It was time for dinner yesterday, and what were we going to do? Clearly it was too hot to cook — at least with a kitchen and dining room that aren’t air-conditioned — so it must be time to try… Read More ›
Dorchester/Boston
SMAPFY
“What,” you ask, “is SMAPFY?” I’m sure that is what you’re asking, isn’t it? SMAPFY stands for “Supreme Musical Artists of the Past Fifty Years”; it’s a voting simulation that we have been conducting at the Crimson Summer Academy for the past ten… Read More ›
Gaslight
Barbara and I just got back from an excellent dinner at Gaslight. Barbara started with a huge shredded beet salad, which she enjoyed but she had to take home more than half of it. I started with the traditional French… Read More ›
World Gone By
Almost exactly three years ago — on January 12, 2013 — I reviewed The Given Day and Live by Night, the first two novels in Dennis Lehane’s historical trilogy. At the time it wasn’t clear whether this would really be a… Read More ›
New Years Eve at Ashmont Grill
Last night, Barbara and I had a wonderful New Years Eve dinner at our favorite local restaurant, the Ashmont Grill, assisted by our favorite server, Michaela Collins. The food was especially scrumptious; the service was superbly attentive (without hovering), as always;… Read More ›
The food never arrived!
Oh noes! I waited and waited…they even sent me a receipt by email…but the food never arrived! Then I realized that I hadn’t ordered delivery for lunch…and such an odd menu…maybe they confused Dorchester, MA, with its namesake, Dorchester, England…. Read More ›
224, etc.
Twenty-five years ago you could count the number of good restaurants in Dorchester on the fingers of one hand (even if you had broken two fingers). Today it would take both hands and a foot…more likely two feet. The first… Read More ›
Dirty Old Boston, On the Dot Books, chain stores, and the Dot2Dot Cafe
Dorchester does have a bookstore! A very small one, but a bookstore nonetheless — and it’s neither a Barnes & Noble nor a Borders. No, wait…Borders is no more…is Barnes & Noble the only remaining brick-and-mortar chain bookstore? They’re also online,… Read More ›
MoS FT
Today we took 200 high-school freshmen on a full-day combined geometry-and-physics field trip to the Museum of Science. It was fun, educational, and…exhausting. Sometimes it was like herding cats. Fortunately we had a dozen adults, so no one individual was responsible… Read More ›
Einstein’s Dreams
What a mystifying play! Yesterday I went to see Einstein’s Dreams at the Central Square Theater, and I wish I brought Dr. Korsunsky along so that he could have explained the physics to me. A year of honors physics in high school was… Read More ›
Copenhagen
So…it’s hard to avoid telling a bad joke about uncertainty…you know, “Heisenberg and Bohr walk into a bar…” But I’m going to try hard to stay away from such jokes, Not that the play isn’t amusing. In fact it has… Read More ›
Ace Atkins as Robert Parker
Reading Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels is a guilty pleasure. The Boston and Cambridge locales are spot on, the dialog is snappy, and most of the plots are entertaining. Or perhaps I should say it was a guilty pleasure, as Parker died… Read More ›
Pixar: Transformations and mathematical models at the Museum of Science
Pixar? Math? What a combination! When I wrote about what I learned at the NCTM Annual Meeting back in April, I observed that geometric transformations and mathematical models were common themes at that conference. Transformations seem fairly abstract, even if… Read More ›
The new Boston Public Market
The new Boston Public Market opened a couple of weeks ago to much fanfare. Along with a lot of positive publicity, there were some vocal critics, so I had to check it out. This isn’t the kind of farm stand… Read More ›
Sea Breeze revisited
Just over four years ago, I favorably reviewed the Sea Breeze Mexican Grill, which had just opened in our neighborhood. This restaurant chugged along for a while, being an adequate neighborhood restaurant but nothing special. My initial enthusiasm began to wane…. Read More ›
Delvyn Case explains the Beatles.
Music professor and composer Delvyn Case gave a refreshing and informative talk yesterday afternoon about the music of the Beatles. The talk, of course, was part of the Dorchester Historical Society’s lecture series. Of course. What do I hear you… Read More ›
Douglas on the world's stage
Douglas is world-famous now: he has just appeared on TUAW, and he is very excited about this exposure.
Turmoil and Transition in Boston: A Political Memoir from the Busing Era
This is an engaging memoir by Boston politico Larry DiCara, former City Councillor and former mayoral candidate. Part political history, part personal, it provides a convincing insider’s account of Boston politics in the ’70s and ’80s, focusing on the busing… Read More ›
Free haircuts for straight A’s?
I don’t know why this sign on a barber shop in Dorchester Lower Mills rubs me the wrong way, but it does:
Learning Strategies 