Valentines Day 2007
Boston received its first real bout of inclement weather yesterday. Walking home after helping a friend put together a website for childhood leukemia patients, parents and survivors and in between helping push out a couple cars and not breaking my neck, I snapped these.
Boston’s Best Tacos
$mymarkers=array(
array(‘markername’=>’number01’,
‘label’ => ‘Tacos El Charro
349 Centre St
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130’,
‘latitude’ =>’42.32269914619183’,
‘longitude’=>’-71.10684156417847’), array(‘markername’=>’number02’,
‘label’ => ‘Tacos Lupita
13 Elm St
Somerville, MA 02143’,
‘latitude’ =>’42.38600050368276’,
‘longitude’=>’-71.11351490020752’),
array(‘markername’=>’number03’,
‘label’ => ‘Takueria Tapatillo
82 Broadway
Somerville, MA 02145’,
‘latitude’ =>’42.387038609014645’,
‘longitude’=>’-71.08207941055298’));
$mymap=array(‘id’ => ‘tacomap’,
‘latitude’ => ‘42.36031976410849’,
‘longitude’=>’ -71.0757064819336’,
‘zoom’ => 12,
‘width’ => ‘100%’,
‘height’ => ‘400px’,
‘type’ => ‘Hybrid’,
‘markers’ => $mymarkers);
print gmap_draw_map($mymap);
?>
I miss eating good taqueria food and Boston’s inhibited palette is definitely to blame. I like places that call the tacos by name, Carne Asada, Al Pastor, Lengua–not Beef, Pork , Chicken (Lengua isn’t chicken, but your anglo-taqueria isn’t going to have it, or call it what it is: beef tongue); where the salsa is more than pico de gallo and you get a slice of radish. The map above has the few places I’ve found in Boston that I like.
They are:
#1) Tacos El Charro
349 Centre St
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
Super friendly sit-down restaurant. Also the enchiladas are great. Go downstairs, it’s “authentic”!
#2) Tacos Lupita
13 Elm St
Somerville, MA 02143
Close to Porter Square. The food is delicious and they have imported Coca-Cola made with real sugar, not corn syrup.
#3) Takueria Tapatillo
82 Broadway
Somerville, MA 02145
Actually Chilean but excellent taqueria. They have a good vegetarian taco too. Was taking an unrelated cab and mentioned the place to my friend. The cabdriver overheard and said that he went there all the time. The cabby looks European but is really Brazilian and fluent in Spanish. He said that when he goes into the taqueria, the staff speak to him in English until he starts belting out Spanish. They are so impressd his lunch is free.
Happy Holidays 2006
If you have problems with the flash video above, try this (mp4).
Love
A girl was betrothed by her father to a man whom she had never met. Her mind shone with an uncommon light and she was ever seeking out tales of love: chaste and reckless, rich and unrequited.
Into her house she called the most upstanding matrons and the lowest whores, regal queens and barren slaves. To each she said, simply: “Tell me of the men you have loved.”
This intense interest worried her father. Though he had found a most suitable bridegroom for his dearly loved daughter, he feared such tales would influence her against any future husband.
She reassured him: “Father, please do not worry. I trust in you that I will live happily with whomever you have chosen for me. I seek these stories so that I may separate the qualities in him that are exceptional from those that are mundane. Knowing this, I can love him.”
Happy Birthday Rebecca
My friend and coworker Rebecca made an extensive list of things she’d like for her birthday. I really like her rationale:
my list is all about ‘you’ because I’m curious who will answer, what you will come up with, and because it will mean that on my birthday I’ll be thinking about people thinking about me, which is a cozy thing to think about.
So here I am and all the best on your twenty-third…
Pint Pot and Billy From Eureka: The songs that made Australia compiled by Warrent Fahey. Version as sung by Cyril Duncan of Hawthorne Queensland. Recorded in one-track with Garageband and my MacBook’s built-in mic.
Seven knights drove up to Flushing.
I know a family of trees on a block along my jogging route in my neighborhood. Jamaica Plain is known to be full of trees, but usually the varieties are pretty well mixed. On this block though, a whole grove of Ginkgo trees grows, or as close to a grove as you can get in urban Boston.
