January 2017
Monthly Archive
Jan 30, 2017
Today I’m supposed to get together with A (not her real initial), walking the labyrinth at Boston College then having potato pancakes at the diner in Newton Centre.
Tomorrow J and I are going to Angell to adopt two cats–George and Gracie–that were surrendered by a breeder/hoarder in New Hampshire, a woman with 40 cats. They are shy and not well socialized–our job will be to get them acclimated into the house and also to get them comfortable around people. We’d intended to adopt just one cat to fill the spot left by Bunny when she died, but since George and Gracie find comfort in cuddling together, we didn’t want to split them.
Nina and Gumbo continue to cuddle me whenever I sit on the loveseat in the master bedroom–Nina on my lap and Gumbo sprawled across my chest. Nina was incredibly shy when we first adopted her–she spent her first few weeks under the bed–but now she runs up and falls at my feet when I walk into the room, begging for a belly rub.
And so we slowly socialize each of the cats we adopt. Frankie and Bobbi will never be lap cats–they’re too feisty and independent for that–but they each tolerate petting as long as it’s brief.
The world is filled with suffering: so many bad, sad situations I am powerless to fix. But I know how to comfort cats and tend to dogs, and so I do that as a small act of devotion I offer to a suffering world.
This is an entry I wrote in my journal on January 30, 2016, along with photos I took and promptly forgot about. I don’t remember what bad, sad situations I’m referring to in the final paragraph, but what was true then is just as true now.
Nina and Gumbo continue to climb all over me, looking for cuddles, whenever I walk into their room, and Frankie and Bobbi are still as feisty as ever. And one year after we adopted them, George and Gracie now let me pet their heads but are otherwise shy.
Jan 27, 2017
Now that both the holidays and my birthday are over, I’ve settled deep into ordinary time. On teaching days, I’m up before daylight and stay on campus until after dark, the precious sunlight of January something I see from the inside looking out. On weekends and at-home grading days, I do my morning kitchen chores upon awaking, then brew a cup of tea and sit at my desk to read, meditate, and write.
I’m a creature of habit, and so is the dog, who is content to lie on her bed and chew her bone while I sit at my desk, scribbling or tapping out words. She doesn’t care what I’m working on or how it’s going, only that I stop what I’m doing and scratch behind her ears when she sidles up to my chair and rests her head in my lap.
Jan 25, 2017
When you live in New England, you become a connoisseur of light. Yesterday the light was gray, like pewter, the world cast in monochrome with scant shadows and slivers of trees snaking across the sky like veins.
When I was a child in Ohio, winters were long, but so were the days. I’ve lived in New England for more than two decades, and I’m still surprised when the sun starts setting in the afternoon, long before dinner. In January, daylight is scarce and precious, so you make every attempt to save and savor it.
Yesterday was a gray-sleeting day, the ground carpeted in dense, sludgy snow: yesterday, I never saw the sun. Instead, daylight diffused through clouds and wind, the mist falling sideways beneath umbrellas, the damp seeping into pores and corners, and the light landing on shallow surfaces like silver.
Jan 23, 2017
On Saturday, J and I took the T downtown, where we converged on Boston Common with some 175,000 other folks for the Boston Women’s March. I knew tens of thousands of people had registered, but it was clear the turnout would be larger than expected when we arrived at our local T station more than an hour before the march and saw a crowd of pink-hatted women, men, and children waiting for the second of two back-to-back, already-full trolleys.
J and I regularly take the T to Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics games, so we have a lot of experience squeezing into crowded trolleys. Saturday’s crowds, however, were like nothing we’d ever seen. At each of the dozen T stops between the Boston suburbs and the heart of downtown, platforms were packed with throngs of people wearing pink hats and carrying posters. “Grab back,” one man’s sign urged, while another man wore a ballcap with a “Strong men support strong women” pin next to one that said “No f*cking fracking.”
At each stop, some people on the platforms would shake their heads, determined to wait for the next, presumably less-packed train…but at each stop, a brave handful would squeeze into the train, and the rest of us would jostle closer to our neighbors, making as much room as possible.
