I Apologize for the Delay

Life, as always, got in the way of my attempt to focus more on my writing, and on this blog in particular. However, I am committed to this blog and shall try to update weekly as promised. Or at least monthly. I owe y'all monthly at least. And now, on to some good, old fashioned Bean Town architecture.

I've always had a passing interest in architecture ever since I took AP Art History my senior year of high school. Gothic architecture and some of the modern work by people such as Frank Gehry in particular caught my fancy. When I first arrived in Boston in August of 2008 to attend Wellesley, I was impressed with the buildings squished together around me on the streets. The architecture here is almost nothing like that of San Diego. Southern California has a much more youthful, spread out feeling to it, with heavy southwest influence in the ever-present stucco and earthen tones of so many buildings. Boston, on the other hand, is old and rich with history that San Diegans can't even begin to imagine.

And so I invite you to take a virtual journey with me to some of my favorite buildings in Boston that I have come across thus far. This will likely be the first of many entries about architecture I come across.

Today's entry will focus on three buildings in Copley Square, which is a very busy, tourist-filled area of Boston, especially around this time of year. Here's a photo I took of part of Copley Square on a recent outing with a friend:

And that, unfortunately enough, is not the side of Copely Square which we shall be discussing today. Instead, we will turn to the left and start with one of my favorite buildings in all of Boston: The Old South Church, also known as the New Old South Church. The reason for this strange nomenclature is that the Old South Church congregation had been around much longer than this building had. This was the "new" building that was created for a congregation that had been around since 1669. In fact, the congregation, a part of the United Church of Christ, is one of the oldest religious communities in the United States. Can your religious community claim that?

I love this building because of its ties to Gothic architecture, which captured the heart of my inner art enthusiast three years ago.

Completed in 1875, "the most beautiful basilica in North America," according to the Boston Transcript, was designed in the Gothic Revival style by William Sears (not of the department store fame) and Charles Cummings (a man with a very unfortunate last name). It became the third home of the Old South congregation. This Gothic Revival style particularly reflected the architecture of the cathedrals in Venice, as was advocated by John Ruskin, an influential English architecture critic. The exterior of the building if constructed mostly of puddingstone and deep rose sandstone to create an alternating red and white exterior that is also relatively common in Spanish architecture as well (google images of places in Cordoba, if you don't believe me).

The campanile, or that gorgeous tower attached to the building that most Americans probably couldn't climb without getting seriously dehydrated, is two hundred and forty-six feet tall, and houses a bell that weighs 2020 pounds. That's right, the bell weighs less than your environmentally-conscious Prius and is about 1/13 the weight of the largest bell in the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. Quasimodo laughs at your puny bell, Boston. For shame.

All jokes about the Hunchback of Notre Dame aside, the Old South Church is thriving in the center of a city famous for people who can't pronounce their "R"s, beans, and tea parties. It currently is home to more than 650 Bostonians from every background you can imagine. They even have a female Senior Minister. Yeah, progress! For a church who once had a man named Ebenezer Pemberton as their Senior Minister and baptized Benjamin Franklin when he was born, I'd say they're doing pretty well for themselves.

One of my personal favorite tiny details of this building happens to not be on the building at all but on the iron gate that surrounds it:

Now, this I can tell you nothing about other than I found it to be especially pretty and so I snapped the above image.

Directly across the street from the (New) Old South Church is the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library, which certainly puts the Balboa branch of the San Diego public libraries to shame, and will possibly be put to shame by the new design for the Central Library in San Diego. However, as far as libraries go, this one is pretty... how shall I describe it? Well, "baller" seems modern and colloquial enough, despite the fact that it is normally applied to people.

Built in 1895, the McKim building was heralded as a "palace for the people" and currently contains the Library's administrative offices, exhibition rooms, and research collection. The building was designed by Charles Follen McKim in the Renaissance Revival style. Why everyone in Copley Square chose to design something in a revival style is beyond me, though I figure it's probably because these people knew good architecture style when it stared them in the face. No need to invent something new when there is already something perfect available, right? The exterior facade was heavily influenced by the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve in Paris whereas the enclosed courtyard pictured below was modeled after the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome.

