at home he’s a tourist

maura @ 9:15 pm

Last month during Spring Break we spent a few days in Philadelphia. The public school break is during Easter/Passover and the university’s break is tied to the public school break, which means that the time off was really, really late in the semester this year. Everyone was kind of strung out by the time break rolled around. I had originally wanted to just take a couple of days off and stay home, but Jonathan convinced me that it’d be better if we left town. I’m glad he did, since it turns out that we really needed that time away.

I always tell people that I grew up in Philadelphia, which is mostly true: we lived in the city until I was about 9, and then in one of the very close suburbs until I was 12. We did a lot in the city even then — we had memberships to the zoo and Franklin Institute, spent time in Fairmount Park, etc. One of my favorite photos of me as a little kid is in the Azaela Garden in 1973 — my flowered bellbottoms are teh awesome. My mom grew up in Northeast Philly and my grandmother lived there (in the same row house) almost until she died in the late ’90s. We moved away when I was in junior high but then moved back East, to Delaware, which is where I went to high school. Delaware is boring so I often went up to Philadelphia on the weekends with my friends.

I was actually in Philly twice last month: at the beginning of the month for the national academic librarianship conference (I gave a poster!), then later for break. It’s very strange to go to Philadelphia now, esp. as a tourist. I have more or less accurate memories of much of the geography and architecture, and Center City is a big grid, even easier to navigate than Manhattan. But things have changed in the past 2+ decades of course: there are lots of newer, bigger buildings, Wanamaker’s is now Macy’s, etc. Some things are not where I remember them: I thought that the Academy of Music, where my paternal grandmother, mother, and I would go see the Nutcracker every year, was much further north, closer to City Hall.

For our minivacation we stayed in a hotel in Society Hill, just one block from the arty movie theater where I saw Last Temptation of Christ (complete with picketers!). Just north of that part of town is the formerly run-down now newly hip + arty Old City, where I don’t think I’ve ever spent much time. My memories of the historic areas around Independence Mall are most hazy — I remember countless school trips, but not really any specifics. As it happened Independence Hall is currently shrouded in scaffolding for renovations, but the two blocks to the east have lots of pretty colonial buildings and open green spaces that were lovely to walk through.

Despite staying in a hotel only a few blocks north, we did not spend any time on South Street, probably the site of my clearest memories (along with the art museum). When I thought I was all cool and arty in high school I spent lots of time wandering up and down South Street, looking at punk clothes I was too chicken to buy at Zipperhead, browsing for records and used books. I saw Athens, GA: Inside/Out at TLA in high school when it was still a movie theater, and the Sugarcubes there in college when it turned into a concert venue. Probably best that we didn’t stroll down there last month: everything changes, and a quick look w/Google street view confirms my suspicions of chain stores and new construction. Which is neither unusual (I’m looking at you, East Village) nor bad, necessarily.

I do regret not going down to Jim’s for a cheesesteak, though. And at least in 2009 when the Google streetview cars took pictures, the ants and zipper were still visible on the old Zipperhead building across the street, which I’m sure Gus would have thought was cool.

all the news that’s fit to print

maura @ 10:29 pm

OMG you guys, the silo house is in the New York Times this week! You remember my slight obsession with the silo house, don’t you?

I kind of can’t believe it’s still on the market, but it might need some work or something (though the price has gone *up* a bit, weirdly [actually the price went down a smidge]). The photos in the Times make it look much nicer even than the original photos. Look at that beautiful old stove oven! And a wood burning fireplace stove, of course. Swoon.

But after further consideration it is really much too far away to be practical. Google says 2 hrs 45 mins right now when I’m sure there’s no traffic at all, which is about 45 mins too long, I think. Plus I can’t see how we could go often with the cats — they don’t really travel well. And like we have the funds for an extra house, anyway. Phew, dodged a bullet there!

(P.S. Don’t tell me if you buy it, I don’t want to know. Unless you invite us to come visit, of course!)

(EDITED to correct some errors — see strikeouts above)

that point me to another day

maura @ 10:19 pm

What is it about getting out of the city that always leaves me so conflicted when I return? Gus was out of school all last week so we headed north for a few days for our annual grandparents-n-snow pilgrimage. All of the usual “s” activities were accounted for: sledding, snowshoeing, skating, and skiing. Gus, Jonathan, and my brother built an epic snowfort, too, about 5 feet wide by 15 long with three rooms and walls (w/crenellations) over 5 feet tall and fierce icicles all around the door to ward off marauders. The whole trip was lovely.

