Lousy parking

when walking to the subway one morning we saw this car... parked like that!! i think the photo does not entirely show how ridiculous this was, and how, relatively, steep.... i guess he/she didnt fit in the normal way you are supposed to park you car, and came up with this solution instead. im just wondering if it was sheer frustration and anger, or perhaps also just for the fun of it...?

we once got a ticket for parking in the wrong direction. something that does not matter (anymore) in the netherlands, you can park however you like, so we were not aware that here that can get you a ticket for that. luckily for us, the ticket never made it to "the system" tim found out when he called to pay the fine (what was it? 20 or 40 dollars or so?), so we never paid... we thus were sure this car would either be towed, or at least get a ticket. but when we got back home in the evening, the car was still parked like this...

around our subway station are 788 parking spots, and they are always, always all occupied (during the week, that is). for some you still have to walk a good 5 minutes to the station, and parking costs you 5.50 per day. i just calculated that that is more than 20,000 parking dollars per week (!!), just for this station. wish that would go straight to me.... !

Burial ground

during the week, we will always goto work by subway, its fastest and cheapest (traffic into boston in the morning, and out of in the evening is more often than not awful). i wish i could go by bike as i used to in the netherlands. tim actually did it a few times, and i did not like that at all. fortunately, he himself decided pretty quickly to stick with the subway (you basically have to bike on the highway at certain parts.. beehh). but on weekends, we often go by car. parking is free then, and no traffic. when driving past charlestown, i always see the above cemetery. i had been wanting to go there since a while, and now that im participating with the taphophile tuesday, we finally did! driving by turned out not to be the same as actually getting there, but we eventually did. as it is fenced off, we walked around to get to the entrance, which was locked! buuuhhh... :( turns out it is always locked. i thus took the above picture through the fence. 

this cemetery is in between blocks of houses, and looks a bit out of place. it has an elevated center, and then many graves seem to be placed arond that, in a circle, kind of like sun rays. it is named the phipps street burial ground, named after solomon phipps, a settler from england. it is the oldest cemetery in charlestown, dating from around 1630! it has 1549 gravestones, and according to the sign, it might be that the layout of the cemetery corresponds to a map of the town. fortunately, a 19th century "beautification" plan to straighten all stones into neat rows was dismissed. there are people buried here from every class and background, the most notable being john harvard. the exact site of his grave is unknow, however, since his marker stone is gone. (most of this info i found here.)

there was a sign on the gate "to enter this site, please call the boston parks department".it feels kind of weird, having to call someone to get access, (how does that work? do they come immediately, do you have to make an appointment..?) yet i would love to be able to walk around there, like this i could not get a good impression of the cemetery. so... another time, maybe... (just a pity i really, really hate to make phone calls..). on flickr i posted 2 more pics that i took through the fence.

for other taphophiles, go here!

How cheesy!!

and its not even a mural... but this is all i got right now. im a little lazy! saw it and ignored it, in boston's chinatown, but then tim said; hey, hey! and well... i took the picture... :)

tomorrow is valentine's day. signs of that are everywhere; the office at our apartment complex asked all residents to pick up their delivered packages as they kept coming in, taking up all the space. shops have entire aisles just for chocolate and other red/heart-shaped candy (they started that beginning of january, some even earlier). and even tonight, at the supermarket one of the employees went crazy over the intercom; "we have roses here, a dozen, they are so cheap, cheaper than anywhere else! we men are in the doghouse, so be her hero, bring her roses. buy some nice chocolate. now do it, really, and here is the place to do it. do your shopping, and get the roses too. and some candy. and since its cheap... you dont even have to spend a lot of money. dont you want to get out of that doghouse... " it went on, and on and on...  (a youtube video about the doghouse (had never heard it before); its rather funny, but a bit long....). 

in the netherlands, valentine's day is not that big (pfew), but here it seems really important...

for some real murals, go here!

