In Memoriam: Spooky

d. November 25, 2007
May she rest in peace

"Death is a debt to nature due
I've paid the debt & so must you"
Headstone of Joseph Mansfield, d. 1795, Salem, Massachusetts Cemetary

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am thankful for two entire days of focusing single-mindedly on what I will next put in my mouth. And thanks to my mother for shelling out quite a few clams and enduring many unnecessary hours in the Philadelphia airport to be here with us (not to mention her turkey expertise and the many, many dishes she washed). Merry season to you.

Rick 'em Rack 'em Ruck 'em

It was the perfect day for football: lots of yellow and orange leaves still clinging to the trees, overcast, and pretty chilly. It was the perfect matchup: Harvard and Yale, the ivyleaguiest of the Ivy League schools with the oldest rivalry in college football (it makes our NFL Packers-Bears look like a toddler). Yale even claims to have invented the game of college football (having been raised on many snowy Saturdays at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin, I can only snort that if it was invented here in New England, it was perfected in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan ...). Undefeated this season, Yale looked like they would handily best Harvard to bring home another Ivy League title. Which would be lovely to see: anyone who has so much as passed through New Haven, Connecticut can tell you that Yalies have crushing chips on their shoulders about their dear school not being Harvard. Even their fight song alludes to their inferiority complex toward Harvard.

Alas, it weren't so. In the first half, the cheerleader charged with running the big 'H' flag across the end zone after each Harvard touchdown had run about twice as many yards as Yale's running backs. It was, frankly, a little hard to watch. It was almost as if, 20 minutes or so before kickoff, someone on the team remembered there was a game today, and then made a hasty phone call encouraging folks to get dressed and put together a few plays. Someone at the tailgate party we attended joked that he'd never seen a team that appeared to have only defensive players, no offense whatsoever. Final score: 37-6. Ah well. As the song goes, there's always next year.

Walden Ponderings*

After a recent episode of No Reservations in which Anthony Bourdain shoved mouthful after mouthful of savory dumplings of pork and shrimp into his mouth, waxing philosophical about how the Chinese appreciate food and eating better than anyone else, we mopped up our drool and headed to Boston in search of dim sum.

In stark contrast to the hedonism we had planned for Sunday, we started our visit in Concord, Mass at Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau spent two years contemplating nature, solitude, and living a moral life. We didn't know a lot about Thoreau but had the impression of him as a sort of ascetic, not even noticing the hardship of living in a tiny, one-room cabin through two winters, gathering simple meals of tree nuts and wild berries, his transcendental philosophy more important than any bodily need. On our visit to Walden Pond, we learned that his cabin was a half-hour walk from his family's home, enabling his mother to come by occasionally and pick up his laundry. A 19th-Century version, perhaps, of living in one's parents' basement? The steps pictured above lead down to a pleasant, sandy beach at the edge of the pond itself, a 102-foot deep glacial kettle pond.

Here are John and Tracy discussing the virtues of civil disobedience:
Me and H.D., outside a replica of his cabin:
After the vigorous, 1.25-mile hike (with 8 ft. in elevation gain!) around Walden Pond, we were physically prepared for a Sunday of strenuous eating. Chau Chow, in Boston's not-picturesque Chinatown, was a worthy venue. It was that kind of dim-sum place where you wait with a sweaty, noisy crowd, through which waiters weave their way, thumbs stuck in the plates of noodles they're carrying to no one's apparent concern. My favorite dishes were squid fried in lots of crunchy garlic and jalapeno, and those little starchy fried cakes filled with bits of pork and green onion and heaped with thick plum sauce.

All we could do afterwards was plop ourselves down in a very accommodating but cold bit of public sculpture, in a Boston University park abutting (props to Noam) the Charles River.
Please note that that trick where you turn to the side to make yourself appear thinner only works when standing.

More pictures are here.

*Walden Ponderings was a literary magazine developed while I was a student at Henry David Thoreau Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin (go Thunderbirds!). A quick Web search tells me that it's no longer in existence. More's the pity! I always thought it was a clever name for a journal of the poetry and drawings of 5- to 10-year-olds.

Farewell, Daylight

After being lashed all day Saturday by Hurricane Noel with cold winds and rain, he abruptly moved on up the coast. We got our first glimpse of the sun right at sunset, and it lit up the remaining clouds in the sky in fiery oranges, reds and blues. It was an appropriately spectacular sendoff ... we won't see the sun after 5 again for several long months. This is the view of the New Haven skyline—mostly the spires of Yale's taller buildings—from the Pearl Street Observation Tower (aka our bathroom window).