Hasta La Gadget!

Terrorists and Ebola dominated the news this week; find out how by taking our Week to Week news quiz.

Here are some random but real hints: Blair would have been quicker; Holder probably unfollowed him; could change its name to ISISE; and al Qaeda spreads faster than the flu. Answers are below the quiz.

1. How many people could be infected with Ebola by January, according to the latest predictions?
a. 150,000
b. 14,000
c. 10,000
d. 1.4 million

2. What country’s legislature voted overwhelmingly on Friday to join the air campaign against Islamic State?
a. Germany
b. Iran
c. United Kingdom
d. Saudi Arabia

3. How did U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan of California respond to news that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was resigning?
a. He told reporters that “Freedom has died today”
b. He threw his hat into the ring as “the only possible successor who will be approved by the new Republican Senate in November”
c. He tweeted “Good riddance Eric Holder. Your disregard for the Constitution of the United States will not be missed.”
d. He demanded President Obama select a successor who favors marijuana legalization

4. On Thursday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko laid out a roadmap for what?
a. Joining NATO
b. Applying for European Union membership
c. Joining the Eurasian Union
d. Reconquering the Crimea

5. How has Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg angered his new neighbors in San Francisco’s tony Dolores Heights neighborhood?
a. Three times he has hosted loud parties featuring his college roommate, Justin Bieber, who was arrested at two of the parties
b. He has purchased three houses next to his and had them torn down so he could build a bigger swimming pool
c. They accuse him of hiring people to save extra parking spaces for the workers constructing his home
d. He never acknowledges his neighbors when he passes them on the street or sees them in the yard

6. Where did three Afghan National Army soldiers go after visiting a mall in Massachusetts?
a. The U.S.-Canadian border
b. The local Pakistani consulate
c. Chuck E. Cheese
d. A U.S. militia training camp in the nearby Catamount State Forest

7. How has the U.S.-led coalition attacking ISIS gone after the extremist group’s finances?
a. The coalition countries have agreed to stop all bank transfers of funds to northern Iraq and ISIS-occupied Syria
b. They bombed ISIS-held oil installations, which have brought the group $2 million a day in revenue
c. They have instituted a 50% tax on all goods and services traded with ISIS-held territories
d. They instituted a naval blockade of ISIS’ only port on the Mediterranean

8. About what did a senior EU official say “It may already be too late”?
a. Preventing terrorist attacks from ISIS fighters who return to Europe
b. Saving the economies of Greece and Italy
c. Preventing another vote for independence by Scotland
d. Stopping Russia from retaking the Baltic states

9. What is the Khorasan group?
a. The financial syndicate that raised $15 billion to purchase the Chipotle restaurant chain
b. A front company created by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s allies to get around energy industry sanctions
c. A newly discovered collection of “mini-neutral” galaxies 9 million light years from the Milky Way
d. An al Qaeda affiliate that was attacked in Syria after it reportedly was planning attacks on the United States

10. What happened after Apple had its “best launch ever” of new iPhones?
a. Its stock price doubled
b. People claimed its large iPhones were bendy and it had to recall its mobile operating system update
c. It had its “worst launch ever” of its new iGlasses
d. Its new AppleTV service was sued by Viacom and Disney for copyright infringement

BONUS. According to a new Swiss study, what have we learned about animals this week?
a. St. Bernards don’t like carrying little barrels of liquor around their necks
b. Cows don’t like wearing cowbells
c. Dogs and cats are both descended from the same line of miniature velociraptor
d. All cows are not female

Want the live news quiz experience? Join us Monday, October 13 in downtown San Francisco for our next live Week to Week political roundtable with a news quiz and a social hour at The Commonwealth Club of California. Panelists include Huffington Post’s Mollie Reilly and San Francisco Chronicle‘s Joe Garofoli.

ANSWERS:
1) d.
2) c.
3) c.
4) b.
5) c.
6) a.
7) b.
8) a.
9) d.
10) b.
BONUS) b.

Explanations of the hints: Blair would have been quicker: without Tony Blair at the helm, the UK is joining an already-in-progress air campaign in the Middle East; Holder probably unfollowed him: the congressman tweeted his distaste for the outgoing AG; could change its name to ISISE: that would make it the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Europe, if its fever dreams come true; and al Qaeda spreads faster than the flu: it’s another spawn of al Qaeda.

At the end of a summer of wars, in the midst of a decade of wars, at the beginning of what may be another century of wars, Sinister Wisdom publishes its ninety-fourth issue on the theme of Lesbians and Exile.

