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Posts Tagged ‘passenger’

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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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.

012715-train-track-in-snow

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