Ever Onward

DIY Mailboxes

One of the fun things about walking, is seeing the creative ways people have found to personalize their space.  There are the houses painted in bright, fairytale colors; tree forts complete with glass windows; weather vanes ( I have such a weakness for weather vanes); statues made from found objects and of course the ubiquitous mailbox.  As long as the door stays shut and the flag is well attached, there's very little reason to think about these oddly shaped boxes, until someone makes them worth noticing. 

About a year ago I did a post about a walk I took in Lincoln, where I was surprised at the number of unique, home decorated mailboxes.  There was one mailbox that I debated whether or not to include in that post.  It was gray, with just the name Frost painted on it.  There was really no reason to give it a second glance except that it was the spitting image of the mailbox in front of Robert Frost's home in the White Mountains.  I decided this was more likely coincidence, than an homage of any sort and left the mailbox out of the post.  This spring, that gray mailbox went through a major transformation.  I decided to explore the neighborhood and see what (if any) other changes had occurred.

Formerly the Frost mailbox

I started out in the parking lot of the Lincoln Exchange, one of the few public places to park near Tower Road.  You can click on here to see my route.  The Exchange is home to one of the town's post offices, and I always feel like I'm stepping back in time when I walk through those doors to buy stamps or what not.  We'd had a week of summer weather (in April mind you), so it was a pleasure to walk under stone colored skies through the occasional shower.  It's the sort of weather I imagine when I think of the Pacific Northwest, great for a visit but I wouldn't want it everyday.

The lilacs are in that wonderful inbetween stage where the closed buds are one shade and the opened blossoms another.  If I were an impressionist painter, I would paint lilacs the way Monet painted water lilies, one after another, trying to capture each change in light and growth.

As I headed to the Frost mailbox (as I think of it) I realized I was just steps from a cute little tree lined road I pass all the time and have wondered about.  I didn't have a schedule to keep, and I figured if it didn't come out somewhere I recognize, I could always retrace my steps, so I took a left on Upland Road and immediately discovered more DIY decorated mailboxes!  Don't you love serendipity?

I like the easy, sketch-like look of the ladybug.  Whoever painted this was Ok with imperfection, and in that created something lovely.  I wonder what the inspiration was to create a house around the mailbox.  Maybe the house was originally the mailbox, but the post office decreed they needed a USPS approved receptacle?  Maybe they needed something to help the mailbox stand out so plow drivers wouldn't hit it?  I have seen one other similar to this in Lexington (next town over).  In that case the wooden exterior was intended to look like a house and garden.

The picture is a little dark, but can you see the painted window, complete with lacy white curtains on the front?

As I continued down Upland to Beaver Pond, I saw several boxes decorated by kids.  Think back to being a kid and just how few things you had complete control over.  Now imagine being given permanent paint, part of the family home and permission to do what you want.  What a heady opportunity!  And then that art work is on display for everyone to see: the mailman, people driving by, anyone coming to visit and of course their friends on the bus.  What a great idea.

Notice the difference in hand sizes?  It's like a much more personal version of those stickers people put on their minivans to show how many people are in their family.


These hand flowers make me smile.  Kids grow so quickly that artwork which makes those stages of growth a little more permanent are a wonderful idea.  When I was three or four I was at camp with my family.  There was an organized children's program so the parents could go off and do things on their own.  One day we were all given white t-shirts and the counselors traced our hands on them in permanent marker.  Mine was green.  I loved that shirt.  When I outgrew it I dressed my dolls with it.  Sometimes I'd place my hand over that earlier tracing and try to imagine I'd ever been that small. 

This garden mailbox was in front of an artist studio.  One side was clearly done by children, and then the other has a bit of an adult's touch.  I wonder if they crafted that roadrunner shape themselves.  The spirals and zigzags behind it make me think of a meteor shower.  Looking at that mailbox, the way it's been warped over time and has started to rust, I can imagine the painting as an effort to beautify it in its last days of use.  Then again, maybe it was new and shiny when those little hands drew rabbits, flowers, dogs and curly ques.  The kids may have kids of their own by now, but this reminder of their younger selves remains.

There was one mailbox that looked like a great steamer trunk, the sort George Bailey dreams of traveling with in It's a Wonderful Life.  Now it's just an unadorned mailbox, bought from a store, but imagine what it would look like with old-timey stickers from around the world and passport stamps painted on it.  

