January 6, 2016 by suzannesmom
When I was 14, I went to the big city every week to live with my aunt’s family and attend school with a younger cousin.
On winter Mondays I arose in the dark. My mother drove me to the bus station, where I got on a bus with my big suitcase and my book bag — and for a while, a clarinet.
When I disembarked at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, I took a cab to school, and later in the day, I lugged the whole kit ‘n’ kaboodle on a city bus to my aunt’s apartment. That first year there were three other kids in the apartment, with another away at school.
This past Monday, I arose in the dark, put my bags in the car, and drove about the same distance as the bus ride I took Mondays at age 14 to a new job in Providence. I’m staying a couple nights a week with Suzanne’s family, which includes two children under 4. Altogether, it’s an adventure with resonance.
So far, I have only two photos to share: one of a 9/11 tile mural that every man woman and child in Providence seems to have worked on, and one of people ice skating in Kennedy Plaza. I hope to have lots more pictures, especially when I can take my walks outdoors. So far it has been too cold, and I have just walked in the mall, where the sights are not, shall we say, photogenic. I’ve been enjoying the new job and also answering questions from folks at the old job. Having handled a biggish transition when I was 14 makes the current transition feel familiar and rather comfortable.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 9/11, ice skating, kennedy plaza, postaday, providence, tile mural, transition, walking | 6 Comments »
January 5, 2016 by suzannesmom
Get ready. National Bobblehead Day is just around the corner.
Bobbleheads? Karen Given at WBUR’s Only a Game can tell you more about the history of sports bobbleheads than you ever imagined.
She says that is 2015, the San Diego Padres were the only Major League Baseball team that didn’t offer fans a game where they handed out bobblehead figures of players. “For years, the Red Sox didn’t give away bobbleheads either.
“ ‘There was a long time actually when we felt like “maybe they’re not into bobbleheads,” ‘ says Red Sox Senior Vice President of Marketing Adam Grossman. ‘But even in Boston we know that the people love them and if they love them then we’ll provide them.’ …
“The Red Sox spend months getting the facial features and tattoos and the stance on their bobbleheads just right. …
“Bobbleheads even have, get this, their own Hall of Fame.
“ ‘We sort of thought of it this way–,’ says Phil Sklar, co-founder and CEO of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ‘if mustard deserves its own museum, bobbleheads definitely deserve their own shrine.’
“The museum doesn’t actually exist yet. Sklar and his partners are busy accumulating thousands of bobbleheads — many from private collections.”
For “the story of a business deal that would change the course of bobblehead history, [Given turns] to Todd Goldenberg of Alexander Global Promotions. …
” ‘Malcolm Alexander, he’s our founder and former president. He’s retired now, kite skating around the world—’
“So, Alexander was trying to start a business selling promotions, and he got a meeting with the San Francisco Giants, who, you’ll remember, were trying to find a company to manufacture a promotional item that hadn’t really been made for 40 years.
“ ‘He just basically said, “What can I help you with?” and they said, “We need a bobblehead doll,” ‘ says Goldenberg. …
” ‘And Malcolm, being very cocky and very Australian said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll do it. How many do you need?” ‘ says Goldenberg. ‘And then he proceeded to leave the office and find out what a bobblehead doll was. Because even though he had just sold about a quarter of a million dollars worth of bobblehead dolls, he didn’t know what he had sold.’ ”
The rest of the story can be found at WBUR radio, here.
Photo: Karen Given/Only a Game
A Luis Tiant bobblehead doll.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged adam grossman, Alexander Global Promotions, baseball, bobblehead, hall of fame, karen given, milwaukee, only a game, phil sklar, postaday, red sox, san diego padres, sports, Todd Goldenberg, wbur | 2 Comments »
January 4, 2016 by suzannesmom
As Maria Popova likes to point out, J.R.R. Tolkien maintained there was no such thing as writing for children, and Maurice Sendak said much the same thing. I myself have found that the “children’s books” Popova recommends to her Brain Pickings readers work as well for me as for my grandchildren.
