Just another personal weblog
We started Monday by felling a tree. There was a dead four- or five-inch diameter beech at the edge of the garden that Arlene was concerned with. Matt and I first decided which way we wanted it to fall. I hacked at it for a while with a hatchet, making a big V on the …
Continue reading “The Party Dock is for floating on, not going places”
That’s a bit ambitious of a title. It was a four-state day on Sunday July 2, and it could have been five states. If we had gone three miles the wrong way at the start, we would have been in New York state. But we started out going to the Mass MoCA. The big gallery …
Millie and Joel had a timeshare week at a resort in the Berkshires and invited us to come up for the weekend (or more precisely, Friday and Saturday nights at the end of their week). We left after my work Friday, leaving Newton around 6:30, and headed for the Mohawk Trail. I’m always willing to …
As I was bicycling to work across the rain-swollen Charles river between Newton and Needham, that “rain-swollen” reminded me of Homeric epithets. My graduate school roommate was in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies department at Brandeis, on his way to becoming a distinguished Bible scholar. That involved studying lots of languages, including some I …
I finished (well, there are more loose ends to weave in, and to darn around the annoying gaps by the corners of the thumbs) the gray and maroon mittens. No, I don’t mind waiting for it to be cold enough for them. January will be soon enough. These are the Maplewood Mittens from Robin Hansen’s …
The door of the cabinet under our bathroom sink was broken. Well, the Ives Push Latch on the door was broken. There’s no handle on the door. You push it in a fraction of an inch, the latch clicks, and a spring inside it pushes the door open. When you push it shut, it stays …
When I was a kid, shortly after World War II, “Jap” was short for, and something of an ethnic slur for, “Japanese”. Nowadays, certainly in Newton, if you hear that syllable it’s more properly all capitals and means Jewish-American Princess. There are lots of those at Newton South High and elsewhere in the Boston area, …
The Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake, New Gloucester, ME, has tours of several of the old buildings in the place. We got tickets after we had watched the woodturning demonstration and went through the boys’ workshop, meeting house, and the ministers’ shop. The Shakers must fit all standard criteria of a cult — founded by …
The last active Shaker community is 15 miles from our house in Casco. In the summer they have a series of demonstrations and workshops in traditional crafts. We went over this afternoon for a demonstration of wood turning, which was presented by (just so you know, this is a Tripod link) Peter Asselyn of Durham, …
Arlene had left the outdoor light on the deck (in Casco) turned on. Around 11:30 she looked at the screen door and hollered, “Look! There’s a luna moth on the screen!” There was, and better yet, when we looked, there was another one flying around outside. We took a flashlight, went out the front door …