Finished reading: Return of the Dragon Slayers, 5 by Brandon Mull 📚

5 stars. Great series to read with the kids.

Finished reading: The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay 📚

4 stars

Last night, we watched the animated movie Flow. What a beautiful film. Wow.

Yes, it’s been snowing here over the last few days!

If you hike to the “top” of Holy Hill, you will find a carved granite slot that clearly used to hold an upright stone marker in it.

It’s still there today, even after all these years. It last served its purpose in 1853.

living-in-harvard.7robots.org/Places/Lo…

Harvard’s Holy Hill was cleared and built by the Shakers over the course of 1842 and 1843. Preserved journals capture some of the steps they took for the construction.

living-in-harvard.7robots.org/Places/Ho…

Every day, I start out the day hiking the trails near my house. I started the habit at the beginning of COVID - a way to continue to get exercise and to both ground and refresh myself in nature. I rarely skip that walk – usually just when I’m sick.

The primary trail I typically walk on is called “Holy Hill” - a key location on the path being an old Shaker outdoor worship area in the 1840’s.

It is fitting, then, that my first entry in my “Where I live” series is about the Holy Hill trail.

living-in-harvard.7robots.org/Places/Ho…

Finished reading: The Book of Koli by M. R. Carey 📚 4 stars

Finished reading: The Map of Knowledge by Violet Moller 📚 4 stars

Finished reading: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 📚 Five stars

Finished reading: The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville 📚 3 stars

Finished reading: The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander 📚

An instant of sharp pain before the numbness. The world was floods above and fire below. If there was such a thing as a soul, the soul had gambled on a sort of baptism, and had it won?

The body apologizes to the soul for its errors, and the soul asks forgiveness for squatting in the body without invitation.

A ring of expectant faces before the light dims; they move in the shadows like ghouls …

… and the creatures of makeshift lives, the hobbled together, the disenfranchised, and the abused: the Lion, the Scarecrow, the maimed Tin Woodman. Up from the shadows for an instant, up into the light; then back.

The Goddess of Gifts the last, reaching in among flames and water, cradling her, crooning something, but the words remain unclear.

• excerpt from Gregory Maguire. “Wicked”

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First fire of the season in the wood stove!

Finished reading: The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami 📚 3.5 stars. A good book, but not amongst his best, largely due to Murakami not effectively “managing“ his plot threads and characters.

Finished reading: The White Mountains by John Christopher 📚

I live as if in someone else’s house A house that comes in dreams And in which I have died perhaps Where there is something strange In the weariness of evening Something the mirrors save for themselves—

—from “Dull Knife,” Anna Akhmatova, trans. D. M. Thomas”

(excerpted From Rose/House by Arkady Martine)

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Finished reading: Rose/House by Arkady Martine 📚

Three stars

Finished reading: Grendel by John Gardner 📚 4 stars. Re-read for the first time since college.

A few months ago, I came across Circling Home by John Lane. The book described a personal project of his to learn everything about the home, neighborhood, and town that he had made a conscious decision to settle in. He drew a circle with a one mile radius around his home on a map and used that as the boundary for his investigations. This research would eventually become the book.

I really the idea. It resonates with me on two levels:

First, every few years, I pick a research topic to “go deep” in and learn everything I can about. I typically collect all of that information, analysis, and data and build an extensive set of notes, articles, and diagrams. Over the past three decades, topics have included: comparative religion, neuroscience, post-Soviet international relations, the American revolution, geology, astrophotography, AI and data science, climate change, lunar science.

Second, I love the town that I live in: the small town of Harvard, MA. I’ve already been accumulating articles and web links and local histories of my immediate environs. I’ve already been capturing photos of the plants and trees and insects in my area. I’ve been downloading topographic maps and geology articles of the area.

And so I’ve already started my next research project. I will learn all that I can about my neighborhood – the Shaker Village Historic District.

I’ll document my findings and notes and discoveries here. After hand wringing over a few different titles, I’ve decided to call this site “Where I live.”