Reunions 2009

June 2, 2009 at 8:49 pm | In little bug, weekend | Leave a Comment

We headed down to Princeton this past Saturday for Reunions and the P-rade. It was my first Reunions with a child in tow, and, as such, I found myself chasing after a toddler more than I was chasing down beer. Nevertheless, while I looked on with some nostalgia at the drunken crowds on the Ivy dance floor post P-rade, it was a gorgeous day and worth every second of the drive to see dear friends with whom I feel like I can pick up immediately (maybe because we are all wearing orange shirts). I could quite easily digress into some serious sap, so instead I’ll pilfer directly (and with permission) from an email Lacy (a professional writer, obviously) sent out early Sunday morning (some names have been changed to protect the innocent…):

Highlights

At around the Class of 2001 mark during the P-rade, Teddy produces an ice-cold bottle of white wine and cups (!) from her shoulder cooler.
Char’s discourse on the pluses and minuses of dudes in the Class of 2005.
Sage McCoy is a REDHEAD!

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Little Bug with Sage, the REDHEAD (though you can’t tell here). (Also, Ed Note: Lacy, the writer of this email is herself a redhead, thus the ALLCAPS!)

The Smyth boys enraptured over the bands, tiger balloons, and mardi gras beads.

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Mischievous Smyth boys, whose parents, it should be noted met at Reunions (her first, his fifth).

[Little Bug] Murphy liberating, conceivably from the grass somewhere, her own cold can of Miller Lite, and throwing the unopened can back like a pro.

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Yikes.

[Mags], hungover, looking nevertheless effortlessly cool and chic in white capri pants, and the random boy after the P-rade who told her, “I remember you studying for Orgo.”  Yeah, we know you do, Pal.
In between chasing down a cup for Char, Dux issues a lovely monologue on a long walk through and aesthetic considerations of Manhattan.
Will Reinblock torn between a convo with Senator Frist in Ivy and the live band across the street at TI.  Very true to his genetic heritage.  On both sides.
The late afternoon sun on the Ivy front lawn, the lull before the Class of 2009 made it from Poe Field across the road, the free cookies and burgers and quiet contemplation of the fact that the building formerly called DEC is still all boarded up and weird.

Lowlights

The ‘Great Hall’?? [Ed note: this refers to the huge HUGE addition on Ivy. It's like a cathedral. I suppose people could get married there...]
Absence of Sotomayer with class of ‘76.
That calliope thing.
Calling people you really liked circa 1995 by the wrong names.  Twice.
The dwindling fields as absurd new dorms spring up.
Waiting to fall into the P-rade toward the upper end of Little.  Like, near Dod.  Like, golf carts are not actually that far off.

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Like this picture has never been taken before — same orange, different year…

Happy Memorial Day

May 25, 2009 at 3:31 pm | In weekend | 2 Comments

 

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A gorgeous day in Back Bay. And my mind does turn to everyone serving — or who has has served — in unfathomably different circumstances.  There is a memorial on the Commonwealth Avenue mall, at Dartmouth Street, to 17 some firefighters (I think that is the number) who died in a Back Bay fire years ago. All day today, fire trucks have come to park nearby and groups of fireman have wiped down the memorial, or have just stood and looked. It is very moving. Just as the police officer who ran the entire half marathon carrying an American flag yesterday — drawing applause the whole way — was moving. I think a day as beautiful as today makes us even more grateful for others who choose more perilous and, most important, selfless, walks of life.

13.1!

May 24, 2009 at 7:36 pm | In running, weekend | 2 Comments

Believe it or not, the half marathon went much better than expected. When we were lined up at the start, the announcer said it was 87% humidity — yikes. There were 8,000 other runners (supposedly), which is always motivating, and Ellen and I were in much better shape by mile 10 at this race than the last half marathon we ran (last April) — we even managed to finish five minutes faster! I knew I was more mentally prepared for this race (if much less physically prepared), but it made for what was actually a fun race! 

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Mile 7


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 Mile 13


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Hooray!

The gang gets back together

May 23, 2009 at 9:34 am | In little bug, weekend | Leave a Comment
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To kick off our Memorial Day weekend, Little Bug and I went to meet our old “baby group” friends at a park for a late afternoon playdate. These women were in my Isis Great Beginnings class, about which I have written before, and they shared those first few sleepless, confusing weeks with me, as we watched our babies scream and spit up (especially mine), while we sat in a circle and learned about how to take care of them, I guess — although mostly I remember it as a place to voice insecurities and frustrations with nursing, husbands, and flabby stomachs. It sounds totally yuppie (obviously) and even slightly touch-feely (OK, very), but it was a wonderful experience, and I’m lucky to have had such a support group.

