Liam Sullivan's Ideas and Reflections
Over Memorial Day Weekend, I enjoyed a two-city, two-team, two-day baseball double header. On Sunday, I traveled down to New York to see R.A. Dickey and the Mets take on the San Diego Padres in the good company of some of my Mets fan friends. The next day, my son Peter & I went to Fenway Park for the Red Sox victory over the Detroit Tigers.
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Some photos from back on May 5th when Spontaneous Celebrations presented its annual Wake Up the Earth Festival in Jamaica Plain. This year we not only watched the parade but my son and I also participated in the festival, performing with Sing Positive JP.
Here’s a sample of our chorus’ singing:
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Beer: Porter Square Porter
Brewer: Slumbrew (Somerville Brewing Company)
Source: Draft
Rating: **** (8.3 of 10)
Comments: This is a nice porter. It’s a deep, chocolaty black with a thick, foamy head. The mouthfeel is very smooth and the taste is sweet with hints of cocoa and coffee. Seek this out!
Beer: Sgt. Pepper Saison / Farmhouse Ale
Brewer: Cambridge Brewing Co.
Source: 22 oz. bottles
Rating: *** (7.8 of 10)
Comments: The beer is a nice cloudy copper with lots of bubbles and a foamy head. The smell and taste stand out as the peppercorns give the beer a spiciness that is unique. It also has fruity, citrus flavors and a pleasantly spicy aftertaste. It’s good to have something different.
There’s no place like home for the holidays, and Boston is our holiday home. With a week off from work and school, my wife Susan, son Peter, and baby Kay sought and found many adventures including: 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. Thanks to the Boston Public Library for providing the museum passes that allowed free entrance to the Museum of Science, Aquarium, and Auto Museum.
Some of my favorite photos are below. If you want to see more, check out my online photo slideshow.
This afternoon my family and I took in the annual performance of The Christmas Revels at Sanders Theater in Cambridge. The Revels is a family tradition and this marks the tenth Christmas Revels production I’ve attended (including a Washington Revels performance in 1995 and performing as a cast member in the 2009 Christmas Revels). This was also my four-year-old son’s second Christmas Revels and my five-week-old daughter’s first Revels ever. Peter showed exemplary behavior and was deeply engaged by the performance while Kay amazed me by actually appearing to watch the show at times when she wasn’t feeding or napping.
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.
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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:
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.
On Sunday June 26th, my son Peter & I rode in the fundraiser Bike-A-Thon for Bikes Not Bombs. We were able to raise $376 for this worthy cause (feel free to add to our donations). All-together 464 riders raised over $135,000 to support the work of Bikes Not Bombs!
My photos are online and some other great photographs from a professional photographer are also available.
Tired but happy we went home to cool off in the wading pool. I had a great time and would love to do this ride again next year. Come join me!
Today I enjoyed another special Boston By Foot tour focusing on Boston Common and the Public Garden. Our guide taught us a lot about the history of these two great public places, their features, and many works of public art. It was a wet day, maybe not the best time to enjoy the parks, but on the plus side I got to take lots of pictures without people getting in the way.
Would you like to help out a cute 3.5 year old kid and his dad as they ride a bike 15 miles around Boston to support Bikes Not Bombs? Then donate now to support our efforts for the Bikes Not Bombs Bike-A-Thon.
My son Peter & I love riding our bikes around Boston and look forward to the 15-mile ride around the city on June 12th to support Bikes Not Bombs. Bikes Not Bombs is a great charitable organization that helps the youth of our city through programs that offer bike safety lessons, teach mechanic skills and encourage a healthy life. As a result of Bikes Not Bombs programs, kids learn confidence and leadership skills. Bikes Not Bombs also refurbishes bicycles and ships them abroad. These bikes help people in Central America, the Caribbean and Africa fulfill necessary transportation and technological needs in an environmentally friendly manner.
Please consider making a donation to sponsor us and support Bikes Not Bombs. Better yet, sign up and ride with us!
Thank you very much.
Jamaica Plain continued welcoming in the spring with Lilac Sunday at the Arnold Arboretum. We took some time to pedal our bikes and sniff the petals. Here are a few photos.
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Today, Jamaica Plain woke up the earth at the annual festival sponsored by Spontaneous Celebrations. I took my son to soccer practice this morning and afterward we biked to Centre St to watch the parade. Stilt-walkers, bicyclists, drummers, dancers and lots of bunnies starred in the procession. After the parade passed, my son wanted to follow on our bike. I got a bit frustrated with the stop & go and having to put my foot down all the time so I took a shortcut to Stony Brook. There we were able to watch the parade arrive at the festival where all the participants formed a circle with much rhythmic drumming and swaying. The stilt-walkers and puppets were a little scary for Peter but it was cool to feel the drumbeats reverberating in the soil. With a storm and naptime approaching we pedaled home but enjoyed a fun morning.
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I’ve started yet another blog, this one about bicycle commuting, aptly named Bike Commuter through the Boston Biker blog network. I’ve been thinking about starting a bicycle blog for a long time and have dragged my feet about it but with spring coming in, this is as good of a time to get started.
I don’t ride as much as I once did, but I hope to get back into more regular commuting and I intend to use this blog as a way of keeping me in check. I also feel that my many years of experience as a bicycle commuter could be helpful to others. Boston feels like a scary place to ride a bike, but I’ve found my experience riding in the city Here’s what you may expect to read on the Bike Commuter blog:
Things you won’t see on this blog:
If you’re interested in bicycling or just like to read things that I write, subscribe to the feed at http://bikecommuter.bostonbiker.org/feed/.
