Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘boston’

I love the Fort Point area of Boston, across a channel from where I work. But even on a moderately stormy day, the water rises so high it threatens to overflow the banks. So the thinking behind one of the latest art installations there is no joke.

Peter Agoos’s “Tropical Fort Point” ( April 28 – June 15, 2014) is part of the the spring public art series presented by the Fort Point Arts Community Inc. Agoos says about his floating palm trees, “The struggle for quality public open space in the neighborhood and the likelihood of climate change-induced rising sea levels are the conceptual parents of Tropical Fort Point.”

There are several other new presentations around the area. “I Wandered,” by Kate Gilbert and Karen Shanley, “celebrates the joyous arrival of spring and invites you to explore the Fort Point through poetry. Large graphic daffodils and select phrases from ‘I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud,’ William Wordsworth’s 1807 poem about discovering a ‘host of dancing daffodils,’ can be found in five different spots around the neighborhood—encouraging us to … reconnect with the lost art of meditative walking.”

“Silver Lining,” by Elisa Hamilton, “is an inclusive exploration of our relationship with hope that invites the public to engage in the brilliance of possibility.” See photos and artist statements at Fort Point Arts, here.

Agoos-Tropical-Fort-Point

palm-trees-visit-Boston

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

What a treat to be outdoors in the Greenway again! Flowers and trees are starting to bloom, and there is always something new to observe.

Although I don’t use my phone on my walk, except to take pictures, a new amenity provided by Fort Point neighbor Life is good is likely to be welcomed by many visitors. I saw one phone-recharging kiosk near the Dewey Square food trucks and one near the Boston Harbor Hotel.

Got my lunch at the Vietnamese food truck Bon Me and ate outside in the sun.

spring-in-the-Greenway050614-Greenway-Boston

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

phone-recharging-kioskLifeisgood-kiosk-in-Greenway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dewey-Square-food-truckscorner-Atlantic-and-Congress

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

4th-floor-roof-gardenIt may get colder, but there’s no turning back now. It’s spring for sure.

Here is a greening-up roof garden maintained by a brilliant landscaper at work. The tree in the foreground is my second favorite of his twisty trees. The first favorite is behind glass, and when I try to snap it, I just get a picture of Suzanne’s Mom taking a picture.

In other photos: The wind was causing a cow balloon to pull against its tether. A bumblebee was one of 20 in my neighbor’s weeping cherry. See it at the top of the picture.

Orange jackets from yesterday’s happy Boston Marathon were lined up for a city tour. And in the Rose Kennedy Greenway, several organizations, including the Coast Guard and Life is good were volunteering for clean-up duty as part of Earth Day.

And speaking of Earth Day, you can enjoy a genuine earthy-crunchy Earth Day celebration in Concord on Saturday. The parade is always a hoot. Check out details here.

tethered-cow-ballonbee-in-weeping-cherry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2014-orange-marathon-jackets

earth-day-volunteering-in-greenway

Read Full Post »

Holmes-School-Dorchester-MaA new employee goes to the Oliver Wendell Holmes School in Dorchester with the team I’m on. He can’t get over how great it is to work for an organization that gives you time to do this. We go out once a month from January to June, and other teams go once a month so that we cover every week.

I started eight years ago with the team that read picture books to a room of first graders. Then I read for a few years with fifth or fourth graders who received chapter books from the librarian. These were students whose teachers thought they would appreciate the extra reading. We all read aloud, with the adult volunteers only taking a turn if the story seemed to lag.

Holmes is a minority-majority urban school with many dedicated teachers who are tolerant of the extra work it takes to herd volunteers. (We also have volunteers who work on math.)

This year, the team I’m on includes the woman who started the whole relationship with Holmes 20 years ago and is now retired. We are assigned to read copies of printed passages and help the children answer multiple-choice questions from tests they have had in the past.

Given the current nationwide emphasis on testing and these third graders’ tendency to keep guessing wildly, I consider it my role to focus on the thought process and deemphasize getting the right answer. I ask, Why do you think that’s the answer? How did you get there?

The administrators often tell us that we make a difference. We’re probably just a drop in the bucket. But, you know, One and One and 50 Make a Million.

More employers should make it so easy to improve the world in which they operate. Other employees probably spend the hour and a half it takes to go out, tutor, and get back once a month in less valuable ways.

