Last night’s sing-and-act-along performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Arlington’s Capitol Theater was a major success for the brand new Starlington Productions production company, selling out the theater. The gathered audience was enchanted by the singing of the two principal stars, Susan as the Narrator and Zachary as Joseph. There were also some very entertaining cameos by Matt as Pharaoh, Clara as the Baker, Cori as Reuben, Sara as the Butler, Parke as Jacob, Tyler as Benjamin, and many others.
Susan’s performance as the Narrator was captivating — she clearly had learned all her lines, and had worked with a vocal coach to bring her A game to the show. She performed her costume changes with amazing fluidity, and her positive energy was infectious.
Zachary’s vibrant tenor was well suited for the role of Joseph. His performance of Close Every Door in particular was hauntingly beautiful. Zachary brought a wonderfully collaborative and positive vibe to the production.
I would highly recommend that you go see this production, but sadly, if you missed it, it was a one night only engagement.
Last night, I went with a friend to go see the BEAT Tour on their stop in Lynn, MA. The band is Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Steve Vai, and Danny Carey. The first two were members of King Crimson in their mid-1980’s incarnation. Steve Vai is a well known guitarist taking on the role of Robert Fripp, the creative genius and only consistent member of the band from its founding in the late 1960’s. I sort of assume that’s why the tour was billed as “Performing the Music of 80’s King Crimson,” in deference to Mr. Fripp, rather than being listed as King Crimson.
The show, which was scheduled to begin at 8:00 p.m., began at 8:02! I don’t think I’ve ever been to a show that started so promptly! The first thought that occurred to me was that these guys are old and don’t want to be up too late! But that shouldn’t be read to mean that they lacked energy in any way. Levin, at 78, is the oldest of the crew, with Belew, the front man, not far behind at 74. Steve Vai at 64 and Carey, 63, are the youngsters.
The music the band played was all from their three 1980’s albums: Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair. I am not terribly familiar with the music, but I wanted to see the band because they are such an icon of progressive rock, and the musicians are so accomplished. The show was filled with great energy, and they all appeared to be having a great time, and playing off each other. I had a great time, and was glad I had gone.
Here are three songs from the evening, if you’re interested:
I will readily confess to enjoying beer, though I have always considered myself more of an aficionado than a connoisseur. I appreciate that the world of (readily available to me) beer has expanded from what was available when I was coming of age (see my previous post) to what we have today, and specifically the proliferation of local breweries. I do sometimes wonder if we have reached “peak craft beer” but there isn’t a brewery on every street corner yet, so perhaps not. (It was amusing to me that when we visited Clara in Austin, in the less-than-a-mile walk from our hotel to her apartment, we passed by two breweries, but that’s Austin!)
This summer, with the help of friends, I cooked up a scheme to get a group of folks to visit more local breweries, and I put together a “Brewery Passport” with a page for each local brewery, and some extra pages for more remote breweries that people might visit in their travels. I even wrote software to generate the pages from a spreadsheet containing relevant data about each brewery, and a photo and name of each participant. A good friend took the resulting booklets and hand-bound them into covers made from six-pack holders. The artifact itself is one of my favorite creations of all time.
On the 29th of June, we had a kickoff event at a local beer hall (which some have mistaken for a brewery…) where we distributed the 20 passports to participants, and agreed to meet again on the 15th of September to celebrate our dubious accomplishments. The listed breweries were all within 10 miles, most within about 5, so they were almost all very bikeable. The idea was that people would plan a trip to a brewery and announce it via a WhatsApp group we created for the purpose, so that others could join in. That didn’t seem to catch on in the group, however. But people did like the idea of visiting local breweries, and some even thought of it as a climate-friendly way of enjoying local tourism.
By the end, I managed to visit all 24 of the original listed breweries (3 of them on the second to last day!), walking or biking to 17 of them. In addition to that, I visited 30 other breweries this summer. Many of those were still within Massachusetts, but not bikeable (not by me, anyway) and were part of the Mass Brewers’ Guildpassport program. Amusingly, I thought that my Brewery Passport was a completely novel idea, but I have come to learn that there are, and have been, many such programs (I do think that my passports are the best of all those that I’ve seen, though). Some of those extra 30 were visited during our travels this summer, in Rhode Island and Texas.
I thoroughly enjoyed the activity, and when I asked bartenders if they had a brewery stamp, and showed them the passport, that would often be the start of a very interesting conversation, which wouldn’t have taken place otherwise. And that’s what I did on my summer vacation.
I can’t believe I’m having to write this. Cambridge Brewing Company opened in a run-down, post-industrial, pre-biotech part of Cambridge on the outskirts of Kendall Square in 1989. That was the year after I graduated college. I didn’t know about it initially, as I had moved out of the area (way out to Waltham), and worked in Boston. But in 1991, I started working just outside Kendall Square, and I discovered CBC. Spending money was short in those days, so I won’t say I went often, but I did stop by periodically. It was a revelation. I knew that Budweiser and Miller could not be all there was to beer, but there were not a lot of interesting options. Heineken? Molson? St. Pauli Girl? I mean, there were other brands, but a bar that served something other than the big 2, and maybe Guinness for an Irish bar, was unusual, if not downright pretentious.
Into that milieu came CBC, along with three other local brewing startups from that era – Harpoon (Mass. Bay Brewing Co.), Sam Adams (Boston Beer Co.), and Commonwealth Brewing Co. So in the Boston area, you would start to see some “local” beers (Sam Adams was contract brewed elsewhere for a while), certainly in stores, and occasionally at a bar. Commonwealth Brewing was a brewery and restaurant that was located near the Boston Garden. While both CBCs were labeled “brewpubs” Commonwealth always felt more like a restaurant, and not someplace you might go to hang out at the bar. So I always had a preference for the more laid back atmosphere of Cambridge.
I would never have been counted among the regulars there, but until perhaps ten years ago, if you wanted to bring someone to a restaurant (or bar) where they brew their own beer, there were few other choices. Cambridge Brewing kept things lively by brewing a wide variety of beers, including a Heather Ale, and the occasional gruit. They also experimented with wild “Brett” yeast. If you wanted to expand your beer horizons, there was no better place.
There was one year, though, when I was something of a regular. From June 2016 through June 2017 CBC had what they called the “Beer Year” contest, where you were invited to post to Instagram every different beer you had there, and if after a year, you had posted
about every unique beer that they had brewed over those 12 months, you would earn a special mug. I would say that I went above and beyond over the course of that year, by also posting their traditional (of that era) four drafts, the 3 different canned beers they offered, posting when I had one of their beers at a different local restaurant/bar, and posting the many unique beers they made for their pumpkin fest which were not required for the contest. All in all, I made 74 posts to Instagram for the beer year, and in fact, the Beer Year was the reason I signed up for Instagram in the first place. I was working in Waltham at the time, and would ride my bike to work once a week, then ride home “the long way” (and it was a lot longer) via CBC. It was a glorious year, and I still treasure my special mug.
After that, my visits went back to their more ordinary pace of “occasional” but when it was time for another “Guys Night Out” I could almost always be counted on to suggest CBC (to the chagrin of at least one friend), and if that ended up being the chosen venue, I would always arrive early to get in an extra round (or two, or…), to see what was new on tap. One of the first places I visited after the worst pandemic restrictions were being lifted was CBC.
Cambridge Brewing has also long been a great supporter of the local craft brewing scene. For their recent 35th anniversary celebration, there were a bunch of beers available from former brewers who have gone on to work at other breweries. From the menu, there were brews from “Ben Howe of Otherlands Beer, Megan Parisi of Samuel Adams, Jay Sullivan & Sean Nolan of Honest Weight, Kevin Dwyer from Oxbow, Lee Lord of Naragansett, Ben Roesch of Murder Hill, and Anthony Lauring of Outrider Brewing.” Pretty amazing, no?
So I was totally caught off guard this past weekend when CBC announced that they would be closing at the end of the year. It would be hard to overstate how much I will miss Cambridge Brewing Company. I know they won’t particularly miss me – I was never someone who was going to keep the place afloat – but CBC has been a constant presence for almost all of my adult life, and I foolishly thought it would always be there. To Phil (the owner) and Will (the brewmaster), I wish happy retirements and/or next ventures. You provided me with 35 years of amazing beer, a creative food menu, and a great place to hang with friends. Próst!
We went away this weekend to spend time with two other couples, and log some good biking in Western Mass. We rented a house in Amherst that was near the Mass Central Rail Trail. Late on Saturday morning, we hopped on our bikes and rode 14 miles to the Williamsburg Snack Bar where we had a lovely lunch, after which we turned around and headed back.
About halfway back, a large tree root that made a good sized bump in the trail caught me off guard, and I lost control of the bike, and fell. Thankfully, I fell in the dirt and weeds along the side and not on the pavement. The image above is of my shin, which is the most photogenic of my scars. Beyond that, my hip has a lovely bruise that is just starting to blossom a day later, and my shoulder, was pretty well wrenched from the incident. Nothing broken, but my ego probably suffered the most. (Shoulder is pretty painful, though). All my companions were very concerned and supportive, and helped pick up all the bits and pieces that came off the bike.
Since nothing on the bike or me was actually broken, after a few minutes of calming down, I got back on the bike and rode the rest of the way home, knowing that at some point in the near future, everything would stiffen up and feel a lot worse. The rest of the ride was, happily, uneventful.
At the encouragement of everyone, I let Susan take me to the clinic. We got in the car, and the directions told us it was 0.1 miles away. In the end, it probably would have been faster to walk, it was so close! They took some X-rays of the shoulder and saw nothing to be concerned about, and recommended ibuprofen, arnica gel, and icing.
For dinner, we walked a little ways past the clinic and had beers and appetizers at the Hangar Pub and Grill, which is home to the Amherst Brewing Company, so we were able to get our passports stamped there. Then we had a lovely dinner at the Amherst Public House. When we were done with dinner, it was raining pretty hard, so the walk back was, um, refreshing?
And then there were board games.
The next day, the rest of the crew did another ~30 mile ride. Even without the accident, it’s doubtful that Susan or I would have felt up to another big ride. Instead, we went to visit the Beneski Museum of Natural History at Amherst College,
which had a very manageable collection of minerals, fossils, etc. We enjoyed about 2 hours there, and then headed to Tree House Brewing Company in Deerfield.
So this is not their flagship location in Charlton, but a newer facility. I’d always heard great things about their beer, but not so great stories about the Charlton facility, which could be overcrowded, with long lines, long waits, etc. Having never been to their Charlton facility, I can’t compare them; I can only say that our experience was great. The facility is huge, and it took some time to walk from the ample parking lot to the sunny, air-conditioned atrium taproom. We arrived shortly after they opened (noon), and were able to walk right up to the bar and order a beer without waiting, and then order a pizza, which was ready in about 15 minutes. The beer was terrific, and the pizza was very good. And we were able to get our passports stamped as well!
A truly enjoyable weekend, with but one blemish. If I had been more alert, or less tired, it probably wouldn’t have happened at all. I’m grateful that my body took this more or less in stride, and seems to be recovering. It won’t be as fast as it would have been in my twenties, but that’s life.
Back in 2017, we travelled to Simpsonville, South Carolina to witness a total solar eclipse. It was awesome. It’s hard to plan for these things, given the vagaries of weather forecasting, but sometimes you just have to go for it. We went with friends who are simply amazing planners. The featured picture for this post is from that event, as is this one:
with all of us posing looking up at the sun with our eclipse glasses.
This time around, with kids fully grown and doing their own things, we were a smaller group:
This year, we drove west to Rochester, New York, to witness the eclipse. Weather was not on our side this time around, but we made a strategic decision on the morning of the eclipse, to head about an hour east to Syracuse. The weather prediction was slightly more favorable, and even though there would be less time in totality, the likelihood of experiencing any totality in a meaningful way meant the tradeoff was worth it.
