Did you know that only two US cities are hosting both World Cup games AND Tall Ships this summer?
Can you guess which ones?
I’ll give you a hint. One is where the colonists gave King George a transatlantic middle finger by dumping a bunch of British tea in the harbor. The subsequent British crackdown pushed the colonies towards open rebellion and kicked off the American Revolutionary War in 1775. (Also, it rhymes with Austin.)
The other is a sleepy little town called New York.
Here are a few shots of the magnificent vessels taken from another vessel in the harbor. (The same place they dumped that tea.)
The BAP Unión, the Peruvian Navy’s tall ship 🇵🇪
🇵🇪 The Esmeralda from Chile 🇨🇱 is known as La Dama Blanca (The White Lady). Built in 1953, she’s one of the most famous and largest tall ships in the world.
Portugal’s NRP Sagres (left) 🇵🇹 I think the one behind it is from Spain 🇪🇸
The INS Sudarshini from India 🇮🇳
Cadets in the rigging of the Sudarshini 🇮🇳
The Amerigo Vespucci from Italy 🇮🇹 Ciao Bella 😍
Another shot of the Amerigo Vespucci 🇮🇹 with Argentina’s ARA Libertad 🇦🇷 behind it
The Mircea from Romania 🇷🇴
The Mircea 🇷🇴 with Poland’s Dar Młodzieży (“Gift of Youth”) behind it 🇵🇱
Our resident Tall Ship—the USS Constitution (aka “Old Ironsides”) with Charlestown’s Bunker Hill Monument in the distance 🇺🇸
A shot of the steeple of the Old North Church where, on the night of April 18, 1775, sexton Robert Newman climbed up and hung two lanterns briefly — a signal arranged by Paul Revere to warn colonists across the Charles River in Charlestown about the movement of British troops. (“One if by Land, Two if by Sea” as goes the line in Longfellow’s famous poem Paul Revere’s Ride)
Our party of four aboard The Valiant—a regular ship, not a Tall one 😉
Did you guess BOSTON as the only other city besides New York hosting both World Cup and Tall Ships?
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Honestly, I just want to live in a world where Donald J. Trump no longer exists (and never did). In the meantime, Massachusetts is as close as you’re gonna get to that ideal in the United States.
Did you know that the Orange Cretin never won a single Massachusetts congressional district over the Democratic nominee in 2016, 2020, or 2024? That’s right, not one district ever fell for his bullshit.
I care about public schools and public health.
And, finally, some exciting news…
There’s a very special new citizen coming to Massachusetts very late this year or in early 2027.
One thing I really like about following a variety of blogs is the geographic diversity. I obviously like all the writers behind the blogs I follow—and actually consider many of them online friends—but beyond that, it’s so cool to get updates from all over the English-speaking world.
For example, Shelly just gave me a great tour of Madison, Wisconsin (a place I’ve never been). And I’ve loved seeing the Seattle area (another place I’ve never been) through recent transplant Stephanie’s eyes. And CJ lives so far north in Canada it makes my city (Boston) seem positively tropical.
The one native English-speaker who uses the most different English than me is my friend May in Brisbane.
“Australian” English is wild and sometimes I have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. They’ve got animals, plants and birds down there that I’ve never heard of. Plus, the slang is so…colorful. Sometimes I put her words into Google. “What does an Australian mean when they say…” or sometimes I just ask her to explain.
Plus, the seasons are opposite down there. (I guess I knew that before, but when she’s sweltering at the beach and planning a cool “Christmas salad,” I actually get it.)
She’s a huge reader of authors from her own country and she loves visiting quirky little Australian towns. She loves her country’s history and culture—especially Errol Flynn and the unsung women heroes of WW2. She goes to lots of live theatre and tackles lots of interesting projects like turning her father’s diary of the war into a book. Plus, she’s a retired grandma like me—a “retirement mentor” if you will.
I honestly know more about Australia (they call it “Oz” you know!) from May than from any other source.
Cheers to all of our blogs making the world seem a little closer.
What’s the best way to deal with negative thoughts?
This is a hard one for me to answer. I’ve been dealing with a lot of negative thoughts since the beginning of this year, due to a situation that has forever changed my feelings about my family of origin.
I’ll be interested to read others’ responses.
I guess distraction is one way!
So, here’s a mommy and baby osprey in their very dramatic nest near the beach on the South Coast of Massachusetts:
And some video of the two interacting:
This nearby beach is just over border, so it’s actually in Rhode Island, not Massachusetts.
New England has many beautiful areas, but this one is my favorite. The ocean is noticeably warmer here than in Northern New England and there are never shark sightings like on Cape Cod (knock wood) so you can get in and swim to your heart’s content.
Actually, that’s my answer: swimming is the best way to deal with negative thoughts.
I’m not sure which countries have the most spontaneous public singing and/or dancing—Brazil? Ghana?—but I wish we did more of that here.
I wish it would just happen in the grocery store and other ordinary places. For example, when it’s someone’s birthday in a restaurant, I think everyone should pause and help sing the birthday song.
