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Boston, MA · Apr 18, 09:05 PM

In the bright chill of Spring Chris, and I wandered along the red-bricked Freedom Trail. Boston is home to gorgeous architecture: Exhange Place (along the freedom trail), the Moakley Federal Courthouse (an inspiring building with an inspiring view of the downtown skyline) and the Boston Harbor Hotel (on the harborwalk).

Other greats: The food (Dick’s Last Chance, Jer-Ne at the Ritz, No. 9 Park, and Café Jaffe), Boston U. (poet Geoffrey Hill, and various painters at an exhibition we stumbled into), the young energy of Boston Commons. Chris’ travelogue beats me to the punch. On Dr. Hill’s poetry reading, he writes:

[T]he assembled crowd for the reading was also priceless. Hawkish Frenchwomen with scarves adoring balding bearded pensive Americans. Moon faced male students fidgeting with tomes and flitting their eyes for female contact. Rogues with thin smiles, ruffled hair and open collars. The overweight female clique. The underweight over privileged female clique- sitting primly. An overwrought doctoral student in poetry (of all things) loudly introducing his boyfriend to his professor.

Saturday, I joined Chris for several hours of Shul, which helped to round out and perspectivate my religous experience. Shul was formalized—much like it’s younger brother, the Catholic mass—but quite informal. People wander about, talk quietly, lean on the altar, and jostle about. Saturday re-enforces my opinion that there ought to be more Catholic rites than there are now. Catholic Jews should have a rite that captures the familial casuality of Shul; they ought not to be forced into either Latin or the vernacular.

End of digression. The take home message: No. 9 Park. Chris put it well,

This place seems to specialize in reducing ingredients to a quagmire of clarity.

Only breakfast by Paul Fuller at The Caratunk House on the Appalachian Trial in Maine compares, and only as a distant second.

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