Here she describes a book about the beauty of imperfection: “Wabi sabi is a beautiful Japanese concept that has no direct translation in English. Both an aesthetic and a worldview, it connotes a way of living that finds beauty in imperfection and accepts the natural cycle of growth and decay. Wabi Sabi is also the title of a fantastic 2008 picture-book by Mark Reibstein, with original artwork by acclaimed Chinese children’s book illustrator Ed Young, exploring this wonderful sensibility through the story of a cat who gets lost in her hometown of Kyoto …
“A true wabi sabi story lies behind the book: When Young first received the assignment, he created a series of beautifully simple images. As he went to drop them off with his editor, he left them for a moment on the front porch of the house. But when he returned to retrieve them, they were gone. Rather than agonizing over the loss, Young resolved to recreate the images from scratch and make them better — finding growth in loss.” More here.
(Remember the mortification of John Stuart Mills when his maid mistakenly burned the manuscript of Thomas Carlyle‘s first volume of the seminal French Revolution? I like to think that Carlyle’s starting from scratch on volume one after completing volumes two and three made made volume one better, as Ed Young found with his art. It’s still painful to think about how Mills felt.)
Art: Ed Young
Illustration from Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged brainpickings, cat, children's book, ed young, french revolution, hobbit, japanese, john stuart mills, maria popova, mark reibstein, postaday, thomas carlyle, tolkien, wabi sabi | 2 Comments »
January 3, 2016 by suzannesmom
ArtsJournal recently highlighted this article from the Guardian about the pyramids.
“Egypt never seems to stop revealing its ancient wonders and mysteries,” writes Jonathan Jones. “Now, it seems we may be on edge of new discoveries as marvellous as when Howard Carter opened the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. …
“The dazzle of Tutankhamun’s gold probably satisfied the tomb’s discoverers – and besides, it has taken 21st-century technology to find the new mystery: traces of what may be well-hidden and still unopened chambers behind the tomb of the boy king.
“Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves believes – controversially – that the hidden space may be the lost tomb of Queen Nefertiti, who may have been young Tut’s mother. If Reeves is right, the sands of Egypt could be about to yield one of their greatest secrets – something epochal.
“And that’s not all. Archaeologists scanning the pyramids at Giza have found ‘thermal anomalies’ that may also reveal hidden chambers, including one deep within the Great Pyramid. So the pyramids too (which are considerably older than the tombs of Tutankhamun and, perhaps, his mother) are apparently still full of marvels ready to be uncovered.”
More here.
Photo: Hassan Ammar/AP
The pyramids of Giza. 
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Egyptologist, giza, hassan ammar, hidden chamber, Howard Carter, jonathan jones, Nicholas Reeves, postaday, pyramid, Queen Nefertiti, thermal anomalies, tomb, Tutankhamun | 2 Comments »
January 2, 2016 by suzannesmom
Our 5-year-old grandson’s friend had been planning to attend an American Repertory Theater musical with her grandmother today at 10 a.m. We decided to go, too.
The show was The Pirate Princess and was loosely (very loosely) based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It was a hoot for me, and the young man in the photo seemed riveted. But whether he could make head or tail of the convoluted plot, I have my doubts. It will be interesting to see down the road what he remembers — and whether he wants to see more plays.
The plot involves a brother and sister who get separated in a shipwreck (in this case, it’s thanks to a monster called the Kraken) and have separate adventures with characters who later mistake the sister dressed as a boy for the boy and vice versa. (I kept whispering in my grandson’s ear, “The pirate thinks he’s the girl that he thinks is a boy”; “The Queen thinks he’s his sister but doesn’t know his sister is a girl.” My grandson didn’t respond.)
There were songs, musical instruments, fancy costumes, pirates storming up lighted platforms in the middle of the audience, sword fights, and imaginative special effects. I especially like the jellyfish created by glowing umbrellas with streamers, carried along the aisles in the dark. The Kraken with his many legs was pretty great, too.
