pt at large

Montreal's World Class Outdoor Market: Marché Jean-Talon

Marché Jean-Talon
7070 Avenue Henri Julien
Montreal, Quebec H2S3A3, Canada
(514) 277-1588
Subway: Station  Jean-Talon
Open Mon-Wed, Sat 7am-6pm
Thu-Fri 7am-8pm
Sun 7am-5pm

It makes perfect sense that a multi-lingual, multi-cultural city like Montreal would have a huge outdoor market. The Marché Jean-Talon is a doozy.  Situated in the geographic center of the city, like the heart of an artichoke, it’s a weekly destination for people who prefer to get their food close to where its been pulled from the ground, picked from bush or tree, butchered, churned or fermented.

We knew we were headed in the right direction for the market because every man, woman, and child coming toward us walked with the slow measured gait of someone girding for a long walk home as they carried bags laden with staples for the coming days or week to home, car, or nearest metro stop.  Lots of cloth sacks, by the way, not many plastic bags.

The market sells anything you can digest or cook: from aisle to aisle, you’re bathed in the aroma of meat, cheeses, yogurt and all manner of dairy products, fruit, vegetables, spices, seasonings, bread, cakes, cookies, pastries, fresh pasta, and flowers (oops, not digestible but pretty). Just about everything is naked. No shrink-wrap, no foamy-white plastic containers, no packaging. Most of what you purchase is wrapped in paper or plopped in paper bags.

The assortment of shoppers is as vast as the products in the stalls. Baseball caps, head scarves, T shirts, flip flops, families in Sunday best, families in beach attire, couples of every age race and gender preference.

Aisles and aisles of concessions occupy an area of several acres. Between May and October, about 300 vendors, many from country farms, fill the market. The overhead roofing today has open sections and appears to be retractable in cold or rainy weather.

Rows of small eateries and stores lining either side of the market are like camp followers taking advantage of the foot traffic roaming through the army of vendor’s stalls inside it. Cafes, a few small souvenir shops, specialty stores selling olive oils from all over the world, more bread stores, restaurants, wine bars, ice cream shops, even a few clothing stores.

There are certainly super markets in Montreal that may be nearer to the homes of the shoppers who are slowly wading through the crowded aisles. Shopping at the Marché Jean Talon is more than a necessity on the weekly to do list.

For many, it is a ritual. A relaxing way to take their foot off the accelerator of Monday - Friday routines, and enter a place that offers endless choices of how they’d like to add variety to the days of their week by the vegetables they buy, or the new kind of cheese, or the bottle of wine the guy from the Quebec winery is offering on special today.

The market felt like an aroma-therapy session with the terrific visual component of seeing all the products arranged just so. Whether I bought or not, I felt better for having strolled through a vast open air theater laden with all kinds of food once removed from its source.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

The Jean-Talon Market is especially busy on Sunday morning...
 

with sweets for Arabian tastes...

 

to locally grown fruits and vegetables...
 

arranged just so...
 

and sold by friendly vendors...
 

fresh flowers from the fields...

and produce you can touch before bagging...

 

and cheeks grandmothers can pinch...
 

terrific people watching...
 

and time to catch up with friends...
 

over coffee or snacks...
 

make new friends...
 

and of course, be  treated with musical interludes...
 

plead your case...
 

vigorously...

and buy one of those local wines that look so enticing.

Montreal: A Melting Pot North of the Border - Boulevard St. Laurent

Montreal’s Plateau neighborhood and the Boulevard St. Laurent
Friday afternoon, July 16, 2010

Reclining below Montreal’s throne of Mont Royal, Rue St. Urbain, once a bastion of Portuguese immigrants, still has a cohesive, neighborhood feel. On this weekday afternoon, residents congregate on postage stamp patios built alongside of steep steps leading up to four storied row houses lined up shoulder to shoulder like soldiers at attention. The small balconies are all filled with flowers, tables, chairs, and the occasional flag. Some are occupied with residents idly watching every passing car, pedestrian and bicyclist.

The balconies are trimmed with wrought iron, now probably an amalgamation of Portuguese, French, Italian and other European styles imported with succeeding waves of immigrants since the late 1800s.

In the midst of snapping photos, I chat up a woman strolling down the street and am treated to a short history. A huge influx of Portuguese flooded here in the 1920s, many from the Azores. Many have moved to other neighborhoods, she says, but the number of Azorean and Portuguese flags waving from balconies here and storefronts up and down nearby St. Laurent Boulevard are as plentiful as jimmies on an ice cream cone. Too hard to count and too many not to notice.

The passerby who used to work for the city appears happy to play the role of information minister to inquisitive foreigners from New England. She tells us that Montreal had a referendum in around 2003 regarding how city was to be politically organized, that now there are 16 different cities in Montreal and 19 boroughs within them, that some cities are small neighborhoods and that all the cities voted to share police, fire, transportation, and the metro system.

Throughout the trip, people we meet take an interest in telling us about their neighborhood, or block, or store. It’s amazing how a little inquisitiveness gets us to know people here. The urge to help foreigners seems to be universal. I remember meeting visitors around Boston and feeling good about being an unofficial ambassador by reeling off as much information as I thought they could handle.

If you wonder about the immigrant influence in Montreal, the Boulevard St. Laurent from Boulevard St. Joseph down to Rue Roy is the place for you. If flags and language are any barometer, the Portuguese still have a two-fisted grip here.

