World Largest Crustacean Means Summer in Worcester

(Click on Buster to make him bigger.)

( It's July again and once again I'm frantically writing toward a deadline on a magazine article,  so I'm running this post over again. It's a tribute to Worcester, MA ,which is still as quirky and full of surprises as ever, and to Buster, who is back once again, telling us to eat crab.)
We who live in (or near) Worcester MA, population 170,000, are fiercely loyal, even though big city papers like The New York Times tend to refer to Worcester as a “sleepy industrial backwater”.

Worcesterites fondly refer to their town as “Wormtown” and “The Paris of the Eighties”. The Worcester Historical Museum even sells a T-shirt (below) that makes fun of the way people always mispronounce the city’s name . (The correct pronunciation in the local accent is: ”Wusta.” If you call it “Wor-chester” everyone here will think you are wicked lame.)



With its rows of three-deckers and its mostly deserted brick factories, Worcester is like a time capsule that was sealed in the 1950s or ‘60’s. (It’s also a great place to shoot a movie—and several have been filmed here.) We have at the moment an airport with no scheduled commercial flights (well, I think there’s one to Florida), an auditorium,a courthouse and a vocational high school that stand empty (making great movie sets) and a central downtown discount fashion mall that has been deserted for years awaiting the wrecking ball.

Worcester has a quirky history full of rebels-- from Isaiah Thomas, who took his printing press and exited Boston ahead of the Tories (the Declaration of Independence was first read in public on our courthouse steps) to Abbie Hoffman who grew up in one of Worcester’s three-deckers (they were built for the families of the factory workers.)

We still have Coney Island Hotdogs with its famous neon sign, and the Boulevard Diner where Madonna ate spaghetti after a concert at the Centrum, Table Talk Pies and Sir Morgan’s Cove (now Lucky Dog, I think) where the Rolling Stones in 1981 gave an impromptu free concert. Worcester boasts seven colleges and universities including Holy Cross, WPI and Clark (where, in 1909 Freud gave his only American lectures.)

Luminaries who came from Worcester are a motley bunch including S. N. Berman, Emma Goldman, Stanley Kunitz, Elizabeth Bishop, Dennis Leary and Marcia Cross--the red-headed desperate housewife. Also the Coors twins, Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski.

Worcester is especially proud of its “famous firsts”, including barbed wire, shredded wheat, the monkey wrench, the first commercial Valentines, the birth control pill, the first perfect game in major league baseball and, most famous of all, the ubiquitous yellow Smiley Face icon.

In Worcester, the perennial sign of summer, as sure as the fireworks and concert in Christopher Colombo Park on the Fourth, is the arrival of the gigantic figure of Buster the Crab, lying on the roof and hanging over the Sole Proprietor Restaurant on Highland Street.

My husband and I ate there last week. There was a special menu of crab dishes, in addition to the regular Sole offerings. From the menu, I learned the following fascinating facts: This is Buster’s 17th year at the Sole Proprietor. Buster is the world’s largest inflatable crustacean. It takes 45,000 cubic feet of air to inflate him. He has a 75-foot claw spam. Buster could feed 200,000 people if he were real. That would require 35,116 pounds of butter and 45,447 lemons.

The crab dishes on the special menu ranged from fried tomato and crab Napoleon with smoky tomato dressing , Spyder Maki with soft-shelled crab, masago, cucumber and asparagus, to crab, mango and pickled cucumber cocktail and Crabmeat Casserole au gratin. I had crab and shrimp salad, which included avocado and tomatoes and sweet lemon herb vinaigrette. My husband had the soft-shelled crabs (sautéed, not fried). It was delicious. On the way out, I even wangled a copy of the Buster the Crab coloring book, usually meant only for kids. When we left, the wind was blowing and Buster’s giant claws waved good-bye.

