Dancing dragon

last sunday we went to chinatown, as they were celebrating the chinese new year (year 4710), which started jan 23rd. the year of the rabbit giving way to the year of the dragon.... (once every 12 years, as there are 12 animals)  i was reading a bit, and did not realize this; in western culture/literature the dragon is a mean, scary beast that needs to be defeated by heroes and so on. on the other hand, in eastern culture the dragon is a symbol of good fortune and intense power.... this could be a good year... ! :) people born under this sign are regarded as innovative, passionate people who are colorful, confident and fearless. 

the dancing dragons were going from door to door in chinatown, seemingly tireless, throwing around lettuce and oranges (this was what they were feeding the dragons). as they were going up each stairs leading to the shops and restaurants, firecrackers were going off. of course, there had to be a policeman guarding this all, but he looked rather bored... (maybe it was too noisy for him).

the theme day for this month at citydailyphoto is animals, so that was a good opportunity to show this pic! :)

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Netherlands cemetery

i am enjoying the taphophile tragics more than you can imagine! i was so eager to do today's post.... and then i didnt have much time... :( on top of that, i was (as often) not satisfied with my pictures and didnt know which one to choose. well, this is what you get... the graves of hannah and simon courant. as you can see, hannah died on may 15, 1881, and her husband less than 2 weeks later. i think it is interesting that their age is precisely noted, but not their date of birth. as you can see, both were born in amsterdam, the netherlands. and guess where those graves are located...! just a few blocks away from our apartment.... we live here now 1.5 years, and i had no clue that very close to the 2 cemeteries i described last week, there is another cemetery. and it gets even more interesting (to me, at least); this cemetery is meant only for people born in the netherlands, from dutch descent, or married to a dutch! i came to know about it when i was frantically searching for info about henry brown for last week's post. then i had to wait till the weekend to finally check it out.... grrr..

this saturday we went. it was so sunny it almost felt like early spring.... we walked to the street facing the main entrance of the wyoming cemetery, an average residential street where we once parked the car... just a little further, in between 2 houses was the little "netherlands cemetery association and roxbury mutual society burial ground"!! one part was still entirely empty, but the middle was quite packed with very old graves, many dating from before 1900. some were illegible, but i could see that many people indeed were born in holland, mostly amsterdam, and some names were indeed typically dutch! i went by every grave (tim got bored, but it was so interesting!).

i have spent quite some time trying to find information about this cemetery. why in melrose?! (of all places..). but the only thing i could find was this page (that led me to this place initially). in 1859, a group of dutch jews (explaining the hebrew on many graves) living in the greater boston area formed a fraternal organization, the netherlands cemetery association, and they opened this cemetery for their members. currently, there are around 475 graves, and it is not affiliated with any temple or synagogue. it is still active, as i saw one grave from 2010 (or was it 2011? i forgot..)

i could not find a whole lot about hannah and simon courant (i have to admit i did not spend a lot of time on that, i was more interested in the history of the cemetery and am frustrated i could not find more). the only thing i could find is that they had a son, mark courant, who was born around 1855 in the netherlands. in 1882, just after his parents died, mark married betsy bronkhorst (she was born in england in 1859, but her family seemed to be from from belgium originally), in suffolk, massachusetts. she was an assistant house keeper, while he was a cigar maker. betsy died already in 1885, and was buried at the netherlands cemetery too, while mark died in 1917 and was buried in woburn, massachusetts. (i found this all here)

there was also supposed to be one grave with a dutch inscription, so of course i wanted to find that one. that wasnt easy, but eventually i did find it (by then tim was really, really bored..). perhaps i will show you that some other time!

for other taphophiles, go here...

