Category: Boston

Friday morning, and the power is out at my office building (like, in the whole building. That’s a new one.) so I’m working from home and breathing in. It’s been a busy, crazy, nutty week, as they all seem to be recently.

I neglected to mention on Monday that I traveled to Chicago for one day for the IQPC Software Asset Management conference (if you attended the Monday workshops, and a few did, I was playing the role of our Marketing Communications Director who for some strange reason was listed as the speaker for Session C instead of me. Odd). It was a relatively easy travel day—I caught earlier flights than my scheduled one twice and made it home by 10 pm instead of midnight—but it still took a lot out of me.

A lot of the rest of the week, non-work-wise, was spent dealing with errands and distractions. For instance: Wednesday I drove to Walpole to pick up a dishwasher that will go in our new kitchen. Yesterday I was at the doctor’s office. And all week long I was calling and griping at Keyspan about the way they’ve dug up our street. (See next post for details.)

And today the power is out in our office and I’m breathing a little easy rather than fighting the morning commute. It’s nice to have a positive disruption in one’s schedule for a change.

I got a bemused comment after yesterday’s post asking about the Italian presence in Boston. Thankfully for some of my remote readers, Universal Hub has a post that gathers blog posts from people celebrating Italy’s victory in the North End of Boston. I particularly like this individual’s pictures of the crowd.

It’s worth remembering that summer, with its endless festas, is the best time to see Italian-American pride in Boston anyway… the festas call for a post all their own some time.

It’s official, Italy beats France for the 2006 World Cup. And the fans are going nuts. In Berlin, in Rome, in Boston.

In Boston?

Yep. City Hall Plaza is packed with fans watching the final game—and going nuts, as aerial shots on the broadcast have shown repeatedly throughout the game.

Of course, you couldn’t prove it by Boston.com, whose blog includes no local interest information about this global sport.

It should be a book title, but “The Taking of Sea Clams” is followed by the prosaic “prohibited because of red tide per order Board of Selectmen, Ipswich, MA.” Still, one imagines the agony and the ecstacy of the clam as it is pulled from its sea bed, pried open, and unceremoniously shucked, breaded and fried. Perhaps a sequel, The Taking of Sea Clams One Two Three?

Anyway, the photos are from two trips to beaches around Ipswich on the first and third of July, during which time I was bitten by green headed flies, lightly broiled, cooled in the 58° water, and well sanded, and loved it. Enjoy.

Oops—almost forgot to mention the gull. Those photos aren’t zoomed. We probably could have reached out and touched him.

…is worth a lot. After the six months or so I’ve had, spending Saturday and this morning at the beach relaxed me enough to more than make up for the lawn mowing, Ikea shopping, and other odds and ends that consumed the rest of the weekend.

I’ll post some photos later, but the other information I thought I’d post today will go up later at some point.

When an article about the famed Museum of Bad Art in Dedham opens with the line, “When I heard the Hockney show was closing [at the MFA], we thought we’d pick up some of the slack,” you know the gloves are off. This is apparently my morning to try to piss people off, but I wasn’t really drawn to the David Hockney show at the MFA, and the MOBA’s take on it, “Hackneyed Portraits,” is just brilliantly funny.

I like the new works, but they still can’t hold a candle to Lucy in the Field With Flowers or Sunday On The Pot With George.

Boston.com: Apple gets green light on Boston store plan. The store design, which was revised to overcome objections about how well the store would fit in with its Boylston St. neighbors, will feature interior stainless steel columns that divide the three-story glass facade into sections, which apparently is going to help the building blend in better. Hmm.

That’s OK by Copy Cop, the building’s current occupant, though; they already have a FAQ document for their customers about the move, though nothing on their blogs. (Yes, Copy Cop management has blogs…)

Looks like our own Cambridge Brewing Company brought home the bronze from the first annual Radical Beer Open. Their Cerise Cassée (“Broken Cherry”) took third place in the Category II (5.1 – 7.5%). The article says that the brewing process “begins with a 100% sour mash for three days. After primary fermentation, brewer Will Meyers adds 300 pounds of sour cherries and ignites a second fermentation with a Belgian abbey ale yeast. A third fermentation with several strains of Brettanomyces lasts nine months in French oak Pinot Noir barrels.” Sounds like it’ll be fantastic. Going to have to check that one out.

