3rd House Journal

Festival of the Trees

[Beech tree, Public Garden, Boston; October 4, 2009]

Thanks to Dave Bonta for including my poem, Conservation of Color, in his Festival of the Trees: seven billion new trees roundup post. A wonderful collection of links, which I've only begun to explore, with several very nice photos of Dave's included. Check it out!

Shedding light

[Boston Common near Park St; 2pm, 11/29/09]

Yesterday's late afternoon sun cast a warm glow around the few trees still holding onto their leaves at the far end of the Boston Common. After a gloomy Thanksgiving, rainy Friday, and blustery Saturday, Sunday's bright sunshine and calm weather was welcome and we happily went out for a stroll around the city.

The upper part of the Common now glows at night with new LED lighting that the city is trying out to save money on energy and maintenance costs and improve lighting in public spaces. The estimate is that the city could cut its carbon emissions by half if it replaces all its streetlights with LEDs. It should also cut down on light pollution [more info here]. The city is inviting residents and visitors to post their response to the LEDs at the city's website. They had two or three different types of LEDs they were trying out, but it was still daytime so we couldn't judge the light quality among them as yet. Maybe next weekend. They're lighting the Common's holiday tree this week, so we'll go check that out soon.

Meanwhile, the nearby Frog Pond ice skating rink has opened for the season and was spinning with skaters like schools of fish on Sunday afternoon. The rink is open most nights until 9 or 10pm. We didn't notice if the LEDs have been installed around the rink.

[Frog Pond skating rink on Boston Common]

Brownstones

[Brownstones, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston; 11/29/09]

Blessings 2009

1. A snuggery for my heart
2. My companion, my curer, my catnip
3. The verve and spark of citified weekends
4. A livelihood maintained in downbeat times
5. A high desert respite
6. Salty-aired seaports in sun and storm
7. The picturebook of my year
8. Strain eased, arms freed to work, to embrace
9. Crazy quilt of friendship still stitched together
10. The stars above, forever turning

Thanks to you all for being there, and Happy Thanksgiving!

---

I started counting my Thanksgiving blessings in 2005. You can also read the posts for 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Berries and birds

[Old South Church, Boston; 11/22/09]

D spotted this winter-fattened little bird sitting in the tree outside the Old South Church.

Boston's "grand allée" gets lit for the holidays

[Comm Ave Mall; 4pm, 11/22/09]

On Sunday afternoon, we were delighted to find crews out on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall lighting the trees for the holidays. When the snow arrives, it will be the perfect holiday scene. For now, there are still touches of fall color in the leaves clinging to the trees above or fallen on the ground, and we're still happy for the relative warmth in the air and the ease of walking on non-slick sidewalks without the snowbank and slush-puddle obstacles.

[Crews in cherry pickers stringing lights on the Comm Ave Mall]

According to the Friends of the Public Garden, which tends to the "Comm Ave" Mall and also takes care of the Public Garden and Boston Common:

Set out from 1858 to the 1870s as part of the Back Bay, Commonwealth Avenue Mall is a grand allée of shade trees forming a distinctive link in Boston's Emerald Necklace. Today the Mall remains a vital amenity for neighborhood residents as well as an attraction for those visiting the city.

D is lucky enough to live across from the park, which reportedly features sweetgum, green ash, maple, linden, zelkova, Japanese pagoda and elm trees along with its monuments and benches, along the Mall's 32 acres of promenade.

[Holiday lights and fall leaves across from brownstones on Comm Ave]

Jamaica Pond, November

[Jamaica Pond, Jamaica Plain, Boston; 1pm, 11/21/09]

Take 5

[Duck pond, Boston Public Garden; 10/25/09]

Having launched this blog five years ago today, I feel that I should post a retrospective of my life and blogging over the past five years (not counting the prior year with my first blog). It has certainly been eventful. Days after the launch, I dealt with a nerve-racking crisis with my mother needing to be hospitalized and then its aftermath. My parents moved away less than a year later, and a couple of years after that my mother passed away suddenly. Meanwhile, after 13 years freelancing, I took a full-time job, and a year later rented out my condo I'd had for 20 years in bucolic central Massachusetts and moved to an apartment in the Boston suburbs, then a year later to another apartment nearby. I traveled on vacation to Mexico twice, to Paris, Montreal and New York City, San Francisco and Santa Fe, New Mexico. I've had many joys and also heartbreaks. I've made many new friends and regained others I'd thought I lost. Through it all I kept blogging, and through blogging made far-flung online friends, several of whom I was lucky to meet in person and become real-life friends with. It's been a wild ride.

