Happy November!

As promised, here are some pictures of my travels to Massachusetts. All photos were taken by my husband, who is much better at photography than me! Except the ones that are of him.

I took the train to Boston without much event, other than the Amtrak line being delayed as usual. There, I met up with my husband and our friend Matt, whose aunt and uncle live in the area. From there, we took the commuter rail to Salem, which was packed!

For Halloween, I was a pumpkin (you can see here that I survived the dreadful ordeal of gluing on eyelashes) while my husband was a terrifying minotaur. It’s hard to see in this photo, but he’s wearing a shirt that says “Morning Glory Farm” on it, which is a reference that exactly two people got while we were out and about. I will have to write a review of the romance novel “Morning Glory Milking Farm” one of these days. Suffice to say, my opinion is that it was terrible, completely overhyped, and borderline unreadable. But it was a very funny concept for a romance novel and the author really did commit to the bit.

In Salem, it was totally packed! There were all sorts of people dressed as all sorts of things, and it gave off the sort of impression that I had when I went to Katsucon where I felt like perhaps I had wandered into a whimsical fantasy universe. Later when I read the local paper I was delighted to see reference to some of the groups of people in coordinated costumes that I had seen while out and about.

There were all sorts of really fun window displays that people would take photos in front of. Here you can see my friend Matt’s costume, which he claimed was “low effort” but seemed to be elevated anyway by the fact that he kind of looks like maybe he’s one of those guys in a stilt costume even when he’s wearing his everyday clothes and not a mask that makes him appear to be even taller.

I think this was my favorite display! By the way, at this point it had gotten very cold and windy so I was quite grateful for the zip-up hood. If I zipped it up all the way, I could still “sort of” see and was insulated from the wind very well.

Once we got out of the crowd, it was possible to see some of the historic attractions of Salem. However, the witch museum was, of course, sold out. I think I will have to go again during the off-season to see more of the fun museums that Salem has to offer. While we were walking to the infamous judge’s house, two guys set up a DJ tent and started blasting “Phat Ass Drop (How To Produce A Club Track Today)” by Djs from Mars at maximum volume. So we ended up solemly learning about the history of the witch burning while being serenaded by the DJ saying “Okay, now we need some fat distortion…. More distortion… I said more distortion… Time for another fat ass drop” as the beat dropped.

It was a lot of fun.

Afterwards, we huddled in the wind for warmth like little emperor penguins (🐧) and took the train back home. A fight broke out as everyone exited the train, but it was just fisticuffs and nobody got seriously hurt. Just a little rough and tumble. Perhaps this is the “Boston experience”?

The next day, Shane (my husband, who I don’t think I’ve named on this blog before 😋), Matt, Matt’s cousin Danny, and I went on a journey walking around Boston.

Back in my hometown, the oak trees never turn this shade of red. It’s really amazing.

Even though “peak foliage” is over, the colors of the trees were truly wonderful. I suppose that in Boston, it’s a little less warm, so the trees still have their colors. I don’t live in a very wooded part of New Haven, so I didn’t really get to see the trees change as dramatically this fall.

We walked from the Back Bay train station along a little greenway and then along the Charles River Esplanade to…

…the bar they based “Cheers” off of! Sadly, I feel like the staff didn’t know our name there. But the food was good, and I enjoyed a nice Oktoberfest-styled beer. I remember the first time I learned that Oktoberfest is actually in September. It boggles the mind. Why not name it Septemberfest? But Oktoberfest can continue even past October if you have enough Oktoberfestbier left over. At this point, it may actually be Novemberfest.

After departing from the Cheers bar, we walked around Beacon Hill. Even though it was now All Saints’ Day, the Halloween decorations were still up! This neighborhood had some really elaborate decorations: one street seemed to have coordinated with each other to all put up Willy Wonka themed decorations, another street coordinated to all have skeletons, and so on. It was so cool to see. Oh, to be a kid in Boston going trick-or-treating!

This might have been one of the coolest, or at least most stylish houses in the neighborhood.

Eek! A skeleton! I don’t think I’ve seen a skeleton painted silver like this. It gave off a really cool effect.

In general, I think Boston might be one of my favorite cities to visit. It felt clean, it felt relatively safe, it was walkable, there was a lot of beautiful architecture, people didn’t feel quite as atomized away from each other, there were really nice parks and greenways… I’d really like to come back again.

The next day we headed home to New Haven. On the way back we stopped at the Great Mountain Forest and checked out the Tobey Bog.

The moss had turned red and the larches were losing their needles. Even though it was getting colder, the pitcher plants were still happily setting their traps and waiting for hapless bugs to fly in.

Sadly, I learned that the era of the beech tree may soon be at an end due to the double-pronged attacks of beech bark disease (a fungal infection caused by excessive feeding by a scale insect) and beech leaf disease (caused by a nematode that feeds inside the leaves of the beech tree). I hope that a treatment could be found or an effort to hybridize American beech trees with a more reistant species could be made…

Now that I am home, I’ve been working on updating the reading list. I hope to have all the summaries up by the end of the week, but I have an exam this week so might end up spending my precious time studying instead.