At one point, the trolley was so densely packed, my back was solidly pressed into that of a pink-hatted woman behind me, as if we were propping one another up. Whenever the trolley swerved around a curve, we standers and strap-hangers all swayed together, and whenever the trolley screeched to a sudden stop, we leaned deep against our neighbors, keeping one another on our collective feet. After one particularly awkward lurch, I apologized to a seated couple for nearly landing in their laps, then I laughed. “I guess none of us is in danger of falling: we don’t have enough room.”
That crush of bodies on the T was merely a foretaste of the feast to come. At the March itself, the crowds kept growing. As we approached the Common from the Public Garden, we could see a solid sea of pink hats and signs stretching from Charles Street to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Finding a spot where we could, in theory, see the rally stage, we were soon engulfed in a mass of humanity whose signs, shirts, and hats proclaimed all manner of progressive messages: “Be kind,” “Love wins,” “Words matter,” “Climate change is real,” “Diversity is our asset.”
I’m not a fan of crowds, which sometimes make me claustrophobic. But the massive swell of pink-hatted protesters on Boston Common on Saturday didn’t feel like a crowd: instead, it felt warm and safe, like a hug or a snug blanket. It was a press of friendly flesh where we all quite literally had one another’s backs as we listened for nearly two hours to speeches by Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, local labor leaders, civil rights activists, clergy, and local schoolchildren.
One of the questions frequently asked of this weekend’s marchers, particularly by Trump supporters, is why are you marching? Why march against a President who has just taken office and hasn’t yet had time to implement any policies: why not wait and give him a chance? I have a very simple answer to this question. Trump, his administration, and the Republican Congress will have a chance to implement their policies whether I like it or not. But even though I didn’t elect the man driving this particular train, I marched on Saturday because I recognize humans are social creatures, and in a democracy we are bound together by a social contract.
After a campaign where our civil unity was stretched to tatters, I marched on Saturday to affirm one simple truth: regardless of who is in the White House, we citizens here on the ground need to have one another’s backs. As a white woman, I marched to affirm black lives. As a straight woman, I marched to affirm LGBT rights. As a United States citizen, I marched to affirm the rights of immigrants and their families. As a Christian, I marched to affirm the civil liberties of Muslims, Jews, and other targets of post-election hate crimes. And as a woman, I marched to affirm that women’s rights are human rights, every person deserves affordable health care, and every woman has the right to decide what happens to her own body.
The biggest irony of Saturday’s march, however, is that J and I never actually marched. Because the crowd on Boston Common was so enormous, after the rally ended, we spent nearly an hour inching toward Charles Street, where the march began. After chatting with an older woman whose hat was covered with faded pins from decades of past marches, J and I decided to make an early exit, gently pushing and squeezing our way through the crowd toward Park Street, where we boarded a trolley for home. (Thank goodness for a tall man with a “Give a Hoot / Don’t Pollute” jacket, who sliced through the crowd ahead of us: we literally followed his coattails to open ground.)
But even though J and I didn’t actually march at Saturday’s March, it was enough to have been there. It was awesome to be subsumed by a crowd of peaceful protestors. It was inspiring to surge on a sea of positive energy even though we were collectively protesting an election that was an affront to our shared values. And it was encouraging to affirm what we believe is the bedrock of our American democracy: rights and dignity for all, and promises based on facts, evidence, and reality.
Instead of moving our feet, J and I took a stand, and I’m immensely glad we did. Watching news coverage of marches in DC and around the world makes me realize the awesome power of millions of people who’ve got one another’s backs.
Click here for more photos from Saturday’s Boston Women’s March. Enjoy!
Jan 16, 2017
On Saturday as I approached the Museum of Fine Arts, I saw a young couple walking ahead of me. It’s not unusual to see young couples walking in Boston, but what caught my eye was the young woman’s pink, pointy-eared hat. Although I’d read about the Pussyhat Project and knew knitters across the country have been making pink hats for the Women’s Marches that will take place across the nation next Saturday, I’d never seen a real live pussyhat in the wild.