This past year I learned I couldn't do everything, not by a long stretch. But I've continued to keep the blog periodically fed, even if sporadically and usually with a lot less depth than in my freelance days. It's still a wonderful outlet for the bits of creative expression I can summon up, often more in the form of a photo documentation of where I've been, what's caught my eye. Since my job is a word factory, a "writing sweatshop" sometimes, photography lets me exercise another part of my brain altogether. Life continues to evolve in unexpected ways. So right now, I'm going to take 5 and enjoy the rest of the evening in peace.

Thank you all for being there on the journey.

Slime, stingers and brainless, gelatinous goo

[Sea nettle jellyfish, New England Aquarium; 11/13/09]

My day off on Friday was rainy due to the outlying remnants of Hurricane Ida, so we took advantage of a quiet weekday at the New England Aquarium on Boston's waterfront. We'd considered going a couple of times this summer while wandering in the vicinity, but the long lines (and no doubt crowds indoors) kept us away.

I was there a few years ago with my former housemate K while she was in vet school and considering career options, so this time I was more interested in trying out my camera settings than just enthralled with everything as I was the last time (see my photo set here). But there were still surprises and the unending fascination with the fish swimming in the giant ocean tank as well as the amazing jellies: "Dive into the realm of slime, stingers and brainless, gelatinous goo..."

[Moon jellies]

While Friday was drizzly and gray, Saturday saw torrential downpours until late afternoon, when it returned to drizzly. So we decided to go to the movies. We went to see This Is It, the movie of backstage rehearsal footage for Michael Jackson's would-be final tour. It was sad to see such talent wasted -- Michael Jackson's, of course, forever, but also the efforts of so many creative and talented people -- singers, dancers, choreographers, set designers, etc. They were certainly going to give the crowds their money's worth on tour. It is fortunate that so much was recorded that they were able to get mileage out of all that effort by producing this film.

On Sunday, the clouds finally lifted around mid-day, preventing us from turning into brainless, gelatinous goo. We made a nice brunch and then headed out to enjoy the day.

[Sunday brunch at the apartment; 11/15/09]

[Wet leaves plaster the Comm Ave Mall; around 3pm, 11/15/09]

Escape

[Downtown Boston; 11/15/09]

I escaped to the city for the weekend. More later...

Time off

[In the Back Bay, Boston; 10/31/09]

I managed to get a day off today, which is not easy last minute where I work. "Last minute" in this case being I asked for it the beginning of this week. Our schedules are such that there's very little slack built in, so you have to plan your time off well in advance. But anyway, D returned from his trip yesterday and I thought I'd grab some of my remaining PTO (paid time off) and make it a long weekend.

PTO means we don't have sick leave, just an allotment of time to use for vacation, sick days, trips to the doctor, or whatever. So, the Sick Day Excuse Generator and other helpful hints for taking a day off aren't especially helpful except, I suppose, if you have plenty of time left in your PTO pool and want a really last-minute excuse to not go in to work. Most of my remaining PTO will be used during my holiday visit to see my dad. And hopefully I will avoid getting the flu in the meantime.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Looking for balance

All the bright yellow leaves have fallen from the gray sky. They lay on the ground like sunlight seeping under the door of a shuttered room.

I tweeted that last Friday when I arrived at work, before the clouds cleared. I thought of it again on this morning's drive, seeing all the bright leaves on the ground, somehow turning the world topsy-turvy with all the sunny brightness coming from below.

I wanted to get outside today for a walk, but had a tight deadline to meet by the end of the day, so I worked through lunch and barely left my desk, save for a meeting. The last couple of days, I was able to take nice walks mid-day to offset the workstation cramping of my back and brain, to clear my head for half an hour or so. Since the weekend, we've had a few days of glorious Indian summer temperatures and I couldn't resist getting outside to enjoy them.

Indian summer: The wind tosses confetti-diced leaves for the grinning pumpkins. Crows caw in approval.

Yesterday, towards the end of a long workday, a colleague let us know he's leaving to go to another job. He's a good guy and also an excellent writer, very creative, and it's sad. Even in this tough job environment, we're still losing good people. It's a burnout type of job. I think they do try, and people there are nice, but maybe it's in the nature of the work, or maybe it's a culture of never setting limits with client requests for near impossible deadlines. It certainly doesn't help the workload to lose good people. I don't know. For all the times I do enjoy the work and like my colleagues, on the other side of the scale is the heavy thumb of pressures.

Gas-powered leaf blowers, the Tuvan throat singers of the suburbs, performing for an audience of empty houses.

For now I try to place every good work experience on the scale to keep things in balance, plus the salary and benefits, and any bit of appreciation that comes my way. I also offset the load with happy, work-free weekends and restorative nights when I can, and leg- and mind-stretching walking breaks when possible, even if these days those walks are often beset by the leaf-blowing crews.