Following in the recent tradition of Wordle and its many spinoffs, Globle is an online game that will let you test your knowledge of geography in an unconventional format. The instructions are simple. First your opponent (the computer) picks a… Read More ›
What, I wonder, draws me to the Celtic languages and Celtic lands, when I’ve never even been there and speak none of those languages? Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish…all are missing from my language repertoire. And I’ve never visited… Read More ›
Which two actors are these? Yes, Alan is Alan Cumming, as you suspected. And Miriam is Miriam Margolyes, who has appeared in dozens of films but is best known (in certain circles) as Professor Sprout in several of the Harry… Read More ›
You may think the answer is “nothing.” Except maybe a failure to follow the rules. But you would be wrong. By this point you are probably familiar with Felicia Hofner, a.k.a. “Feli from Germany.” After six years in Cincinnati her… Read More ›
You do need a little light reading to start the new year off right, don’t you? Then you need Bill Pronzini’s latest mystery, The Paradise Affair. From the title of the book you might expect it to be about Hawaii…. Read More ›
“Tracy Chapman saved my life.” That’s the dramatic opening sentence of Chapter 32 of Roger Bennett’s terrific memoir of his life in Liverpool and his decision to emigrate to the USA and become a naturalized American citizen. As a middle-class… Read More ›
We all know now that Dorchester’s own Maya Jonas-Silver is the new world record holder for visiting every single station on the Green, Blue, Orange and Red Lines in the shortest time; it took her 7 hours, 4 minutes, and… Read More ›
That’s what I kept asking myself as I was watching the PBS Nova episode Petra, Lost City of Stone, which I somehow missed when it first aired six years ago. This amazing archaeological site in Jordan competes in quality with… Read More ›
How many Americans know that Morocco is in Africa? Probably not very many. I’m guessing 4%. And half of those know Morocco’s location only because they’ve seen the world’s best movie (Casablanca, of course) and have paid attention to the geography…. Read More ›
What are your favorite poems? Is an epic poem too long to count as an answer to this question? I hope not — but I’ll play it safe and split the difference. My favorite pair of poems are… drumroll, please…… Read More ›
“Miles on the MBTA.” That was the clever (but unobtrusive) title of Miles Taylor’s original blog, written for years while he was a high-school student in Cambridge. His goal was to visit and review every station on the Red, Blue,… Read More ›
Seafood and Asian food — that’s what you would expect in Seattle, amirite? Well, one of two ain’t bad: we did have lots of good seafood. The first night we went to RockCreek Seafood, which was spectacularly good. It turned… Read More ›
This was supposed to be a mini-vacation along with Hannah and Ben’s wedding, but was it? Yes, it counted as one in my book, even though there wasn’t a whole lot of down time. Here are a few of the… Read More ›
As I indicated yesterday, our principal reason for this long weekend in Seattle was to attend the wedding of our niece, Hannah. Although I had worried that I would be overwhelmed by the large number of guests (over a hundred),… Read More ›
Barbara and I are here in Seattle for our niece’s wedding and a mini-vacation, while Barbara’s sister Brenda house-sits and cat-sits. William appreciates her long fingernails, which are designed for scritching. Anyway, all the details about Seattle will come in… Read More ›
The best book of the year! Yes, I know that the year is only half over, but I’m still going to nominate Mary Norris’s Greek to Me as the best book of the year. Equal parts travelogue, memoir, mythology, and… Read More ›
By the way, MapLoco, someone should tell you that Puerto Rico is part of the United States and not a separate country, no what what Donald Trump thinks. Other than that (and a couple of other similar gaffes), this is… Read More ›
With one notable exception, Barbara and I enjoyed our meals in New York. We had decided to try to pick walkable destinations whenever possible, and that wasn’t difficult since our hotel’s Murray Hill neighborhood contained a bunch of restaurants that… Read More ›
We were in Manhattan, after all, so we spent a portion of each day at a museum. I’ve already reported on the Tolkien exhibit we saw at the Morgan. The next day we went to the National Museum of Mathematics,… Read More ›
On May Day I wrote about the Tolkien exhibit and promised to discuss the rest of our NYC trip in my “next post.” Unfortunately that task turned out to be far too big for one post, so it is being split among… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 