So now I’m thinking about the country again, nature + woods + mountains (and the silo house). It’s not that I want to leave the city. Why does nature always have to = no diversity + tons of driving? Especially the driving — on this trip we realized that Connecticut is the Staten Island of New England, because there is always traffic somewhere no matter what day or time you’re on the road.

Also, I really miss the snow. You’d think after our unusually snowy January I’d be okay with what’s obviously winter ending (at the botanic gardens today I noticed that the bluebells are starting to poke through). But the skis in my closet make me greedy for more. Maybe we just need to be in a more northern city.

What I really want is a War Drobe so I can move from city to nature easily without all that pesky driving. And a rainbow unicorn.

if this is the future

maura @ 10:59 pm

Disneyworld! I think Jonathan and I were more excited than Gus in the days leading up to the trip. We haven’t really done the amusement park thing with him so don’t think he knew what to expect — more than anything I think he was looking forward to seeing his grandparents. And the waterslide in the pool at the resort we stayed at.

Of course that changed on the first day. Not that he wasn’t still happy to be with Grandma + Grandpa, but he bought into the Disney thing whole hog. We rode the Buzz Lightyear ride twice — his favorite ride, and with good reason: you go through the ride sitting in spaceships blasting at targets (that register an actual score!) on Zurg and his cronies. It was pretty cool. We also rode Peter Pan, the Lilo + Stitch thing, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse (not all in the same day). Jonathan and I were thrilled to get him on Space Mountain and Haunted Mansion, both of which Gus was a bit wary of initially but ended up loving. And Big Thunder Mountain was also *awesome* — so fast and fun, with such great details alongside the tracks.

Gus did *not* like the Carousel of Progress or It’s a Small World, but his old parents forced (tricked, really) him to ride them because OMG how can you not?! Too much. We stopped short of the Hall of Presidents because we figured we’d tortured Gus enough, but were sure to drop Bill + Ted references whenever we walked through Liberty Square. The lessons of Disneyworld? You can do a surprising amount with cars on a track, black light, and animatronics.

It was interesting to see Gus’s reaction to the many many many consumer opportunities throughout the parks, too. Since he doesn’t watch TV we don’t get a lot of “buy me this!” from him, but after a few days of being dumped out of the rides right into the character/theme shop that wore off some. We *all* went a little crazy at the store in Liberty Square that’s wall to wall Nightmare Before Christmas stuff, but overall I think we came out okay. (Where okay = Jack Skellington hoodie for J, Jack socks + a mug for me, and a stuffed bat for G. Thanks Grandma + Grandpa!)

We stayed in this campground resort called Fort Wilderness that has RV/tent camping as well as 1 bedroom cabins. The cabins were cute — all of the furniture was made of (pretend?) logs, even the bunk beds. J+I got the Murphy Bed in the living room, a tiny house dream come true! I’ve always wanted to sleep on a Murphy Bed. It’s everything I expected — so fantastic to just shut the bed up into the wall every morning. (Yes, I am simple.) The RV campers were intense — many of them brought their own Christmas lights and decorations, and some seriously had as many decorations as you’d put on a house! To get from the resort to the Magic Kingdom was a short boat ride and on the last day we saw pelicans on the way over, so cool.

Epcot was really, really neato. I wish we’d had more time there — Gus wasn’t that into the World Showcase but J and I could easily have spent an afternoon wandering around. We did go on some good stuff: Spaceship Earth and a fun space simulator called Mission Space. And we rode the Tronorail! (One of the monorails was all kitted out as a Tron ad.) Jonathan and Gus went on Soarin’ which everyone says is amazing, but I had to bail because the line was three (3!!!) hours long. Even reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (now how’s that for yr cognitive dissonance) on my phone wasn’t enough to save me in that line.

We also did one day at Animal Kingdom which I guess is new-ish. There was actually a lot more stuff for kids to just *do* there, including a huge climbing space w/tube slides and a giant dinosaur excavating pit that Gus loved. And it was all naturey walking around, very pretty. We tried to go on the roller coaster there but the line was just too dang long. But we did go on this crazy ride called Dinosaur which was of the jarring loud variety and enjoyed more by the littlest member of our party than the adults.

