Art in three places honors the National Park Service on its centennial

"Cretaceous Egg,'' by Anne Alexander, in the New England Sculptors Association's show "Centennial Visions: 50 Artists in Three Parks,'' marking the National Park Service Association's centennial. The show will run at the Saint Gaudens National Historic Site, in Cornish, N.H., the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller site, in Woodstock, Vt., and the Springfield Armory, in Springfield, Mass., through Aug. 22.

Salinger's high country

 

Statues at the  wonderful Saint Gaudens National Historic Site, in Cornish, N.H., where J.D. Salinger lived for decades, though he remained in many ways a Manhattanite.

Herewith a charming look in The Boston Globe at J.D Salinger's Connecticut River Valley section of Vermont and New Hampshire. I have always found it one of the loveliest and most interesting parts of America.

He was a strong presence, albeit usually unseen, in the region. I think I saw him go into the stacks of Dartmouth's Baker Library once; he was wearing a raincoat. He was the male Greta Garbo of his time -- the more reclusive he got, the more famous. Intentional, in some way?  And yet he was a civic-minded resident when it came to local matters.

I took a class in Chinese history with his wife of the time -- the '60s --- Claire Douglas, at Dartmouth.  The young assistant professor seemed very smitten with this beautiful lady. Toward the end of the trimester, I was surprised that at a social gathering (at the professor's apartment) for the class, which only had about a dozen people, that the majority of the attendees (including the professor) supplemented their wine and beer with marijuana cigarettes. This was the high '60's indeed!

-- Robert Whitcomb