There are all sorts of interesting little symbols and details throughout the library that, in order to cover them all, I would have to create an entire post devoted to this building alone. My personal favorites are the two large statues in front of the library that represent Art and Science;

the head of Minerva (known as Athena to the Greeks), goddess of wisdom, over the main entrance;

the marble lions that proudly, if lazily, lord over the stairs and memorialize the Massachusetts Civil War infantries;

and the fountain in the Italian-inspired courtyard with the statue of the Baccante and Infant Faun in bronze.

For someone who normally misses the heavy symbolism that laces the art and literature of the world, I certainly appreciated all of obvious influences, references, and blatant copies that I found throughout my wanderings of the McKim building. The one aspect I did not appreciate as much was the never-ending stream of religious paintings that seem to be a requirement of any building built before 1900. If I've seen one Crucifixion of Christ, I've seen them all. Please, stick to the clever personifications of great over-arching terms like "Art" and "Science." Kthxbai.

I should clarify. I'm not anti-religion or anti-Christianity, but I always enjoyed the mythology and symbolism associated with ancient Greek and Roman societies so much more because there was so much more to pull from: gods, goddesses, demi-gods, heroes, titans, satyrs, nymphs, and so on. When I studied early Christian art, however, I saw the same twelve scenes or so repeated over and over again and quickly grew bored with the subject matter. Also, gruesome pictures of a crucified Christ do not really seem appropriate in a place of research, which is not a place of worship.

The last building I would like to share with you today is across the square from the Old South Church and is where I would like to stay when I am a wealthy doctor married to a man who has more money than either of us would ever know what to do with. My friends and I originally (and quite literally) stumbled into this building when one of us announced that we needed to use the ladies' room sometime soon or Bad Things would happen. Imagine our surprise when we walked through the doors of what looked like a normal, though not cheap, hotel, and were greeted with the below sight:

Everything in white marble and gold leaf... rugs that probably cost more than my yearly salary... chairs that might be actual Louis XV chairs from the time of the old French king himself. For someone who considers freshly laundered sheets a luxury, I certainly was impressed. My eyes were bugging out of my head, my jaw had dropped onto the ground, and my mind was desperately trying to not calculate how many lifetimes my family would have to work to afford what was in the lobby alone.

This is the Fairmont Copley Plaza. The hotel's architect was Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, the same man who designed the Plaza Hotel in New York City. The hotel opened in 1912 to host more than 1,000 guests, some of whom had had to make reservations for the hotel up to sixteen months in advance for a room. Currently, the hotel has 383 rooms that range in price from $259 per night to $3,500 per night. Among several of its impressive facts and anecdotes, this hotel was the first to be completely air conditioned and was the first to accept credit cards. The Fairmont, which was built on the original site of the Museum of Fine Arts, has been the hotel of choice for nearly every president since William Howard Taft, as well as several foreign dignitaries, celebrities that attract paparazzi like carcasses attract flies and maggots, and various royalty.

And if that doesn't impress you, then consider this: they have a hotel WITHIN the hotel on the fourth floor, open to a "selection of like-minded guests," where "your individuality is valued, your room preferences are honored, and your arrangements for a quick and effortless departure are anticipated." This is all taken directly from their website. They not only arrange your limousines for you, but even provide you with a bottle of mineral water to go along with your bath. Oh, and just to remind you, this is a common sight in the ballrooms:

Meanwhile, this is their bar/lounge:

Feeling outclassed yet? I definitely had a Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman moment when I stepped into this place, and had another one while I was doing the research for this entry.

Awesome.

So that's all for now. More soon. Peace, love, and pandas!

A Nice Place to Visit

This

is my current desktop wallpaper. I captured this image on my most recent travels to the Most Beautiful Places in the World.

This

is what that exact same place looked like in April of this year. I think this place certainly warrants a Seasonal Lusciousness of the Year award. Or perhaps the Ugly Duckling that Grew Up into a Beautiful Lake award.

Ok, enough capitalization. It is making me seem pretentious. Also, the lake wasn't really that ugly in April. Just nowhere near as green.

These two pictures, as I mentioned, come from one of the most beautiful places I have ever been: Wellesley College. No, this is not an underwater institution, as might be suggested by these images. That, unfortunately, would be too badass to ever bring into existence. Also, the lead levels in the sediment of the lake make it not-so-safe for underwater undergraduate schools. The actual campus is on the other side of the camera, facing Lake Waban, and is one of the most prestigious colleges in the world, as well as the most well-respected women's college in the nation. I am more fortunate that I can even comprehend to be able to attend this school.