Of course there were a few annoyances. It was incredibly, amazingly crowded, just people everywhere you looked pretty much all the time. I’m usually not too bothered by crowds but I have to admit that they started to get to me by the end of the trip. It was nice to come back to our cabin — while I’m sure that the resort was just as full as others in Disneyworld, because things were all spread out it didn’t seem too crowded.

In fact, it was so crowded on our first day (which was actually xmas) that the “castmembers” let us cut out of the public area of the park to bypass a parade and go right to Tomorrowland. It was freaky to see behind the scenes — castmembers smiled and waved us on, but I caught a glimpse of a banner with an inspirational message for castmembers along the way.

I have to admit that Tomorrowland kind of bugged me, though I loved the rides. There’s a big stage in the middle of everything with a DJ and characters and dancing which kind of ruined the atmosphere for me. And Jonathan was bummed that you can’t walk through Cinderella’s castle anymore — there’s some character meal place in there now. All in all I was surprised that the Magic Kingdom seemed a bit less enveloping than Disneyland felt to me. I guess mostly it was Tomorrowland — when we got over to the other side to Frontierland and Adventureland things were much more immersive.

It was also pretty cold for most of the time we were there. Christmas day it was in the mid-70s, but that was the warmest it got (and hence the only swimming day). On Boxing Day it was about 45 degrees and windy, seriously cold. OTOH, short lines! And no line for Splash Mountain, but we weren’t brave enough.

Most surprising was that there was pretty much no free wifi anywhere. I think the only place I jumped right on was when we were eating dinner at the Contemporary (the hotel that the monorail runs right through). We could buy internet for our cabin but didn’t because we just weren’t there long enough most days to make it worthwhile. I’m sure it would cost a fortune to wifi up the entirety of Disneyworld, including all of the parks and resorts, but it did seem odd given Disney’s attention to detail + service. On the plus side, I felt like it was kind of nice to have an internets break for much of the trip.

Phew, I think that’s most of it! I could write even more, but I think 1000 words is probably enough, don’t you? Gus is already asking when we will go back…again, a few weeks ago I’d have said never, but now I think maybe.

i watch the snow make slow time

maura @ 10:29 pm

Over xmas break we went to Disneyworld. It was my first time and before we left I thought it would also be my last, but now I’m not so sure.

Let’s back up. If you were alive in America after the 1950s or so it’s impossible not to have some sort of history with Uncle Walt’s Corporation. I wasn’t a particularly Disney-crazed kid, but I do have lots of fond memories of the old movies.* I think Cinderella was my first movie in the theater ever, Alice in Wonderland (which I actually remember) my second. I still have the soundtracks to several of them — with a storybook built in to the sleeve! — that I vividly remember playing on my Fisher-Price record player.** I brought Dressy Bessy with me to see Snow White, because that evil queen was intense. But I was never really into Mickey et al.

* And why don’t they release the movies theatrically anymore, like when I was a kid? They could make boatloads of $ I’m sure, you’d think they’d be all over it.

** Would that I still had the record player, it was so cool!

We didn’t go to Disneyworld when I was little — it was too far away + expensive, so we went to Colonial Williamsburg + Busch Gardens instead (which was really fun and actually historical, so don’t feel bad for us!). When I was in college my mom + stepfather + sibs + stepsibs all went and I admit to a smidge of envy. Not quite as much as the jealous queens of old, but a tiny bit. As a college graduation gift my mom got us Disneyworld and Epcot passes, but we didn’t use them for a long time.

When I took a year off from archaeology grad school to work in the crazy internets trenches during those mid-1990s boom days, I spent some time working for Disney Online. The job was kind of wacky (in that Herman Miller chairs + unlimited espresso + late night redesigns kind of way), but I worked with some smashing folks. One of the perks was four 1-day passes to any of the parks every year (Happy Holidays!). My brother went to college in LA, so once when my mom + J + I were visiting we trooped out to Disneyland (with Tex, too).