When I got to the end of Beaver Pond I realized it intersected with Tower Road, the place where I'd found so many unique mailboxes a year ago.  What prompts one area, in a rather traditional, historic New England town to create so many works of public art?  I believe residents gain inspiration by driving past each other's creations each day.  It's the same logic that drives people in economically depressed areas to clean up a corner or a vacant lot and by doing so inspire neighbors to take on their own beautification projects. 

As I walked Tower Road back to the exchange, it was nice to see a lot of my favorite mailboxes still standing.  There was the shocking tiger striped box, the Grandma Moses style red fox and more.  At the end of the street there was a new addition, a yong girl's dream mailbox, all purples and reds with fluffy white rabbits and a shiny moon.

What do you make of those little running figures?  They remind me of Crockett Johnson's character Harold, who with the help of his purple crayon sets out in his pajamas each night for all sorts of adventures. 

As I drove home I thought about all the personality and creativity that went into the mailboxes I'd seen, and I wanted a bit of that for myself.  For the first time in my life I live in a place where the mailbox is a box (not a wall of doors with tiny keys).  What could I create that says a little something about me?

Check back for the next post and you'll see.

Good People

"There just aren't nice people in the world any more.  Everyone's out for themselves [sic]."  I heard these words at a meeting I was at recently and I had to bite my lip before a quick response came out.  If everyone is so awful, I wanted to say, I must be too.  So why are you talking to me?  Of course I realize that wasn't the speaker's intention, but generalizations about "people today" just set me off.

Once that ugly moment had passed, I felt sorry for the speaker.  Not because in my mind I'd told her off with elegant harshness.  No.  I felt sorry for her because I started to wonder what sort of life was she living, and who was she encountering, that she had such a dim view of people?

Last weekend I was a stranger, taking my morning walk in Cambridge, NY a town I'd never been to before, and a farmer tipped the brim of his cap to me as his truck rumbled by.  Later I walked into a busy restaurant, and a woman who was already waiting offered to share her table with me.  I believe people are as good (and otherwise) as they've ever been; it's just harder for people to act on those positive impulses when our communities aren't as close knit as they once were. 

I get excited when people accept that lifestyles have changed and find new ways to create community and look out for one another.  USA Today recently did a story that touched on this.  The story, Beauty Businesses Give Back gave a number of examples of people and companies doing the right thing, but my favorite was the "karma credits" at The Littlest Spa in Natick, MA.  OK, I'm a bit biased since Amy Elizabeth, the owner is a friend, but that doesn't change the fact that her program gives people a chance to help their neighbors.  Rather than offering coupons, The Littlest Spa issues credit toward future services when a patron brings in supplies for a local charity.  It's so simple and wonderfully effective.  I'm sure offering coupons would be less of a logistical challenge for Amy, but she makes karma credits work because it's important to her. 

So now the next time I hear someone say that people just don't care about each other any more, I think I'll have a better response than "You can't really mean that."

Moonscapes

Shorter days do have one magnificent advantage.

When else is your daily walk likely to include a light show like this one?

Do you see the traveler?

    




Gute nacht.

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For the astronomically minded, the moon pictured is a waning gibbous, 99% of full.  I'd never heard the term "gibbous" until a month ago when a second grader explained it to me.  Does knowing the definition make it any more beautiful?  Of course not, but I've always gotten a thrill from being able to name things, especially in the natural world.  I think it might run in the family.

 

 

 

Farewell to Fall

According to the earth and sun, it won't be winter for nearly a month yet, but with James Taylor singing about winter wonderlands, Christmas crafting spilling from tables and chairs, and the first candle on my advent wreath lit, it's not exactly fall either. 

This year's fall was a muted celebration.  The Halloween snow storm ripped many of the leaves from the trees before they even had a chance to change color.  While I'm sure that disappointed people who had travelled far to see the famous New England color, I was surprised to find myself relieved.  Most years the trees put on a display to rival the 4th of July fireworks.  The reds burn, the golds glow and the evergreens shine in contrast.

And just as with the fireworks, when the show is over there is a sense of loss and what remains appears all the drabber in comparison to what has been.  It usually takes weeks for me to shift from seeing the barren trees as harbingers of cold and misery, to forms with their own minimalist grace and beauty.

This year the transition was gentler; trees stripped by the storm stood alongside smaller plants displaying their fall glory.  Instead of golden arbors, we had sunlight as soft as butter and looping vines of bittersweet.  It was not a traditional fall, but it was beautiful in its own way. 

