There are Many Reasons to Love Cambridge, but the Best of All is Fall

Usually, I am NOT an autumn person.  Summer is where it's at for me.  Sun.  Warmth.  Blue skies.  T-shirts.  Beaches.  Gardens.  Upon hearing each of these words I am filled with a combination of glee and absolute comfort.  Fall typically affects me in the opposite way.  Instead of glee, I feel dread.  Instead of comfort, I feel out of sorts.  Despite my lament for the passing of summer, in Cambridge I am offered the solace of an autumnal rainbow of leaves quietly assuaging the pain of the impending wind-chills and icy precipitations of winter.  Even I can appreciate the beauty of autumn in a place like this.  The air is crisp and each step is filled with a soundtrack of crunching leaves.

These are a few pics I've taken this fall.  Please click on them to make them big, so you can really see:

Fall Leaf Bouquet made up of fallen leaves on my street.

Annual rowing event on the Charles River, just outside my door:

High School football practice in Athens, Pa.

Cherry and Green Apple Snow Cone.

My Mom's Street.

Suzanne, The City, and Tosca.

My sister-in-law Suzanne lives the kind of life that girls dream about.  She's young. She lives in NYC in a cozy loft neighboring central park with her two loyal and protective dogs. She has a fabulous collection of footwear, including a pair of candy red cowboy boots. She practices jujitsu. And she is a professional writer.  Yea, I know, wasn't that all of our plans when we were imagining life as a young adult. I really like Suzanne.  She's strong, opinionated, and elegant, but mostly just a lot of fun.  It had been my plan to go visit her for a while now, and the perfect opportunity presented itself when Charlotte and her mom invited me to an opera, Tosca, at the Metropolitan Opera as an early birthday present.

On Friday afternoon I jumped on a bus to NYC to meet up with Suzanne.  I only mention this mundane detail because on the bus I sat next to one of the most interesting people I have ever encountered.  He was an elderly man in his 70's or so, but with a much younger countenance.  He had penetrating eyes and was dressed much like an old school Ivy Leaguer, in his sweater over a collared shirt and a pair of khakis.  We started chatting and I found out he had a PhD from the Divinity School at Yale and after years and years had decided that he was a Zen Buddhist.  This Divinity School grad, turned investment banker, turned Buddhist who now lives in Greenwich Village chatted with me for nearly all of the 5 hour trip.  As the story of his life so far unfolded during our conversation, I came to realize that life is long.

So I arrived in NYC and met up with Suz and a handsome friend of hers.  We went for dinner, Ukranian, and then Suz and I went back to her place and talked through the night about life, love, and rock'n roll.  The next morning she made me some of the most delicious muffins I have ever eaten, lemon blueberry (I are three for breakfast), and then she took me an a walk through central park.  Do you know how huge central park is?  I had no idea. If you walk its perimeter its more than 6 miles around.  It's like a nature reserve in the middle of the concrete dessert of NYC.  I loved it.

I met up with Char, Dolores and Sister Carrington (a lady from my hometown who is 85 and made it a goal to see an opera at the Met before she kicks the bucket) for lunch and then to the Opera.  It was nice to hang out with Charlotte without her kids.  Let's be honest, kids and husbands are great, wonderful even, but they can get in the way.  The few hours I spent with Charlotte sans husbands and kids was like the good old days.

Tosca was a wonderful Opera.  The singers' voices were beautiful, not too warbley.  The staging was stark but realistic.  The story was dramatic and sad.  And of course, as in all tragedies, all the characters die in the end.  Tosca's death was the most traumatic as she jumped to her death for the top of a watch tower.  Just as you saw her throw her body out of the window of the tower the theater went pitch black and the curtain fell.  The audience gasped in unison at her death, but as the lights come back on and the curtain raised for our heroine to take her bow the audience erupted into applause.  It was really exhilarating.  What a wonderful birthday present..

Map of Manhattan and Central Park. 

 

 Suz's friendly puppy.

 

 Blueberry Muffins=perfect breakfast

 

Love.

 

 Central Park.

 

Largest collection of the endangered American Elm.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friends.

Googling my name:

I googled my name and up popped this blog post on RaceWire:

Racial Privilege on Full Display in NY Times’s “Why We Travel”

Click to enlarge.
by Ian Lovett
The New York Times Travel section’s most recent slide show, “Why We Travel,” adds 13 new slides and captions to last year’s slide show of the same name. Unfortunately, “Why We Travel” conveys the very worst of Western attitudes about travel, developing countries, and Otherness.

Of the 62 travelers featured, 57 hail from the United States, Canada, Australia, or Europe. And of the other five, three now live at least part-time in the U.S., while the remaining two are the only travelers shown on religious pilgrimage. The “We” of “Why We Travel,” then, refers to Westerners…and white people. 55 of those same 62 travelers are white.

One slide, in particular, epitomizes the show’s disinterest in people of color. It shows two white American women in a Tokyo metro station, separated by one seat from two Japanese men. “Amanda, 25, right,” the caption reads. Except she’s not on the right; the Japanese men are—she is second from the left, right only of her sister.

Such active blindness portrays travel as a privilege reserved for a specific class of people. The many shots of white vacationers luxuriating in developing countries with no locals in sight reinforces this interpretation. As does another telling slide, which depicts a white Australian man photographing a young Pakistani girl in a dress traditional, calling her a “sort of tribal people.” That is, Westerners partake, while people of developing countries are partaken of, just like the landscapes and architecture shown in other slides.

