Tag Archives: from the neighborhood

from the neighborhood: gratuitous cat photos

16 Wednesday May 2012

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I was going to post another installment of The Act of Marriage live-blog series today, but I’m on the upswing from an epic two-day migraine and blogging didn’t happen. So instead, have some pictures of Geraldine!

she’s just discovered the back of the couch as a perch
and likes to keep an eye on us while we’re working (also steal sunshine)*
then there’s the shameless flirting with guests … 
can I haz TARDIS?
meditating cat is meditating

*Usually “keeping an eye on” translates to “sitting on the keyboard and/or page of the book the human is reading” … so in the grand scheme of things, a little hip-cuddling is very polite behavior!

from the neighborhood: baby pictures

03 Tuesday Apr 2012

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It was my birthday last friday, and my parents sent me some fun artifacts from my infancy:

The summer after I was born, my parents took me to visit my great-grandmother Margery. She was in her nineties when this picture was taken; my mom is the one in the red sun-dress. I’m obviously the one looking really bored by the visit.

My mother notes below this photograph that I was ten or eleven pounds at this point (about the size of a large house cat). Since I was born about five weeks before my anticipated due date at about five pounds in size, this is double my birth weight. Since I had trouble nursing and keeping food down in the first few months, I bet my parents were pleased I’d started to grow at a healthy pace!

Although my early and precipitous birth meant my mother was admitted to the hospital, my parents had planned for a home birth. This is the map that my dad drew for the attending midwives so that they would be able to find our house without getting lost when the time came.

from the neighborhood: christmas tonttus

14 Wednesday Dec 2011

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This past weekend, Hanna and I were up in Maine celebrating an early Christmas with the folks. This involved a lot of good food, a Christmas carols service at nearby Colby College, and the creation of our very own tonttu for the apartment. Tonttu are Finnish house spirits that Hanna’s mother learned about from her Finnish parents and grandparents. Here are some photographs that we took of the process of making two tonttus. It took the better part of Sunday morning.

these fellows were our model tonttus
here are some of the supplies Linda provided
We started with a base of cardboard, Styrofoam, and felt
all self-respecting tonttus need hats
Mine is on the left, Hanna’s is on the right.
Hanna named hers Ibrahim; mine is named Helga
We brought them back to Boston on Monday to grace our Christmas shelf

While tonttu is the Finnish term for house spirits, some of you may be familiar with the Astrid Lindgren picturebooks which tell the story about a gentle tomten who cares for a family farm in Sweden. This is essentially the same folk character, though seen through the lens of a slightly different Scandinavian tradition.

I hope all of you are finding small and pleasurable ways of preparing for the holiday season …

from the neighborhood: athan’s bakery

05 Monday Dec 2011

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Yesterday, Hanna and I branched out from out usual weekend haunts to try out a new spot for weekend brunch: Athan’s Bakery in Washington Square, Brookline. It turned out to be a great place for people watching, reading (Hanna: Freud’s collected letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Anna: The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin), and nursing our morning espresso. Here are some photos I snapped while we were there.

The front room, full of sunshine and sugary things.
Cookies sold by the pound
Not exactly breakfast food, but …
There were lots of students with laptops working away
Hanna’s left arm, lovely earrings, and
new-hairstyle-in-progress
Abandoned coffee cups at the espresso bar.

from the neighborhood: shirley moves to maine

03 Monday Oct 2011

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This passed Saturday, Hanna and I drove up to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens to visit with her mom and dad. Linda was exhibiting at the Maine Fiber Arts Showcase. It was a rainy afternoon, but luckily the fiber arts event was inside the visitor’s center.

As usually happens when we visit with Hanna’s parents, we drove north with things to give/return to them and they met us with more things for us to take south again … a new sweater for Hanna, the tam that Linda knit me for Christmas and finally blocked, and what Hanna has termed “the rudest thing ever”:

Kevin with the rude squash (photo by Linda)

In exchange, we finally allowed Shirley — the stuffed sheep from Michigan that we gave Linda for her birthday in July — to move to her forever home in Maine.

Shirley and Linda at Linda’s display booth (photo by Anna)

The garden is impressive in size and scope, although we didn’t get a chance to see much of it in the rain. One section is the fairy house village. I think this is where these magical creations were headed:

fairy houses in the garden library (photo by Anna)
a fairy castle? tree house? (photo by Anna)
Shirley got a bit chilled (photo by Anna)

When we got home, Geraldine was pissy because we had left her alone all Saturday — but she was somewhat mollified by the four new rag rugs we brought home, courtesy of Linda. Rag rugs are clearly for kitties to sleep on, not for humans to place their feet.

enigmatic cat is enigmatic (photo by Hanna)

Cross-posted at …fly over me, evil angel….

from the neighborhood: BU bridge

19 Monday Sep 2011

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Last Friday, Hanna and I walked from our apartment over to Cambridge via the Boston University bridge which has been under extensive restoration for the past several years. It was a gorgeous September day. Here are a few photographs that we snapped on the bridge.