 

 

So long fall, until we meet again...

A Little Reminder

It's come to my attention that Mother Nature has suffered a crisis of confidence.  After giving the Northeast nearly a week of 80 degree days in October of all months, Mother feared we thought she'd gone soft.  She worried that she no longer inspired awe and had lost our respect. 

Here it is, the end of October and the hardware stores are still selling rakes - hardly a shovel to be found.   Brightly colored Daffodil and Tulip bulb boxes still fill the shelves, proof that the first hard frost seems a long way off. 

The tiny, wild violets that began appearing in lawns last week, did nothing to help Mother's confidence.  She appreciated that the squirrels were fattening up on schedule (though if she were honest with herself, she knew they were always looking for an excuse).  The geese were steadily honking their way toward the southern cross, but the sight of New Englanders leaf peeping in shorts and sandals was really too much to bear. 

So this morning it was cold enough to see our breath in the air.  And this evening she reminded us that water comes in three states, not just the two we've grown accustomed to in recent months. 

There's liquid,

vapor,

I admit to a little creative liscence here

and not tobe forgotten,  solid!

Taken through my windshield this evening

Visual Oxymorons

A couple scenes from recent walks that made me laugh at their incongruity.

Beating the Heat

This photo, taken last summer, has come to mind many times today as I've tried not to think about the 101 degree weather.  Doesn't it look refreshing? 

I should buy a sprinkler. 

I wonder if this lounging fellow would hop through it. 

 

 

 

A Walk Through Back Bay

In March when the weather had pushed above freezing, but the scenery was all watercolor shades of gray and brown, I decided I needed to find someplace new to walk.  If nature wasn't going to provide any inspiration, maybe a  change in architecture would do the trick.  So I hopped on the T and took the Red Line to the Charles/MGH stop, with the vague plan of wandering Beacon Hill and Back Bay.  

Boston skyline, viewed from Rte 2

If Boston post cards are any indication, Beacon Hill is what people envision when they think of Boston.  It's known for its rows of Victorian brick townhouses, and exclusive residences.  I seem to remember Senator John Kerry's Beacon Hill home being used against him during his presidential campaign, as a sign he was elitist and out of touch.  Personally, I can't imagine anyone who isn't financially out of touch with most Americans being able to afford to run for president, but that's a topic for another day.

The streets of historic Beacon Hill are narrow, so few cars are seen, except those owned by residents.  It's relaxing to be in the city without the steady hum of car engines.   A funny little side note - the persistent drone of cars on Storrow Ave. resulted in a green on the Boston University campus being nicknamed the  BU Beach.  If you close your eyes the sound could almost be mistaken for waves on a beach. 

Actually, I find the act of walking through Boston (when I don't have somewhere I have to go) a lot like walking a beach.  It's by no means as tranquil, but I experience the same sense of discovery and the desire to slow down and take a closer look at the little details so easily lost on the whole.  This doesn't make me very popular with people who actually have places they need to be, especially on the narrow sidewalks of Charles Street and the like, but I just pretend I'm a tourist, set on getting my money's worth from the visit.

Charles Street is full of restaurants, bakeries, galleries (by appointment only if you please) and a wonderful assortment of expensive little shops.  Most of them are the size of a large living room in the suburbs, but every inch is used to its full potential.  I went in one where there was a single circular path between tables of goods.  Whenever customers stopped to look at an item, everyone behind them had to stop too.

 

This is just a small selection of the snow globes decorating one travel agency's windows.  It's such a perfect idea.  Who didn't shake a snow globe as a child and dream of visiting its world? 

This trend of placing cut birches in flower pots, is much harder for me to understand.  I saw them all over the city and each time I felt like something cruel was being placed on display, much like animal heads hung on walls.  There's no reason for it.  The butchered form lacks the vitality and grace of the living one. 
 

A dog does a little people watching from a window

Walking through Lousiburg Square and down Mt. Vernon Street, it's easy to pretend you've stepped into an Edith Wharton novel.  The click of a woman's heels on the brick sidewalks echoes the long ago ring of horse's hooves on cobbles.  It's easy to picture a captain, standing atop his stately home, looking out to Boston Harbor for any sign of his ship's return.

In this older part of the city, even mundane items like manhole covers are worth taking a second look at.  The winter's road salt had temporarily dulled the colors, but this cover appears to be decorated with rounds of colored glass.

