Not Much Ado

‘S 'bout time I added another update I think, time flies when you are having fun.

Speaking of fun, spring has really sprung here; the weather has been noticeably warmer now for a couple of weeks, but the kicker is that all of the trees have come into leaf in the last week. It always surprises me how quickly it happens in this part of the country. One week the trees are bare and you turn around, and they are green and leafy.

Big fun in the neighborhood over the last couple weeks; a film shoot is taking place up our street a couple blocks from the house. The film; ‘The Company Men’ stars Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner and Tommy Lee Jones, not that we have seen them in the neighborhood, but the local press has been keeping us filled in on their every move. The shoot is taking place at what we called for lack of a better title the ‘Munster House’; actually know as the Hodgden House it was built in the 1860’s towards the end of the ‘estate ‘ period in the Roxbury Highlands. The house has been in disrepair for the better part of 50 years, going from Italianate mansion to rooming house and apartments, and vacant for many years. It is now owned by a cab driver. One of the more endangered old houses in the neighborhood, the owner has barely had the funds to keep the house standing let alone actually make any repairs. The plot of the film revolves around the Affleck character, once a corporate hotshot who looses his job and goes to work for his brother (Costner) who is a contractor. The house happens to be one that they are working on over the course of the story. The upside of the filming in and around the house is that the film company is putting a substantial amount of money in the actual repairs of the house as the house transitions from derelict to repaired over the course of the film.

The house in transition.

The downside of the film shoot is that they keep blocking off the street for days starting early in the morning until early evening. The street happens to be narrow and one way, and the only straight route over the hill to the other side, and is the main route I take in the morning to take the boy to school, the first couple of mornings he was late for school in part because of the longer route. It isn’t like I could just take the next block over either, the streets were laid out in the 1830’s tend to meander all over and are often one way going the opposite direction.

Speaking of construction, the houses that are being built behind us are nearing completion. The last couple weeks have them digging up the street and sidewalks while installing the utilities. The houses dominate the view from the back of our house and make our humble home look even smaller and humbler. It will be strange having some one living so close. When we first moved here 8 years ago, we were the only house on the block with vacant lots to the back and to the side of the house. With the completion of these last two houses, what had been vacant land will now contain 10 units of housing, which is 6 to the side and 4 to the rear. It used to be that ours was the only car parked on the block and we could always park next to the house. That has changed dramatically, and god forbid you don’t have a space by 8:00am on Tuesday mornings when they are sweeping the streets and parking is prohibited on one side.

Before: October 20, 2008

Current: May 3, 2009

The other one: May 3, 2009.

In the broader picture, work is slowing down. The last few weeks were hectic with a variety of student groups performing in the theatre, of ten with four or more events in a given week. I’d like to say that they were all brilliant productions, but alas they all seemed to blend in to one mass of student bodies bouncing around the stage to pop tunes played and a painful volume. I was most disappointed by the burlesque troupe, I was hoping for something a little different from the other dance groups. But alas ‘twas not to be. Whereas the other groups we attempting to be ‘artistic’, the burlesque troupe was a little more ‘wink-wink’ about flouting their sexuality on stage, where it could have been more crass and in your face, in reality it was more of the same.

Good news; the triangle across the street from us that has been a vacant lot for 30 years or more which the neighbors have been tending for nearly as long is soon to come into the possession of a local land conservancy, and will

And they by ended the academic year, as classes ended Monday a week ago. I had two more events in this weekend, both of them benefits for worth causes, which featured a lot of good live music on stage. Unfortunately both events were poorly attended, and I doubt if either made any money for their chosen charities. It is kind of a shame to see the tacky student shows packed with kids, and when something of a higher artistic merit comes along the house is empty. I understand that the students are going to see and support their friends onstage, but it is still a little disheartening.
All that is left now is commencement exercises on the 17th and a few events scattered over the next month.

Beyond that life has been busy but pretty routine, get up in the morning, work and go to bed at night.

I am always raving in these pages about the neighborhood, here is a video that a local organization Roxbury Cultural Network put together.

Meanderings

My muse Jamaicia Pond

I guess that it is time for an update.

We are in the middle of the annual mid winter melt. I have been waiting for this for a few weeks. It usually happens in late January but it isn’t unusual for it to take place in February. It is generally about a week of unseasonably warm weather in the middle of the winter deep freez. This one has been relatively mild, with temps getting into the 50’s but it has been long lived the results being that the majority of the snow has melted. The 2 and 3 foot high snow banks along the sidewalks have vanished in a matter of a couple of days, and features in the yard, unseen for months have reappeared. Of course with the melt come the downside, not to be negative here, but what remains after al the snow melts is not a pretty sight especially after a cold and snowy winter like we have had. Like long gone glaciers, the receding snow banks leave a layer of dirt, sand and other debris in their wake. I don’t know which is worst to look at the dirt blackened snow banks or the layer of dirt and trash on the sidewalks and street. I am happy to see the snow gone though, and the slightly warmer weather in a relief as well. Now the furnace doesn’t run nearly constantly, waking me in the middle of the night each time it turns on. The cold and snow will most likely be back but for now I am not complaining. Spring is just a few weeks away. Ok more like 5 weeks, but it is light when I leave work in the evenings these days, that too is a good sign.

For the most part we have just sort of been hunkered down and getting thru the winter for the last couple weeks. The boy of course seems to take most of our attention and energy. Being 13 as he is, there is sort of a constant level of ‘tude that he gives us. He is doing pretty well in school, although it seems like he can’t quite keep up his grades in all subjects at once. Generally he is a B student; that seems to be as much work, as he wants to put into his studies in spite of our chiding and coaxing. At the same time inevitably on subject will get lost in the shuffle and his grades will drop for a while. We push in that and something else then falls behind. As it is we have added more guitar lessons for him. A neighbor is jazz and rock musician and teaches on the side. The boy has been saying that he is bored with playing classical guitar, and he is in jazz band which has opened up other styles and elements of playing for him, so adding this lesson seemed like the thing to do. It is only $20 for an hour lesson, and after the first one last Sunday the boy came away saying that his fingers hurt, but he had learned some good stuff. You would think that we were trying to turn him into a musician or something.

Both Mrs. and the boy are big Sci-Fi fans; I am too, but not quite to the degree that they are. We have all 10 seasons of Stargate on DVD, and a few seasons of Stargate Atlantis as well. The latest acquisition is the first couple of seasons of Babylon 5 a series that was on the air in the mid 90’s. I was never that fond of that particular series, the writing is stilted and the acting is wooden, or is it the other way around? The only interesting characters and decent actors are the ones who play the aliens. They have a tendency to over act, but that is more interesting than watching the stage timber that play the earthlings. Anyway, mother and the boy have been devouring the episodes. Fortunately or not, they don’t play well in the DVD player connected to the TV, so they have been playing them on their respective laptops. That last few nights as I have sat down at my desk in the evening I can hear the audio tracks from both of their computers as they play the DVD’s. I just turn up the iTunes on my own computer to drown them out, while they bliss out on Babylon.

I have been thinking lately about starting another blog about music, or just start blogging here. Like I barely have time to write here, huh? Since I was a lad of 10 or 11 and got my first crystal radio, I have been listening to and collecting music. My tastes are definitely not mainstream, and might best be described as eclectic. There are any number of artists and performers who interest me, and It might be interesting to write about what draws me to them and sharing that. I have been exploring how to share music through the blog. We will see how that develops..

The latest progress on the construction.

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.