![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
That's when we knew he was outside time
Rabbit, rabbit!
I spent most of my day at the deCordova with my niece who is nearly three years old. The museum itself was closed for winter hours, so we walked around the sculpture park while I read out all the signs to her and took pictures, a few of which have made it from my mother's camera to my computer.
Charlotte exploring, companioned by the walking stick she found in the first stand of trees, her partner-in-adventure Batty Bat, and, at a decent distance, the expedition photographer. We thought while she was walking on them that the irregular flags of granite that wind through the woods were part of Carlos Dorrien's Little Red Riding Hood and Other Stories (2000), which only seemed appropriate.
Charlotte at the gates. (Beacon by Stephanie Cardon, 2015.)
I just liked how the sky looked through the cables.
Taken by the expedition photographer's mother.
Charlotte rampant!
I am very happy that Paul Matisse's Musical Fence (1980) is still in place. I remember it fondly from my childhood, along with the interactive musical sculpture in the Kendall T station (Kendall Band (1987). I watched it stop working over the years; I hadn't realized there was a student intiative to restore it. Go, MIT. It's one of the best memories of my subway-riding childhood, the others being the view over the Charles River from the Longfellow Bridge—which I still enjoy—and the time my father took me to see the implosion of the Traveler's Insurance Building in 1988). It took some demonstration by me before Charlotte was comfortable hitting the aluminum pipes with a stick of her own, but after that she wouldn't leave it alone. I explained how shorter pipes produce higher pitches and longer ones lower; I asked her to guess if the next pipe would sound higher or lower based on its height and I think she got the idea. I'm not sure how much she understood about overtones, but she did like the idea that she could stop a struck pipe from humming by placing her hand on the metal. I'd like to take her to Matisse's Charlestown Bells (2000) next. I like that she enjoys art.
I had an unexpected windfall in a used book store earlier this afternoon, while waiting for my mother and Charlotte in Arlington Center; I have been reading the collected prose of Marina Tsvetaeva which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks got me as a birthday gift, so when I saw a bilingual Anthology of Russian Women's Writing, 1777–1992 (ed. Catriona Kelly, 1994) in the Book Rack, it seemed thematically contiguous and I pounced. I am feeling cautiously optimistic about my library. I have moved another four books out of storage into my office to unpack and shelve.
Most of yesterday was spent on writing for Patreon with a surprise publication in the evening, but it was not a bad Halloween. We ran out for candy in the late afternoon and had exactly four trick-or-treaters, but they were the cast of Super Mario Bros. 2 as portrayed by four six-to-nine-year-olds, almost entirely genderswapped and minus Mario, so it was worth it. The pumpkins are extinguished, but still on the front steps. We watched a movie after dark and it was a doozy. We do have kind of a hazardous amount of candy left over.
I spent most of my day at the deCordova with my niece who is nearly three years old. The museum itself was closed for winter hours, so we walked around the sculpture park while I read out all the signs to her and took pictures, a few of which have made it from my mother's camera to my computer.
Charlotte exploring, companioned by the walking stick she found in the first stand of trees, her partner-in-adventure Batty Bat, and, at a decent distance, the expedition photographer. We thought while she was walking on them that the irregular flags of granite that wind through the woods were part of Carlos Dorrien's Little Red Riding Hood and Other Stories (2000), which only seemed appropriate.
Charlotte at the gates. (Beacon by Stephanie Cardon, 2015.)
I just liked how the sky looked through the cables.
Taken by the expedition photographer's mother.
Charlotte rampant!
I am very happy that Paul Matisse's Musical Fence (1980) is still in place. I remember it fondly from my childhood, along with the interactive musical sculpture in the Kendall T station (Kendall Band (1987). I watched it stop working over the years; I hadn't realized there was a student intiative to restore it. Go, MIT. It's one of the best memories of my subway-riding childhood, the others being the view over the Charles River from the Longfellow Bridge—which I still enjoy—and the time my father took me to see the implosion of the Traveler's Insurance Building in 1988). It took some demonstration by me before Charlotte was comfortable hitting the aluminum pipes with a stick of her own, but after that she wouldn't leave it alone. I explained how shorter pipes produce higher pitches and longer ones lower; I asked her to guess if the next pipe would sound higher or lower based on its height and I think she got the idea. I'm not sure how much she understood about overtones, but she did like the idea that she could stop a struck pipe from humming by placing her hand on the metal. I'd like to take her to Matisse's Charlestown Bells (2000) next. I like that she enjoys art.
I had an unexpected windfall in a used book store earlier this afternoon, while waiting for my mother and Charlotte in Arlington Center; I have been reading the collected prose of Marina Tsvetaeva which
rushthatspeaks got me as a birthday gift, so when I saw a bilingual Anthology of Russian Women's Writing, 1777–1992 (ed. Catriona Kelly, 1994) in the Book Rack, it seemed thematically contiguous and I pounced. I am feeling cautiously optimistic about my library. I have moved another four books out of storage into my office to unpack and shelve.Most of yesterday was spent on writing for Patreon with a surprise publication in the evening, but it was not a bad Halloween. We ran out for candy in the late afternoon and had exactly four trick-or-treaters, but they were the cast of Super Mario Bros. 2 as portrayed by four six-to-nine-year-olds, almost entirely genderswapped and minus Mario, so it was worth it. The pumpkins are extinguished, but still on the front steps. We watched a movie after dark and it was a doozy. We do have kind of a hazardous amount of candy left over.
no subject
Did he also used to play it as a child?
I don't know if it was working in his childhood; I think so, but I have memories of Cambridge from so many periods it's hard to be sure. He just is interested in anything that has to do with the T and has a fondness for... oh wait. I only just now realized I've got it all wrong. I'm thinking of the **light** sculpture a t**Porter** (though I do remember the sound installation at Kendall). But it's Porter that he's got a special fondness for. I think every time he goes there he goes up the down escalators.
no subject
Porter has wonderful art, even if some of it also needs maintenance. I used to call the huge red kinetic sculpture that turns and rotates in the wind "the horseshoe crabs." There's also the installation of bronzed gloves spilling down the slide between the long escalators. I always associated them with the construction workers who built the station, but I don't know if that's true.
no subject
no subject
That works, too!