Joan Nestle is a member of the board of directors of Sinister Wisdom and pitched this theme as a special issue nearly three years ago. Nestle, born in the Bronx in 1940, spent most of her life in New York City. In 1974 she cofounded the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which still thrives today in its Brooklyn home. Nestle is the author of A Restricted Country (Cleis Press, San Francisco, 2003, first published Firebrand Press, Ithaca N.Y., 1987) and A Fragile Union (Cleis Press, San Francisco, 1998) and editor of seven other books exploring the lesbian body and imagination. Since 2002, Nestle has lived in Melbourne, Australia with her lover, Dianne Otto.

Nestle’s formidable editing skills matched well with co-editor Yasmin Tambiah’s. Tambiah grew up in Sri Lanka and lived there before and during the war years. She has spent long periods of her adult life in the U.S. and Australia, with stints in Trinidad, India, the U.K. and Spain. Trained as a European medievalist she now researches issues at the crossing points of law, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and militarization in postcolonial states, and also works in research management. Her creative writing has appeared, among others, in Conditions (New York), Options (Colombo), Nethra (Colombo) and ZineWest (Sydney), as well as in anthologies edited by Nestle and by Yasmine Gooneratne. She has won awards for writing from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation in New York and, most recently, from ZineWest in Sydney.

Nestle and Tambiah write in the “Notes for a Magazine:” “We decided to provoke questions about the utility and limits of the term exile by including a spectrum of other processes and states of dislocation, displacement, eviction, illegitimacy, and rejection. These states cannot be considered without simultaneously foregrounding acts of dissent, resistance, and transformations, and always from a lesbian perspective or on a lesbian continuum.”

Sinister Wisdom 94 includes work by lesbians from around the globe. Activist Mariam Gagoshashvili wrote “Reportage: My Experience on May 17th 2013, IDAHO Day, in Tbilisi,” a detailed, personal account of an attack by counter-protestors in Georgia (Eurasia). The issue includes letters written by out lesbians from Kosovo, poetry by Palestinian writer khulud khamis breaches the subject of citizenship and identity, and Xi’an Glynn’s “There is no place for us,” which considers exile occurring within the United States itself.

Dedicated to Sunila Abeysekera, a Sri Lankan feminist and human rights activist, Sinister Wisdom 94: Lesbians and Exile investigates the challenges faced by lesbians around the world, examining lesbian identity in relation to social marginalization, dislocation, war and survival.

The rich material gathered in this issue of Sinister Wisdom considers the many facets of exile and its fractured, resilient, and complicated relationship to identity.

For those of you who have never heard of Salem, it is based in Essex County along the North Shore of Massachusetts and about an hour’s drive from Boston. While not everyone may have heard of it, Americans know Salem for its infamous Witch Trials from the 1600’s, which made the town famous not just in the states, but worldwide. It’s a small city, with a population of under 45,000 but there’s a remarkable number of things to do, from boating, segway and walking tours to museums and a variety of activities which center around witchcraft.

Here are ten of our favorite things to do based on an extensive visit this past August.

The Fame Schooner

The Fame Schooner ride on the Atlantic in the afternoon was one of our favorite things we did in Salem.  The authentic boat captures history and brings you back to a different time, all while enjoying the best views of the coast. The original Fame was a ‘Chebacco boat’ that was commissioned as a privateer when war broke out in the summer of 1812. She was the first American privateer to bring home a prize, and made 20 more captures before being wrecked in 1814.

The new Fame (above) is a full-scale replica of this famous schooner. Framed and planked of white oak and trunnel-fastened in the traditional manner, the schooner is based at Salem’s Pickering Wharf Marina. Like so many activities and events in Salem, you learn about history in the process…in this case, the stories of the fishermen, privateers, merchants and men of war who shaped the Massachusetts North Shore.

Passengers on our sail were even encouraged to help put up the sail when we were finally out of the harbor.

Below are a few shots taken while we made our way out of the harbor.

I found the story behind the building of Fame fascinating. The boat was built by National Heritage fellow Harold Burnham, who is part of a boat building family who have been involved in building boats in Essex for over 350 years.  Preparations for the construction of Fame began in February 2002. 

Burnham started carving half-hull models, working up drawings, and hunting for wood and by the spring, the spruce trees had been cut down, trimmed, dragged out of the woods, rolled down to the river, and towed upstream to the Burnham Boatyard in Essex, across a small inlet from the Essex Shipbuilding Museum. Over the summer of 2002, Burnham completed the lofting, haped and finished the spars. The lead casting for the keel arrived in late August and a keel-laying ceremony was held on Labor Day of that year.  

