Author: bbpeck

The Pecks have split up — for a little over a week while Bob heads to Iowa City, Iowa, to care for Murphy while our nephew and niece have a summer holiday. Bob, ever the resourceful traveler, researched the travel options to Boston’s Logan airport and found that our housesit is very close to two commuter rail stops.

He picked the Needham Heights station, from which the train departs at five past the hour and would take him all the way (about 40 minutes on the train) to Boston’s South Station, from which he could catch a bus that would take him another 15 minutes to the airport.

I saw him off at 1:05 pm, and he is currently at the airport awaiting a late afternoon flight.

Zeus and I will be holding down the fort in Needham. After Bob left, I walked past the Olin College of Engineering across the street from the house to Babson College, a top school for business and best college for entrepreneurship.

One of my main reasons for exploring the campus a bit was because of a large globe that Bob had seen on one of his walks with Zeus. The globe is located behind a statue of Roger Babson, for whom the college is named.

I have included photos of two of the markers, but some highlights from the school’s history include:

The college started as the Babson Institute in 1919 with 27 students focusing on practical business training. The college ceased normal operations during WWII and became a US Navy Supply Corps School, training more than 2,000 reserve officers. The class of 1948 was the first to receive a BS degree in business administration and study liberal arts as well. The first MBA degrees were awarded in 1953. In the 1960s, the school became coed and was renamed Babson College. In the 1970s the college started the first Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. The school has had 4 national championships in Division III sports — 3 in soccer and 1 in ice hockey.

Needham is a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, and has a population of about 32,000. It was officially incorporated in 1711. It is named after the town of Needham Market in Suffolk, England, which we’ve also visited!

Bob and I are exploring the area a bit before he leaves on Thursday to fly to Iowa to care for our nephew’s dog for about 9 days while our nephew and his wife are on vacation.

Yesterday, after a run, Zeus’ morning walk, and a grocery fill-up at Trader Joe’s, Bob and I walked 1.4 miles to the Needham Free Public Library. On the way, we passed an impressive athletic complex near Rosemary Lake.

Today, we walked about 40 minutes down Great Plain Avenue, which the house we are caring for is right off of, to explore the small town center of Needham.

Bob and I drove about 3.5 hours from Hyde Park, NY, to Needham, MA, yesterday. We started the drive with a quick stop at the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site for a couple of quick photos. The property was acquired in 1895 by Frederick Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. While there was a house on the property when he purchased the 153 acres, it proved structurally unsound, so he had the house built that remains on the property today.

On the way into Needham, we did a walkthrough by phone with our homeowner, so we were able to cover some questions that weren’t addressed in the Welcome Guide while allowing her time to get her young daughter to her activities and pack for their trip. We met the homeowner and daughter (husband and two sons already in California) this morning for final instructions before they headed out.

We walked Zeus across the street on the campus of Olin College of Engineering. To our surprise, they were hosting a bike race today. We went before most of the riders returned.

After Bob and I finished our visit to the FDR Library and Museum, we headed into Poughkeepsie to walk on the Walkway over the Hudson. This parallels the Mid-Hudson Bridge that we drove over to get into Poughkeepsie and then onto Hyde Park. The Walkway over the Hudson, formerly the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, is the world’s longest elevated pedestrian bridge. It is a steel cantilever bridge spanning the Hudson River between Poughkeepsie, NY, on the east bank and Highland, NY, on the west. The bridge is 212’ above the Hudson River, and is 1.3 miles long.

After the bridge,we picked up dinner from a local grocery store to take back to our room and then headed across the street to the Culinary Institute of America for our 2:30 tasting and tour. We have visited their two campuses in California, but this is the original and has trained many of the famous chefs in America— Anthony Bourdain, Amanda Siegfried, Geoffrey Zakarian, Cat Cora, Rocco DiSpirito, etc,

We actually started the 90 minute tour in a classroom, watching a couple of short videos about the history of the CIA and some of their alumni. Following that, we did a 20 minute tasting exercise to help us taste like a chef and understand just how much your sense of smell adds to the flavor of food as well as how salt, acid, spice, and sugar can add complexity or change the flavors of food.

Finally, we had our tour which took us to each of their different restaurants and some of the classrooms. No photos of students allowed.

Saturday we will head to Needham, Massachusetts, where we will begin our next housesit on Sunday.

Yesterday (Thursday), Bob and I drove the 7+ hours from Streetsboro, Ohio, to Hyde Park, New York. We drove the first 1 hour or so in rain and were a bit concerned the whole trip, as the skies were gray and there was a flood watch for the drive area into Friday morning. We lucked out and didn’t get more rain for the rest of our drive.

We checked into the Inn at Bellefield Hotel (actually a Marriott Residence Inn) right before the deluge started. We were worried about flooding, but we awoke today without our car having floated away, which allowed us to proceed with our plans.

