massquest

i think it's important to always have at least one sidequest going on, something to obsess about. it's the spice of life. recently, i have decided that my sidequest will be the state of massachusetts. also, baking bread (i made some absolutely delicious garlic-sharp-white-cheddar-guinness bread yesterday). but the main sidequest is massachusetts. my goal is simple on its face: go to every place in massachusetts. the details are a little more difficult. how do you define a place? how do you define going to a place? what counts? what is massachusetts? who am i?

according to all official sources, massachusetts has 351 municipalities or local governments. thankfully, everything is at least incorporated into a county, which makes it easier than tracking down unincorporated areas outside of counties.within counties, some places have unincorporated areas like villages, and some census-designated places. i was initially including them in my schemes, but most census-designated places were actually just, like, a historical section or a neighborhood within a city that was already on the list, so whatever. i am informally including unincorporated areas if they're interesting, for instance, the ghost town of Dana which was wiped out for the contruction of the Quabbin Reservoir, and Satan's Kingdom in Franklin county, because, duh.

i say informally because of my methodology for counting somewhere as having "visited" it. i just want a clean, easily verifiable number for what i consider a place, so i don't want to just arbitrarily throw some in and count them but not others. so i am including only formal municipalities. while researching for this endeavor, i came upon an article in the worcester telegram & gazette about a father and daughter from worcester that did this exact thing, but what they did was visit every city/town hall in the 351 municipalities in massachusetts. i that is a fantastic metric, especially for places that don't otherwise have much going on. of course, there's lots of places in massachusetts that i have been but that i don't have a photo of the town hall, but i will make sure i double back and get that town hall pic. i don't think that fully counts as visiting a place, subjectively, but driving to some town halls has had me driving past some interesting places that i DO want to come back and actually go to. also in my research, i read about a man (and a community of like-minded individuals) who has visited all 3000+ counties in the united states. by their (honor system) logic, it doesn't count if you flew over it, but it DOES count if you drove through it, because "if you weren't there, where were you?" and that is so true. of course, for interesting places i will spend more time there and actually do something.

there are going to be some challenging ones to visit, but by "ones", i mostly mean the town of gosnold. gosnold is the least populous municipality in massachusetts, with only about 70 inhabitants. gosnold is made up of the chain of 20ish elizabeth islands off the cape. most of those islands are irrelevant, and a lot are OWNED BY THE FORBES FAMILY AND I CANNOT VISIT THEM. about half the population lives on naushon, owned by the forbes family. the other half, the normal people, live on cuttyhunk, a real town that isn't owned by the forbes family. unrelated to either of those, there is also penikese island, which was a leper colony and then school for troubled boys and is now mostly a bird sanctuary for wildlife research. unless you have your own boat or charter one, pretty much the only method of getting to cuttyhunk is a ferry that's like, $60. BUT! it seems that for a few short weeks in september and october, tthe long pasture auduborn in barnstable does guided birding kayak tours of cuttyhunk and penikese, with time to explore town in cuttyhunk. obviously, my happiness and the success of this mission depend on me getting on one of those tours. and i love birds. i am so excited. this will be the crown jewel of my quest.

regarding "what is massachusetts", i found out that the answer used to also be, like, all of maine and a lot of new hampshire and connecticut. who knew? probably a lot of people. we didn't learn about massachusetts like that in florida school.

anyway, i have already lightly kicked off my quest and will dive in with gusto this summer, and soon i will be making a page on this website to keep updated on my massachusetts exploration. stay tuned!

March 22 2025

she should be at the club!

on saturday, i started having a crisis. i've been having a lot of those in the past few months. this time, i was worried that i have been contained to such a social bubble that i had lost the ability to "correctly" socially interact with people outside of my bubble and that after graduation i wouldn't be able to integrate into the Real World that i have been longing for as an escape from this bubble. maybe it's the nice weather that knocked some sense into me, but as i was driving back, i figured that instead of sitting inside freaking out and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of separation from the Real World, i'd just go find it. it was saturday night! st patrick's day weekend! the national holiday of massachusetts!

i asked if anyone else wanted to go out, but no one was up for it. turns out, solo night on the town was exactly what i needed. i walked probably 2 miles, bothered a yuppie accountant from boston and got his number to use his woosox season passes, ran into a friend and her friend, had extensive conversations about threesomes and kanye (separately), went to a second location and joined a UV dance party, danced with a gay guy and reassured him about his ex, got locked out and let back in, went wild and free into the night once more, got in an uber and made conversation with the driver, made it home in one piece. it was a perfect night in every way. i wish i was in a city with a better going-out scene, but maybe it's been there more than i thought it was, and i just hadn't looked particularly hard. whenever i do really have a successful night out, it make me understand how people get obsessed with going out every weekend or several times a week. humanity is beautiful. sorry for being such a square that i have to wax poetic about the beauty of human connection because i went to the bar, but billy joel made a banger about that, so...

in honor of st. patrick's day and a very lucky night:
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

March 17 2025

is anybody out there?

i'm brand new here, but i have a lot of big plans for my site :) be patient and let's be friends!!!

March 15 2025