We went to visit the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Association in Oak Bluffs, a charming collection of tightly-packed, brightly colored houses with abundant gingerbread built over 150 years ago around a Methodist Camp Meeting Tabernacle. It is clearly a more secular place now, but our church camp experiences (plus sending two sons to Asbury, a Wesleyan college) allowed us to discuss for an hour as we walked around what it must have been like for families to go there year after year, from the time when it was camp meeting through the "generally religious" years on into the "community involved" focus now.
One can only live in these houses a few months a year. Because of their age, I estimated that craftsmen of all types could make a good living on Martha's Vineyard keeping up with the repairs. The museum was not yet open and the Tabernacle is being refurbished. As it is open, one can get some sense of it. Interesting to see and think about once, I think. I feel no call to go back to get the full experience when everything is open and everyone is there, but I'm not sorry I went the once.
We also went to the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History. Tracy got two new birds for her life list, because environments where one thing meets another, such as salt and fresh water, are prime locations for diversity. We found that I prefer to walk right along and look off into the landscape to see an environment, while she keeps becoming fascinated by smaller-scale items like wildflowers. Fifty years later, we still haven't quite worked this out. But this mostly-outdoor museum in Brewster has both, so we were able to make it work. Even I can get interested in the birds when they are out on the shore and in open salt marshes, and even she can put up with walks with bad footing in order to get to a beach where she can look down and see new shells.
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