Looking Back, November Edition

I haven't posted anything for a *long* time! Luckily, my blogmates have taken up the slack. I was looking through iphoto and realized I have all these pictures from the fall and winter that I never got around to posting. So I'll start sharing again, but only if you'll forgive the long absence! Here's November that was.

First things first: I took Julia to see The Pee-Wee Herman Show as a late (very late) birthday gift. I think "overjoyed" wouldn't even cover Julia's feelings, but here's the picture so you can judge for yourself.



Julia, Matthew, Stella, and I biked over to Newtown Creek to enjoy the recently opened "nature walk." Apparently Newtown Creek is home to more than toxic sludge and the sewage treatment plant! What a perfect location for a nature walk. For real, though the walk itself is actually nicely designed and maybe a superfund site *is* the perfect place to try to appreciate something we did a good job effing up.
The nature walk starts out concrete. Go figure.



Besides that, one or two things other things puzzle me. For instance,access to the water. For what purpose, exactly? To better enjoy the view of the garbage scows in the distance, or to appreciate the scent of the fuggy breeze wafting off the canal?





Food plants in the "fragrance garden." Really, who would even consider that?



I don't think you have to worry about anyone swimming here (except for a certain Brooklyn assemblyman), but just in case:



Still, we did get the "nature," as promised.







And a nice view walking back. If by "nice," you mean "industrial," which I do.



My last bike outing of 2010 was a Bayside bike ride. We took Time Out New York's word for it, and made a big loop from the last stop on the F train to Fort Totten and back. I'm not sure if we did the entire loop suggested by the article, but it was a beautiful, picturesque ride with some delicious Thai food at the end, so no complaints.











We wrapped up November with a terrarium making workshop at Hannah's studio. We made large terrariums





small terrariums





Fun, crafty times!

Tourist in suburbia

This past weekend I paid a visit to Claud & Eleanor's current hometown (and where they'll likely be staying for another three years until Claud finishes his PhD): Natick, Massachusetts. This town has a very un-illustrious history as far as the decimation of the local Native American population is concerned (although really, which U.S. town doesn't?), being the place where Puritan missionary John Eliot "was best known for attempting to preserve the culture (minus the religion) of the Native Americans by putting them in thirteen planned towns where they could continue by their own rule, with Natick as the political and spiritual center." I can practically see the collective shoulder shrug of the wikipedia contributors who penned this entry. It continues, "A school was set up, a government established, and the Indians were encouraged to convert to Christianity. In November, during King Philip's War, the Natick Indians were sent to Deer Island. Many died of disease and cold, and the Indians who survived found their homes destroyed. The Indian village did not fully recover, and the land held in common by the Indian community was slowly sold off to white settlers to cover debts, and, by 1785, most of the Natick Indians had drifted away." Just kinda wandered off, just like that. Huh! Must've just been in the mood for a change of scenery, I guess.

From what I can tell, Natick is now a relatively middle to upper middle class suburban town, peppered with autobody shops, an inexplicably large number of martial arts studios, houses with vinyl siding

and lilac bushes.

It's also home to the BJ's Wholesale Club corporate headquarters, the US Army Soldier Systems Center, and Casey's Diner--one of the last operational ten-stool diners in the US.

The Natick suburbs have a bit of nature to them too--literally steps from Claud & Eleanor's front door is the Tony Anniballi Memorial Park at Pegan Cove. We originally went on a night walk through some of the trails on Saturday evening, which was awesome and kinda spooky. Haven't gone on a night hike in something like a decade! Sunday is when we returned to experience the park in daylight.

It's a beautiful but diminutive nature preserve with a few towering pine trees,

a bit of a mucky stream,

lotsa poison ivy, and bordering the really large Lake Cochituate.

It was a gorgeously sunny day, but extremely windy.


We kept busy the rest of the weekend with gardening, cooking and eating.

The veggie garden plot:

Sugar snap pea sprouts ready for replanting:

Garlic sprouts:

The soon to be mother of my soon to be niece:

Unmistakeably:

Flattening seitan cutlets in a pasta press:

Sauteed chanterelles:

Fresh baked bread, before:

Fresh baked bread, after:

Dinner is served:

By the time I grace Natick with my next visit I'll be an aunt!

Fall Delhi, NY Pics

It's been a while since I posted, so I thought I'd take it back to Delhi, NY. I've been sitting on these pictures for a while, and finally had some time on my hands to take a look. Carl, Cara, and I found these spores in the cornfield, and shook them out. Good, clean, fun until our allergies starting acting up!

Flâneur

From Wikipedia

There is no English equivalent for the French word flâneur. Cassell's dictionary defines flâneur as a stroller, saunterer, drifter but none of these terms seems quite accurate. There is no English equivalent for the term, just as there is no Anglo-Saxon counterpart of that essentially Gallic individual, the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city. (Cornelia Otis Skinner Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals, 1962, Houghton Mifflin, New York)