Launch Party

Yesterday was Miles' birthday party. Bonnie of Children's Technology Workshop did a great job leading a squirmy crew of boys through the process and the physics of building catapults. It's amazing what chaos a small band of 8-9 year old boys can generate! They quickly jumped into modifying their new creations with thicker rubberbands...or more of them to get more power. As you can imagine, they wanted to launch wet sponges, grapes, stuffed animals, etc.

Everyone got mustaches in their goody bags and looked great in them, but somehow we didn't manage to get many good shots. Here's one of Miles in a rather distinguished looking one.


Oh and here's a snap of Miles' teacher leading the class in singing Happy Birthday when we brought in cupcakes. It happened to be Pajama Day.

Birthday Boy

Today we celebrated Miles' birthday with a low-key family celebration. Next weekend is his party with his friends -- catapults will be involved. Should prove exciting!

This picture was taken with his new camera courtesy of Nana. He loved all his gifts from Grandma and Grandpa, too, and is itching to put them to use.

Meet our guitar teacher Sam

Miles and I just started taking guitar lessons with Sam, in his wild apartment featured in the video. When we bought Miles' guitar before our first lesson and mentioned our teacher's name in the shop, everyone smiled and said, "Moooo". Now we understand. His apartment has even more features now and HGTV did a little piece on it.

I knew we had found the right guy when during the lesson Miles was trying to be a bit too clever...and Sam looked at me and said, "Don't worry, I can 'out-Miles' Miles."

Happy Valentine's Day

Snapped these Jim Dine hearts at the DeCordova Museum last weekend. Hope your day is sweet!

DeCordova Museum

On Saturday we traced, for a little while, the route of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Amazing to see the actual routes and sites. We spent much more time though at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln. Just as we started to step outside to view the sculture garden, the snow clouds started unloading. Here are some pics from our snowy visit.

Costa Rican memories

One of the secret perks of this fellowship is a “field-trip” to Costa Rica. Such hardship! It’s frequently described as a working trip, and indeed, it was heavily scheduled. But this is the kind of work anyone could get used to. We spent a full-day learning about Costa Rica’s national health-care system, which, as they say, allows a 3rd-world economy to achieve 1st-world health standards. It’s not perfect, and not directly applicable to the U.S. But it was pretty interesting to see what a strict public-health focus can achieve. They still have lots of grumbling about the taxes, and those who are healthy feel they shouldn’t have to pay so much.

The more glamorous part of the trip took us first to an active volcano, called Arenal. It's one of the most active in the world, erupting pretty steadily since the late 1960's. We hiked in as far as you are allowed to go, and with binoculars, you can watch boulders tumbling down the flanks, in little bursts all day, every day. At night, if the cloud lifts, it looks like little campfire ashes floating in the blackness. And at any hour, you can hear the crashing thuds.

In the rain forest, highlights included the amazing leaf-cutter ants (yes, bugs – but they have an incredible ecological niche. They fan out, cut off swatches of leaves, and carry them home, where, like farmers, they are harvesting a giant underground fungus, which is the sustenance for the colony. True symbiosis: The fungus only grows when the ants care for it; the ants depend on the fungus. Okay, I’ll stop now.) We went out with a researcher who captures bats at night (we saw four fruit bats and one vampire). They were pretty traumatized by our flashlights, as she held them for us.

And we got a few hours at the beach, the last day, where I rode a surf-board for the first time. Managed to stand up for about two seconds. The rest of the time was spent on marathon bus rides, along the winding mountain highways of Central America.

If this line of study was a major, what would it be?

Harvard started back up this week, so Keith and I are busily shopping classes. MIT starts next week. One thing I love about this academic set-up is that my slate of classes don't need to add up to any particular major. When you see my list of classes, you'll understand why I say that. Here's what's on my short list this semester:

- Near East History from rise of Islam to the 11th century
- Czech Culture from Prague Spring to Velvet Revolution
- Decipherment (learning to decipher ancient texts - this looks so fun)
- Politics of Congress (taught by the professor that leads the program that all newly elected members of Congress take!)
- Quantitative Reasoning OR Psychology & Economics
- Women Writers of Imperial China
- Strategic Organization Design (my only MIT class this semester)

Bread slices back!

Have you ever heard of anyone getting a finger cut from a crusty ciabatta? Well, now you have! I have a quarter-inch cut on my knuckle...the knife was nowhere in the vicinty. It was the blasted crust!

I opted not to post a picture of the injury, instead you see a picture of the rather harmless looking perpetrator.

Do you know the way to San Jose...?

This was Keith at 4AM today heading out for the week-long fellowship field trip to Costa Rica. Look at what he's missing out on:

Inconvenient Beauty

Heavy snowfall blanketed the area Sunday and Monday with more headed our way tomorrow and on Friday.


Yesterday, the we couldn't get the car out, so we had to hoof it across town to observe a violin lesson (Miles wants to learn how to play). Snapped some pics of the lovely scenery we encountered. From a distance, the trees look like they are all abloom with white blossoms.

Fun with friends and webcams

We had our first SKYPE video call with Rosa & the girls today...it was so great to see them! Great idea Rosa...let's do it again soon!

