The Stoop's Too Big Without You

Our friend Tracy moved away. We miss her. We're delighted that she got a job in Boston as a middle school technology teacher, though, because she has just the right combination of cleverness, sense of humor, bullshit filter, and inexplicable fondness for people under the age of 14 to be entrusted with the important and difficult role of teaching. She taught us to appreciate the front stoop, through her own habit of sitting outside grading papers, reading forest service-themed mysteries, or just drinkin a cold one in all variety of weather, day or night.

To add insult to injury, it appeared that Tracy had been replaced by someone driving a car with one of those Christian fish on the back and Texas license plates. Thank Jesus, it turns out the car belongs to Kat, graduate student from London, who moved to New Haven to complete the second half of a year-long fellowship which began at Texas A&M. She bought the car as-is on Craigslist. I don't think she knows what the Christian fish means, and I don't yet know her well enough to tell her. She assured me she doesn't have any guns though.

But back to Tracy. We really got to know her when we expressed our interest in checking out the Mohegan Sun casino in eastern Connecticut, and she proposed combining an excursion with a camping trip. Camping 'n' gambling is not unlike Tracy's many other innovations, one of which will certainly earn her her future fortune. I've never seen someone delight equally in spotting a turtle in an inland salt pond and settling in at a "Wheel of Fortune" half-cent slot machine.

So anyway, tonight when we got home from seeing Superbad (two thumbs up!) to escape the (global climate change) 90-degree September heat, we gave the stoop a post-Tracy try. We had no way to open the beers we had just bought, and it was downhill from there. We haven't given up on stoop-sitting yet, but the concrete will definitely not be nearly so cozy without T-racy.

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.

Monadnock is for Suckers

OK, maybe that title was just to get your attention. Or perhaps a wee bit of sour grapes. We spent a recent jolly weekend at Greenfield State Park in New Hampshire. Never heard of Greenfield State Park, you say? It's lovely, but perhaps more importantly, it's within 20 miles of Mt. Monadnock and had campsites less than a week prior, when we actually got our act together to make plans. We met Tracy B., formerly of our front stoop, now of Somerville, Mass. She proposed a hike up the Pumpelly trail to the summit of Monadnock, thus avoiding the ant-like procession of people up the trail from the park. In the end, we wisely avoided the summit altogether, because for the entire time Mt. Monadnock was in our view, it was covered with people. Plus, we were tired. Work smarter, not harder. Intrepid hikers:
Mountain Laurel along the trail, which seems more legit than the bigger white variety in our backyard:
We had one of those charmed camping weekends where the rain holds off until just after dark when we'd just finished our dinner Saturday night, and stopped before we woke up Sunday. Unfortunately, it being dark, I neglected to notice that my hiking boots were outside the tent. You know what that means: boot slugs! Aaaaagh! The very most treacherous kind of slug:
Sunday morning, an owl flew right through our site, and hung out on this perch for the longest time:
After we broke camp, we stopped by Monadnock Berry Farm on our way home, and loaded up on New Hampshire raspberries.