The result is the current modern Fame Schooner tours throughout the summer and Fall. We would recommend this to anyone passing through and would go so far as saying that it’s worth a day trip from Boston even if  Salem isn’t on your radar, just to take a Schooner tour. Check out our two videos we shot during our tour which will give you a taste of what you’ll experience. Here’s <a href="”>Part I and Part II of our video footage.

Information is at Wharf Street in Salem, phone: 978.729.7600.

In the National Historic Landmark District, the historical and renowned House of Seven Gables is located on the Harbor, where you can discover 359 years of Salem’s history while you experience this museum and collection of historic buildings.

The structure is a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge clustered chimney. This famous site became so from the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne who wrote in depth about Salem’s most famous house in his 1851 novel The House of Seven Gables. The novel is famous for taking you back into early New England Puritan life and it’s charm, its oddities and its culture. 

The house stands today and does tours. They also have fabulous programs for kids where they learn through an experience with a “living textbook” by which economics, geography, history, literature, mathematics, and science come to life. Programs for Schools offer several connections to the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks, and a range of topics covered during school visits are noted in each program description on this website.

Get a Hot Dog at Boston Hot Dog Company

At Salem’s Boston Hot Dog Company, you can get natural casing or kosher beef hot dogs made a variety of ways. It may very well be the largest variety of hot dog preparations I’ve seen on my travels. You can have nearly anything you want on your “dog” from diced onions, peppers, poppy seeds, pickles, cheese and bacon bits to mayo, baked beans, pastrami (yes, really), peanut sauce and sauerkraut.

While I don’t eat hot dogs or burgers in my daily life, every now and then I crave one and it tends to be when I find myself in New England because of my childhood memories of having them loaded with meat sauce in Gloversville’s New York Lunch.

One afternoon when we were walking around Salem, I suddenly found myself craving one and when we started asking around, we fell upon not just a hot dog stand (which was what I was expecting) but a place that gave me so many choices, my head began to spin.

They also have traditional draft root beer and an incredibly friendly (and witty) staff. We had a blast stopping here and would recommend it if you’re not a vegetarian and want to be a l’il adventurous with your “dog.”

Information is at 60 Washington Street, Salem. Phone: 978.744-4168

The Salem Segway Tour

I didn’t always dig segways despite testing one out when it was still a prototype many years ago, but I’ve grown to love them as they have become a more popular way to experience a destination. The great thing about segways is that you can get to places you can’t normally get to in a car and is faster and more efficient than walking or even on a bike since you can look at things more closely than you can if you’re on a bike. And, truth be told, they’re FUN!

The tour is highly worth doing and after the Schooner, it was my second favorite thing in Salem. Salem by Segway offers 1 and 2 hour tours — they call their guides Adventure Captains. Along the way in typical Salem style, you learn a lot about the area’s history — from witchcraft to literature to art to architecture. Adventure Captains narrate the tour via an audio device which allows you to listen in hands free and enjoy the sights at the same time. They also offer tours in Newport, Philadelphia and Boston. Two Thumbs Up!!

It was a blast hearing historical factoids about Salem’s witch trials and past while we were zipping through the city.

Information is at 283 Derby Street in Salem. Phone:  866.611.9838.

The Salem Witch Museum 

Everyone knows Salem for its history of witches, when in 1692, twenty innocent people were put to death during the Witch Hysteria. History of course made them famous — the Salem Witch Museum brings their stories to life in a lovely storytelling way as you sit and listen to a narrator bring you back in time in complete darkness while relevant articles light up at the appropriate time.

To understand the events of the Salem witch trials, it is necessary to examine the times in which accusations of witchcraft occurred. There were the ordinary stresses of 17th-century life in Massachusetts Bay Colony.

A strong belief in the devil, factions among Salem Village fanatics and rivalry with nearby Salem Town, a recent small pox epidemic and the threat of attack by warring tribes created a fertile ground for fear and suspicion. Soon prisons were filled with more than 150 men and women from towns surrounding Salem. Their names had been “cried out” by tormented young girls as the cause of their pain. All would await trial for a crime punishable by death in 17th-century New England, the practice of witchcraft.

