Dear friends,
I began this newsletter during the first heat wave of the summer -- three days of stifling 90+ heat and humidity. Our new apartment, though without central air (neither Hanna nor I have ever lived with central air), is cooler than it might be with good cross breezes shade from the arboretum trees, and fans to keep it all going. Happily, the heat has broken now and we are looking forward to lovely weather this weekend as we host friends from California. We are looking forward to sharing the best of Boston in summer, not the worst!
I hope you enjoy them if you choose to click through! No need to be a Twitter user to see them. And if you are not a Twitter user, note that some of these photos are the top image in a series of photos ... just scroll down to see more!
Image: Teazle helps Mommy Anna read her book.
We still have two! Christopher's progress from being a master of invisibility to more and more extended periods out from under things continues; this week's heatwave has brought him out from under the couch into doorways where the hint of a cross breeze can be found, and on Monday night he even sought out ear scratches from Mommy Hanna that were rewarded with much purring!
Teazle, meanwhile, continues her ruthless campaign to catch every fly that approaches the house. She is also assisting us daily in reading, folding laundry, sewing ... and, of course, napping.
Images: Minnehaha Falls.
Images: CoMo Conservatory.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, I had the long-anticipated pleasure of visiting friends in Minneapolis whom I have known for nearly a decade yet never had a chance to visit in person. Long-distance friendship is nothing new to me; the summer I was 12 years old I flew to Vancouver, British Columbia to visit a pen pal I had been corresponding with since age three. It is always a treasured experience to land in a foreign city and fall immediately into conversation with people whom you've never met face to face but feel like you already know. We spent four days exploring the city, eating amazing homemade vegetarian food, and watching Sarah and Duck. We look forward to seeing one another again...and in the meantime, there's email!
Bonus image: Sarah and Duck fan art!
(Relationship trivia: Hanna and I were long-distance friends for a year before I moved to Boston ...who says internet friends aren't real friends?)
Images: Arlington Street Church.
Neither Hanna nor I have felt particularly moved to participate in-person in Boston Pride -- but this year it felt important to me that we stand and be counted. So last Saturday we attended the 46th annual pre-parade worship service at Arlington Street Church. There was music. There were rainbow beads. Reverend Kim left early to officiate at the blessing of the bikes ... and we all celebrated one another and committed to the long road ahead.
#resist, #persist
Images: more 11th annual Strawberry Festival.
On June 2nd, the Reader Services department hosted our 11th annual Strawberry Festival ... a tradition the origins of which are hazy (possibly because the signature item on the menu is strawberry daiquiris!) but which involves everyone in our department creating strawberry-themed dishes -- sweet and savory alike -- and closing the library a couple of hours early so that everyone -- staff and researchers alike -- can enjoy the feast! For the past nine Strawberry Festivals (yes, I have been there for nine of them...), I have made fresh strawberry salsa and have augmented the savory fare in the past two years with strawberry-basil caprese.
I like both of these recipes because they offset the sweet offerings and also because they don't require intricate preparation.
Strawberry Salsa
2 lbs fresh strawberries, washed and chopped
1 medium red onion, diced
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced
Juice from 2 limes
Cilantro (if desired; I leave it out because not all staff can eat it)
Instructions: Combine ingredients in a large bowl, mixing thoroughly. Serve with tortilla chips!
Strawberry Caprese
1 lb large strawberries, washed and halved
1 ball of fresh mozzarella, cut into roughly into bite-sized pieces
1 bunch fresh basil
Balsamic reduction (I buy a prepared bottle at Whole Foods)
Toothpicks
Instructions: On a toothpick, stack 1 piece of cheese, one leaf of basil, one half strawberry. Arrange on a plate and drizzle with balsamic reduction. Serve!
A lot of fic writing has been happening behind the scenes in "zeroeth draft" form, via email, to my delightful co-conspirators Hanna and Kivrin. Most recently I've been working on what might be considered a whole original work (that is, all of the characters are my own invention) though it sprung up as a back story for a very tangential character in our Grantchester series. I created a professor of New Testament theology who helps Sidney through a crisis and, in the process, discloses that he himself was in a long-term, committed relationship with another man. On a whim I began writing their get-together, set some thirty years previous (in the main story the partner has since passed away in his seventies) and that side-project has sprawled into a 30,000-word narrative. It's been a healing project in the midst of all the crap that's going on in the world. We'll see where it takes us.