Some of us have gone back to work to varying degrees, some of us have since had new babies, but we have kept in touch, via email and Facebook. I know that some of the moms and babies see each other pretty regularly, and I miss that camaraderie. But as we marveled over the size of our kids yesterday (especially my daughter’s size 8 shoes at 22.5 months!), I realized that these friendships started off with such a shared intensity of experience that it’s quite easy to pick up where you left off.

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Halloween 2007 

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May 2009 
 

13.1

May 21, 2009 at 10:45 am | In running, weekend, yoga | 3 Comments
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I am running a half-marathon on Sunday. I write this not to self-glorify, but to ask why. Why am I doing this? I am a remarkably slow — steady and consistent, but slow — runner. I run a 10-minute mile when both sprinting and slogging. My knees turn in and my legs flail out (to the point where little kids watching me run often imitate me mockingly. Quincy once kindly told me I was like a young calf, or colt, but, in short, it’s not pretty). I’m a fair-weather runner. I like to run at 7 a.m. on a spring or fall morning, or just before sunset on a similarly warm but not humid day. I like to run with my iPod. And I like to run with people who will run slowly enough to chat with me — the list is short! In no way do I consider myself a “real” runner, such as my marathon-running husband who will head out for his “usual” 12-mile Sunday run no matter the weather or, as I’ve noted previously, no matter how much wine he has consumed the night before.

I’ve run one marathon (when 13 years younger and 13 pounds lighter), and two other half marathons. When I’m “training” for one of these longer races, I have to remember that I feel like crap until I have run for about 45 minutes. Then I feel good for about 30 minutes, and then I feel like crap again. Usually, it’s blisters, or just plain aerobic fatigue. Why do I sign up for these races? (1) I feel like I need to get in shape, and the looming challenge of a race is all that will motivate me and (2) that’s about it.

Here’s what does feel good: after you come home from an eight, nine, or 10-mile training run and are showered and have eaten whatever you feel like because you’ve just burned 2,000 calories and then and walk around ever so slightly sore in the hips for the rest of the day. Here’s what also feels good: sitting in a diner immediately after the race, salty sweat dried on your face, proudly wearing a race-issued long-sleeved t-shirt, drinking a chocolate milkshake or coffee and eating diner pancakes. And, also, knowing that a six-mile run is no longer a daunting, long-ish run, but, rather, just an everyday run.

Sunday will be tough. The longest run I’ve done while training this time around is 10 miles (for previous half-marathons I’ve gotten in 12 miles), but I will excuse this with balance this out against my full-time job. I ran 6.5 on Tuesday (felt good), 4.5 this morning (felt awful, but will chalk it up to not drinking enough water last night? I hope?) and will run three tomorrow and will try to go to yoga on Saturday morning. And will then cross my fingers!

 

Milestone

May 12, 2009 at 7:52 pm | In Starbucks, little bug, running, the firm, wine | 5 Comments
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Hello! Remember me? It’s my birthday, so I’m going to use this occasion to try to start posting again. If the camera on my Blackberry hadn’t broken the last time I dropped it (iPhone here I come!), I would have posted a picture of my desk at work today, which featured a beautiful bouquet of flowers from my coworkers friends, another goregous bouquet from Winston Flowers from my dear EAPL, and a genuine Starbucks mug from the original Pike’s Place Starbucks in Seattle, lovingly carried back by Sarabclever, who knows me too well. There was a leisurely lunch at Boloco (where else?) with coworkers friends; voicemail messages from friends trying to sing happy birthday (love you KRB and QBMc!); a real, old-school birthday card from LMR (of course!); presents from my loving family, including a framed, matted reproduction of the Maira Kalman print of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (the one featured in the post below) from my incredibly talented sister (now open for freelance stationery business!). And lots of emails and Facebook messages. Plus, Tim walked in from a business trip with pizza and mint chocolate chip ice cream from J.P. Licks. And, I am drinking a Chateauneuf-du-Pape given to me by my coworker friend, Jean-Michel (and he didn’t even know it is my absolute favorite varietal!) My baby is sleeping soundly in the next room (hopefully, with her pajamas on. Her new habit is unzipping them numerous times throughout the night). I am a lucky, lucky woman.