The trees are all about 20 feet tall with rough gray bark. In the spring and summer they are deep green. In the Fall they all turn a self-conscious bright yellow, in contrast to the other trees’ reds and oranges.
One tree in the grove is set back off the street. It has a wound on its sunset side. The tree is also female, the only one, and is neighbor to the grove’s lone outsider: a juvenile Callery Pear that is always losing branches.
Greatest Gatsbees(mp3) by (famous band) Houseguest. Goes great with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Wolf Parade.
20 212 74 or #14D44A
MeetAmeriCorps is “social networking”!
My pet project, MeetAmeriCorps.com has finally passed that development milestone that marks a “social network”: Buddylists. To be a little more haute, we’ve decided to call them “contact lists”, but the concept is the same: you can demarcate people who you like/know/want-to-be-on-your-contact-list.
| [  ](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bensheldon/320123089/ “Photo Sharing”) |
Since I haven’t really been advertising it too heavily, Meet AmeriCorps was a directory–now it’s a “social network”–of AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps*VISTA volunteers who are either currently serving or alumni. It’s pretty neat stuff, doesn’t look to shabby and, disclosing I am the lead developer on the project, actually kind’ve useful.
| [  ](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bensheldon/320123303/ “Photo Sharing”) |
We put together MeetAmeriCorps.com to fill what I see as a sorely lacking need. AmeriCorps and VISTA are essentially-governmental, national-service programs that mostly places full-time, stipended volunteers with community organizations. AmeriCorps speaks of itself as a “network” that is creating a “national service movement”. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the capacity to truly achieve this because, in my opinion and experience, AmeriCorps and VISTA members generally do not:
communicate with other members serving with other organizations (even organizations inside a single community)
self-identify as AmeriCorps volunteers
collaborate on developing resources and capacity
AmeriCorps and VISTA currently provide some tools and resources to achieve #3, but I believe that #3 cannot be achieved with volunteers being able to effectively communicate and identify themselves as AmeriCorps both to each other and the outside world.
| [  ](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bensheldon/320123173/ “Photo Sharing”) |
Meet AmeriCorps seeks to provide an easy-to-use tool for AmeriCorps members to meaningfully interact with one another both within service, and outside of it. I hope this will improve the experience of being an AmeriCorps or VISTA volunteer and contribute towards creating a true network and movement.
| [  ](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bensheldon/320123529/ “Photo Sharing”) |
These screenshots were made with the OSX app Paparazzi!
The Drink
Our milk carton sprung a leak and these were the best containers on hand. I drink my milk from a dirty glass.
Nonprofit Technology Sandwich
I don’t know if it’s my empathy for the myriad of people I know stymied in technology quagmires for good causes or a desire to combine my love of good food with my job, but this is the result. Download a printable PDF perfect for tacking to your wall or the wall of whomever makes technology decisions at your organization. Update: The sandwich is on Unmediated.org Update: The sandwich is on LOLnptech.org
Denim flashback
Click on the photos to see explanations of the wear marks
I purchased a new pair of jeans last weekend. In fact, I got the exact same brand (Carhart), style (relaxed-fit) and size (34-34) from the same store (Jones Department Store, “Jonesy’s” in Southie vernacular) at the same time of year (Novembrish) as I did last year. I also bought a new cap too. I don’t want it to seem like I don’t make progress in my life but the cap is identical too, to one I got last year (it matches my mittens) on the same expedition. Its progenitor was lost to the Boston Public Library one cold March morning.
Buying pants is always exciting for me; I never even owned a pair until I was 13–in San Diego one can get away with that. My mom likes to tell the story of my middle school principal saying to her after eighth grade promotion (for which I was en-panted), “I never thought I’d see the day with Ben in pants.”
In side note, it was pouring rain last Saturday when I went out to Southie to buy the jeans. Jonesies is far up on East Broadway; and while I caught the #9 bus there, I walked/swam back.
Office faceoff
The Home Office
Laptop, calendar, cellphone, sunlight, cat.
Molly is cute, furry and warm. She doesn’t take dictation though.
The Work Office
A hardened concrete box deep in the windowless bowels of UMass Boston. Not my desk, but respective.
Danielle is hardworking, hilarious and awesome. She doesn’t take dictation either.