Read Full Post »

No matter how much you like your routine or how pleasant your surroundings, sometimes you just have to get up and go out. Today I needed a change of scene so, in spite of the freezing temperatures and high wind, I went to look at some art.

The Design Museum is not far from my office, and the folks there come up with lots of good projects. I blogged here about their Street Seats, an array of public benches designed by creative people from around the world.

This being Design Week in Boston, I decided to check out the exhibit space they are using in a new apartment building called 315 on A, a lovely renovation of an 18th century warehouse for coffee.

The new exhibit is called Green Patriot Posters and features handsome posters from professionals as well as the pretty impressive results of a school poster contest on the conservation theme.

Many of the posters explicitly reference WW II posters. You know: “Loose lips sink ships” and all that. Here, the posters urge viewers to pursue a more sustainable way of life and fight global warming. More.

Be sure to check the poster over the left shoulder of the woman speaker in this video. That was my favorite in the show because it made me laugh out loud. I think you can see a Paul Bunyan figure with an ax. He is looking at the tree he was going to cut with an uncertain expression as the tree is growing out of his foot.

 

 

Read Full Post »

bitcoin-machine-at-South-StationA friend is doing research on bitcoin and other virtual currencies.

Although it sounds like phoney money to me, I still honor the lesson I got in fourth grade about how a dollar represents trust. You trust when you receive it that it will be accepted by someone else in exchange for something you want. You trust the entity that backs it. Today people are using virtual currencies like real money, so trust is working so far.

But does it all remind you of the company that used to accept your money and promise to do your worrying for you? Or how about virtual gift giving, which enjoyed a flurry of attention in the media a while back. (The gift company will e-mail your friend that you “bought” a virtual gift. The concept is based on the premise that it’s the thought that counts. VirtualGifts4U.com, for one, just asks you to support its sponsors.)

I took this picture at Boston’s South Station, where, during specified hours, a friendly young man will explain how you can buy bitcoins at this machine. I haven’t chatted with him, so I don’t know if he also explains that the value of your bitcoins can not only go up in an hour or two but go way down.

There is no significance to the fact that the machine is located right next to an endlessly running “If you see something, say something” security video.

Read Full Post »

Amtrak-trains-Boston

I love Amtrak, and I love writing, but I don’t think I am ever going to do an Amtrak Artist Residency, so I am passing along the info so you can apply. It sounds like fun. Just glimpsing the exposed backs of houses along the tracks with their hints of the private lives lived in them is inspiration for a ream of stories.

William Grimes writes for the NY Times blog ArtBeat, “The wheels have begun moving on Amtrak’s plan to offer writers a rolling residency aboard their trains. … Up to 24 writers, chosen from a pool of applicants, will be given a round-trip ticket on a long-distance train, including a private sleeper-car room with a bed, a desk, and electrical outlets. …

“The idea was born in December when the novelist Alexander Chee, in an interview with the magazine PEN America, casually mentioned his love for writing on trains, and added, jokingly, ‘I wish Amtrak had residencies for writers.’

“When Jessica Gross, a writer in New York, echoed the sentiment on Twitter, Amtrak arranged for her to do a trial residency on the Lake Shore Limited from New York to Chicago. She agreed.

“Her account of the trip, ‘Writing the Lake Shore Limited,’ published by The Paris Review in February, grabbed the attention of The Wire, The New Yorker and The Huffington Post. Soon after, Amtrak decided to turn the trial run into a full-fledged program.” More on when and how to apply.

Even before that series of events, there was the Whistlestop Arts Train, you know. I blogged about the rolling public art project by Doug Aitken last July, here.

Trains for dreaming. Holiday model train layout at Amtrak’s South Station, Boston.

model-trains-Amtrak-S-Station

Read Full Post »

congress st nook

The City of Boston has a nice opportunity for folks with ideas about making cities more livable.

The City says, “In Boston, a third of the land is open to the public. We invite you to reimagine that space. How can our streets, plazas, sidewalks, street furniture, and public buildings better serve people?

“The Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics Streetscape Lab is sourcing ideas from designers, makers, artists, and engineers to improve Boston. We are asking members of our vibrant creative community to submit project ideas to make our public spaces simple, intuitive, and literally awesome. Project ideas can be entirely new creations or a new way of using an existing product. The City will review the submissions and may select up to six ideas total to implement in the following categories:

“The Streetscape: sidewalks, streets, medians, plazas, and our other civic front porches. What improvements would you make to space? What is the next iteration of our classic street furniture? Look at the sample locations to get you thinking.

