The Final Dispatch

September 30, 2025

Amherst Shore, Nova Scotia

Peanut butter.

That’s the best I could come up with. I missed American peanut butter.

I was really trying. Giving it my best. Looking for the silver lining for having to return to the United States after traveling for nine weeks in Canada.

All I could come up with was that I was disappointed with the peanut butter I found in Canada, as I’m disappointed with peanut butter whenever I travel anywhere outside the United States. Why can’t I ever find peanut butter that wasn’t the consistency of baby poop?

I had packed five jars of Skippy Chunky No Sugar Added for the trip, but ran out about halfway through. JSYK, it’s an excellent source of protein and a fulfilling snack when spread on a Granny Smith apple.

I mean, come on: My country may be going down the tubes but damnit, it can still make decent peanut butter.

Though I guess that’s kind of like saying, Look on the bright side, at least Mussolini got the trains running on time.

NS 366

The FDR Bridge connecting Canada and the United States at Campobello Island, New Brunswick and Lubec, Maine, as seen from Cranberry Point

The day before we crossed over and began sneaking down Rte. 1, that country bumpkin of a roadway with towns like Camden and Rockport desperately trying to hold the line on stiff-neck New England standards, the kinds of which are now only seen on the likes of old Katharine Hepburn movies and reruns of the Gilmore Girls, I sat at Cranberry Point on Campobello Island looking across that neck of Passamaquoddy Bay that separates the two countries.

They don’t call it Cranberry Point for nothing.

It was so close, yet so far away. Geo-political borders, invisible yet so powerful. Show me your silly little booklet and pass on through.

Border agents at neither crossing stamped our passports, but instead made notations on a computer. Taking note. Adding to our files, I’m guessing.

Two completely different countries. It wasn’t always like that.

My friend, Bruno, who lived in Toronto for a spell, says that when you’re in Canada you keep thinking you’re in the United States, but then suddenly something happens that reminds you that you’re in another country.

Yeah, that’s crazy true when it happens. Like when someone with a completely flat accent asks you if you have change for a toonie.

What? Change for a what? Don’t you speak Canadian?

Our last night after supper we took a walk through the woods to take one last look at the Northumberland Strait…

…and later watched the stars come out on Herring Cove Beach. The fisherfolk there still use weirs. The herring were running and the nets were stretched and seals were actively hunting on the incoming tide.

And so the next day we crossed the bridge into the United States, and upon arriving in Boston, the shock of white knuckling along the two narrow twisting high-speed lanes of Rte. 1, squeezing onto the Tobin Bridge before merging onto the Zakim Bridge then diving down into the I-93 tunnel to cross five lanes of roaring insane video game traffic in order to position myself to be spit out on the other end into the maddening stop and go traffic on the Southeast Expressway to Quincy made me forget that eight hours ago while I was rolling up our tent for the last time I looked up to see a bald eagle stretching its wings overhead.

I admit I exaggerated a bit though, about the peanut butter. I’ve lived in and around Boston for forty-five years. Whether I want to admit it or not, it’s where I call home. But I do have a definite love/hate relationship with the city.

That city can wear on you. Sue always looks on the bright side, but even she refers to Boston as Angrytown because everyone there is always yelling at you. The light turns green and before you can pop the clutch some guy behind you in a BMW is leaning on his horn pretending he’s so important when he’s probably only on his way to get a haircut or meet some guy named Bobby or Tommy or Mikey in a bar where they’ll drink martinis made with fruit and leer at women. Or you turn on your blinker to change lanes and they speed up rather than even consider letting you in. People there don’t talk; instead they condescendingly wait for you to finish speaking to begin poking holes into whatever it was you were just saying. It’s because of all of the colleges there, he said, and the people that go to them. Everyone thinks they’re so damn smart but the bell curve does exist. It would never occur to them that there is no way they all can be that smart, that there has to be a few dummies in the bunch. But no one was willing to admit to being the dummy. It’s like being in the middle of one giant barroom brawl, but instead of everyone fighting over who has the biggest dick, they beat each other up to prove who has the biggest brain. But the result is the same. And then you go into a CVS and the clerk behind the register acts like it’s your fault they have to work their shitty job and you just want to scream, Hey, my life is no better than yours and all I want is this Charleston Chew and bottle of Advil so why don’t you just fuck off? —The Road Into Beartown

It wasn’t just peanut butter I missed. I have a life here. I did miss my friends, my pals at Atlantic Works Gallery, the Thomas Crane Library, the crew at the YMCA. I missed my work in the studio.

