I am planning an Urban Nature Walk to occur in Boston Common--kind of amazing I've never done one there before. While researching the history I read that the Common was basically on the shore when it was created. If you've ever been there, you don't have any sense that the ocean is nearby when you are in that part of the city.

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I wrote myself a note to clean the kitchen table in order to find my health card and the letter from my dad. The health card is the missing piece to making a doctor's appointment, and I was going to use the letter from my dad to post something poignant about a conversation we had ( Read more... )

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My dad writes long letters and sends them to multiple people. For all intents and purposes he's blogging via the US mail. So I'm reposting. In his most recent letter he wrote on St. Patrick's day, the story of learning of our Irish ancestor:

Decades ago [my Irish friend] challenged me to find my Irish Roots and I discovered one that improved my ( Read more... )

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I just learned about Juneteenth. I can't say I care much for the name, but if there was ever an event in United States history that deserved a National holiday, the ending of slavery is it. Let's call it Emancipation Day, and give everyone a chance to be happy that slavery is behind us, and be introspective about the fact that our ancestors ( Read more... )

In art school, I was taught that some 40,000 or so years ago, there was matriarchal society (or societies) across much of Europe, if not the whole of the peopled world. (I should stress that I was not taught this in the context of a history or anthropology course.) This society, peaceful and artistic, produced artifacts like the "goddess of ( Read more... )