Grocery stores, specialty shops, small restaurants all have the flavor of Azores or Portugal. But alongside these is an astonishing array or Tibetan, Moroccan, Turkish, Italian, Indian or Spanish owned restaurants (including vegan), markets, shops, cafes, bakeries,  and furniture stores, selling food, or clothing, gifts, rugs, pottery. Walk into any of them, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and you’re transported across oceans to an exotic culture.

Head down Avenue Duluth, a chameleon little street between St. Laurent and St Denis, and you’ll stroll past funky cafes and shops, a few quirky stores with offbeat pottery and artistic gifts, and several restaurants, some with murals painted on their outside walls.  

You wouldn’t be surprised to see a limousine or a rack of old bicycles parked outside the Na Brasa Portuguese and Mediterranean Bar and Grill on Avenue Duluth or be seated, as we were, on a lovely patio next to a mom, dad and two teenagers, a pair of love birds, and other constellations of friends and families out for a dinner in a cool part of town.

The pitcher of Sangrias helps make the walk back to our hotel leisurely, if a bit crooked. We’ve just spent another day exploring Montreal - a foreign country, we remember as we’re greeted in French by the concierge at midnight.

All passersby are scrutinized...

from high or low...

flags fly everywhere...

and are emblazoned on storefronts...
 

and tiny parks appear everywhere...

 

this one dedicated to Portuguese immigrants...

 

who's stores are omnipresent in this neighborhood...

 

with increasing numbers of Middle Eastern and African influences becoming more numerous...

 

what's going on here?

 

Duluth Street has specialty stores and ubiquitous "despanneurs" (convenience stores)...

 

and restaurants and bars...

and if you're lucky, you can walk home from one of them after you conduct your business.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Mont-Royal Part 2: Cross and Vista

Friday, July 15, 2010
Park du Mont-Royal

Onward.

A fifteen minute walk past joggers, Lance Armstrong wannabees, and frolicking families...

to the illumiated cross, the highest point in the city where Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, planted a wooden cross to ask the Virgin Mary to protect the colony...(an apparently successful petition)... 

then find the sign a  few minutes further up the gravel path that directs us down a set of steeply terraced steps to the road side lookout and vista...

Belevedere Camelien-Houde  with the same assortment of visitors...

who are just as likely to have descended from a tour bus...

as from one of the myriad hiking and biking trails that surround this 190 hectare preserve. Four million eight hundred thousand people visit the Parc du Mont Real every year. Minutes from the city, accessible by public transportation, it's a gem Montrealers love and are willing to preserve.

A handy guide to a park in which the government has invested over 30 million dollars in the past twenty years...

for the enjoyment of tourists or residents...

 

of this cosmopolitan city...

  with the Olympic Stadium to the left, and the Parc du Fontaine in the center...

 

and a fine place to spend a summer afternoon with a friend.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

The Mont-Royal of Montreal: Maison Smith and the Belvédère Kondiaronk

Friday, July 16, 2010

Mont-Royal, an ascent into a nature preserve, glorious views of Montreal, and a close up portrait of Montrealers and tourists who can't resist its siren call. There are 17 large scale parks in Montreal. This is the Queen.

Mont-Royal is a 767 foot topographical speed bump on the plains of Montreal Island. Next to lifting off in a hot air balloon, it’s the best place to get a grand view of the city, the St. Lawrence River and the plains beyond. Hop on the number 11 bus from Mont-Real metro station at the foot of the mountain, and for $2.75 you’re transported up of a beautifully maintained and well used part of the city.

The 470 acre park atop is loaded with hiking trails, biking trails, a gem of an open space park, a formidable stone chalet with a broad stone terrace that offers a panoramic view of the city below. Buzzing with the usual suspects of families, lovers, joggers, bikers, and the occasional tri-athlete on this late Friday morning, it must really hum during weekends.

The three main targets here are The Smith House, The Mount Royal Kondiaronk  Lookout and Chalet (named for the Huron chief who signed a major peace accord with the French regime in 1701), and the roadside lookout halfway up the mountain. 

The Smith House in the midst of the park features a small cafe, gift shop, and two rooms filled with displays describing the topography, history, including the establishment of the expansive 190 hectare grassy park land here dotted with stone sculptures, shade trees, grassy sloping hillsides and a man made lake at bottom ofgrassy knoll at far end of the park. 

Mont-Royal is truly the natural throne of the city that surrounds it. It is criss-crossed with hiking and biking trails.

The park was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in 1876. Olmsted designed Boston's famous "Emerald Necklace" and New York's Central Park

Sentiment for the Green Movement is nothing new here. Montreal residents were so horrified at an outbreak of mass tree cutting for firewood in the 1860s that they designated it as a parkland in 1876. Citizens love the foresty feel of the park and escape here every chance they get.

Beaver Lake was created in 1938 as part of a WPA type work project during Depression years. The pavilion at the far shore was built in 1958 and is popular with skaters and tobagganers in winter.

 

Wide gravel trails lead from Smith House to Belvédère Kondiaronk, a spectacular viewing spot overlooking the city. The chalet is to the left. Follow the path to the right for a breath-taking view of the city.

A huge stone terrace can accommodate everyone...

If you have only time for one stop at Mount Royal, This is IT. Once again, families, romantic idlers, tourists of every stripe with one thing in common, using zillions of pixels in their cameras and video cameras...

to try to capture the depth and sweep of the beauty below crowned by cumulous clouds above...

to write, daydream, and ponder...

