Tag: photos

one door, three seasons

There is a door at BU, on the street where I park, that often catches my eye. It’s a door on an otherwise traditional-looking Brownstone building, and its bright blue contrasts strikingly with the muted red-browns of the brick and stone. I happened to park directly in front of it yesterday, and it was featured among my rainy-window-filtered views. In editing my photos last night, I was reminded that I had photographed this door, and its companion red standpipe and vintage-looking fire alarm bell, a number times in the past. I knew that I had some photos of the door in question in the snow, and when I poked back through my photo library found I had one with it posing with a flower spring shrub. (It’s entirely possible that I have more photos of this door from other times, but I didn’t necessarily tag them for easy retrieval.)


Blue door, November 2012


Blue door, February 2011


Blue door, May, 2011

Finding this set gives me the urge to photograph some same subject many more times, but under different conditions.

water colors

These are all photos from today, from both ends of my commute home. (Well, the sunset ones were from a stop on my way home. It was dark by the time I actually got home. Come to think of it, it was a really long commute home. I left Boston at 3:00, picked up Theo at his school just after 4, then had to collect Phoebe at her school at 4:45. We hung out for a bit at the school, and it was 5:30 by the time we got home.)

In case you couldn’t tell, it was rainy today.

Goldsworthy pilgrimage

Yesterday was a gorgeous fall day, sunny and surprisingly warm. We found ourselves with no specific plans for the day, and the kids were starting to go a little stir-crazy in the grandparents’ house. Inspired by the previous day’s leafy homage to Goldsworthy, I felt compelled to visit the large sculpture garden nearby to see one of Goldsworthy’s own works.

I posted a couple of photos I’d taken there last month, at which point I realized it had been 6 full years since we’d been there. It had been when six-year-old Phoebe was under a year old, and if you do the math, you will realize that four-year-old Theo had never been there at all. Clearly, this needed to be remedied.

The Storm King Art Center now boasts 2 large Goldsworthy works. I had seen the first wall before, but hadn’t realized that a second wall had been built only a couple of years ago.


The wall winds through the trees.


It wriggles all the way down the hill, where it dips into a pond.


This is the second wall. I don’t believe that the twig ring is part of the sculpture, as it is not in the description. However, even if not put there by Goldsworthy himself, it was a fitting tribute.

I found myself wondering why it had taken us so long to get back here, especially given how much both Phoebe and Theo love art. But our trips are often too short, often well under 48 hours, and are usually filled with other family-related things.

(Once again, these photos were just taken with my iPhone, as I didn’t remember to pack my camera for this trip.)

polychromatic, idiosyncratic

Yesterday, the kids and I spent some time playing out in the front yard at my in-laws’. Phoebe had collected some pretty leaves, and I found myself joining her. Fall comes a bit later here than at home, so the big maples in the yard were still leafy and bright. I kept finding interesting individual leaves, with interesting patterns and color arrangements. Of course I had to photograph them. First individually, then in groups. Before you knew it, I realized I wanted to spread them out and arrange them by color.¹

I was channeling Andy Goldsworthy, one of my favorite artists.

I found I had to hunt around to find more of the brightly-hued freshly-fallen leaves among the crinkled older leaves, which had turned a fairly uniform shade of brown as they dried. I paced around the yard, poking at the leaves, looking for more oranges and reds. I was enjoying myself immensely.

I was somewhat startled, therefore, when a woman from across the street yelled across: “Did you lose something?”

“No,” I replied. “We’re just playing with leaves.”

The neighbor took my explanation, with a nod and a slight look of confusion, and went back into her house.

I was reminded a little of that time I probably confused (or amused) some passersby back at my house by my rather unusual approach to shovelling snow.

Do you ever confuse your neighors?

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¹ Much like I once did with tomatoes.

late fall in the garden

These are some photos of the plants in my in-laws’ front garden from today. While spring and summer gardens are certainly pretty, I find the late fall withering to be more interesting.


This maple leaf interloper looks like it’s trying to fit in with the ivy.

Also, can I just say that I am really impressed with how well my iPhone camera does with these fairly macro shots? There was a lot going on in preparation for this trip, and I totally forgot to bring my camera.

signs of the times

I know that everyone and their mother and their dog and the fleas on their dog’s back is thoroughly and entirely tired of hearing about the stinkin’ US presidential election.¹ But this time, I’m going talk about a different race: the Massachusetts senatorial race. Not even really about the race. About the sign we have in our front yard. (But maybe your dog and its fleas should leave the room, anyhow.)

Early in 2010, Massachusetts held a special election to fill the seat that had long been held by Ted Kennedy, after his death. I was not happy about the results.² Happily, there is a new candidate for senate this time, and one I enthusiastically support: Elizabeth Warren.³

I have been marginally involved with the Elizabeth Warren campaign. I did a very small bit of phone banking, and an afternoon of door-to-door canvassing. And I signed up to put up a yard sign.