Boston & Tim

so.... today a photo of tim & boston, after boston & me... :).  no pink for him... this is from quite a different location. not on the banks of the charles river, but in winthrop, but on the other side of the water you can see boston again. had to look it up, but winthrop is a town, and not part of boston. its tiny, yet densely populated, and cute, with many dead end streets, leading to the ocean. it was established in 1630, and that makes it one of the oldest towns in the us! named after john winthrop. you can read all about him here, as i am supposed to goto bed now....

it was cold today! -4 C during the day, and very, very windy. but soooo sunny, as you can see, so we had to go out and do some exploring....

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...).

Hey, Dali!

sorry, no post last night, i was suddenly exhausted and fell asleep on the couch.. (actually quite a while ago since that happened. at some point it happened almost daily!).

just a quick post to make up.. here we were just driving around, not too far from our apartment (but have no clue anymore where this was). i suddenly saw this (i think) stencil-painted face of (must be) salvador dali on this piece of street furniture. hahaha, almost every day i learn something new, because of this blog (as a result, it also always takes me much longer to write a post than i intended. as it is usually the last thing i do before going to bed.... i usually end up going to sleep later than i should) i was looking up how you call this thing. well, its a fire alarm call box, but normally they are painted red, so im wondering whether this one is still in use (and so i learned that in the UK they call everything placed on streets, like benches, fire alarms etc "street furniture"). 

anyways... these boxes look very ancient, and they are! but they still work, and for example after 9/11 they proved useful in new york (there are 15,000 of those in new york). power and cell phone service were down in large parts of the city, but those boxes are powered from a separate supply and continue to work in the face of outages of both electrical and telephone systems...

behind is a fire hydrant. you cannot park in front of a fire hydrant. always frustrating, when you think you have found a parking spot (parking in boston is horrible!!), the fire hydrant pops up... grrrr. if you do park there, you can expect a parking ticket. or.... if there is a fire... firemen will not hesitate to damage your car... (picture here).

and once again... i wrote much more than intended! i just wanted to show this pic, and write that this is a typical residential street with use houses. that i like these streets, and that they are just as you see them in the movies... :)

Boston & me

i dont have my computer here right now, so im using tims annoying (non-apple) computer, and his photo. of me.. :) in cambridge, photographing the charles and boston in the background. the hat (how you call such a thing? we dutch call it a "muts", here you have such weird names. isnt it called a "beanie"? i think that sounds really weird.. :) ) i bought at H&M, mostly because it was pink, it tends to sit a little weird on my head, as you can see, so i dont wear it much. the perfect photographer's gloves were knit by my friend sylvia, who lives in california, where she probably doesnt need them.... she also knitted me a perfectly-fitting purple hat (beanie?), that i usually wear, but i thought pink fits better with my red snow boots. at least in my world..... one day i show you the boots, i just got them for this winter, but barely had the opportunity to use them so far... :( buuuhhh.

Banning sugar?

this sculpture is in cambridge, in a park called the cambridge common, which is right behind the harvard university campus. i liked this sculpture, but did not really know why it was there. underneath the inscription you can still faintly see that someone wrote "yet they still do" (i think someone should repaint that, its a good addition that makes you think if you didnt when reading the first sentence).

it is a memorial to the great hunger in ireland. both the woman and the man have a child in their arms, and they depict separation due to hunger. the great potato famine was a period between 1845 and 1852. due to a potato disease, potatoes were not available, while a large part of the irish population depended entirely on the potato for food. 1 million people died, and another million emigrated from ireland, causing a significant drop in the population.

regarding food..., today i read an article in nature magazine in which the authors argue that sugar should be taxed, just like cigarettes and alcohol! they write that there are 30% more people obese than there are undernourished (although im not sure this is worldwide or US only). interestingly, while sugar is present in nearly every product, long-long-long ago sugar was only available during a short period of the year; in fruits during harvest, and in honey (but honey is guarded by bees... ). so.. evolutionary we are (still?) not used to taking in so much sugar, yet we all do.... (many people eat 500 extra calories a day, just from sugar additives in their food!! just look at the labels... especially here in the us many, many products will contain high-fructose corn syrup)

several governments are now thinking of taxing sugar, but while you dont need to smoke or drink to survive, everyone does need food..... im not sure making sugary things more expesive will help to reduce sugar intake. but maybe it will help the food industry? if sugar becomes something "bad"/expensive, maybe they will stop putting high-fructose corn syrup in everything?

sorry for the boring post, here is the entire article, which is in fact really interesting. if you cant get to the entire article, i can always send it to you... :)

In between...

julie from taphophile tragics asked me last week about a wider shot of the netherlands cemetery (last week i just showed 2 graves). i took some while we were there, but the sun was so beautifully bright, only the ones from behind turned out ok. as you can see, this small cemetery is literally just in between 2 houses. instead of the next house, there is suddenly a cemetery, you dont even see it when down the street. it just pops up. unfortunately i have no idea what was there first, the residential street, or the cemetery? (the cemetery dates from 1859). i also still dont know why this cemetery is in melrose. i presume it was just a matter of availability, as i havent been able to find info about a dutch settlement or whatever in melrose. there are people buried here from as far as (relatively) worcester, which is an hour by car from here. melrose was a relatively new town, only in 1845 it separated from the city of malden, and became the town of melrose (in exchange for city in 1900). in 1845, the melrose-area got 3 trainstops, and people working in boston in search of a country atmosphere moved here (haha, actually just like tim and me... although it was more that we would never be able to afford the same kind of apartment with all its amenities in the center of boston...), perhaps some of them were dutch.. ?

there is one other pic i wanted to show, but i cannot break my self-imposed rule of 1 picture a day. so, i cheat, and you can have a look here, at my flickr account, for the one grave that was in dutch (and a few more pics of this cemetery). its not a spectacular photo, but the dutch text is just weird, and was hard to decipher, at first. but it reads "hier ligt het stoffelijk overschot van roosje ween", which translates into "here lies the corpse (!!) of roosje ween". i think thats very weird. why not just, here rests, or here lies... why "the corpse"? perhaps their dutch was not that good anymore, and they didnt know "stoffelijk overschot" is not something you use on a grave? (or is this normal? any dutch who knows this?)

for other taphophiles, go here!

Ghost sign

i took this pic 2 weeks ago or so, when we had some snow. this is on cambridge street in boston (i wonder whether cambridge has a boston street? i actually dont think so... :)). although i walk here every now and then, i never noticed this faded mural before. its an old advertisement for quaker oats, "the world's breakfast" (yuk! defenitely not for me!). actually, if you look carefully, you see such faded advertisements on houses/buildings here and there, i like them, as they always look nicely old-fashioned. i was googling around to find more info on this specific one, but... nothing. i just found 2 other blogs that also pictured the one i have here, but no further info.

on wikipedia i did find that these are called ghost signs, brickads, or simply fading ads. the copied wiki-defenition: "a ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising signage that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. the signage may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, or simply indifference by the owner." many of these signs were placed between the 1890s to 1960s, so this one might be decades old! in a time when billboards did not exist and there were no committees deciding as to whether a building would be ruined by such an advertisement or not... 

i think they are interesting, its like peeking into another time, however briefly.... moreover, they are so much more interesting than huge mass-produced billboards! having never noticed this one before, i saw the exact same one somewhere in cambridge later that day, equally faded. from now on i will pay more attention to these signs, so perhaps i'll show you another one sometime...

for more murals, go here!

Super bowl

this is a piece of art by barbara kruger, which i photographed in the museum of art yesterday (on my screen the colors looked very crisp. on my screen, not so much... :( ). we have an entire book with her photo/phrases, which are really interesting. she takes her pictures from different media sources, and puts a phrase/question next to it. often, they really make you think. for example; "when i hear the word culture i take out my checkbook" "your moments of joy have the precision of military strategy", "i shope, therefore i am", are a few of them. the pictures are important too, ofcourse... (so you should really look her up!).

anyways... i realized the one above perfectly describes what i have been watching tonight; the super bowl, the annual championship of the highest level of professional american football. it was the new york giants against the new england patriots. until last week i didnt even know what the super bowl was, or that the patriots were in, or.. whatever. but i watched the entire thing. plus 4 times as much of commercials. my goodness... our host this evening told us that for every minute of playing time, there are approximately 4 minutes of commercials. i know now that guys in tight pants have to get a weird-shaped ball to one side of the field, and during this process they are most of the time lying on top of each other. i also noticed they have a towel hanging from their pants, and some have black stripes under their eyes (to prevent reflection or whatever.... well.. the sun still bothers me sometimes, even though i wear a lot of black eye-make-up too! but... i dont usually wear a helmet, perhaps it has something to do with that). more importantly, some players are really really fat, and i could sometimes see their bellies (yuck), and.. the while the patriots had shiny tight pants, the giants had matte pants, and i now know that shiny pants make your ass look more tight. (of course, this has not been scientifically tested. it could be that the patriot's pants were more tight, or their asses better trained...). 

from the numerous commercials i learned that women are objects. i saw many very pretty, barely dressed ladies recommending some product or another... (another image/text of barbara kruger would have been highly welcome).

all in all, it was interesting, and i saw a little more of american culture...

Giant head

this is one of the 2 gigantic baby heads that are flanking the back entrance of the museum of fine arts in boston. we were there today, and as it was quite sunny and not too cold, i once again tried to picture these sculptures... one has its eyes open, and the other, above, has its eyes closed. they are bronze, and weigh  just 1.6 tons at 8 feet tall.  the sculpture is titled "night and day", and made by Antonio Lopez Garcia.

about every time that we go to this museum (and thats pretty often. although we only go when we can go for free. that is, on wednesday evenings or the first weekend of the month with our bank card), i take pictures of these heads, but im usually not very successfull. they are just sooooo big, and it is such a weird piece of art... when i saw them first i thought there was something wrong with me. i passed by in a bus and wondered if i really saw what i just saw. when i really saw them, a few weeks later, i didnt like them at all. now im not so sure anymore. for sure they are interesting! perhaps one day i will like them... (probably when i am able to photograph them in a way that i am satisfied..)

Road house

i read on the news that there is quite some snow in the netherlands! no more trains, extreme traffic jams.... while around boston they know very well what to do with snow, but there is not much of it (none here, at the moment). this was 2 weeks ago, when we drove to new hampshire, somewhere along the route, off the highway. here and there a house next to the road, in the middle of nowhere. it looks nice.... and it must be rather quiet. but most times either me or tim says, oooh... would you want to live there? na. not really....

Cheese balls

im not very inspired today... so here, some cheese balls...

theres no snow at all. its rather warm (certainly for this time of the year), and i wonder if we ever will get more snow! last year we were immersed in it, the streets were getting narrower and narrower from all the snow piling up on both sides. and now?! nothing... :( i could as well be in the netherlands. although... there its pretty cold now, with temperatures well below 0 (celsius).

believe it or not, but the primary reason i bought this enormous thing (what is it? a box? a can?) was because i thought it would look funny at home. placed atop the bookshelf, its size looked really disproportionate. but, of course... after several weeks, i had to try one. and then a few more. and they were not that good, but they were there, and there were a lot of them. and then.... about halfway or so, they got stale. yuk... not surprising, if you think of it, such a huge box filled with air, and cheese balls. that will make them go stale. is that why there are so many overweight people in this country? because everything is in such enormous packages.. and you do need to eat it, before it goes bad, otherwise its a waste! 