 

and mark the event for posterity...

 or use as a great spot for posing with your boyfriend.

Jacques Cartier would be impressed with the park ..

and startled at what his discovery looks like now.

The chalet ...

is a stately, caverous marble and polished granite edifice the size of a football field and an information desk the size of a phone booth. Its grand interior is decorated with giant paintings tracing the history of Montreal. Next stops, the illuminated cross and roadside vista.

Photos, with exception of the chalet, by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Montreal Midnight Metro Triptych

Thursday, midnight, metro, montreal, july 15, 2010

Montreal Dining

Thursday night Montreal 7 PM...

in which two foot-weary tourists returning to Le Jardin d’Antoine after a day of walking through the huge Plateau neighborhood ask the young concierge to suggest a restaurant.

La Moulerie, she says, located in the Mile End neighborhood of Outremont, a distinctly French section of town and promptly makes a reservation for us. Hunger overtakes fatigue and dress code. We memorize the metro stops and are out the door.

La Moulerie turns out to be mussel heaven, in business for over twenty years. We get seated on the sidewalk patio, an ever so slight breeze ruffles the tablecloth on a warm, humid evening.
The menu, no surprise, features bowls of fresh mussels steamed in over a dozen kinds of broths. We order La Bouillabaisse and a bowl of mussels in cream sauce laced with cognac and green peppercorns from Madagascar.I would DRIVE here from Boston some night just for this dinner.
 
11 PM. On the walk back to the metro, we pass an ice cream store with a line out the door. The only sensible thing is to get in line. If we’re going to die from over eating, it may as well be with really good food. Flavors like maple taffy, passion fruit, chocolate-orange, and vanilla-raspberry fill the bins behind the glass counter.

This is the home of Bilboquet, the famous ‘artisan glacier,’ an ice cream and sorbet palace. We stagger to the metro at 11:30, hands sticky with chocolate-orange and passion fruit. There’s still a line out the door.

We’ve just consumed all the calories we burned off in twelve hours of today’s gallivanting around Montreal.And are quite happy about it.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Montreal: Pedaling Push Power

Montreal, Province of Quebec, Thursday, July 15, 2010

Amazing...this pedal-power to the people thing going on in Montreal.

Just across the street from La Maison des Cyclists on Rue Rachel, I see this fabulous bike rental system in action.

A fellow walks up to the black metal BIXI station next to a rack of bikes at the edge of Parc du Fontaine, swipes a plastic card, pulls a bike the computerized system has just unlocked from a rack of about twenty bikes, and heads for another part of town. Maybe he’s going on a date. Maybe he’s going to his favorite café. His carbon imprint is the amount of carbon dioxide he exhales en route.

The bikes are one-design, sturdy, and appear brand new. They’re created for short trips and can be returned at any other of dozens of similar bike stands in the city. They cost a pittance to use (first 30 minutes included when you sign up, then 31-60 minutes $1.50). You can rent by the year, the month, or the day.

You might sleep at night but this system never does - it works 24/7. You can get a BIXI key by mail. You can manage your BIXI account online.

Mon Dieu! This is so simple.

A few minutes later, I watch a mom and two kids swipe their cards and zoom -  well, in one case, wobble - down the long paths that navigate through Parc du Fontaine.

The bike lanes down streets like Rue Brebeuf are  so wide they’d make a Boston cyclist swoon. Whether they run through leafy neighborhoods like Rue Brebeuf or across town on main thoroughfares. two things are apparent about cycling on the streets of Montreal.

First, motorists accept the concept of sharing the road with cyclists. The bike lanes are well marked. Second, cyclists generally accede to the same traffic laws as motorists and are not the kamikaze types I often see in Boston. Order prevails.

According to Voyagez Futé, a downtown transportation management center created to improve Montreal business employees’ transportation habits, there are 400 BIXI stations with 5000 rental bikes in the city. The biking season runs from May to November.

After that, everyone back to the Metro.

Locally, my little town has a lively debate going on whether to reconfigure Mount Auburn Street, the main thoroughfare between Watertown Square and Harvard Square in Cambridge, from four lanes to two, and installing bike lanes on each side. Perhaps sending a delegation to Montreal would help resisters see that it can be done safely. It might also light a fire under some entrepreneur looking to bring the BIXI concept across the border.

 

Historical perspective - your tax dollars at work.

 

Easy to read maps at every BIXI station.

Pull out credit card or your BIXI card, unlock a bike, and hit the road.

 

Return your BIXI bike at any of 400 stations around the city - this one at corner of Boulevard St. Laurent and Rue Prince Arthur.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Montreal: "The Plateau" neighborhood

Montreal, Thursday,  July 15, 2010

The city island of Montrealis a bewildering patchwork of 19 boroughs and 16 municipalities. The boroughs are divided into neighborhoods. The best strategy for the first time visitor is to locate neighborhoods that sound interesting and either metro or hoof it to ground zero and go from there.

It’s amazing how much fun you can have orienting yourself on a first visit to a new city. Three requisites:

1 - have a good map in your clutches
2 - carry a small tour guide book that explains the nitty gritty
3 - display a total lack of self-consciousness as you stand on a busy street corner turning your map this way and that while peering at street signs and adjusting the map so it matches the way you’re facing.

“Well,” we speculate in a moment of temporary disorientation, “if Jacques Cartier could manage to get around with only a compass, we can do it with these tourist guides.”

When all else fails, there’s always a nearby café.

Our first day of exploring zeroes in on the neighborhood of “ The Plateau,” not to be confused with the larger area of “The Plateau Mont-Royal.” Starting at the Mont-Royal metro stop, we head east on Avenue Mont-Royal to connect with a bike route through the heart of the neighborhood.

Avenue Mont-Royal is loaded with casual bistros, small convenience stores, and entertainment spots that will liven up after dark. Like much of the rest of the city, it’s not showy, but has the glow of self-assurance that emulates the rest of the city’s personality.

Personality is certainly a bonus when we stop for lunch at Au Pain Perdu, a small eaterie we spot just off Avenue Mont-Royal. The charming owner has been in business 16 years and fills the tiny space with smiles and comfort food - in my case, a huge Croque Monsieur sandwich that dwarfs the only other one I’ve eaten in Paris. The neighborhoods are loaded with places like this.

The best thing about exploring a city is that you never know what to expect. Three items on today’s wow list: how a metropolitan city of just shy of 2 million people can design bicycle friendly routes through the city AND have a public bike system that is universally embraced (short follow up photo essay to follow); lovely public parks, both sprawling and petite; architectural differences from street to street. 

The Plateau is totally downscale. No high rises, just a glorious conglomeration of architectural styles, nothing more than a few stories high. The Plateau was formed in the 1860s from a patchwork of villages built when villagers migrated to the city to work in tanneries, quarries, and other industries. They built row houses, narrow, deep units side by side and by the early 1900s had filled the area to capacity, leaving space for public parks.

 

The Ministry of Culture building opposite Mont-Royal metro station

 

The information center where a fellow hands us a map and suggests we follow the bike route through 'The Plateau'... great idea!

To save space in these row houses on Rue Brebeuf  that date from the late 1800s, working class owners with large families, built staircases between floors on the outside of the building to conserve floor space. The practice was later outlawed.

Wide, safe bike route lanes like this one on Rue Brebeuf and on larger roads throughout Montreal, make cycling a viable and  highly utilized aspect of city life.

 

Family owned enterprises are part of neighborhood culture.

La Maison Des Cyclists, across the street from Montreal's sprawling Parc du Fontaine, is a popular stop.

 

Parc du Fontaine features lush lawns, two ponds, playing fields, wading pools, picnic areas, and an open air theater. Since most of the row houses in the neighborhood have no space for lawn or garden, this place is an expansive and restorative getaway for them and a destination for residents around the city.

 

BYO hammock...

 

A theater summer school camp for kids in a building at the edge of Parc du Fontaine - children are dropped off at 7AM and picked up by their parents at 4 PM.

With guidance from teachers, children write a play, create scenery and stage a play every two weeks.

 

Future actresses compare notes

 

The reflecting pool at Parc du Fontaine

 

Quiet neighborhoods like this are just blocks away from busy main thoroughfares...

 

and feature small stores

filled with fresh produce and staples for local shoppers.

Rue Prince Arthur is a popular destination between Boulevard St. Laurent and St. Louis Square...

and will liven up considerably...

as evening approaches.

Wrought iron balconies, like these just of Rue Prince Arthur, are a nearly universal feature of neighborhood architecture.

And wall murals are becoming more popular.

There are more than 650 public parks in Montreal that range in size from Parc du Fontaine to the size of a tennis court. The Carré St. Louis (St. Louis Square), on the southern edge of The Plateau, is one of the loveliest...

surrounded by grand Victorian mansions.

 A kiosk selling ice cream, coffee, croissants - all the necessities to accompany a leisurely hour - is a few steps from Rue Prince Arthur...

and has a concession selling fruits and veggies just pulled from the soil...

and  an uusual collection of visitors...
 

and is a grand place to relax while reading the news.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. 

A Summer Evening Introduction to Montreal

Montreal, PQ
Wednesday evening, July 14, 2010

“This is like being in another country,” I say to my travel companion.

Hellooo? What spurs the geographically impaired comment is not the architecture around me, a mix of residential and urban high-rise, or neighborhoods with the faint architectural imprint of farmers from the Canadian countryside who migrated here in the late 1800s and immigrants who to find a home here today.

Hey. In our first walk down Rue St. Denis, cveryone we overhear is speaking French. Or English with a French accent. We’ve just arrived in Montreal, Province of Quebec.

I guess showing my passport at the Canadian border about 60 miles south of here didn’t make an international impression on me. And when planning to come up here for a few days, Canada seemed so, well, American.

They spoke English, didn’t they. And their currency is called the “dollar” - these days just about par in value with our George Washingtons. So, a foreign country? Nahhh. Probably just like Boston but with ending their sentences with, “Ehhhh,” like in Saturday Night Live skits.

Mais, non, monsieur. According to the 2006 census, the language most spoken at home in Montreal is French at 52.4% followed by English at 12.5%. After Paris, Montreal is the next largest primarily French speaking city in the world. The city's charter proclaims French as the official language of the city. Before long, I'm chirping along with decent enough French to make Miss Curtain, my high school French teacher, proud.

Le Jardin d'Antoine, our hotel smack in the middle of the Quartier Latin, is on Rue St. Denis just around the corner from Rue Sherbrook. St. Denis, is one of Montreal’s magnets for sidewalk cafes, bars, restaurants, and clubs. It’s 85 degrees F at 7 pm. Every Canadian is in search of a sidewalk café or restaurant patio en plein aire. We’re joining the crowd.