Driving in CA is awful but the park was a blast. It was so cool to see the care + attention to detail — wherever you were it was almost impossible to see the other parts of the park. The illusion was intense, and it was easy to forget that we were right outside LA. I think we spent most of the day waiting in line, but they were so good at keeping us busy with stuff to look at that I can’t remember feeling down about it. We got to go on a few things that aren’t in Disneyworld, like the Indiana Jones ride and Mister Toad’s Wild Ride (one of J’s favorites; now gone from FL). I could swear we went on Space Mountain, but J says we didn’t.

Recently I’ve spent more time thinking of the dark side of the mouse. We spend lots of time in the class I teach talking about intellectual property and copyright and fair use, and Mickey et al. always make at least a token appearance when we discuss the Copyright Term Extension Act. I also watched Rip: A Remix Manifesto this semester (we screened it at work during Open Access Week) which takes pains to point out the plainly derivative nature of so much of Uncle Walt’s best work. I know there’s lots of money at stake, but it’s hard not to be disappointed and a little angry at the WDW Corp for those legal shenanigans.

Gus is not a big Disney kid — as is probably impossible to ignore, the company has invested heavily in the princesses for little girls (ugh). I can’t think of a newer Disney movie he’s been interested other than the underappreciated Lilo and Stitch. Lucky for all of us there’s Pixar. Lately, though, Gus had been throwing “those movies are for little kids” at us. We missed Toy Story 3 in the theaters and it sat in its Netflix envelope for weeks until I finally convinced Gus to watch it.

And now it’s late and I’m not even to the real story yet, but I think I need to stop for tonight. To be continued!

and they call him sandy claws

maura @ 4:07 pm

This holiday season was fun and hectic, and it’s going to take me a while to process it all. I’m going to try and write it out in a couple of posts as a way to get myself back on that writing train again, which I’d fallen off of so successfully so many times last semester. New year, new resolutions, blah blah blah — I’m not really going to make them because they are always the same, and always things I try to do all the time anyway: write more, read more (esp. non-work-related stuff), exercise more, stress less.

So, the holidays! This year the Santa situation came home to roost. You may remember my ambivalence about Santa from previous posts around this time of year. My mom didn’t want to lie to us so we never believed in Santa (though I never burst anyone else’s bubble when I was a kid!). We always put Santa on gift tags + stuff, though, just for fun. Before Gus was born Jonathan and I used to visit some of his relatives at xmas and it was fun to do the Santa thing for their little kids, so it wasn’t too hard to convince me to do Santa w/Gus. But I’ve always been kind of jealous of Santa — he does none of the work and gets all of the credit, lucky fatso! — so in our house the *best* gifts are always given by actual real people, and Santa has been known to bring socks + underwear.

There were some cracks in Gus’s Santa belief showing last year, but they were easy to ignore. He wrote a note on xmas eve that read:

Dear Santa,
please fill in a box that tells me if you are real.
_ Yes _ No
From Gus
P.S. Merry X-mas

Jonathan got out his fancy red calligraphy pen, checked “yes,” and wrote “Love S. Claus” on the note, and that was the end of that.

This year things were different. About 3 weeks before xmas we were coming in from somewhere and as I was unlocking the door to the apartment Gus just asked me out of the blue: “Mom, is Santa real, or is he just parents buying presents for kids?” Now, this is where I need someone to be with me at all times as an adviser, because when I told this story to a friend later she said “why didn’t you just say: ‘what do you think?'” But I don’t and I didn’t, instead going for the whole truth.

And of course Gus got angry, threw “you lied to me!” at me and everything. I felt really bad, tried to explain that we can still write Santa on gift tags because it’s fun, right? Nope, no dice.

Luckily after a week or so of moping he mellowed out, and we ended up having a perfectly nice Santa-free xmas. And in the end I was relieved because I hadn’t been sure how Santa would fit in with our plans to be on vacation on xmas day — when we went to London two years ago Gus was very concerned with whether Santa would deliver the presents in time (we traveled on 12/25). As you can probably guess, I’m really pleased to be done with Santa, and glad too that we’ve safely navigated our first xmas in which Gus doesn’t believe but his younger cousins (still) do.

