Boston

Street photographer

~ MaryG ~ 9 Comments

List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.

Three jobs that sound fun to me are fragrance tester, ice cream taster, and street photographer.

Perhaps I’ll pursue one of these when I retire, although I bet they want people with younger senses for the first two.

So maybe I’ll look into street photography. I recently attended a talk by Izzy Rodriguez, a Providence street photographer and it made me remember how I had liked it once.

I took a photography class for fun in the late 80s at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. I enjoyed going out on the streets of Boston with my camera. It was a 35mm Canon. I developed and printed the film in class. Here are some photos that I took. These people were all strangers to me, except the last one is my sister.

This one is my favorite. The girls were just pretending to talk on the phones – playing grownup.
Boston’s famous “Make Way for Ducklings” ducks
My sister

The Three C’s

~ MaryG ~ 4 Comments

What brands do you associate with?

I’m a New Englander, so definitely LL Bean. Their return policy is amazing. They’ll take anything back, forever. I also like Land’s End and Eddie Bauer.

For cars, I’ve driven Hondas for years now. I really love my CRV.

What other brands matter – besides clothes and cars?

Oh yeah. Coffee. As previously mentioned, I’m Boston-centric, so Dunkin not Starbucks.

Two colors most people would never wear together are pink and orange, but somehow it works for Dunkin.

TGIF

~ MaryG

How are you feeling right now?

I’m glad it’s Friday. I work in Boston and things get hectic in late August when all the students move back to the city for the fall semester. We call this time of year “Allston Christmas,” when you can pick up anything from a toaster oven to a Bob Marley poster for free on the curb. Traffic gets MUCH worse. Occasionally, it comes to a complete standstill when some poor parent from the Midwest drives a too-tall rental truck under one of our too-low underpasses and gets stuck. This is called “getting Storrowed” and it happens every year.

Anyway, Labor Day weekend is the calm before the storm—or perhaps it’s the eye of the storm. I liked I.V. Greco’s post about sharing our super moon photos from Wednesday night. It’s so hard to get a good photo of the moon, but I like the sky in this one that I took. Peace.

Moon Sky, 8/30/23

Oases (Oasises?) for All

~ MaryG ~ 2 Comments
The pool at One Dalton, Boston

How would you design the city of the future?

For about six months in 2019 and 2020 (pre-pandemic), I was able to swim laps in Boston’s fanciest new building – One Dalton Street. It’s both a Four Seasons Hotel and a very expensive condo building, all in one deluxe skyscraper.

At that time, the condos were still under construction, but the hotel was open, so management kindly let people who lived or worked in the neighborhood use the fitness center. They didn’t advertise this — I just happened to ask, so I typically had the whole pool to myself. The occasional hotel guest would come and go.

The light-filled pool area has a gentle arc and sweeping view of Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood and Christian Science Plaza. The locker rooms have complimentary everything – from cucumber water, to fluffy white robes and the thickest emery boards I’ve ever seen. It’s a true urban oasis. After swimming, showering and pampering there, I would drive home in a relaxed state.

I knew it wouldn’t last, so I tried to enjoy it. But I never thought a virus would be the thing that ended it!

Anyway, in my fantasy City of the Future, everyone would have access to an oasis like this.

It’s 64 feet – long enough to swim laps