Leap Year Whirlwind. The week of Leap Year Day was filled with visits through four cities, three events and as many flights, two coasts, a dozen cab rides, and a surprise addition of one black poodle to an event in Palo Alto – all there and back again in less than a typical work week. By Friday morning, after a perfectly named red eye flight, I was back in Cambridge. Here (see “more dining”) is a photo collection of every single meal enjoyed. Why? Because it was delicious.
Air over California’s coast.
December 2011, Chicago. A terrific, early winter trip to host an event in Chicago brought me to some of the best eating in the vast, flat, beautiful land between coasts. Details and images from my favorites are here. And of course, while food key in Chicago - it was not the reason for the visit. The event was a joy to plan and host no less.
Chicago - a random assortment of places I wanted to visit but could not. Next time, to be sure.
Over a year ago, Pete, a farmer from Rhode Island, sold to me a small mint plant at the farmer’s market in Cambridge. The goal was a perpetual mojito plant. It worked, in a sense (sugar, lime, and rum additional). Many mojitos where enjoyed. But this little mint plant, uncut for months, grew and stretched and twisted and now looks more like ivy and taller (and wider) than your average toddler —- surprised me with a pale purple blossom for my birthday.
Three images. August is a delightful month full of resplendent weather, open air meals under the sun and colleagues with a tad of extra time to play with. Three images, all unrelated, that colleagues crafted or copied and sent to me. A welcome weight to my inbox. Especially as school begins anew and temperatures begin to fall. Until then: enjoy rapturously!
Memorial Church at Night. More or less a similar image to one of Kirkland House I captured during the night of the grand moon (March 19) - but enjoyable nonetheless. It reminded me, after the fact, of Simon’s Quest. What a horrible night for a curse.
June 2011. Harvard Commencement. Not the finest photographs I have taken (before the tables were finished being set but before my guests arrived) but I’d chalk up the experience of managing a luncheon for nearly half a thousand people between commencement programs for the university leadership, President of Liberia, the US Secretary of Education, US Treasurer, two supreme court justices and many others - a pretty nifty success. We used this 150-foot tent for the first time and we couldn’t have asked for a better day. Four-hundred guests for lunch (out of fifteen-thousand for graduation), what felt like twice that in mint juleps and almost more top hats and tails than caps and gowns.
Mandarini. On my trip home from a dinner in Orange County, my aunt handed me a great bag of mandarin oranges grown right in my other aunt’s back yard. I flew home to the cold northeast and devoured the bag but left one, little, tangerine-sized mandarin alone and decided to see if it would grow in the land of nor’easters and double-digit feet of snow fall. For over a month I watered and watched. Nothing happened. Then the weekend before I decided to call it quits – there they were. Mandarin sprouts! Here they are two weeks old. They will take up to seven years to become trees that bear fruit. I’ll probably need all that time to figure out where to put a tree (or trees) that is, for the time being, growing next to my rosemary and parsley on the window sill.