This elaborate doorknocker, is on a door leading to a basement entrance.  I love the tiny ring on the middle finger.  As I took the picture I realized I was being watched by a security camera, and hurried away feeling like I'd done something vaguely illegal.

A quick walk across Beacon Street and I was in the Public Garden.  A line of tourists waited to take pictures of the admittedly adorable Make Way for Ducklings statue.  I especially love how there are wear marks on the mother's back from where generations of children have climbed on as their parents snapped photos.  If I were three feet tall again, I'd do the same.  

It's been a while since I've been into the city, and I was stunned at 1). how close the squirrels let me get to them and 2). how incredibly fat they were compared to the ones at home.  Were the squirrels in my neighborhood starving?  I'd never thought so before, but for a moment I felt guilty about having a 99% squirrel-proof bird feeder (there's one squirrel who has figured out how to slip seeds out an empty screw hole). 

The Public Garden is best known for its swan boats.  If you've never read the scene in E.B. White's Trumpet of the Swan where the protagonist encounters these legends, get a copy from your library today.  Admittedly I feel that way about most of E.B. White's writing, but this was my favorite book for many years as a child, so I think everyone should read it. 

During my visit, the boats were still in winter storage, in fact the pond appeared to have frozen over.

People were out on the ice and snow, walking their dogs and enjoying the change in perspective.  I spotted one woman making snow angels and trying to convince the man with her to do the same. 

 I joined a crowd waiting for the walk sign at Arlington Street, and headed down Newbury, the Rodeo Drive of Boston.  I'm not much of a shopper, so the charms of this part of town are largely wasted on me, but I do like people watching.  In a window for a salon/spa I saw a couple women chatting in robes and curlers.  The scene was disquieting in that it was both intimate, and incredibly public at the same time.

 I saw an Easter Bunny costume so scary it deserved to be worn at Halloween.  I'm not sure which was creepier, the rabbit on the right looking like it's about to give a lecture, or the headless rabbit on the left!

Just as I was trying to decide whether I should head back to the T, I arrived in Copley Square and was reminded what a feast it is for the eyes.  There's the elegant Copley Plaza hotel with it's giant golden lions flanking the entrance; the stately Boston Public Library; and the contrast of Trinity Episcopal Church's gargoyles to the glass and steel of the Hancock Tower. 

I've heard that the interior of Trinity Copley is itself worth making a trip to see, but this visit I opted to stay outside.  The building is a checker pattern of colored stone, with a ribbon of carved biblical figures and stories reaching all the way around.  The same architect used a similar style when he designed the public library in Woburn, MA. 

On one side of the church is a bit of a courtyard where there's a statue dedicated to a former priest of the church.  The sculpture was strangely menacing, which I'm sure is the opposite of what was intended.   The priest is standing at a dias, preaching to his congregation.  This is normal enough, but behind him is a hooded figure, reaching out with a bony hand to touch the priest's shoulder.  I think the hooded figure is intended to be Jesus, guiding and working through the beloved priest. To me however, that hooded figure looked like the Grim Reaper.  His looming figure and the sense that he is manipulating the man before him reminded me of the evil Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies.  I'd love to know what other people think.

By now it was getting late.  The wind was picking up and what little warmth the sun had provided earlier in the day was fading.  I decided to make just one more stop before heading home. 

Whether you're looking for a book or not, the Boston Public Library is too beautiful to miss.  The hallways feel like a museum, with marble stairs, statues, murals and more. 

In many ways it feels like visiting the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, with the added benefit that you're invited to pick up a book, find a comfortable seat and stay a while.  The mural above is part of one that goes all the way around an ante room.  The only furniture in the room are benches along the walls.  Some people use the benches to observe the artwork, occasionally I've seen a tired student stretched out taking a nap there. 

A lamp in the Boston Public Library

And then there's the "library" itself, which is truly a cathedral for books.  Row after row of dark wood tables with individual, green domed reading lights fill the center. The books reach from floor to ceiling, with the higher ones reached by travelling up spiral metal staircases or ladders on runners.  As someone who goes a little weak in the knees at the site of built in bookshelves, each time I see this room I want to stay for hours.

There are of course other more modern sections of the library which are functional and offer abundant resources (including an incredible number of books in lesser known languages like Haitian Creole), but in this older section all the potential locked in the pages of the books is palatable. 

