Cambridge

The GR talk at Harvard at GSD went well. There were tasty snacks, a hi-tech projector, a packed house, a great Q&A session, and gracious hosts who took us out to eat at the amazing Baraka Café, an incredibly tiny and delicious Tunisian restaurant. The lemonade with rose petals was a sign of great dishes to come... Our friend Ali was there, too, and the restaurant's host was his biggest fan. "A-li, A-li," she chanted when he came in, putting the Cheers bar to shame.

Ali was the only other dude from Harvard in our dinner party. Why are Eric and I always surrounded by women when we go on trips like this? Don't guys get involved in stuff like this? I'm not complaining--just making an observation. Too many fine ladies to praise and thank, but they know who they are.

Eric and I parted ways the next morning. He split his time between Providence and NYC. I hung out in Boston with Wendy. After grazing the buffet and checking out of the Irving House B&B, we went to Harvard's Natural History Museum to check out the glass flower exhibit. An father and son team from Germany blew over 3,000 glass models of flowers for the college. Their work is amazing, obsessive, and somewhat disturbing. It seems like an oddball story from the Museum of Jurassic Technology, but it's real and worth checking out.

On the same floor, there is the most amazing display of taxidermy I've ever seen. Imagine glass cabinets full of dead animals from apes to bison to wolves. It's very Old World, and the pieces have been on display for so long that you can see stitching becoming undone and glue coming out of eye sockets. Wendy was really freaked out by the bird display.

Although we spent the next two nights in Boston, we returned to Cambridge for great pizza at Cambridge One (long wait, impossibly quick service) and an awesome hardcore show at the Middle East (freaking Avail), and then brunch at Veggie Planet, which is a vegetarian spot in this beatnik-style basement, complete with an onstage folk musician. I had always equated Harvard with preppies, but this was straight-up Bohemian.

Other stuff in Cambridge worth noting: a Frank Stella show and The Tablet and the Pen: Drawings from the Islamic World (see pic), both at the Sackler Museum, and the Million Year Picnic store, where I bought some New England zines.