Image: 1 of 20 squares finished!
I've started my quilting project for church -- with Teazle's aid, of course. The pattern is a series of twenty blocks ( 5 rows of 4 blocks each), each made up of eighteen triangles (see the image above!). Lots and lots and lots of tiny triangles and tiny bits of sewing! But the upside is that I don't have large swaths of cloth to hold on my lap as the weather gets warmer.
Do any of you remember the mother in Good Bye Lenin! who writes to the East German leadership about all of the things she believes they can and should fix -- such as not having women's underwear in stores the correct sizes for East German women? Some days, I feel like that character sending my women in science postcards to our elected representatives: Dear Sen. Warren, Please do everything in your power to stop Trump and the GOP from gutting the ACA... Dear Sen. Markey, As Boston prepares to celebrate Pride, I write to thank you for your support for LGBT+ equality and ask you to remain vigilant ... Dear Rep. Lynch, As the federal government plans to pull out of the Paris climate agreement ... #wtf2017. But at least I'm habituating myself to the weekly act of asking our representatives to truly represent us.
I encourage you to find small, manageable ways to do the same.
And that's all the news that's fit to print ... I look forward to writing again in July!
Stay cool, and be kind to one another,
~Anna
I began this newsletter during the first heat wave of the summer -- three days of stifling 90+ heat and humidity. Our new apartment, though without central air (neither Hanna nor I have ever lived with central air), is cooler than it might be with good cross breezes shade from the arboretum trees, and fans to keep it all going. Happily, the heat has broken now and we are looking forward to lovely weather this weekend as we host friends from California. We are looking forward to sharing the best of Boston in summer, not the worst!
New glasses!
A word about photos...
This TinyLetter will be thin on photos because the TL interface insists on importing almost all the photographs I take with my phone upside down. Which is frustrating and time-consuming to fix. So at the top of each section I've linked out to an image I shared on Twitter.I hope you enjoy them if you choose to click through! No need to be a Twitter user to see them. And if you are not a Twitter user, note that some of these photos are the top image in a series of photos ... just scroll down to see more!
Cats
Image: Christopher lurks under the dining room table.Image: Teazle helps Mommy Anna read her book.
We still have two! Christopher's progress from being a master of invisibility to more and more extended periods out from under things continues; this week's heatwave has brought him out from under the couch into doorways where the hint of a cross breeze can be found, and on Monday night he even sought out ear scratches from Mommy Hanna that were rewarded with much purring!
Teazle, meanwhile, continues her ruthless campaign to catch every fly that approaches the house. She is also assisting us daily in reading, folding laundry, sewing ... and, of course, napping.
Minneapolis
Images: Lake Harriet.Images: Minnehaha Falls.
Images: CoMo Conservatory.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, I had the long-anticipated pleasure of visiting friends in Minneapolis whom I have known for nearly a decade yet never had a chance to visit in person. Long-distance friendship is nothing new to me; the summer I was 12 years old I flew to Vancouver, British Columbia to visit a pen pal I had been corresponding with since age three. It is always a treasured experience to land in a foreign city and fall immediately into conversation with people whom you've never met face to face but feel like you already know. We spent four days exploring the city, eating amazing homemade vegetarian food, and watching Sarah and Duck. We look forward to seeing one another again...and in the meantime, there's email!
Bonus image: Sarah and Duck fan art!
(Relationship trivia: Hanna and I were long-distance friends for a year before I moved to Boston ...who says internet friends aren't real friends?)
Boston Pride
Image: Fenway Health pride!Images: Arlington Street Church.
Neither Hanna nor I have felt particularly moved to participate in-person in Boston Pride -- but this year it felt important to me that we stand and be counted. So last Saturday we attended the 46th annual pre-parade worship service at Arlington Street Church. There was music. There were rainbow beads. Reverend Kim left early to officiate at the blessing of the bikes ... and we all celebrated one another and committed to the long road ahead.
