It's coming......

so.... the weathermen are more and more sure that the snow is really coming tomorrow. and lots of it. flights have been cancelled, schools in boston are closed, the subway will stop running in the afternoon and apparently cars should be off the road by noon.... above a picture of the first snowstorm we experienced, on jan 12, 2011. this is the boston common, after a night of strong winds and lots of snow, clean-up had started long before we got out of bed, and when we arrived here, while it was still snowing, people were just having fun.....

tims wintercoat broke just this week (the zipper), so we went to the thrift store and got him a very decent jacket that surely will keep him warm and dry. we also went to the supermarket for some milk (but forgot the yoghurt). all salad was gone, almost all meat, most chips (it wasnt me!!), most fruit, and.. there was hardly any milk anymore... luckily tim found some, so we now have our milk, eggs and bread....

all the people from the news are going crazy and keep calling this storm epic, historic, huge.... and nothing has happened yet... i hope they still have some words left after the event. at cnn they were talking about the possibility of 38 inches of snow, if i calculated correctly, that would be 1 meter of snow!! really??! wow.... i hope we have enough milk...... 

Enjoy christmas!!

this is (again) at the boston common. the tree you see here comes from nova scotia, and is a present from their government to the people of boston. since 1971, this has been a tradition. it is in thanks and remembrance of the halifax explosion in 1917. on december 6 of that year, a french wartime ship fully loaded with explosives collided with a norwegian ship in the halifax harbour. the gigantic explosion that followed instantly killed 1900 people, and 9000 were wounded. anything, buildings, people, within 500 acres of the explosion vanished, and the explosion caused a tsunami in the harbour, causing even more damage. the city of boston quickly learned of the disaster and was the first to send help. the year after, in 1918, the people of halifax sent a tree to thank all those that helped. and as mentioned, since 1971 this has been a yearly tradition.

the tree lighting is a spectacle in itself, with a lot of performances and whatnot. we went there the first year we were in boston (together with 30,000 other people). it was so cold, we could hardly see anything and the (live) singing was not that good....needless to say, we did not go the past 2 years!  but... although sad, its good to know the story behind the tree....

and now you all should enjoy christmas!!

Common birds

today we walked a bit around in boston. that was pretty cold. there was a strong wind, and it was kind of grey out... brrr!! i guess still better than yesterday, when it was raining like crazy...

here the boston common again, a little further is the frog pond (that i showed you yesterday). here someone just stirred up the pigeons and they happened to fly right over me, yuck... i did what everyone would do; i used my camera for protection... ;)

Getting better

after a week (a week!!) of being sick, i can finally say im feeling better again. not entirely, but better.. defenitely much better than i felt last week friday, or the entire weekend for that matter. beeehhh.... we must have picked up a virus here or there.

anyways. no pictures at all this week, so this is one from december last year. this is the frog pond in the boston common, which i have shown you several times before, mostly in summer when little kids play there to coll off. in winter it frozen, although both last winter and so far this winter it has been too warm to be frozen by itself.... :) (im waiting for the snow!!!). here you can see the huge amount of people, waiting to get onto the ice thats being polished. i really dont get why so many people are always skating here; its so tiny! 

ah well... time for bed now, still not feeling 100% healthy...

Summer evening

its hot! since days. i guess well above 30 degrees celsius (86F). sometimes theres some rain, but at some point the clouds recede and the sun is back at full force. i know not everyone likes it, but i do! we have the pool at our apartment complex so thats a great way to cool down (whenever we are allowed, ofcourse. the security murmured something the other day about "city regulations" to have it closed at 8 pm; as usual we were the last to leave, and really didnt want to. couldnt find anything about city regulations on google though...). 

evenings are lovely too. it remains warm.... so everyone is outside! this is at the boston common, yesterday evening (i just had an ice cream that i spilled all over my dress... grrr..actually, it turned out not to be the worst; later that evening almost an entire glass of beer got spilled onto my dress as well.. then it was really time to go home... ). in the front you can see the brewer fountain and behind it the state house. 

we really had a nice day, we started out with quite some swimming. as it was raining a tiny little bit, we had almost the entire place for ourselves. then some groceries and a walk through boston. eventually we got to the museum of fine arts, with free entrance as it was the first weekend of the month (with our bank card). some more walking, dinner, and eventually the ice cream and the beer... :) 

(the dress is clean again. and my shoes as well....)