The even more insidious subtext of featuring white people almost exclusively in a show titled “Why We Travel” is that, “This is how and why We travel—They must travel differently.” Although a majority of the Taj Mahal’s visitors are, in fact, Indian, this slideshow profiles a young Danish woman’s trip to the famous tomb, while the only Indian traveler profiled is shown on a religious pilgrimage, not visiting the Taj.

All of which reinforces an idea of the Other that travel can, at its best upend.
Ian Lovett is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.

Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced

If you are interested in some great "girl power" reading please try this.  It's smart and funny.

When Best Friends Come to Visit....

As many of you may know by now, I have joined the Boston College Chorale. It's a group of mostly BC undergrads, so although I don't exactly fit the typical member profile, it is a chance for me to sing. I used to sing a lot, and I really loved it, but after college, I just let that part of me fade out. Now that I am studying again at a university but am also almost done with school "for good," I thought I should take advantage of the opportunity to join one last collegiate choir.

Mrs. W my high school voice teacher and second mother and my best friend Charlotte were very happy to learn that my first concert was on the weekend that they planned to visit me in Boston. They were even more ecstatic to find out that I was performing with the Boston Pops and Bernadette Peters. 

The concert went well.  The Pops were perfect.  Bernie, as the undergrads like to refer to her, was sensational in a tight sequined dress.  At age 61, she works it like a 30 year old.  I saw Keith Lockhart, the Pops director, place his hand over his heart and act as if he would swoon from her vocal sex appeal. As overpriced as the event was, it was really fun.  And it was so nice to have Char and DW there to greet me when it was all over.

But most importantly,  Dolores, Charlotte, and her two extraordinarily beautiful and uniquely "wired" children, Dottie and Elliot came to spend time with me.   I loved having them around and I was sad to see them leave.  Charlotte's kids are the sweetest, although they also have a demonic side as well.  One of my favorite memories from the weekend was when Elliott was crying on the floor, and Charlotte asked Dottie what happened to him. Dottie proudly admitted in her dainty little girl voice that she pushed him down the stairs.  We all just busted up laughing.

Highlights of the visit included:

1.  Bernadette Peters lying on the piano during her sultry rendition of "Fever."

 

 2.  Visiting Harvard. . .

 

Elliot liked the leaves.

Charlotte and I in front of Longfellow's house.

Someone at Harvard made this little tree house on campus, and Jonathan couldn't wait to show it to Dottie.  Notice Dottie's smile, it's a bit maniacal. I like those kinds the best.

When we told Elliot that we expected him to end up at Harvard he looked around and then started crying.

3.  Eating corndogs and "chowda" in bread bowls at Quincy Market.

"mmmmm......after eating this delicious chowda I will also eat your soul.  Wink.Wink."

 

 Although Dottie looks like she doesn't like her corn dog in this picture, she is really just disgusted that her mother waited almost 5 years before she gave her one of these delectable culinary masterpieces.

Elliot couldn't jam it down his throat fast enough. 

4.  Walking the Freedom Trail.

 This is the spot of the Boston Massacre and the balcony from which the Declaration of Independence was read.

 

Paul Revere's home.  

 

The old State house.

 

A very old tombstone.  Mother Goose was also interred at this graveyard. Yes, apparently, she was real.  Notice the skull at the top.  As I walked through the grave yard I felt like I had entered a child's scary Halloween drawing. 

 

 Colin and James.  They are the cutest.

 

 The Landon's joined us on our Freedom Trail adventure.  It was very fun.

 

 Boston is very pretty.

 

 Paul Revere is a handsome man.

 

Boston.

5.  My early Birthday present, handmade by Charlotte.  We are cosmically connected for life.  If you don't know what that means...well, I would say, of course you don't.  Few people in life are cosmically connected like me and Char.  It's kind of like we are Siamese twins, but with our souls.  Does that make more sense?  This pillow, I think, is the home decoration that most perfectly embodies our friendship.  Thanks so much Charlotte.  This is my favorite present that you have ever given me. 

Thanks so much for coming guys.  Thanks DW for coming to my concert and for buying me delicious treats.  I hope you can come again soon!! I love you!

I laughed so hard I cried...

Another reason to love Mass: Newburyport, Ma

Last week Jonathan went out of town for more interviews.  It's been a stressful time for us, especially for him.  With school just starting and the race to find a great job in this horrible economy in the home stretch, Jonathan is really feeling the pressure of being a law student.  I feel bad for him, but at the same time his anxiety is certainly becoming a part of my daily life as well, so sometimes I'm not as supportive as I could be.  I'm sure everything is going to be fine, but we can't wait until this whole process is over.

In to other news, while Jonathan was out of town, Katie, my sis, and I decided to take a short day trip to Newburyport, Mass to visit Plum Island.  It was one of the most magical places I have ever visited.  Plum Island is a barrier island off the coast of Mass and so the ocean behaves very differently there than I am used to.  The surf broke in a million different places and in a million different directions.  Most magical though was a narrow (like 20 feet wide) piece of the beach that jutted out several hundred feet into the ocean, like a pier.  The waves broke all around us and at times it felt like we would be swallowed up by the ocean at any minute.  The sunset was magical.  Part of the sky was almost black with a rainstorm and the other part was perfectly blue and sunny. It was an experience I won't forget and one I hope to replicate soon.  Unfortunately, I sent the camera with Jonathan on his trip (no, he didn't take any pictures), so I didn't get to take any photos of our adventure. 
But here's one I found online to get your imagination going: