The most memorable event this year by far is the birth of my baby girl and second child Kay on November 19th.  Everything else pales in comparison.  Here’s a photo of Kay with my son Peter.  The rest of the list follows in chronological order.

• Snow -We had an interesting winter with several heavy snowstorms in a short period of time.  I even got to go up on the roof of our house to shovel some off.  The snow was fun, especially seeing it through the eyes of a three year old, but it got very tiresome when it wouldn’t melt away.
• Salem – a fun day trip North of Boston by train featuring the Peabody Essex Museum and candy!
• Boston Breakers Game / Red Sox Game – I took Peter to a Breakers’ soccer game and was surprised that he was actively engaged in the game.  So by his request I took him to Fenway for his first Sox game as well.  Looking forward to more sporting events in 2012.
• JP Children’s Soccer – Peter started playing children’s soccer in the Spring.  It looked like so much fun that I pushed my personal comfort boundaries and signed up to coach in the Fall.   I was surprisingly successful coaching 3-4 year olds to at the very least get some experience with the ball at their feet.  Of course, the players’ favorite game was Chase the Coach.
• Drawing Class – I took a drawing class at the Eliot School in JP, hoping to learn perspective and found I could draw a pretty good tea pot.
• Wake Up the Earth - One of JP’s great annual events.  Peter & I dropped by to watch the parade after soccer practice and ended up participating in the procession by bike.
• Bike Rides – Peter & I participated in three organized biking events: JP Spring Roll, Bikes Not Bombs Bike-A-Thon, & Hub On Wheels. All were fun, but the BNB event was the most memorable for taking us through parts of Boston I’d never seen and for the vibrant post-ride festival.
• New York in June – Peter & I spent 72 hours together in the city that never sleeps visiting the Central Park Zoo, the Staten Island Ferry, Citi Field for a Mets game, the Intrepid Museum, the High Line, and lots of playgrounds.
• Visit to Harvard Depository – kind of geeky, but I enjoyed a special tour of Harvard Library’s offsite book and records storage warehouse and wanted to take home a Raymond order picker of my very own.
• Wicwas Lake Lodge – Our magnanimous friend Craig invited us to spend a long weekend at a lake house in New Hampshire with another family.  There was much running and giggling and splashing in the lake.  The kids had fun too.
• Visit from a friend – Our friend Sara and her family passed throw town and spent the night on a sultry evening.  Peter and her daughter broke the ice with stomp rockets and then jumped on the bed together.  It was a good sign that Peter was ready for a sibling.
• Two Parties in One Day – In the morning we went to a third birthday party featuring a performance by Wayne Potash.  In the afternoon, our downstairs neighbors hosted a bbq in our backyard.  Nice to have a party so close and not have to set up.
• Davis Square Tours – This walking tour had to contend first with Hurricane Irene and then with the street bands of HONK! Fest, but it turned to be one of the best tours I’ve ever lead in an exciting neighborhood.  This Boston By Foot will return on July 29, 2012.
• Trapp Family Lodge – The hills were alive with the sounds of Peter as Susan’s parents treated us to a long weekend at this rustic mountain retreat in Vermont.
• Old Sturbridge Village – Peter kept asking about life in the “olden days” so I did what any history geek would do: I took him to a living history museum.  And he loved it.
• Occupy Movement – This is an odd choice as I never spent a night in a camp but was inspired by the people who did and tried to share the best articles, stories, and opinions on my Delicious, Twitter, and Tumblr feeds.  More thoughts on Occupy here
• High School Reunion – In 1991 I graduated from a small Catholic high school in Connecticut, the last class to graduate before the school closed.  20 years later we got back together with spouses and children for a play date, a dinner, and a tour of the old school (now an elementary school).  It turned out better than I imagined, and I had positive thoughts going in.
• Promotion to Processing Archivist – In November, I started a new position at my library adding archival processing responsibilities to some of my earlier duties and moving from assistant to professional.  Oddly, this is the type of job I thought I’d like when I started library school, but I took an interesting, circuitous route to get there.
• Holiday Week – The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is always eventful and we took advantage of visiting the Museum of Science, Boston Common, The Children’s Museum, The New England Aquarium, The Christmas Revels, The Larz Anderson Auto Museum and Park, and Edaville USA.

Previously:

• 2010 Year in Review: Memorable Events
• 2009 Year in Review: Memorable Events
• 2008 Year in Review: Memorable Events
• 2007 Year in Review: Memorable Events

Some of my favorite photos are below. If you want to see more, check out my online photo slideshow.

San T. Rex is coming to town.

Leatherback Turtle surfaces for a snack in the giant ocean tank.

Anderson Auto Museum license plate collection.

The Edaville Railroad's steam engine

Big fun on the big wheel

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 47,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 17 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

In no particular order:

• Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle
• One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde
• Triumph of the City by Edward L. Glaeser
• Maphead by Ken Jennings
• The Big Short by Michael Lewis
• Boilerplate : history’s mechanical marvel by Paul Guinan
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
• Soccer in a football world : the story of America’s forgotten game by David Wangerin
• The Boneshaker by Kate Milford
• 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

Every Book I Read in 2011

Books published in 2011 in bold. (A) is for audiobook.

January

• Tinkers by Paul Harding (A)
• Revolutionaries by Jack Rakove
• The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman (A)
• The Big Short by Michael Lewis
• Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen (A)
• Boilerplate : history’s mechanical marvel by Paul Guinan

February

• The Archaeology of Home by Katharine Greider
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (A)
• The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman
• Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan
• Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery (A)

March

• The Far Side of the World by Patrick O’Brian (A)
• One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus
• Sixty Feet, Six Inches by Bob Gibson & Reggie Jackson
• Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle

April

• 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang
• Take Time For Paradise by A. Bartlett Giamatti
• Ambassadors of Reconciliation by Ched Myers
• Poverty of Spirit by Johannes B. Metz
• Why you can disagree– and remain a faithful Catholic by Philip S. Kaufman
• As It Was In The Beginning by Robert McClory

May

• Beastly Fury by Robert Sanders
• Soccer in a football world : the story of America’s forgotten game by David Wangerin
  
• Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics by Jonathan Wilson
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (A)
• The Whites of Their Eyes by Jill Lepore
• The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (A)
• Once in a lifetime : the incredible story of the New York Cosmos by Gavin Newsham

June

• Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us by Joe Palca & Flora Lichtman (A)
• Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Syzmanksi
• One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde
• The Crime of the Century by Stephanie Schorow
  
• The Underboss by Gerard Neill
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (A)

July

• The Pox and the Covenant by Tony Williams
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: Or On the Segregation of the Queen by Laurie R. King (A)
• Taking the Field by Howard Megdal
• The F-Word by Jesse Sheidlower
• Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (A)
• Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway by Kirk Johnson
• Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer (A)

August

• Kate Vaiden by Reynolds Price
• Selected Shorts: Lots of Laughs! by Symphony Space (A)
• Dangerously funny by David Bianculli (A)
• Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion by Johan Harstad
• Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson (A)
• Get Out!: 150 Easy Ways for Kids & Grown-Ups to Get Into Nature and Build a Greener Future by Judy Molland
• The Boneshaker by Kate Milford
• Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne

September

• Boston Riots by Jack Tager
• At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson (A)
• Consequences by Penelope Lively

• The Pun Also Rises by John Pollack
• Triumph of the City by Edward L. Glaeser
• Bossypants by Tina Fey
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (A)
• Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression by Morris Dickstein (A)
• Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg

• Blackout by Connie Willis
• All Clear by Connie Willis

December

• Maphead by Ken Jennings
  
• The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson

“Walking for peace may certainly strike you and me as futile and useless, but if a person believes it works, then it’s the most logical and rational thing in the world.  To walk for a reason, any reason, however personal or obscure, is surely a mark of rationality.  Money, art, self-knowledge, world peace, these are not eccentric motivations for walking; they’re damn good ones, regardless of whether or not they succeed.  I find myself coming to the conclusion that perhaps the only truly eccentric walker is the one who walks for no reason whatsover.  However, I’m no longer sure if that’s even possible.” – p. 85

“We walked on, not very far and not very fast.  It gradually became obvious, and it was not exactly a surprise, that two hours standing around listening to stories, interspersed with rather short walks, of no more than a couple of hundred yards each, was actually very hard work, much harder than walking continuously for two hours.  As the tour ended twenty people were rubbing their backs, complaining about their feet, and saying they needed to sit down.  I checked my GPS: in those two hours we’d walked just under a mile.” – p. 90

Pegg’s autobiography is another celebrity biography (an unusual genre for me although I read two in the same month) that thankfully transcends the genre.  Pegg is witty and humorous as a reflects on his life but also offers good insight on his life and its impact on his comedy work.  At times he also takes the educated approach to evaluating some of his beloved pop culture such as Star Wars.  He does lose some nerd cred though when he admits to being a life guard and other non-nerdly exploits of his youth.  Pegg also appears to be content with his life and grateful for the many opportunities he’s been given.  If you like Simon Pegg and his work you’ll enjoy this book.  The only downside is some inter-filed chapters which are written in a manner that can only be described as a 12-year-old Pegg writing a fan fiction about his future life.  These chapters may be easily skipped.

Recommended books: Bossypants by Tina Fey, American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent, and Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years by Michael Palin.
Rating: ***

The Revels impress me each year by crafting a show around a theme with consistent narrative that logically incorporates music and dance from various traditions.  This year’s production is set in a French fishing village on the Mediterranean that is hosting an annual feast that draws pilgrims from near and wide.  Thus we are able to enjoy traditional music from France and other parts of Europe as well as traveling performers from the East playing Arabic music.  The Sharq Trio steal the show with sets in both acts of Arabic singing, dance and percussion.      The trio seemed to mesmerize my infant daughter at the very least.  Salome Sandoval also lends her stunning voice as a soloist.

The center of the performance is three members of the Guild of Fools – Soleil (Timothy Sawyer), Etoile (Sabrina Selma Mandell), and Eclaire de Lune (Mark Jaster) – performing the annual pageant. Amid the music and revelry there is the lurking presence of the skeletal Boney (Linnea Coffin) who seems to be just out of sight of the villagers on stage, but very frightening to at least one four-year-old boy in the audience.  At a key moment in the first act, Boney and her skeleton crew seize the light from the world plunging the holiday performance into darkness.  The fools thus are given the quest of finding their namesake light sources – the moon, the stars, and the sun – which they do with plenty of song and dance and a nativity play along the way.  The Revels crew deserve a lot of credit for the stage design featuring multiple layers of scaffolding for the performers and a Ship of Fools upon which the featured trio sail to fish for the reflection of the moon.  The costuming is also brilliant, especially Soleil, Etoile, and Eclaire de Lune’s outfits for the concluding mummer’s play.  And the makeup helped make Boney and the other skeletons the scariest things I’ve ever seen in a Revels’ production.

The final performance is Thursday December 29th at 1 pm, so get tickets and go see the show if you can.  If you’re reading this after the fact, make sure to check out The Revels’ website for future events.

Other Reviews:

• The Boston Globe: Traditional and Terrific ‘Revels’ Fun
• Dorchester Reporter: Revels Returns Christmas Story to its Roots
• Boston Herald: ‘Revels’ puts the fun back into Christmas

Related posts:

• Christmas Revels (2006)
• Pub Sing
• Christmas Revels: The Reviews Are In (2009)
• The 40th Anniversary Christmas Revels (2010)

I heartily welcome the removal of this eyesore which is both overbuilt for the traffic it carries and a detriment to the neighborhood.  Unfortunately, there is a movement afoot to create an auto-centric solution by rebuilding the overpass which I believe would bode poorly for the future of the neighborhood as well as for anyone who wishes to navigate the area below the bridge on foot, by bike, on public transportation, and even by car.  Several organizations such as LivableStreet, WalkBoston,  The Emerald Necklace Conservancy,  MassBike, the Boston Cyclists Union, and JP Bikes have come out in favor of an at-grade city street option to replace the current overpass.  Below is a copy of my letter to Thomas Broderick, acting chief engineer of MassDOT, explaining my reasons for supporting the at-grade option.  If you live in Jamaica Plain, Roslindale or elsewhere in Boston  and would like to help spur the economic development of Forest Hills by making it livable for all users – pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users as well as motorists – please consider writing a letter yourself (the BCU provides a good template) and attending future public meetings to support an at-grade city street.

Dear Mr. Broderick,

I am a resident of the Forest Hills neighborhood in Jamaica Plain and commute through the intersection below the Casey Overpass on a daily basis by foot, bicycle, public transportation and by automobile.  I welcome the news that the crumbling and overbuilt Casey Overpass must be demolished and could be replaced with an at-grade city street.  This approach would help reconnect the Emerald Necklace, create new public space, allow for better neighborhood development and provide safer connections for bicyclists and pedestrians as well as motorists.  Unfortunately, voices are mobilizing to encourage MassDOT to take a more expensive and auto-centric approach by reconstructing the highway overpass over Forest Hills.  I am writing to offer my support for an at-grade city street connecting the Arborway as the better option for the future of the neighborhood and its residents.

I am aware that traffic engineers in your department have determined that both a bridge and the at-grade option will handle the predicted traffic flow of 2035 in roughly the same way. In light of this I see no reason to build a bridge. In future projects, I believe that the recently consolidated MassDOT would serve Massachusetts better to find ways to hold traffic flow around our fair city to the levels of 2011 or less instead of planning for traffic increases. This could be accomplished in many areas by developing public transportation, a safe connective bikeways network and pedestrian-friendly streets that encourage active transportation and healthier lifestyles.

The current situation under the bridge is quite the harrowing experience for pedestrians and cyclists and even for motorists.  The bridge support structure creates blinds spots for turning vehicles and lack signaled left turn lanes making the intersection a frightening place to make a turn.  When I commute by bike passing under the Casey Overpass is the most unpleasant part of my ride although necessary to navigate this intersection to get from my home to the Southwest Corridor Bike Path.  An at-grade option would mean that the bike path would no longer have to dead end at New Washington St.

With the existing at grade New Washington Street and the access lanes to the highway overpass, pedestrians have to make as many as three crossings in a short distance when walking down Washington or South Streets.  The access ramps are particularly dangerous to cross since drivers using them have a “highway mentality” that causes them to exceed the speed limit and not pay attention to walkers and bikers.  I find that the overpass and the access lines also contribute to automotive congestion in the morning rush hour as the need to have multiple traffic signals close together causes the traffic flow to back up.  In fact, on one occasion I was stuck on a 39 bus for five minutes because a handful of cars snarled up South Street between the two traffic lights under the overpass.  An at-grade city street would mean that motorists, buses, bicyclists and pedestrians would only have to navigate one crossing making the street easier and more welcoming for everyone.