Roa mural

i had a really hard time choosing one of the pics i took from the mural i want to show this week. finally i choose this pic, but to see the entire mural, you have to click on it! unfortunately, my pics dont do this piece justice... :( it was sooo impressive! this is in miami, the sunbather that i showed earlier is on the wall to the left. if you go here, you can see a few more pics, close ups etc.

the one above is made by the street artist roa. of course, i had to look what i could find about him online (where would i be without the internet!). roa is from ghent, in belgium. he has painted in many cities in europe and the usa, including london, paris, new york, los angeles, and recently he had a show of his work in paris. he mostly paints animals, in various stages of decay. in this interview i found, he mentions that the type of animal depends on the region where he paints, as he likes to paint the ordinary animals from that location. quote; " I dream to go one day to Africa or Australia to extend my choices". he likes to paint abandoned places, as you can see here (you should really check it out! many beautiful, and funny murals). i think his work is really beautiful, and very well fits the locations!!

here you can see more monday murals.

Sunday slogan

today was a much too long day. beeehhh. its good that in such cases i can always just let the church have their say.... what a great play on tooth decay....  this was during our holiday, somewhere in florida, but already i would have to look where approximately i took this photo. grrrrr....

good night!

Hmmm, pizza!

today we had a pizza from this place for dinner... somehow i got to know about groupon one day (and then livingsocial, and then bloomspot, luckily for me, this was only a few months ago), and now my inbox gets loaded every day with their "daily deals". grrrr.... essentially it means that i now sometimes spend money on things i otherwise wouldnt, "because its so terribly cheap now!". this time it was a coupon for 10 dollars, giving me 20 dollars to spend at upper crust, the pizzaplace. there are always nice rules coming with such groupons (only one coupon per table, only valid till..., not for alcohol, have to spend the entire amount at once, etc etc). ah well... the pizza here is really good, and actually too expensive, so with the groupon it was worth it...  (and then we went to the movies with another groupon, the ticket now only was 6 dollars instead of 11 or 12!)  :)

picture again from last week. all the snow is gone! it was very, very sunny today, didnt feel like winter at all!

Last saturday...

... it looked like this when getting off the subway in chinatown. i was surprised, it actually looked like quite a snowstorm... :) but it wasnt that bad at all, they just hadnt really cleaned the streets here yet. today it mostly rained, but tomorrow its supposed to be sunny, and not too cold.

ah well... im not in a writing mood. good night!

Charles river

we had a nice walk on sunday, it was not too cold, although quite grey out, and the snow was still there (its raining, right now). we took the red line to central square in cambridge, and then walked by MIT, hit the charles river and walked on the cambridge side along the river, then crossed the longfellow bridge and were back in boston. i took a lot of photos while walking, one of them above.... on the right you see prudential, and to the left the hancock tower. i was very surprised to see the river is (partially) frozen. sure, we had a few very cold nights, but most days it has been rather mild. im sure the laws of physics can explain this all, but i cant... :) on july 4th we were in a canoe on this river, what a difference!

supposedly, the charles river is one of the cleanest urban rivers in the usa nowadays, but in the past it was extremely dirty; you were not allowed to swim in it, and if you happened to fall in, you would get a tetanus shot and antibiotics! this was common practice until mid-1990s! i do have to say, americans like to give you as many shots as possible (everyone gets the flu-shot, just 2 days ago they asked me if i didnt want a tetanus-shot, as i hadnt had one since childhood, and most (all?) teenagers get vaccinated against hepatitis B. when arriving here they didnt believe the note my physician wrote for me, namely that i received all required vaccinations, and thus they wanted to vaccinate me again against some childhood-disease. i refused and thus i was required to have my blood tested to prove i was indeed vaccinated. i still remember how furious i was then..).

anyways, you still are not allowed to swim in this river naked, as you can see here. you will get arrested and handcuffed... but perhaps those officers just secretly enjoyed that... (otherwise they would have given the man at least a towel, no?!)