After the show, we had hot chocolate and cookies at the Darwin on Mt. Auburn Street. I’m not sure what our grandson will be able to tell his parents about the madcap entertainment he witnessed, but bits and pieces will likely emerge over time. I myself saw Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland when I was four, but I didn’t become a theater nut until I was 10.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged american repertory theater, art, darwin, kraken, mt auburn st, musical, pirate, pirate princess, postaday, princess, shakespeare, shipwreck, theater, twelfth night | 4 Comments »
January 1, 2016 by suzannesmom
I’ve been meaning to share a charmingly illustrated 1986 publication called The Book of Holidays around the World. The author is Alice van Straaten.
Her entry for January 1 mentions the Rose Bowl Parade, of all things, and how it was launched in 1890 in imitation of the Festival of Flowers in Nice, France.
She also describes a celebration in Greece honoring St. Basil: “Children go from door to door, carrying an apple, a paper ship — or a paper star — and receive coins for singing calends, carols of good wishes for the year.”
(Kind of makes me think of going door-to-door at day camp on Fire Island with a list of scavenger-hunt needs. Of course, in that case, you’d be asking for a paper ship or an apple, not carrying items to the houses. Summer renters were very tolerant of scavenger hunts. Today, you’d probably want to do a scavenger hunt only where you knew the neighbors.)
I’ll conclude with one more tradition, highlighted on the website Watching the Swedes.
“Almost every New Year’s Eve since 1896, a well-known person has stood on the stage at a Swedish open-air museum and recited the poem ‘Ring out Wild Bells’ by Lord Alfred Tennyson written in 1850. This may seem weird, but nowadays, the event is televised and attracts a large public. Translated into Swedish, the poem is called ‘Ring Klocka Ring’ and it has a very meaningful and deep content as we leave one year and enter into another.
“Various famous people, mostly actors, have had the honour of delivering this rousing poem throughout the years. Of the 20 narrators so far, only one has been a woman. However, this year the second female narrator – popular opera singer Malena Ehrman – will take the stage.”
Art: Edmund Dulac
Father Time, featured in The Book of Holidays around the World.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged alice van straalen, edmund dulac, father time, fire island, greece, Holidays around the World, malena ehrman, new year, new year's eve, poem, postaday, Ring Klocka Ring, Ring out Wild Bells, scavenger hunt, st basil, swede, sweden, tennyson | 3 Comments »
December 31, 2015 by suzannesmom
I’m leaving a job that has been a great fit for me and starting at another organization. Although I’m really looking forward to new experiences after 10 years, there are a few things I’m likely to miss …
an unusual number of really nice co-workers, the building’s art collection and landscaping, subway musicians, the weary dignity of homeward-bound commuters, sunrise over Boston Harbor, Styrofoam sheep floating in Fort Point Channel, a vast array of food trucks, the farmers market, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, conversations on the commuter rail, the conductor with the circus-announcer’s voice, a commute that allows me to read …
and this view.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged boston, job, mbta, postaday, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, subway, view | 4 Comments »
December 30, 2015 by suzannesmom
A US student studying in Hungary was stunned by the refugee crisis at his doorstep and felt compelled to do something.
David Karas wrote in early November at the Christian Science Monitor, “Among those struck by the extreme hardships confronting the refugees is a graduate student from Mobile, Ala., who had been traveling in Europe. Motivated to find a way to help, he used his background in information technology and software to help provide something in high demand but extremely scarce: information.
“David Altmayer has launched the Refugee Help Map – an interactive mapping platform using Google tools that provides details on where refugees are traveling and what needs they have – to assist volunteers in best providing aid.
“ ‘At the beginning, it was just to get more information out there,’ Mr. Altmayer says. ‘I started helping in the first place because I couldn’t just sit by and not help. And then I just tried to find ways that I could best use my skill set to help.’
“Altmayer had worked in Seattle on IT and software projects, and is currently pursuing an MBA and master’s degree in global management through the Thunderbird Graduate School of Global Management and the University of Indiana, Bloomington. In order to finish his degree, he had to select a couple of courses that would be held abroad. …
“ ‘I live about one kilometer [0.6 miles] from the main railway station here in Budapest,’ he says, By mid-August, migrants had begun to flock to the station to take shelter. ‘Every day there were more and more people basically living there – camping, setting up tents, sleeping on cardboard,’ he says.
