Ernest Hemingway and Carlos Gutierrez aboard Hemingway’s boat Pilar , 1934. Hemingway fished the Gulf Stream from his home ports in Key West and Havana. During the early years of World War II, he equipped the boat to hunt German submarines. Hemingway christened The Pilar with his nickname for his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer. (Public domain. Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.)
My window commands a view of the harbor, shrouded in low clouds, and across the water I can see the vague outline of downtown Boston swaddled in gray. The wind has been steady and cold for a few days and yesterday’s sparse erratic mist, halfway between rain and snow, turned during the…
