08 Thursday Jan 2009
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Happy New Year everyone! I’m back in Boston and catching up on everything that needs doing before the term starts up in a few weeks. This includes napping . . .
. . . and polishing off some of those winter break book reads . . .
As well as, of course, working our way through the local selection of xocolata calenta.*
*Catalan for hot chocolate (because why not?)
25 Thursday Dec 2008
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06 Thursday Nov 2008
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With autumn well and truly here, the temperatures dropping, and the days getting shorter, it is most definitely time for that coziest of beverages: tea! Hanna and I were shopping down on Newbury Street today and stopped in at Tealuxe to augment our collection with two new additions. When I brought them home and added the bags to our little regiment above the stove, the effect was so pleasing that I felt compelled to take a picture (or two, or three).
Hope you’re all enjoying the post-election glow . . . and now it’s back to the books.
05 Wednesday Nov 2008
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Despite fears of long lines (happily unrealized) and the lack of “I voted” stickers (I was sad) and “I voted” fudge (Hanna was sad), we went and voted today in Allston at the Warren Street Elementary School (Ward 21, Precinct 8). Mine was the 569th ballot accepted at the polling place. I voted for Obama/Biden–no mystery there–and kicked myself later for not having written in the cast of Torchwood for the local house and senate seats, which are all filled by unopposed Democrats around here. Note to self for next time: Prepare to alleviate election stress with humorous write-in candidates!
As I write this, Hanna and I are swapping election trivia off respective computers, puzzling over the inexplicable method The Guardian has of calling states for Obama . . . and getting lost in the interactive election map on NPR.org. As well as, in my case, following Feministe’s live-blogging of the election results (me? a political junkie? what gives you that idea?), and of course catching the britcoms on PBS. Time for some election-night cocoa!
20 Monday Oct 2008
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Mom and Dad finally had the chance to visit me in Boston this weekend, and Dad–as usual–brought gorgeous autumn weather with him for the duration of their stay (although he also brought the first cold snap of the season). Mostly we wandered around my usual haunts, got food at my favorite coffee shop (the Boston Beanstock Co.) and pastry shop (Mike’s Pastry) in the North End, and visited lots of bookstores (because what else does our family usually do on vacation but hunt for books!). We also stumbled into the Boston city Camp Sunshine Pumpkin Festival and the Head of the Charles Regatta. You can see pictures below.
To see a larger slideshow, click here.
08 Wednesday Oct 2008
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How not to use a moustrap:
“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”
02 Friday May 2008
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This weekend, I’m working away on one final history paper on mid-twentieth century feminist historians and Native American women’s history–if you’re interested in details, check back in a month when I have more perspective! But in the part of my brain not preoccupied with academic writing, I’m happily assembling the beginnings of a summer reading/viewing list. At the top are . . .
Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, by Daniel Radosh. I don’t know what it says about me that at the end of term, what sounds most appealing to me is to pick up a rollicking bit of journalism that allows me to laugh at the “parallel universe” of Christian fundamentalist evangelicals . . . but this one’s at the top of my list.
Tasha Alexander’s latest mystery featuring you widow Emily Ashton, Fatal Waltz, is out in bookstores and I’m looking forward to a bit of historical-mystery-romance escapism if I do say so myself.So I’m sure I will have no trouble filling my leisure time . . .
I have a few other more substantive post ideas that I hope to work on after my brain recovers–check back in a couple of weeks.
11 Tuesday Mar 2008
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On Saturday, Hanna and I went shopping at McIntyre & Moore’s, this spiffy used bookstore in Davis Square, near Tufts University. Their fiction section and children’s book section are paltry, but they have extensive nonfiction titles of all sorts. The impetus for the shopping trip (besides needing a Saturday outing) was the fact that they’re moving and having a 40%-off sale of their entire stock! Hanna walked away with a whole stack of books on Irish history and I picked up a book on the history of sex education in the United States that just became the 900th volume in my librarything catalog. I’m not sure what that says about me, other than that I’ve more or less managed to make up for all that weeding I did back when I initially cataloged my library in 2006.
02 Sunday Mar 2008
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As predicted, the “weekly” updates from grad school aren’t quite so weekly as I had hoped. I’ve been busy and–I hope!–productive the past couple of weeks. This past Thursday I turned in my project proposals for both oral history (interviewing Boston area doulas about their work) and history of imperialism (a term paper on feminists, history-writing, and the idealization of “primitive” cultures). I finished up reading report on feminist methodology in oral history and learned about coding MARC records in cataloging.
And of course, since I’m not an advocate of being studious 24/7, I have also made time for the first five episodes of Torchwood with Hanna, who is happy she finally has someone with whom to discuss the intricacies of combating alien invasions through the great Rift of Cardiff :).
The second week of March is Spring Break here at Simmons, and we are all looking forward to the time to catch up a little on our research and reading (we’re grad students, we don’t ever quit entirely), as well as make the time for a little leisure. Hanna and I have plans to take the commuter rail up to Salem to visit the Peabody-Essex Museum, and if I remember to take my camera with me, there should be some pictures coming soon.
the feminist librarian 