Tag Archives: fun

Rails and Tales

22 Saturday Dec 2007

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This weekend, I’m heading home to Holland, Michigan (yep, it still feels like “home”) for Christmas . . . by train. It’s twenty hours from Boston to South Bend, Indiana, by Amtrak, and in order to pass the time I’m taking–what else?–a big stack of books. Here’s what’s in the Nina Totin’ Bag.

  • bitch magazine. My latest issue came in the mail last week, and I’m saving it for somewhere between Albany and Erie, PA.
  • Tiocfaidh ár lá: Our Day Will Come, An Exploration of Irish Nationalist Ideology, by my friend Hanna. This is her first pass at the topic that will eventually become her master’s thesis, and I get to be one of her first readers! Hooray!
  • The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion. I’ve been meaning to read this all year, and actually sometimes between semesters I’m in just the right mood to contemplate grief, morality, and the meaning of the universe.
  • Spending: A Utopian Divertimento, by Mary Gordon. I’ve actually already started this novel, which is about a woman artist and her self-appointed muse, about art and work, relationships and sex, money and ethics, feminism, and a whole lot more.
  • A Lick of Frost, by Laurell K. Hamilton. Evil fey, not-so-evil fey, court intrigue, murder, and sex. What more could one ask for in winter break reading?
  • Murder at the Gardner, by Jane Langton. Langton’s retired police detective turned Harvard professor Homer Kelly stars in a series of mysteries set around Boston; this one takes place next door to Simmons!
  • History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History, by Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward. With a title like that, how could I resist?
  • Dragonhaven, by Robin McKinley. I’ve been saving this one for a couple of months. It’s always a treat when one of your favorite authors comes out with something new.
  • “Mingling of Souls Upon Paper”: An Eighteenth-Century Love Story, edited by Bonnie Hurd Smith. This book contains the edited correspondence of Judith Sargent Stevens, telling the story of her love for, and eventual marriage to, Universalist preacher John Murray. The editor was a speaker this fall at the MHS.

It is entirely possible that between now and Saturday, noon, when the train pulls out of South Station, I will have added a volume or two to the collection. I have this 25% Barnes & Noble coupon burning a hole in my pocket and I think the Prudential Center has a copy of Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, which I’ve been meaning to read since July, and which I know I will need to own since it will be read with pencil in hand to make notes in the margins. And Mom tells me I simply must read Lauren Child’s Clarice Bean Spells Trouble . . .

Then again, I have to fit those Christmas presents in somewhere too.

Need to Footle*?

02 Sunday Dec 2007

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My friend Hanna passed along this deadly website to me this morning, and I have already used it for many valuable minutes of procrastination. It’s one of those play-a-game-to-defeat-world-hunger sites, and the particular gimmick is that you get to guess what words mean! If you are as excited about this as I am, then I know why we are friends. If not, we can still be friends (I don’t mind).

Today, I learned the meaning of the following wonderful words:

scofflaw = repeat offender

paraph = flourish after signature
supernal = celestial

viviparous = producing live offspring

saponaceous = soapy

fruticose = shrubby
sibylline = prophetic

suspire = sigh

dipsomania = alcoholism

roily = turbid

Hanna also suggests that you enliven the game by trying to remember why you know the meaning of certain words. Why, for example, did I know that “abaca” is a word for “manila hemp”?

The semester’s almost over!

*footle = waste time

Thanksgiving on Middlesex Fells

24 Saturday Nov 2007

Posted by in a sense of place

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Over Thanksgiving weekend, I decided to take a mini-vacation from Boston proper, and spent a night at the Friendly Crossways hostel outside Harvard, Massachusetts (the small town, not the University), and then drive to Middlesex Fells Reservation for a hike around the system of reservoirs which supply water for the town of Winchester. Yes! I said drive! I rented a car and was vehicularly mobile (a word I just made up) for the first time in three months. It was both extremely harrowing (in the dark) and giddily liberating (in the daytime).

The hostel was comfortably bare-bones and dark and quiet, in a way only rural areas can be. And Middlesex Fells was beautiful and abundantly populated with people and their dogs. I am not exaggerating when I say virtually every party of walkers had more or more four-legged companions. One woman even exclaimed when she passed me on the path, “You’re walking without a dog?!” as if it were an alien concept.

The photographs can be seen above or in larger format at picasa.

Fun With Old Things

16 Friday Nov 2007

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Tonight, I am headed to the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair to admire, well, antiquarian books, manuscripts, and prints, in an atmosphere of bibliomaniacal excitement. A group of us are headed down after work, and my friend Hanna is meeting us there. If I buy anything I’ll report back with pictures! I doubt anything will be in my price-range (<$25) though. Oh, well, it's fun to window shop!

I also thought I’d share this link from the MHS website. It’s our monthly object of the month, which a number of archives have started doing as a way to increase the visibility of their holdings online, and give people a taste of what sort of resources archives have to offer. MIT also has a fun collection on their site.

In the MHS collection, I particularly like the entry showcasing eleven-year-old Sara Putman’s dairy, with an account of her 1862 visit to the aquarial gardens, which was an early Boston aquarium.

Everyone have a good weekend!

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

05 Monday Nov 2007

Posted by in my historian hat

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I was first introduced to Guy Fawkes Day as a child by the immortal author E. Nesbit in The Phoenix and the Carpet:

It began with the day when it was almost the Fifth of November, and a doubt arose in some breast–Robert’s, I fancy–as to the quality of the fireworks laid in for the Guy Fawkes celebration . . .

