October 2004

  • Red Sox Victory Tour

    I’ve been waiting for this moment all of my life.Ok, maybe I’ve only been waiting since last week, when I actually began paying attention to the Red Sox. In any case, the Sox have one the World Series, the Curse of the Bambino is finally broken, and now Red Sox Nation can finally get some…

  • Fargo: A Profile through Postcards

    Robert alterted me to this Fargo site created by James Lileks, a Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist born in Fargo. The way he weaves his written reflections together with historic postcards is an excellent example of online place-based writing, and I think I’ll show it to my students next sememster as they’re writing their essay on where…

  • A Winning Weekend

    It’s been a banner weekend for sports fans here in boston. Not only was the annual Head of the Charles Regatta taking place Saturday and Sunday, but most of the major sports teams added to their W columns in impressive fashion: The Red Sox won twice against the Cardinals in the World SeriesThe Patriots won…

  • Bush vs Kerry/Texas vs Boston

    Last night I went to sleep to the sound of thousands of elated Red Sox fans pouring into the streets to celebrate the greatest series comeback in baseball history. A similar scene erupted when the Patriots won the Superbowl earlier this year and when Brazil won the world cup a few years back. The density…

  • Birthday Leaves Revisted

    Birthday Leaves Revisted

    Last year on my 30th, I wrote about spending the morning at Mt. Auburn Cemetery; this year I revisited birthday leaves by returning the Consecration Dell to see if the leaves and the water had composed a similar scene. This time around, the pond was less uniformly green, but the leaves still embedded themselves on…

  • (Red Sox vs Yankees) vs (Bush vs Kerry)

    This evening two rivalries went head-to-head for the viewing loyalties of Bostonians: the Red Sox/Yankees playoff game in New York and the Bush/Kerry debate in Arizona. I generally have a low tolerance for both baseball and political rhetoric, but in the end the debate prevailed and I settled in to listen to it on the…

  • A Corner of Beacon Hill

    A Corner of Beacon Hill

    A Columbus day stroll through Beacon Hill brought me to this very pleasant dead end.

  • Reluctant Activists

    Reluctant Activists

    Yesterday afternoon, Jonathan, Marlene, Steve and I spend the day ringing doorbells in Plainstow, NH, trying to put in a good word for John Kerry. I think most of us were reluctant activists going into this venture, but by the end of the day we were glad to have done our part. I, for one,…

  • Writing like an Ant

    Writing like an Ant

    The other day I was sitting on our front porch enjoying the mild evening weather, and I began to watch the labors of single ant, hard at work on the wide cement railing. As far as I could tell, his primary task was to move wood shavings from the base of the column where they…

  • Unicycle

    Unicycle

    This evening I attended a reading by Naama Goldstein at the Out of the Blue gallery, and as I parked my bike at the rack across the street, I noticed that a unicycle was locked up next to me–the first time I’ve had this happen. Only in Central Square Cambridge would someone ride to Whole…