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Road Trip: Day 10—Wethersfield and “The Witch of Blackbird Pond” (Part Two of Two)
Yay! My home town of Wethersfield, CT gets some love from Emily Jacobs in the post below the fold (which, admittedly, is now over 3 years old, but sometimes the wheels of the Blogosphere grind slowly, amirite?).
Ms. Jacobs has included some beautiful pictures from Old Wethersfield, most of which were taken 2 blocks from my Mom’s house.
Old Weth is its own little universe, and I still love and miss it.
Edit: PS, I wasn’t sure whether to mention this, because it might sound like a bit of a downer, but my father (who died when I was a senior in high school) is buried in the Village Cemetery. He loved Wethersfield, too, so even though I am sad that he is gone, it is nice to think that his resting place is in a place where he felt at home.
If you like old buildings, Wethersfield, Connecticut is pretty much house porn for you. The slideshow below is what I saw while walking to and from the Cove.
After I toured the Buttolph-Williams House, I walked over to the cemetery.
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It was a very sunny day, and a hot early afternoon, but the cemetery still gave me the creeps. My guide was kind enough to let me know that the oldest stones were at the top of the hill, known as Hungry Hill because that is where the Indians would retreat during flooding times, often with little sustenance.
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It’s just not a vacation if I don’t get to go to an old cemetery.
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It took me a surprisingly short amount of time before I found Gershom Bulkeley’s gravestone. As I said, in the bright, hot sun, it was still an intensely creepy…
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Ballet Squid Chronicles: Lucky
We’re going to visit my parents in Connecticut in January, and I’ve been looking around for a ballet class to squeeze in while we’re up there. I’ve been surprised to find few options — there are adult options at a number of schools, but most seem to offer only one or two classes a week (and so many happen to be on Thursday — is there something I don’t know about Thursday?).
There are a couple of notable exceptions — Hartford City Ballet, for example, offers five adult open technique classes (and a conditioning class, which is one offering I wish we had — we do have Pilates, though).
I’m reminded again how lucky we are to have access to Louisville Ballet School’s robust adult class offerings — nine ballet technique classes per week, not counting the 6-week Intro Pointe class that happens once in a while. I’m not even counting non-ballet offerings (tap; something called “fitness fusion,” which might be ballet conditioning masquerading as a general fitness class; and Pilates, which doesn’t appear to be on our Winter Break schedule).
It surprises me that LBS, a school attached to a small company in a small city in a part of the country where the arts are vibrant but always struggling, offers such a robust adult program in what is presumably a much smaller adult-ballet market than one would expect in the Northeast. Not that I’m complaining! I’m just surprised.
I think the topic of how to cobble together a reasonable class schedule sorted has been bandied around the adult ballet boards at Ballet Talk for Dancers quite a bit, but I guess I still hadn’t realized how challenging it can be.
Any thoughts out there on why things shake out the way they do? How do class offerings look in your necks of the woods, fellow dancers? Do you think LBS’ offerings are more typical or more atypical for a ballet school in a moderate-sized city?
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Update
The New Haven Ballet has a nice selection of Open Division classes, so I think I’m going to try to work their Friday morning class into our visit. I’d love to visit Yale’s Peabody Museum while we’re up there, so it works out nicely for me.
danseur ignoble 