the boston marathon

Is monday. the finish line is 1 block from my apartment.

trying to make a home in boston

Latte art at cafe l'aroma and the sunday times. The weather is really picking up and i'm starting to love my neighborhood. People are awakening.

the new yorker

I remember when I first started reading the new yorker. There were old issues that happened to be around the gym at work, and having read someone's blog who seemed to like it a lot, i started picking up issues and reading whatever article seemed most interesting while I worked out. The New Yorker is quite dense, and honestly more than a little pretentious. But I found stories that made me want to rip the pages out and preserve them, reading them over and over again to capture the people and experience the author was describing. There are some articles that told such lovely stories.

I subscribed, and over the past few years the only magazine that has piled higher with unread copies has been the Economist, which I finally gave up and canceled. It's unfortunate -- I do love the New Yorker, but I can't keep up with it. It has gone from a leisurely activity, a surprise, to a weekly duty. It doesn't help that certain people seemed to jump on it and complete each issue well before the next would arrive, leaving me 5 deep.

I never transferred my subscription when I moved to Boston, but I also didn't cancel it (probably something psychological about being unwilling to close doors there). When I was home for spring break, I grabbed the issue with the prettiest cover art, glanced at the index, and started reading. It was the style issue. I was reminded of how even if they continue piling up ad infinitum, I will continue to subscribe, because some of the articles are so poignant I want to cry. In this issue I read about Isabel and Ruben Toledo, a fantastic cuban couple so creative and productive and immersed in each other (the abstract doesn't do it justice), and I was so moved I think I'll have to rip out and save the pages as I did with the article about Diller Scofidio + Renfro, a design firm in New York. They did the ICA in Boston. Now that I look them up, I realize each story is about a husband and wife pair who create beautiful things. I love the idea that their relationship manifests itself in their collaboration. I love the picture of Isabel hoolahooping while Ruben dances in the background of their loft. I think I will have to throw all of my New Yorkers into the air and read them randomly as they land.

Edit: Here's a great walk through of their living space: nymag

updates on living in boston

They have these two papers, which I refer to as USA Today for the T, called the Metro Boston and Boston Now. These little bundled men stand outside the T in the morning handing them out, saying things like "here you go sweetheart" and "smile!" When I leave after 10 AM (which is all too often) they're gone, but I can find the papers strewn about the stations and on the train. They have a nice simplistic view of the news (in today's Boston Now, they had a timeline of everything China was doing wrong, starting with the pet food incident and ending with Tibet) and for some reason they constantly seem to talk about sexual predators. Such and such sexual predator is going to jail. Groping on T is up. Some law changed with regards to sexual predators and now they can't live somewhere. etc etc etc -- either this city is sexual predator central, or these papers are obsessed.

Every morning when I grab a paper I would wonder why anyone would pay these bundled little men to hand out free papers, but then I found out they are advertising cash cows. I guess commanding every commuter's attention in the morning is highly valued.

They're building a new cancer building next to Stata, so there's a big fenced area blocking what used to be my route from the T. They have these nice big trees on the sidewalk, which now have signs posted about a town meeting where I think they're going to discuss removing them. I daydream about attending and giving an impassioned speech defending trees and green in our urban landscape -- as if the MIT campus could get any grayer.

It's a strange experience. Sometimes I don't understand what I'm doing and sometimes I feel quite inspired -- like at a talk Nikolai Zeldovich gave yesterday, on HiStar. Inspired and depressed that he seems to have solved all the problems here, leaving nothing for the rest of us -- his thinkpad is RUNNING HiStar. I'm not sure if you can appreciate the work that must have gone into making this robust enough to use. He rebooted in the middle of his presentation to show us how it checkpointed user state, and it flawlessly resumed. The audience applauded.

What a strange place I'm in.

the economist going downhill

Obamaworld versus Hillaryland

Oh Economist, how are you wrong? Let me count the ways...

• I drink wine
• I'm a liberal, young (well relatively) professional
• I eat sushi
• I am intensely worried about America's past sins and its woeful image in the world
  
• I'm a latte drinking elitist

I voted for Clinton. And I know several others who fit that list (but not necessarily the characteristic i'm sure your mind is going to, dear reader, that i'm female) who did as well! Seriously, who writes this junk? Why is it ok for the media to make a bunch of so-obvious -they're-wrong generalizations, throw them out there, and call it reporting?