In the end, the cloud cover stole much of the awe inspiring visible experience from us, but we still had a great time. From our vantage point, we were able to see the umbra moving from west to east, and it got much darker than we remembered from 2017. And then, the three hundred mile drive home went as smoothly as it possibly could, getting us home by 8:00 p.m. which was a blessing. We had friends who were in Burlington, Vermont, who headed home after the eclipse and who didn’t arrive home until 5:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. Yikes!
All in all, a great experience, and we would be inclined to do it again.
This autumn, I’ve had three good friends suffer falls and injuries from their bike slipping on ice. Probably a decade ago, I had a similar incident, on the Minuteman Bike Trail, where I was turning to go around the gates they had setup at the time, and my front wheel slipped right out from under me. My shoulder went directly into the bollard. I wasn’t going fast at the time, but it hurt like heck, and I could barely move my arm. I limped home on the bike from there, and wondered whether I’d broken anything, but nothing seemed broken. After a couple of days, I could move my arm again reasonably.
Susan and I share one car, which generally means that if one person has the car, the other is left with a bike. (Or walking, or public transit, all of which are reasonable options around here, thankfully). Not wanting to relive my previous experience, with bones a decade more brittle, and after seeing so many other experienced cyclists go down, I decided to set myself up with a second set of wheels, with studded tires.
I first spent some time researching what I had on my existing back wheel for sprockets, and started looking for used wheels on eBay and Craigslist, but it’s a little complicated and hard to be 100% certain that everything would work together. So in the end, I opted for new wheels. I was super excited when they came, but when I opened the boxes, I discovered that I had ordered wheels with nutted axles instead of quick release. Thankfully, even though it was my mistake, the shop allowed me to return them, and refunded me, and I ordered the proper wheels.
So when the new order arrived, I thought I had everything I needed: wheels, tires, tubes, cassette. But I didn’t have rim tape. So I had to go to the local bike shop for that. The owner there was nice enough to install it on the one wheel that I brought, and sent me home with a second piece for the other wheel. And then the tubes. The tubes I bought had “normal” length stems, but the rims are slightly aero, so the stems are barely long enough — really hard to get the pump to grab on. Sigh. But now I have a set of winter wheels, and hopefully that greatly reduces the chance of slipping and tumbling.
It would of course have been possible to just replace the tires on the existing rims, at much lower cost. The tires themselves are not particularly inexpensive, so this was a pretty costly endeavor — about $400 when you add it all up. I just doubted my ability to follow through and actually swap tires twice a year. Swapping wheels seems a lot more likely.
I’ve always had an interest in locks and locksmithing. A few years ago, I bought someone’s re-pinning kit on eBay. It was in pretty rough shape, so I removed all the pins, put them in teeny little ziploc bags, and imagined I would eventually get around to sanding and re-painting it. But I never did. So when Tyler asked for something on which he might practice powder coating, I immediately thought of that sad metal case. I gave it to him, and then forgot about it. On Christmas Day, though, when I opened my present from Tyler, there it was! But not at all how I remembered it. It ended up being too big for his powder coating oven, but he cleaned it up and gave it an amazing custom paint job! So cool!
So this week, I finally got around to putting the pins back in their little compartments, and ordering a few more to fill some of the empty compartments. Over the years, I have used the kit to re-key my house so that now all the locks can be opened with the same key. And here it is now, all ready for my next career as a locksmith. Heh. I have spent some time trying to pick locks, but haven’t gotten to the point of being reliable, and in the end, I don’t really care to invest the time. But I do enjoy being able to re-key locks!
Last night, we went to see John Oliver perform standup comedy at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway. We used to watch The Daily Show pretty religiously back when Jon Stewart (cousin Jon, as we referred to him) was host. We followed the career trajectories of correspondents Stephen Colbert and John Oliver. And then we were given the gift of the Colbert Report, which was a magnificent creation. We dropped our cable tv subscription some time ago, but we watch a lot of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight pieces on YouTube these days. These guys are all well informed, well educated, bright, opinionated, witty, and able to present the most depressing news (well, bits of it) in a way that both informs and entertains.