As years passed, apologies were offered, and restitution was made to the victims’ families. Historians and sociologists have examined this most complex episode in our history so that we may understand the issues of that time and apply our understanding to our own society.  The Witch Museum does one of the most accurate jobs of explaining this story.

Information is at 19 1/2 N Washington Square, in Salem, Phone:  978.744.1692

The Witch Walk & Psychic Reading by Lorelei

Done in a more informal and “fun” way, the Witch Walk  starts at Crow Haven on Essex Street, where you join a real Salem witch who starts the tour with a ritualistic circle.

In the circle, you go through various rituals and in the process, learn about witchcraft, what it means, its misperceptions and truths from a Salem witch’s point of view. We loved this!!! The tour took you through some of the historical sites in town however what’s really great about the tour is that the guides are great storytellers and actively practice witchcraft, so you’ll learn about how they got started, why they’re doing it and even the meaning behind some of the rituals along the way.

You are given a crystal at the end of the tour in recognition of your participation in the tour. Check out our video which gives you a glimpse of what to expect from the ritual, which kicks off your walking tour — it’s fascinating!

Information is at 125 Salem Street: 978.666.0884.

The Crow Haven store on site is also worth meandering through as it’s a wealth of information on witchcraft and has tons of things you can purchase, from candles and crystals to books and more.

 Take a Mahi Mahi Cruise

While we took one of their morning cruises during the late summer, they also offer jazz brunch cruises, sunset cruises and in the fall, they have historic (and heated!) cruises with food and drinks from their bar & grill, including belly-warming favorites like New England Clam Chowder and their famous Grandma’s Spiked Cider.   They have different boat options, including the Finback, which is a 50-foot sightseeing boat that provides a fun and intimate setting for up to 50 people. The Finback apparently has great lighting for evening cruises.

The more spacious boat is their Hannah Glover, which can accommodate up to 150 guests on two decks. The Hannah Glover features a fully-heated main deck and an open-air top deck to enjoy the weather during summer and fall months.

On the top deck, you can relax in style in one of their colorful Adirondack chairs.  It is a great way to spend a relaxing morning or afternoon seeing the area by boat. Kids will love it too. A major refit recently outfitted Hannah Glover with two Mahi Tiki Bars, and a beer and wine stations.

Information is at 24 Congress Street in Salem.

The Salem Night Tour

For people who love the mystic of ghosts, witches and history, the night tour brings you into the world of Paranormal Investigation. It’s an award winning walking tour through The Witch Cities most famous Haunts — haunted historical, witch trial sites, cemeteries, murder sites and more as you listen to a narration of various stories from the time.

The tour also starts on Essex Street and of course, tours run at night, so a great option for those who like the spooky and mysterious in life. Below, Howard Street Cemetery by night, which is a historic cemetery dating back to 1801 with more than 300 gravestones.  The land on which the cemetery is located is connected to the witch trials which you learn about on your night tour.  There are a quite a few seafaring men buried in the Howard Street Cemetery, including ship captains.

Information is at 127 Essex Street, Salem. Phone: 978.741-1170.

Explore the Unknown with Psychic Lori Bruno

We accidentally learned about Lori Bruno, which is surprising given that her photo can be found in so many of the brochures floating around town about the city. A longstanding psychic who used to work in Boston’s North End, she is a delight to spend time with and something you should do when you visit Salem. Lori is a Hereditary High Priestess and Elder of the Sicilian Strega line of the Craft of the Wise, founder and Head Mother of Our Lord and Lady of the Trinacrian Rose Church, Inc.

She has an exciting and interesting history, as you’ll learn if you ask questions about her life. She does her psychic readings at the Magika on the Wharf, where she has a private room for her visitors.

I couldn’t help wondering during my time with her how much the jewelry weighed that she wore around her neck and on her fingers and arms every day — jewelry which apparently she cleans every night. And, in addition to being informative and incredibly interesting, you’ll have fun in the process.

Information is at Magika, 63R Wharf Street Pickering, Wharf Salem: Phone: 978.741.9297 or 740.9297.

The Peabody Essex (PEM) Museum

While Salem may be a small and not necessarily on everyone’s global travel radar, the quality of the Peabody Essex (PEM) Museum and what passes through its doors is top notch. PEM may be considered one of the oldest continuously operating museums in the United States, combining the collections of the former Peabody Museum of Salem and the Essex Institute.

