SCALES #42: stinted pasture
Hello! A little piece of hyper-local research: it seems possible “Mistick fields” was not in fact a name once given to Medford south of the Mystic, despite...
SCALES #41: smellscape survey
Hello! I’m back! I couldn’t resist the numerological coincidence that I sent out #14 exactly a year ago, and now today, as if through a mirror, #41 falls...
SCALES #40: entr'acte, deux
Hello! First, a quick note: This newsletter took a break after the 20th issue, and I’ve decided to do the same after this, the 40th (!). No plans to shut the...
SCALES #39: duck authorities
Hello! Lab work has been crunching up serious time as of late. Right now we’ve been stuck on a problem that’s following the classic contours of what can be...
SCALES #38: "wormwood, harvested rye and buckwheat"
Hello! So as threatened, I brushed up on my Turgenev, namely the Richard Freeborn translation of Sketches from a Hunter’s Album. To rehash some learning...
SCALES #37: paper spray
Hello! In lab I’ve been trying to get up and running (hopefully quickly!) a new set of systems to collect (hopefully quickly!) a good set of levitated...
SCALES #36: "Pip among Pleiads"
Hello! I think last time around I didn’t quite capture the feeling I wanted to convey from my mini immersion into Somerville/Medford history with Electric...
SCALES #35: bears in the streets
Hello! Previously on SCALES: The author wonders, why is there a short residential street in West Somerville called Electric Avenue? Was it the site of some...
SCALES #34: utility imperialism
Hello! Recently I noticed a street in West Somerville called Electric Avenue: a fairly short residential street, terminating near where at least the map...
SCALES #33: zareba
Hello! It’s a laying-down-foundations week for this here newsletter, taking some time to do some research for a future issue. Also working on switching over...
SCALES #32: Darwin to Tahiti
Hello! Jumping right into The Culture Section this week. ▢ ▢ ▢ At the symphony I saw Thomas Adès conduct the Boston Symphony and the program was so good:...
SCALES #31: root systems
Hello! I've been working on getting everything, including some new-and-improved instrumentation, set up for another round of levitated droplet experiments....
SCALES #30: mixed clouds
Hello! In February 1922 Tor Bergeron was at a health resort outside of Oslo. He was on a multi-week break before starting a new position in Bergen, Norway,...
SCALES #29: cold connoisseur
Hello! The snow here in greater Cambridge has progressed to the dirty piles of slush phase and most of the sidewalks are finally clear. (I got angry seeing a...
SCALES #28: drinking deep
Hello, and happy 2018! SCALES is back, after a conference/holiday travel hiatus. As I'm writing this, the first flakes of the hyped East Coast cyclone...
SCALES #27: "Oh plum! My Captain!"
Hello! Happy December. This newsletter is back. A bunch of newsletter-unfriendly Thursdays have flown by and I've finally realized I'd rather get one out...
SCALES #26: lookin back, lookin back, lookin back
Hello! This issue: just a few short follow-up items. SCALES #25 and writing about music. I've been reading more of Ben Ratliff's Every Song Ever and my...
SCALES #25: head inside the speakers
Hello! Since last we checked in, my 2017 Spotify playlist has exploded in size. If at midyear it was the length of 1 or 2 CDs, a size my mind can grasp as a...
SCALES #24: historic cemetery
Hello! Welcome to a special Friday edition of SCALES! Conference travel last week, a conference-induced cold, and some busyness this week all kept this...
SCALES #23: granite, hornblende-schist, and the rest
Hello! I finished A.S. Byatt's Possession and found it a deeply pleasurable book to read—knowing satires of all these different literary scholar types; some...