My mom and I are most similar in our Irish heritage and love of reading. We recently traveled to Ireland together and soaked up not just the cloudy countryside, but also Ireland’s rich literary history, by creating our own literary Dublin walking tour. We began with the Dublin Writers Museum. In an unassuming yet charming eighteenth-century brick house in northern Dublin, we saw unique [...]
When I delve into a book, I like to read every chapter name before I start in. I always like to have some idea of what I’m getting into. This is a practice I sort of fell into, though I never realized the other PSG staff members might also have curious reading habits they’ve fallen into! Alyssa’s main habit, which she gets a [...]
There’s something oddly comforting about seeing everyday objects scaled down to miniature size. It reminds me of the days of dollhouses and army men, when I controlled my own tiny worlds. I can only imagine the thrill of seeing Gulliver’s Gate: a tiny world of epic proportions. Since May 9, 2017, visitors to Times Square could pay to enter the 50-thousand-square-foot exhibition of [...]
While I have been in love with London for as long as I can remember, William Shakespeare did not capture my heart until ninth grade, when I first read Romeo and Juliet. Since then, my love for the Bard has only continued to grow. Then, this past March, I had the opportunity to visit the Globe Theatre—an English major’s dream! At first glance, [...]
Binoculars? Check. Protective solar glasses? Check. A clear view of the sky? Check! You’re ready to watch the total solar eclipse sweeping the nation this month. August 21, 2017, marks the first total solar eclipse to cover the entire country in 99 years. Tracing a path from Oregon to South Carolina, the eclipse will only be visible in the United States. It’s predicted [...]
Just across the Hudson, the Empire State Building shines as the star of the Manhattan skyline. Often lit with a classic white light, the Empire State Building is even more breathtaking at night. Every so often, however, the building can be seen sporting a wide variety of colors and images. This past April, for example, Harper’s Bazaar used an LED light system to project [...]
I have a tradition of visiting the public library in every new city I visit. Call me a bibliophile, but a library says a lot about its city. I’ve been to the New York Public Library (NYPL) Midtown branch numerous times, but the next time I’m in New York, I’ll have a “new” library to visit—the Midtown branch’s Mid-Manhattan Library is beginning a long-awaited [...]
At seven o’clock on a rainy November night, I headed back to class to start a five-hour screening of King Lear, where my professor met me and my classmates with a bag of secret-recipe homemade popcorn. As an English major at Smith College, I was required to take an intensive course. I got the very last spot in a class that meant 15 [...]
Once, in grade school, I was given a blank map of the world and asked to label every country (in pen—yikes). I may have gotten a lot wrong on that test, but it turns out the map I was working with may not have been accurate to begin with! I was probably being tested on the Mercator projection, one of today’s most common [...]
We’re a staff of passionate readers at PSG, and when not working with words in the office, we make time to read for fun in some of our favorite places. Kate’s favorite place to read is reclining on her porch on a warm weekend morning,but she also does a lot of reading as a commuter, where she can be caught peeking at what others [...]