And the obligatory funny ending? A week or so after the revelation, Gus turned to me out of nowhere and exclaimed: “you and Daddy eat the cookies!” And the carrot sticks, too.

sunday sunday sunday

maura @ 11:30 am

We spent last week at the beach on vacation with my family (my mom, 2 sibs + their families). It’s always a fun, if somewhat chaotic, time (7 kids under age 9!). The weather was great: we only had one rainy day, and much of that day it was only drizzly so we ended up taking the kids to the beach to hunt for shells anyway. It was lovely to meet my new nephew, who turned 4 weeks old last Friday. In my annual seafood-eating event I nommed steamed clams picked up by my mom + brother on the way in, an amazing lobster roll + clam chowder from here, as well as yummy broiled crab cakes from here.

This year I got sick (and Jonathan, too), which unfortunately kind of harshed my vacation mellow and scrapped many of my more ambitious leisure plans. I only read two books (both before the sickness hit), didn’t catch up on personal emails, and didn’t learn how to knit either. It’s just a head cold, but even though I tried to slow down and take it easy I’m still on sick day #6 (I think?). The inherent instability of vacation time means that I can’t quite remember when I got sick, maybe Tuesday? It was a bummer, though the vacation was still fun overall.

Now we’re back and I’m simultaneously trying to manage re-entry and recovery. Today is stretched before me in all of its Sundayness, and I’m a bit at odds. It’s hot + rainy. The cats missed us and are meowy + needy. Gus wanted a playdate but his desired pal is busy. I should clean the floors and go buy my niece a birthday present. I think the former is a pipe dream (also, Anne Lamott told me to clean less), but maybe we can swing the latter this afternoon. But resting needs to be at the top of the list, I think: classes start Thursday, so things are about to ramp up sharply. Full speed ahead!

experimental results

maura @ 10:19 pm

Last week we took a vacation in Vermont and I put myself on an internets diet. In some ways it was fairly easy to do — cellphone and internets can be wonky up there, and I didn’t always have access in the places we were visiting. But with all of the bajillions of articles recently about information overload and hyperabundance and how our brains/behavior do or don’t change with all of the internet info we consume, I thought it might be an interesting experiment.

My rules were:
– Check work email once/day (I get kind of anxious when the work email piles up so I rarely ignore it entirely, even when we’re on vacation. But I only answered the few that seemed like they couldn’t wait.)
– Check home email once/day (Since we had catsitters I felt like I couldn’t completely ignore home email. And I get much less email at my home account anyway.)
– No Twitter
– No RSS feeds
– No other internets reading/browsing, e.g., New York Times (If you can’t ignore the news for a week is it really even a vacation?)

I also promised myself that I wouldn’t feel bad about skipping all of that info, or try to catch up on it later. Which for the most part was successful: though I did end up reading a couple of things published last week in the early part of this week, I also went into my Google Reader when we got home Sunday night and pushed the magical Mark All As Read button to clear out the feeds. (Oh, the power!)

The results were hardly earth-shattering, but they were sort of interesting. In practice what happened is that I didn’t use my computer phone to fill in the gaps between activities. Usually I’ll check Twitter or read feeds or check email in the myriad little bits of time I encounter throughout the day: waiting in line or for the people I’m with to be ready to go do something, watching Gus (in this case while swimming in the pool or pond), sometimes while riding in the car (though this is dicey because it tends to tweak my carsickness).

Without the internets I spent those bits of time last week thinking, spacing out, watching the world go by, etc. It was relaxing in a way, kind of soothing and boring at the same time. I was happy to learn that it didn’t make me all twitchy, which I’d feared since I am definitely susceptible to the mini-endorphin rush of a new email alert or a pile of new tweets.

For the longer stretches of time I did lots of book readin’, just like in the olden days. I read one from start to finish, finished up another I’d started a while ago, and read parts of two others. It’s definitely easier to read while on vacation, and I appreciated having the stretches of time while Gus was happily splashing around to get some reading in.

Now that the experiment is over I’m back to the usual stuff at work and at home. Though I do think I’m interacting more thoughtfully with the internets than before. Of course, it’s still the slowish summer — I’m sure my internets serenity will go right out the window once the semester (and the course I’m teaching) begins in (eep!) 22 days.

the weatherman on tv ain’t creating the weather

maura @ 10:01 pm

It’s lame to complain about the weather. I know this, but I cannot help myself. It’s 87 degrees outside right now (down from today’s high of 934 or so) and feels like it’s been this way for weeks and weeks. Even with liberal A/C use (and the electric bills to prove it), I still seem to get all hot and sweaty several times a day. I’m tired of having to shower twice a day and all of the extra laundry. I’m sick of feeling lethargic and crabby and not getting enough exercise. Begone, global warming!

