Topic: Travel

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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Hope Cemetery: Life and death celebrated in a garden of granite

By Christine Anne Piesyk | August 22, 2008 |

While On the Road in America, I continually look for unique and interesting places and people. In Barre, Vermont, I found just such a special place, a landscape irrevocably linked in life and death to the people of this community whose work is art in its highest form.

The pensive Spence monument is intriguing as the only one not immaculately tended.

Ten years ago friends introduced me to Hope Cemetery, first in a quick drive-by on the way to somewhere else, and later, for a “quick” tour that became a lengthy monument-by-monument tour. For these monuments are like no others. They honor the dead, but are of themselves museum quality works of art and imagination that attract a flurry of annual visitors from all over the world. The granite monuments, carved from Barre’s own Rock of Ages Quarry, rank as the best granite craftsmanship in the world. Most people do not realize that many of the monuments across our country are crafted from Barre (and other Vermont) granite.

I walked the peaceful, quiet grounds, awestruck by the ingenuity of many of the stones, and by the willingness of the creators to step beyond the traditional “names and dates of life and death” inscription and create memorials that capture the essence of individual in the form of a hobby, a career, a love, a memory…

To say that the images unfolding here are breathtaking is an understatement. I was walking through an open air museum of the finest art. «Read the rest of this article»

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Chicago Impressions: The city of broad shoulders beckons!

By Turner McCullough Jr. | July 25, 2008 |

Business trip unveils an American big city and a wondrous experience!

An unexpected business trip resulted in this writer traveling to the famed ‘City of Broad Shoulders!’ Chicago was our destination and The Sears Tower, our business epicenter. Chicago truly is ‘An American Big City.’ Make no mistake, the city center is absolutely impressive with skyscrapers aplenty, social amenities, commercial ventures and a swift hustle and bustle everywhere. The people of Chicago are as diverse their city’s business environs.

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The legacy of Yves Saint Laurent

By Christine Anne Piesyk | July 12, 2008 |

When I read of the death of legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent at the age of 71, I felt a generation of masterful design slipping away. He was among the last on a list of greats that include Coco Chanel, Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, Nina Ricci, Valentino, Oscar de la Renta, Balenciaga and Christian Dior.

That hallowed group spearheaded an era of glamour evidenced in romantic and elegant couture, offered unparalleled, unequaled garments that now grace fashion institutes and museums. [At left, First Tuxedo: 1966 Fall/Winter Collection No 76, Nap and satin silk jacket and trousers, madarin Tuxedo shirt. Tie, Cumberbund and satin silk ankle boots, metal cufflinks with fancy pearls. Foundation Pierre Berge -- Yves Saint Laurent, Photo Foundation Foundation Pierre Berge -- Yves Saint Laurent]

The creations of these master craftsmen of fashion were emulated, a source of inspiration to ensuing generations of fashion designers. They were trendsetters too, shaping fashion to match the shape-shifting of global cultures. Nowhere was that more evident than in Saint Laurent’s transformation of the pantsuit for the world of working women. His adaptation and softening of the suits men wear to fit the emerging world of women in business was groundbreaking, changing the face of fashion in the workplace.

Actress Katherine Hepburn years earlier broke through boundaries with her confident stylish wearing of women’s trousers in the 30s, but it wasn’t until Yves Saint Laurent introduce pantsuits for the professional women in the 70s that the change took hold. «Read the rest of this article»

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The Artist’s Voice: An exhibition featuring artists with disabilities

July 2, 2008 |

The Artist’s Voice: An Exhibition Featuring Tennessee Artists With Disabilities is on display in the Conte Community Arts Gallery at Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts. The juried exhibition presents more than 50 paintings, prints, sculptures, digital art and documentary film created by 54 Tennessee artists, who each live with a disability. Admission is free for this exhibition, which will continue through Sept. 14.

The artists and their works were selected by a juried panel from more than 400 submissions. The works featured in the exhibition have an expressive force and sense of beauty that transcend any limitations that might be imposed by their makers’ disabilities. The artists’ personal circumstances often inform their art, as well as their chosen media. Some of the works explore an artist’s daily struggles of living with a disability; others convey a positive outlook, rich with vitality and raw energy that is often achieved through the use of bright, bold color. Intertwining themes of strength, resilience, fragility, contentment and endurance can be seen throughout this exhibition. Though each work stands on its own artistic merit, the individual stories of their creators make the art even more engaging and awe inspiring. «Read the rest of this article»

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Of pens, peonies and summer rain…

By Christine Anne Piesyk | June 29, 2008 |

‘On the Road in America’ is an occasional column of meanderings and musings, written during my semi-annual sojourn north.

After the first bursts of near tropical heat in Clarksville, the cooling summer rain in Vermont is a gift to cherish. It began last night, after a day of haze and clouds. It ushered in coolness somewhere around sunset, and by nightfall I could hear the raindrops lightly kissing the brick sidewalks, dripping lightly from the eaves. No blustering wind, no storms. Just that gentle rain.

This morning I walked by a bank of peonies, damp and brightened by that rain, slightly bent by the weight of water. The temptation to pick a few stems was strong.

We are a large group this semester at Goddard College, writers all of poetry, prose, fiction and non, memoir, plays and screenplays, even graphic novels. Unlike other residencies here, this one — by its very nature as an MFA writing program — requires a certain amount of solitude in and around such activities as workshops, advisor sessions, seminars, and sometimes heated discussions abut things like style, form, voice, perspective, language… Students meet, interact and retreat for the solitary task that is composition. «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»

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‘Tiffany by Design’ celebrates artistry, craftmanship of Louis Comfort Tiffany

By Christine Anne Piesyk | June 19, 2008 |

Daytrips and Weekenders. As the summer months and the vacation/travel season approaches, we offer you, our readers, ideas for day trips and weekend excursions to places and events that can be done in a day, or maxed out over a weekend. Time and the high cost of gas fuel our efforts to find local or regional entertainment and activities. This column will appear each Thursday through Labor Day.

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts’ exhibition “Tiffany by Design” , which opened in May, continues to attract crowds interested in the art and artistry of Louis Comfort Tiffany. The exhibition features Upper-Level Galleries. This exhibition, which showcases 40 beautifully crafted Tiffany glass lamps, celebrates the craftsmanship of the colorful leaded glass lamps produced by Tiffany Studios between 1900 and 1918. Tiffany by Design will continue through Aug. 24, 2008. «Read the rest of this article»

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Pss-s-st! “Sullivan’s!” In Charleston! Pass it on!!

By Turner McCullough Jr. | June 13, 2008 |

Recently I had occasion to travel to Charleston, South Carolina. Going home has always been a special thing for me. Going out to the Atlantic Ocean is my favorite seaside pastime. On this trip a good friend took us to a islanders’ favorite hangout which I can now boast is well worth the trip, all on its own.

Author Turner McCullough Jr. outside Sullivans

Sullivan’s Island is home to Fort Moultrie, one of the fortifications which fired on Fort Sumter in the Charleston harbor, thus initiating the Civil War. The island is a small stretch of land with it’s own lighthouse, historic sea captain homes, fortifications and bunkers of Fort Moultrie, but it enjoys a lively commercial district of eateries, guest houses and taverns. Most of these places open for the evening meal during the week and brunch on Sundays. The best of these is “Sullivan’s,” a seafood paradise at 2019 Middle Street, a family friendly dinning place that has been around for over two decades. «Read the rest of this article»

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