I am also concerned of the costs to taxpayers and neighborhood residents that come from constructing a new highway overpass through Forest Hills.  The overpass is obviously the more expensive option and would leave little money for improved facilities for bicycling, walking and public transportation that would be possible with the at-grade option.  Historically, the Casey Overpass was a decision made in the 1950s when high-speed auto transportation through the city was thought to be the wave the future.  This mentality caused considerable harm to Boston such as the Fitzgerald Expressway forced through the heart of the city and paving over James Jackson Storrow’s Embankment parks.  Here in Boston and in cities worldwide the idea of urban freeways has been discredited and when elevated highways are removed in cities from San Francisco to Seoul the cities have benefited from increased economic development and reduced automobile congestion.  It should also be noted that the Casey Overpasss was rebuilt in the 1980s just 30 years after it was constructed.  Now 30 years later it needs to be rebuilt again.  The cost of the new overpass would include greater maintenance costs and the very real possibility that in another 30 years we would be in the same situation of repairing and replacing that bridge. 

Finally, there are great opportunities to improve the Forest Hills neighborhood from the Arborway Yard to the parking lots and open space around the T station.  Examples of economic development in the shadow of a freeway overpass are few and far between and the current development in the immediate area of the overpass reflects the depressing effect of highway infrastructure in a neighborhood setting.  Permanently removing the Casey Overpass would be a good first step in encouraging the development of new transit-oriented housing and commercial space that would revitalize Forest Hills as a dynamic bikable, walkable and economically-flourishing neighborhood. With the construction of the new large Co-Op store and other small businesses to join them in the near future, the Forest Hills area is fast becoming a thriving business district, not merely an MBTA transit center located amidst several neighborhoods. It is imperative that traffic is slowed down and adequate long-term access solutions are created to accommodate the increasing numbers of pedestrians and bicyclists.

My approval and support of the at-grade option is contingent on the timely completion of bike paths that will travel up both sides of Washington St. toward Roslindale from the project area, and ending at Ukraine Way where they will be designed to connect to and complement the bike lanes on that street. The construction of these bike paths should be considered as part of the replacement project and completed within the same time frame as that project.

It is also contingent on there being no “slip lanes” at either Washington Street, Hyde Park Avenue or South Street. Slip lanes create dangerous situations for both pedestrians and cyclists due their wider radius turn that allows cars to travel through them at an increased speed. There is no need for speed in this area and in this community we value the safety of our residents over convenience for motor vehicles.

I also support converting Shea Circle into “Shea Square” by creating a normal intersection there. Traffic circles, particularly those handling more than one lane of traffic, have been proven to be particularly dangerous to bicyclists and pedestrians.  Further along the Arborway, MassDOT should consider redesigning the large rotary at the intersection with Centre Street.  Currently traffic coming from Forest Hills gets backed up by the traffic signal while traffic from all other directions is not signaled and enters directly into the circle with very little congestion.  Improved traffic flow for this intersection would help prevent auto traffic from backing up into Forest Hills.

I strongly believe that the at-grade option offers a better future for myself and for the neighborhood I love.  Please consider the needs and happiness of all people – residents, pedestrians, public transit users, and cyclists as well as motorists – when planning for the future of Forest Hills.

Huntington Avenue photo courtesy of Yarian Gomez's photostream on Flickr

Come out this Sunday October 30th at 2pm for a guided walking tour of Boston’s Avenue of the Arts lead by Boston By Foot guides (including yours truly).  The tour begins in front of The Church of Christ, Scientist on Massachusetts Avenue and the cost is just $15/person.  If you become a Boston By Foot member admission is reduced to just $5 and you get lots of other benefits as well.

Have you ever wondered why so many cultural institutions dedicated to fine arts, music, education, religion, and sports are clustered in one area in Boston?  As we walk along this cultural corridor we’ll explore the history of Huntington Avenue and learn about:

• landmarks created by two of the most remarkable women in Boston’s history: Mary Baker Eddy and Isabella Stewart Gardner
• not one but two acoustically perfect concert halls
• not one but two historical figures named Eben
• the oldest artificial ice sporting arena in the world
• Boston’s lost opera house
• the many innovations and contributions of the YMCA
• the site of the first World Series game
• expansion and development at Northeastern University, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
• and much, much more

I’m particularly proud of this tour because I originated the idea and collaborated on the research and manual writing.  So please come out and join us to learn more about this fascinating Boston district.