What is so sickeningly wonderful about this place is the actual, physical location of the school. It is in the town of Wellesley, or as I like to call it, upper middle-class suburbia where the nightlife is non-existent and the cheapest stores are CVS, Starbucks, and the Gap. Luckily for us Wellesley women, this means that we are surrounded by trees and pretty houses and scenic routes. We have a lake on the edge of campus. We have our own arboretum. Our buildings are Neo-Gothic and old, so they make those lovely creaking noises when you step on just the right plank of wood on the floor. There is a sense of sophistication everywhere you go - even when you go to the Science Center, which sticks out like a sore thumb and then some. And that is how you fall - hook, line, and sinker - for the school.

I am an Admissions Student Assistant during the school year, and I know for a fact that many, many high schools girls are romanced not by the academics, not by the social life, but by the red bricks of the centenarian buildings and the sweet, wafting scent of the blooming magnolias in the spring. Of course, they have already come to the school with some idea of our excellent academic reputation our unique situation in which students are very, very much in charge of their own social lives. These are the reasons for which I originally applied to Wellesley College, in fact. And these reasons are nothing to be scoffed at. However, when it comes to romancing a student, to setting her imagination ablaze with desirable images of studying on the bench near the Paramecium Pond under the shade on a nice, autumn day, of strolling around the lake just as the sun as started to set over the trees and turn the sky into dazzling shades of pinks and oranges, and of finding oneself in an impromptu snowball fight after class in a winter wonderland... yes, when it comes to all of that, Wellesley's campus cannot be beat. Simply put, my school is gorgeous.

And yet. And yet...

I think there must be some sort of agreement between the weather gods and the big wigs at Swells in that the true face of New England weather may only rear its ugly head once students have actually enrolled in the school. And I think this because the two things they never tell you about the weather are 1) the rain, and 2) the humidity.

Let's start with the rain. I've seen rain before. I've danced in the rain before. I've walked home without an umbrella in the rain before. But I had never, ever seen rain like this:

Buckets (literally, buckets) of rain falling from the sky, drenching people within seconds of stepping outside. Torrential downpours that would put monsoons to shame. Flooding that threatened to not only destroy the 2012 class tree freshly planted by the lake, but that also threatened to turn Wellesley from a beautiful forest dotted with buildings to a swamp that required swamp boats like the one in The Waterboy to get around. I honestly thought rain like that was only used in movies for epic battle sequences (reference: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) or make-out scenes (references: The Notebook and Match Point).

Ok, so I exaggerate a little, but when you have to walk across that campus to get to class at 8:30 am, and it's pouring down rain, you'll know exactly how I feel.

You will also come to understand the exact need for rain boots.

When I was a naive, foolish thing, I was under the distinct impression that rain boots were for fashionable, young mothers who wanted their children to be extra prepared and super cute in the event that it ever even drizzled outside. To me, galoshes were just part of the rain wardrobe, along with the bright yellow rain coat/poncho and the bright yellow sailor's hat. Everything matched, and everything was made with extra special care to make that your child never, ever had to get wet. Even though she or he was probably dying to rip the darn things off and go streaking through the rain-soaked streets. Oh-ho-ho, how wrong I was.

Along with more winter clothes that I believed anyone ever needed, galoshes were my first major clothing purchase after moving to the east coast.

Now, let's move on to our second topic: humidity. To someone from Southern California, like myself, humidity is a vague concept that usually means that the marine layer has not burned away yet, or that it might rain at some point later in the day if we're really lucky. It is also something that only comes onstage during the last act of the year when the temperature actually dips below 65 degrees and everyone complains about the cold and the clouds (this is called winter in SoCal).

Meanwhile, in Wellesley, and apparently in the rest of Massachusetts as well, humidity is something that never goes away, and is most noticeable when you most wish it would evaporate (no pun intended), notably in the summer. Here, in Boston and its surrounding suburbs, the humidity is as much likely to get your shirt completely wet as the rain is. 85 degree Fahrenheit weather, sun, and humidity mean more sweat than you ever thought possible for one person to secrete in a 30-minute period.

My boss is from the southern tip of Sweden, so we are both originally from climates that experience dry heat. The idea that you can step outside and feel like you are breathing in water when you haven't jumped into a pool yet is at once bewildering and frightening to the two of us. Try asking us about the weather sometime after we have just walked to work. You shall get more than earful.

