Week in Seven Words #293

bay
Foam churns in the wake of the ferry. The city recedes to the size of Legos. I lean back and feel the wind coast over me. The water is deep and glistening.

murmur
From between the rocks, the water whispers.

peering
Sunflowers, leaning out of buckets, press their faces to a bright window.

sheltered
Most of the homes have porches half-screened by flowers and leafy branches.

soft-hued
I'm walking in a world of pastel colors: pink doors, seashells, light blue skies, flowers enfolding fences and homes.

tending
In a dimly lit room with dusky, rose-colored walls and no TV, I press bandaids onto my blisters and settle back in bed with a novel.

vicinity
The famine memorial is spread out in the foreground. Behind it, a glass-fronted convenience store displays large cutouts of a spoon and fork.

Cleo and the Black Boston Elite in The Living Is Easy by Dorothy West

… she would cut off her arm for these sisters of hers with the same knife she held at the tenderest spot in their hearts.

That's Cleo, the main character of a book that brings to life the world of Boston's black elite shortly before and during the First World War.

Cleo is originally from the South, but after making her way north learns the social refinements of northern cities and marries a down-to-earth businessman, Bart Judson, whose money helps her maintain her social airs. She doesn't see herself as black so much as Bostonian, and wants to raise her daughter, Judy, to also be a little Bostonian lady.

Dorothy West's The Living Is Easy, which I read for the Classics Club Challenge, is fascinating for two main reasons.

Week in Seven Words #247

assuaged
The restaurant feels impersonal, all the furniture spare and made of metal, but they serve rich comfort food.

barred
When I see the number of missed calls that have accumulated in my cell phone, I'm glad I kept it on 'silent.' Otherwise, I wouldn't have had the morning to myself, to explore as I like.

enchanting
Plum-colored houses with white picket fences. Cobbled lanes and sunken gardens.

gratifying
Tourists licking ice cream in the salt-flavored air.

singular
A lonely giant on a charcoal ledge looks away from the moon.

soaped
Back-to-back episodes of Shark Tank, the TV flickering in a dark room. My mind gently wiped clean of the day's emotions.

tenacious
His wife strikes me as hard and bright, a woman who's difficult to get to know but worth knowing.

Half-Day in Boston

From the same trip with the Cambridge morning walk and Salem in 25 photos…

Boston Museum of Fine Arts



Mary Baker Eddy Library





At the library, there's the Mapparium - a huge walk-in glass globe you can stand right in the middle of. The globe dates from the 1930s, so it's a snapshot of the world then. Wasn't allowed to take photos in it, but here's a look from the website.

Taking a break from watching the Boston coverage

My main sources of information about the Boston Marathon bombings over the past few days have been BostonGlobe.com and Boston.com, but I realized today that I have to give those a break, after seeing essentially the same message ("suspect remains at large") repeated several times over the course of the day with different wordings ("manhunt underway," "suspect on the loose," etc.) to give the impression that there are new developments.

This is a nightmarish situation, but for people who aren't currently in the thick of it, let's step back. People who ought to know better are pouncing on every bit of new information and running with it, regardless of whether it's confirmed or not. Same goes for trying to come up with a narrative, right this moment, to explain the attackers' motives, when they were just identified yesterday and we still don't know everything about them and how they got to the point in their lives where they thought it would be an awesome idea to kill and maim random people. I hope the surviving one is captured soon. But please let's deal with this patiently. I understand the urge to speculate, but doing so publicly, while re-tweeting rumors and fake photos and delivering broadcasts based on information from unofficial sources, is irresponsible.

Not that I think this post will have an effect on that. Just wanted to vent a little.

A bit of Boston

This week I took a few vacation days and headed to Portland, Maine (more on that planned for future posts).

I passed through Boston on the way back home and had enough time to walk around a little; these are some photos I took along the way between North Station and South Station.

Temple Street - a narrow, quiet lane, with lovely flowers and no traffic:



And at the southern end of the street, the State Capitol House:



Let's zoom out and make it more imposing:



(Though it can't be too imposing with a "Let's Go Celtics" banner.)

Nearby businesses with political themes:



and a bar honoring the amendment that made its legal existence possible:



A group of students on a historical tour, with their guide in historical get-up. Can history ever successfully compete with cold sweet desserts?



I rest here for a while. Boston Commons is a great place to crash and relax.



Or flirt beneath a fountain's cool spray.



The enchantment continues in South Station:



Where there's an unexpected string quartet performance, right in the train station; Mozart accompanied by boarding announcements: