Boston
Walking in a Winter Wonderland
Posted January 29, 2015 by Hayley Botnen
So I was wondering if winter was ever going to hit the Boston area. Coming to Massachusetts from Montana, I was told by everyone, “Watch out for their winters! It’s colder out there! Make sure you’re prepared!” I’d been a little let down by the weather so far. I’m not particularly a fan of snow. In fact, I usually say that I don’t like it. But growing up in Montana, you get use to snow starting around October and lasting through about March. Occasionally, it snows outside that time, like when I went to my Freshman undergrad orientation, and it snowed in June. That was unusual, but I just bought a pair of socks and a pair of sweatpants from the school store and called it good. Now, I can say that I’ve finally learned what a Boston winter is like, and it wasn’t as bad as I expected. It was a lot of snow. But what surprised me the most was how everything shut down. I never had a snow day growing up. It…
Fall Festivals
Posted October 7, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
New England is known for being a bit quirky in its weather, and one of the things that really gave me pause about moving to Boston from Vancouver was the cold and snowy winters. To be fair, Boston is relatively cold and there usually are some spectacular snowstorms, but it’s not quite on the level of the Prairies or American Mid-West in either of those categories. (Which is a good thing! I know there are people who love the cold and think skiboarding and shoesnowing are great fun, but luckily you can usually spot them coming a mile away and steer clear of them before their delusions can get you.) The thing that outweighed the cold and pushed me to come here anyway was the promise of amazing autumns. We don’t really get autumn on the West coast – not like here, with the vibrant foliage and pumpkin patches and fall festivals popping up everywhere. Autumn in Vancouver means dropping temperatures, more rain and fierce wind storms, none of which are as fun or…
Boston, you’re my home
Posted September 21, 2014 by Alison Mitchell
I’ve lived in Boston my whole life, and sometimes I take the city’s cultural attractions and goings-on for granted. (That could be because I have kids, and their idea of culture is the Grossology exhibit at the Science Museum.) Meeting my classmates, many of whom have moved to Boston just for this program, reminds me to slow down to appreciate all the area has to offer, even as I wonder when I will finish my reading and class assignments! So, last week I went to a lecture with a friend, and today I visited Drumlin Farm with my brother and one of my daughters. Super fun, and I still had time to finish the TOR! It’s important to balance school and fun. So, in no particular order, here are some of my favorite things to do in the greater Boston area. Whether you’re visiting Simmons, have just moved here for SLIS, or, like me, have lived here for many years, you’re bound to enjoy at least one of these adventures. The Greenway: The Big Dig,…
The (Not-So) Secret (Rose) Garden
Posted September 18, 2014 by Hayley Botnen
Everyone! I have found The Secret Garden! Okay, it’s not actually the one in the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, but it’s almost as great. Because not only is it somewhere I’ve never been before, (spoiler alert: there are a lot of those places) it’s also a beautiful and well-maintained rose garden. In the Back Bay Fens Park (for those of you who aren’t native Bostonians–including myself– the actual park portion of the park is called thus, the Fenway Park is the baseball field…I think.), there is a secluded beautiful rose garden called the James P. Kelleher Rose Garden. I was told about this beautiful spot by someone I met briefly earlier in the day. I was so thankful to her. It really felt like stepping into one of my favorite childhood gardens. Seriously look at it. (photo credit to Christine Riggle (accessed via flickr) — I was not thoughtful enough to take anything besides SnapChats when I was there) Admittedly since I went on Tuesday, and it’s September, it wasn’t quite as vibrant as…
Ahts Festival
Posted September 9, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
One thing I love about Boston is the amazing diversity and frequency of the festivals and events that happen in the city throughout the year. This is especially good if you’re new to town and aren’t quite sure what to do with yourself – I know I spent my first fall here learning the city by going to harvest festivals in neighborhoods all over the place, and it’s how I learned the T/commuter rail routes. Fall may be the best time, the quintessential New England time, really, but summer is a busy time for festivals, too, and it’s hard to go more than a few blocks in the city without stumbling on tents and music and food trucks. This happened to me Labor Day weekend, when I went into Boston mostly to visit the Institute of Contemporary Art but also just to poke around Haymarket and enjoy my last free weekend before classes started. The Ahts Festival is proof that no matter what anyone tells you about not being able to hear the accent you’ve…
August Exploration
Posted August 11, 2014 by L. Kelly Fitzpatrick
