A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Such cool weather for August, far more like September, overcast and a bit chilly, with a hint of the season to come. The rain made it particularly clear how far the wheel of the year has turned, as already-brown leaves were washed onto the sidewalk. I'm enjoying the cool, but I hope it doesn't mean an early and hard winter.

On the Cambridge side of the river at the bend near the pepperpot bridge yesterday morning, it looked like someone not yet skilled in paper marbling was using green dye against the dark background of the water.

I got a lot of Looks yesterday because I wore my blue-and-white-striped engineer's hat. They all seemed to be commenting on the hat, presumably the disconnect between a supposed kid's hat and my age, but it was interesting to see the range of tones, positive to negative. I was also surprised by how much comment there was by people I know (*waves*); I apparently do not put my hair up much.

( cooked )

I'm thinking about canning things. The top three on my list right now are tomato sauce (using the Federle tomatoes), plum-cranberry jam with Chinese five spice (I'm not sure whether this is a good idea or not; opinions very welcome), and, assuming Boston Organics delivers five pounds of wild blueberries, blueberry-cranberry jam. It's very probable that there will be filled jars available; let me know if you're interested in something. (ZZBottom, I already owe you a jar of blueberry-cranberry stuff.)

PSAs:

• Wednesdays at 6:30p in September, the Paul Revere Memorial Association and the Old South Meeting House have a series of free lectures titled "A Radical Look at the American Revolution." ( Read more... )
  
  
• Tuesday September 19, 6-8p, the ACLU of Mass. and PEN New England are celebrating Constitution Day with an event called "An Evening Without.... giving voice to the excluded," which is people whose names I should apparently recognize reading the works of people whose writing has been suppressed at some time, such as Nelson Mandela, Pablo Neruda, Pierre Trudeau, Doris Lessing, et al. It's at the Copley BPL, in the Rabb Lecture Hall.
  
• For the 1776 fans: Lyric Stage is putting the musical on, September 8-October 14.

Little Miss Sunshine

The short version: two thumbs up.

The longer (pretty much spoiler-free) version: I thought it was great, having much more real people than Hollywood lets into their movies. Everyone's got their quirks, and it seems like the family is heading in six different directions, until the road trip to let the daughter compete in a beauty pageant starts things changing. No, the daughter is not your average pageant contestant. And may I just say, who are these scary girls who compete, and why do their parents think it's a good thing? Just horrible.

I thought the actors were great, as was the sound track, and with a good story, it all rolled up into an excellent time with lots of laughs, though not appropriate for kids. (And that's even though I ended up towards the end of the second row...)