We pile our luggage in our room and head straight down St Denis amongst a swirl of francophones. If we keep our conversation down to sotto voce levels, no one will know we’re tourists from south of the border.

The fact that I stop every ten meters to take a photograph blows our cover but I do my best Gallic shrug. Who cares? After passing scores of cafes, and being invited into a July 14 Bastille Day party by a lovely young woman dressed in red, white, and blue, we arrive in the the “Old Port” section ("Vieux Montreal") that slopes down to the piers on the St Lawrence River.

You're never far from a metro station or a church steeple in Montreal.

 

Festivals are a regular part of metropolitan life here. Nuits d'Afrique is held in July.

 

Chapelle Notre Dame de Bon Secours in "Vieux Montreal", a few blocks from Place Jacques Cartier and the piers on the St. Lawrence River. Built over ruins of an earlier chapel in 1771, the chapel's history parallels the tangled influences of French and English interests that competed for power since the 1600s. The bronze statue of Mary holding watch over the chapel's entrance has  blessed passing ships since 1893.

 

Toute Montreal - families, couples, tourists, vagabonds of all ages and nationalities are promenading around the Place Jacques Cartier after sundown. The whole area is a hive of boutiques, cafes, restaurants, and art galleries.

Musicians and artists know a good thing when they see it - dozens of portrait artists and street musicians set up shop during the evening.

An outdoor patio at Café Marée at the corner of Rue St Paul serves as our own viewing stand, an excellent perch for people-watching and relaxing with a glass of wine. An enthusiastic crowd surrounds the men playing charango ( mandolin) and zampana (pan pipe made from bamboo) and other instruments playing traditional in Andes music.

 

For the next three days, we sample Montreal on foot and via their efficient metro system. This is a good taste of what's  to come.

Photos - Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

On The Road To Montreal

On the road from Boston to Montreal, Province of Quebec
July 14, 2010

Once across the border from Vermont to Quebec, an abrupt change in topography. It’s as if some divine national boundary plan is in effect, The Maker having said “I’m pooped from jamming all these tectonic plates together in New England, I’m taking a nap.”

The next thing you know the mountain ranges that form the spine of Vermont morph into prairie and you’re driving through flatlands, surrounded by cornfields, silos, and homesteads as far as the eye can see. 

Soon the roads merge with the interstate highway system. About 50 miles later you’re speeding across the Pont Champlain Bridge,  the wide blue St. Lawrence River below and the skyline of Montreal’s business district ahead and the profile of stubby Mount Royal (Parc du Mont-Royal) behind it.

Take a right from Rue University and onto Rue Sherbrook and the business district (above) and ...

five minutes later,  hang a right down Rue St. Denis to your hotel in the Quartier Latin. A jam packed four day visit to Montreal is in the works.

 

 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

49th Annual Westport Quaker Used Book Fair: Big Bang for your Buck

This story was published in the September 2 edition of Westport Shorelines. It contains photos not printed in the Shorelines story.

49th Annual Westport Quaker Friends Meeting Used Book Fair
938 Main Road, Westport, MA
July 10, 2010

At precisely 11 AM on July 10, a shrill whistle blast is followed by a loud whoop, then near silence. Dr. Stuart Kirkaldy has kicked off the 49th Annual Westport Friends Used Book Fair. For the next forty five minutes, all you can hear under two giant yellow and white striped tents is the sound of hundreds of pairs of feet shuffling through the gravel on the ground and hushed whispers of the searchers.
 
Those colorful tents, erected in early July, are a huge bookmark to anyone driving past the Friends Meeting House on 938 Main Road. The book fair is always held on second Saturday of July. Every reading enthusiast, from serious commercial collectors to recreational readers in need of a page-turner for the beach, has the date scrawled in their calendars.
 
This crowd is on a mission. Their eyes are locked in on titles on the spines of the thousands of used books laid out on ancient wooden tables. Some have lists clutched in their hands. Others, veteran readers with prodigious memories for titles and authors, are ready to reach and pluck. Some have computer gizmos that can scan the ISBN number and come up with some esoteric information that might identify the book as a good eBay prospect.
 
It is almost comical to watch bargain hunters with a stack of paperbacks under one arm try to read the first few pages of a book of interest with the other free hand. Others fill cloth sacks, paper bags, or cartons to store their booky booty.
 
 The types of shoppers are as varied as the books on the table. Seniors, teenagers, boomers, beach bums, nine to fivers on vacation, and little kids hanging on to an adult’s sleeve for dear life so they don’t get swallowed up by the rummaging book beast slowly grazing its way along the tables with single minded purpose.
 
For the Quaker Community that operates the book fair, this qualifies as a successful trifecta: a cash infusion to support the Meeting’s annual operating expenses, a chance to do good works by supporting charitable causes, and a way to brand themselves.
 
Meeting member Kevin Lee tapes a big sign on Greg Marsello’s T-shirt that reads: “Question? Ask a Quaker!” 

“It’s part of our outreach program this year. Lots of people don’t know who we are or what our religion is. We printed bookmarks explaining a brief history of the Friends Meeting, worship times, directions to the Meeting House, and our web address,” Mr. Lee says.
 
Greg Marsello of Tiverton is the Steering Committee Clerk and oversees committees that are part of the scheme. He manages the tent committees, finance committees, hospitality committees, and sorting committees. By this morning, just about everyone in the small but robust Quaker community has been involved in the fair.

“Last year we sorted over 20,000 books over a period of eleven months. Every book we took in was sold or dispersed. We shipped the books that remained overseas or to places we knew that could use them or to a paper recycler. We start fresh every year,” Mr. Lee says.
 
