Tag: Travel

Culture Corner

Culture Corner – January 2015

Geoff W

2015 01-04 License Plate GameI can’t believe it’s been four months since I last did a Culture Corner (September 2014), but the blog wasn’t lacking for culture! With the end of my 30×30 list we got to visit the Somerville Museum, finish touring the MFA with my friend Caroline and I finally attend the Boston Symphony Orchestra again. But since then, I’ve done a lot of travelling and visited quite a few museums.

One of the big things I’ve never talked about as a cultural experience is travelling. I generally focus on what I do when I get there, but driving from Boston to North Carolina and then flying from North Carolina to Omaha, Nebraska and then back to Boston really made me think about the culture of travelling.  I won’t go into it in this post, but I think I’ll probably write about it when I attempt to revive Now Entering Adulthood in the coming weeks. What I AM going to write briefly about and show lots of pictures of are my whirlwind trips in December to DC and North Carolina and my January trip to Omaha! And then throw in a few pictures of my most recent MFA visits.

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Updates

December (And Year!) 2014 Recap

Geoff W

2014 12-08 Washington MonumentWhat a busy and exhausting month December was! It’s been almost a full week into the new year and I’m struggling to get a recap together so it’s going to be pretty basic. I did a lot of traveling from a birthday trip to DC (right) to my annual winter trek down to NC, with a side trip to Virginia where I completed my 30×30 list with a literary inspired tattoo, and topped off the month and kicked off the new year with friends in Charlotte, NC and a wedding in Omaha, Nebraska! I’ll do a separate December/January Culture Corner to do a recap on my traveling to DC and Omaha as I went to so many museums and traveling in itself is a type of culture!

I’m going to do a quick monthly recap in the next paragraph and then after that will be my yearly recap and a couple of small changes you’ll notice in the new year.

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30x30, Books, Quotes

Book 319: The Return of the King (LOTR #3) – J.R.R. Tolkien

Geoff W

With this book, and my previous reading of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, I’m one step closer to finishing my 30×30 list. What better way to start off my response than with Treebeard/Fangorn’s words to Galadriel: “It is sad that we should meet only thus at the ending. For the world is changing: i feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air. I do not think we shall meet again.” (290)

It’s so true though! What a sad, beautiful and perfect ending to this epic novel (apparently it’s counted as one in a lot of lists). I mean I knew it was great and I remembered a lot of it, but nowhere near as much as was included in the book. I even read Appendix A which gave the brief history of the race of men and Gimli’s heritage which was excellent to learn more about them. I didn’t go into the other appendices as they were a bit too technical for my liking, but I did seriously consider buying a few more Tolkien Middle-earth books when I saw them at the used bookstores last weekend and I may yet!

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30x30, Books, Quotes

Book 317: The Two Towers (LOTR #2) – J.R.R. Tolkien

Geoff W

I’m still reeling at how fast I read The Two Towers and yet excited that it was so much better than I remembered. I hope I haven’t misspoken over the past 10 years and that the next book was the boring one. If I did, I have a long trek before me. Having read The Fellowship of the Ring and now this, I’m 2/3 of the way through another 30×30 list item!

Even though I still find Tolkien’s descriptions incredibly heavy and often times dampening, this time I felt as I read the descriptions increased and bogged you down the further I read. I guess Tolkien is an even greater writer than I ever gave him credit for. (Shocking I know right?) The only time I found it hard to continue reading was as Frodo and Sam began their journey as I was so daunted by my memories of reading the book that before I knew it I was over 300 pages into the book and then I’d finished.

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30x30, Personal Project

30 x 30: #27 Visit and gamble at a casino

Geoff W

2014 11-22 Mohegan Sun - So Many PeopleAfter visiting and gambling at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut yesterday I am down to nine items left! And over this next week I will cross most (definitely five) if not all of them off my list.

I added visiting and gambling at a casino as I’ve never been to one. I’ve seen the outside of Harrah’s Cherokee Casino in NC, but never been inside and thus, yesterday. I drove down (about two hours in traffic) and spent about two hours there and then turned around and drove back (with a side-trip to Ikea). and honestly, I was underwhelmed after I got over the sheer size of it. The architecture and decor were actually really cool, but the amount of smoke in most of the areas made it difficult to really enjoy it.

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