only problem is the rain

It’s raining a bit too much in Providence, though not constantly. Judging from what the Minnesota woman next to me on the plane said yesterday, it’s been raining a lot throughout much of the U.S. lately.

Otherwise, this has been a perfect first trip to Providence. This area of the city just oozes charm, and I can easily understand why Brown is the top choice of many undergraduates. I’m not sure if this is still the case, but when I was at the age of applying to colleges, Brown had the lowest acceptance percentage of any undergraduate institution in the U.S. It was only around 20% at the time.

Tamanya in Cairo

This sounds like the kitten I know:

“Just wanted to update you. Tammy was a bit scared when she came but it took her one day to get back her courage and play back to normal. She just does not stop playing around. She got used to the cats and plays with the Siamese one. She decided today that I had enough sleep and stated to bite my toes up till I woke up.”

She had a great time with these same cats immediately in early May, while I was in Oxford. But she was really a different animal then, enough so that she didn’t even seem to remember me after I returned from my 8-day absence. By now she’s ripened, and more used to her physical environment.

Glad to hear Wafaa’s Siamese is her friend, though.

the Pippen trade

As a follow-up to the last video, here’s where the Bulls actually acquired Scottie. Sports history is made.

1987 draft flashback: “Scott” Pippen

Here’s where the Bulls picked up Scottie. He was drafted by Seattle, but then traded to the Bulls for a package including the forgotten (but beautifully named) Olden Polynice from Virginia.

getting ready for the draft

Still trying to decide if it’s worth going out for dinner in this rain.

The NBA draft is just over two hours away. I think everyone expects Cleveland to take Kyrie Irving #1, but what about at #4? ESPN was reporting that Lithuanian center Jonas Valanciunas, age 19, may be their choice. The story said the Cavs think he’ll be as good as Pau Gasol. (If so, then they ought to take him.)

It might not seem like the Bulls will do anything tonight, but they do need a better shooting guard to team up with Rose in the backcourt, and maybe they’ll put together a trade tonight. Draft night is always great for trades.

It was unbelievably fantastic when Portland passed on Michel Jordan in 1984 and he fell to Chicago at #3. They thought they were already covered at that position with Clyde Drexler. Imagine how NBA history would have changed if Portland had taken Jordan. (I’m giving Houston a pass for taking Olajuwon. Respectable choice, and he was the tallest star player available and played for the University of Houston. Can’t blame them.)

But an even more exciting draft for the Bulls was when they picked up both Pippen and Grant in 1987.

just spoke with

My brother in Toronto. If he can’t make it to Iowa, I may have to take a quick trip up there. I haven’t seen him since my grandmother’s funeral, which was at the very end of 2006.

more on the shunned house for sale

It’s only $925,000, less than expected, but still well out of range for a philosopher.

My favorite line here:

“Aside from a giant monster buried in the basement (which can, admittedly, be killed with acid), it has four bedrooms, a koi pond and a library.”

I’ll buy a few lottery tickets in Iowa next week, and I swear…

shunned house for sale

By incredible good luck, it turns out that my bedroom faces “The Shunned House” from Lovecraft’s early story of the same name. There is now a “For Sale” sign in front, and my God, I wish I had enough wealth at my command to buy it instantly (it must be worth $1 million or more in a neighborhood like this). How many houses in the United States have that sort of literary aura about them?

If you’ve read the story, you may remember that there’s a strong French angle to it. The original haunting begins with a Frenchman, one of the maids in the house begins speaking French despite never having studied the language, and so forth. The reason I mention this is because the owners have a number of French signs on the gate (such as “Attention : chien bizarre!”). I appreciate that humorous touch.

The final haunting, you will also recall, occurs in the cellar-type area not directly beneath the house, which can be seen in the foreground of the photo. [ADDENDUM: I’ve started rereading the story, and I now think this is incorrect. The “cellar” in the story actually seems to be what now looks like the ground floor room right on the sidewalk. It would have been the cellar before they exposed the foundations of the house when Benefit Street was considerably widened.]

The narrator in the story makes much of the fact that all these horrific events occur nonetheless just a few feet from the sidewalk.

I think I’ll reread the story tonight while directly facing the house.

Something else, which is also mentioned explicitly in the story, is the relationship of Edgar Allan Poe with this street. Towards the end of his life, the widower Poe was courting the important Providence poet SARAH HELEN WHITMAN. As I remember from the biographies, she was even prepared to marry Poe, but his reputation simply wouldn’t allow her to go through with it in the end. The Wikipedia article on Whitman makes it sound more like Poe broke things off, but my recollection was somewhat different from that.

The narrator in Lovecraft’s story makes the “ironic” point that Poe must have passed by the shunned house quite often on his visits to Whitman (who lived on Church Street, just a few blocks from here), without ever noticing the house. Nice job by Lovecraft at dealing with his anxiety of influence!

sudden realization

I just realized that… hey, I’m in the United States right now, and that means that I can actually watch the NBA draft tonight!

Wow. I really am excited by that. You have to understand the depressed resignation of living 6 time zones ahead of the Eastern U.S. and knowing that I will always get sports news after it’s already happened, by reading it on a website. The idea that I can actually watch it happen live tonight is a stunning treat.

There’s a TV right here, and I know where I will be at 7 P.M.

One thing we know is that the Cleveland Cavaliers will be rebuilt tonight, at least potentially. They have the 1st *and* 4th picks in the draft.

The draft I remember most vividly was 1996. Allen Iverson went #1 to Philadelphia. But the big gamble was the Lakers trading Vlade Divac to Charlotte in order to select a high school player named Kobe Bryant. I didn’t know what I thought of that at the time, but they showed some Kobe high school footage on the broadcast and he looked just great. Obviously, that pick turned out very well for the Lakers, as they ended up with one of the 10 greatest players of all time, and some people say the best guard other than Jordan.

As for tonight, Kyrie Irving from Duke seems to be the likely #1 pick by Cleveland. Looks like a nice kid.

the East Side

A long-time Providence resident wrote to say that this area near Brown is affectionately known as “the East Side.” That’s helpful. I had thought it was probably called “College Hill,” but maybe that term is limited to the hill itself.

The area could hardly have more charm; I warm to it increasingly by the hour.

I did a few things this morning, one of which was to walk to the Lovecraft birth site on the 400 block of Angell Street. The original building has been torn down in favor of an apartment complex. If I’m remembering correctly, Joshi’s biography speaks of the original house as being on the outskirts of Providence in those days, and close to nature. You can sort of picture that when you walk out there. It’s not super-far from the heart of the East Side, but far enough that you can feel a bit of effort. (And now there’s a Starbucks across the street from where Lovecraft was born.)