For some book lovers the fair is the answer to The Dollar Store. While most books are priced individually, there are categories of six-for- a-dollar books and categories of more pricey hard cover first editions.
 
 Book dealers are not involved in the pricing and sorting process and cannot get into the tent before that famous whistle blast at 11 AM. Since books have been known to be delivered by the pickup truck load, you never know what treasures will be unearthed. In the early years of the fair, a first edition of “Moby Dick” was found on one of the tables.

“What makes this work is their committee system. And they work very hard,” longtime Westport observer Jon Alden says.
 
Today, they’re having fun. The money is rolling in, the books are being carted out, and someone has asked a Quaker a question.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

The waiting game

Waiting for the whistle

 

Show time

A keeper?

   

Dr.Stuart Kirkaldy, bookfair originator in 1962 and now retired, returns yearly to take in the action...and blow the opening whistle at 11:00 AM sharp

 

Got a question...?

 

Taking inventory
 

Why wait? Let's start reading now...

Feasting on books and food from the concession

What a haul! 

 Whewww. First wave of consumers has left, next wave, primarily from the beach, will pick up the slack at around 3 pm.

Gulf Spill Dispersants: Cure Worse Than Cause

The link was sent to me by a reader in response to my  post New Orleans In June: The Spill Closing In On New Orleans

in addition to being posted as a response on my post above, I am highlighting this disturbing link by posting it on a page of its own. http://www.truth-out.org/bad-air-barataria61296

New Orleans in June: The Spill Closing In On New Orleans

Shuttle ride to Louis Armstrong Airport, New Orleans, LA
Friday morning, June 25, 2010

As of last week, The Spill is on everyone’s minds but not everyone’s lips. That video of oil and gas billowing unchecked from a broken well drilled into hell under the Gulf of Mexico is a nightmare in the raw. It’s like watching the satellite shot of Katrina dwarfing the Gulf of Mexico in August 2005, except The Spill has been going on for 80 days (65 days on the day of the conversation below) with no end in sight. 

The ongoing assault to the Gulf by the Deepwater Horizon well was on the airport shuttle driver’s mind when he drove me and three others to the Louis Armstrong Airport in the Kenner suburb of New Orleans last Friday. The volume of people flowing in and out of New Orleans is normally slow in June, July, and August. He’s worried because it is even slimmer than usual.
 
“P&J’s Oyster House shut down last week,” he said with a trace of incredulity. “The place has been running on Toulouse Street for 134 years. It shut down because its oyster beds are fouled.”
 
Mind you, this is a place the driver normally touts with enthusiasm and local pride as a major food attraction in the city. Not today. His tone of voice is of a man bearing the news of a death. His remark touches off the first conversation I've overheard about the spill during my visit.

“Lots of restaurants are improvising using mussels instead of oysters,” he says and wonders how long they can keep that up.

“My father in law, retired military, has crab pots in Chesapeake Bay, he’s worried that oil may come all the way east to the Bay,” says a passenger.

“I live in Jefferson Parish. When I go to my local sports bar, all the oil and refinery workers who drink there, they’re worried," the driver says.
 

The conversation drifts toward the consequences of catastrophic events. “People around Tampa have disaster amnesia, we haven’t had a serious hurricane in 80 years,” the passenger says. "It's a problem. They  have no sense of urgency about making plans for a hurricane that  will inevitably come. There's no plan here, either."

The driver pipes up. “My cousin works for a New Orleans bus tour company. Summer is usually bad, slow except for music festivals like the Essence Festival in July. Now most of her work is from driving spill relief workers to the coast at 3 AM, and coming back at 7 PM.  If the weather is bad, she just waits it out, they sit on the bus until it clears or they just head back here."

The man from Tampa again.“There are lots of negative health effects down there with respiratory problems, skin rashes, and heat stroke.  The workers are compensated but I don’t think the risk is worth the compensation. I worry about depression for these people who are third and fourth generation fishermen. There have been suicides here - a way of life might be disappearing.”

“How do you know this stuff,” I ask.
 
“I’m the Manager of Metropolitan Medical Response Team in Tampa," he says.

“To add to the problem, burning the oil in the Gulf increases the temperature of the water which increases the risk of hurricanes. And we have no idea what the effect of the berms and dispersants and burning oil will have in the future. And I worry about the grandchildren of all those people on the coast,” he adds.

“Sometimes I lie awake worrying about my job that depends mostly on tourists and restaurants,” the driver says.

Watching oil and gas gush unabated from the ocean floor has to be the worst living nightmare that millions of people in these Gulf States have ever experienced. The economic, cultural, and environmental effects of this are incalculable.
 
The impact of The Spill will test the heart and soul of every state the waters of the Gulf of Mexico touch. It will test the heart and soul of every voter and politician in the country.  Everyone knows that oil is a finite product. Most agree that it has something to do with climate change. Everyone from the president on down talks about breaking “our dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil.”
 
Everyone also knows that its production creates jobs for millions of men and women, including tens of thousands in Louisiana who, like BP CEO Tony Hayward, want their lives back. How does that happen if we all go back to business as usual?

What, I ask, is the plan to curtail oil exploration and create new energy sources and supply chains to put these people to work in a re-oriented economy. Who, I ask, will convince them it is in their best interests to look to the future, not the past, for solutions.