Thus, Guy Fawkes will always, in my mind, be associated with magic carpets and imperious, mythical fowl. However, I thought I rather owed it to my profession to be a bit more informed about the actual history that gave rise to the holiday–a spot of unpleasantness, I gather, involving a failed attempt to overthrow the British government, as memorialized in this rhyme:

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

So, tonight, my friend Jeremy and I are going from work to the Old State House downtown, where the Bostonian Society is hosting a scholarly lecture on “Bonfires, Effigies, and Brawls: Colonial Boston Celebrates Guy Fawkes Day.” You can check out their online exhibit right here on blogspot. Sadly, we doubt that any actual bonfires, effigies, or brawls will be in evidence. . . perhaps we will have to foment a rebellion ourselves?

Why I Go to Art Museums

30 Tuesday Oct 2007

Posted by in a sense of place

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On Sunday, Bethany, Patrick and I went out for brunch at the Kitchenette and then made our way to the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, when I almost got to live one of my childhood fantasies of being Claudia Kincaid in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who runs away from home with her brother Jamie. The two manage to hide themselves away in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and solve a mystery involving a statue possibly carved by Michaelangelo. It involves adventure, museums, and archival research–what’s not to like?

As incisive as the Guerrilla Girls may be in their critique of the fine art world’s lack of support for women artists, I still think one of the best things about visiting art museums is the women one finds on display. The variety of women’s bodies is absolutely stunning in comparison to the visual representations of women in our daily media. Their very multiplicity attests to the volatile nature of standards of beauty throughout history and across the world, from era to era and culture to culture.

For example, on this particular visit I was fascinated to see a 1661 Dutch painting, Visit to the Nursery, which shows a couple presenting their newborn to relatives. The mother holding the infant is dressed, but you can clearly see the gap in the front of her bodice, suggesting she is ready to nurse her child at any moment, despite the formality of the scene.

Another picture I was enchanted by (Mom, this one’s especially for you) was this portrait of a “mad” woman, Malle Babbe, which the museum describes as “in the style of Frans Hals.” She is posed with an owl on her shoulder, which apparently symbolized foolish or “vulgar” behavior in the seventeenth century. I like the fact that “wise old owls” were once thought to be exactly the opposite.

And finally, in a modern art gallery, I came across this painting (forgive me, but I forgot to note the painter and title; I will remedy that when I have the time) which I have always liked because of the juxtaposition of the very “feminine” colors and floral motifs with the girl’s confident pose and forthright stare. On the floor below the painting was a child or about eight, carefully drawing a copy of the portrait in her sketchbook. I hope she pays way more attention to what the art museums have to say about the beauty of the human form than she does to the monotonous version of “femininity” being pedaled by our consumer culture.

You can see all my pictures from the Met at Picasa.

Ceilidh NYC-style!

30 Tuesday Oct 2007

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For those of you who don’t know (and why should you?), a “Ceilidh”–pronounced “kay-lee”–is a Scottish dance party, usually featuring great music, food & alcoholic beverages, and traditional Scottish folk dances. This is not performance dance, but participatory dance, like a barn dance or square dance, where everyone can join in–and if they don’t volunteer, they are often pressed into service.

My friend Bethany’s husband Patrick is a graduate of the University of Glasgow, where he earned his MLitt in Philosophy, and the University was throwing an alumni dinner at the Harvard Hall of the Harvard Club in Manhattan. We went and gawked at the decor and enjoyed the food and wine, got in a few dances, sang “Auld Lang Syne” (obligatory at every ceilidh I’ve been to) and managed to stumble home not much later than midnight!

You can see all the pictures in my web album at Picasa.

Vicarious Boston Cream Pie

19 Friday Oct 2007

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My friend Megan, the fabulous baker, wrote and asked when I first got to Boston if I had had Boston Cream Pie yet, what exactly it is, and was it any good? I had to answer “no” to the first question, and thus had no idea about the answers to questions 2 and 3. I promised to hunt some up, try it, and report back.

Today, I finally got around to doing just that at the Omni Parker House hotel, which is credited with actually creating the “pie” back in the 19th century. The dessert is actually a vanilla sponge cake cut in two layers with a vanilla custard between and some sort of chocolate glaze over top. Apparently there are endless variations. The one I had today included almond shavings, whipped cream, and strawberries, and looked more like this version (right) than the one above. Unfortunately, I neglected to take my camera, so don’t have a genuine “Anna’s Boston Cream Pie” visual.

(images from What’s Cooking America and Rosie’s Bakery)

Wee Britain in Boston?

25 Tuesday Sep 2007

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Some of you may recall the plot arc of Arrested Development in which Michael (Jason Bateman) is involved in international intrigue, crossing into the settlement of Wee Britain and, for a short while, dating a mysterious young woman named Rita (played by Charlize Theron). Well, it was the first thing that came to mind when I walked passed this sign on my way to the Arnold Arboretum today:


Honestly: do they all wear uniforms? (or maybe robes, and carry broomsticks?) . . . or maybe it’s more along the (in)famous Summerhill free school model, and they run around like wild savages and set their own bedtimes at democratic community meetings (more my style).

A little further up the road, while speculating about the nature of British schoolchildren, I happened to stumble across this peculiar architectural specimen:


If it weren’t for the half-dozen American flags liberally sprouting from the battlements, I might be tempted to suggest this was the school in question . . . what purpose do you think the giant golden crown serve? Anyone?

Happy Monday!