Advent Calendar: Day 17

By Circe -

When I first moved here, I was amused to find a giant monument to drugs in the middle of the Public Gardens.

As mentioned, one of the Victorians' favorite hobbies was attaining mastery over nature. The entirety of the Back Bay neighborhood is a testament to their success. It is almost entirely landfill, created by leveling a nearby hill, and in 1837, one of the first ex-marshes was established as the US's first public horticultural garden. Which then spent the next 20 years fending off the city's attempts to annex the land and build stuff on it.

In 1859, the dispute was settled in favor of the plants. Since they couldn't build more city over it they constructed a lovely little suspension bridge and swan pond instead. I've never bothered taking the swan boats, but I've spent a fair amount of time under the weeping willows, watching the ducks. The flower beds are still planted in precise and colorful patterns every season, just as the Victorians would have wanted it.

The Public Gardens are near Mass General Hospital, where in 1846, in another bid to attain mastery over the natural world, a dentist named William Morton used ether to anesthetize a patient so the dean of Harvard Medical School could surgically excise a tumor from his neck. The operating theater is still standing, and now known as the Ether Dome. You can book a tour, if you're curious. The Ether Monument was installed in the Public Gardens in 1868, which is a bit tardy, but I suppose it took that long to carve the Good Samaritan that crowns the top.

-------------------

If you want to see non-Advent Calendar posts during the holiday season, jump on over to my Patreon, and check out the different rewards. Subscribers get to see blog posts 24 hours early, videos of my dance work, extra essays about more personal subjects, and other things as they come to me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

By Circe -
About a week ago, I crewed a show at the studio theater for a non-profit outfit up from New York. The guys who run it are friends of our executive artistic director, and they come up two or three times a year. I like them; I dealt with them a bunch when I was at the box office, because when you're the most experienced person they have around they hand you all of the EAD's friends, and I have an unofficial standing request to work their shows even when I'm not the only crew who is both in town and not drowning in finals. One of the guys, as it turns out, is laid up with an injury right now, so the other one had to fly solo, on top of performing in the show. I ran into him coming down the stairs as I was going up, and as soon as he saw me he just lit up like, oh, it's you!  How are you are you working are you going to be my box office again! I told him I'd swapped over to doing tech and he asked if I was disappointed that I didn't get to dress up anymore. I
Read more

The mystery of "Himmmm"

By Circe -
[Note: This entry has been edited from its original publication. See here for explanation.] The gossip blogs are alight today with the breaking news that some dude who leaves a lot of comments at a site called Crazy Days And Nights  under the screen name "Himmmm" is "really" Robert Downey, Jr. Nobody has any proof, of course, and there has been no comment from RDJ -- possibly because the story is too new, possibly because it's true and he'd rather not have to lie, possibly because it's not true and he thinks it's too funny for words. Normally, I just laugh at these things, because really, who the fuck cares beyond the entertainment value? But one of the more interesting things about "Himmmm" is that he seems to have made it a point to go after people who have done Really Bad Things. He's most famous for popping in and letting other commenters play 20 Questions about who's being talked about in the most recent blind item, and  c
Read more

WARNING! Sweeping generalizations inside!

By Circe -
Captain Awkward -- who is one of my new favorite people, by the by -- has apparently been getting a lot of flack from her post about creepiness and how not to engage in it . I say flack specifically because it's not necessarily all directed at her personally, but when you're in the middle of a field of anti-aircraft guns all firing in random directions, you're likely to get some shrapnel in your hide whether anyone is aiming at you or not. One of the running arguments down in the comments (in her blog, in other blogs, on reddit, on the astral plane, etc.) is about whether it makes a difference whether someone is painfully socially awkward, has Asperger's or an autism spectrum disorder, or is just a boundary-free creepy fucker, whether these things are comorbid a lot, and what to do about it. I think it's really damn easy to tell the difference between them, myself. I suspect it's because I do tact about like a Panzer tank does ballet. The people who seem to
Read more