As I watched the couple ascend the stairs to the Museum’s Fenway entrance, I knew what I had to do. Although my own hat is black and store-bought, I’m planning to attend next week’s Boston Women’s March for America, and I realized it was time to come out as a Pussyhat-in-Hiding. Since my museum membership allows me one guest, I approached the couple as they stood in line for tickets, complimenting the woman on her hat and offering to get her into the Museum for free.
While her boyfriend bought his ticket, “N” and I chatted about next weekend’s march: she is knitting pussyhats to give away to marchers, and I’m looking forward to marching even though I don’t have a pussyhat to wear. You can see, I suspect, where this is going. By the time her boyfriend had bought his ticket, “N” promised to mail me one of her knitted hats, and I gave her my email address to arrange logistics. None of this would have happened, of course, if “N” weren’t wearing a pink knitted hat with cat ears that inspired me to approach her. The simple act of seeing someone in a distinctive (and politically significant) hat inspired me to reach out rather than quietly minding my own business.
There’s nothing stopping any of us from walking up to a stranger and doing something kind: inviting “N” to be my Museum guest cost nothing but the nerve to approach her. And yet, I would have never dreamed of walking up to a stranger before November. Suddenly, the election of a man who promised to Make America Hate Again makes simple acts of kindness feel subversive and powerful, a revolution powered by knitting needles and nice gestures.
Inside the Museum, in the sun-drenched enclosed courtyard that connects the building’s old and new wings, there are artworks made by local schoolchildren in honor of Martin Luther King Day. The most eye-catching of these are quilts bearing quotations from King, each letter whimsically decorated: a chorus of colors.
These quotes from King seem particularly relevant in today’s political climate, when the voices of hate have grown loud and it’s easy to give up hope. “I have decided to stick with love,” one quilt proclaims. “Hate is too great a burden to bear.” I’ll confess to carrying more anger than I’d like these past few weeks, unable to fathom how some voters could choose a mean-spirited, hot-headed bully over a woman with a lifetime of experience. But this, indeed, is a burden too great to bear: as King himself exhorted, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
So how do we move forward, regardless of the burdens we carry? Dr. King said “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” so what are these things? From where I sit, kindness matters, and so does compassion. Truth matters, even if some don’t want to hear it. Lending a helping hand matters, as does protecting the sick and vulnerable. Love matters, and random acts of kindness, and both solidarity and sisterhood. So next Saturday in Boston and beyond, women and men of all colors and stripes will march together for what matters: a chorus of colors, beautiful and harmonious.
Jan 14, 2017
Today I went to the Museum of Fine Arts: a belated birthday treat. I went to the Museum to see an exhibit of paintings by William Merritt Chase but found more interesting an exhibit on Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock that I wandered into by chance. That is the serendipitous nature of museums: given the abundance of riches at every turn, you can wander until you find something that speaks to you.
One of the things I like to do at Museums is hunt for images. This means I roam from gallery to gallery looking rather than reading: I just wander, looking at everything, not just the art. I look at other museum goers, shadows on the floor, and reflections on the wall. You might say I’m interested in observing the entire museum space: not just the art on the walls, but the habitat the art lives in. While other museum patrons are snapping photos of their favorite paintings, I’m looking for interesting views through doorways and down corridors. It’s not that I’m not interested in looking at art, but I find museum spaces to be equally interesting.
You could argue that my way of cruising through museums is intrinsically predatory: I’m perpetually on the lookout for images I can use. Instead of seeing paintings and sculptures as finished artifacts, I see them as stimuli. An interesting image scratches an inner creative itch. When I see interesting paintings, drawings, or sculptures, they stimulate the part of my brain that wants to think and make connections. Going to a museum is a way to feed my Inner Artist, so I circle the galleries like a vulture scavenging shapes and shadows. If I find and photograph enough interesting images, my full memory card can last me for weeks: a restocking of inspiration.