Water fun

this picture was taken at the frog pond, during a hot summer day.... (just like this one, perhaps it was the same day? i dont remember!). just like yesterday, it was (and is, its 11 pm now and still above 30C) very hot, perhaps even hotter.... luckily we have the pool to cool down a little bit. unfortunately, it closes at 8 in the evening, and this is strictly enforced. at 8! who wants to stop swimming at 8 on a hot day/night like this?! but no, there is no discussion. pool closes at 8. (while it gets dark here around 9, so i would think they at least could keep it open till 9!). 

thats something else i miss from the netherlands, there it gets darker so much later in summer.... buuuhhhh!

and guess what, we are having the AC on right now, and i am cold!! i am about to switch it off (dont like it during sleeping), will probably be another difficult night of sleeping again....

Indelicate & unladylike

one of these stones is from sally morse, whose stone i showed you last week. this cemetery, the central burying ground, was actually established to alleviate overcrowding of the nearby cemeteries that i showed you earlier. as this burial ground was the furthest away from the market center of boston, this was the least popular cemetery. the graves here are from british common soldiers who died in combat or of disease during the revolution, foreigners who died while in boston, and some american patriots.

 a few commenters last week said something like "imagine everyone would would have their cause of death listed in such detail on their grave!" well yes, that probably would be weird. although i really didnt mind in this case. i guess they were just really surprised that "some stomach cramp" for just one hour resulted in her sudden and unexpected death. so much so, that they (her husband?) wanted it engraved on her stone...
a little more googling around about sally morse (thanks julie for pointing out she was named morse, and not morfe!), and i found the same article in 3 different newspapers, published around 1921, about a lady who apparently was not happy about sally's stone either. this lady went to the cemetery office and demanded that sally morse's stone be destroyed as the inscription is indelicate and unladylike! the secretary replied that he is in no position to destroy a stone. the lady then demanded that some sort of action will be taken while she waits in the office, to which the secretary replied, as it is the best/first that comes to his mind: "madam, that stone is of great value. harvard university has just been making an investigation and has pronounced that stone important evidence of the first authentic case of appendicitis. madam, that stone cannot be destroyed". "at the magic name of harvard the visitor retreated, vanquished, and went forth to tell her friends of the "appendicitis stone" as it came to be called". 

i have no clue whether this story is true, or when exactly it happened. i could not find anything about that, nor the original article in the detroit news to which this article refers, but surely it was an amusing find... . here you can read the entire article for yourself (and look at the advertisements too, they are funny!)

for more taphophilia, go here...!

Indulgent wife

another cemetery in the center of boston, that is relatively close to the ones i showed you last week. this one is in the boston common, a large park in boston of which i already posted many pics on this blog. yet it was only this february that we "discovered" this park has a cemetery (next to the tennis court, baseball field and bandstand). we were waiting for someone to join us for the cinema but were too early and decided to have a small walk on the side of the park we dont see that often. and there it was! a cemetery; the central burying ground! it was locked... but a few weeks later we were there during the day and it was open. as opposed to the other cemeteries, this one does not seem to be much visited. its more than 100 years younger, established in 1756, but the stones looked more or less the same and equally old.

the above stone was found by tim. and since then i think about it every now and then. although you can read it, you can do so only barely, so it was more or less by chance that he found this one. this is what we read: "in memory of mrs sally morfe, wife of mr samuel morfe who died july 25th 1799 of the cramp in her stomach after about one hour illness aged 26 years & 2 months". i just asked tim what could have caused her sudden death (he is the medical doctor, not me), but his list of probable causes was pretty long... and i have to say i forgot which one he thought was most likely (it is late and, as usual, he went to bed already). but poor sally, only 26....

then.... not very well visible on my picture, but underneath all this, in smaller, italic script it says: "complete (? about that word im not sure) she shone through every scene of life, the tender parent and indulgent wife"

i think that is very sweet. especially in 1799.

for more taphophilia, go here.

Boston skyscrapers

march is not yet going into april and i already took almost 1000 pictures... i was just going through them, and hoped to find one to post. some were dismissed because they were ok, but not ok enough. some because i am too lazy to write something about the pic, but i dont want to post it without writing that something. some because it takes too much time to find info about it at this very moment. some because i cannot choose between several shots. some because my computer is too slow and does not listen to me.

i settled for this one. i liked the bare trees in front of the hancock tower (left) and prudential (right). to the left is the entrance to the park street subway station, and to the right is the boston common. the green fence is there because they are doing some major (re)construction to the park. since months already.... theres always a hotdog stand, and often other (fried) food as well, a stand that has boston t shirts, and there are quite some homeless people sitting around here, usually. i never bought a hotdog at a stand, and i think i never will. somehow i dont trust food from such stands, not even in new york! (or especially not in new york... ?)

Golden dome

i took quite some pictures during the snowstorm in january, but since we havent had any snow since, those pics look a bit out of place.. :( but i like this one so much! today we were here again, its in the boston common, and you can see the state house in the back. today skies were perfectly blue, and the sun was shining. it was really nice walking around, and my wintercoat was too warm...

the state house was builst between 1795 and 1797 (i was surprised by that, somehow i thought it was built more recently). you can visit the state house, but we still didnt get to that...

i like its golden dome, you can see it from many places. when on the banks of the charles river, on the cambridge side, you can see it shine. originally, however, the dome was made of wood shingles! in 1802, it was covered by copper, to prevent leakage. first it was painted grey, and later yellow. in 1874 it got its real golden layer... then i found that it was painted black during world war II. the article doesnt mention why, which was my first question, ofcourse! amazing, how you can just type your question into google, and when its somewhere on the internet, it will pop up.... so.... the answer is..... it was painted black to prevent reflection during blackouts. this to protect boston from potential bomb attacks. i found that here, where you can also read why there is a little pine cone at the very top of this dome (i had never seen that, i guess you have to be closer to the dome to be able to see that).

Where's the....

...snow?! i liked this statue during the one real snow "storm" we had this year. it is in the boston common, and i dont know why its there or who made it... in fact, i had never seen it before, the snow made me suddenly see it... :)

today we had a little snow, tiny flakes. but it was not cold enough for them to stay on the ground. buuuhhh. but... for the economy no snow is good. at least, thats what i read in time magazine. there is more work for construction workers, more gets done, people buy more, and the city does not have to spend millions on snow removal (last year's budget for snow removal was 16 million dollars, in boston!! and they spent it all, maybe even more...) and roads get less damaged (although the roads around here are so awful already, i cannot imagine they can get even worse...).

Real snow!!

yayyy! finally the first real snow of this season..... when going to bed last night it was not yet snowing, which was very disappointing to me. naturally, i woke up several times during the night and had to check the snow... and jeejjj, at some point it was snowing. it wasnt such a spectacular snowstorm as we had last year (we even had several), with strong winds and big flakes... these were tiny flakes... but they were coming down steadily for hours, so we woke up to a nice layer (again, not the knee-deep we had during our first US-snow last year).

we walked a bit around boston this afternoon, above the boston common with the skating rink at the frog pond, such a different view than in the midst of summer (taken form the other side)! unfortunately, some snow drops on my lens... we walked around a bit, and i took some pics from higher up, where young and old were sleighing down. suddenly, a man standing next to us bellowed; "you are not taking pics of my kids, now are you?!" me, surprised and not yet knowing what to say, could only think of this event. then he said: "because if you do, i have to sign a release form". i just mumbled something like "eehmm.. i was just taking a pic of the entire view from here.. ok" but then he said: "i was just joking!! its one of those things i like to say, there are so many photography students around here". pfew...

most of my pics were disappointing.. but i guess over the coming days i will show you more of them anyways.. :) im not sure how long the snow will last, forecast says higher temperatures in a day or so.

Crazy weather

the crazy weather continues! tomorrow is the last day of november, and you can go out with just a cardigan, no real jacket required... its so warm. im not complaining!! i like it! i just remember from last year.. i was wondering when the real cold, and ofcourse snow, would come... the weather remained so mild for so long. especially when compared to the netherlands, where it was much colder. but then the snow came, and it stayed cold for sooo long; i think only by the end of may it was warm again. 

but... this year its more extreme than last; as a result, the skating rink at the boston common had to close early today, and some trees in the public garden started to blossom again, as you can see here.

above was at the cemetery behind our apartment. there is this little pond with a green lawn around, perfect for sunbathing....

