Seven Photos from an Epic Weekend

I am fortunate to have just had one of the most memorable and fun weekends of my life. Here are seven photos that sum up my adventures.

It was still dark when I left my apartment in Royersford, Pennsylvania at 5:00 on Friday morning. Being that early, I didn’t encounter too much traffic as I headed north toward Menands, New York, just outside Albany. I was going to visit Albany Rural Cemetery (See Fig. 1).

Visiting Albany was what some of my friends like to call a side quest, not my ultimate destination. But, as side quests go, Albany Rural Cemetery was crucial: it was my first “new” U.S. presidential gravesite in 14 years!

Back story: from approximately 1975 through 2011, I had visited the graves of 14 presidents, but I had been stuck for nearly a decade-and-a-half at #13 and #14 — John Tyler and James Monroe, both at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. I was pining to get to my 15th, and even though Albany wasn’t exactly on the straight and narrow path to Boston, it presented an opportunity, and I ran with it.

Albany Rural is a huge cemetery with much to see, but its main “celebrity” attraction is the gravesite of our 21st president, Chester Alan Arthur. Arthur attained the presidential office upon the death of James Garfield, due to an assassin’s bullet and subsequent medical incompetence. Arthur served out the rest of Garfield’s term, but was not nominated for a term of his own, and died in 1886, just a few years after leaving office.

Arthur’s monument is a bit over-the-top but it’s beautiful in a Victorian Era/Gilded Age kind of way. I took photos, meditated a bit on Arthur, then drove to the cemetery office to say hi to whoever was there. I think the staff liked my Chester Arthur t-shirt, obtained specifically for this trip.

After my office visit, I drove past Arthur’s grave once more. Pulling away, I noticed that a pick-up truck had pulled up to take my place. I resisted the temptation to return to find out who else was visiting Chester Alan Arthur on that cold afternoon in Menands, and headed out for the 30-minute drive to my next destination, Kinderhook, New York.

The village of Kinderhook, New York, was the birthplace of the eighth U.S. president, Martin Van Buren. Van Buren had served as vice president during Andrew Jackson’s second term, and served one term as president from 1837 to 1841.

Driving from Menands to Kinderhook was generally not a problem, though I made one wrong turn that landed me briefly in downtown Albany. Then, I followed my phone directions to Kinderhook Reformed Church, not initially realizing that the church’s cemetery was actually about a mile away.

I found the lonely cemetery quickly enough after realizing my mistake. It’s big enough but nothing like the enormous Albany Rural. I paid my respects to “the little magician” who served as the inspiration for the phrase “O.K.”, took a variety of selfies aimed at getting the right combination of me, my MVB t-shirt, and MVB’s obelisk (see Fig. 2).

Martin Van Buren’s home is open for tours, but not during the winter, so after a stop at local convenience store for hot tea — it was a cold afternoon! — I hit the road again, my #16 presidential gravesite side quest completed.

I should note that driving to the Albany/Kinderhook area and then through Massachusetts was a first for me. I had never been in those parts of either New York or Massachusetts.

I left Kinderhook sometime around 1:30 and at this point I was on a bit of a timetable, as I was headed to a hotel room in Woburn and, ultimately, to the House of Blues in Boston, where I’d be seeing Frank Black play his classic second solo album, Teenager of the Year, in its entirety, with the musicians who had played on the album (see Fig. 3).

I had known for a few months that Black was releasing a 30th anniversary reissue of Teenager of the Year, and touring behind it. This was appealing to me as Teenager is probably my favorite album of the 1990s, and would rank highly on my all-time album list.

It was only about three weeks ago, that I checked Black’s tour schedule and realized that he wasn’t playing anywhere that near Philadelphia. He’s got Pixies tours coming up in the spring, so it looks like the window will be closed on the Teenager shows after this.

It was then that it occurred to me that my friend Chris, who lives outside Boston, had expressed admiration for Teenager of the Year as well. I contacted Chris (more on him under Fig. 4) and we agreed that seeing Frank Black together seemed like a great idea.

We were right. Frank Black and his band were on fire at the House of Blues. Opening with a few songs from his first album, Black and company then roared through Teenager before winding down the proceedings with three additional songs from his solo debut.

It was a masterful performance. The band was great, recreating all the intricacies of Teenager, but with a crackling live performance energy that was infectious. Black was chattier than he typically is in his day job with Pixies, telling introductory stories about several of the 22 songs that comprise Teenager.

I am a little wary of shows that could be construed as nostalgia-fests because of their emphasis on older work, but Frank Black and his band blew all those concerns out of the water, connecting the past glory of Teenager of the Year with an electrifying live performance that brought the album firmly into the present. Chris and I loved it.

Speaking of Chris, here he is (see Fig. 4). Chris and I have known each other for several years, as we both write about music for the PopMatters website. Chris was already writing there when I started and, as we began reading each other’s articles, we began to sense a musical kinship. Eventually, we acknowledged this, and began collaborating on PopMatters stories on Warren Zevon, Bob Dylan, and Elvis Costello.

