Daily Archives: June 24, 2023

Thursday, September 7 – Sunday, September 10 – What’s Out There Weekend: Cleveland

by

What’s Out There® Weekend (WOTW) Cleveland will bring to light the local character of the city as reflected by its publicly accessible parks, gardens, plazas, cemeteries, memorials, and neighborhoods. The region boasts more than 24,000 acres of publicly accessible green space, including a National Park, several scenic reservations, seminal landscapes designed by the Olmsted firm, A.D. Taylor, Ernest Bowditch, and others, and exciting contemporary projects enlivening the city’s center. In addition to significant works of landscape architecture, the area possesses a rich diversity of cultural landscapes, including several sites included in the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, such as Lake View and Erie Street Cemeteries.

Working in collaboration with myriad local partners, The Cultural Landscape Foundation will make visible and instill value in the places that make the region unique, and engage the public to promote their sustained stewardship. WOTW Cleveland will engage a large and diverse audience (typically 1,000+), offering two days of free, expert-led tours of up to 30 sites, encouraging participants to discover the little-known design history of places they may pass every day.  For more information, and registration, visit https://www.tclf.org/whats-out-there-weekend-cleveland

Wednesday, July 26, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm Eastern – Foodways Book Club: An Exploration of How Food Connects Us Beyond the Table, Online

by

The Foodways Book Club, sponsored by the Boston Public Library, will have its next online discussion on Zoom on Wednesday, July 26 at 6:30 pm. The next book to be discussed is Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family by Rabia Chaudry. Copies of the book have been set aside at the BPL, and of course it’s available at bookstores and as a Kindle and Audio Book.

According to family lore, when Rabia Chaudry’s family returned to Pakistan for their first visit since moving to the United States, two-year-old Rabia was more than just a pudgy toddler. Dada Abu, her fit and sprightly grandfather, attempted to pick her up but had to put her straight back down, demanding of Chaudry’s mother: “What have you done to her?” The answer was two full bottles of half-and-half per day, frozen butter sticks to gnaw on, and lots and lots of American processed foods.

And yet, despite her parents plying her with all the wrong foods as they discovered Burger King and Dairy Queen, they were highly concerned for the future for their large-sized daughter. How would she ever find a suitable husband? There was merciless teasing by uncles, cousins, and kids at school, but Chaudry always loved food too much to hold a grudge against it. Soon she would leave behind fast food and come to love the Pakistani foods of her heritage, learning to cook them with wholesome ingredients and eat them in moderation. At once a love letter (with recipes) to fresh roti, chaat, chicken biryani, ghee, pakoras, shorba, parathay and an often hilarious dissection of life in a Muslim immigrant family, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom is also a searingly honest portrait of a woman grappling with a body that gets the job done but that refuses to meet the expectations of others. Chaudry’s memoir offers listeners a relatable and powerful voice on the controversial topic of body image, one that dispenses with the politics and gets to what every woman who has ever struggled with weight will relate to.

The book discussion is a free event. Registration required at https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6451659f65e9014900d433f8. Questions? Contact Alea Stokes at astokes@bpl.org.