The House on Bar Point

The house where Kate and I are staying is on a spit of land called “Doctor’s Point” by the locals. My stepmother, Risa Benson, bought the land in in the late sixties, and various family members have contributed to the construction of the house. My brother Sam Benson, he of the Unimogs and TIG welders, did the lion’s share of the framing carpentry, under the direction of local carpenters Alf and Jack Bellows. Sam and his friends Mica, Christian, and Hahn, lived in tents the summer of 1990, subsisting on vats of peanut butter, loaves of bread baked by Alf’s wife Alma Bellows, and large amounts of Screech, the local Newfie rum. My sister Bridget and her husband Tony Dattillo came up for their honeymoon after a week at the Shelter Institute in Maine, and together they built the deck in front of the house. Later, Sam and I paneled most of the interior of the house with twisty juniper tongue-and-groove boards.

This is the third honeymoon in the house, counting Bridget and Tony’s and my father and Risa’s. We’re not digging ditches this trip, though — we’re more sticking to hiking, Yoga on CD, and eating out^*. My construction activities are limited to building panoramas. The image below is a panorama that I created from disposable camera pictures (taken a few years ago). The house is green now, not tan, and there’s some more deck on the side of the house, but you get the idea! You can click anywhere inside the image and drag to look around.

^*Note: we are emphatically not making cappuccinos with an at-home cappuccino machine, nor are we sampling the local wines. However, I am using a thera-band when I do the Yoga on CD. Which means my coolness factor has plummeted to previously unplumbed depths. If you want a nice antidote, go read Alejandro’s website. Though, now that I think of it, he told me about taking a naked Yoga class in Manhattan. Oh well, I bet he got away with it.