I didn’t go to the Museum of Fine Arts at all last year: not for my birthday, and not any other time. It’s not surprising, then, that I spent the majority of last year feeling like I had nothing to write about, because I didn’t. For me, writing often starts with looking, and there’s no better place to exercise your looking-muscle than at a well-stocked museum. When I haven’t been to a museum for a while, my spirit grows lean and hungry, craving a visual feast.
My birthday trips to the MFA take me away, if only for an afternoon, to a place rich with imagery and rife with inspiration. It’s a place we all should visit more often.
Jan 7, 2017
Without much hoopla, Hoarded Ordinaries has made the awkward transition from tween to teen: it’s been a little over thirteen years since I published my first blog post on December 27, 2003. Because my blog anniversary happens so close to the New Year, I typically use the occasion to post some sort of retrospect on the previous year in blogging. So in honor of Hoarded Ordinaries’ thirteenth birthday, here are thirteen posts from 2016.
Many people were happy to see 2016 go, given its tumultuous conflicts, violent outbreaks, and tragic losses. When I look back on 2016 through the lens of my blog, I see frequent reminders of loss and heartbreak. I blogged relatively little in 2016, averaging less than a handful of posts most months. (In September, I only posted once, which is unusual for me.) One of my resolutions for 2017 is to blog more, and considering I posted only three entries in January 2016, I’m already on-track to blog more this January than last, at least.
Last year began with J and me putting Bunny the cat to sleep, a sad event I chronicled in “Traveling Mercies.” In May, we put another of our cats, Crash, to sleep, and I described the now-too-familiar experience of coming home to a too-big, too-empty house in “His ninth life.” As if euthanizing two cats weren’t enough, in October we put our elderly beagle to sleep after a sudden seizure led to a diagnosis of metastatic cancer. I never got around to blogging Melony’s death: I never found (and still don’t have) words to describe the sudden, beagle-sized hole in our household.
Many of the tragedies of 2016 transcended the purely personal. In “A world full of swans,” I responded to the Orlando nightclub shootings, and in “The cries of the world,” I addressed gun violence by and against police. The election of Donald Trump was a development I’m still reeling from, and I described my reaction in a post titled “Aftermath.”
Not everything in 2016 was drear and disappointing. In August, I enjoyed a trip to the Brookline birthplace of John F. Kennedy, which I blogged in “The house on Beals Street.” In October, I enjoyed a trip to the Tower Hill Botanic Garden to see a stickwork installation by Patrick Doughtery, which I described in “Where the wild things are.”
Although I didn’t write much in 2016, I did meet my goal of reading (more than) 50 books, which I recorded on Goodreads. Of the books I read in 2016, I particularly enjoyed Alexander Masters’ A Life Discarded, which I discussed in “Trusting your days to the page“; Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, which I mentioned in a September post titled “Between the book and me“; and Kerry Egan’s On Living, which I reviewed in a December entry of the same name.
Many of my blog entries aren’t easily categorized: one of the things I love most about blogging, in fact, is its random and ragtag nature. In a February post titled “As the moment unfolds,” for example, I describe the flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants feeling I have whenever I teach a new course for the first time, and in “A grace freely given,” I describe the feeling of abundance that comes from leaving a book in a Little Free Library. Finally, in “Keep your options open,” I describe the spacious, free-fall feeling that comes in the summer when I have time to write but haven’t yet defined a topic.
For thirteen years, Hoarded Ordinaries has been a place where I’ve explored the creative abundance of writing by the seat of my pants, with or without a clearly defined topic. Here’s to another year of posts both random and ragtag.
Jan 4, 2017
Last week, in the lull between Christmas and New Year’s, J and I took a day-trip to Springfield, Massachusetts, where we visited the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Although many people think of baseball as being America’s pastime, I think basketball more truly deserves that honor. Invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a gym teacher who wanted an indoor game that could keep students at the YMCA Training School in Springfield occupied on rainy days, basketball is played by men and women of all ages across the United States and beyond. With nothing more than a peach basket, soccer ball, and thirteen simple rules, Naismith created a game with a now-global appeal.
