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In 2018 I semi-retired by retiring from Weston High School after my 21st year teaching mathematics there. This was also my 44th year as a teacher altogether. In 2023 I retired fully, adding in my 18 years at Harvard’s Crimson Summer Academy each summer. For 21 years I had taught at the Saturday Course in Milton, MA, and I used to serve on the board of the Dorchester Historical Society.

I read, cook, and spend a lot of time building my model railroad. For some reason I’m left with less free time than would be ideal, considering that I’m supposed to be retired, but somehow I also manage to devote time to my wife, Barbara, and to our varying number of cats (once up to six, but now sadly down to one).

Larry Davidson
ljd@larrydavidson.com

  • What happened to the ceiling?

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    Came home to find that the ceiling in our den now looked like this:

  • Barbara’s ancestry

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    The day before yesterday, I reported the results of my DNA test to determine my ancestry. Barbara had her DNA tested at the same time. To the surprise of no one who knows us, her results were very different from… Read More ›

  • Godspell at Weston

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    Go see tonight’s performance of Godspell at Weston High School! The Theater Company really outdid itself in this terrific ensemble-based production of the famous musical. As I’m sure you know, gentle reader, Godspell is superficially the story of the time before and immediately after… Read More ›

  • My ancestry

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    They got it right! According to ancestry.com, my DNA sample shows And here is the detailed map:

  • New England Math Championships

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    Please congratulate the Weston High School Math Team for their outstanding performance at yesterday’s playoffs for the New England Medium-Size Schools Championship: After a close-fought contest, Weston is now #1 in all of New England! It was all very much… Read More ›

  • Your future?

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  • Winthrop

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    Never would I have picked the town of Winthrop as the ideal vacation spot… until the confluence of two events: Barbara and I had wanted to find a nearby long-weekend getaway that wouldn’t take much time to travel there and… Read More ›

  • The Vocal Fries (yet another linguistics podcast!)

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    Yet another linguistics podcast has come to my attention! It’s The Vocal Fries, subtitled “the podcast about linguistic discrimination.” This series, now four months old, is of course named for the phonological register commonly called “vocal fry,” but that’s only the starting point…. Read More ›

  • Cats and geometry

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    Three of the cats, doing their best to sit at the vertices of an equilateral triangle (even though William isn’t paying attention and Vincent is messing up the covers):

  • Campaign posters

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    Randomly chosen campaign posters for candidates for class officer positions as seen on the walls of Weston High School this morning (identifying images have been deliberately blurred to protect student privacy):          

  • Ready, Player One (the movie)

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    So, what’s the verdict? … It lived up to my expectations and more so. Last week I reviewed the book; yesterday, when I saw the movie, I was pleasantly surprised to see how closely Steven Spielberg’s vision matched my own…. Read More ›

  • The Marriage Pact

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    What a strange (and disturbing) book! It’s one of those novels that grip my attention and refuse to let go — so I feel compelled to read to the end — and yet I certainly can’t say that I enjoyed… Read More ›

  • State Math Champions!

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    Congratulations to the Weston High School Math Team for their extraordinary performance yesterday in the medium-sized high schools’ playoffs for the Massachusetts state math championship! Weston finished #1 among all the medium-sized schools in all the state math leagues, and far… Read More ›

  • Felicia Day: You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)

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    Continuing with the gaming theme that played a major role in Player by Proxy, Ready Player One, and The Chalk Artist, now we need to talk about Felicia Day’s amusing and engaging memoir, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). As you know… Read More ›

  • Ready Player One (the book)

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    Flashback to two months ago: apparently I was the only living person who hadn’t yet heard of Ernest Cline’s Ready, Player One. Now everyone has heard of it, since Spielberg’s film adaptation has just opened. As I’m not going to be seeing… Read More ›

  • Finally… the 16th Annual Fractal Fair

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    Our plans for the 16th annual Fractal Fair at Weston High School looked good. All was supposed to go smoothly, just as the previous 15 fairs had. Why not, after all?           But the weather did… Read More ›

  • Bach’s Big Birthday Bash

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    I’d like to give a well-deserved shout-out to my students Laura and Thea for their excellent performance at yesterday’s Boston Bach Birthday Bash celebrating J.S. Bach’s 333rd birthday! Yes, it’s a few days early for Bach’s actual birthday, but that’s… Read More ›

  • What happened to the Combat Zone?

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    Yesterday evening, Barbara and I went to an excellent talk by author Stephanie Schorow about her new book, Inside the Combat Zone: The Stripped Down Story of Boston’s Most Notorious Neighborhood. Thank you, Joyce Linehan, for hosting this event at Ashmonticello!… Read More ›

  • Duolingo

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    For dual reasons (appropriately enough) I have made myself a commitment to pursue several months of language lessons on Duolingo, which describes itself as “the free science-based language education platform that has organically become the most popular way to learn… Read More ›

  • The Chalk Artist

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    I know the characters in this novel. Not literally, of course. But it feels as if I know them. Local author Allegra Goodman brings her characters to life as real people. I’m sure it helps that so many of them are like… Read More ›