Author Archives

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

• Not on the Test

  By ljd42 on March 6, 2025

  Recorded 16 years ago, but even more relevant today:

• Happy Ἐξελαύνω Day!

  By ljd42 on March 4, 2025

  

  In case you’ve forgotten, today is Exelauno Day. But surely you wouldn’t have forgotten such an important day, would you?

• If you need to get blood drawn for a routine medical exam…

  By ljd42 on March 3, 2025

  

  go to the lab at the Atrius Health office in Braintree! (I highly recommend it. This is an unsolicited testimonial.) My experience there yesterday can be summarized in three words: fast, efficient, painless. (Those adjectives describe the Atrius lab, not… Read More ›

• Good Lieutenant by E.J. Copperman

  By ljd42 on February 28, 2025

  

  Good Lieutenant is the sixth, the best, the most serious, and (alas) the last novel in Jeff Cohen’s Jersey Girl series of mysteries. But — wait, wait! important question here, I hear you cry — you said Jeff Cohen but… Read More ›

• Elon

  By ljd42 on February 26, 2025

• Tavolo

  By ljd42 on February 23, 2025

  

  It’s been a long time since we’ve been to Tavolo, largely due to weather and not being able to drive after dark. The solution today was to go to brunch! They were serving the regular dinner menu along with their… Read More ›

• Abigail’s Dilemma

  By ljd42 on February 21, 2025

  

  Abigail just received two presents to celebrate the monthiversary of her adoption. Now she can’t decide whether she prefers her new kitty bed (“So soft!” she exclaimed. “And it’s purple!”) or her new scratching post (“This gives me a view… Read More ›

• A close-up view of Neighborhood #4, Orchard Heights

  By ljd42 on February 20, 2025

  

  And now we move on to another neighborhood in my model railroad layout, a.k.a. Rose City: Orchard Heights is — wait for it — the Rose City neighborhood with the highest altitude. What a surprise! But it no longer has… Read More ›

• Written in the South Pacific during World War II

  By ljd42 on February 17, 2025

  This is a poem written by my dad in 1943 while he was serving in the U.S. Army in the South Pacific — not in Tahiti unfortunately, but in New Guinea in this case. During most of the war, however,… Read More ›

• Baskerville!

  By ljd42 on February 14, 2025

  

  Four years ago I wrote a post about the Baskerville typeface, Of course my post had to be titled The Font of the Baskervilles; I had no choice. And now we have an entire book called Baskerville, subtitled The Biography… Read More ›

• The Law of Innocence

  By ljd42 on February 11, 2025

  

  You’re wondering why Mickey Haller, the eponymous Lincoln Lawyer, would choose to represent himself. He even quotes the maxim that my father happens to have taught me when I was 11 years old or so: “He who represents himself has… Read More ›

• Abigail supervising her domain from on high

  By ljd42 on February 9, 2025

  

  “Hmmm… I want to learn music theory,” says Abigail, “but I’m not sure how to do that. Maybe I can do it by sitting on top of the bookcase, right above some music books, while I gaze over my domain.”… Read More ›

• Bye bye Mark Z.

  By ljd42 on February 6, 2025

  

  My Facebook account is going away, effective 24 hours from now. Find me on BlueSky at https://bsky.app/profile/ljdljd.bsky.social or by email at davidson.larry@gmail.com Bye bye Mark Z.

• City Unseen

  By ljd42 on February 3, 2025

  

  City Unseen: New Visions of an Urban Planet is an amazing collection of 100 annotated images by Karen C. Seto and Meredith Reba. Is it a collection of artistic images, you ask, or is it a collection of maps? Art… Read More ›

• The Guest List

  By ljd42 on January 29, 2025

  

  Despite having multiple viewpoint characters (a practice I’m not usually fond of), Lucy Foley’s The Guest List is both absorbing and easy to read. It is definitely the sort of book where you should not read reviews ahead of time,… Read More ›

• Abigail: A better photo

  By ljd42 on January 27, 2025

  

  Abigail complained that the photo I posted a few days ago did not make it clear that she is a beautiful princess, so I took a better picture right now while she sat on her royal purple blanket:

• Welcome to your forever home, Abigail!

  By ljd42 on January 24, 2025

  

  Five days ago, timid little Abigail met us at MSPCA/Angell and agreed to adopt us. From an all-time high of six cats to a low of one cat, we had now been completely catless for nearly three months at that… Read More ›

• Overboard

  By ljd42 on January 22, 2025

  

  Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski series has been going on forever — or so it seems. Actually it’s been 43 years now, but that’s practically forever in the publishing world. After reading the earliest dozen or two, I started to get… Read More ›

• A close-up view of Neighborhood #3, The ’Burbs

  By ljd42 on January 18, 2025

  

  This month’s exploration of my model railroad layout is our third look at an individual neighborhood of Rose City. Back in the 1940s some developers noticed that there was a lot of still undeveloped property just north of PowerTown. Clearly… Read More ›

• Men can say no.

  By ljd42 on January 15, 2025