Favorite Trees

People get attached to lots of things.  Some people really like architecture, automobiles, art, books.  Is it okay to like trees?

Once my mom took a picture of a tree and posted it on her blog because she thought it looked kind of heart shaped.  It inspired her.  It didn't do the same for me.  But maybe it would have had I been there to introduce myself and get to know that tree!

At the same time, there have been numerous trees that have been inspiring to me.

When I was a kid, my dad built a triangular tree-house in a huge weeping willow.  It felt like it was 12 feet in the air!  Perhaps it was only 7 feet up, but the fact remains that the willow's branches would create privacy and shade for the tree-house, and the tree wisps would billow and sway in the breeze.  It was a wonderful play area, until a tornado came and blew it over.  The tree-house was never quite the same when it was on stilts (thanks for the effort dad!)


Fourth graders in the state of Tennessee are given a sapling of the state tree: the Tulip Poplar.  I planted mine in the side yard of the Estill Springs house, and it really shot up like a weed.  It's a soft-wood, as I understand it, but it held it's own during it's own bouts with storms, that ultimately changed its concept of what direction is "up."  From here.  Last I checked, it was like 60 feet tall, as big around as my waist, and going strong.

When we moved to Massachusetts, I fell in love with a beautiful Sugar Maple next to a gray weathered salt-box style colonial era house.  I passed it on my way home from work every day.  It has since been cut down, perhaps to reduce the threat to the house from its majestic and aspiring branches, but my memories of it will never fade.

Then there's that old maple outside our favorite Sugar Shack.  Think of the hundreds of gallons of maple syrup it has contributed over the decades!  Yes, I'm sentimental about trees.

Even trees I never knew, but had read about.  There's a plague on American Elms going through New England, and I read articles about tree-lined streets that overnight become un-tree-lined, because the trees are removed due to a pesky beetle killing them.  Our neighborhood had one surviving Elm.  One day on my way to work last month this last-remaining-tree was being taken down because it also met an early demise due to the bug.  Sad day for me.

Fortunately, I have another sugar maple that I have to look at, this one I see as I walk with Ian and Blake to drop him off at school each morning.  The tree is beautiful with or without leaves on.

My new favorite tree.

And we had a beautiful display in our backyard this fall, too.  

The best tree our backyard this year.  Pretty nice!

I should just count my blessings that God made trees so they rejuvenate each year, and while some pass away, others are sprouting and maturing elsewhere.

My favorite library

We have a fantastic Library in town, which I had not be utilizing properly for the first several years of us living here.  We've taken Ian down to the children's room (in the dungeon) several times, and when he learned to write his name, he was eligible to get his own library card.
When we got a Kindle, Jen started checking out electronic books that sync up nicely with our reader.
Off and on over the years, I had checked out feature films, children's movies, and documentaries.  I found the films produced by the local historical society to be particularly interesting, and they were well researched, written, filmed, and produced.  I especially liked watching the History of the City Fire Department, and History of the City Police Department.  I even appreciate that balanced approach to our Colonial Loyalist, the Count Rumford.

A couple of years ago, when we signed on with Netflix and had a seemingly endless supply to choose from, I thought it would be good for me to be more conversant in classic movies.  My first set of criteria was it needed to win a "Best Picture" and not be rated R.  That gave me a pretty wide set, but didn't allow anything more recent than 1990 or so.  (Academy has been giving awards to more dodgy/intense films recently...)  One of these days I'll summarize what I've seen and what I liked off that list.

After the "Best Picture" kick, then I opened it up to "Best Actor" films.  Then Carey Grant for a while.
This summer, after some disappointment in Netflix not having what I want, I decided to use the Library's shelves  and look for titles that I had heard of but never seen.  This represents set of the films shelved C-H that I watched (August-October).  For the record, VLC playback software has a feature so you can watch a film faster than it's recorded pace.  I've found that watching at 140% speed significantly shortens screen time, but is still easy to follow.

So here is my list.

