goatee
highlanders
°2026.09.08.Tue | Higgins Armory Collection at Worcestor Art Museum
We visited the Worcester Art Museum this weekend and the highlight was the Higgens Armory Collection’s open storage exhibit: a modern and informative way to keep their whole collection on display. Plus, you can touch and don replica helmets, gauntlets, and swords!
We also hiked in and around the Purgatory Chasm with Nixie.
°2026.08.13.Thu | Asia (Korea and Japan)
We are back from our trips to Daejeon, Tokyo, and Seoul. It’s been decades since I’ve been to Japan (in 1998 and 2001), and fourteen years since our trip to Seoul, about which I posted on korean food and Koreans. Some quick thoughts from 2026:
- It was exceptionally hot and muggy; fortunately, our time in Tokyo and Seoul was a bit cooler than when in Daejeon.
- We often escaped the heat via museums. South Korea has excellent and inexpensive museums in both cities.
- South Korea was not vegetarian friendly, especially Daejeon.
- In Japan, we took a day trip from where we were staying in Hatagaya to hike some of Mitake Gorge, well worth it!
- At the Bic Camera
superstore I purchased a set of Kowa
6x30 porro binoculars—Bic was also the only place we could find fine
tweezers with which to remove a tick from our hike.
- Porro prisms are hard to find in the US, but I prefer them. And the Kowa’s have eyeglass-friendly 20 mm eye relief. (I gave my old 7x35 binos, that I purchased from Kmart when I was in high school, to friends. They too were made in Japan and of surprising quality.)
BTW: Most of my current photography is HDR, which is now visible in my gallery thanks to this sigal plugin. Such images should show nicely on HDR devices and even as embedded here.
°2025.11.17.Mon | Arboretum in Autumn
Speaking of autumn colors, we saw this beautiful gingko tree at the Harvard Arnold Arboretum.
°2025.10.27.Mon | Autumn Colors at Mt. Auburn Cemetery
Visiting Mt. Auburn Cemetery before Halloween is one of my favorite things to do in the autumn.
I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:
Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.
Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the Sea,
And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a Golden Tree. — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
°2025.07.08.Tue | Train to Portland
We try visit Portland at least once a year, always by car. This year we took the Amtrak Downeaster. The benefit is we didn’t have to worry about driving, parking, and traffic. We did have to be a bit more patient in waiting for public transit, but that was fine: Amtrak was pleasant and three buses regularly run up and down Congress Street, Portland’s main thoroughfare. For example, on our last day we checked out of La Quinta at 11:00 am, walked 20 minutes to the train station, hiked along the nearby Fore River Park Trail, cooled off at the station, got on the train, got into Boston’s North Station, stretched our legs along the nice walk across the Charles River Damn and Revere Park to Cambridge Crossing, got dinner at Bon Me, then took the #69 from Lechmere to within a block of our building. We missed stopping at Fort Williams Park on the way back, but we got our fill of views and old battlements via the ferry to Peaks Island and Battery Steele. (BTW: the Wikipedia article on the latter still uses my photo from our 2015 visit!)
The most important thing, though, is that Nixie enjoyed playing fetch on the beach.
°2025.04.22.Tue | New Orleans, LA
We’re back from NOLA, where I presented at the 2025 Popular Culture Assocation Conference. I didn’t care for the French Quarter (too many tourists and addicts) but I did note a few things, that can be seen in my photos.
- We made much use of the 12 and 57 tram and bus lines, respectively.
- The RTA public transit ferry ride to Algiers Point was a nice and inexpensive way to float on the Mississippi.
- Stores were more casual about dogs than those in Boston; the buses were okay and the trams more strict—even when we had Nixie in a bag, as permitted by policy.
- Folks there like their floats! Weekend nights are lit by open air buses and floats full of women drinking and partying (in Ward 7 at least).
- City Park is not a nice walking-about park; rather, it’s a bunch of athletic fields.
- Audubon Park is a lovely place to walk about (designed by an Olmsted).
- The Garden District is beautiful.
- I enjoyed Oak St. neighborhood, in Ward 14.
- Breads on Oak is one of the best vegan bakeries I’ve ever been to.
°2024.10.22.Tue | Fresh Pond’s dog pond in autumn
°2024.08.26.Mon | The lost rock of Lake Michigan
While visiting Michigan for a family wedding, we came across the Lost Rock of Douglas Beach, Lake Michigan.
°2024.03.28.Thu | Manhole with ladder
