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Singing for her Supper

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 26, 2016| 2 Comments »

Nate Homan recently wrote a good human-interest story for the free subway newspaper, Metro. It’s about one of Boston’s subway musicians, a blind woman.

“Michelle Abadia sits at Harvard Station early each morning that her T performer permit allows, strumming her guitar and singing to an audience she cannot see.

“ ‘Music was my passion from an early age. I don’t have a memory without it,’ Abadia said. ‘I am told that I was helping tune the piano when I was three.’ …

“She lost her sight to congenital cataracts at the age of 4 after six unsuccessful eye surgeries. She has started a GoFundMe page hoping to earn $20,000 to fund her musical career and to help pay for medical bills. …

“She earned a double degree in language studies and music in Boston College, and went on to earn a master’s in French literature and International Latin American Studies from Tufts. After that, she earned New England Conservatory master’s for vocal performances.

“Now she is trying to earn a living as a musician, after teaching Spanish at several colleges in the area and working as an interpreter in courtrooms.

“ ‘The commuters are half asleep, and I don’t know how effective I can be in brightening their days, but some people say the I do,’ Abadia said. …

“ ‘For anyone who is blind wants to be a musician, or anything, I would tell them to follow their dreams,’ Abadia said.”

More here.

Photo: Metro.us

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What I’ll Miss

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 31, 2015| 4 Comments »

I’m leaving a job that has been a great fit for me and starting at another organization. Although I’m really looking forward to new experiences after 10 years, there are a few things I’m likely to miss …

an unusual number of really nice co-workers, the building’s art collection and landscaping, subway musicians, the weary dignity of homeward-bound commuters, sunrise over Boston Harbor, Styrofoam sheep floating in Fort Point Channel, a vast array of food trucks, the farmers market, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, conversations on the commuter rail, the conductor with the circus-announcer’s voice, a commute that allows me to read …

and this view.

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Missing Muralist Found Baking Pies

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 19, 2015| Leave a Comment »

When the MBTA subway system decided to rebuild the stop called Government Center a couple years ago, it began a search for the artist who created the original murals there to see if she would like them back, and if not, if she would be OK with selling them.

It wasn’t easy to find her.

As Malcolm Gay writes at the Boston Globe, she was baking pies as part-owner of the Pie Place Café in Grand Marais, Minnesota.

“ ‘I got a phone call one day,’ [Mary] Beams explained, ‘and a voice I didn’t know said, “How does it feel to know that all of Boston is looking for you?” I had no idea what to say.’

“Beams, it turned out, hadn’t disappeared at all. An animator who had been a teaching assistant at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, and whose work has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art, she’d simply left the art world …

“With her blessing, the MBTA plans to hold an online public auction of the artworks, giving Bostonians a chance to own a piece of the city’s history.

“The online auction and display of murals will run Oct. 20-29, with a kick-off event at the state Transportation Building at 10 Park Plaza on Oct. 21. … The event will be something of a homecoming for Beams, who left Boston soon after completing the murals. She has never been back.

“ “I am so curious to see them again,’ she said. ‘I’ve gone on and lived this whole other life. But to be able to confront something that you made 35 years ago and ponder what they’ve been through? It’s quite amazing.’ ”

Pictures of the murals — and more information on the artist — here.

Mural by Mary Beams, for sale at Skinner

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New Massachusetts Photos

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2015| 4 Comments »

Let me tell you about these photos.

I first noticed the shoes of the gentleman riding the subway. Then the white suit, the pocket hankerchief, the bow tie, and the hat. I was concentrating so hard on taking a photo surreptitiously that it didn’t occur to me to check out what he was reading. Somerset Maugham? Proust? William Dean Howells?

You never know what photo ops you might see on the MBTA, and I hope to get adept at taking pictures unobtrusively.

Next we have a fanciful teapot in the window of the Lacoste Gallery.

Moving right along: dappled shade on Summer St., Boston, near South Station; and a row boat for rent in Fort Point Channel.

Today’s Dewey Square excitement was a labor rally for striking airport workers demanding a $15/hour minimum wage. Lots of speeches. I photographed a T-shirt and a Boston politician. The politician had such an energetic speaking style, the photo came out blurry, but I’ll add it if you want it.

The last three pictures are of a fake snake — perhaps intended to keep passersby from sitting on a resident’s stonewall — and grapes. The grapes were the most surprising thing that happened to me today. I must have walked past that fence twice a day for years and years, and I never noticed a grape vine growing there. Did someone drape it over the fence while I was at work?