John is touring at least in part to support his staff during the current writer’s strike. Opening for John were Brooks Wheelan and local legend Eugene Mirman of Bob’s Burgers fame, who were both very funny. Wheelan’s most memorable bits were about drugs and alcohol, while Mirman’s were about trying to enroll his son in an exclusive preschool.
After they had warmed up the crowd, John came on
and entertained us with material ranging from the origin story of the British royal family, to Florida’s newly approved history curriculum, “educating” young Floridians about the benefits of being enslaved. As always, John’s acerbic wit, when applied to injustices great and small, can be very cathartic for me.
I wanted to include a link to at least a small sample video from the current tour, but it must be that his lawyers are very expedient in issuing takedown notices, because I can’t find anything out there.
Anyway, a great and memorable evening was had by all
We chose to bike in to the show because we hate: trying to find parking in the area; paying for parking in the area; and getting out of the area in a car. We didn’t realize it at the time we headed in to town, but there was also a Sox game at the same time. So Lansdowne Street was packed as we walked our bikes down its length to get to The Fenway, and coincidentally, the game must have ended about the same time the show got out. So we were super grateful we had chosen to bike. On the way home, we essentially rode over to Mass Ave, and then took it all the way from Boston, through Cambridge, and right to Arlington Center. 6.5 miles in 33 minutes, which is not too bad, and very likely faster than it would have been by car.
We only had one full day in Belfast, plus the half day after our arrival, and a half day preparing to leave. We walked around the city that first evening, taking in the City Hall
and Saint Anne’s Cathedral
The next day, we took a bus tour that took us to one of the major attractions that drew us to Belfast — the Giant’s Causeway. On the way, we got to see the ruins of Dunluce Castle
which was used (with some CGI enhancements) as Pyke Castle, home to the House of Greyjoy in Game of Thrones. And then we got to the Causeway. And wow was it breathtaking! I would have to say it was the most unique and interesting geological site I’ve been to. The notable feature is the collection of some 40,000+ hexagonal columns of basalt, which were formed by lava cooling very slowly and uniformly, which apparently caused fractures to form hexagonally.
The tour bus gave us a reasonable amount of time to explore, and the only challenge was that it was raining lightly much of the time, which left the surface of the rocks rather slippery. Our tour guide told us there were two stories about the formation of the structure, a “boring” one involving slowly cooling lava, and a more colorful one involving giants. The story with the giants did not in any way explain why there were hexagonal columns, so personally, I prefer the boring one.
On the way back, the bus stopped at another GoT filming site — the Dark Hedges, which is known in the series as the Kingsroad. That was striking and picturesque as well.
The last stop on the tour was the Titanic Experience museum, which documented the history of shipbuilding in Belfast, the design and construction of the Titanic and her sister ships, her launch, and the story behind the disaster. It was really well done and fascinating.
Completely coincidentally, we were in Belfast on the days leading up to The Twelfth, and saw one of the bonfires under construction just a few blocks from our hotel. Here are two photos, one from the evening of the 10th, and another about 12 hours later, on the morning of the 11th, when we were leaving.
Bonfires are lit on the night of the 11th. On the 12th itself, parades apparently make it very challenging to get around the city, so we were glad that our plans had us leaving the morning of the 11th.
From Belfast, we took a train to Dublin. It was just over a two hour ride, which was pleasant enough through the picturesque Irish countryside. I knew when I booked the tickets that there were reserved and unreserved seats on the train, and I (of course) purchased the less expensive unreserved. I was envisioning this manifesting as some cars having only reserved seats and others being completely unreserved, but that’s not how it works. Each seat has a status indicator indicating whether it is reserved or not (and for what part of the trip). This meant that you really want to arrive on the early side to ensure that you can find seats together, facing forwards (if that’s your preference) and with space for your luggage. It all worked out fine, but was a little more stressful than I had anticipated.
In Dublin, our schedule called for two full days, plus two half days for traveling. On our arrival day, we again did quite a bit of walking around, finding St. Stephen’s Green
near our hotel, which was reminiscent of Central Park, though at a very different scale, and browsing some of the many knitwear shops.