While we were in Wisconsin, we had purchased tickets to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Library and Museum and a public tour of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), both of which are very close to our hotel. This blog covers our visit to the FDR Library and Museum. The visit to the CIA and a walk across the Hudson River is covered inthe next blog (Hudson Views and Tastes).

There was lots of information on his 4 presidential terms, with 3 different vice presidents. One interesting fact shown was the percentage with which FDR won every election.

In FDR’s first win, with John Nance Garner as the Vice Presidential candidate, he beat Herbert Hoover in 1932 with 57% of the vote and 472 electoral votes. They won all but 6 of the states.

FDR’s second election in 1936 was the biggest landslide in American history, winning 61% of the vote and 523 electoral votes. With John Nance Garner again as the Vice Presidential candidate, they won all but 2 states against Alf Landon.

FDR fought to bring American out of the Great Depression by putting Americans to work. That included the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), along with other programs, and even artists.

FDR won his unprecedented third term in 1940 with Henry Wallace as the Vice Presidential candidate against Wendell Willkie. It was a narrower victory with 55% of the vote and 449 electoral votes. Roosevelt had promised to keep the US out of WWII. Fortunately (to the extent we helped end the war), he didn’t keep that promise.

As we know, the 3rd term wasn’t his last, although Roosevelt died during his 4th term. FDR won his 1944 campaign with Harry Truman as the Vice Presidential candidate. They beat Thomas Dewey with 54% of the vote and 432 electoral votes. Sadly, FDR died on April 12, 1945, only months after his 4th inauguration at his presidential retreat in Georgia.

In 1947 after FDR’s death, Congress approved the 22nd amendment to the constitution which limits the number of times a person can be elected President of the United States to twice.

FDR was far from a perfect man. The museum made mention of his affairs and some policy misses while he was president, however, it was hard to not feel nostalgic for a president that cared so deeply for the good of America as a country over his own personal wealth or benefits from his actions.

Bob and I said our good-byes to my mom yesterday after a great belated birthday lunch for her from my aunt and her daughter.

On Sunday night, we had our first visit to a Wisconsin supper club when we had dinner at Frederick’s Supper Club in Milton, Wisconsin, with my godmother (and aunt) and her husband. In another life, the supper club was a different restaurant where Bob and I had our rehearsal dinner before our wedding 30+ years ago.

Today, Bob and I packed the car in the rain and left Janesville, to drive 7 hours (plus a loss of an hour) to Streetsboro, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cleveland. Our drive took us briefly through Wisconsin, since Janesville is so close to the border of Illinois, south and east of Chicago, before entering and driving across the width of Indiana, and then into Ohio, as far as the Cleveland area.

Tomorrow’s drive to Poughkeepsie, New York, seems like it will be rain-filled. We lucked out today and only had rain for the first 30 minutes and then briefly again at the end of our drive in Indiana.

There have been a number of visits with family while we’ve been in Janesville and even one family reunion. Most of the get-togethers have been with my family since they’re in Wisconsin, but we have seen some of Bob’s family as well. Sadly, we don’t always remember to take photos, but the following visits were photographically recorded.

My mom is the oldest of 13 children (12 still living), and I am the oldest grandchild — but only by a couple of months. Bob and I recently met up with my cousin who is closest in age to me for a celebration of both of our 60th birthdays.

On Friday, Bob and I drove 2.5 hours into Chicago to visit one of my aunts (my mom’s sister) and then see our nephew and his family.

We spent the night at Dee’s and then drove along Lake shore Avenue north to our nephew’s house. Some scenes from the drive.

Our nephew and his wife have a 2.5 year old son and a 1 month old daughter. The son had a baseball class that morning that we got to attend.

I had picked up a Janesville Public Art Trail brochure shortly after we arrived for this stay, and since it was a nice day and no other plans, Bob and I drove downtown to see some of the many public art pieces in the downtown area. We were happily surprised that some of them helped us learn more about the history of the town as well.

Bob, my mom, and I visited a local farm market on Saturday, as I read that their sweet corn season had begun. Woo Hoo! We do love sweet corn, along with watermelon, it seems to be the epitome of a Midwestern summer. While Bob and I were interested in the sweet corn and tomatoes, they also sell their own watermelon, cucumbers, green beans, zucchini, peaches, and blueberries, and get other produce delivered. Happily, they make some lovely baked goods with their fruit as well.

Bob and I are in the state of Wisconsin, and specifically the city of Janesville, for the month of July. We are trying to avoid the governmental news as it continues to depress us, and we are on the other end of the political spectrum from most of my family, who we are now living near.

One of the downsides of our peripatetic lifestyle is that it is sometimes hard for our relatives to find us, so Bob and I were just recently reunited with a Christmas gift from Bob’s brother when we drove to Des Moines for the day for doctors appointments.

In Wisconsin, we’ve also been able to visit with extended family, including attending my great cousin’s first birthday on the 4th of July.

We visited a farmer’s market today with my mom and next week we’ll be back in Des Moines for a couple of days for a medical procedure for Bob.

More slow news to come on a sporadic basis until we start housesitting again in August.