Dutch delicacy

i have not been home in 2011... by now i have not been to the netherlands in over a year, and i really start to miss little things (the big things i missed before, already... haha). one of the things that more and more came to mind when having breakfast or lunch is pictured above. a delicious slice of bread with chocolate sprinkles! yes, this is what the dutch eat on a regular basis, and yes, this surprises everyone not from the netherlands. and no... those sprinkles are not entirely the same as the ones you use for baking, to just add that little extra to a pie or cupcake. i found that out the hard way... :) just 2 weeks ago i could only think about a "boterham met hagelslag" (a slice of bread (boterham) with (met) chocolate sprinkles (hagelslag)). when we were in the baking section of the supermarket, i decided to buy such a little box with the baking sprinkles. i almost bought 2, as they were only 1,50 a piece.... at home, i did not put the box in the cupboard, as not to forget it during breakfast the next morning. but surely, i didnt forget it, it was the first thing on my mind when waking up. we toasted some bread, i put on some butter, covered it well with the sprinkles... and was disappointed right after the first bite. ofcourse the taste was wrong! beeehhh, this was so not hagelslag..! :(

luckily... our dutch neighbor is much more knowledgeable about where to get dutch stuff in the usa than we are, and she happened to go to a dutch store somewhere around boston. she got us a real, dutch box of chocolate sprinkles!! yumyuymyum. thats what you see above... the most real bread we have been able to find at our supermarket, toasted and buttered, and then real dutch hagelslag. hmmmmm. a true delicacy. for a dutch living abroad that is..... :)

ah, and hagelslag literally means "hailstorm". now isnt that funny...?

if you want to try some hagelslag, either "melk" (milk chocolate), or "puur" (bittersweet), just order from this website!

Tree protection

this is at the wyoming cemetery in melrose, close to our apartment (a 5 minute walk). i go here every now and then, sometimes alone, as it is so pretty! next to the cemetery is pine banks park, and then there is yet another cemetery (the forest dale cemetery), but somehow i prefer this one. many people, including us, run or walk around these 2 cemeteries. with my (slow) pace it takes 30 minutes, just enough.. :) (somehow i feel weird running on the cemetery itself, and i think its not allowed. but many people do walk their dogs, and, ofcourse, you can access it by car. im now kind of used to this, but the first time i saw this in the usa i was totally surprised and a bit annoyed. "really, driving on a cemetery?!"). i liked this grave as it is so extremely tiny, and, i presume, got partially covered by the tree trunk over the years. i tried to find something, anything really, about this person, but google could not give me any answers this time. grrrrr.

so... something about the cemetery then. it was established in 1857. in 1887 and 1891 they expanded the grounds, leading to a total of 61 acres. other than that, it has not changed but for the trees that have grown older and bigger. and ofcourse the addition of people, currently there are 25,476 graves. right now, the cemetery is running out of space (although it looks like a really spacious cemetery), but they are working to solve this problem. the above grave is in the 1700s section, so named because it was also the place where the first house of melrose was built, in 1645. the exact location is indicated by this sign, its near the entrance of the cemetery. it was the house of deacon thomas lynde, who built it himself. around that time, 3 families owned melrose, the lynde family being one of them. 

other than that, i found on strangeusa.com that the cemetery is haunted... according to the description: "the cemetery is known to have had strange occurances in the late night hours. especially, a feeling of negativity and people have said they have felt like they are being watched. many people have been chased by a young girl and have heard strange sounds coming from the rear of the cemetery. dark figures have also been reported in the 1700's section" (i.e. the section where i took this pic. the shadow, btw, is my own... ;) ). but other than that description, and some commenters describing similar experiences, i could not find anything about this! i myself have not experienced anything weird at this cemetery, perhaps i should go there again and pay more attention to the supernatural...... does anyone believe in such things... ?
for more graves on taphophile tuesday, go here!

Banksy, cancelled

i like the monday mural theme, but, as i said before, its not that easy to find graffiti in boston. im sure the graffiti busters have something to do with that, combined with zero-tolerance policies (recently they arrested someone who tagged subway cars and stations in boston, plus other cities, and he could goto prison for 3 years!). but there is a little here and there.. (and actually a lot along the orange line, but this is not legally accessible). just read somewhere that boston spends around 6 million/year to get rid of graffiti!! above is in chinatown. and as you can see, its very ugly! i wouldnt call it a mural either, but.... underneath this used to be (most likely) a real banksy. the only thing remaining is a tiny part of the man, in black, underneath the white R. this is what it used to look like, in 2010. then someone decided to paint over the man, as you can see here. and at some point at least 2 more people went over that, as you can see above. we actually had been looking at this wall before, seeing nothing but ugliness. haha, its still ugly, but just wanted to show that many graffiti-writers do not care on which wall they write, or whether they overwrite someone else's "work". i think its too bad that something this ugly replaced the banksy, although all of them did something that was illegal; defacing a wall that is not theirs... but still, something like this is much more interesting than a grey empty wall, right? (but this person had permission to paint that wall).

last week someone told me about "hanksy", a kind of a prank on banksy, but with the face of.... tom hanks. hahahaha. here you can see an example. no clue who is placing those..

for more monday murals, click here...

Sunday slogan

last week i did a sunday slogan, and since i collected a few over the past few weeks, heres another one! taken during the same trip last saturday. they dont cease to amaze me.... in fat, whenever we drive past a church, im hoping to add another one to my collection, and im disappointed when they dont have a sign out front. sometimes theres still hope, i can see the sign from afar, but coming closer i see it only gives the hours for sunday prayer or reads "all are welcome" (how boring!).

the one above is a very bad one, i think. how on earth can they write that?! how does it make people who are maybe not so into god (or not at all) turn to him? 

because i have so many questions regarding these signs, i google around a bit this week, but couldnt find much on wikipedia (bbuuhhh). i did find this site where they posted the most hilarious church signs (and many more weird ones in the comments). some of them i have seen myself around here, in the exact wording, so i do think churches share them. still dont know how this exactly goes though... perhaps priests make a lot of road trips and just note down the ones they like, and then use them for their own signs. hmm, but they could also just use the internet. a weekly email with the best slogans? a website from which they can pick? (would it be for free or is there this full time slogan write?) maybe...

Real snow!!

yayyy! finally the first real snow of this season..... when going to bed last night it was not yet snowing, which was very disappointing to me. naturally, i woke up several times during the night and had to check the snow... and jeejjj, at some point it was snowing. it wasnt such a spectacular snowstorm as we had last year (we even had several), with strong winds and big flakes... these were tiny flakes... but they were coming down steadily for hours, so we woke up to a nice layer (again, not the knee-deep we had during our first US-snow last year).

we walked a bit around boston this afternoon, above the boston common with the skating rink at the frog pond, such a different view than in the midst of summer (taken form the other side)! unfortunately, some snow drops on my lens... we walked around a bit, and i took some pics from higher up, where young and old were sleighing down. suddenly, a man standing next to us bellowed; "you are not taking pics of my kids, now are you?!" me, surprised and not yet knowing what to say, could only think of this event. then he said: "because if you do, i have to sign a release form". i just mumbled something like "eehmm.. i was just taking a pic of the entire view from here.. ok" but then he said: "i was just joking!! its one of those things i like to say, there are so many photography students around here". pfew...

most of my pics were disappointing.. but i guess over the coming days i will show you more of them anyways.. :) im not sure how long the snow will last, forecast says higher temperatures in a day or so.

Side street

just a side street in new york, somewhere in chinatown. i was so surprised to see so many of these scooters lined up, and a bike behind... looked more like rome to me!

we had some snow here last night, and more is expected tomorrow, hopefully i will be able to take some pics...

