North of Boston

First stop, Salem. We’re told that Wicca is a common religious practice here, and that any resident you pass in the street might be a witch. Since they don’t dress in black and wear pointed hats, I couldn’t tell. And I should know, since I once interviewed Margaret Hamilton.

The Salem Witch Museum is a series of narrated dioramas explaining the Salem Witch Trials in the late 1600’s, which didn’t involve any real witches and was the source of the phrase “witch hunt.” Too bad for the dozen or so folks executed as witches before the silly girls who accused them said “just kidding.”

The legend of witches in New England grew out of midwifery. Midwives were apparently seen as a challenge to some of the religious leaders of the time, so rumors spread. The Museum also spends some of its exhibit space explaining Wicca, which is a naturalist type of belief system and doesn’t involve devil worship. Then again, the Museum may be run by people with an interest in dispelling the devil worship thing, but I’m just a skeptic.

We also visited Gloucester, MA for a  whale watch tour. Gloucester is a working fishing town which we have visited a couple of times before. The whale watch was pretty good, we saw several hump back whales fairly close to the boat. We’re a bit spoiled, however, because the first whale watch we went on out of Gloucester several years ago was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

On that trip the whales literally rubbed up against the boat, swam under the boat, and rolled on their sides right next to the boat so they could look at us. It was wonderful. I really think some enterprising whale was running human watching tours. But as I said, on this trip the whales were close but not that close.