#resist, #persist
Strawberries in the Library!
Images: 11th annual Strawberry Festival.Images: more 11th annual Strawberry Festival.
On June 2nd, the Reader Services department hosted our 11th annual Strawberry Festival ... a tradition the origins of which are hazy (possibly because the signature item on the menu is strawberry daiquiris!) but which involves everyone in our department creating strawberry-themed dishes -- sweet and savory alike -- and closing the library a couple of hours early so that everyone -- staff and researchers alike -- can enjoy the feast! For the past nine Strawberry Festivals (yes, I have been there for nine of them...), I have made fresh strawberry salsa and have augmented the savory fare in the past two years with strawberry-basil caprese.
I like both of these recipes because they offset the sweet offerings and also because they don't require intricate preparation.
Strawberry Salsa
2 lbs fresh strawberries, washed and chopped
1 medium red onion, diced
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced
Juice from 2 limes
Cilantro (if desired; I leave it out because not all staff can eat it)
Instructions: Combine ingredients in a large bowl, mixing thoroughly. Serve with tortilla chips!
Strawberry Caprese
1 lb large strawberries, washed and halved
1 ball of fresh mozzarella, cut into roughly into bite-sized pieces
1 bunch fresh basil
Balsamic reduction (I buy a prepared bottle at Whole Foods)
Toothpicks
Instructions: On a toothpick, stack 1 piece of cheese, one leaf of basil, one half strawberry. Arrange on a plate and drizzle with balsamic reduction. Serve!
Reading / Writing
During the month of June, I'm participating in the #30DayBookChallenge and you can read my recommendations on Twitter here. I'm also reading a lot of romance, reading my way through most of K.J. Charles thanks to a friend who gifted me the delightful Think of England just before I left for Minneapolis (I read it on the plane). Review books have included the Gay Liberation memoir When We Rise by Cleve Jones; a great history of Gilded Age philanthropy in Funding Feminism by Joan Marie Johnson; and some crack investigative journalism into the Hobby Lobby corporation in Bible Nation by Candida Moss and Joel Baden.
A lot of fic writing has been happening behind the scenes in "zeroeth draft" form, via email, to my delightful co-conspirators Hanna and Kivrin. Most recently I've been working on what might be considered a whole original work (that is, all of the characters are my own invention) though it sprung up as a back story for a very tangential character in our Grantchester series. I created a professor of New Testament theology who helps Sidney through a crisis and, in the process, discloses that he himself was in a long-term, committed relationship with another man. On a whim I began writing their get-together, set some thirty years previous (in the main story the partner has since passed away in his seventies) and that side-project has sprawled into a 30,000-word narrative. It's been a healing project in the midst of all the crap that's going on in the world. We'll see where it takes us.
Sewing
Image: Tiny triangles, tiny stitches.Image: 1 of 20 squares finished!
I've started my quilting project for church -- with Teazle's aid, of course. The pattern is a series of twenty blocks ( 5 rows of 4 blocks each), each made up of eighteen triangles (see the image above!). Lots and lots and lots of tiny triangles and tiny bits of sewing! But the upside is that I don't have large swaths of cloth to hold on my lap as the weather gets warmer.
#SmallActs: Cranky Old Lady Postcards
Image: This week's postcards.Do any of you remember the mother in Good Bye Lenin! who writes to the East German leadership about all of the things she believes they can and should fix -- such as not having women's underwear in stores the correct sizes for East German women? Some days, I feel like that character sending my women in science postcards to our elected representatives: Dear Sen. Warren, Please do everything in your power to stop Trump and the GOP from gutting the ACA... Dear Sen. Markey, As Boston prepares to celebrate Pride, I write to thank you for your support for LGBT+ equality and ask you to remain vigilant ... Dear Rep. Lynch, As the federal government plans to pull out of the Paris climate agreement ... #wtf2017. But at least I'm habituating myself to the weekly act of asking our representatives to truly represent us.
I encourage you to find small, manageable ways to do the same.
And that's all the news that's fit to print ... I look forward to writing again in July!
Stay cool, and be kind to one another,
~Anna