And I'm back (in the nineteenth century)

So after a long hiatus from blogging, I'm back.  And it just so happens that I again find myself at the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) in Worcester.  You may remember previous posts from Worcester from a few years back when I was all excited about Cotton Mather's high chair and various other scary and/or funny early American oddities.  I'm back again for a brief visit for the Digital Antiquarian Conference.  The semester is over, my three years as Associate Chair are over (as of June 1st at least), and I am exciting to be diving back into research and writing.

It's been a busy time (as you may have deduced from the lack of posting here.  One of the major highlights, of course, was one I showed you in a recent photo post:

 Yes, that is me with LeVar Burton.  He was our commencement speaker, and I have to say, he was tremendous.  This photo is from the Commencement Eve celebration, where he spoke briefly.  It was a lovely event.  During LeVar's speech, I turned to my friend and said "do you want to rush the stage with me?"  She was game, so as soon as he finished speaking and went to his seat, I jumped, grabbed my friend and we went right up.  Luckily, I knew one of the organizers (from some of my previous events where I got to meet Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper), and I said "we have some English faculty who would like a photo with LeVar!" and he was on it.  LeVar was lovely.  I got to tell him how much Reading Rainbow meant to me when I was a kid.  I know, I know, I should have talked about Star Trek (sorry, Brendan!) but I only had time for one sentence.  Mostly, I wanted the photo so I could taunt my brother about my Star Trek connections. When I was in college, one of my very favorite professors in the world was Professor Frakes:

Frakes happened to be the father of this guy:

Who you may recognize as Commander William T. Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I like to imagine photoshopping myself into this photo to just totally infuriate my brother:

Sorry, Brendan.

That's about all the celebrity news we have here.  In other recent fun, we took a family trip to Mount Auburn Cemetery. This should come as no surprise to most of you, if you've seen how we celebrated Lucy's birthday, or our visit to the Lowell Cemetery.  Mount Auburn Cemetery (started in 1831) is just gorgeous -- the first "Garden Cemetery" or "Rural Cemetery" in America.  Lots of famous people are buried there, like Longfellow:

And there are some very beautiful and very curious monuments:

There's a very very tall Washington Tower, designed by Bigelow and built in 1852–54; it has a great view of the area.

I particularly liked this stone:

We'll definitely be doing more visits to check out other famous monument.

I hope to provide more updates on the blog this summer.