Topic: On the Road in America

Not just your everyday marketplace…

By Christine Anne Piesyk | August 28, 2008 |

On the Road in America is an occasional column of chance, of seredipity, written in the course of my travels.

A buttery light tart filled with tomatoes, cheese and herbs. A light golden crepe folded around a filling of melted bittersweet chocolate and fresh homemade raspberry preserves. Crusty warm olive bread inviting buyers to break off a chunk and just eat. Jar upon jar of freshly made preserves (think strawberry, blueberry, red raspberry…). This is not your typical farmer’s market.

Every Friday afternoon in a field on a country road in Hardwick, Vermont, vendors arrive to set up their tents and tables for the afternoon’s sales. By 3 p.m., cars have filled the parking lot and spilled onto both sides of the road. This market more closely resembles a country fair.

The Hardwick Farmer’s Market, featuring local produce, products and services, has plenty to offer every taste. vendors market whatever fresh vegetables are ready for harvest : snap peas, lettuce, early corn, cucumbers, and tomatoes are just a few items to be found here (keep in mid that gardens are started much later and are subject to freeze much earlier this far in the Northeast). «Read the rest of this article»

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A new twist on fruit salad: a bouquet of the best of summer’s bounty

By Christine Anne Piesyk | July 14, 2008 |

On the Road in America is an occasional column born of occasional travel. Every trip is a new experience or a meeting with other friends. This is a look into one small facet of my current journey.

A country wedding. Low key, informal. Good friends and neighbors invited. Held at home with sprawling lawns edged with Green Mountain forest and a wonderful view.

Though my friend Robin has known the bride, Nettie, for a lifetime, I met Nettie as a undergraduate at Goddard College in the 1990s. She’s the kind of woman whose beauty is not just external but radiates from within; her spirit is radiant, warm, loving. The kind of person everyone should have for a friend. We all wanted her wedding to be special.

So, even as we faced the challenge and choices of what to bring to this pot luck country wedding, Robin spotted a TV ad for a bouquet of fresh fruits. Clever. Cute. Little sculpted flowers and such.

“We can do that,” Robin said.

“Of course we can,” I echoed. «Read the rest of this article»

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Rubber-stamped travel: Corporate cloning of America’s landscape

By Christine Anne Piesyk | June 26, 2008 |

On the Road in America is an occasional and serendipitous column about people, places and observations, with publishing predicated on the random availability of internet access or lack thereof.

Being On the Road in America can sometimes be a bore.

Oh, there’s a great deal of beauty to be seen, from the Green Mountains of Vermont to the rolling farmlands across Ohio, from the rugged Rockies and the dramatic coastline of California’s 17-mile drive. That’s not the issue.

As implied in Josh Neuman’s Lemmings (right) ,what is troubling is the growing lack of identity, of uniqueness, of individuality, as one moves from state to state. North, south, east or west makes not a whit of difference. Commerce in America is cloning itself at breakneck pace, mass-producing blueprints for hotels, motels, box stores, shopping malls and restaurants that increasingly lack a sense of their own identity and certainly have no ties to community heritage or culture.

I’m on the road again, as Willie Nelson would sing, and I am heading for one of the few bastions of non-traditional development — via the central midwest to the rural northeast, home of green mountains, clothing optional backwoods beaches, interstate bike paths, and those perpetual golden arches relegated to the outermost borders of some cities. «Read the rest of this article»

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Travel: Was the full moon making mischief?

By Christine Anne Piesyk | June 24, 2008 |

On the Road in America is an occasional and serendipitous column about people, places and observations, with publishing predicated on the random availability of internet access or lack thereof.

As I prepare to board the bus for my semi-annual sojourn north, ready to be “On the Road in America,” I am thinking of all the roadblocks thrust before me as I was pulling the jigsaw pieces of my itinerary puzzle together. Starting with the travel plans…

To begin with, there is no easy way to get where I am going from Tennessee. Take Amtrak and you have to navigate to Indianapolis first. Flying means not only getting to Nashville but landing in Hartford, navigating to a bus terminal and — taking the bus for hours and hours more. Or tripling the airfare to land in Burlington and — get to the bus station or train station and take a train. I’ve since resolved to take the scenic routes by Greyhound, which has, until this trip, been both flawless and economical. And scenic.

To begin with, I’ve been enjoying the 14-day advance purchase for my tickets for years. Apparently that particular and very appealing price option was discontinued on June 3. Okay. I was not happy about that, since I subscribe to Greyhound Rewards and never got a notice about this change. Neither did it show up on June 17 when I cruised their website double-checking prices and schedules. So I opted to buy a discounted 7-day advance purchase ticket. Yeah, right. Since buying online tickets involves surcharges that add up, I went to the Clarksville Greyhound Terminal, as I always do, to buy my ticket. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Arts and Leisure, Business, Opinion | No Comments