Mr Peck visits the Homeland again

Dwight Peck's personal website

Winter 2002-2003

Very eventful, but in a quiet way

As round the world some of them were trying in vain to convince the rest of us that it would be a fun idea to go bomb a lot of the folks down in Iraq, D. Peck and friends spent the fall and winter hiding out in the safest place they could think of. But then . . .

Mr Peck visited the Homeland again

It's April, the end of the winter 2002-3 season and raining in Switzerland, and Mr Peck dashes off for a quick trip to the land he never thought he'd see again.

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

The 11th meeting of the Scientific and Technical Review Panel (STRP) having been concluded in something like containable chaos, after 18 months of successive meeting preparations with few chances for a holiday -- Mr. Peck bolted off to the USA for ten days to visit Kristin and look in on Prof. Berman and dash on down to see Marlowe again.

Here's Kristin's house in Boston, April 2003, enough to give anyone ideas above his or her station in life. Actually it's just a very nice flat in this disused and renovated church -- in the Boston area, religious institutions continue to serve a purpose.

People wandering by and stopping in to make confessions can supply an endless source of amusement.

Perhaps a trend

Here's another: fine old basilica in Québec City, that bastion of the faith and centrepiece of the pope's dreams of reconquest, viewed with For Sale signs all over it in August 2000.

Kristin, musing upon the view of Logan Airport in the distance, from our traditional walking place "World's End", a Frederick Law Olmsted park near Hull. Plenty of time in Boston to visit the MFA a few times and schmooze over drinks with media friends with similar political views to our own.

But enough of Boston.

Now for a dash down to New York City, to visit our friend Katy in her flat on Times Square, multiple visits to the Met and the Frick museums, and a pleasant evening at the off-Broadway show about Hank Williams.

But enough of New York City.

Now off for a visit to Marlowe Peck and her mom Jane near Philadelphia -- here's Marlowe's house, "revolutionary"-era by the looks of it.

Kristin and the Old Dad pay their respects to Young Marlowe (center) along the Delaware River near New Hope, Pennsylvania, right near where the disabled people park their cars.

And then back by the scenic route up the Delaware and over the Catskills to Kristin's church, with its very nice interiors, all nicely laid out with art and artefacts and odds and ends and piles of old newspapers in the corners.



Modern churches from the inside. Not bad at all. The art work costs extra.

Goodbye, USA! Back to Rummy's "Old Europe", too late for the last of the snow in the lower mountains, time to get the bicycles serviced and try if they can still bear our weight without buckling.

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