Hal LaCroix discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Hal LaCroix lives outside Boston with his wife, Elahna. He has worked as a journalist at newspapers in New England, a reporter and editor at Harvard Medical School, a conservation writer for non-profits and an instructor at Boston University. Here and Beyond is his first novel. You can read a review.
1. Senator Charles Sumner. Sumner was a mid-19th century senator with laser focus on one issue: slavery. Grew up in a racially diverse neighborhood on edge of Beacon Hill. His father was an abolitionist. Sumner saw how blacks were treated decently during his time in France, then represented a child in a Boston school discrimination case (lost). He had a profound impact on Lincoln, pushing him to expand rights of African Americans after emancipation. Sumner became epic villain in Confederacy, where souvenir canes commemorated the beating were hot items.
2. Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mt. Fuji. Fuji is sacred, a symbol of Japan. The most well-known Hokusai print is Fuji dwarfed by the Great Wave off Kanagawa. The 36 mostly long-range views, all around the compass, provide a wraparound view of Japanese life in 1831.
3. Exoplanets. More than 5,000 have been confirmed so far, out of hundreds of billions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy. Until the 1990s no one even knew if there were any planets outside our solar system!
4. Wingspan. This is a board game about birds that my wife and I are a bit obsessed with. Each player has a board with forest, grassland and water habitats. Plus, dice and cards and food and eggs and hundreds of cards, each with a beautiful drawing of a bird.
5. Boston Cream Pie and Boston Cream Donuts. My grandfather used to bring cakes and pies when he visited us on Cape Cod. He’d pull up in his Oldsmobile Cutlass with all these white boxes tied with string from Montilio’s bakery.
6. We Need a Global, Unifying Mission. We live on a planet with 8.2 billion people and the vast majority of us just know our neighborhood, our route back and forth to work. But on the spinning ark ship in Here and Beyond, the entire world is visible within the sphere. You look up and see buildings upside down, people upside down.
Better Known 