Last night Elaine made brisket. It’s my favorite and she combined our two recipes to make it, which were almost the same. Along with some mashed potatoes, baked green peppers, onions, and two types of zucchini it was delicious. Today was my last day at work which meant finishing up all my little loose end projects. Dave took me to Come Spring Café for lunch and I ate this piece of Peanut Butter Cream Pie the size of hand.
Since my first week here we (Elaine, Suzy and I) have discussed going over to Tamarind a Thai restaurant in Rockland but hadn’t gotten around to it. We decided tonight was the night. We sat in some fun seats where it’s like you’re sitting on the ground but you’re not because there is room under the table for your feet. It was different but we ate a lot of tasty food. Beef satay doused in cucumber sauce and then dipped in peanut sauce, crab Rangoon with Thai sweet chili sauce and I had Pad Thai for my main course and Thai tea. I’m going to miss Elaine, I know that much. 😦 You can expect more on my experiences and things later but I have to get to bed! 5:30 will come awful early in the morning!

1 Comment | posted in Schwartz Athenaeum

July 18, 2010

Pam Schwartz – Slide Whistler Extraordinaire

By Pam Schwartz

I am exhausted; it has been a very BUSY week. Do you want to know how I know I am exhausted? I started this blog two nights ago and am just deciding to work on it now and I still don’t want to. This weekend Union celebrated Founders’ Day which means at the historical society we had a lot to do. Most of this week was spent planning and getting ready for Founders’ Day as well as finishing my mini-exhibit. Don’t think this week wasn’t any fun, you know better. Tuesday Elaine and I went to Freeport which is apparently the shopping Mecca of Maine. It contains THE L.L. Bean, lots of “outlet” stores and a delicious restaurant called Gritty McDuff’s. I had the most interesting plate of food here but goodness was it tasty. I’ve NEVER ordered Mac N’ Cheese at a restaurant but I couldn’t resist ordering Gritty’s Pub Mac N’ Cheese it sounded so appetizing. Big spiraly pasta (I don’t remember the real name and am too lazy to look it up), blackened chicken breast, fried jalapenos and grilled cornbread. It was so incredibly tasty I don’t even know what to say about it.

This week Dave also took Suzy and me out for Athen’s Pizza again. Yum, I love pizza. Other than that it’s been work, work, work. This morning I went over to Rockland on errands so I decided to stop and grab a spinach and cheddar bagel with hummus at The Hole in the Wall Bagel Shop. I love food. Last night, to kick off the Founder’s Day, there was a Pie Social on The Common. It’s very nostalgic and old timey. I spent the afternoon decorating the gazebo (bandstand) on the town green with red, white and blue bunting and bows. I felt very patriotic and it looked very nice, see for yourself.
I had a hot dog and chips with some scrumptious homemade blueberry pie and ice cream. I took Elaine home some Strawberry-Rhubarb Custard Pie because she couldn’t make it to the social. This was my first of four “public” meals in a row as they call them here. This morning there was a blueberry pancake breakfast at the church, chicken barbecue for lunch and fireman’s spaghetti supper this evening. I ate a lot this weekend! I was busy all day helping with stuff for UHS but I did get a little down time during the Come Spring Bus Tour this morning. If you all haven’t read the novel Come Spring by Ben Ames Williams, please do. It’s an excellent novel and then you can come to Union and see where everybody lived and did things. It’s a novelization on the first ten years of the earliest settlers’ lives here in Union. The Come Spring tour takes you all around Union to see where the original homesteads would have stood (this is usually in the form of an indent in the ground, the cellar hold) and where some of the notables are buried. It’s like living the novel and was a really fun experience.  Talk about an excellent view for the cemetery, now adays this is where the common would be put and the ancestors else where.  They have one of the best views in town and of Seven Tree Pond.  I’m usually weirded out about taking pictures in cemeteries but these people are like celebrities to me after reading Come Spring.  These two are Phillip and Jemima Robbins the very first settlers of Union (then Sterlingtown) whose daughter Mima Robbins is the main character of the book.
This afternoon was hanging out at the UHS stand on The Common and listening to a really fun little Celtic Trio play in the bandstand. The fireman’s spaghetti supper was very tasty, all homemade sauce, salad dressing and the whole works. The weird thing is that the “sauce” was pretty much meat with a little bit of red sauce to color it, definitely a man’s spaghetti. The weird thing out here is that they refer to ground beef as hamburg. Not hamburger or ground beef, just hamburg. Allison, whose Scottish and super cute, says, “My, there sure is a lot of hamburg in this sghetti.” People are funny. She’s a very quotable lady, in fact she is the one who narrates the Come Spring tour. Another thing that made me laugh today was when she said, “My bug bears a bee in its bonnet.” When complaining about somebody who annoys her. What a weird thing to say. She also says the classic European, “Tis much better.” when something is improved. I love it.

Now for the real fun. The UHS showed the silent movie The Camerman, which is a Buster Keaton film. Phenomenal! Absolutely hysterical! Not only was the movie funny on its own but Doug Protsik is a hoot and plays silent movies entirely from his own creative genius by a score he’s written in his head to fit the movie. As I am always introduced as Pam, the intern at UHS from Iowa, Doug thought he might have a fun interny thing to do. Usually he just plays the piano for the show but he always thought it would be kind of fun to mix other sound effects in.

Somehow I was volunteered and I had so much fun. Doug gave me a five minute rundown of the movie (which I’d never seen before) gave me some suggestions on when to play my instruments (big bell, counter top ding bell, a gong and a slide whistle) and told me to improvise the rest. I’ve never heard a whole room of people laugh so hard constantly for a movie. It was a riot and I had many compliments on my excellent timing. I dropped one of the bells and hit the gong on the chair by accident but was lucky enough they fit right into the movie, I’m also putting professional slide whistler down on my resume. I have some of the most bizarre and interesting experiences on these little random internships/trips I do and this will probably be one of the most memorable.

This is my mini-exhibit. Dont’ judge, I was on very limited time, funds and materials.  It has excerpts from letter written during the Civil War that soldiers sent home and facts about the war casualties etc.

3 Comments | posted in Schwartz Athenaeum

July 13, 2010

Food, Friends, Ocean, Excellent!

By Pam Schwartz
Friday afternoon meant off for another adventure weekend in Portland and the surrounding area. Marie-Agathe, a friend from back in high school who was a French exchange student, was coming up to Portland to visit Merry and I was invited to join them. Unfortunately Alice, Merry’s daughter and the reason I know both Merry and Mappy, couldn’t come. For supper we had some tasty stir fry and then it was off to meet the rest of our company for the weekend. Long story short; Merry’s friend and coworker is hosting for a short time a friend of Mappy’s from France. We spent the weekend with them (Tracy=Mom, Emmy= Tracy’s Daughter, Pauline=Mappy’s Friend) because it makes sense in a way I need not take time to explain, you’re all smart individuals and I’m attempting to make this less than 100 pages long, onto the good stuff.

 

