In an era when an artist can release an album upon the world without any advance warning, Blur’s “Magic Whip” was a most pleasant surprise. They’d been hinting that a reconciliation was in the works, but I had no idea they were recording, and when the album came out, it was a huge relief and […]

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And so my fearsome November has come to an end. It began with the marathon, which seems like it was about a year ago now, and featured travel on four of the five weekends during the month. The day after we returned from New York, I headed to Richmond, Virginia, for the AMIA Conference and […]

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Alright, New York City Marathon. I trained for you in California, when moving east wasn’t even on our minds. I trained for you in Alaska, when I ran a half-marathon and speed-walked up a mountain. I trained for you in Massachusetts, in Rhode Island, in Vermont, and in Connecticut. Through the birth of our second […]

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Perhaps the best thing about living in Connecticut my first time around was its proximity to New York City, and while I lived here in the late ’90s, I spent a lot of time on the Metro North back and forth between Greenwich and Grand Central. We’re not quite as close to the city this […]

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A couple of projects at work came together over the last few weeks that needed looking after in New York City, so I went for a few days last week. I had a chance to screen Showman with one of the film’s directors, Al Maysles, and also worked on packing up an animation collection. In […]

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I spent a three-day weekend in New York City last week, which was a nice chance to see friends, catch some theater, explore the new High Line, and see a couple of movies. I was there to introduce a screening of Upstream (which got a nice write-up on the New Yorker blog), and had some […]

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It had been a year and a half since I’d last been to New York, so I thought I’d use one of my last few days off of the year (this is before I took off three weeks for jury duty, but who saw that coming?) and spend a long weekend in the city with […]

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I was talking to Aimee last night about what I was going to write about New York, and she suggested I almost needed two entries for the state, one for the year when we lived in Rochester, and one for everything else, the fifteen years of visits to New York City. She’s right; New York […]

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To celebrate Valentine’s Day a little late and to take advantage of Aimee’s February vacation, we headed to New York City for a long-planned three-plus day trip this weekend. The coinciding appearance of The Gates was a bonus incentive, and we also looked forward to our first visit to the new MoMA (and to the […]

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Having missed both Tim and Mari’s wedding and George’s 30th birthday to run the marathon last weekend, I tried to make up for the only one I could, and made the trip to Manhattan this weekend to celebrate a little late. Aimee and I have driven the last five or six times we’ve come to […]

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We spent a chilly but very enjoyable weekend in New York, complete with a rock show, a museum, some bars, some photo booths, and lots of parking karma.Thanks to my conversation with Mikey about Josh Rouse, I checked on Josh’s website, where I found out that he would be opening for The Jayhawks on their […]

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Aimee and I went to New York this weekend to find museums, photo booths, and “Christmas,” the elusive feeling of holiday cheer that lies somewhere between the crush of camera-mad tourists thrashing their way toward the tree at Rockefeller Center and the drunken mob of cheerful Santas on their blitzkrieg through Greenwich Village. We found […]

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I came across a new reprint of Mark Alan Stamaty’s classic Who Needs Donuts? while browsing through the Brookline Booksmith last night. What a great book – I’d forgotten about it, but immediately recognized it and remembered what strange, scarily detailed illustrations it has, and how I got a sort of nightmarish yet alluring image […]

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