In the areas surrounding Simmons’ Boston campus, there are countless neighborhoods to be explored. This past weekend, I took a step toward better exploring my own neighborhood of Somerville at the Somerville Flea. Every Sunday, vendors and visitors gather near Davis Square to engage in an exchange of goods from vintage scarves to bunches of carrots, peaches, and plums. Awash with Etsy-worthy ephemera, a stack of enormous volumes stopped me in my tracks. Unbeknownst to me, they weren’t books. They were boxes. And not the kind that butcher books to make them either – stunning reproductions of War and Peace, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and other titles. Set on them lining my bookshelves within the hour, I made away with the two enormous false volumes clutched haphazardly in my arms. Arriving home, I soon placed my own copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace into the box boasting the same title in box format; the daunting pagination of the wartime epic finally matched by a cover of suitable size. Tucked away on my bookshelves, the remainder…
Museum of Bad Art
Posted July 30, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
Boston, it has been pointed out by myself and others, has a lot of really excellent art museums. One of my favorites that doesn’t get mentioned a whole lot in the usual lists is the Museum of Bad Art, which specializes in pretty much what you’d expect. The Museum displays most of its collection online, but also, fittingly enough, exhibits in the basements of two theaters (right outside the bathrooms). One of the theaters is the Dedham Community Theater, but the other is the Somerville Theater in Davis Square. The only problem is that you have to buy a movie ticket to get inside, but the Somerville Theater is usually playing something decent, and matinee tickets are only $6. The museum only takes works that were done with the intention of being good; it’s not for deliberately terrible works, which is what makes it all the more interesting. It also doesn’t collect anything that is done on black velvet or anything paint-by-numbers, which I think is kind of a shame because that would really be…
Fenway Flag Ceremony
Posted June 5, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
I am not a sports person, as I’ve mentioned, but I always seem to become friendly with massive sports fans who try to cure my sports apathy with huge infusions of exciting sports… stuff. Well, exciting for them. Mostly incomprehensible to me. I spend a lot of time struggling to look like I care, if you know what I mean. One of my friends is a huge – and I mean huge – Red Sox fan. As a way to try to inspire a similar love for the team in my cold, dead heart, she invited me to go to Fenway to help with the giant flag that unfurls from the top of the Green Monster before the game. (Here’s an image of the flag (not from that day), for other non-Fenway go-ers. We’re the people who are actually behind it, who you can only see from the knees down.) Basically, we got to Fenway about two hours before the game started, before the gates were open to ticket holders, and got to walk around…
Derby Dames
Posted May 19, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
I am not a sports person. In Canada we have our hockey, yes, but even people who don’t like hockey are allowed to go about their daily lives with a minimum of head shakes and eyebrows raised. Even hockey, it’s understood, is not for everyone. That’s not possible in Boston. Sports are a religion here. It’s hard for me, an outsider, to say which team inspires the most passion in Bostonians; if hard pressed I would have to guess the Patriots, but the Patriots-Red Sox-Bruins trifecta is everywhere. Trying to explain that no, you haven’t been to Fenway to see the Red Sox play because you’re not actually a baseball fan will get you both head shake, the raised eyebrows, and an immediate invitation to come see a game, with the obvious expectation that yes, you too will soon be converted. (Which is why I will be not only going to a game on Thursday, but participating in some sort of giant flag (?) holding ceremony (??) on the field before the game (!!). I……
Boston City Archaeology Lab
Posted April 28, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
It’s no secret that Boston has a rich history. One of the first things I did when I moved to this area was spend a long afternoon walking the Freedom Trail, which I highly recommend to anyone new (or not so new) to the area, especially now that the weather has gotten so lovely. Of course, the Freedom Trail only tells the recent history of Boston; the Massachusett and other Native American people were here long before the Pilgrims, and their history is harder to see. Not impossible, though – if you’re very interested in the history of the Boston area, the place you want to head is the city’s Archaeology Lab, out in West Roxbury.That’s the home base of Boston’s City Archaeologist, Joe Bagley, who oversees all of Boston’s archaeological digs and collections. (Stop for a minute and think about how cool it is that Boston has archaeological digs going on right now that are unearthing amazing finds about the history of the city. It’s pretty cool.) The best part is that if…