Last year's Day of the Dead

Halloween in Cambridge was absolutely quiet. Not a single visitor to the door - that seems typical around here. Although I'd gotten email from several city council candidates who were soliciting volunteers to go around door-to-door - so I assume they were out.

Last year we were in Lima, Peru on the Day of the Dead and visited several cemeteries which were jammed with people.

I did write about this last year.

Here is one of the huge arrays of graves:



Speaking of Peru - Peru, MA got 32 inches of snow. - we had a dance camp there a few years ago.

Title usage: ---- Ms.

In this morning's Boston Globe, Alex Beam wrote an article about the term Ms. (first coined in 1901!) and he has this marvelous quote from a William Safire column in the Times in 1982.

"Actually, my Miss name was Holtz. My Mrs. name was Goodman," she wrote. "But I am no longer married to Goodman, or Dr. Goodman as The Times would put it. Now Miss Holtz isn't exactly right. Nor is Miss Goodman. Nor is Mrs. Goodman.

"To compound the problem, I will be marrying a perfectly delightful person with a single flaw. His name is neither Goodman nor Holtz but Levey. I will not become Mrs. Levey, needless to say. Nor will I go back to Holtz. Due to bylines and children, I shall forever remain Goodman, unless I change this time to Goodperson, Or simply Good."

She signed the letter "Ellen May Holtz Goodperson."

Beam closes: "Good for her. After four more years of careful deliberations, the Times started using "Ms." in 1986."