Comments on: boston trip notes

By: david carlton

david carlton — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:54:38 +0000

I was going to say that I spent more time at Wordsworth, since it was better on general purpose books while Harvard Book Store was better on academic stuff (though both carried both), and I read the former more than the latter, but of course there’s the used books in the basement of Harvard Book Store, which balanced things out. Since I actually bought stuff regularly at used book stores back then…

The main Wordsworth space is currently unoccupied, which makes it even sadder. (The upstairs space is occupied, but by something boring that whose name I’ve already forgotten.)

Other disappearances that I noticed: the building that had a good middle eastern restaurant and a typewriter repair store has disappeared. (Replaced by an out-of-place glass building, with the Globe bookstore on the ground level.) In the Garage, the pizza place has been replaced by another acceptable pizza place (I think part of a chain that I hadn’t heard of); Formaggio’s is also gone, though if this is the same outfit (which it seems to be, poking around), they’ve just moved and would seem to be doing well. Hmm, maybe I should order some olives from there!

By: Jordan

Jordan — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:46:15 +0000

Oh no, no more Wordsworth! I know Harvard Book Store is slightly more chi-chi, but I’ve got to say I probably spent more time browsing Wordsworth in my time in Cambridge. Though on my last few visits HBS got the nod, being next door to the only place I _never_ miss, Mr. Bartley’s.

Did you eat at Sturbridge Village? They have this outstanding relish at the restaurant there. I bought a jar of it to take home.

By: david carlton

david carlton — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 04:25:53 +0000

Alas, none of the water-powered stuff was doing anything while we were there. We could see the machines, but the floodgates were all closed.

By: Stuart Marks

Stuart Marks — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 04:03:22 +0000

Ah, Sturbridge Village! Did you see the sawmill? When I was there they were demonstrating it. It’s amazing what water, gravity, and some leverage can do….

No more T tokens? I guess I can throw away those few I was saving for my next trip back.

I never lived in Boston, but I must have visited there 15 times over the years for business trips, conferences, friends, etc.

By: david carlton

david carlton — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:39:08 +0000

Interesting; I don’t think of German as being all that particle-heavy. Come to think of it, despite my mention of Greek, I don’t think of it as being all that particle heavy, either. (But my Greek is very rusty indeed.) But I’m willing to believe that there’s enough in both languages to support books and articles, even if particles aren’t as important in them as they are in Japanese.

Part of my confusion is that I couldn’t actually give a precise definition of what a particle is! Hmm, I guess I shouldn’t feel too guilty about that - the Wikipedia article on the subject leads off with “the term particle is often employed as a useful catch-all lacking a strict definition”.

More wikipedia links: German particles and Japanese particles. The only German one which came to mind before looking was doch; I see they list a few more, but the Japanese list is a lot longer. Which might just be due to vagaries of wikipedia, admittedly, but I think not entirely.

Is “admittedly” in that last sentence a particle? In the past, I would have said it’s obviously an adverb, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe particles are everywhere, I just need to be sensitized to them…

By: John Cowan

John Cowan — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:27:05 +0000

There are books (and lots and lots of articles) on German particles, though I have been away from that scene for so long (and was never more than a peripheral participant) I can’t name any offhand.