I have been meaning to put up the rest of the photos from my tour of the USS Cassin Young, but I just hadn’t been able to get around to it yet.
So here are more of the photos from the tour, in no particular order.
Anyone who isn’t a moneyed plutocrat in the very tiny ruling elite here in Boston – Marty Walsh, John Fish, Charlie Baker, and Shirley Leung, I’m looking at you – likely understands that yesterday’s announcement that Boston “won” the USOC nomination for the 2024 olympics is a Very Bad Thing. The Boston 2024 group has existed for about a year and, chaired by Fish, has been trying to essentially shame the populace into believing that if we do not do this thing, invite the world to come here for a 3 week-long party 9 years from now, we’re provincial losers and that Boston isn’t fit for the world stage.
To put it bluntly, the people at Boston2024 are liars.
Continue reading “#BlackLivesMatter & #NoBoston2024 – The intersection of money, race & power”
The Boston Mineral Club is having our annual Auction on January 10th. (That’s this Saturday for those of you following along at home.) Geoff and I are rock nerds. I’ve been a huge rock nerd since I was a kid and I’m THRILLED that I’m finally going to have a chance to go to a live gem and mineral auction in person.
Continue reading “Calling all Boston area Rock and Mineral geeks!”
Part of the problem with doing family history is that there is so much missing. Kelly and I both had relatives serving in the U.S. Navy in World War Two, and on a wide range of different ships. Kelly had a grandfather that served on the USS Massachusetts (BB-59) during the war, and I had a grandfather that eventually served on the USS Cutlass (SS-478). Interestingly enough, both of these vessels are well-documented, and even more fascinating, both of them still exist.
Kelly and I are big Neil Gaiman fans, in case you didn’t know already.
Now we have yet another reason to love the guy. Last year he recorded a wonderful version of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: a version in which he reads from Charles Dickens’ own annotated copy, as Charles Dickens, complete with clothes and beard.
It’s that time of year again, Meravelha has a concert for you. These hardy souls are, amongst the insanity of December, putting on a concert featuring the music of the Christmas season. Twice. I’ll be at both concerts.
Medieval Ensemble
presents
Continue reading “Meravelha presents Twelve Days of Christmas”
So like I was saying in my earlier post, I managed to get a pretty-much full tour of the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Cassin Young last Saturday. I took a lot of pictures.
As many of you already know, I am a lover of history. Maritime history is especially one of my favorite sub-fields of history, and I love to see historic ships or reproductions of historic ships at any opportunity. I am lucky enough to live in a state (and a region) that has many.
So I went to the old Navy Yard in Charlestown on Saturday, since my back was feeling a bit better and I was feeling up to doing some walking around. And I am so very glad I did, because for the first time ever I got to take a tour of the inside of the USS Cassin Young, one of the museum ships kept there by the National Park Service.
One of my favorite things about living in Cambridge (and Greater Boston generally) is that I get to meet so many authors. I have met more authors in the last five years here in Cambridge than I have over all of the rest of my life combined. And although I have met a great many authors whose books I liked or even loved, sometimes I get to meet someone really, really great, whose work has a lot of special meaning for me. One of my literary heroes, as it were.
I got to meet Neil Gaiman.
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that independent bookstores are a bit hard to come by these days. We’re lucky here in the People’s Republic, because we still have a lot of them. But on Friday one of them went the way of the Dodo and the world is a little less fun for it. So long, Lorem Ipsum.
The Books are Taking Over... 