Seriously, I would not have changed my mind about coming to study at Wellesley if I had known about the rain and the humidity, but I would have liked to know that I was moving into a giant greenhouse before I showed up here. I especially would have liked to know that, in the summer, the humidity seems to double in evilness. I would have stocked up on t-shirts to sweat through if I had known it would be so humid. I also would have bought a snorkeling mask because it honestly feels like I am swimming some days when the humidity reaches levels known and "unbearable" and "ludicrous."

But maybe I am just prone to complaining. My mother certainly used to think so when I was younger.

In summary, I love Wellesley. I believe it is the only place where I could be half as successful and well-rounded as I have become. There is no other institution in the world where I could meet such wonderful people, receive such an excellent education, and experience such breathtaking views as the picture at the beginning of this post. But I could never live here. I could never take up permanent residence here. I need somewhere that looks like this when you look one way:

and like this when you look the other way:

And this is what it looks like in the middle of January.

Call me spoiled, but San Diego, home of In-N-Out and authentic Mexican food, will always be my one true home.

A Slight Misnomer

I am not an elf. I feel compelled to clear that up before anyone is confused and people begin sending me comments along the lines of "OMG!!!1 I've known you for friggin ever and NOW you tell me that your an elf?!?!" First of all, the grammar, spelling, and punctuation in that comment are painful to read. Second of all, there is a story behind the title of this blog that I wanted to share.

Years ago, when the world was young... at the beginning of the Iraq War... when we still were under the reign of the Bush the Second... when college was something for adults and older siblings... right smack-dab in the middle of my favorite awkward period of life known as adolescence... I had a very close group of friends. (Well, I still have a very close group of friends, but this one was special). And together we decided to create story, which all of us would write, in which all of us had our own character that represented us in ways both obvious and vague. My character was based on my love for J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, and she was one badass elf named Lauremir. She was strong, graceful, wise, occasionally a leader, and turned into a big green monster whenever she didn't get what she wanted or whenever someone angered her.

Eventually, these characters became us, and my friends and I became synonymous with our characters. "Lauremir" became not just my nickname, but a nerdy 13-year-old with acne and an insatiable appetite for books. And so, I became the elf. To my friends. To anyone else, that probably would have been a little weird.

The name, and to some minor extent, the persona, has stuck with me over the years. The last name "Bennet" was added at some point as an homage to my all-time, number one, absolute favorite female author, Jane Austen, and the name "Lauremir Bennet" has since been used in pretty much every online social networking/blogging/art site I've ever joined where a screen name was required. It's nice to have a little continuity, or perhaps constancy, in life.

Thus, I am not an elf. But, indeed, the elf I am.

The slight misnomer comes into play with the word "travelling." It is perfectly true; I will be travelling from Boston to Paris, from Paris to Aix-en-Provence, and from there to who knows where. However, it will not be a constant in my life. I will not be travelling the world. I will not be in a new country every other week. As awesome as that would be, it is unrealistic, and so I ask of you to instead think of the full title of this blog as "The Elf, Who Is Actually Human, Who Experiences Punctuated Travels, But Mostly Stays In One Place In France." Not a very pretty title, though, is it?

Therefore, at the price of ever so very marginally misleading you, I have opted to choose a much shorter and nicer blog title: "The Travelling Elf."

I do ever so hope that you enjoy reading this blog. It is my intent to create a new entry on a weekly basis, and perhaps even more frequently than that, should there be something particularly interesting that I just must share with you in order for my day to be complete. I plan on sharing as much as possible about my time spent away from San Diego and away from Wellesley with all of you lovely people. This includes, but is not limited to, stories about my travels, awkward moments with strangers in foreign places, unfortunate mishaps that led to fortunate results, photographs of whatever happens to strike my fancy that day (or is pertinent to the blog entry), musings about the world at large, rants that express my frustration with life and school, and so on and so forth.

Originally, I had promised to send roughly five people short of a gazillion letters about my time in France. However, I decided to use a blog, instead. There are a few people who will still be getting postcards and/or letters (they threatened me with shoes, cluebats, and death by fire, so I had to say yes), but for everyone else, I look forward to communicating with you on the Interwebz!

Much Hugs and Love,

Rachel