New England, again.
Monday, September 18th, 1995
Hello from Atlanta, where things have finally begun to cool down enough to create at least the expectation that fall will be a delight. Sammy and I have been off on a quick trip designed to get the most out of the early signs of autumn.
We flew to Boston on a cheap Delta flight and rented a cheap Avis car; we drove up the Maine coast, turned west and cut over to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Took the car up through some beautiful scenery that had just begun to change fall colors, drove up Mount Washington in the Presidential Range, followed the Connecticut River to its headwaters on the New Hampshire/Quebec border, drove north into Quebec listening to arguments over the seperatist question on CBC Radio, and saw covered bridges and small Catholic farm towns along our route. Got to Sherbrooke P.Q., turned south and drove along Lake Mephremagog, crossed back into the states at Newport, Vermont, and headed down into the Green Mountain state. Dined in Cabot with old friends from my days at The Country Journal (a very small newspaper–no, not the magazine of the same name), stopped by my old radio station at Goddard College, breakfasted well at The Horn of the Moon in Montpelier, and dined well in Burlington. Dropped down state route 100 (the traditional fall foliage route), picked up the Connecticut River again down into Massachusetts, and made our way around to Interstate 495, which we took to down by the Cape on a sunday night. Next day, we headed out to Cape Cod, where we spent the day and night having fun on a relatively unpopulated vacation spot, and we finally pulled back into Boston to spend a day with Sammy’s friend Kelley, who has renovated a large former elevator factory in Cambridge into cool homes and artist’s spaces. Phew! We cram more into seven days than most people cram into..uh, ten days, maybe.
I want to do my part to help you experience Bob Page-mania. Yes, it’s true. Reports are that Mr. Page has been in the recording studio most of this week and is all but done with his next CD, which for fans of Bob’s distinctive boogie-woogie blues piano, is good news indeed. Bob’s first CD, Poor Man Shuffle, was critically well-received, if not a commercially big success (that may well be because he records on a small independent label.) I’ve always been a big fan, however–and, uh, by the way, I did the graphic design for Poor Man Shuffle and it looks like I also get to have some fun with his new one, Blues in Dixieland. Make a note: it’s coming this Christmas to a record store near you.