Title	Year	Acclaim	Joe's Very Brief Comments	Stars
12 Angry Men	1948	AFI Great Heroes	Henry Fonda, loved how he held to his benefit of the doubt on the Jury.  Watched this after serving Jury Duty.	5
All the King's Men	1949	3 Acad Awards	Frustrating to see a well intentioned man spoiled by political aspiration to fix government	4
Charge of the Light Brigade	1936	1 Acad Award +2 Nom	I enjoyed this film, though was disappointed to find out this rendition of the disastrous charge was not accurate.	4
Clash of the Titans	2010		Fantasy film.  I did good just to make it through.	1
Coal Miner's Daughter	1980	Acad Award + 7 Nom	Sissy Spacek did a fantastic job showing Loretta Lynn's climb to stardom.	5
The Color Purple	1985	Pulitzer Prize, 11 Noms	Watching this just hurt.  Some aspects of the black deep south was just terrible, but that is not the South I know.	3
Don Quixote de Orson Welles	1972-85		Torture.  I turned this one off after about 20 minutes.  I can see why Orson Welles never finished it.	0
East of Eden	1955	1 Acad, 3 Noms	Family trauma with a son that can do no right, inherently "Bad" allegorical. (Second half of Steinbeck's novel)	4
The Egg and I	1947	Nom. Best Actress	Newlyweds quit city job and move to country to take up egg farming.  Pa Kettle is a hoot!	5
Eight Men Out	1988		Baseball movie highlighting the 1917 world series.  Now I can sympathize with the ball players.	2
Far from the Madding Crowd	1967	1 Nom , 2 BAFTAS,	Really enjoyed this movie about a capable shepherd who loves the prideful heir to an estate. Thomas Hardy novel.	4
Far and Away	1992		Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Irish Oklahoma Land Rush.  Very rich plot.	5
A Farewell to Arms	1957	1 Nom	War Movie, Secret Marriage of a soldier to a nurse.  Stereotypical Hemingway.	4
The Field	1990	1 Acad Award	Irish tenant farmer gets a bit out of control at wanting to win the auction for the land his family has always worked.	5
The Fountainhead	1949		Architect stands to his morals, will not design something below his aesthetic standards, resulting in periodic poverty and ridicule.  Ayn Rand.	5
Fairy Tale: A True Story	1997		Girls see and photograph Cottingley Fairies, provide positive distraction in WWI England	3
The Five People you Meet in Heaven	2004		Mitch Albom's NYT Best Seller, gave alot of food for thought about how our life is interconnected with other people's life.  Accountability for actions.	4
Free Willy 2	1995		Just for the fun of it for movie night with Blake and Ian.  Ian is now a fan of orcas.	2
Funny Face	1957		Beat Poetry type with Audrey Hepburn.  Not a great movie, but I appreciated a dance scene in the movie.	2
Gallipoli	1981		Mel Gibson.  Australian vim/vigor to serve as soldiers in WW2, ultimately in a terrible campaign in Turkey.	4
Gentlemen's Agreement	1947	Won 3 of 8 Oscars	Gregory Peck.  A look at anti-semitism with a spin...A writer goes under cover as a Jew.	5
Gigi	1958	9 Acad Awards	Girl learning to be a woman.  Looks like alot of awards, but this movie didn't appeal much to me.	3
Get Low	2009		Curmudgeonly hermit man plans to hold a funeral party for himself, and wants to confess to everyone.	5
The Great Escape	1963		Huge in Pop Culture.  A top Christmas Movie in England, a very whistle-able theme song.	5
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly	1966		Sergio Leone, the father of the Spaghetti Western.  Hope to never watch this one again.	2
The Grapes of Wrath	1940	2 Acad, 5 Nom,	Henry Fonda, Based on Steinbeck Pulitzer Prize, The Joad family looking for work in Dust Bowl Depression times.	5
Gunfight at O.K. Corral	1957	2 Nom	Wyatt Earp and his brothers trying to bring peace to an unruly town.  Appreciated the Doc Holliday character.	5
Hello Dolly!	1969	3 Acad, 4 Nom	Very clever musical with plenty of cheesiness, two poor boys go to town to have fun, on a day off work.	3
Hairspray	1988	Grand Prize at Sundance	Yeah, not a fan of this one.  High school chubby girl makes it on TV dance show and fights for de-segregation.	1
Hamlet	1948	4 Acad, 3 Nom	I didn't recall this plot from reading it in 10th grade English.  Quite a tragedy, eh?  Quite the turn of events!	5
A Midwife's Tale	1952	PBS	About Martha Ballard, who kept a daily journal for years and years.  Studied and recreated some of the facts by historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich	5
Les Miserables	1952		My first time going through the full plot of this one.  We so often hear the first 15 minutes of the plot retold.	4
My Life as a Turkey	2011	PBS	I loved this!  A man studies imprinting of newborn animals.  He basically is a "Turkey Mama" for over a year.	5