This may seem like no big deal, but it actually was a bit of a deal. Perhaps a medium-sized deal.

We’ve never had a yard sign up before. We support candidates in a variety of ways, but not typically with signs. One issue is that we are non-confrontational, and somewhat private. Anyone who knows me well knows how I lean politically. But it has generally not been the case that people who don’t know me well would necessarily know.

It should also be noted that while we live in a blue state, our town is far from blue. We live in Scott Brown territory. Back in August, when I put up our sign, I don’t remember seeing any other Elizabeth Warren signs. (Happily, there are some others scattered around town now.)

You may wonder whether having a sign up does any good at all, but I have to say that I think it matters. Especially in areas where signs for one candidate dominate. People driving by see that there is diversity of opinion. Closet supporters of a candidate feel heartened. Open supporters feel bolstered. (I know I am happy whenever I see other Elizabeth Warren signs in my area.)

But, it also publicly marks us. And in these rather ugly times, with so much open hostility surfacing with election, that’s not always a comfortable feeling. One afternoon, while I waited at the top of our driveway for Phoebe’s school bus, I noticed someone giving me a dirty look as he drove by. In the next day or so, our sign disappeared. Coincidence?

John’s response was to order 2 new signs. A few weeks later, we had a sign back up in the yard. The 2nd new sign was kept as a back-up, in case the new sign also disappearead.

I’m happy to say that our current sign has weathered both the ravages of weather and hostile neighbors. We have not needed to break out the emergency back-up sign.


Here is our first sign, in early September, shortly before the sign’s disappearance. Note the green leaves on the trees.


Here is the replacement sign, several weeks later.


Here’s the sign again, just this afternoon. Still there! And check out all the leaves, none of which remain on the trees.


Here is our back-up sign, at the top of the stairs, in front of a bookcase. Note the lack of leaves, but the presence of a Duplo robot and some light bulbs.

Phoebe and I also got to meet Elizabeth Warren at an event at her Worcester campaign office, which was enormously exciting for me. I was more than a little star-struck, but Ms. Warren was gracious and kind, and spent several minutes talking with Phoebe. Here they are doing a pinky promise.

¹ Especially you poor souls in swing states.

² I concede that Scott Brown has turned out to have been not as extreme as I feared, and has even occasionally broken with his party in his voting. However, he still by and large doesn’t represent me and my views. But I don’t want this post to be about him.

³ The reasons I support Elizabeth Warren are many and varied, but a good indication of them can be seen from my results from ISideWith, a website that shows how well you mesh with candidates based on answering policy-based questions. I scored a 96% overlap with Elizabeth Warren, and only 52% with Scott Brown. (For the record, for the presidential race, my highest score, 97%, is for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Second is Obama, with 90%. As for my overlap with Romney? 6%. I kid you not. That’s not a typo. Less than 10%. Of course, I don’t know how they determined Romney’s positions on policy, because they seem to be moving targets to me…)

a single leaf, before and after

On a morning walk in my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago, a bright Japanese maple leaf laying in the road caught my eye . I picked it up, carried it home, and took its picture on my kitchen table.

Today, while sorting through the frightening pile of papers, toys and art supplies that has overtaken the eating area of our kitchen, I came across the leaf again. Amazingly, it was uncrushed, in spite of existing within the realm of the piles. It still had much of its bright color, but had curled up. I placed it by the window to catch the light, and took its picture again.

I find it interesting the way the green veins made ridges, and curled in like fingers making a fist.

ridiculously colorful Fall leaves

New England is known for its spectacular Fall foliage, primarily for the show put on by the sugar maples that are native to the region. However, there are plenty of other plants, trees and shrubs that put on autumnal shows of their own. And I have no idea what most of them are.

These are some photos I took around and about over the last 2 weeks.


This little guy is a shrub on the campus of BU. The leaves reminded me of confetti.


These leaves were on a smallish tree on the MIT campus. I loved the way the colors changed variably across the surface of each leaf, making striking multi-colored outlines.


This plant caught Phoebe’s attention at an apple orchard we went to a couple weekends ago. Likely a weed, these plants grew over 6 feet tall, and had very soft, fuzzy stems. (Phoebe wanted to just stay and pet the plant.) We were all amazed by the varied colors, covering quite a large range of the spectrum, and often over the surface of a single leaf.


This is just another shot of that same plant.

Anyone have any idea what any of these are?

sea (friday foto finder)


A beach on the Mediterranean Sea, in Barcelona. From our 2009 trip to Spain. Our visit to the beach was fleeting, as John had a conference call shortly after, and there were storm clouds on the horizon. But Phoebe and Theo had a chance to meet the Mediterranean.

This week’s friday foto finder theme is “sea.”