If we don’t use this disaster right now, while it’s still grisly, to jumpstart a change in our national behavior, we'll succumb to a national case of oil spill disaster amnesia. It will do us in. It’s just a question of when.

Photo courtesy NYTimes

 

New Orleans In June: A Cold One At The Old Point Bar

Algiers, that's where I want to go right this afternoon, says I, as I finish a late morning "Mae's Omelet" at Mother's Restaurant on Poydras Street. Algiers...the exotic name alone was good enough reason take the short ferry ride across the Mississippi to see what was on the other side. 

Little did I know my ultimate destination would be thanks to three English tourists whose questioning of the first tour guide booth attendant was taking more time than it took to forge The Treaty of Ghent.

Old Point Bar
545 Patterson Drive
Algiers Point
New Orleans, LA 70114-1060
(504) 364-0950
 
Thursday, June 24, 2010
 
“Good afternoon, sir, Can you tell me how to get to the ferry to Algiers?”
 
So it goes that a question to a man in a tour booth on North Peters Street leads me to a bar in Algiers Point across the Mississippi that I’d never have found on my own in a million years. Just another way New Orleans has of taking you by the hand and leading you to a treasure of a place filled with people who’ll make you feel right at home.
 
A few women from England are busy asking questions of a guide at the first tiny tour booth I stop at. I walk down to the next one a few hundred yards down the street. Simple as that, the die is cast.
 
“I can tell you where the ferry leaves from quarter after and quarter before the hour. And I can tell you a good place to go when you get to the other side,” the man says, and before you know it he whips out a map and starts drawing on it.
 
“You can take a right and go to the fancy part of town, pay five or six bucks for a beer if you want, but I’ll tell you where to go for a friendly place with a good cold beer for three bucks. I head there myself every afternoon after I leave here. When you get off the ferry, go left, walk down five blocks along the levee to the Old Point Bar. Patti’s the bartender. She’ll treat you right.”
 
The words have come from Roger’s mouth but this is New Orleans talking to a pilgrim searching for a piece of its soul. You don’t pass up a chance like this.
 
The big ferry plies the waters back and forth from the east bank to the west bank all day long. It’s a free ride. This afternoon, laborers, whole families, New Orleaneans who feel like losing an hour or two in Algiers, and tourists file onto the ferry for the fifteen minute ride.
 
Most of them head for the air-conditioned enclosed space in the ferry's aft cabin. I step out to the bow. This is as much of a breeze as I’ll feel on this 92-degree afternoon. The skyline of New Orleans recedes, the non-descript Algiers Point emerges. Cars and passengers debark.  I take a left.

Ten minutes later, drops of perspiration are trailing down my temples and soaking my shirt as I spot the Old Point sign on Patterson Street. One step inside and I know Roger told me right.
 
Long on well-worn wood paneling and short on chrome and glass, this is my kind of place. Air conditioning hums, just cool enough to satisfy. Ceiling fans whir overhead.
 
The Old Point Bar is an unassuming watering hole with a laid back atmosphere, quiet except for world cup soccer on the two plasma TVs. The unpretentious retro interior with brown and white tile floor, tables and chairs that echo the 1950s, and memorabilia pinned on the wall above a small bandstand in the back corner tells me this place has a history. No attitude here except friendly.
 
A blonde haired woman chatting with a few patrons she’s serving from behind the bar comes to greet me.
 
“You must be Patti. Roger who works at one of the tour booths across the river told me that if I came down here from the ferry terminal I’d get cold beer at a good price served by the friendliest bartender in Algiers.”
 
Patti lights up with a warm smile.
 
“Where you from?” she asks. Down here, people ask me this question all the time. It’s not a formality. Once they find out, they figure out a way to connect some dots and pretty soon you’ve made a new acquaintance or two.
 
 “My friend Tina is from Boston. She paints floats at Blaine Kern Mardi Gras World on the other side of the river. Tell her I sent you if you visit there,” she says. Tina came down to New Orleans from Boston 12 years ago and put her art school talent to work in one of the biggest fun houses in the world.

Rigs that haul the kinds of floats Tina works on are huge enough to pull the isle of Capri down Canal Street. Tina may secretly root for the New England Patriots but her heart now belongs to the Crescent City.

This city has a way of seeping into your blood stream. You visit. You return to your hometown. You daydream about the places you visited and how you felt when you explored the city, ate the exotic food, talked to the people.

Next thing you know, you’re on a plane for another visit. That can have long-term consequences. Tina is a prime example. New Orleans is her new hometown.

Who needs a guide book when you visit New Orleans?  Talk to people like Patti and Roger and they’ll connect you to people in places under and over the tour book radar.

Algiers Point has a good handful of historic, cultural, and architectural attractions. The Old Point Bar is a great place to plot your tour.

Next time I visit New Orleans, I’m heading for Mardi Gras World, a place where the imagination takes flight and lands in Mardi Gras parades every February.

I suppose that’s how New Orleans works on you, too. One minute it’s dancing around in your imagination, the next thing you know, you’re having a cold Bud Light with Patti in the Old Point Bar in Algiers. 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

New Orleans in June: Mother's Still Serving Up Comfort Food

Mother’s Restaurant
401 Poydras Street at the corner of Tchoupitoulas Street
New Orleans, LA 70130
Thursday, June 24, 2010


No place I’ve ever visited has New Orleans' knack for creating terrific eating experiences in such ordinary surroundings. The photos and memorabilia scattered around the entryway and the signs proclaiming the daily specials are familiar sights to the regulars and a nostalgic hint of yesteryear to a first time visitor like me.
 