Huntington Avenue in 1920, courtesy of Boston Public Library's photostream on Flickr

This is not your typical celebrity memoir, thankfully,  as the warped mind of Tina Fey pretty much deconstructs the all the conventions.  I have to admit that a lot of the humor in the book falls flat.  Yet, she does get around to the point about her life and career in clever ways.  The title refers to the frequent questioning she receives regarding what advice she can offer as a woman in charge of a tv show.  While mocking the sexism in the question that would never be asked of a man she does eventually offer some good – and funny – management advice.  It’s a fun book and a quick read, and definitely worth checking out if you like the work of Tina Fey.

Favorite Passages:
Recommended books: Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg, Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests by James A. Miller, and Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” by David Bianculli .
Rating:

Pollack’s short but compelling narrative examines the history, etymology, and linguistics of the much-maligned pun.  The pun has not always been held in disregard as it has in history been seen as a sign of wisdom, and even today it is harder to not pun than to pun.  Pollack explains how the pun is deceptively simple and opens a window on meaning and abstract thinking.  The book is also pretty punny – er funny – no punny was correct.
Favorite Passages:

“Punning is a virtue that most effectually promotes the end of good fellowship.” – The Moral Definition of Punning according to Thomas Sheridan’s Ars Punica. – p. 81

“In a way, the pun was humanity’s first hyperlink, a way to identify and articulate potential connections that aren’t necessarily or immediately apparent.  Punning was and remains a way to sling a verbal rope, in an instant, across vast conceptual canyons.  It is this same urge to imagine, explore and establish new connections that fuels creativity generally, and science specifically.  Not that puns are a substitute for reason, but neither is reason a substitute for imagination.  If imagination didn’t exist, what cause would reason have to set out on a given journey, to prove or disprove a given proposition?  Puns reveal a mind free to roam frontiers of possibility, without shame or fear of being wrong.” – p. 143

Rating: ***1/2

Glaesar's book is an analysis of the city as one of the great inventions of humanity and the connections the city fosters being a moving force behind human ingenuity and progress.  Cities are seen as a place with poor people living in slums yet Glaesar demonstrates that cities actually draw poor people because cities offer them opportunities to improve their lives.  Glaesar also demonstrates that cities are more environmentally friendly than suburbs.  He criticizes how government policies tend to  encourage sprawl and expensive housing.  Several cities (including my own, Boston) are cited as examples of successful cities.  If there's one thing that does make me uneasy about this book is Glaesar's uncritical support of free-market capitalism, but he does make a good point that governments should spend money to help the poor but not spend money on poor places, an important distinction.  My opinion is already biased toward cities, but I believe this book makes a great argument toward encouraging dense well-managed cities as the sustainable way to go for humanity's future.

Favorite Passages:

“The strength that comes from human collaboration is the central truth behind civilization’s success and the primary reason why cities exist.  To understand our cities and what to do about them, we must hold on to those truths and dispatch harmful myths.  We must discard the view that environmentalism means living around tree and that urbanites should always fight to preserve a city’s physical past.  We must stop idolizing home ownership which favors suburban tract homes over high-rise apartments, and stop romanticizing rural villages.  We should eschew the simplistic view that better long-distance communication will reduce our desire and need to be near one another.  Above all, we must free ourselves from our tendency to see cities as their buildings, and remember that the real city is made of flesh, not concrete.” – p. 15

Recommended books: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson, and The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream by John F Wasik.
Rating: ****

This novel begins when a woman from a wealthy family and a poor artist meet, fall in love, and marry with parental disapproval in 1930s London.  What follows is a narrative of three generations of women in the family today.  It’s a lyrical text that seems oddly plotless, just kind of multi-generational vignettes.  In fact the title is an interesting choice.  All fiction in a sense is about consequences – a protagonist makes a choice and then must respond to the consequences.  Yet this book seems to be less about consequences than your typical novel.  Anyhow, it’s a short book but it took me forever to complete, so I think that says something.