The roots of the Peabody Essex Museum date to the 1799 founding of the East India Marine Society, an organization of Salem captains and supercargoes who had sailed beyond either the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. The society’s charter included a provision for the establishment of a “cabinet of natural and artificial curiosities,” which is what we today would call a museum. Society members brought to Salem a diverse collection of objects from the northwest coast of America, Asia, Africa, Oceania, India and elsewhere.

It’s a great museum to also bring children as they have special exhibitions, weekend festivals and family art-making programs. This summer, they had an outstanding Turner & the Sea exhibition through September 1 that showed the first full-scale examination of Joseph Mallord William Turner’s lifelong preoccupation with the sea.

It featured iconic works spanning the artist’s career from his transformative Academy paintings of the late 1790’s and early 1800’s, to the unfinished, experimental seascapes produced towards the end of his life. A  Turner & the Sea was produced by the National Maritime Museum, part of Royal Museums Greenwich, London. Supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. They have a Calder and Extraction exhibit on through January 5, 2015.

Information is at 161 Essex Street in Salem. Phone: 978.745-9500.

Lastly, you will be surprised by a number of top notch restaurants in town. Be sure to also check out our Massachusetts Food/Wine section where you’ll find some restaurant write-ups on Salem as well as our Top Massachusetts Hotels section where you’ll find a couple of recommendations on where to stay.

While we were there over the summer, Fall is in fact the best time to visit Salem — September and October is not only pretty as the leaves begin to change, but they have additional activities going on leading up to Halloween, the city’s busiest time.

I never thought I’d become an uncle. My sister, Cindy, is mentally handicapped and when most women her age were having kids, she was living at home with our parents, playing Barbies, and too bashful to even speak about boys.

I get sympathetic looks when I tell others I have a mentally handicapped sister. And I’m going off topic for a moment to say that I don’t want those sympathetic looks. I’m proud of my sister. She is the heart of our family. Most people would consider her handicap a burden; however, I see it as a blessing. I can sit down with Cindy, laugh as we read all of Clifford’s adventures together, and talk, in unusually great detail, about the epic ’90s romance that was Tommy and Kimberly from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (she thinks they were soul mates; I think otherwise).

Cindy even calls my fiancé, Jeff, her brother and unquestionably accepts our relationship.

“If anyone has a problem with you guys, they’re gonna have to answer to me,” she’s told me countless times.

Take a moment to think about that. This is a 36-year-old woman who has maintained the heart of a child. Where most people her age cast judgment, she loves. How can anyone ever pity her?

This is all a long-winded away of saying that being an uncle was something I never thought about. I loved the family I had and didn’t wonder about an alternate universe where my sister was a mother.

Last year, Jeff’s sister, Julie, gave birth to a beautiful red-headed girl named Mira Celeste, and it was then I found myself taking on the role of uncle. And with that new role came a slew of fears I wasn’t ready for.

The first time I held Mira, I was afraid. I’d never before held someone that was so tiny and fragile (yes, the first time I held Mira was the first time I held a baby). And that’s what shocked me. She was someone. Someone that if I dropped, would be injured. Someone who was not only the perfect blend of her parents, but of Jeff as well. I was instantly in love. How could there have been a world before her?

When Jeff was named her godfather, I saw my fiancé, a guy with an asymmetrical haircut and the very embodiment of Hell’s Kitchen cool, walk up the altar at this small church in Ohio, and tear up as the chrism fell onto Mira’s head. Jeff and I don’t go to church, and I won’t say he became a devotee after the ceremony, but, he walked down that altar with Mira, ready for their spiritual journey.

Later, as I was reviewing my notes from the baptism, a thought entered my head. Mira had brought such joy in our lives that I couldn’t picture our family without her. However, what claim did I have over this happiness? I wasn’t blood-related.

A few years ago, Jeff and I separated. The split was mutual, but everyone in our lives felt the need to take sides (life advice from Uncle Paul: never take a side with warring couples). People who I considered family defriended me on Facebook and friends I had met through Jeff began ignoring my texts. What if 15 years down the road Jeff and I separate again? Would I still be considered Mira’s uncle? And would she, siding with her biological Uncle, defriend me from the future Facebook?

Of course, Julie and her husband Kevin have assured me I am Mira’s uncle no matter what.

“You’re not blood-related?” Kevin jokingly said to me when I was talking to him about this essay. “I hadn’t noticed. Should I be treating you any differently?”

Perhaps the best affirmation came from Cindy.

The other day I was on the phone with her when she was telling me she wanted a baby. I never knew Cindy thought about having children. My heart couldn’t help but break as she told me she hopes God sends her a little girl one day. You see, Cindy takes a powerful medication to keep her brain functioning. It’s had long-term effects on her body. I explained to her she couldn’t just go off the medication to have a baby. She could go into a coma or die.

“I don’t care what happens,” she told me. “I just want to love my baby.”

The idea of Cindy giving birth to a daughter then dying was too much for me to handle. I sat alone in my living room after our conversation, watching the sun set over the skyline. I was unable to picture my life without my sister and she was unable to picture a life without a daughter. I couldn’t believe how someone, who had so many disadvantages in life, had so much selfless love within her. She didn’t care about what happened tomorrow.

As of this writing, Mira is coming to New York to visit for Halloween. The entire family is doing a Flinstones theme for the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze we’ll be going to upstate. Mira is going to be Pebbles and I’m going to be Barney (the ultimate non-blood relative). I may not know what’ll happen in the future, but I’m taking my sister’s words to heart. Tomorrow is irrelevant. I just want to love my niece, and I’ll always be here for her.

Global Yodel sent Cara out with a DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: New England to get her perspective on what it means to use a travel guide in her local area. Here is what she discovered.

New Englanders are a lot like the lobsters they catch: independent, tough­-skinned, and perhaps a bit pinchy on the outside. But once you get through their hard exteriors they are pretty sweet on the inside. They also tend to turn red when exposed to heat.

Can you sum up New England? An artist once told me that he lives in New England because he can’t stand to reside anywhere that isn’t on the edge. (He meant the sea, of course; New England is far from edgy). The cities and towns along the coastline are steeped in history and tradition, just as tea was once steeped in the Boston Harbor. Besides the abundance of historical sites, New England’s character varies widely with the seasons: snow-piled winters, tempestuous springs, blazing summers, and spectacularly colored autumns change the landscape drastically throughout the year.

What was it like looking through a travel guide for your own local area? I loved flipping through the book and seeing in print the landmarks I pass by every day. It got me really excited to revisit old haunts through the eyes of a tourist. I actually had a lot of trouble reading through the guidebook at home because every page made me want to get up and run out the door to the next adventure!

Did you find anything new or inspiring about your area in the book? I found so many new and interesting vantage points around the city of Boston. Since I live in the South End and work in the Back Bay, a lot of the northern parts of the city were less familiar to me. Through the book I discovered that you can go up to the roof of the Custom House, which I highly recommend doing at sunset for some amazing views of the harbor and financial district. Just be careful not to disturb the peregrine falcons nesting up there!

How did the guide influence the photos you took of your area? I picked several of the full page chapter opener images and explored the places they depicted. This ended up being a really fun plan of attack since it meant I got to visit both well-known and close-by landmarks while also seeking out hidden gems farther afield.

Tell us about the photos you shot for this project. I wanted to show both the city and the amazing coastline farther from the urban center. All of my images were taken within a half day’s drive of Boston, and yet they depict three different states. I was also excited to explore some of the landmarks in the book in different weather and light. I love how thick fog or a clearing storm can change the mood of a place in minutes.

Occupation: Graphic design & photography.

What is a perfect day in New England? I would grab a cold brewed iced coffee from The Thinking Cup on Newbury Street and then drive up to the north shore. There would be swimming and a sand-dollar hunt at Crane Beach, then a short hop to Essex for fried clams at Woodman’s, and finally back to the city in the evening for a walk around the South End. Dinner out on the patio at Coppa would be the perfect end to the day.

What do you love about New England? No one ever says this, but I love the crazy intense weather! The sky and light are changing all the time, and even the long snowy winters are gorgeous. Just make sure you have a thick coat.

What do you dislike? I’m pretty sure Boston wins the worst dressed city award every single year, so it could definitely use more fashion sense and creativity. That, and the drivers could be a little nicer.

What would be surprising about New England to an outsider? You can easily take a short ferry ride from Long Wharf to many of the little islands in the Boston Harbor. Each island has its own personality, activities, and landmarks. There’s a super cool old fort on one island, campsites on another, and you can even run a 5k race on Spectacle Island in the spring.

If New England was a character who would it be? A lobster!

What was your impression of the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide? I loved how the interior design and layout of the book made the information easy to absorb. It’s pretty hard to walk around a bustling city with your nose in a book, and the at-a-glance sections really convey everything you need to know quickly so that you can focus on exploring!

Head over to GlobalYodel.com to see the full New England travel guide and learn all the local secrets.

Be sure to follow Global Yodel on Instagram for daily travel inspiration!