Eateries like Johnny’s Po Boys, Liuzza’s, and Mother’s are the anti-franchises of the restaurant world, places that have a mojo all their own and know enough not to mess with it. There are scores of places like these three all over this city.
 
Part of the draw of a place like Mother’s Restaurant is its plain, unfussy interior. But there’s nothing ordinary about the place when there’s a line out the door and the action behind the serving counter is crackling with the same intensity as the bacon and sausage on the grill.
 
The veteran staff of women stands behind the chest high order counter as if it were a bunker between them and us, shouting orders, bantering, occasionally one or two of them exploding into a high pitched yelp of a laugh. It’s not all peace and love back there. There’s a pecking order we can’t see but can certainly feel.
 
“Somebody else gonna do that, not gonna be me,” a woman says to no one in particular when the going gets thick. The tempests blow over like one of the bursts of rain that will pour and stop within a matter of minutes later in the afternoon.
 
New Orleaneans are highly tuned into food. They find a place that serves good gumbo or po boys, or knows how to fry up a good dish of shrimp or oysters, or cook up a tasty etouffée, or pile meat and gravy into a sandwich that will require you to wipe yourself up from hands to elbows once you’ve finished, or any of ten ways to cook up eggs, grits and biscuits - they will keep coming to that place until it burns down, closes, or starts to coast on its reputation.
 
That lapse would be the most mortal of sins. The chefs and line cooks at places like Mother’s don’t know the meaning of the verb "coast".
 
Mother’s Restaurant on Poydras Street in the Central Business District hasn’t messed with its décor for decades. Except for updating the kitchen, the place is essentially the same as when Simon and Mary (Mother) Landry opened it in 1938. A short walk from offices in the Central Business District near Canal Street and the piers on the riverfront, Mother’s clientele in those early years ranged from longshoremen to attorneys.
 
Nothing essential changed after the Amato family bought it from the Landry family in 1986 . One of the distinguishing aspects of Mother’s is that the men who work in the kitchen and the women behind the order counter and in the kitchen have worked here for years. Many of the best places in town have staff that stay for the duration.
 
“Give food receipt to bus person. Your food will be brought to you at your table,” reads the sign at the beginning of the long order counter. Lucky me, I find a small table after I’ve paid for breakfast at the cash register that anchors the line. Five minutes later, a young lady arrives with a  “Mae’s Omelet” filled with black ham, green onions, and mushrooms.
 
The taste of clove lingers in the bits of caramelized ham flecked in the omelet, the green onions release little pows of chivey onion when you chew them, and the mushrooms hold all the tastes together in a fluffy oblong of Louisiana breakfast with hot biscuits and a generous helping of smooth creamy grits with hint of butter. In ten minutes, my plate is empty and I've stored enough calories to last me well into the afternoon.
 
A large fairly generic dining room is around the corner, but I’ve found a table within a few feet of the order counter from which I can survey the action. The line is filled with local businessmen and women, tourists, carpenters, contractors of all ages and races. So New Orleans.
 
The places I frequent at home have predominantly white customers, whether for music or dining. Maybe that says something about me, maybe it’s about Boston, but the jambalaya mix of customers in New Orleans’s bars and restaurants is just business as usual.
 
At about 11:45 when I leave, about 50 people are in a line that snakes out the door. High tide at Mother's.
 
“Menu is on the right make a line near the wall and order when you get to the counter,” the man sitting at the tiny desk at the door repeats every minute or so.

“It’s like this everyday,” he says to me as I leave.

No wonder.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

New Orleans In June: Doreen Ketchens Captures Royal Street

 
Wandering through the French Quarter
Wednesday morning, June 23, 2010

Well now, where’s that music coming from? I turn the corner in the French Quarter and there’s the answer.

A stout woman wielding an ancient clarinet has just set up shop on the on the quiet corner of St Peter Street and Royal and has begun her late morning gig in the streets of New Orleans.

Before she starts playing, there’s hardly a soul in the vicinity but within fifteen minutes there’s a crowd of foot-tapping, photo-snapping people. This is your standard New Orleans street scene. It’s 11 AM. Wherever I was going, I’m going to be late. 

A man in his forties is playing a sousaphone behind her, a pre-adolescent girl shyly squirms on a beach chair beside her. Don’t let the fact the three are sitting on rickety portable chairs fool you. This is concert hall quality music
 
A few minutes after I’ve taken photos, people are applauding and pitching folding money into one of three large white plastic pails labeled $$. When the lady puts down the clarinet and begins to croon “When You’re Smilin’,” she punctutates a couple of the refrains with the throaty growl that was a trademark Louis Armstrong, born a few miles away from this very corner.
 
Before I know it, I’m doing tiny east coast swing steps in the street and no one gives it a blink. Mainly because they’re all swaying to the beat themselves.
 
The beauty of this is that there are other little pockets of miraculously uplifting music erupting in Jackson Square, on Decatur Street, and on other street corners in the French Quarter. It takes about an hour before my feet stop keeping time to the music as I walk down the street.
 
When I return to my hotel later and google “Doreen, New Orleans,” my jaw drops when I come up with Doreen Ketchens.

Doreen Ketchens has performed at Lincoln Center and festivals in three continents. This is everyday New Orleans in the French Quarter where I’m listening to sweet, soulful music that makes me want to cry with joy and hold a woman in my arms and dance in the street at the same time.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.