Rating: **1/2

Books Read by the Same Author:

• A Short History of Nearly Everything
• A Walk in the Woods
• Notes from a Small Island
• In a Sunburned Country
• I’m A Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years…
• The Mother Tongue
• The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
• Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
• Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United…

Summary/Review:

Bill Bryson travels through his English home and uses it as a launching point for this history of the uses of the rooms and the types of things one finds in each spot.  It’s something of a cluttered attic of a book (pun intended) with little bits of cultural history, material culture, architecture, and all sorts of odds and ends.  To be honest I listened to some of the audio discs out of order and didn’t realize it at first, so linearity is not important to this work.  While focusing on the broad topic of the home and private life, the focus of the book tends to stick with British and American history, and while some examples go back to Classical times most of the book is set in the past three centuries with the Victorian Era being Bryson’s favorite.  It’s a nice bit of compiled history told with Bryson’s usual wit and insight, although surprisingly his own voice is not as prevalent in this intimate book as it is in his other works.

Recommended books: How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built by Stewart Brand, The Archaeology of Home: An Epic Set on 1000 Square Feet of the Lower East Side by Katharine Greider and In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life by James Deetz
Rating: ***1/2

It’s hard to believe that a book on rioting can be dull, but Tager pulls it off.  First, he relies strictly on the high school essay formula of stating objectives, writing about them, and then summarizing.  Like every paragraph. Secondly, it’s not until the most recent riots of the twentieth century that he calls upon primary sources in a great amount to liven up the stories of these riots.  Finally, he also made the odd decision to exclude the riots leading up to the American Revolution (Stamp Act riots, Boston Massacre, and Boston Tea Party) on the grounds that they were political and crossed class boundaries.  This is something he would not claim if the United States had failed to gain independence and I think the book would be improved by their inclusion in the comprehensive survey of three centuries of Boston riots.

Nonetheless, it is interesting to learn about the different things that lead to civil disturbance over the course of history.  In the 18th century people rioted over the lack of food, against customs duties, impressment and the rule of the elite, as well as in “celebration” of Pope’s Day.  The next century saw rioting to enforce norms (ex. – closing down brothels), race and anti-Catholic riots (such as the Ursuline Convent and Broad Street), and riots both for and against abolition.  The twentieth century saw fewer riots but were bigger in size and effect: the 1919 Police Strike, the ghetto riots of the late 1960s, and the anti-busing riots of the 1970s.

The book is probably not worth reading unless for academic study or for those devoted to the history of Boston.
Favorite Passages:

Boston white ethnics and their leaders had certainly fostered segregation.  The plan imposed upon them had nothing to do with promoting educational quality — only integration.  It exempted the well-to-do who had fled the city, exacerbated already high racial tensions, and recalled old class warfare  between the Yankees and the Irish.  On this occasion, however, people of Irish descent were on both sides of the controversy. – p. 192

Recommended books: The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763-1834 by Paul A. Gilje
Rating: **1/2

David Byrne has a folding bike and takes it with him on his travels around the world.  This book collects his ruminations from cycling through many great cities.  Sometimes they are observations on what he sees from the saddle, but often they ponder more deeply place of the city from architecture to culture to politics.  He is admittedly didactic at times, but he often makes a good point.  Knowing Byrne as the singer/songwriter for Talking Heads, I found his narrative voice not at all what I expected, sometimes a little crude, sometimes a little lofty, but usually compelling.  This is a good book for learning about the necessary changes that need to be made to our cities to survive an uncertain future.