During the closing credits of the movie The Sheep Detectives, which we saw in a full theater a couple weeks ago, they played I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers. The woman next to me started singing, so of course I joined her, then she stood up and started dancing too. Her kids did not seem at all embarrassed. It was great.
More of that please.
New Orleans gets it. They’ve got more people making music and dancing in the streets than any other US city I’ve ever visited.
I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but if I were you, I’d pass on visiting the US during the Trump administration. I really don’t think it’s safe for foreigners here at the moment. They’re even detaining the white ones.
I recommend going to Canada instead. It’s spectacular in the summer.
I remember walking around in the airport in Paris—Charles De Gaulle—in December 1985. I was waiting for my flight back to Boston after my semester abroad in Rome. I was listening to my Sony Walkman, which had the songs that had been the soundtrack for the entire semester—Take on Me by A-Ha, Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, 99 Luftballons by the German band Nena.
I was hungover. I was sad. It was the end. Back to America. I knew it was going to be culture shock. So many things had happened that semester—some good, some bad—but all of it was new and exciting. I had traveled through Europe with friends, had a fling with a fellow student who was studying in France, been semi-stalked by an Italian guy, smoked hash and saw Sting perform live, been chased down the street by a very angry nun who was mad I’d let my friend use my roommate’s bed in the convent, been subjected to my first public masturbator (aka “The Jerk”), ordered entire meals in Italian, been awakened on a train by a French security guard who didn’t like my friend’s Filipino passport, got all my clothes destroyed by an Italian laundromat, and seen the most magnificent art and wonders of western civilization from the Mona Lisa to the Colosseum to Pompeii to the Vatican.
Walking through that airport felt like the last scene in a movie—a very 80s movie.
Here I am in Rome in 1985 with my short 80s hair and my friend Scott who was in my program with me. Scott was my close friend Carla’s boyfriend, but she was studying in cold old England for some reason. Girl Code obviously eliminated any chance of a fling with Scott, but he was so cute, right? Look at those legs.
This prompt is N/A (not applicable) to a retired person.
Sometimes I have to wrack my brain to remember what day of the week it is, when I wake up in the morning. As other retirees know well, you want to take advantage of weekdays to do stuff like grocery shopping, when other people are busy at work. I had to learn this lesson the hard way over the past year. I messed-up several times. I specifically remember fighting for a parking spot at Costco in tax-free Nashua on a busy Saturday last year when the lightbulb went on: Why on earth would anyone go to Costco on a weekend unless they had to?
Back when I was working and raising children, work-life balance wasn’t a huge problem for me. I mostly worked as a part-time consultant/contractor, except at the very end of my career when I went full-time. I liked my job a lot and was happy to leave suburbia and go to the city a couple times a week. I especially liked going out to lunch with my work friends, most of whom had no children. It was great to talk about non-mom things with other adults. They couldn’t have cared less about the outcome of travel soccer try-outs or which kids were recommended for Honors Math.
One of the biggest issues for me back then was traffic. Getting back to the suburbs from my Boston office could take over 2 hours on a bad day. It was hell. I got involved in several road rage incidents. I was sometimes late to pick-up my son at his afterschool program.
In conclusion, if the powers that be want to help people have work-life balance they should fix traffic. And retirees should stay the heck out of the way and do their errands at 11am on Wednesday.
The 10 US Cities With the Worst Traffic: 1. New York 2. Chicago 3. Los Angeles 4. BOSTON 5. Philadelphia 6. Miami 7. Houston 8. Atlanta 9. Washington 10. Seattle
I’ve registered and paid for a five-day dance retreat in Maine in August.
I’ve been hearing about “Ferry Beach” from my fellow Unitarian Universalists for decades. This mythical coastal retreat center has transformed many a life. They’ve got retreats for everything from Yoga, to Women’s Healing, to Buddhism. My church friend Ron, who leads our monthly Sacred Circle Dance, is co-leading a week-longSacred Circle Dance retreat. I brought the flyer home and stuck it on the refrigerator about a month ago.
With my husband’s knee replacement recovery taking for fucking ever, we have zero travel plans. Nothing booked. Nothing to look forward to. And I have noidea when or what type of travel he’s going to be up for.
This led me to Dance Camp. I tried to convince my two friends from high school that I rarely get to see to join me there, but so far, no dice.
So…I went ahead and registeredfor five nights by myself in the mythical UU retreat center. Dancing 5 hours a day with strangers, could be a terrible idea. I mean, I like our monthly dance, but this is going to be waaaay more than that. There’s a chance I might hate it and bail out after a night or two.
In any case, I’ll have finally experienced Ferry Beach.
I was lucky to visit the two most iconic US national parks over the last few years—Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.
I’m now realizing that trying to paint landscapes based on any of those photos is just going to be frustrating. Those views are just too beautiful to be rendered by an amateur painter. I should just be happy I got so many great photos with my cell phone. My pics take me back to the actual feeling of awe.
I want to try another landscape at some point, but need to try something more humble.
Really not happy with this. I’ll keep it out as a way of hopefully learning from it.
This area is called “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” in Yellowstone National Park.
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