“Boston City Hall: rethinking the indoor and outdoor space, signage, improving service delivery and the user experience. These designs may help inform future improvements to the building.

“Random Awesome Designs: great ideas that defy classification or location.” Guidelines here.

I see no reason you have to be an artist or an engineer. What’s to stop you from sending in a good idea? Go for it.

Dewey-Sq-_farmers_market

providence author lovecraft

Read Full Post »

The FortPointer passed along another great lead by way of twitter. He recommends a blog called We Love Beantown. (Beantown is a Boston moniker that comes from Boston Baked Beans.)

I really liked the post about people racing their couches in the middle of the city. Blog cofounder Jarret Izzo writes, “I laughed out loud when I first received word of the Great Boston Couch Race, an outdoor obstacle course completed via pedicabs/couches/rickshaws, for the awareness and benefit of House of Tsang sauces. …

“It turns out Tsang puts on quite a show and they deserve a thumbs up for a legitimately fun event. The race’s obstacles were so ridiculous that they circled back on the cool-o-meter, from a DVD hunt reminiscent of Supermarket Sweep to tossing vegetables at a teammate with the help of a wok.

“I felt like I was a contestant on Family Double Dare, if it were filmed on a frozen tundra. Multiple flatscreens displayed twitter feeds and a nearby tent cooked up stir-fry on demand. This is apart from the sauce itself, which I know as a staple for confused guys who want add flavor to meat, but for whom the advanced ways of five spice marinade remain a mystery. …

“The crowd was dominated by high schoolers in formal wear: there was a jazz band competition in the Hynes. … But I can only wonder, who chose to come to Boston in February and spend more time inside at a mall? How bad does it have to be where you came from?

“In the Couch Race, those high schoolers would be my downfall. I raced against two girls in town from Cape Cod — a pianist and a singer. We had a huge lead, entering the final stretch under 100 seconds. But  pedal mishaps necessitated pushing the bike-couch-rickshaw with our feet, a la Fred Flintstone, costing valuable time.” More here.

Reminds me of a couple silly things from years past. The outhouse races in Minnesota. And the time a 20-something John and his Life is good buddies put a couch on a corner of Newbury Street and sold lemonade from it like little kids. (I think there was a charity involved. I hope it got the money.)

Photo: We Love Beantown

Read Full Post »


Lately, I have been following a very artistic art consultant on twitter called Liz Devlin.

Here is what her website says about her: “Since launching FLUX. in 2008, I have provided an online resource for local artists and Arts enthusiasts in the Boston area, and beyond. Through weekly event coverage, artist interviews, Open Studios recaps, and educational posts, the site enables readers to feel informed, engaged in, and connected to the pulse of Boston Arts.”

Here’s the part that floors me: “My 9-5 is in the corporate world as a Financial Analyst.” Gosh, how can she possibly have time for it all?

She continues, “My downtime, in-between times and restless nights are spent actively pursuing and supporting creative endeavors.”

A reason to follow her on twitter is that she keeps up on everything in the Boston arts scene for you. You can also check out weekly lists of events — with commentary — at her website. For example, here.

I especially like the nostalgic, off-kilter look of this piece in the current  Montserrat exhibit.

Art: Andrew Houle’s “Leaving East Gloucester.”
Montserrat College of Art Galleries, 23 Essex St., Beverly, Mass., through February 14

Read Full Post »

Happy Lunar New Year, Spring Festival, and Year of the Horse!

I love any excuse to celebrate a holiday and went over to Chinatown at lunch in hopes of seeing a dragon dance or something.

As early as 11:30, the restaurant Bubor Cha Cha, here, was packed. I was the only non-Asian. I ordered spring rolls to go. At the Chinatown gate, a young couple (husband American, wife Chinese) asked me to photograph them with their baby. On Harrison Ave., someone was selling fresh produce.

My husband is the Year of the Horse. He says he’s a Water Horse, whereas this is the Year of the Wooden Horse.

Hmmm. Wooden Horse? Wherever you are this year, Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Jan2014-Chinatown-gate

013114-welcome-lion

 

 

 

 

 

 

winter-market-in-Chinatown

 

 

Read Full Post »

When John played saxophone in high school, I got it in my head that I should set a good example about practicing by going back to piano and seeing if I could make more progress than I did as a child.