Writing together led to a friendship, but we had never met until late Friday afternoon when I drove to his place from my hotel. The moment we met, Chris and I immediately started talking music and were still having a rambling conversation when we emerged from the train near Fenway Park and the House of Blues.

We continued the conversation during dinner at the Bleacher Bar in Fenway. It’s too convoluted a story to get into here, but as we were talking about R.E.M. we discovered that we both attended their Oct. 9, 1995 show at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia.

This coincidence jumped out as a huge “Plate of Shrimp” moment to me, since the main reason I was at that Hampton show was because my friend Eric and I, meeting in Norfolk for business, had decided on a whim, while having a rambling conversation during dinner the night before, to go to the show.

And so it was that Chris and I, about to see Frank Black together, had already seen R.E.M. together, 30 years ago. We just didn’t know it.

This concert coincidence blows my mind and has joined other great "plate of shrimp" moments in my life.

Anyway, Chester A. Arthur and Martin Van Buren were fun, and Frank Black was fantastic, but meeting and hanging out with Chris was absolutely the highlight of my trip. He’s a cool guy and hopefully we’ve got further collaborations and visits in the future.

After a delicious breakfast at My Diner in Melrose (Chris’ recommendation) I headed toward Cambridge, to stop at Mount Auburn Cemetery and pay my respects. During nearly every tour I give at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, I mention that it was the second rural cemetery founded in the United States, with Mount Auburn being the first.

(“Rural” cemeteries were large cemeteries set in naturally beautiful areas just outside large cities. Laurel Hill was outside Philadelphia when it was founded in 1836. Mount Auburn preceded it by five years. )

It was cold and snowy when I stopped in at Mount Auburn’s office, but its staff was warm and friendly as we compared notes on our cemeteries. As it happened, there was a tour happening at 1:00, just an hour away, so, after checking in with Donna, I decided to extend my visit just a bit longer to take the tour.

I am glad I did. The tour guide, Robin, was informative and enthusiastic, two key attributes for the job. She started our large group in the chapel that serves as the main office, and then we took a spin around the area closest to the office.

As I said, it was freezing, so the tour may have been abbreviated, but it was exceptional nonetheless, with the highlight probably being the grand gravesite of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science.

Once the tour was done, I hit the road, with a playlist of albums that Chris and I had mentioned in our epic conversation serving as my soundtrack. It was a long ride home, but absolutely worth it for all the adventures I’ve just detailed.

But the weekend wasn’t over yet…

Arriving back home in Royersford on Saturday night, I got some sleep and woke up to a whole new trip on Sunday morning. Donna and I were having a date in New York City.

Donna and I had made plans to spend Feb. 2 in NYC before I knew the Boston trip was going to happen. We left mid-morning on Sunday, with our first stop being The Cloisters, the lovely medieval art and architecture museum that is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Located near the northernmost point of Manhattan, the Cloisters was a natural side quest, especially since I have been wanting to visit it on a Sunday morning. Our only other trip there had been on a Thursday.

While I am not an overtly religious person at this moment in my life, I do love the mostly-religious art that is on display at the Cloisters. During our visit, I found myself being drawn to several “virgin and child” statuettes (Fig. 6). All of them, hundreds of years old, are indescribably beautiful. I was entranced over and over again by the expressions of both the mothers and the infants.

In the midst of a fun but crazy weekend, a trip to The Cloisters was a serene respite.

We left The Cloisters and headed toward what we thought was going to be our next side quest: a cottage where Edgar Allan Poe lived, right in the middle of the Bronx. Everyone was out and about in the Bronx, which made for some crazy driving and more to see than I could possibly take in while driving.

We found the Poe cottage but we recognized that finding a spot to park would have been nearly impossible, so we moved on to our final destination. The Bartow-Pell Mansion in Pelham Bay Park, also in the Bronx. We were going to a Jane Austen Country Dance workshop at the historic mansion (Fig. 7).

Donna had learned about this workshop a month or so ago and thought it would be a fun reason to take a day trip to New York. She was correct!

We arrived early but had not eaten in a while, so a wacky misadventure ensued when we tried to grab a late lunch and wound up each eating a slice of pizza in the car as we headed back to the mansion, saving the rest of the thin crust slices for later.

We arrived back at the mansion just in time to join about 25 other participants as we attempted to learn one of those fancy dances that always break out at crucial moments in Jane Austen books and film adaptations.

Donna and I did our best to grasp the basic steps, and with time we might have been able to fake it decently, but the workshop was just an hour long. There is only so much one can do in an hour. But it was a fun event and we had a lot of laughs.

Soon after the workshop ended, we made our way back across the Bronx, over the George Washington Bridge and onto the New Jersey Turnpike toward home. We drove through some snowy weather along the way but made it home safely and finished the pizza we had bought in the Bronx.

It was the perfect way to end a weekend that I will always remember.