November Nonsense

I am not sure where to start here, it has been another full week, and in spite of my promises to myself I can’t seem to generate more than an entry a week.

I supposes that I can’t let this entry pass without saying how utterly overjoyed I was with the presidential election. I think that Obama has a level of intelligence and ability not to mention charisma that we have not seen in a president in a long time. He has some enormous challenges ahead of him what with the economic situation and the wars on tow fronts, but I think he has the ability to solve those problems. It is going to take time and sacrifice on all our part, but I think it can be done.

It is very much late fall here in New England while the weather has been pretty nice generally speaking, very little rain, moderate temperatures and no snow so far, the landscape is starting to take on that bleak gray on black look. Here are a couple of pictures to give you the feeling. These were taken at Jamaica Pond a spot I pass each day while taking the boy to school. I think that little island is becoming my muse.


These were taken roughly 24 hours apart.

I hope that it isn’t going to be a long winter, having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, I am used to that dark gray look and the short days, but at least there spring comes early the crocus will come up in late February, and there are distinct signs of spring by mid March, not so In New England – you can push those events back at least a month. I remember my first winter in Connecticut. It was April, and I was still waiting for the Crocus as I recall. Since then of course I spent 15 years in Michigan; lets talk about long cold winters!! 25 degrees below zero F is not my best friend. I like to joke that we move back to New England for the warmer winters. There is some truth in that in part, the winters are a little warmer, but that just means that the snow is sloppier, and spring comes no earlier here than it does there.

Construction on the houses behind us is proceeding at a rapid pace; they completed framing in the second floor on the units nearest to us yesterday. That is a goodbye to the early morning sun streaming into the kitchen. I don’t think that they are going any higher; bit there is still a peaked roof to go on them. While there were backfilling the foundation last week the Bobcat operator clipped our back fence breaking two of the cross members and a couple of the vertical members. I noticed it as I was taking the boy to school in the morning, and pointed it out to the operator. While I was delivering the boy Mrs. went out with her best lawyer face on and talked to the foreman on the project. The fence was repaired by that evening. I was happy to see that they were trying to be good neighbors. The whole project makes me feel a little melancholy, but perhaps it is jut the time of the year. It also make me think of a children’s book about a little house that was built in the country, and gradually everything grows up around it until it is surrounded by the big city among skyscrapers; lost and forgotten. Eventually someone finds the house and moves it out to the country much like it had been originally.


When we first moved in the house in spring of 2001, it was the only house on the block. The lots on both sides of the house were vacant, and parking was never a problem. We had our own little spot on the street next to the house. Since that time three – 3 family units have been constructed across the street, and now these two 2 family units which will have their own parking on the lot, but that means curb cuts for those driveways, and you can be assured that who ever lives there is unlikely to have only one car. Soon we are going to like any other neighborhood in Boston soon, have to circle the block to find an open space.


At one time this was a densely packed neighborhood until the 1970’s when Roxbury became a no-mans land, and many houses were abandoned and either burned or torn down. As they were excavating the site for these two latest projects one could see the remnants of the foundation of the houses that had been on the lot previously

All in all it is a good thing to see the neighborhood coming back to life. I don’t want to sound like I am complaining, but it is becoming a very different neighborhood that it was when we moved here.