Goes to show you don’t really have to go anywhere much to find surprises.

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081515-teapot

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The Commuter Rail Conductor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 11, 2015| 8 Comments »

The Red Line was telling people not to take the Red Line but to go North Station and walk. So I did.

Between Porter Square, Cambridge, and North Station, Boston, the young conductor sat down near me. I said, “How’s it been going for you?”

He said it’s OK, but he doesn’t like it when passengers start screaming at him like it’s all his fault. He said one day the train had to stop because snow was packed around a switch, and a passenger was angry with him. He got out in the snow, came back with snow up to his chest, and said, “I cleared the switch.”

He wishes passengers could take the same two-month class he took before he started. They would be amazed about all the rules and regulations. Our route passes through three track jurisdictions (I think he said three, maybe more.) At each one, the engineer has to ask permission to pass, and he has to write down the interaction in a book. Sometimes he asks the conductor to come help.

The conductor pointed out a light low down in the snow-covered track. Someone had dug it out. He told me that if the engineer can’t see a track light, he is obliged to treat it as malfunctioning and just stop.

I asked how long the conductor had worked for the system. He said he started New Year’s Eve. It’s been a real trial by ice. But he says he thinks it will get better and he actually likes it. I told him most passengers don’t blame the conductor for snow or aging train equipment.

The walk to work took longer than it should as the sidewalks were not equally clear. Charles Schwab did a lovely job with its sidewalk. Fidelity not so much. I’m thinking of switching my account.

Railroad track near my home.

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Stop the Pigeon — Now!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 8, 2014| 2 Comments »

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When Suzanne was two, she and John used to watch a TV show with a theme song that went like this: “Stop the pigeon, stop the pigeon, stop the pigeon — now!”

One day we took the train to New York City, and in spite of the fact that Suzanne never saw pigeons where we lived, she took one look at the city’s official bird and started singing, “Stop the pigeon!”

So unlike many people, I have some good feelings associated with pigeons, and I am getting a big kick from the pigeons I photographed near city hall yesterday.

Someone with a sense of humor has decorated the barrier around the construction site for the  new Government Center T stop with pigeon portraiture.

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Poetry in the Subway

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »

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I was always impressed when I saw a poem in the place of an ad in the New York City subway. Now Boston has caught on.

Martine Powers wrote recently at the Boston Globe, “Finally, Bostonians will have the chance to experience the pleasures of poetry on the MBTA.

“Mass Poetry [is] bringing poems to advertisement spaces on subway cars. The initiative, dubbed PoeTry, is part of the organization’s Poetry in Public Spaces initiative, which began last year, said Mass Poetry program director Laurin Macios…

“ ‘Contemporary poetry is barely taught in schools, and often when it is, it is taught in a very scholastic sense instead of an artistic one,’ Macios said. “People often grow up without ever realizing there is poetry out there that can speak to them, or that they can speak back to. …

“Each appearance of a poem includes a tearsheet on the corner of the sign, allowing passengers to take a copy of the poem with them if the spirit strikes them.”

One poem in the series, says Powers, “What Travels,” by Joseph O. Legaspi, takes place on a subway car. “What travels beneath their secret faces? What is train but transport to other lives?” More at the Globe.

See also http://masspoetry.org.

Photo: Suzanne’s Mom
Poem: “Bulls vs. Suns, 1993,” by José Olivarez

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The Bunny Didn’t Eat the Celery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 15, 2013| 2 Comments »

Last night as we pulled into our snowy driveway, a rabbit ran in front of the headlights. I thought he must be hungry and cold. But this morning, I saw that he hadn’t found the celery I put out, and the apple was buried.

Here is the celery and a few other recent photos: a church’s advent wreath, a frosty leaf, a suitable wreath for a coffee shop, my dogwood in snow, winter footwear on the MBTA subway, and Rudolph cookies.

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Rudolph-cookies

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Street Art Lives on the Edge

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 25, 2013| 5 Comments »

Most street artists don’t think in terms of permanent museum collections. They don’t expect their work to be admired forever. Still, it must be a little sad to see it torn down.

Meghan alerted me, by way of twitter, to the demise of Boston’s only graffiti park, Bartlett Yard, about to be demolished.  Dig has the story.

“Rosa Parks, Mr. Miyagi, and the Incredible Hulk gaze down from the wall, their faces nearly big enough to drive a bus through. A giraffe in a space helmet floats carelessly through the light purple cosmos,” writes Dan Schneider at Dig.