My son and I attended Woolapalooza today, Drumlin Farm’s celebration of all things pertaining to sheep. We saw one man working hard with the shears to remove the wool of many sheep quickly and skillfully. It was surprise that there wasn’t a team of people using electric shearing tools, but he got the job done (although we did see one sheep in the meadow with a big boo-boo from the shears). We were also impressed by the sheepdog demonstrations as a border collie expertly herded a small flock around the pasture. This made an impression since we recently watched Babe. The only pig at the farm was a large, pregnant sow named Hattie sleeping in the pig shed. There were many pregnant ewes as well as new-born lambs and kids. It was a fun day and made for some good photographs.
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In honor of this special day let’s revisit one of my favorite posts.
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Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I’m a big fan of Revels and their annual Christmas Revels performances at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge. I was excited and honored to attend the dress rehearsal performance of this year’s 40th anniversary production of the Christmas Revels on Thursday, December 16th. Had I better journalistic standards I would have used this scoop to get my review up before the show opened on Friday night, but at least at this point there are still eleven more shows to go.
This year’s Christmas Revels returns to a familiar setting, Haddon Hall, an English manor house that was the scene of the first and many subsequent Revels performances. This time the show is set in the 1920s and the 10th Duke of Rutland with his wife and children are making one last visit to the long abandoned house before it is demolished to make way for a motorway. I never before realized that Haddon Hall is a real place and the characters in these Revels are based upon real people who in fact saved and renovated Haddon Hall in the 1920s. The story told in the Revels performance of course is a beautiful fiction but one that contains deeper moral truths about family, ritual, and place.
In the performance, the spirits of the Duke of Rutland’s ancestors emerge from the walls to celebrate the solstice. This gives the chorus and instrumentalists the very enjoyable opportunity to perform music and stories from various eras – medieval, Renaissance, and Victorian – a Revels’ clip-show of sorts. While building on the historic traditions of England, the show also builds on Revels traditions of the past 40 years. Sanders Theatre is very much our Haddon Hall for the families and friends of the Revels who come each year.
I’ll try not to give too much away, but here are some of the highlights of the show (don’t read if you want to be completely surprised):
I’ll be returning to Sanders Theatre on December 26th to catch a Revels’ matinée with my wife, son, and mother. In the meantime, if you live anywhere near Cambridge and want to celebrate the holidays, go see this show!
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Author: Stephen Puleo
Title: A city so grand : the rise of an American metropolis, Boston 1850-1900
Publication Info: Boston : Beacon Press, 2010.
ISBN: 9780807050439
Previously read by the same author: Dark Tide
Summary/Review:
I looked forward to reading this book with great anticipation and was not disappointed. With a certain amount of civic pride, I enjoyed this history of Boston’s many municipal accomplishments during the period 1850-1900.
Boston’s greatest hits of the half-century include:
Other interesting tidbits I learned from this book include:
* At one time the Boston Archdiocese required English-only confessions in the Italian North End.
* On the day of Alexander Graham Bell’s burial all telephone service in the United States was suspended for one minute (I wonder what will happen when Tim Berners-Lee dies).
* Walter Dodd is the real-life Good Will Hunting going from janitor to physician experimenting with x-rays.
This is a great book for anyone who loves Boston and an uplifting history of what a community can accomplish through perseverance and direction.
Recommended books: Boston’s Back Bay: The Story of America’s Greatest Nineteenth-Century Landfill Project by William Newman, Change at Park Street Under;: The story of Boston’s subways by Brian J. Cudahy, Eminent Bostonians by Thomas H. O’Connor, A Game of Brawl: The Orioles, the Beaneaters, and the Battle for the 1897 Pennant by Bill Felber, Local Attachments: The Making of an American Urban Neighborhood, 1850 to 1920 by Alexander Von Hoffman.
Rating: ****
Beer: Samuel Adams Winter Lager
Brewer: Boston Beer Company
Source: Draft
Rating: *** (7.8 of 10)
Comments: I had this on-tap at Doyle’s Cafe the pub close to the Samuel Adams headquarters in Jamaica Plain where Sam Adam’s beers always taste best. This is a chocolate-brown beer with a thick – although quickly dissipating – head that leaves nice lacing on the glass. The flavor is malty, spicy and sweet but not too sweet. It’s a complex and refreshing beer and I ordered another pint.
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Visited Ward’s Berry Farm in Sharon today for some hay-riding and pumpkin-picking. Here are my gourd-eous and artsy photographs from the pumpkin patch.
Today we went to the last day of the 2010 Topsfield Fair, America’s oldest fair dating to 1818. Our time was limited and we were guided by a toddler, but I think we got a good sense of the fair and had a great time. The Kiddie Land area had a lot of rides my nearly three-year old son enjoyed including little cars, a fire-fighter themed climbing structure, a Crazy Bus, a Berry Go Round, and a jungle bounce (I want one of these for my back yard). In the agricultural area we feed miniature horses and brushed a calf as well as saw rabbits, llamas, guinea pigs, sheep, and goats. There were other things I would have enjoyed such as the history exhibit in the Grange Hall and the rides in the Midway (not to mention the racing pigs), but I think we all had a fun and fulfilling day at the fair.