“Some of Altmayer’s friends had been providing support to refugees, mainly by bringing them meals. Altmayer noticed other volunteer groups were providing assistance. Wanting to learn more, he began to explore online – only to discover a need that he and his computer-literate colleagues could help to address.
“ ‘More and more people had been asking where they could get information in English,’ he says. Most efforts to provide information were in Hungarian. Before he knew it, he had become part of a group that launched an English website, making details about locations and needs accessible to English-speaking refugees and volunteers. …
“In the first six weeks the map was online, it received more than 80,000 views. It is constantly updated with markers indicating the location and urgency of needs, as well as comments about conditions facing refugees.
“ ‘There are so many people using it and counting on it,’ Altmayer says.”
More here. I do love stories about people working to solve a problem by offering the skills they have.
Photo: Andrea Giuliano
US college student David Altmayer created the online Refugee Help Map while living in Budapest, Hungary. Here he is shopping for supplies to help migrants in Serbia.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged alabama, andrea giuliano, budapest, David Altmayer, david karas, hungary, map, migrant, mobile, postaday, railway, refugee, serbia, syria, Thunderbird Graduate School | 2 Comments »
December 29, 2015 by suzannesmom
I am a fan of UTEC, the United Teen Equality Center, in Lowell, Mass., which has many programs for helping acting-out youth choose a better path. A couple aspects of UTEC’s approach strike me as fundamental to its success, which was recognized by the governor in his inaugural address.
For one thing, UTEC gives people a second, third, fourth, fifth … chance. (ROCA in Chelsea is like that, too.) It tries to remove barriers to success but holds that it’s up to the individual to take up opportunities. For another thing, teen decisions are key to the organization’s direction. After all, young people concerned about gang violence were the founders in 1999.
An impressive staff, led by Gregg Croteau, is also dedicated to making change.
One of UTEC’s initiatives, as I learned from a recent presentation at church, is called Teens Leading the Way. The members are actually working to change government policy. Right now they are focused on expungement of early criminal behavior after teens have served their time. They believe underage offenders must deal with the consequences of their actions but be able to start over and not be blocked from education and jobs.
Here’s what the website says, “Expungement essentially erases a criminal record, including police reports and arrest records, as if it never existed. This would be a unique opportunity for young people with criminal records to obtain a clean slate after completion of their sentences. In 2012 a report titled ‘An Exploration of Juvenile Records Maintenance Across America: A Way Forward for the Commonwealth’ looked into the status of juvenile records in Massachusetts and recommended policy changes to offer expungement to juveniles. …
“Teens Leading The Way youth … have coined the motto: “Erase our sentence so we may write a novel,” which highlights their belief that young people should be held accountable for their actions, but additional rehabilitative actions should be taken to remove barriers upon re-entry and to prevent recidivism.”
More here.
Photo: UTEC
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged expungement, lowell, massachusetts, postaday, unted teen equality center, utec | Leave a Comment »
December 28, 2015 by suzannesmom
You may recall a post I wrote about the Daily Table, which takes produce that would’ve been wasted and uses it to provide good meals at low cost.
Jennifer Medina writes at the NY Times that Imperfect Produce, a San Francisco Bay Area start-up, has also “been selling what it calls ‘cosmetically challenged’ fruit and vegetables. …
“Imperfect Produce delivers boxes of ugly fruit and vegetables to people’s doorsteps in the Bay Area. A large box of mixed produce — 17 to 20 pounds of fruits and vegetables, with five to eight types of items, depending on what is in season — costs $18, for example; a small box of fruit (10 to 15 pounds) costs $12 a week. [Chief supply officer Ron] Clark primarily relies on buying produce directly from California farmers …
“Ben Simon, the chief executive, and Ben Chesler, the chief operating officer, began their work on food waste as college students, when they saw trays of food from the campus cafeterias thrown out each night. Mr. Chesler and Mr. Simon created Food Recovery Network, which now has more than 100 colleges donating uneaten food to soup kitchens. …
“The pair met Mr. Clark, who had spent more than a decade working to bring produce that would have otherwise gone to waste to food banks across California. Using his relationship with suppliers, the three have created a business that has attracted attention from many of the tech luminaries in the region, including the design firm Ideo, which receives its own drop-off each week.” More here.
Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Imperfect Produce, a San Francisco Bay Area start-up, specializes in produce that is misshapen or cosmetically deficient but otherwise perfectly edible. 
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged daily table, Dana Gunders, Food Recovery Network, ideo, Imperfect Produce, Jennifer Medina, jim Wilson, Natural Resources Defense Council, postaday, produce, ron clark, san francisco, trader joe's, waste, Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook | 2 Comments »
December 27, 2015 by suzannesmom
The poet Marianne Moore once helped to save a special tree by writing a poem about it, proving that art is more powerful than apathy.
Maria Popova writes at Brain Pickings, “In 1867, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, once an American Revolution battlefield, opened its gates to a community hungry for a peaceful respite of wilderness amid the urban bustle. So intense was public enthusiasm that local residents began donating a variety of wildlife to fill the 585-acre green expanse, from ducks to deer. But the most unusual and enduring gift turned out to be a tree, donated by a man named A.G. Burgess and planted in 1872.
“This was no ordinary tree. Ulmus glabra ‘Camperdownii,’ better-known as Camperdown Elm, is a species unlike regular trees in that it cannot reproduce from a seed. The rare elm carries its irregularity on the outside — its majestic, knobby branches grow almost parallel to the ground, ‘weeping’ down. To ameliorate its reproductive helplessness, the Camperdown Elm requires outside help — a sort of assisted grafting, be it by accident of nature or intentional human hand. …
“As excitement over the novelty of Prospect Park began dying down, the Camperdown Elm came to suffer years of neglect. …
“But then, in the 1960s, it was saved by a force even more miraculous than that by which its Scottish great-great-grandfather had been born — not by a botanist or a park commissioner or a policymaker, but by a poet fifteen years the tree’s junior.
“The poet was Marianne Moore (November 15, 1887–February 5, 1972), who had been elected president of New York’s Greensward Foundation — an advocacy group for public parks — in 1965. This brilliant and eccentric woman … created a citizen group called Friends of Prospect Park, aimed at protecting the Camperdown Elm and other endangered trees in the park.
“In 1967, eighty at the time and with a Pulitzer Prize under her belt, Moore penned ‘The Camperdown Elm’ — a beautiful ode to this unusual, dignified, yet surprisingly fragile life-form of which humans are the only bastions. …
“Moore’s poem mobilized the Friends of Prospect Park to envelop the Camperdown Elm in attentive and nurturing care, which ultimately saved it.”
Read the poem and the rest of the story here.
Come to think of it, the Camperdown Elm’s reliance on humans to do the right thing make it very little different from the rest of the natural world.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, brooklyn, camperdown elm, elm, Greensward Foundation, maria popova, marianne moore, new york, poem, poet, postaday, prospect park, tree | 4 Comments »
December 26, 2015 by suzannesmom
Ready for another post on tiny houses? Here is a house built from scratch in Burrillville, Rhode Island, near the border of Massachusetts.
Kim Kalunian (now at WPRI) wrote about it last summer when she was still working at WPRO.
“Jessica Sullivan shares a nearly 200-square-foot tiny house with her husband in Burrillville. It’s 8 by 16 feet, but a small loft gives them extra space for a bed.
“While some tiny homes come prefabricated, the pair decided to build theirs from scratch, and started the process in 2013. They moved in full-time last summer.
“Today, they live on an organic farm, and their tiny home is completely off the grid – they use solar power and carry in their water. They don’t have an oven and instead cook on a RV-style stove top. They have a small bathroom, but there’s no shower. (Don’t worry, they haven’t abandoned personal hygiene: they go to the local gym or shower outside in the warmer months.)