Today a new Boston Tea Party begins...

(or alternative title: Ode to Joy)
Thank you Jen and Ryan for supporting my habit, you are the best!

Happy New Year!

We're back from a fantastic week in Floria. We had 80+ degree weather everyday, with only 2 minutes of rain during the entire trip. The wildlife in Florida is breathtaking. Thanks to EJ for all the insider tips!

Below is a little video snippet of Miles and Keith kayaking in a mangrove "tunnel" in the Everglades, the expert paddler ahead of them is yours truly. The space is pretty narrow and there is often very little clearance over your head, so it's often easier to just push off of the mangroves rather than paddling.


This slideshow has some of the better pics from our trip, including a decent shot of a mother alligator and her babies that we paddled past while kayaking.
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Snow, snow, snow

This car is parked in front of our apartment. Turns out there's been more snow this month than all of last season. The Massachusetts highway department has already spent its entire winter $24 million sand and salt budget.

You better watch out...

Jazz hands on the way - check out our dance moves. To understand why we're dancing, see weather conditions below (please note the "Feels Like" temp).

Current conditions for where we are:


Weather for where we'll be for the next week!

The Fellows

This picture was taken early on. I'll let Keith name everyone.

Technical difficulties

Miles made a few signs to ensure the message was clear to everyone.

You know the old "walked a mile to school in the snow" bit?

Guess what Miles and I did today? Actually I walked a mile in the snow to get him and then we walked a mile in the snow to get back home. We almost always walk home, there's just been much more snow lately!

BTW: Happy Birthday, Mom! Hope you got the flowers.

Hanukkah is over...

...but I just realized I forgot to post an action shot of the new menorah Karen gave us.

Q&A with Miles and Kari

Miles e-mailed my friend Kari, who works in Shanghai, the following question:

Hi Kari,

This is Miles. My friends at school said sticking up your pinky is a swear in China. Is that true? Thank you.

Sincerely, Miles

This was Kari's thoughtful response:

Hi Miles :)

That was a really good question. And in fact, I had to do a little digging to find out. Sticking your pinky up means you are referring to something that is "small". So most of my Chinese friends and co-workers have told me that it would depend on how you meant it to mean something bad or not. Does that make sense? I am sure you could think of some normal ways to use a pinky to indicate small and some mean ways ... probably the nice/normal ways are the best :)

Sincerely,
Kari

Gnome for the holidays

I was shopping on Newbury Street in Boston and saw this sassy gnome staring out at me. He was in a shop full of gnomes, fairies and other mythical creatures.

Remembering the last drops of fall color on the Mohawk trail

Yikes, it's December, our second snow has arrived and I'm just getting around to posting about our Veteran's day travels. For the long weekend, we went on a mini-tour of the Western Mass/Berkshires. In summer or prime leaf-viewing season, this area would be packed. But, with the arrival of the chilly pre-snow air and with most, though not all, of the fall color gone, it's very quiet.

Day one - Hadley & Amherst: After a very late start, we drove to Hadley where we had short, but very enjoyable visit with Jill Kaufman, her husband Av, and their two girls. Jill is a friend of Keith's from public radio, turns out Av is also a public radio reporter. They live in a sweet old farmhouse in Hadley. Av has lived in New England most of his life and has an incredible wealth of information about this region housed in his head. They are such smart, funny, and warm people -- we'll have to head back for another visit. Hopefully we'll get to see their pond and the local snapping turtles that live there.

Day two - Roadside Stops and North Adams
- Shelburne Falls: Artist community sort of like Mount Vernon, but more authentic somehow. Glacial Potholes. Delicious warm Apple Puff, tea, and coffee at Shelburne Falls Coffee Roaster. If you go there, don't waste time with cold apple puff...get it warmed.

- Mohwak trail gift shop: When you travel with Miles gift shops are a part of the equation.

North Adams : Visit Mass MoCA. The museum is housed in an immense old factory with lots of wide open spaces perfect for displaying large scale artworks.

I was excited to find a Strandbeest by Theo Jansen. Keith and I had previously seen his work online where you can see it in motion. The pieces depend upon wind for mobility, so at MassMoCA it lies there like a mysterious and beautiful washed up alien life-form.

Also was really intrigued by the work of Heeseop Yoon. She creates very large installations using black tape, vellum, and pencil. I haven't found a photograph that captures the gesture and depth that she is able to create with these simple materials. It's sort of like she combines sumi, mural art, and fine sketching.

There was a large Spencer Finch exhibit, that, with a few wonderful exceptions didn't work for me. Much of the exhibit was focused on accuracy of color and color of light(he uses a colorimeter to ensure this) ...and being somewhat colorblind, it was lost on me.


We spent the night in lovely Porches Inn. Miles and Keith enjoyed many rounds of their "swedish treatment" (where they swim in the heated outdoor pool then dash through the cold mountain air for a dip in the hot tub and then pool....then hot tub). The town was so shuttered up that only two restaurants in town were open. Fortunately for us, one was the excellent Gramercy Bistro.

Day three: Visit Williamstown (home of lovely Williams college), drive through Bershires, visit to Hancock Shaker Village.