Politics of Happiness

Favorite Passages:

My generation makes fun of the suburbs and the shopping malls, the TV commercials and the sitcoms that we grew up with — but they’re part of us too.  So our ironic view is leavened with something like love. Though we couldn’t wait to get out of these places they are something like comfort food for us.  Having come from those completely uncool places we are not and can never be urban sophisticates we read about, and neither are we rural specimens — stoic, self-sufficient, and relaxed — at ease and comfortable in the wild.  These suburbs, where so many of us spent our formative years, still push emotional buttons for us; they’re both attractive and deeply disturbing. – p. 9

These [modern] buildings represent the triumph of both the cult of capitalism and the cult of Marxist materialism.  Opposing systems have paradoxically achieved more or less the same aesthetic result.  Diverging paths converge.  The gods of reason triumph over beauty, whimsy, and animal instincts and our innate aesthetic sense — if one believes that people have such a thing.  We associate these latter qualities with either peasants — the unsophisticated, who don’t know any better than to build crooked walls and add peculiar little decorative touches — or royalty and the upper classes — our despicable former rulers with their frilly palaces, whom we can now view, in this modern world, as equals, at least on some imaginary or theoretical level. – p. 79

I’m in my midfifties, so I can testify that biking as a way of getting around is  not something only for the young and energetic.  You don’t really need the spandex, and unless you want it to be, biking is not necessarily all the strenous.  It’s the liberating feeling — the physical and psychological sensation — that is more persuasive than any practical argument.  Seeing things from a point of view that is close enough to pedestrians, vendors, and storefronts combined with getting around in a way that doesn’t feel completely divorced from the life that occurs on the streets is pure pleasure.  Observing and engaging in a city’s life — even for a reticent and often shy person like me — is one of life’s great joys.  Being a social creature — it is part of what it means to be human. – p. 292

Recommended books: Pedal Power by J. Harry Wray and The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

Rating: ***

Don’t let the Young Adult label fool you, this is a terrific eerie thriller involving bicycles, carnivals, patent medicines, automatons and the Devil.  Set in a mysterious Southern town near the crossroads, the narrative follows young Natalie Minks as she tries to deal with a nefarious patent medicine troupe who are bewitching the townspeople.   Built on legendary elements, this book is totally original and a compelling read.

Recommended books: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston.
Rating: ****

The ride started at City Hall with thousands of riders (apparently 5000 total) lined up past the Old State House. It was exciting to turn Storrow Drive into a big bicycle party. Peter enjoyed passing his day care center twice. The route then followed the Muddy River along Park Drive and the various Ways (River, Jamaica, and Arbor) to the Arboretum. Honestly the ride went by almost too quickly for me. We started at 8:08 am and arrived at the Arboretum around 9:20. I’d like to ride farther but there’s only so long one can expect an active 3-year-old to sit still in a bike seat.

The event went off without a hitch, with perhaps the one exception of the rest area at the Arboretum. The portable toilets and snack stands were set up along the road right in front of the visitor center creating a huge bottle neck as thousands of bicyclists tried to cram in. Last year the rest area was deeper in the Arboretum where Meadow Road and Forest Hills Road meet allowing a place for bikes to pull off without obstructing ongoing traffic.

Nevertheless, Peter & I had a good long snack on the hill by the visitor center. The bike traffic cleared out quickly and about fifteen minutes later it seemed that almost all the other cyclists were well on their way. We stayed in the Arboretum to play at Peter’s favorite little bridge, throwing rock and sticks in the stream.

Hub on Wheels is a great event and I love that every year Boston becomes more and more of a bicycle-friendly city. I’m going to have to figure out how to ride next year since Peter will have outgrown his child seat.

Video of thousands of cyclists at the starting line:

Related posts:

• Bikes Not Bombs Bike-A-Thon
• JP Bikes Spring Roll
• Hub on Wheels 2010

(Looking at Library Thing, I’m amused that many of the reviews are by librarians.  Most of us like it.  Don’t tell the evil librarian in charge.)

Recommended Books: A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer and Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins.
Rating:  ****