Hell no

every now and then there is someone with a large sign telling you about jesus. jeejjj. this was last week in the boston common. jesus or hell. why that? surely i did not go and ask them. its all so negative. no jesus? then hell. what kind of choice is that! i really dont get why those fanatics impose their faith on others. ofcourse, you can just ignore them. but is that what they really believe? jesus means no hell? whats the fun in that? does that mean they only believe in jesus because not doing so means hell? thats quite a bad reason to believe in jesus, if you ask me...

And this...

...is the new state house. or rather, the current state house. that golden dome there... :) its next to the boston common. you can visit it, but i never did (yet). you can see this dome from quite far, if you go to cambridge, at the other side of the charles river, you can see this dome shining..

the old state house (see yesterday's post) is from 1713 and was occupied by the british during the revolution (dont tell occupy boston! they might want to occupy it, but its far too small for all of them!!). on july 18 1776, citizens gathered in the street to hear the declaration of independence read from the building's balcony, the first public reading in massachusetts. the royal (royal?) governor presided here until the new state house (see above) was built on beacon hill in 1798... (i stole this info from here)

While sleeping...

.. in the park you become an easy target. me from one side, two ladies shooting him from the other... 

this was yesterday at the boston common. it was very bright and sunny, but windy and thus quite chilly. many trees have lost their leafs, like the tree right next to the window of our apartment that lost all its leafs from one night to the next, but there are as you can see, still some trees with bright red leafs. its sooo beautiful! 

Tour bus

there are many tour buses in boston, i guess from different companies. there is ofcourse the famous "ducktours" that both drives you around boston, as well as is able to go into the water (as they describe it themselves: a W.W.II style amphibious landing vehicle). i never had the slightest urge to take such a tour. i am somehow always annoyed when they drive by (and they do, very often), they block your view, they stop on the middle of the road to allow the lazy people to take pictures of the "sights" they ought to have seen, they cut you off while driving yourselves (in this case; tim :) ).

this tour bus i saw last week or so. and it is advertising for boats?!! so basically advertising against themselves? a lot of these tour buses also promote that they drive "green", but are they really green, when going through the city with so many at the same time? (often only half-full or less, as they just drive around and tourists can hop on and off).

for me that ad said enough.. :)

Girl talk

im very curious what these ladies are discussing here, but it looks important...

monday we had rain the entire day! today at least it was dry, but the sun was kind of hidden... hope tomorrow will be better again.

Frog pond (2)

remember this picture of the frog pond? some guards were not happy with tim taking pics..., that post ended up on this site, and generated a lot of responses. now yesterday evening i was bored and hopping around on facebook (what a waste of time!), and saw this post at the frog pond page: "Visitors at any public space have the right to take photographs and that is of course true at the Frog Pond. Please accept our apologies that one of our staff members aired on the side of overprotection." actually posted july 12, two days after my post... sadly, they had then had already removed tims question on their page about taking pics, and never wrote him back directly. 

ah well... i thus went to the frog pond this afternoon, without tim, as he only comes back from the netherlands tomorrow, but it was so emtpy there! hardly any kids in the water and not much happening. besides, my view was blocked by these people concerned about whales and dolphins... were they afraid to find one in the frog pond? :) (here is their site, actually sad to read that stuff.., good i never had the urge to swim with dolphins)

Fashionable bostonians

GQ, which stands for gentlemen's quarterly, is a magazine apparently the male equivalent of vogue (oh, am i glad that wikipedia is there to literally explain me everything! how else would i have known what on earth GQ mag is!). they did a poll, which made boston the worst dressed city of america, which in turn was so shocking, that it was on the cover of the free newspaper, cnn, and on the (local?) news. i found back that article and just had to copy what they write about boston style: "Boston is like America's Bad-Taste Storm Sewer: all the worst fashion ideas from across the country flow there, stagnate, and putrefy. To be fair, it's hard to be a fashion capital when half of your population is made up of undergraduate hoodie monsters, including those unfortunate coeds who don't realize that leggings-as-pants were supposed to be paired with tops large enough to conceal their cameltoes." and this: "For the more proletarian-minded, there are the modest little burgs of Cambridge and Somerville, where everyone dresses like the proprietor of his or her very own meth lab." eh....?

well.. what can i add other than the picture above... the socks might be some sort of fashion statement, but after that it only gets worse, and where did he get that hat or whatever you call it?