In the first lesson, the teacher asked me what what I wanted to learn to play, and I said Boogie Woogie. So we did a little bit of that, and I thought I would really learn it. In the next lesson, she said, “You don’t want to learn this, it’s so repetitious.” So I studied what the teacher liked, which was classical. It fizzled out after a few years because I didn’t like to practice any more than John did.

Anyway, I still like Boogie Woogie, and was tickled when the FortPointer tweeted this new Boogie written especially for Fort Point. What happy music! It makes you want to jump right up and — well — boogie.

https://soundcloud.com/tysavias/fort-point-boogie

Read Full Post »

WP_20140206_10_59_29_Pro20140206155526

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I lived in Minnesota for a few years, so I really shouldn’t make a big deal out of cold weather, but it sure has been hard to pry myself from a warm building this week.

Today I went out to take a picture of salt water starting to freeze in Fort Point Channel, something I hadn’t seen before. I got a bonus for my effort — a colorful bubbly sculpture in a tree in front of the Children’s Museum. Was the nearby Boston Tea Party Museum throwing its bales of tea into the channel as usual? Probably the tea would have bounced right back.

The flowers are by the wonderful landscaper in the building where I work. They make you feel like you are in a greenhouse (“växthus” if you are Swedish or have a bilingual grandson).

Note the weather outside the window.

Update 2/6/14. Today the ice in Fort Point Channel, covered with snow, reminds me of chicken fat when you take homemade soup out of the fridge. I added the photo up top.

fort-point-salt-water-freezing

bubble-art-childrens-museum

winter-window

warm-inside-cold-outside

Read Full Post »

I have blogged before about Sam and Leslie Davol’s library projects, including the Uni, a portable library (here). They were living in Boston’s Chinatown during the economic downturn and got an idea for a temporary library in one of the empty storefronts. Chinatown has not had a branch of the Boston Public Library since the 1950s.

(Read a couple stories about that at the BostonStreetLab, here, and the Boston Globe, here.)

Now it seems some 8-year-olds in Mattapan have become indignant about no-library injustice and have marched on City Hall.

Wesley Lowery writes in the Globe, “The voices were young, but they rang out in a synchronized and forceful chant as the children made their way through the downtown streets. Gloved hands held painted signs as pink and blue bookbags bounced on their backs.

“ ‘Books, access fairness, we’re marching to raise awareness’” the more than 50 second-graders declared as they marched from the Chinatown gate to City Hall Friday afternoon. …

“The youthful protesters were seeking to raise awareness of a campaign to bring a public library to Chinatown, which is the only Boston neighborhood without a library branch. …

“The protest was planned and carried out by students at the Young Achievers School in Mattapan, which as part of its curriculum has recently spent time learning about libraries. Upon hearing that Chinatown does not have a public library, organizers said, the students decided to stage the protest.

“ ‘They asked: “What can we do to help?” ’ said Kim Situ of the Chinese Progressive Association, which helped to organized the march.” Read more here.

And when the Young Achievers from Mattapan have gotten a library for Chinatown, maybe they could work on one for Fort Point. It’s something @FortPointer has been tweeting about for ages.

Maybe he should have been talking to 8-year-olds.

Photo: Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
Luis Pizarro, 8, was one of the students from the Young Achievers School who marched on City Hall.

Read Full Post »

Did you see this cute story at Today.com?

Lilit Marcus writes, “61 years ago, Donald and Dorothy Lutz’s wedding photographer stood them up … . But six decades later, they got a very special belated wedding gift — a beautiful anniversary photo shoot, inspired by the Disney movie ‘Up.’

“The idea began when stylist Lauren Wells — who is married to the Lutzes’ grandson Matt — and her photographer partner Cambria Grace found themselves with a bunch of colorful balloons left over from a photo shoot. After a conversation with her husband, Lauren got the idea for the ‘Up’-inspired shoot and decided the photos would be a gift for her grandparents-in-law. …

“The shoot took place on Boston’s Old Northern Avenue Bridge, chosen for its ‘industrial’ look, and was a true family affair, with Matt’s sister Abby assisting — and keeping pedestrians from crossing the bridge and walking through the shots.”

Read the rest of the story here, and check out the completely charming series of photos. I have taken many photos myself on the photogenic Northern Avenue Bridge. After this, I think it will become a destination. Thank you @FortPointer, whoever you are, for another great lead!

Photo: Cambria Grace Photography

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »