Category Archives: Anywhere
Back to Boston
This image is modified from a Charity Tee by Gildan for sale online. LINK
Yesterday my husband and I drove to the Anderson-Woburn MA commuter rail station, parked, and took the train into Boston to attend a rescheduled BSO concert. I was struck by the quiet demeanor of everyone. I am rural person through and through so I normally find entering the land of mass transit to be noisy, dirty, and I go into a mild state of alertness even though I love many assets that can only found in an urban environment. None of those feelings yesterday. OK there may have been one or two discarded newspapers on the floor of an Orange Line car but really the young people (tweens, teens, college students, 20 somethings) were all displaying a respectful reserve along with their elders. The security checks of bags when entering Symphony Hall was professional, but did not feel intrusive. After the concert we ended up walking quickly past the area where the Patriot’s Day bombing took place. We were trying to make it to North Station in time for a train (which we missed by 2 minutes) so we were not really gawking. Everything looked quite normal, the way it would at the end of April any year except as I have already noted quieter and cleaner. My husband commented when we got home how the streets showed no evidence of the recent dramatic tragedy. We did not walk directly passed the stretch of fence where memorial displays had been relocated but could see a moderate crowd of people viewing those items as we turned the corner to head in the opposite direction. Again my ears were struck by the relative quiet. There was plenty of traffic but I only heard one or two car horns. People might be carrying on conversations but there was no yelling or screaming to friends in the distance.
We will be back in Boston this coming weekend and spending a couple of nights in one of the chain hotels in that central area. I am going to be interested in observing if things are still somber, and comfortable for the simple country kid I will never out age, or whether the noise, grit, grim, and activity of the Boston I remember from years past is starting to return.
For those people and families who will never regain their pre Patriot’s Day 2013 normal please consider donating to The One Fund – Boston.
Six Word Fridays: Home
Spent today at home watching CNN.
A concert in Boston was cancelled.
Looking forward to the reschedule performance.
Weekly Photo Challenge: My 2012 in Pictures (from The Daily Post, 12/28/12)
In 2012 we said goodbye to our 22 & 1/2 year old rescue cat Zoe.
After a short time of mourning we welcomed two new cats to our home.
Thunder, who is mainly my cat, and Lightning, who is mainly my husband’s cat. These sisters, now 9 years old, like their own separate spaces.
We did not travel very much in 2012 but there were a few day trips to Boston, plus a long weekend or two also.
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Six Word Fridays – New
New 2013 calendars are hung everywhere.
Six Word Friday – Escape
A three-day escape next weekend -
to Boston for food, art, and music.
Bravo Restaurant at the Museum of Fine Arts – Boston
Wacky Wednesday # 21 – World Turtle Day
World Turtle Day is observed on May 23rd each year. It was started in 2000 by American Tortoise Rescue. American Tortoise Rescue has been designation the Groupon Grassroots Charity of the Week. If 45 People Donate $10, Then American Tortoise Rescue can build a raised vegetable garden to feed rescued turtles. When I checked there had been over 280 donations made so I’d say the garden will be build and even more will be done for the turtles.
My favorite turtles are the sea turtles in the giant ocean tank at the New England Aquarium in Boston. Here are some images from their website:
I seem to have misplaced the photos I took during my October 2011 visit. Right now the Aquarium is raising funds for a new and improved ocean tank to be installed in 2013 where Myrtle the turtle will be the queen of the exhibit.
Travel Tuesday # 21 – Molly’s in Hanover NH
I remember this restaurant as Molly’s Balloon went it first opened. It replaced a clothing shop and at the time there were other places to eat along Hanover’s main street that I preferred. That was back in the mid 1980s. Now the other places I knew are long gone. So while making a day trip to the “Upper Valley” Molly’s is where we stop for lunch these days. It is pretty typical of a New England college town hang out, take your parents establishment. The decor is wise crack comments on wooden plagues, old back and white photos of Dartmouth doings, and other memorabilia.
So when we stopped there this past Sunday I enjoyed a house salad, a cranberry spritzer, and the 4 oz maple glazed salmon with snow peas while my husband had a house salad, a Sam Adams Pale Ale, and a cheeseburger with fries. Because I had no starch I asked if my husband wanted to share a piece of carrot cake with me. Well I am sorry to say I failed to take a photo of the carrot cake but it was a gigantic slice. We both ate all we wanted and still had about half of it left to bring home.
Travel Tuesday – Return to Summer Shack
As I mentioned yesterday, my husband and I made a day trip to Boston on Sunday. We returned to Summer Shack for a second time and were very pleased with the experience. My appetizer was an item off the specials board, corn fritters with maple syrup. The fitters were on the spicy side but the a deep dunk of each bite into the saucer of mid grade syrup helped balance that fact. The rest of our meal was off the standard menu — with the exception that I was able to sub a side for my grilled shrimp: I opted out of french fries and enjoy a sticky almond coconut rice that was part of an entrée special.
Music Monday #18 – Recycling
I had an outing to Boston yesterday for another Handel & Haydn concert, the last of this season. The program featured a number of pieces with ‘regal’ connections. Thoroughly enjoyable. A soprano soloist booked for the concert had to withdraw which allowed a member of the chorus to take the soprano solo slot. In the first half of the program Teresa Wkim sang the popular Mozart Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165 and then it the second half she again soloed in the Mozart Coronation Mass in C, K. 317. Now somewhere in that Mass, I am going to venture to say in the Gloria, despite the distance between the Köchel catalog numbers I found myself thinking ‘sounds an awful lot like something I already heard today’. Now a quick and simple Google search doesn’t turn up anything about a melodic/harmonic/rhythmic relation but I still believe I heard it. However my search did lead to a note stating that Mozart reused materials from his Mass in C minor (1783) in a 1785 oratorio “Davidde penitente”. So perhaps my ears did indeed catch a bit of “recycling”.
This clip is in no way similar to the concert performance I heard yesterday. I selected it because I have had the pleasure of hearing services & performances in Salisbury Cathedral where this rendition took place. And there is just something endearing about English choristers carrying on their long tradition.