I spent what seemed like a huge amount of time this weekend ferrying Gus around to his various social engagements via car and subway, and I found myself daydreaming about a summer house someplace colder. But where’s cold enough? It’s been in the 80s in Vermont and Maine, and there’s not a lot of a/c up there. Upper 70s in Montreal and lower 70s in Quebec, that’s a little better. A surprising 84 today in Halifax, which takes it out of the running, I’m afraid.

Or we could go for the ultimate: it’s in the mid-60s these days in Reykjavik. And for an added bonus, the sun rises at 3:56am and sets at 11:13pm!

It was an interesting mental puzzle to keep my brain busy. In this scenario we would sublet the apartment and would pack up the cats + take them to our summer getaway. I could take my vacation and maybe some research time and smush it all together to make a biggish chunk. A month, say? We’ve never been away for that long before. We’d need to end up someplace that’s either so exciting + interesting (forest and water? ocean? pool?) for Gus that he’d have loads to do (because we would likely need to spend at least some of the time working) or put him in some kind of camp.

The reality is probably considerably less rosy (or feasible). We’d need to arrange for *some* time with other kids, because a month with just the three of us would probably drive us all batty. And I’m sure that once we got someplace cooler I’d be grumpy that there’s not enough to do. Because one of the other things that makes me sad about this heat is that we haven’t had the chance to do all of the fun summer things there are to do here, like go to Governor’s Island or check out the new part of Brooklyn Bridge Park or visit the lion cubs up at the Bronx Zoo. NYC FTW!

(or maybe I’m just trying to psyche myself up for a hot hot bike ride to work tomorrow morning)

journey to the center of the earth

maura @ 11:08 pm

Post-vacation re-entry can be hard. Especially when it’s 100 million billion jillion degrees out. I spent the early morning trying to pull the fuzz from my head only to have to go out into the inferno for my eye doctor appointment in the afternoon, record-breaking temperatures be dammed! I now have a spiffy new prescription, though, so it was worth it (though I still have to get some glasses somewhere…).

We spent the long holiday weekend up in the northlands visiting extended family, where it was almost as hot as it is here. Gus got his fill of vacation awesomeness: swimming in the pool (for literally 4 hours straight on Saturday!), smores via campfire, snuggling with grandparents, and videogames + watching The Last Airbender with his teenage cousins. (The movie kinda sucked, but that’s a post for another day.)

This morning he trooped off to camp, sleep-deprived, of course, since staying up too late is another hallmark of vacationing. I try not to wallow in the murk of parent martyrdom, but I couldn’t help feeling kind of bummed all day. He was not very excited to go to camp. It’s a perfectly fine camp — lots of activities, swimming twice each week and the beach on Fridays. He went last year and had a good time, but this year he doesn’t really know anyone there. He’s well into the putting on a brave face in a new situation phase, but I changed schools enough as a kid to remember how yucky it can be walking into the first day in a new place.

Mainly I felt kind of sad that we can’t give him the summer he wants, which is clearly to swim, play videogames and burn things, maybe with some reading + hanging out with friends thrown in there for good measure. I’m hyperbolizing, but I do wish there were some way to give him some more unstructured time that’s *not* just sitting around our apartment playing videogames, as well as some outdoor and swimming time. For the first time ever Gus said he wished we had a yard, though he did concede one advantage of the city: it’s relatively light on bugs (mosquitos, at least).

Of course, noplace is perfect. Houses, yards + pools are lovely but require maintenance; living apart from others is peaceful but requires driving to get anywhere. Would that there was some sort of hybrid location *between* urban and rural. I guess this is why people move to the suburbs? Though the suburbs always strike me as the worst of both worlds: almost as much driving as rural and twice the strip malls, ugh.

Swimming lessons start up for Gus on the weekend, and maybe that’s the key to a nice summer: oodles of time by the pool. And we have lots of pools here in the city, all bug-free.