Stupid dutch

as you might know, new york city's borough brooklyn is named after a very cute dutch village, breukelen (breuckelen in old dutch). the dutch breukelen is close to the city utrecht, where i used to live, and sometimes i would bike around this area, which is very beautiful...  (buuuuuh, i miss my bike!). there are many huge and beautiful mansions along the river, dating form the 17th century belonging to wealthy merchants, mostly from amsterdam.  already in 1624, the dutch were somewhere in that area on long island, NY! in 1646, breuckelen was part of new netherland, but in 1664 they lost it to the british. over time, the name evolved from breuckelen, brockland, brocklin, brookline, brookland and eventually, to brooklyn. brooklyn's official motto is still a dutch one: Eendraght Maeckt Maght, which was also the dutch motto until 1816. it means "unity makes strength".

now, brooklyn heights is a neighborhood within brooklyn, which looks rather nice, judging from google images. but.... the above advertisement is taken in the netherlands  (in december 2010)! around breukelen.... (with in the background a dutch train...). why the hell do they call it brooklyn heights?! why does everything have to be in english? (this happens more often in dutch advertisements). it just really annoyed me...

anyways... here we still dont have snow. it started snowing on monday, and there was a nice (little) layer of snow on everything, enough to get the snow removers out of bed early, by 5 am (!!!) they had cleared the paths around our apartment complex. but.... by the end of tuesday it was all washed away by the, yet again, high temperatures and rain. now its freezing again, and some snow is expected. perhaps even more on saturday!! lets see....

Southernmost southernmost

i did not know what to post today... and then decided it had to be a pic with people in it, havent posted that for a while! but my most recent pictures with people in it go back to the first of january, when we were at key west, florida. this is a sort of monument, intended to resemble a bouy, standing at the southernmost tip of key west. this is written on the side with the least number of people, and it also mentions that from here its only 90 miles to cuba (as you can see here). there were many things on key west labeled as "southernmost", the southermost hotel, house (but there was also a southernmost southernmost house next to it), supermarket, restaurant... etc... but this monument was overcrowded with tourists. there was quite a long line with people wanting to have their picture taken next to it. at some point people became impatient and just had their picture taken from the other side, as you can see here. the ones facing the sun probably ended up with a better picture, but the others have the text with "southernmost point...", having at least an excuse as to why they were standing next to that ugly big thing! :) of course, this is not really really the most southern point of the usa. on the island itself are points farther south, and also those are only the southernmost points of continental usa, the island hawaii is more southern.... in fact, i just read there is another key, key ballast, that is more southern than key west, but this island is privately owned, and therefore apparently does not count (perhaps because tourists cannot get their picture taken there?). this island had been owned by someone for the past 50 years, but last year it was for sale! for only 13,800,000 dollars.... you can see that here, on the "private island website". "private island website"... can you believe it?! 

it was hard to write a post without visiting wikipedia... :( but they are blacked out for 24 hours to protest against SOPA and PIPA...

Benjamin Waterhouse

i took this pic long ago, at the mount auburn cemetery in cambridge (for an earlier post about this cemetery, click here). this is the grave of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, who died at age 92 in 1846. i took this picture because i liked this stone, and it is not usual to see that much text on a grave. upon reading it, i became even more curious! i put the pic in my "to post sometime, but first need to read more about this person" folder, and never did so. but thanks to taphophile tragics, im finally posting it! when waterhouse, born in the usa, was 21, he went to europe to study medicine, both in britain and the netherlands; he got his degree in leiden (as you can read on the stone; leyden). back in the us, he became professor at harvard medical school. in europe he had learned about the small pox vaccine, which he wanted to introduce in the us. he wrote to the then-president, john adams, as they had been roommates in the netherlands (how interesting!). when a reply did not come, he wrote to the vice-president, thomas jefferson, and when he became president in 1801, waterhouse introduced the vaccine. he did the first vaccinations on 4 of his 6 children, i guess the ultimate proof that a doctor deems something safe... he then also did a "controlled experiment" in which he deliberately exposed 19 vaccinated and 2 unvaccinated boys to the smallpox virus; the latter 2 died. (well into the 20th century this kind of experiments happened. i suggest this book if you want to know more about that). and so, he brought this vaccine to the usa. vaccines were discovered by edward jenner in 1796, when he noticed that milkmaids who caught the cowpox virus did not catch smallpox. by 1977, this deadly pathogenic disease has been eradicated, thanks to vaccination! it is said that jenner's discovery leading to vaccines has saved more lives than any other person...
of course, i got most of this knowledge from wikipedia... i could read it for hours, just following links... :) but.. tonight, the english wikipedia will be unavailable for 24 hours, to protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. if you want to know more about that; click here.
now i really digressed too much... to see other taphophile tragics, click here!