On the drive to Springfield, J and I listed the reasons why basketball is our favorite sport. Basketball is interesting to watch at every level: whether you’re watching professional athletes in the NBA and WBNA, college amateurs, or schoolkids shooting one-on-one on the local playground, basketball is an engaging game. It’s an accessible sport: most schools and neighborhood playgrounds have basketball hoops, and if you live far from these, it’s easy to put a hoop on your garage or in your driveway. You can play basketball as part of a team, you can play one-on-one, or you can shoot hoops by yourself: all you need, really, is a ball and basket. And whereas other sports privilege particular body types, basketball players come in various shapes and sizes, from tall and skinny centers to short and speedy guards.
When I watch football or hockey, I can’t really imagine what it would be like to play those sports: I’m too small for the former and too klutzy for the latter. But even somebody short like me can learn the rudiments of shooting, passing, and dribbling: one of the pleasures of watching the NBA, in fact, is the glee of knowing even I can shoot free-throws better than some of the pros. Basketball is a team sport that leaves ample room for individual excellence, so there’s a certain joy that comes from watching a player who is on fire and in the zone, their shots tracing perfect trajectories and their footwork transcending the bounds of mere gravity.
Although the “Hoop Hall” in Springfield preserves objects reflecting the history and evolution of the game and its outstanding players, what I found most endearing was the basketball court on its first floor. While J and I started our visit on the third floor and worked our way down, admiring artifacts such as the game’s first shot clock and lots of enormous shoes worn by the pros, local children played on the court below us, shooting and dribbling and perfecting a game that for them isn’t about history; it’s a piece of the here and now.
Click here for more photos from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. Enjoy!
Jan 1, 2017
Yesterday, J and I went to an afternoon Bruins game, but instead of taking scores of photos of the action on the ice, I took one photo in the concourse during intermission. Ever since the TD Garden added larger-than-life murals to its concourse walls, I’ve wanted to photograph the one that shows Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett in their glory days as the Celtics’ Big Three. Yesterday, I walked by that mural right when the passing crowds parted, and I was able to snap a quick shot of a half dozen Bruins fans standing in front of the Big Three. With one photo, I captured a memory of yesterday’s Bruins game even though that photo doesn’t show any hockey: score.
This year I’ve decided to pursue another 365-day photo challenge. In 2017, I’m setting a goal of taking and posting to Flickr at least one photo every day–365 photos in 365 days–just as I did in 2013 and 2015. I’m already in the habit of taking lots of photos, but I tend to take those photos in spurts: some days I take lots, and some days I take none. When I challenge myself to take and share a photo a day for an entire year, though, I can’t zone out for days and then make up for lost time when I feel inspired. Instead, I have to be on-the-lookout for interesting images every single day.
The 365-day photo challenge provides an interesting nudge to take lots of pictures: whether you feel inspired or not, you have to photograph and share something, which means you start treating your mundane life as a kind of visual scavenger hunt. But even more interesting is the way the 365-day photo challenge forces you to encapsulate a single day into a single, quintessential picture. Given all the things you did (and all the photos you took) on a given day, which one will you select as That Day’s photo?
When anyone else looks at one of my finished 365-day challenges, they see a bunch of random, unrelated photos. When I look at a year’s worth of photos I’ve taken, however, I’m reminded of the story behind each one. There are photos I love, photos I think are adequate but a bit boring, and photos I took out of sheer desperation. Viewed en masse, these images capture the incremental and random nature of our lives. Some days are interesting and others boring, but all days pass just the same.
Ultimately, the 365-day photo challenge is a kind of spiritual practice, as it forces me to make an intentional commitment pay attention to the world around me every single day. Last year, I didn’t take as many photos as I normally do, and I also spent less time than usual writing and blogging. This year, I want to kick these creative pursuits into gear, and I know from past experience that the 365-day photo challenge is a gimmick so silly, it somehow works.
Of the photos illustrating today’s post, I took the first two yesterday and the rest today. The final photo of two L.A. Burdick chocolate penguins is today’s photo, and over the course of the year, I’ll be posting 364 more to this photo set. Enjoy, and happy New Year!
Hoarded Ordinaries 