the closing sentences

photos - Washington - a view to the monument down the Mall and the Reflecting Pool; Abraham Lincoln; the waterfall at Falls Village (twice) and Aitan Mizrahi from the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center (who organised the Hannah Frank art exhibition there) with his favourite baby goat (!)

well, we leave tomorrow, having got back to Boston yesterday from a whirlwind 5 day tour of Gettysburg, Washington, Philadelphia, Cherry Hill, Hartford and Falls Village. This was doing some uni work (Gettysburg), some tourism (Washington), seeing some long lost cousins (Washington/Cherry Hill/Hartford) and doing a talk about my aunt's art - which has been on show at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Falls Village.

The flat is on its way to being cleaned and the suitcases are on their way to being packed. I'm catching up with the last long-lost cousin tonight and Anna has done her scrapbook of all the places we've been, things we've seen, and stuff we've done. We're both finishing off our 'holiday assignments' - well, Anna is - I'm a bit worried about how I'm not quite doing that at the moment. I am taking 13 books back to Brandeis Library this afternoon on my way to see Marilyn French reading from her latest book.

Looking back to my 'targets':

I was meant to be

- writing a new intro chapter to my PhD

- writing an essay for my Strathclyde Uni 'Social Theories for Historians' course,

- having a great time with Anna in the evenings and weekends and take in lots of music, films and shopping

- making a pilgrimage to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington-

- not to be too stressed about my academic goals-

- to remember I'm being paid to do at least half a day a week's Lancaster Uni work here :-

(and- to only eat half of every meal we get given in restaurants!

well, I've done LOADS of reading and note-taking for the PhD and found some really interesting connections.

I've done a little reading for the Social History essay (and got myself an extension!)

Anna and I have done LOADS of shopping and cinema (we can recommend The Notebook and Reign Over Me, and Spelling Bee as a light Broadway show)...

YES we saw the Lincoln Memorial and walked all the way from the other end of the Mall - where we also saw the Cherry Blossom Parade

NO I haven't been at all stressed about my academic goals! but Anna's school didn't work out, otherwise I would have had more time for all that....

I have kept up with my Uni work so I won't have to take too much time as holiday at the end of this trip (and I really enjoyed the trips to Gettysburg College and Boston College being an 'ambassador for Lancaster')

and we have CERTAINLY stuck to our goal of taking half our meals home in doggybags. I have definitely not put on weight while I'm here...though we have eaten A LOT of bagels and cream cheese and salmon through the 4 weeks!

It has been wonderful to meet long lost cousins - it's like having the best of friends, even though they're complete strangers. I'm hoping to organise a big Frank/Farber/Schulman/Lipetz reunion next August in Glasgow to do it all over again. We have another Hannah Frank art show happening in August in Michigan which is great - so I might even come back in the autumn for a re-run!

all is well; we fly home tomorrow; there's only 30 minutes change-over time at the hub airport, so it may be that we miss our onward flight, but American Airlines assure us that we won't...

thank you for listening and for your responses - it's been fun doing this and a real privilege to be away for a whole month. I can highly recommend it - it's interesting travelling with a 15 year old, keeps you on your toes....

ok, the homework assignment on Romeo and Juliet (not mine!) calls. I'll put some photos on here, do some more Anna-support, then I'm off to Brandeis. Over and Out - and looking forward to hearing from you all.

lots of love,

Fiona

one week later...

nice house which looks like a face! a row of bronze ducks with Anna and my
New York cousins (they're big on ducks here)




Anna on the roof in the snow...view from my cousin Jonathan's fab weekend house in Plymouth (where we're off on Sat, to go canoeing)...Macys in New York- well, you now know our big secret - we're only really here for the shopping...and that is the BIGGEST DEPARTMENT STORE IN THE WORLD...and our fab apartment here in the North End of Boston

hi, we have had wall to wall Friends, Everyone Loves Raymond, and this is the SECOND time that Legally Blonde has been on. But life isn't all TV sitcoms. I did my talk at the Art Exhibition; we've confirmed the next exhibition in Connecticut (though there may be a hiccup about insurance, watch this space; we've been to New York and had two fabulous Passover Suppers with my family there as well as going to a Broadway musical (Spelling Bee) and visiting Ellis Island. I've been looking at a whole new load of phd related literature from Brandeis library (they have great books about US Jewish history and interesting feminist stuff as well as more volumes of the (English) Jewish Yearbook from the 1920s than they have in Glasgow (yes, I'm easily pleased aren't I). I've set up meetings at Boston College and Gettysburg College to talk about Lancaster University Year Abroad stuff (which is how I'm 'earning my keep' here), and have booked a hotel in Washington for next Thurs and Fri (near an airport and handy for the metro into Washington, but unfortunately nowhere near the airport we will be flying into :-( )

I have made contact with not less than 3 lots of long-lost distant cousins that I didn't know I had, two of whom came all the way from Detroit (wherever that is) to Boston, to see my talk and the Hannah Frank exhibition. And the others of whom we'll be seeing next weekend, variously in New Jersey near Philadelphia, and Hartford Connecticut.
And we've just got back from having dinner round the corner in this wonderful Italian Section of Boston with Kevin Cole - who formed a FOLK GROUP with me, my schoolfriend Karen and my flatmate's boyfriend Roger, and our friend Dave, when we all lived in London when we were 18.

Actually watching Legally Blonde the second time through along with Anna is amazing, because last weekend we walked through Harvard grounds, and Anna's going 'Wow, we saw that' - 'Wow, we were there last week' 'Wow, we just saw that' - (post-modernist culture?)

I think we have all our bases covered for the next 2 weeks, very little time to manoeuver but lots of things to do, including an AIRPORT WATER TAXI EXPERIENCE!, and, if I can get out there, get this, MARILYN FRENCH doing a reading from her latest book at Brandeis Womens Studies Dept (where I now have a STAFF CARD) on our last afternoon!

I have the computer for another 15 mins apparently so will put a few pix up and then send this off to you all guys.... lots of love and looking forward to seeing my newly decorated living room, newly housetrained cat, newly sanded living room and hall floors... thanks Rae!

and would just like to announce that I had a fab Co-counselling session with a lovely Jewish woman in Somerville last week, and during that time had a brainstorm during which I realised that 'academic books' aren't 'horrid heavy things that take up space in your luggage and that you would never read during your holiday' but are actually 'the very best attempt by lovely intelligent people to talk directly to ME through the medium of print so I can use their ideas in my own thinking' (I expect everyone else in the world knew this but I have only just realised it. It's so exciting!)

lots of love, and please write back!
Fiona

ps also there's a really nice art shop down the road who is going to stock Hannah Frank prints, plus various places that might take the Show after Connecticut, if we can sort this insurance problem out... so things are improving on that front too.

A few photos

Anna (front right) with Boston Skyscrapers around her

this is the State House, where I didn't go and meet David Rosen talking about adult literacy this morning...

and this is Boston by night....

surprise TV appearance!

Excitement, excitement. Just when I'd finished my first blog entry, I got an email saying that I was going to be interviewed on TV tonight! And there's me thinking I had nothing to blog about.

About a month ago we'd been told that Channel 7 was going to do a programme about Auntie Hannah's art... but that it was going to be recorded on the day I was flying in, and there was nothing I could do about it - it was going to be recorded at the very time my plane arrived, so I couldn't be part of it. Next, I got a call from my cousin Jonathan to say he couldn't meet me at the airport because he was going to be interviewed on this TV show. Jealous? Mad? Me? And finally, I get this call saying that they had to re-shoot the last 5 minutes of the show, and would I like to go tonight and be interviewed! Well - is the Pope Catholic!!!

I was emailing my friend Kate at the time so I mentioned it to her. Kate's a musician and has been on TV in Spain loads of times - and she said I needed to wear makeup so I wouldn't look pale and awful. I had this idea that they wouldn't do anything about it at the TV station (which was absolutely right) and all my makeup had got "lost" on the journey here - so I went and replenished it all - and more - at Victoria's Secret (!) this afternoon. VERY up-market! Anna made me up this evening - even SHE said I looked nice, which is praise indeed, and there's a photo at the top showing the set, with me (fully made up); Leah Zaiger from the Brandeis Centre, and Rabbi Ronne Friedman, the programme host.

It's 'only' a Jewish Community programme, and as such is 'only' on show at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning, but we don't have to tell everyone that - Channel 7 is a 'real' channel, with lots of 'real' programmes, and apparently 17k people are watching even at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning. They're showing clips of Sarah's wonderful film about auntie Hannah, and hopefully I can get a video or two of it. And - the Rabbi who interviewed us, Ronne Friedman, is the rabbi of Temple Israel, the biggest community outside NY apparently, and has invited us to his community Seder for the second night - which will be great.

Anna and I had a great Italian meal after the filming - just round the corner from our apartment in Hanover Street. We have found somewhere to buy fruit, veg, milk and cheese, finally. And - roll on tomorrow; a visit to Anna's school in the morning ready for her starting properly on Monday; seeing our cousin Jonathan doing a lecture in the afternoon; and my cousins David and Lynda visiting from New York for the weekend - we're meeting them at a gallery opening on Friday evening and hopefully will be able to persuade them to go to the Improv Drama show about 5 minutes walk from here on Saturday evening. Wish my life in Lancaster was like this!

first few days in Boston

Hannah Frank, A Glasgow Artist - exhibition at the

Women's Studies Centre, Brandeis University

Jan 19 - April 6 2007

hi all: I have decided to try to keep a daily blog while Anna and I are in Boston. This is so different from the erudite diary my aunt Hannah used to keep, in lovely hard backed books with beautiful sketches in the margins. But there you are.

We arrived on Tuesday after a DAY LONG journey. This involved rather a lot of payment for excess baggage, a little 'blip' in Chicago where we got lost in the airport, couldn't find where to re-check in our luggage, and ended up with about 50 Hannah Frank loose prints all over the floor and a bit of an in-flight argument. But all was well, the customs man didn't charge us entry duty for the 20 Hannah Frank books and 150 Hannah Frank prints, when I told him that we didn't think we'd sell any, and it wasn't a proper commercial operation! which is more or less true.

The apartment we have rented, from a contact on Craigslist, is beautiful: it's in the North End of Boston in the Italian section, with lots of little Italian restaurants. And not a supermarket in sight. Breakfast for the last two days has been cheese (which you CAN buy from little Italian speciality shops) and chocolate (which we brought with us). I'm sure they have supermarkets in the United States, but we have yet to find them,hopefully soon.

Our month's plans are coming together. Anna starts school (!) on Monday; yesterday we went to see my aunt's art exhibition at Brandeis University which looks fantastic, and I sorted out where my lecture will take place on Tuesday. They wanted it to be in a lecture hall round the corner; I'm now having it right in the middle of the exhibition, which will be much more fun. It has been advertised on the front page of Brandeis Uni Website for a month, though luckily the date was wrong for the first 2 weeks - they're not expecting more than about 20 people so we'll see.

I've been keeping up with work emails and personal emails for the last 2 days, which is kind of depressing in a way - 'abroad' used to be a place free of all that stuff. But I did get half my fare paid in return for doing some Lancaster Uni work over here at Boston College, and I've negotiated that I don't have to take the whole time off as holiday so I do have to work half a day a week or so on Uni stuff. And it will certainly make it easier for when I get back!

So, apart from Lancaster Uni work, my goals for this month are

- to write a new intro chapter to my PhD - the real 'Literature Search' and how my wonderful piece of work is going to build on all this and cover new ground [it may well have to be a very sketchy outline seeing as I don't know how many of the relevant books about Scottish Jewry I'll find at Brandeis University library...];

- to write an essay for my Strathclyde Uni 'Social Theories for Historians' course, on what I can learn about the Jewish experience in Glasgow, from looking at the Black experience in the USA (should be easier to find THOSE books here)

- to have a great time with Anna in the evenings and weekends and take in lots of music, films and shopping

- to make a pilgrimage to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington

- not to be too stressed about my academic goals

- to remember I'm being paid to do at least half a day a week's Lancaster Uni work here :-(

and

- to only eat half of every meal we get given in restaurants!


We have trips to New York and Washington DC planned - also to a Jewish Retreat centre where the art exhibition will be going on 9th April - the Isabella Freedman Retreat Centre in Connecticut - http://www.isabellafreedman.org/ - it looks wonderful, and several baby goats have just been born there last week! We have 2 more leads about possible new art venues for my aunt's art exhibition - (the 30 drawings and 3 sculptures and 8 exhibition info boards are available right through to January, by the way, if you have Art Gallery leads you want to pass me, we can deal with all the communications!)

We will be meeting relatives and friends throughout the month - my cousin Jonathan came round the first night with bread, cheese and wine - my cousin David and his wife Lynda from NY are spending this weekend with us. We're going to him next weekend in NY and having the first Passover Seder Night with my other cousins Lois and Nigel in Brooklyn (which sounds more religious than it actually is). We're meeting other long-lost 'new' cousins Merle and Richard Leland on Tuesday after my lecture at Brandeis - and their niece Sherry Roseman in New Jersey in a couple of weeks time.... and I have some more phone numbers of relatives I haven't even heard of.

so a calm retreat this is NOT. But I am hoping for some calm thinking time at Brandeis Uni Library when Anna is attending school. And some co-counselling too (I have made contact with a Boston co-counsellor so hopefully I'll be able to have 'sessions' with wonderful Bostonians I haven't met yet, to keep me connected with my inner creativity and stop me being too stressed out - if you don't know what that's all about, see www.rc.org !)

OK, this is the first of many. I don't promise humour, creative writing, or descriptive challenge. I don't have a very retentive 'eye' - just a retentive 'ear' so I will listen out for stories to tell on these pages. And I'd love to hear back from you as comments on the blog or direct emails to me ... lots of love, Fiona