“ ‘We don’t have a water bill, we don’t have an electric bill,’ said Sullivan. ‘For us it costs roughly $800 to $900 a month, that’s including our overhead in the house … our rent, our cellphone, our heat, our groceries.’ ”
Isa Cann of Tiny House Northeast, a professional tiny home design and building company, “who said it’s common for folks to put their tiny homes on wheels, said placement of tiny homes depends a lot on zoning.
“ ‘If the question is, “Where can we park a tiny house?” the first and best answer will always be, “Read the zoning requirements of the town [or towns] you’d like to live in before you get started to buy or build your own tiny house,” ‘ she said.” More here.
Kalunian also describes a tiny apartment in downtown Providence. All these adventurers in miniature living seem to cook on something like hot plates. Other than that I am a terrible pack rat and could never fit everything into a tiny house, having nothing more than a hot plate or camping stove would be a deal breaker for me.
Photo: Another Tiny House Story blog
Jessica Sullivan shares a nearly 200 square-foot tiny house with her husband in Burrillville.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged burrillville, hot plate, Isa Cann, jessica sullivan, kim kalunian, postaday, rhode island, rv camp stove, tiny house, Tiny House Northeast, wpri, wpro | 2 Comments »
December 25, 2015 by suzannesmom
Wherein the grandmother is too tired to talk but will describe the photos. Wreaths on the Colonial Inn, grandson with new truck, church nativity scene early Christmas morning, Christmas tree at John’s house, grandfather with two granddaughters.
So much fun to be around little kids at Christmas. Also very good for sleeping soundly the following night.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged christmas, christmas tree, creche, grandchildren, photo, photography, postaday, presents | 6 Comments »
December 24, 2015 by suzannesmom
Here I am with my siblings, posing before the fireplace in our Christmas Eve pajamas long ago and far away. (We used to be allowed to open one present before Christmas morning — pajamas.) I’m the kid with the ponytail. Today, the boy on the left does biomedical research, the little girl is a psychiatrist, and the boy on the right writes business books.
May all the good things about the season wrap you ’round, and may the not-so-good things roll off your back and vanish.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged christmas eve, family, pajamas, postaday, pousette-dart, siblings | 6 Comments »
December 23, 2015 by suzannesmom
What I liked about this story on rescuers in Iceland was how the volunteer tradition started when “women banded together and organized a rescue crew to curtail the loss of their men at sea.” The part that wasn’t so great was about tourists endangering everyone with harebrained feats for their bucket list.
Nick Paumgarten writes at the New Yorker, “Iceland, with a population of little more than three hundred thousand, is the only NATO country with no standing Army. It has police, and a coast guard, but these, like the citizens they are paid to protect, are spread thin, so come accident or disaster, disappearance or storm, the citizens, for the most part, have always had to fend for themselves.
“[Slysavarnafélagið Landsbjörg, or, in English, the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue] has evolved into a regimented volunteer system that serves as a peerless kind of national-emergency militia. It is not a government program, and so represents a tithing of manpower. There are close to ten thousand members in all, with four thousand of them on ‘callout’ duty, on ninety-seven teams. … They are well trained and well equipped, self-funded and self-organizing, and enjoy a near-mythical reputation among their countrymen, who, though often agnostic regarding the existence of elves and gnomes, are generally not inclined toward reverence or exaggeration. …
“Landsbjörg traces its roots back to the formation, in 1918, of a rescue team in the Westman Islands, an archipelago just off the southern coast. The women on shore banded together and organized a rescue crew to curtail the loss of their men at sea, and in time other fishing communities established similar groups and protocols. Eventually, the fishing industry, as it grew, supported these efforts with donations. On land, farmers, left to their own devices, looked after each other, as they will.” More at the New Yorker, here.
You may get a kick out of the fundraising based on selling fireworks. Setting them off is legal in Iceland once a year. “Last year, Icelanders blew up five hundred tons of fireworks.”
Photo: Benjamin Lowy / Getty Images for The New Yorker
“People think of the rescue teams as the Guardians of the Galaxy,” a mountain guide said. “They forget these are normal people.”
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged archipelago, iceland, Nick Paumgarten, postaday, rescue, search and rescue, Slysavarnafélagið Landsbjörg, volunteer, westman islands | 2 Comments »
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