I paid a visit yesterday to the Boston Waterworks Museum, the main pumping station for the Metro Boston water system from the 1890s to the 1970s. It’s a fascinating and impressive collection of massive machines and plumbing. There are three pumps, each about three stories high. The largest of them extends two stories below ground as well. The pumps were all steam powered, the steam produced in coal fired boilers. This picture shows some of the steam pipes for the oldest of the pumps.
Animals and plants which are common in one locale can seem exotic and beautiful to a visitor from somewhere else. This little beauty was hanging from the porch of a B&B we stayed at on Kauai. I would estimate it’s body was about 1/4 inch by 1/2 inch.
In June of 1982, shortly before we were married, Lynn and I made a trip to Alaska, which included a few days on a small (8 passenger) boat cruising around Glacier Bay. It was one of the highlights of the trip. Being on a small craft allowed us to get much closer to the ice floes than we could have on a cruise ship. We even got to land on a couple of the glaciers and walk around.
“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.” – Aldo Leopold in Marshland Elegy.
With that thought in mind, I headed out this afternoon to Heyward’s Meadow, a small marsh near Walden Pond. By the time I got there, the morning sun had given way to thickening clouds. It was a cold, bleak, apparently lifeless landscape, and deliciously peaceful. There were no signs of animal activity I could see, until I spotted this recently gnawed tree near the water’s edge.
Earlier this week, my good friend Lynn Holbein posted a lovely watercolor of the Boston skyline from the windows of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. (You can check out her work at lynnholbein.com.) Here is a different view from those windows. The ICA is currently showing an exhibition on migration, immigration, and displacement through contemporary art. I tried to frame this image to fit that theme. The reflections in the glass make it look like there are a few people on the inside looking out, and a lot of people on the outside looking in. But the division is an illusion. The people who seem to be outsiders are just a reflection of those on the inside.
This gentleman is deep into a game of Eisstockschiessen, also called Bavarian curling, which is played on asphalt during non-winter months. I took this shot in Zell am See, Austria in 1971.
Na Pali is the name of the northwest coast of Kauai, a stunningly beautiful area of high sea cliffs covered with lush vegetation, and cut by deep, narrow valleys and waterfalls. Insatiable sunset chasers that we are, we decided to take the long, twisty road up to Kalalau Lookout one evening, to see the sun set over the ocean from the top of the cliffs. Unfortunately, when we got there, a dense, cottony mist had settled on the coast, completely obliterating the view. We waited around a few minutes, and were about to drive back down, when magically, the wind picked up and the clouds parted just long enough for me to take this shot.
I took this picture somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin while on a road trip through the Midwest in 1971. The original (a slide) is pretty badly deteriorated, but I still like the way the composition depicts a lazy summer afternoon.
For me, Friday night has always been a time to relax, take a deep breath, and count my blessings. May that Friday night feeling stay with all of us throughout the coming year.
Stacked and tied down for winter.
Photos by Barry Hass 