After dinner we had dessert over at Tracy’s which consisted of a variety of sorbetto, gelato, maple coconut tapioca and things. For drinks, Champagne Aubry I believe it was. Everything I had was delicious. I had a small moment of star struck syndrome as Tracy’s husband Eric played NHL Hockey with the Chicago Blackhawks, he of course played with several teams including the New Jersey Devils and the Montreal Canadiens, but I found it exciting! I love hockey but of course the other girls paid no attention so I got over it. Saturday we had those delicious waffles Merry makes for breakfast. I apologize right now Merry if people start showing up at your house for breakfast, but they are just so darn tasty I have to talk about them.
The original plan for the weekend was to go out on the boat all day and see the sites but there was unfortunately some wicked storm clouds moving in so we changed it up a bit with a shorter scenic boat ride and TUBING ON THE OCEAN off Cousins Island! We all know how much I love tubing but even I am used to just doing it on the Maquoketa River, the ocean is a whole different experience. Mappy was a little terrified at first but we had a lot of fun! She even went Maq. River tubing when she was in Iowa so she has had two VERY DIFFERENT experiences. We had some DELICIOUS Panini for lunch with all the great ingredients I can’t afford (yummy artisan bread, fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, grilled peppers, grilled eggplant, arugula, yum, yum, yum) I couldn’t contain myself it was so tasty. I also went WAY out of my box and had green gazpacho made with avocados and cucumbers, neither of which I typically like but I mixed it with some regular gazpacho and it wasn’t too bad.
Left: Check out those clouds!    Right: At least Tracy and I know how to get down to Janis Joplin.
The afternoon was spent on karaoke and watching Pet Semetary which only Tracy and I had seen before. It was fun to help translate “A man’s heart is stonier” to Pauline as we didn’t have the luxury of French subtitles. For supper El Rayo Taqueria, tasty Mexican including Beso to drink (tequila, hibiscus, lemon, lime and orange)!
Has everybody ever noticed that the main thing I talk about is food. I’m a foodie, what can I say? I love food and delight in talking about and photographing it for the world to see. A recent comment made by a little birdie said my blog always makes her hungry, I aim to please. The moms woke our butts up early for breakfast (I say moms because I claim Merry as my mom away from home) because of a little bakery called Scratch. Can you say: IT. WAS. WORTH. IT!? Talk about a mean croissant, buttery and soft, if both the French girls say it’s a good one it must be right? We went out to Fort Williams Park (you’ve seen mention of this in my last trip to Portland) and I enjoyed by croissant and soy latte sitting aside the ocean and the Portland Headlight Lighthouse. I almost forgot to add this in but there could have been some more adventure and cool picture taking if Merry had only allowed me to climb out on the rocks to do it. There is a picture of my being displeased with her about this but it won’t come until I gather the pictures from everybody.
Next we were in for a real adventure, it included snipe hunting…oh wait that’s not right. I mean Piping Plover Searching! They are a cute little puffball of an endangered species and we went to see if we could locate some baby ones at Ferry Beach. Ferry Beach is your fairly typical sandy beach and was great for a Sunday walk with the ladies. We didn’t see any Plovers but we found several good seashells and ended up swimming in the ocean in our full attire. Emmy got a little rowdy at the water’s edge and somehow that resulted in the submersion of the rest of us kids, somehow the moms were spared.

 

I left Portland at 1:30 and decided I had time for another small adventure before retiring home. I ended up heading south to the coast from Bath and wound up at Popham Beach. I was thinking it might be a bust because it was rainy and foggy out, but I rolled my pants up and grabbed an umbrella and started into the sand. Popham is extremely peaceful and mildy eerie in the fog and I seemed to be the only one around. I decided to at least walk out into the sand until I either met water’s edge or couldn’t see where I’d come from anymore. The latter happened first but by then I could hear the water so kept on until a huge rock, which I of course had to climb for curiosities sake. I like to say I was being really adventurous and could have possibly been climbing to a fall to oblivion but I was very careful. The ocean is not something to toy with. When I reached the top I could see above the fog and see where I’d come from and the ocean next to me crashing into the rocks. I want to live at this exact point with nothing around me for miles, it was so beautiful. I sat and enjoyed it for over an hour by myself until the fog started to clear and the beach monkeys started coming around. At this point I traversed the edge of the beach and overturned some rocks looking for creatures. They included some crabs, lots of sand dollars and one little starfish which I “saved” by putting it back in the water.

Last stop, Marnee’s Cookie Bistro in Bath, I saw it and knew I’d heard of it so had to stop. I had in fact heard it featured on Rachel Ray’s Snack of the Day so I of course had to get some cookies! I got a bowl of White Bean Chicken Chili for supper and took three cookies to go for Elaine and I to share later. Two were Peter Pan (peanut butter chips and toffee) and the other was Rhapsody (ginger, toffee and molasses). Rhapsody may be my new favorite cookie ever.
P.S. There will possibly be another photo blog linked to this one when I receive the rest of the weekend’s pictures from Tracy and maybe even some from Merry!

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July 9, 2010

Whoopee!

By Pam Schwartz
I’ve discovered that having a full-time plus and part-time job at the same time gets a little hectic. This week has been crazy busy. Anyways, I did have some time to go in Elaine’s “backyard,” 13 acre plot and check the area out. I found some wild blueberry plants, some wicked fungus and the St. Georges River. I also found myself up to the knees in bog.