Hanna looking west up the Charles river
(photo by Anna, obviously)
Moon over I-90 (photo by Hanna)
graffiti on the freight rail  bridge below
(photo by Hanna)
girders in the sun
(photo by Anna)

Cross-posted at …fly over me, evil angel….

from the neighborhood: home improvement

29 Monday Aug 2011

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In the midst of Hurricane Irene this week, Hanna and I not only managed a trip to visit friends in Providence, RI, but also built some shelving for the bedroom in order to better organize books and clothes … the dressers we’d saved from the apartment building trash (yes, we have been known to dumpster dive) and the wine crates from the store up the street just weren’t cutting it any longer. The downside, of course, is that we had to spend yesterday evening constructing a 9′ x 7.5’x 1′ shelving unit in our tiny apartment. In tropical humidity.

Ah, the price of literacy.

First, we had to clear a space for the new shelves.
(If only we could keep the wall empty! So restful.)
We moved one of the old bookcases into the closet to hold VHS tapes
and periodicals. Play spot the cat for extra points!
There were 72 bolts to tighten. Ouch!
Gerry supervised from her perch on the piles of books.
By 10pm we had the whole thing constructed and
called it quits for the night.
Here are the shelves mostly filled (the wine crates remained … but our
clothes are finally not buried at the back of the closet!)
The cat’s supervisory responsibilities exhausted her.
And now we have space for more books!
This time we’ve actually interfiled our books for subject continuity!
This bookcase indicates the relationship is serious folks.

And now as I type this, Hanna is making us Tassajara whole wheat millet bread which is one of my new favorite treats! I promise a recipe one of these days. We plan to enjoy it with Magic Hat Hex and matzo-vegetable soup.

Cross-posted at …fly over me, evil angel….

from the neighborhood: chihuly at the mfa

21 Tuesday Jun 2011

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Cross-posted at …fly over me, evil angel….

Now that I’m finished with graduate school, I have my weekends back (hooray!) and Hanna and I have been trying to re-learn what it means to spend leisure time together … time not compressed by the anxieties and demands of trying to complete academic work on top of a 35-hour work week and, you know, the daily tasks of living.

Walking home through Fenway Victory Gardens
Photograph by Hanna

I seriously don’t understand how couples who have full-time jobs manage to care for children. Is there time travel involved? Because caring for our family as just two adults is difficult enough.

Anyway. Back to basics. How do you enjoy a weekend that’s truly a weekend … as in: time off from one’s regular mode of employment?

I thought it might be fun to spend a few months playing quasi-tourist in our own city. Particularly since, as an employee of the Massachusetts Historical Society, I have free admission to lots of cultural sites in the region. (Free entertainment always being preferable when you’ve got student loans to pay off!) Over the past four years, I haven’t found a lot of time to make use of this benefit, but I’ve decided that this should change. Therefore: watch for more “from the neighborhood” posts in the coming months, as Hanna and I explore new parts of our own backyard.

Our first stop, this weekend, was the Museum of Fine Arts, just up the road from the MHS. The MFA is currently hosting an ehibit of work by glass artist Dale Chihuly. I’f you’ve never seen Chihuly’s work, I highly recommend checking out the photos and video clips on his website — the installations are breathtaking. I first saw his work at the Frederick Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan about a decade ago and can’t think of anything that’s more soul-enriching than sitting in one of his galleries and soaking in the color. Here are some photographs we took at the exhibition here in Boston.

So much of his work looks like ocean life of some kind
The camera washed out the color on this one, but I love the reflection.
See a better image at Chihuly’s homepage.
See what I mean about the tide pool effect?

Hanna and I agree he should design
sets for Tim Burton…
Chandelier detail
Shadow pictures especially for my mother, who is
currently working on a photography series like this.
Chandelier (by Hanna)
Hard to tell here, but these are massive.
I love seeing his work in organic settings;
sadly, the MFA space had few outdoor installations.
Purple reeds (by Hanna)

All in all, it was an amazing way to spend our Saturday morning. Not sure what we have planned for our next outing, but rest assured I’ll take the camera and report back!

from the neighborhood: validation thursday

05 Thursday May 2011

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cross-posted from …fly over me, evil angel… where I wrote this post for Hanna this morning.

So for some reason, this seems to have been the week from hell for a lot of folks. Here in our household, Hanna has the flu, which is why I’ve volunteered to break radio silence with a photo post so you don’t think she’s been, you know, abducted by Mulder’s alien friends. Or something.

Yeah.

Anyway. Here are some pictures by Hanna from our walk last weekend along the Charles River Esplanade. May 1st, through some strange coincidence, happened to be one of the first truly gorgeous spring/summer days here in Boston — and we took photos to prove it!

Even the sailboats were enjoying the weather
Joggers and walkers were out in spades; and leaves
are finally starting to fill out along bare branches.
About halfway along the walk, we found that someone
had been busy with chalk writing encouragements on the pavement.
Encouragements like this — charming in their artlessness.
(And to be honest, moving as well — that someone took the time.)
This was my favorite. The text reads:
“<– DUCK. Don't be afraid to fail (even at drawing)"
This was Hanna’s favorite. The text reads:
“Just keep swimming!” (and a picture of a fish)

All of which reminded me of T.J Thyne’s little gem of a film, which really should be broadcast on a weekly (daily? hourly?) basis across all forms of media worldwide. Possibly then there wouldn’t be so many people doing stupid things which make us sad. It’s 16:24 and I swear it’s worth it. Make time in your day. You’ll thank us.

We hope to see you again next week for our regularly scheduled programming.