The Wedding-- 10-10-10—Part 1—Bourbon for the Weather Gods

(Please click on the photos to make them bigger)

In Corfu, Greece, last Sunday, the day of my daughter’s wedding began with a threatening black cloud looming over the island, but two days earlier we had buried a bottle of bourbon upside down in the dirt at the Corfu Sailing Club— on the advice of my friend Kay from New Orleans, who promised that this would ward off bad weather. Predictions for 10-10-10, which I had been nervously monitoring for a month, ranged from “heavy rain” to “full sun”.

The biggest Greek newspaper, To Vima, called Eleni at the Corfu Palace for an article about people in Greece who were getting married on 10-10-10 for good luck. She told them that the Catholic priest (who was conducting Eleni and Emilio’s first wedding ceremony of two on that Sunday) said he was doing four "10-10-10" weddings—including a couple who wanted to get married at ten in the morning, but he had a liturgy at that hour.


By the time the hairdresser arrived to put Eleni’s hair in an up-do with a rhinestone clasp, the sky was a brilliant blue with only two tiny clouds. Female cousins and aunties arrived to sing the traditional wedding songs while Eleni finished dressing, helped by her sister Marina, who practiced bustling the wedding dress with its train of lace, and her cousin Frosso.


Shortly after three o’clock we watched from the lawn outside our garden room as Emilio, the groom, his mother, Carmen, and the two young flower girls, Maria Agustina and her sister Ana Isabel (both from Nicaragua) came out of the hotel, serenaded by musicians playing the violin, guitar and accordion, and flanked by singing troubadours in Corfiot native costume.

As soon as the carriage deposited the groom’s family at the nearby Catholic Duomo, it came back to collect the bride. The carriage (provided, like the musicians and troubadours, by Eleni’s Corfiote cousins), was decorated with flowers and tulle. On the back was the intertwined “E” logo that Marina designed for the occasion. (Those double “E”s were on everything from the invitations to the menus to the embroidered handkerchiefs filled with Jordan almonds and tied with ribbon and a silver sailboat to make the wedding favors.)

Eleni descended the hotel’s red staircase to enter the carriage, joined by her parents (Nick and me) and her honorary second mother—the “Big E”—Eleni Nikolaides. But first she posed on the stairs with some of her girlfriends.

The horse, named Danae, pulled the carriage up the harbor-view road to the central square and made a tour around, past the famous arcaded street of cafes, the Liston, as pedestrians applauded and Eleni waved, looking like Princess Grace of Monaco. The troubadours and costumed singers managed to keep up behind us, despite Danae’s eagerness to break into a trot.

The door of the Catholic Duomo was decorated with long persimmon-colored calla lilies that matched the smaller lilies in the bride’s bouquet. Emilio escorted his mother, Carmen, and Eleni entered on the arm of her father. Her friend Leslie began to sing the Ave Maria, bringing tears to many eyes. The service, which the priest celebrated in English, included readings from Eleni’s maid of honor, her cousin Areti Vraka, and Emilio’s best man, his uncle Jose Oyanguren.

When it was over, the newlyweds led a procession of their guests, walking from “Town Hall Square” through the Liston, past the Royal Palace and to the opposite side of the square where the little apricot-colored church of the Panayia Mandrakina sits below the Venetian fortress that dominates the harbor.



The procession arrived early for the 5:30 Greek Orthodox ceremony, so we posed for photos in the small park nearby and Eleni and Emilio joined in a Greek line dance of celebration.

Not everyone could fit into the tiny church with its beautiful Italianate icons, but most of the guests crowded in. There were no pews, so we stood close to the couple as they participated in the Orthodox wedding ceremony, which involved chanting (including a guest-star participation as cantor by former Minister Yianni Paleocrassas), the trading of the rings back and forth, sipping wine (which had been brought all the way from Cana in Israel by Areti, who was the koumbara—the sponsor of the wedding), and, finally, the switching of the wedding crowns, linked by a ribbon, three times, alternating between the bride and groom.

When the priest, holding the Bible, led the couple three times around the altar in the “Dance of Isaiah” the crowd erupted in cheers and a storm of tossed rice and flower petals. This set off so much excitement, especially among the children, that the priest had to calm the congregation before he could conclude the ceremony.

Outside the church the families formed a reception line. Then the bride followed another Greek tradition—throwing the decorated loaf of sweet bread—the bougatia—over her head to her unmarried female friends gathered behind her.

Her friend Catherine Mailloux, who had come all the way from Worceter, MA, caught it with blocking skills worthy of a fullback. Everyone cheered and the guests began to wend their way across the bridge over the moat and into the fortress where they would follow the “Double E” signs through the cobblestone streets and down the steps to the Corfu Sailing Club, nestled between the base of the fortress wall and the covey of small sailboats anchored in the sea. There, when family photos were finished and the twice-married couple arrived, the celebration of Eleni and Emilo’s Greek wedding would begin.

Next: Fires, food, fancy footwork and a launch onto the sea of matrimony.

World Largest Crustacean Means Summer in Worcester

(Click on Buster to make him bigger.)

( Okay--this blog post was posted last July but it's July again and Buster is on top of the Sole again and I'm frantic-- finishing a photo exhibit and planning a wedding-- so I'm running it over again. Worcester is still as quirky and full of surprises as last year.)

We who live in (or near) Worcester MA, population 170,000, are fiercely loyal, even though big city papers like The New York Times tend to refer to Worcester as a “sleepy industrial backwater”.

Worcesterites fondly refer to their town as “Wormtown” and “The Paris of the Eighties”. The Worcester Historical Museum even sells a T-shirt (below) that makes fun of the way people always mispronounce the city’s name . (The correct pronunciation in the local accent is: ”Wusta.” If you call it “Wor-chester” everyone here will think you are wicked lame.)



With its rows of three-deckers and its mostly deserted brick factories, Worcester is like a time capsule that was sealed in the 1950s or ‘60’s. (It’s also a great place to shoot a movie—and several have been filmed here.) We have at the moment an airport with no scheduled commercial flights (well, I think there’s one to Florida), an auditorium,a courthouse and a vocational high school that stand empty (making great movie sets) and a central downtown discount fashion mall that has been deserted for years awaiting the wrecking ball.

Worcester has a quirky history full of rebels-- from Isaiah Thomas, who took his printing press and exited Boston ahead of the Tories (the Declaration of Independence was first read in public on our courthouse steps) to Abbie Hoffman who grew up in one of Worcester’s three-deckers (they were built for the families of the factory workers.)

We still have Coney Island Hotdogs with its famous neon sign, and the Boulevard Diner where Madonna ate spaghetti after a concert at the Centrum, Table Talk Pies and Sir Morgan’s Cove (now Lucky Dog, I think) where the Rolling Stones in 1981 gave an impromptu free concert. Worcester boasts seven colleges and universities including Holy Cross, WPI and Clark (where, in 1909 Freud gave his only American lectures.)

Luminaries who came from Worcester are a motley bunch including S. N. Berman, Emma Goldman, Stanley Kunitz, Elizabeth Bishop, Dennis Leary and Marcia Cross--the red-headed desperate housewife. Also the Coors twins, Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski.

Worcester is especially proud of its “famous firsts”, including barbed wire, shredded wheat, the monkey wrench, the first commercial Valentines, the birth control pill, the first perfect game in major league baseball and, most famous of all, the ubiquitous yellow Smiley Face icon.

In Worcester, the perennial sign of summer, as sure as the fireworks and concert in Christopher Colombo Park on the Fourth, is the arrival of the gigantic figure of Buster the Crab, lying on the roof and hanging over the Sole Proprietor Restaurant on Highland Street.

My husband and I ate there last week. There was a special menu of crab dishes, in addition to the regular Sole offerings. From the menu, I learned the following fascinating facts: This is Buster’s 17th year at the Sole Proprietor. Buster is the world’s largest inflatable crustacean. It takes 45,000 cubic feet of air to inflate him. He has a 75-foot claw spam. Buster could feed 200,000 people if he were real. That would require 35,116 pounds of butter and 45,447 lemons.