I have...

... a dream. who doesnt know that it was martin luther king who said that?

during our holiday, we saw the lorraine motel in memphis, where martin luther king was assassinated while standing on his balcony in 1968. in fact, the wife of the motel owner had a stroke some hours after the murder of MLK, and died 5 days later. years later, when the motel was in financial troubles enough money was raised to buy it. and only in 1991, it officially opened as the national civil rights museum. we were there on christmas eve, and the museum was closed, unfortunately.

the next day we drove to new orleans, where we saw this mural of martin luther king next to malcolm x. this area was not the most inviting, and i felt extremely touristy when i stuck my camera out of the window to take a picture... 

the third monday in january is a national holiday in the us, to honor martin luther king, observed for the first time in 1986. yet it was only in 2000 that all 50 states in the us recognize this holiday, with new hampshire and utah being the last states to do so.

here you can view other murals from around the world!

Sunday slogan

just read it; "exercise daily, run from satan, walk with the lord"

really?! which slogan generator spit that one out?! im really wondering about this. how does it work? do all the church-people sit together and come up with some witty text that in some way has something to do with normal life, as well as god, and then mixed together? did they assign one priest thats good with words? do they just google some random words and hope that something comes out? is each church free to put up whatever they feel like (provided it has something to do with god), or is there a more national oversight, and churches of the same kind put the same texts?

ofcourse, the best still remains this one.

i can only feel for the first part; exercise daily.. this year has not been very good in that respect, so far. i was sick most of the past week, although its getting better now. but i still think running is better than walking... but cant i just do that alone?!

When snow...

....refuses to come to boston..we have to go to the snow! grrr... still not one flake here... :( i liked it so much last year, and now... nothing, nothing, nothing... 

we went to new hampshire, where they dont have a 6.25% sales tax like massachusetts. depending on what you buy, this can make a difference! so, an hour away from our house, there was snow, jeejjj! but it was also really cold. i am still a bit sick, so mostly we just sat in the car and enjoyed the view (we tried not to take the highway).

around here you can find abandoned houses/cars/shops as well. we saw some (but not as many as in mississippi), like this car above. the door was open, and inside was a total deteriorated mess..

What happened..?!

we were having a long walk in boston, and suddenly we entered this street. entirely deserted, but with such a mess! (i must admit, this was a few months back, but i havent been taking pictures this week..)  what on earth happened?!! and why was nobody there...? then we saw all those bricks are actually made of styrofoam! from afar you really couldnt tell! without knowing, we had entered a movie set... but the shooting had been done already, and they were cleaning up... :( we also saw several trashed cars, some on top of each other... 

it was for the movie RIPD (rest in peace department). its due to release somewhere in 2013, and stars ryan reynolds, kevin bacon, jeff bridges... among others, and has something to do with undead police officers and whatnot... apparently, they have been filming all over boston! (so, only for that im curious to see that movie). it was interesting to see that for such a movie they just shut down several entire streets in the financial district of boston on a sunday afternoon (not that it is very crowded there during weekends anyways), and how many cars (entirely demolished) were involved, and how many props, and that even the newspaper boxes were brought in by them, as well as the bike, the streetlight and the parking meter.... imagine how much work it is to clean it all up again, and how many people are involved!