We visited famed Trinity College, where we were able to see the exhibit on the Book of Kells, which was also very well done, as well as the famous library,
which was in the early stages of major restoration work, and therefore devoid of most of its books. But Susan got to say hello to Rosalind Franklin there
and later, I got to have my first Guinness in its birth town.
On our first full day, we once again took a bus tour. This one took us from Dublin, on the eastern coast all the way west across the country to Galway, on the Atlantic coast. Our stop in Galway was really focussed on the very touristy section that was all about shopping and eating. Which was OK for such a brief visit, since we needed some lunch anyway.
On the way there, we got to stop at the (in?)famous Barack Obama Plaza truck stop, which was a little weird, but apparently his third great-grandfather lived in the area before emigrating to the U.S.
The next stop was the geological gem of the day — the Cliffs of Moher, which among other things is famous as the “Cliffs of Insanity” from The Princess Bride movie. There was a nicely developed walking trail safely set back from the edge, which we walked on for a stretch, but not the entire 18 km length! As in much of Ireland, the trail was directly adjacent to grazing lands for cattle and sheep.
When developing the site for tourism, they very cleverly built gift shops directly into the landscape, which was cool.
We subsequently had two stops in the area known as The Burren. The first was right along the coast, where we got to experience the terrain up close, which is largely exposed limestone.
Speaking to the barrenness of the area, it was famously stated that in The Burren, “there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him.” The second stop was at Kilmacduagh monastery, a lovely collection of ruins.
Our second full day in Dublin coincided with our wedding anniversary, and we got the celebration off to a fine start with a walk to breakfast at a quaint little café called Two Pups, which included some appropriately decorated beverages.
From there, we walked to the Guinness brewery at St. James’s Gate and took their self-guided tour, which was quite extensive, educational, and fun. One of the little highlights was the nine thousand year lease that Arthur Guinness signed for the plot of land on which he built his brewery.
Others included some history of cooperage (barrel making), including a video that documented the process, and a fun intro to drumming on a Bodhrán,
even if any connection to Guinness was lost on me. Along the way, we did learn about brewing, about Arthur and his family, the history of the company, etc. We spent over three hours leisurely walking through the exhibits, which culminated with a lesson in beer tasting, and finally a “free” pint (or half pint, if preferred)
in the pub at the top of the building, which had lovely panoramic views of the city.
After that, we exited through the gift shop, and gleefully spent way too much money, for the privilege of advertising on behalf of Guinness.
After a quick “toastie” for lunch, we next made our way to the Irish Whiskey Museum, where a very opinionated and humorous guide instructed us in the history of Irish Whiskey and its superiority over all other Whiskies (especially Scotch). We then got to sample three (Susan) or four (me) different whiskies.
Well done, even if the guide was a little over the top.
The highlight of the day, though, was definitely attending a production of Fun Home, an autobiographical musical written by graphic novelist and creator of the unintentionally famous Bechdel test, Alison Bechdel. It was a powerful and tragic story of a young woman discovering her sexual identity, and subsequent learning about her father’s closeted gay identity. Heavy and moving material. We happened to walk past the theater the previous day, on our way to the bus tour pickup, and Susan noticed it was playing, and mentioned that it had been on her list. So we bought tickets on the spur of the moment, after vanquishing a recalcitrant website for ticket purchases.
The next morning was simply packing for the trip home and getting to the airport. Our travel went as smoothly as possible. The plane that was arriving in Dublin to fly us to Boston left New York almost three hours late, but there was enough slack in the schedule that we ended up taking off only about fifteen minutes late, eventually arriving fifteen minutes early and having to wait for a gate in Boston! We were able to clear customs in Dublin, which meant that we arrived as a domestic flight, and with only carry-on luggage, we were able to walk out of the terminal, and catch a Silver Line bus just as it was arriving. That took us to South Station, where a Red Line train was just arriving! The “big delay” came when we got to Harvard and had to wait about three minutes for the 77 bus to arrive. And that gave us an entire weekend to recover!
A great vacation, though obviously too short to get to know either of those cities meaningfully.
