The Urban Pantheist

Busch Gardens selfie with Dad and Andy.

( the last few BG photos )

The conference is taking place at this place--I didn't expect it to be so huge or so nice.


This is our view when we step out of our hotel room.

This post is to remind me of this pub. My dad and I were driving around Quincy, Mass, and construction forced us to do a little detour. On the way we saw this pub sign and found it intriguing. I've been trying to remember the name ever since, and finally figured it out today.

The sport portrayed on the sign is the Irish/Gaelic sport of hurling.
The bar is at 1464 Hancock Street in Quincy center. At this writing it has a four star rating with 12 reviews on yelp. They don't open until 3 on Sundays--have to check their Facebook page on a Saturday to find out when they open then.

My dad, on the day after his 80th birthday, at the Arnold Arboretum.

After World's End, we spent some time at Rag's Tavern for drinks and pizza!

My dad and I went to Albany, the capital city of New York, yesterday. I suspect they thought that New York City was too damn crowded to put the capital there. Albany is a parcel of land once ruled by deer and snow monsters, but now has a little bizarre city squatting in the middle of nowhere. Despite its small size I managed to get us lost (on foot) so we got to see some pretty buildings and doorways.

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We took on three 7 week old puppies this weekend--they arrived on Friday and just left a few minutes ago. Pretty fun short term project, but three is definitely at least one too many for easy care. We only have two arms!

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I wrote myself a note to clean the kitchen table in order to find my health card and the letter from my dad. The health card is the missing piece to making a doctor's appointment, and I was going to use the letter from my dad to post something poignant about a conversation we had.

I more or less cleaned the kitchen table, by which I mean I dug through a year's worth of stacked mail and moved some of it to other rooms and threw a lot of it in the recycling, and did not find my health card but I did find my Dental Insurance card. I figured that there's a chance that I could sign up for an online account with that, and get the ball rolling toward going to the doctor regularly like a grown man (I mean middle aged man). The application to get an online account seemed simple enough but when I got to the bottom to click "next," the blank page reloaded. Start again! After doing that 4 times I gave up.

I couldn't find my dad's letter either. I found a dozen other letters from him from earlier in the year but not that one. Suffice it to say: He documents me being a terse dick. But it's funnier than that sounds.

EDITED TO ADD:
No, wait, I'll tell the story the best I can remember it. My dad wrote it out and it was pretty funny so I'll try to approximate his version.

We were on Sanibel Island driving around, talking about Ding Darling (the cartoonist who managed to get legal protections against development on much of the island) and such when my dad said something like "Anne Morrow was out here at that time too." And then just let it hang there. Now I had no idea who Anne Morrow was, and I didn't really care. I forget what we were up to, but I didn't want to learn new history at that moment, we were trying to do one of our crazy fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants vacation style tasks. Both he and my brother do this, and I probably do too, but if I do please tell me because it's obnoxious: dropping a name or a fact out there, knowing that the person you are talking to probably has no idea what you are talking about. It's a way of dominating the conversation by leaving breadcrumbs that the other person has to pick up in order to complete the thought of the last sentence. Anyway.

I inhaled deeply and said "I don't know who that is."

"Anne Morrow's father was a partner at JP Morgan who became ambassador to Mexico and the Senator from New Jersey. Her mother was president of Smith College, where Anne went before becoming an important author. It was in Mexico that she met Charles Lindbergh, they married and she became a pilot herself. Lindbergh believed that Germany ... politics.... Lindbergh baby Kidnapping...." I confess at this point I dropped the thread of the narrative realizing that we had passed a shortcut.

"Can I stop you there, dad?" He did.

"She was Lindbergh's wife."

"Yes."

"Okay thanks."


My dad's takeaway from this exchange is that he talks too much. I'm not sure that's exactly right; I would say that we each talk a lot, and each have fairly deep interests in very different fields, and would do well to be considerate of one another. Also I diminished the important accomplishments of an important figure in history to simply being the spouse of another important figure in history. We should probably all know Anne Morrow better.

Anyway, thanks Dad! Sorry I was a dick.

Our last stop on the vacation was the Edison and Ford Winter Estates. I was keen to see the botanical laboratories and such, not so much the big houses of two rich men I don't particularly admire. Edison was a ruthless capitalist and elephant electrocutor and Ford was a noted anti-Semite. We saw some cool stuff there though--check out the tree behind this statue of Edison.

I made sure to show my dad the Oatmeal strip about Tesla, after we got back, just so you know.
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Arr! or something. I told my dad he needs a bandana and a hoop earring and we could make a lot of friends in Florida.