 

We’ve been having fun at the historical society and by that I mean we’ve been roasting without air. However, the archive room does have air set at 62 so we decided it was probably a good time to reorganize it. Apparently UHS has decided to put tall interns down as a hiring preference. I’m not tall but I’m taller than Suzy so I have to get things off the top shelf. Suzy and I unrolled for the first time ever the giant set of printing plates from Sibley’s “A History of Union”. They were wrapped up in extra full pages that had been printed of other books. It was interesting to see a book in flat form. While we were attempting to pull the roll apart we managed to bury ourselves into the archive room, darn, there are worse places to be stuck.
Wednesday we had a program at the Old Town Meeting House. This mean I worked from 9 A.M. until 9:30 P.M. straight through. Oofta. Before the program the speaker and his family came to the Robbin’s House for dinner. I was lucky enough to sit next to the speaker and to be the only one really speaking to him. His name is Scott Mills and he is a WWII veteran who now lives in Maryland. He was, however, born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa so we had a special sort of Iowa bond. His daughter and her husband were hamming it up at the other end of the table with Dave and Suzy so I was glad to get to chat with him. We talked about all sorts of Iowa stuff, unfortunately he was hard of hearing so I had to speak up making me the LOUDEST person at the table and everybody kept looking at me. It was awkward but worth it. His talk was really interesting; it was about Professor Roy Bell’s time spent stranded in the Philippines. He even authored a book about it, as well as a couple of others on various topics.
After our chat and his talk, I of course had to buy his book and his daughter asked if I’d just like him to sign it or write it to somebody. Scott spoke up and said, “I will WRITE it to My Friend Pam, from Scott Mills.” I was glad he spoke up, he’s a really interesting guy and we had more time to talk after the program. I’m excited for this book and possibly more excited for his next one about his son-in-law’s father who was one of the top ambassadors of the U.S. during WWII.
Today, another field trip to enjoy Moxie Day at Moody’s Restaurant in Waldoboro. For those of you who don’t know what Moxie is: http://www.drinkmoxie.us/
I had it the first time I was in Maine with Alice, Merry and Eleanor. I remembered it being absolutely terrible but this time around it didn’t seem quite as bad. Elaine made my Dad try it when he was here and he didn’t grimace so it can’t be THAT bad. Moxie Day consisted of seeing the Moxie vehicles and booths selling t-shirts and other paraphernalia. We had at lunch at Moody’s which is apparently one of those must eat at places in Maine. It’s well known because it’s been around forever but it’s just your typical if not subpar diner food. Turkey wrap was bleh BUT desserts are another thing, I guess it is what they are known for. Mile-high Lemon Meringue Pie was indeed a mile high and whoopee pies the size of my face pass the test. Well, the Lemon Meringue was pretty all right considering I don’t care for that sort of thing and Elaine and I are going to split the whoopee pie as soon as I get off my rump and go out to the kitchen and get it for us.

This afternoon we went to the Transportation Museum over in Owl’s Head. First things first, AWESOME! I am so mad I didn’t know how cool it was or when Dad was out here with me we would have gone. We were only a few minutes from it but we sort of assumed it wouldn’t be nearly that extensive. The museum is incredibly large, it sort of feels like several large airplane hangars attached to one another. They have a ton of OLD, REALLY old cars, planes, carriages, bikes and motorcycles. I think Dad and I probably could have spent an entire afternoon there. Maybe he’ll want to come drive home with me?

The machines are in great shape, the museum has a base of 2,400 members. Did you hear me? 2,400 MEMBERS!!!!! That’s Ahhh-MAZING. The volunteers spend the time fixing them up and painting and taking care of them. The planes and everything all run, they ACTUALLY run. Ok, maybe you aren’t as excited as me but some of these planes don’t look like they EVER should have worked and they still do. They’ve tried them and occasionally take them out to keep them working. http://www.ohtm.org/edu_col.html Check it out. I loved everything about this museum from the spacious layout, interesting text panels and enlarged photos hanging on the walls. My only real qualm was that some of the text panels were too far back from the audience barriers to read. My favorite thing is the logo; it is cute, fun and fitting. Spent the afternoon chatting with Elaine and working on Maquoketa Art Experience things, I’m about to the end of two big projects so it will be a relief to get them out of the door, at least for awhile. My blog really has become a chapter book. I apologize but when I don’t have time to blog often the story just gets longer and longer…now it’s time to go dish up some whoopee.

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July 5, 2010

It is really dark in Maine.

By Pam Schwartz
There were about a gazillion options of what to do in Maine over this lovely Fourth of July weekend.  I opted to hang out with Elaine (my hostess) because she’s super fun and other than eating supper, drinking wine, watching Jeopardy and doing crosswords together we haven’t really gone out and done anything.  Saturday morning Elaine made entirely homemade blueberry muffins! This lady is going to make me fat.  At about noon we took an adventure to the two local wineries; Savage Oaks and Sweet Grass.  Sweet Grass doesn’t make grape wine they use entirely different fruits; peaches, blueberries, apples, cranberries etc. AND they make some spirits.  I tried the Backwater Gin…plain, and it ate my face off but tasted YUMMY. Also, I’ve been informed I can locate Pimm’s easily in Maine.  Fantastic.  For anybody who doesn’t know I have a not-so-secret love affair with Pimm’s No.1 and it is unavailable in Iowa.  I’ll be bringing some home. Savage Oaks also has some tasty choices but a little more on the traditional side.
Now, Elaine hasn’t been to fireworks in well, she doesn’t remember how long.  So I says Elaine, we HAVE to go to fireworks!  Of course she complies because she’s always game for anything.  We decide on going to fireworks in Camden where they shoot them off over the harbor.  We read in the paper how they were doing some sort of underwater fireworks? We don’t know much about it and if they used them we couldn’t tell the difference.  Had some supper at Cappy’s Chowder House, wowzas!  Elaine had the most monstrous burger I’ve ever seen called the Mt. Battie Deluxe or something and I had the Belfast Special.  The Belfast Special was incredibly tasty.  Blackened Cajun chicken breast on a super yummy bun with pepper jack cheese, lettuce and habanera mayonnaise.  Enough spicy to make my nose run a little but not enough to void my taste buds for multiple days. Success.
The fireworks were amazing.  We sat in Harbor Park which is apparently the place to be and they shoot the fireworks off pretty far out in the harbor, right in between the island and little peninsular thing you see in the photo.  The only thing more beautiful than fireworks is to see them doubled in the water and bouncing around.  The show was at least a half hour long which is pretty long for most places and Elaine and I both enjoyed it, I think I have her hooked back into going to fireworks!
Today we had crepes for brunch and they were SUPER tasty.  We eat pretty well around here.  Elaine had a special crepe pan that looks like an upside down skillet with bow in the bottom.  Needless to say we couldn’t come up with the correct temperature to make it effective to use and settled for a more boring right side up skillet.  Elaine made a blueberry pie and we were off towards Palermo/Bald Head Island to have a cook-out with her a couple of her friends, Bernie and Donna,  who have a cottage on Sheepscott Pond.  Lots of normal summer fare for dinner, cheeseburger, potato salad, chips and garlic dip, corn on the cob! Bernie and I went kayaking out into the pond (again what I would consider a lake) and up the St. Georges River a ways.  It was a beautiful night at the perfect temperature.  Must be rough to be able to take three steps out of your cottage into a kayak in a beautiful lake.  For dessert there was Elaine’s magnificent blueberry pie and ice cream from John’s Ice Cream in Liberty.  John’s is another one of the MUST HAVE Maine foods I guess and it was worth it.  We had plain vanilla on the pie and some blackberries n’ cream on the side because it sounded delicious.
There was a lot of discussion over supper about how things are different in Iowa.  It’s surprising really.  One thing is that it is really dark in Maine.  People in Maine don’t believe in street lights, street signs or speed limit signs.  They prefer you don’t know where you’re going because they do know.  Well Maine is very dark (at least up here) and it makes it hard to see while doing anything at night. Weird. But, all in all a very relaxing and enjoyable 4th of July.

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