My studio and its condition upon returning from Canada. This is what it pretty much looks like anyway.

As much as I like the simplicity of waking up every morning in a tent, people who are so damn friendly at first it’s unnerving, the quiet and the drop dead scenery, I knew I couldn’t live there full time. Eventually I’d turn mean. I’d miss culture. Of running into old friends like Agnes Martin, Suzanne Valadon, Glenn Ligon, Joan Mitchell, and the conversations we’d have through their work.

You know what? They’re all so happy and friendly because they’re content. And I’m not. And maybe I don’t want to be. Content. Ever. Because something tells me that the day I’m content is the day I’ll die. And I’m not ready for that just yet.

A length of marine rope I found on a beach in Newfoundland. Now what can I do with this, I wondered, even though I already knew it was something I had been looking for. You can do a lot of thinking when you’re tucked into a sleeping bag late at night.

A few days after being home I had to venture into the city to pick up some art supplies at Blick in Fenway. (I had called that morning to see if they had what I needed. The people who work at Blick are usually friendly and helpful, free with advice, but after this particular person checked and confirmed the supplies I needed were in stock, she pointedly suggested next time I should email my request in instead of calling when they were so busy.

Gee, I’m sorry you have to do your job.

I thanked her, but what I should have said was, I have done that in the past, except every time I have you’ve never replied to the email so I have to call anyway. Yeah, I was back in Boston, all right.)

The scattering of young people on the Wollaston platform wearing Red Sox jerseys told me there was a game that night, and I was heading into Fenway, the eye of the storm. When I ride the subway alone, I always bring a book, and since I live pretty far down the line I usually get a seat. I barely looked up, and the closer we got into the center of Boston, as the train filled, I just kept my nose in my book.

But here’s the thing. Here’s where living in Boston can just captivate you.

With the train rolling into Park Street, I marked my place with my bookmark and closed my book. I don’t know when she had boarded, but at some point I noticed a young woman sitting next to me who also had been reading. Curious, I looked over at the cover of her book and caught her sneaking a look at the cover of my book, and realizing what was going on, she gave the most delightful laugh. Two readers the old fashioned way sharing a moment. I would have bet we were the only two people on the entire train who held books in their hands.

That right there is the good part of living in Boston. Sometime just moments, human moments, but those moments are worth putting up with all the shit.

Upstairs in Park Street Station was controlled pandemonium. Red Sox games mean people taking the subway who normally don’t ride it but this time it’s for their walk on the wild side. It’s all fun and games, a ride in DisneyWorld for them, compared to the people who have to rely on that rickety old rattletrap of a subway everyday for work.

They take the subway, which they haven’t a clue how it works or which train goes where.

But a Sox game is different. A chance to rub elbows with the hoi poloi. Show how democratic they all are.

Fenway is the great equalizer.

At least it used to be.

By the time I got off at Kenmore, oversized Blick shopping bag conspicuously rolled up under my arm, I was being swept along by the tide of baseball fans.

Who are these people? I kept wondering.

Days gone by, I might have stopped what I was doing and bought a ticket off someone getting rid of a few on the street. I’m showing my age, but when I moved to Boston you could score a bleacher seat for around five dollars. Now the cheapest seats start at around fifty, and I learned later that the Sox that night were positioned to get into the playoffs, so the scalpers would have been having a field day.

Also, I made the same sort of observation I make most times I’m in Boston. It’s, “not a lot of brothers go…” and then I fill in the blank, as in, Not a lot of brothers go to Red Sox games.

I grew up seeing burnt crosses along the highway and Confederate flags painted on barn roofs, and Boston continues to be the most racist place I’ve lived. Just saying.

As actor Juan Carlos once said, Bunch of whities. Then, turning to me, he added, No offense.

None taken.

It’s time to get to work. Immerse myself in my work like I do with a book on the subway. It takes my attention off everything that annoys me to death, and as you can tell, there’s a lot that does. It seems to me it’s the logical response to this insane world we’re living in. How can you not be outraged, I ask?

An empty easel is as daunting as an empty page. The only response I’ve ever found is jump in with both feet, make a mess, and sort things out later.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned to see what I’m building. I’m just as curious to see what turns out as you may be.

And, after reading, could you hit the like button? Much appreciated.