I received an email today indicating that a dreaded moment had come: the Reverend Peter Southwell-Sander, member and adjunct staff of Old South Church and husband of senior minister Nancy Taylor, passed away Wednesday night. I didn’t get a chance to know Peter well, but I mourn his loss, and what I do know about him makes the loss the more painful: Anglican minister, author of books on Puccini and Verdi (!), satirist (!!), baptizer of one of Mick Jagger’s children (??!?!?), and to the end of his life a tireless proponent for the inclusive welcoming nature of God’s love—and the need to translate that into this world for the poor and marginalized all around us.

Nancy and Peter were a model of grace in the face of a long struggle. I mentioned their long dance together earlier in the week; now I believe he dances free of pain in a better place, and I hope that Nancy has some peace after their long shared struggle together.

It’s not opera, but the music that is in my mind now was written by another Briton who found a home in a different religious tradition:

Alleluia. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Remember me O lord, when you come into your kingdom.
Give rest O Lord to your [servant], who has fallen asleep.
The choir of saints have found the well-spring of life, and door of paradise.
Life: a shadow and a dream.
Weeping at the grave creates the song:
Alleluia. Come, enjoy rewards and crowns I have prepared for you.

I was going to do a follow up to my 2003 post, “I’m a reasonable man, MacArthur, so I know this isn’t snow,” but was beaten to it by another Boston blogger. It’s been snowing here for about six hours already and the stuff was coming down in big postage-stamp-sized flakes at lunchtime. Guess it’s my fault: I put the snowblower away on Sunday.

Oh, and thanks to Tony Pierce for the link over on the BusBlog (check the left column, where I’m one of “tony’s specials” today).

Finally, I hope the snow lets up in time for the Neko Case show tonight. I’m not wearing boots to that show.

I wrote a few days ago about why I love our nearby big city—but our own little burb isn’t without its charms. For instance: how many towns can claim an Australian expat as a local celebrity—one who has been living on the streets for a month? The Arlington Advocate published a story today about Funny Face, an Australian “labradoodle” (lab-poodle cross) who escaped her new owners within two hours of arriving in the country and led the entire population of several neighborhoods, including mine, in a chase that took the better part of the month before her eventual capture.

The best part of it, other than the occasional white streak with a red sweater going down the street, was the commentary on the local email list. Quotations posted from the List in the article included a designation of Funny Face as “the canine equivalent of Moby Dick,” as well as daily updates of where the dog was in the neighborhood.

So add this to the values of online community: sometimes your neighbors can help you find lost friends—or at least help you laugh about them.

Why do I love living in Boston? Because somewhere in the vicinity there is a Universal Unitarian minister blogger who writes fashion and makeup advice for ministers. (Via Universal Hub.)

I have a sister in Presbyterian seminary who could probably write the mid-Atlantic frozen chosen version of the ministerial attire rules.

Thanks to Universal Hub, I made two wonderfully bizarre discoveries yesterday. One is that there are enough übergeeks in the greater Boston area to field a marching detachment of Imperial Stormtroopers in the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The linked photo shows everything from regulation general purpose Stormtroopers to an AT-AT driver, a Scout Trooper from Return of the Jedi, to a black-armored TIE pilot and a bounty hunter. Of course, how Stormtroopers get to march in the Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade when gay people can’t march there or New York is anyone’s guess.

The thorny question of deep irrational unChristian institutional homophobia among Boston’s Roman Catholic population aside, the other wonderful thing I found was the 501st Legion aka Vader’s Fist, a worldwide organization of part-time Imperial Stormtroopers of whom the Boston marching contigent is a mere portion of a garrison.