Neighborhood – The Cambridge Placebook

February 16, 2023February 16, 2023

Dinky Doors

Some of Cambridge’s most charming architecture is tucked away at ankle level. Since 2019, an anonymous couple has been working toward their mission of “Saving the World” by installing little portals to whimsical delight throughout Cambridge. These are the Dinky Doors. There are 14 so far—new ones pop up every few months—and I always make sure to point out a few of them on tours I give to visitors, or even to friends who have lived here a while and still haven’t noticed them. I must admit that I hadn’t made an effort to track down all of them until I was about to move away (and even then I missed one)!

A tour of all the Dinky Doors is effectively a tour of Cambridge—you can even buy a walking tour from the Dinky Doors website (and/or donate to support their mission to Save the World). There’s also a Youtube channel where the Dinky Doors couple appear (with red boxes on their heads) to update the world on dispatches from the Supreme Leader (a kindly extraterrestrial being giving Dinky Doors instructions on how to Save the World) and otherwise share their quirky humor and Dinky Door backstories. Read on for some highlights!

December 5, 2021January 4, 2022

Autumn Again

I was taking a retrospective look at my blog recently, and was stunned by how much I wrote last autumn. I kept a treasure trove of field notes on everything the season was giving me during a time of quiet and isolation. This season, the hustle of community is back, along with the haze of attempting to write up my thesis, and I’ve found it hard to get into the headspace of word-crafting my surroundings. Despite this, the season has given richly and I’ve been fed by warm earthy palettes, frosty mornings, flame and lemon leaves, full moons, mushrooms and chestnuts, sunbeams and sunsets. In lieu of words I’ve captured as much as I can on my often inadequate camera. I’m going to attempt to decorate the images with some remembered notes, because this autumn deserves all the attention I can give it, even in memory.

May 2, 2021July 5, 2021

The Cam Towpath to Bottisham Lock

My favorite way to explore:

Look at Google Maps on satellite mode
Find the green patches
Think about where I haven’t been recently (or ever)
Click around for general cycling directions
Get on my bike
Deviate from that route as much as I like.

On Easter Sunday, a month ago now, my afternoon was wide open after Easter observances and the weather was perfect. So I opened Google Maps and consulted my map feelers—where I felt like being and where I could extend my exploration coverage—and decided on the direction of Jesus Green and Fen Ditton. No endpoint in mind, just a place to be and see where I ended up.

Well, I ended up seven miles down along the River Cam. The pull of the path was irresistible, and only a sense of daylight waning turned me back.

March 28, 2021July 5, 2021

Field Notes: Spring’s Progress

In Cambridge now, we’re teetering at the peak of daffodils and cherry blossoms. But the colors started with the crocuses, with layer on layer of new faces emerging since then. Was this the beginning of spring, over a month before the equinox? Less tidy than the succession of flowers, many species of wind and cloud and sun flow through these early months, hybridizing winter and spring. But petals and their colors and birds with their eloquence won’t be ignored as they talk of the changing seasons. I’ve been taking notes.

December 5, 2020July 5, 2021

Field Notes: Newnham in Autumn

Yesterday brought the first early-morning snow of winter to Cambridge. Having been tipped off by the forecast the day before, I knew what the muffled calls and screams of children meant when they woke me up, even with the curtains closed and my brain still groggy. Within a few hours of sunrise, the half-inch of snow was latticed into slush on the lawns and rooftops, and soon after that, was gone. (Having spent nine Decembers in Idaho, I’m not impressed.)

Today brought near-frozen sunshine, which I’m now watching gather into sunset just after 3 pm. The walnut tree outside my window is all a-crag with empty branches; I can only see a single leaf clinging and waving.

All this is to say that winter is here. So my post today is a tribute to the memory of the glorious autumn I was so unusually intimate with here in Newnham, working at my south-facing window in my college room, taking strolls for breaks. Here are some of my field notes.