“This barely begins to cover the intricate murals found at the Bartlett Yard, an 8.6-acre parcel of land just blocks away from Dudley Square in Roxbury, formerly used as a bus garage by the MBTA. Since the beginning of the year, the property’s owners have allowed an event planning group called Bartlett Events to turn half of the property into a community art space.

“In May, Bartlett Events held Mural Fest, an open call for graffiti muralists, which drew an estimated 1,000 artists and community members together in a frenzy of aerosol, transforming the Yard from a 125-year-old dilapidated bus garage into the massive public art installation.

“If you want to take in the art at Bartlett Yard, however, you’d better do it soon.

“Come this November it’ll all be torn down to begin construction of Bartlett Place, a mixed-use development of housing with—in all likelihood—no graffiti. …

“The Bartlett Bus Yard has been out of commission since the late nineties, following a community-led effort to shut it down due to concerns about bus exhaust contributing to high rates of childhood asthma in the area. Since then the Yard has been abandoned …

“With a few weekends’ worth of hard work, however, several dozen volunteers were able to clean out most of the Yard’s two main buildings and surrounding blacktop prior to opening day.”

Residents express mixed feelings about the redevelopment, which some fear could lead to the dreaded gentrification and push out lower-income people. Others think it will be good to have more variety.

In any case, it sounds like the artists want to stay around even if the art is  ephemeral.

For Jason Turgeon,  an environmental scientist and one of the founders of Bartlett Events, “the notion of trying to create a permanent graffiti museum would simply miss the point.

“ ‘I come from the Burning Man world, so I know that art doesn’t have to be here forever. Some people say, “You have to save this!” And I say “No, it’s okay. There will be more art after this.” ‘ ”

Read more at Dig.

Photo: DigBoston.com

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Super Subway Musicians

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 14, 2013| 4 Comments »

I saw these fiddlers a couple times while waiting for the evening train to Porter Square. For weeks there were tweets: “Who are those guys?”

Steve Annear at Boston magazine got the scoop. “Two former Berklee College of Music students have made a full-time job out of playing contemporary music on their violins for the swarms of passengers that crowd the platforms of the MBTA each day.

“After meeting in 2009 outside of the school, violinists Rhett Price and Josh Knowles got together and decided to form a two-piece ensemble and perform songs while standing on the Boston Common. But when winter got too cold and their fingers ‘started to get stiff,’ Price says the pair turned to the T for a busker’s permit so they could share their songs with riders traveling on the underground transit system.

“ ‘It’s been amazing. I was really nervous at first—we were nervous about playing on the T in general, and we didn’t think any one would give us any money. But there are people who come up and [request songs],’ says Price. ‘This is what we do right now to pay bills.’ …

“Price says he and Knowles play at three stops throughout the week, including North and South Stations, and at the Harvard Square stop. In a few weeks, they’re kicking the public transportation appearance up a notch, and will travel to New York City to play for riders there.”

Um. Forget about New York. Spend more time at South Station, please.

More.

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Driving with the Top Down

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 13, 2013| Leave a Comment »

These recent photographs show the changing seasons — from a March storm at a T station to driving with the top down.

The weather changes fast around here — today on my walk I kept zipping and unzipping my coat because the sun kept going in and out of clouds and the temperature kept zooming up and down. As the saying goes, “If you don’t like New England weather, stick around for a few minutes — it will change.”

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Repairing Subways Every Night

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Those of us who go to work on the commuter rail or on the subway (the T) have a love-hate relationship with our public transportation system. Probably more love than hate since we forgive everything, always reminding ourselves how much more we would hate sitting in road traffic listening to the same news headlines repeated multiple times. We just make sure to carry a book and snacks in case of train breakdowns.

Take tonight. When I got down to the platform, the numbers of commuters seemed ominous. Even more ominous was the recorded message that kept telling us our train was “arriving” even though we know it never says “arriving” more than once for any train.

My boss said, “Don’t you have the option of taking the commuter rail from North Station?” Good point. I set off on foot, caught a number 4 bus, and landed at North Station in reasonable time, but for a later train.

The country badly needs good mass transit, and I think focusing on cars, gas, and roads is misguided. We riders get mad at the T and often complain about how it spends its money, but man, it sure is old and beat up! It’s held together with string — and the efforts of people who work all night on repairs to try to get the system functioning by 5:30 a.m. every day.

Now the T has made a 45-minute documentary on its night-time moles. If you don’t have time for the whole documentary, here’s a taste.

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