Not to say that this birthday hasn’t been a little fraught — poor Ellen got an earful on our 10-mile run around Castle Island on Sunday (yes, the half marathon is happening Memorial Day weekend!). It’s a milestone of sorts — no longer am I in my “early” 30s. If and when we have another child, I’ll be of “advanced maternal age,” and my insurance will cover all the early pre-natal testing that it didn’t the first time around. But it has been milestone also in that it has, somewhat surprisingly, put me in touch, for various reasons, with two important people from my deep, dark past. I’ve grown a lot, and karma has won out (I hope), and attempts at closure have, perhaps, finally been satisfied. I’d rather be 35 and who I am right now than young and face-line-less.

Move over Jane Austen as my imaginary Best Friend Forever

April 24, 2009 at 7:50 am | In read this, tax law is sexy | Leave a Comment
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Too gorgeous out to write a long post — need to get my work done and get outside! But please click on this link to see the “Opinion” column — a fusion of art and photos and observation — in today’s Times. It is a subtly provoking and lovely musing on women and the law.

Wanderlust

April 20, 2009 at 8:53 pm | In not yet written, read this, wine | 5 Comments
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As some readers know, I traveled almost around the world from July 1999 through March 2000, armed only with an Arcteryx backpack. I have no pictures of that trip, only three journals, densely packed with my minuscule, typewriter-like handwriting. Someday I’ll get the nerve to look back at them and write something meaningful.

I don’t think of that trip either with frequency or urgency, but every now and again I’m pulled back. For example, just this past weekend, Little Bug and I were taking an early Saturday morning walk. Believe it or not, among the boutiques on Newbury is a Buddhist gift shop called Prem-La, and swinging over the door is a big sign with the “Buddha’s Eyes.”

“Owl? Owl!” pointed Buggy at the sign.
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See, they do kind of look like owls’ eyes (isn’t my baby smart?). I don’t think I had ever really noticed that store before other than to perhaps note the Tibetan prayer flags out of the corner of my eye and wonder in passing how on earth a store like that stayed in business. But, now, those Buddha’s eyes immediately (I’m not being dramatic — the connection was intense) transported me to the wondrous and yet frightening three weeks I spent in Nepal, subsisting on garlic soup (for the altitude sickness) and staggering up some 18,000 feet to cross Thorung-La on the Annapurna circuit. Those eyes were all over Nepal — on stupas, homes, t-shirts — and were utterly otherworldly, mesmerizing to me then.

And then, tonight I stumbled upon this Times article on the revamping of European backpackers’ hostels into something a bit more upscale than the stereotype. Oh, but how I lived the stereotype for the first four months of that journey as I traipsed across Europe — in the first hostel I ever stayed in, in Amsterdam, where I was almost too tall for the stairwell and was almost electrocuted by a shower head that inexplicably shared space with the overhead lightbulb. Or at the hostel in Normandy filled with happy Brits and lots of very cheap, very good French wine, which was drunk into the 10 p.m. summer dusk as we relived the day’s tour of the D-Day beaches. Or the hostel in Sevilla, smelling like cat pee, and next door to potentially the best bar in the world, La Carboneria, where a group of Australians tried to recruit me to help them drive their ambulance across Europe (for real). Further east, the only bus or train out of Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic left at 9 a.m., so travelers at the Australian-run hostel ended up staying days, weeks, or months past their intended departure because the amount of (real) absinthe consumed often made it hard to get out of the hard, wooden bunk beds before noon. (On my first night there I heard a distinct “thud” from one of the common bunk rooms. “What was that?” I asked another guest. “Oh, it must have been one of the Australians falling out of the top bunk again.”) One of my favorite hostels was the Mountain Hostel in Grindlewald, in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, in the shadow of the Eiger, where dinner was an almost cliched combination of cheese, chocolate, and French bread and the duvets soft and clean. One of the worst was in Budapest and was called, simply, “Back Pack Hostel.” Here, travelers slept on mattresses on the floor, seven or eight to a room. My room was in a musty basement, and I distinctly remember waking up in the middle of the night to see a random dog skulking around the floor (ugh!). (Check out the website if you have time — the pictures say it all…)

The Times article describes hostels filled with wi-fi, internet access, bars, and private baths. That sounds nice. The article, however, also had pictures of the hostels’ common rooms — much nicer than the ones I remembered — but what really affected me (and inspired this post) were the travelers themselves,  pictured relaxing over foosball, a cafe table, a drink. More likely than not, they had met only hours earlier. More likely than not they would head out together that evening for drinks and would stay up very late, sharing stories and perhaps shots of absinthe (take a teaspoon full of sugar, dip it in the absinthe, and then light it on fire; the sugar will liquify, then stir it back into the absinthe to cut the bitterness). They might even travel together for a few days, as I ended up doing with the aforementioned Australian ambulance drivers (we re-met in Tangier while waiting for a train to Marrakesh; re-meeting the same group of crazy Australians is not as random as it sounds). 

These pictures made me nostalgic — achingly so — for such spontaneous moments of camaraderie. I’ll never travel avec backpack again — I don’t particularly want to — but I also realize with certainty that neither will I stagger off an overnight train and explore the cobblestones of a new city at dawn. I actually would like to do that again, just as I’d like to drink cheap Italian (French, Spanish) wine outside, maybe gazing up at some European church steeples or some Alps, with strangers/new friends until the light fades away.

Weekend update

April 19, 2009 at 7:20 pm | In little bug, weekend | Leave a Comment
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A beautiful weekend in Boston. Lots of action in our neighborhood — Newbury Street is thronged with marathoners in their florescent jackets and t-shirts. This morning brought the women’s professional mile championship — four very very fast laps from Arlington, down Newbury, to Exeter, then down Boylston to the marathon finish line. Tomorrow is the marathon. I’ll be at work instead of watching the runners take the turn down Hereford towards Boylston and then watching the finishers walk, run, and stagger in all afternoon from our bedroom window, but part of me will wish I were out there staggering in with them (has it been 12 years?).

A few shots from the weekend:

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Dancing and singing with an a capella group from BU. (A future Tigression, I think!)

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Enthralled by a dog statute.

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The closest she’ll ever come to kissing a dog (I hope).

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Sunny afternoon at the playground. Vroom vroom!

Tweet

April 16, 2009 at 3:09 pm | In read this, the media | 2 Comments
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Last night I attended a seminar on social media networking for journalists led by one of my former professors at Columbia J-School, Sree Sreenivasan, who has become a kind of new media/technology guru. At the time, he taught a course called something like, “New Media for Journalists,” in which we learned how to use the Internet for research and maybe how to create a webpage. In other words, there wasn’t much to the class (frankly, I remember finding it irrelevant — no offense Sree. You were just way ahead of all of us — I mean, I only acquired a legit email address in 1995…).

Of course, little did we know back in the mid-1990s how integrated journalism and the internet would become, and how this integretation would “threaten” traditional media. If I were still a print journalist right now, I would be fighting like hell to get as many Twitter followers as possible (Sree mentioned that some guy had just scored a book deal based on his Tweets — blogs are, like, so over) and would of course have a blog. Yet, were my employer a newspaper, they’d probably be fighting me every step of the way, lest I give my content away for free.
>My brother-in-law, the internet-savvy Pax Arcana, had a witty (as always) — but yet astute and insightful — post yesterday analyzing this impass and the looming failure of traditional media. Yes, it will cease to exist as we know it. And until recently I was one of the traditionalists who would argue, “You can’t let a newspaper fail.” But face it Bostonians: someone is going to buy the Boston Globe, sell off its cumbersome assets (printing presses, trucks), outsource weekend delivery, and move almost everything online.
Anyway, the overall point of the seminar was that the conversation (the big, meta conversation) is now online. It’s on Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn. So journalists have to get in there – to get story ideas, to make contacts. This may seem obvious, but if you think about it philosophically (or even from a marketing perspective) it can be kind of overwhelming.* And, of course, media companies have to be where the conversation is, as well, so they too need Facebook pages or Twitter feeds. (That’s why CNN and Astin Kutcher apprarently are locked in an epic battle to be the first to claim one million Twitter followers. For reals.)
And, to that end, Marbury v. Madison Ave. has to be there too — so you can now follow me on Twitter (where you’ll get a Tweet each time I have a new post, or with links to other articles and tweets, and/or whatever else I figure out you can do on there).

*And exciting. Last night’s event reminded me how passionate I am about the media on that very meta/philosophical level — as much about the industry and its scope as about the craft itself.

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