Friendly reminder

apparently, the dumping of used oil, antifreeze, paints, and other awful (household) chemicals are the primary source of pollution of the charles river. so.... most stormdrains have a sign like the one above, reminding people not to just carelessly dump their sh*t, as it will go straight to the charles river etc...

this one is actually on the bridge that i showed you yesterday.

as a kid, i sometimes used to make "soup" in such drains. we would throw in sand, mud, leaves, anything we could find and then stir it with a large stick... i guess that was one of the reasons they sometimes got clogged and all the rainwater accumulated at the little "playground" behind our house.... ooopss!

Neglected bridge

this is the longfellow bridge, connecting boston and cambridge. its for cars, the subway, bikes, or you can walk.because of the shape of the 4 towers in the center, as you can see here, the bridge is also called the salt and pepper bridge. hmmm. well, would never have thought of that, but ever since i read it, i guess i can sort of see it... unfortunately you cannot climb those towers. there was a time you could walk around them, they sort of stick out of the bridge, but as long as we live here the entrance has been blocked by fences.

this year they will start some major repairs on the bridge. the subway will not run during several weekends and the lanes for other traffic will be significantly reduced as well. according to wikipedia, the bridge has been neglected for a long time. the bridge has been there since 1906, but some  major repairs were only done way back in 1959 and lesser ones in 2002. they expect to spend almost 270 million dollars for repair. had repair been done regularly, it would have been "only" 81 million....