The crab dishes on the special menu ranged from fried tomato and crab Napoleon with smoky tomato dressing , Spyder Maki with soft-shelled crab, masago, cucumber and asparagus, to crab, mango and pickled cucumber cocktail and Crabmeat Casserole au gratin. I had crab and shrimp salad, which included avocado and tomatoes and sweet lemon herb vinaigrette. My husband had the soft-shelled crabs (sautéed, not fried). It was delicious. On the way out, I even wangled a copy of the Buster the Crab coloring book, usually meant only for kids. When we left, the wind was blowing and Buster’s giant claws waved good-bye.

World Largest Crustacean Means Summer in Worcester

(Click on Buster to make him bigger.)


We who live in (or near) Worcester MA, population 170,000, are fiercely loyal, even though big city papers like The New York Times tend to refer to Worcester as a “sleepy industrial backwater”.

Worcesterites fondly refer to their town as “Wormtown” and “The Paris of the Eighties”. The Worcester Historical Museum even sells a T-shirt (above) that makes fun of the way people always mispronounce the city’s name . (The correct pronunciation in the local accent is: ”Wusta.” If you call it “Wor-chester” everyone here will think you are wicked lame.)

With its rows of three-deckers and its mostly deserted brick factories, Worcester is like a time capsule that was sealed in the 1950s or ‘60’s. (It’s also a great place to shoot a movie—and several have been filmed here.) We have at the moment an airport with no scheduled commercial flights (well, I think there’s one to Florida), an auditorium,a courthouse and a vocational high school that stand empty (making great movie sets) and a central downtown discount fashion mall that has been deserted for years awaiting the wrecking ball.

Worcester has a quirky history full of rebels-- from Isaiah Thomas, who took his printing press and exited Boston ahead of the Tories (the Declaration of Independence was first read in public on our courthouse steps) to Abbie Hoffman who grew up in one of Worcester’s three-deckers (they were built for the families of the factory workers.)

We still have Coney Island Hotdogs with its famous neon sign, and the Boulevard Diner where Madonna ate spaghetti after a concert at the Centrum, Table Talk Pies and Sir Morgan’s Cove (now Lucky Dog, I think) where the Rolling Stones in 1981 gave an impromptu free concert. Worcester boasts seven colleges and universities including Holy Cross, WPI and Clark (where, in 1909 Freud gave his only American lectures.)

Luminaries who came from Worcester are a motley bunch including S. N. Berman, Emma Goldman, Stanley Kunitz, Elizabeth Bishop, Dennis Leary and Marcia Cross--the red-headed desperate housewife. Also the Coors twins, Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski.

Worcester is especially proud of its “famous firsts”, including barbed wire, shredded wheat, the monkey wrench, the first commercial Valentines, the birth control pill, the first perfect game in major league baseball and, most famous of all, the ubiquitous yellow Smiley Face icon.

In Worcester, the perennial sign of summer, as sure as the fireworks and concert in Christopher Colombo Park on the Fourth, is the arrival of the gigantic figure of Buster the Crab, lying on the roof and hanging over the Sole Proprietor Restaurant on Highland Street.

My husband and I ate there last week. There was a special menu of crab dishes, in addition to the regular Sole offerings. From the menu, I learned the following fascinating facts: This is Buster’s 17th year at the Sole Proprietor. Buster is the world’s largest inflatable crustacean. It takes 45,000 cubic feet of air to inflate him. He has a 75-foot claw spam. Buster could feed 200,000 people if he were real. That would require 35,116 pounds of butter and 45,447 lemons.

The crab dishes on the special menu ranged from fried tomato and crab Napoleon with smoky tomato dressing , Spyder Maki with soft-shelled crab, masago, cucumber and asparagus, to crab, mango and pickled cucumber cocktail and Crabmeat Casserole au gratin. I had crab and shrimp salad, which included avocado and tomatoes and sweet lemon herb vinaigrette. My husband had the soft-shelled crabs (sautéed, not fried). It was delicious. On the way out, I even wangled a copy of the Buster the Crab coloring book, usually meant only for kids. When we left, the wind was blowing and Buster’s giant claws waved good-bye.