I took a different route back, including a stop at the Frog Pond in Boston Common to watch the ice skaters. 

There was a young boy and his father having a silly-string fight.  They raced around trees, dodged dogs on leashes and eventually collapsed on the ground laughing.  The father never once looked around to see if anyone was watching; he was totally in the moment with his son.  I smiled and headed for home.

 

 

 

 

 

Spring Peepers

Tonight there's a slip of a moon,

so fine it could be mistaken for a curl of butter

on a great indigo plate. 

The air smells of sodden earth,

rich with life, both past and potential.

And there it is. 

A voice nearly forgotten, for being silent so long.

A chorus of frogs serenades the darkness, and winter is a memory.

***************************

I heard my first spring peepers of the season tonight.  The person I was with said that even if the weather gets warm, they won't come out until it has rained at night.  I haven't verified that, but it sounds plausible. 

If you'd like to hear the spring peppers, there are a lot of recordings on-line.  The Fairfax County school system in VA has a great Spring Peeper page complete with photos and recordings.

 

 

Collecting - Mailboxes

Growing up, my older brother was always collecting something.  He collected bottle caps (I can't remember why), coins, stamps, Star Wars action figures, and baseball cards (Topps, not Fleer).  I'd listen to him rattle off what made one item more valuable than another, how they should be handled, just how many he needed before he had a complete set, and I wanted to have a collection too.  I was fascinated by the planning: where to get the next one, how to organize the ones you have.  And I loved the guidebooks full of arcane minutiae set in endless tables. 

I love glass, so I started a collection of old bottles, the sort that can be found in the woods near deserted cellars.  I picked them up at flea markets and tramping through the woods, but I never wanted to look in any of the guidebooks I brought home from the library.  I liked the idea of all those facts and guidelines for collecting much more than the reality of studying them.  So I stopped collecting anything that anyone else might find valuable.  I had a collection of itty, bitty pencils (ones with working erasers were the top find), rocks that looked like animals (I still have my first, a hamster) and teardrop shaped glass sun catchers.  

Today my urge to collect manifests itself in the pictures I take.  There are certain images that I never tire of: weather vanes, hollows in trees, squirrels, animal tracks, shadows and most recently, mailboxes!  This latest collection started when I took a wrong turn and ended up on a road with some of the brightest owner-decorated mailboxes I've ever seen.   I say owner-decorated because there are all sorts of companies making unique mailboxes, but what caught my eye was the DIY nature of these mailboxes.  Let me show you what I mean.  

This tiger striped mailbox was the first one to catch my eye.  You just don't expect to see something like this in Lincoln, a historic, rural, New England town. 

Further down the road I spotted this cheetah mailbox.  Could their owners be friends?

This Canadian goose mailbox is a bit more traditional.  I liked how the goose on the front seems to be daring you to come any closer.

This one intrigues me.  I'd love to talk to the artist.  Both sides show fungi on a desolate landscape.  It felt sci-fi inspired to me. 

 

In addition to alien-world look of the painting, it has a lucky horseshoe underneath.  I don't know if it's intened to bring luck in the form of good tidings, or if the homeowner was just trying to preserve the mailbox from the snow plows.  All up and down the street I saw trees with gouges from plow blades, and mailboxes which had clearly been knocked down a time or two.   This winter the snowbanks were so high that on some streets all you could see of the mailboxes was the tiny mailbox-door sized holes their owners had made.

All of those plow mishaps have lead to some creative solutions. 

The base of this mailbox is surrounded by concrete blocks.

These brightly painted mailboxes have been secured to a stump in addition to having metal supports. 

 
And my favorite plow-war veteran would have to be this one.  The original support only goes so far as the first milkcrate at which point it ends in a splintery mess.  So the mailbox is actually being supported by two milk crates attached to a dolly with a web of bungy cords.  Now that's Yankee ingenuity (and thrift).

This old rusty ol' dinosaur has seen a crash or two.  Wouldn't it be great if they actually painted it like a dinosaur?  The door just needs a tongue and razor sharp teeth like a T-Rex.  A couple cold reptilian eyes on the side and it would be perfect!

This fanciful, red fox out for a moonlit run is my absolute favorite.  The simple lines and bright colors look like something out of a children's book.  I look at it and imagine the rest of the fox's adventure, and then I start to imagine what sort of story I could paint on my own mailbox. 

I think I'll collect some more mailboxes (for inspiration of course), before I take that leap.