So if I wanted you to experience what I felt during those fall months watching 33 movies, I'd recommend: 

Best Documentary: My Life as a Turkey

Best Historical Fiction: The Grapes of Wrath

Best Commentary on Humanity: The Fountainhead

Best Biography: Coal Miner's Daughter

Best Script: 12 Angry Men

Best Action/Romance: Far and Away

Best War Movie: Gallipoli

Moving Day in Boston

via.

No we're not moving.
Well. Someday we're moving, but we haven't determined when or where.  That's not my point.

My point is that there is a day in the year that is called Moving Day here, which falls on the Saturday nearest to September 1st every year.  With Boston having like 52 colleges and universities, there are a plethora of rental units that have changes in tenancy at the end of the summer.  Summer interns leaving, new fall students arriving, people moving up in the world from one saggy old shared apartment to a saggy old apartment with some advantage over the other.

Well.  If it were just a game of "Count the Uhauls" it wouldn't be that interesting of a day worth blogging about.  But it gets better! {insert giddy laughter!}
{Now rub hands together with slightly evil chuckling!}

There's a major artery that almost everybody uses that provides direct access to much of the Boston/Cambridge areas.  It's called Storrow Drive.  Storrow Drive follows the south side of the Charles River, and has a reputation for people driving fast because there is no shoulder for cops to pull drivers over.  Furthermore, it has a reputation for having Boston Newbies who don't read the signs that say "Cars Only" and "No Trucks" tin-canning their moving truck as they are just arriving to town because Storrow Drive has a handful of bridges with very low clearance.  Every year, there's SOMEONE who thinks that sign isn't for them, and they wedge their truck under the bridge.  And now, for your viewing pleasure, here are a few links to images highlighting recent incidents.

via. 

2007: A photo of an incident.
2011: An overview of the new #StorrowPool, a wager where the new guy always loses.
2011: A behavioral therapist assessing why people think their truck will make it when the dimensions are still obviously wrong.
2012: Sometimes it happens later than moving day, too.
2012: Hints from a Boston blog with moving tips and a warning.

p.s.  Did you notice how this post follows the image prompt from yesterday's?  Your welcome.

p.p.s.  This also reminds me of those youtube videos of people trying to follow the bus through the moving bollards in the UK.

July 4th overview.

Ian's first Pony Ride on the Burlington town common.  He had on the right hat for the job.  Blake had a horse his size ready to carry him, but he refused to sit on the poor creature.

Much to Blake's chagrin, Ian also got to ride the train.  Blake got shortchanged due to age.

We went to see the lightning show at Wakefield.   It was awesome.  The fireworks were pretty good too.  Ian thought "they were spectacular"  (he learned some fireworks terminology by watching How It's Made), but Blake just scrunched his eyes closed.

Sometimes it's just tough to be two, isn't it?  We still had a great day.


Not my video, but glad someone put it on YouTube.  This was how much of the fireworks show went.

 Neat, huh?

Here's some stills extracted, for your pleasure, from around the 28 second mark.

And here's one of the finale.

I wonder if the lightning contributed to this preferred fireworks watching posture?  (Blake kept his eyes firmly closed... not asleep, though.)

Yeah, we lucked out that we were on our way to the car before the precipitation really started coming down.

Museum Day

Ian and I went into the city today and visited the Boston Museum of Science. It was fantastic...

{The only hiccup occurred when Ian came face-to-foot with a life-sized replica of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He gave me the "you-have-some-explaining-to-do" look when he realized that his 3" miniatures we have at home are not of the correct dimensions.}

More pictures coming on Ian's blog.