i actually trashed them, they were really not good anymore, but then i realized i wanted to take a picture. for comparison, i put my favorite pink illy-cappuccino cup next to it (which i brought with me from the netherlands, i couldnt leave them behind). just the other day tim and me were thinking how it would be for a real american, one that has never been outside the us, perhaps outside his state, to go to the netherlands. he would find everything small. the houses, the cars. the portions in restaurants and the milk cartons in the supermarket (maximum one liter). the fridge would be tiny too, but that would turn out fine, as most products are sold in at least half the size as they are sold here. but you cannot keep everything for weeks in it, it will go bad, as high-fructose corn syrup is used in much less abundance....(gelukkig!)

woops, i wrote a lot. and that for a picture of cheese balls... :)

Dancing dragon

last sunday we went to chinatown, as they were celebrating the chinese new year (year 4710), which started jan 23rd. the year of the rabbit giving way to the year of the dragon.... (once every 12 years, as there are 12 animals)  i was reading a bit, and did not realize this; in western culture/literature the dragon is a mean, scary beast that needs to be defeated by heroes and so on. on the other hand, in eastern culture the dragon is a symbol of good fortune and intense power.... this could be a good year... ! :) people born under this sign are regarded as innovative, passionate people who are colorful, confident and fearless. 

the dancing dragons were going from door to door in chinatown, seemingly tireless, throwing around lettuce and oranges (this was what they were feeding the dragons). as they were going up each stairs leading to the shops and restaurants, firecrackers were going off. of course, there had to be a policeman guarding this all, but he looked rather bored... (maybe it was too noisy for him).

the theme day for this month at citydailyphoto is animals, so that was a good opportunity to show this pic! :)

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Netherlands cemetery

i am enjoying the taphophile tragics more than you can imagine! i was so eager to do today's post.... and then i didnt have much time... :( on top of that, i was (as often) not satisfied with my pictures and didnt know which one to choose. well, this is what you get... the graves of hannah and simon courant. as you can see, hannah died on may 15, 1881, and her husband less than 2 weeks later. i think it is interesting that their age is precisely noted, but not their date of birth. as you can see, both were born in amsterdam, the netherlands. and guess where those graves are located...! just a few blocks away from our apartment.... we live here now 1.5 years, and i had no clue that very close to the 2 cemeteries i described last week, there is another cemetery. and it gets even more interesting (to me, at least); this cemetery is meant only for people born in the netherlands, from dutch descent, or married to a dutch! i came to know about it when i was frantically searching for info about henry brown for last week's post. then i had to wait till the weekend to finally check it out.... grrr..

this saturday we went. it was so sunny it almost felt like early spring.... we walked to the street facing the main entrance of the wyoming cemetery, an average residential street where we once parked the car... just a little further, in between 2 houses was the little "netherlands cemetery association and roxbury mutual society burial ground"!! one part was still entirely empty, but the middle was quite packed with very old graves, many dating from before 1900. some were illegible, but i could see that many people indeed were born in holland, mostly amsterdam, and some names were indeed typically dutch! i went by every grave (tim got bored, but it was so interesting!).

i have spent quite some time trying to find information about this cemetery. why in melrose?! (of all places..). but the only thing i could find was this page (that led me to this place initially). in 1859, a group of dutch jews (explaining the hebrew on many graves) living in the greater boston area formed a fraternal organization, the netherlands cemetery association, and they opened this cemetery for their members. currently, there are around 475 graves, and it is not affiliated with any temple or synagogue. it is still active, as i saw one grave from 2010 (or was it 2011? i forgot..)

i could not find a whole lot about hannah and simon courant (i have to admit i did not spend a lot of time on that, i was more interested in the history of the cemetery and am frustrated i could not find more). the only thing i could find is that they had a son, mark courant, who was born around 1855 in the netherlands. in 1882, just after his parents died, mark married betsy bronkhorst (she was born in england in 1859, but her family seemed to be from from belgium originally), in suffolk, massachusetts. she was an assistant house keeper, while he was a cigar maker. betsy died already in 1885, and was buried at the netherlands cemetery too, while mark died in 1917 and was buried in woburn, massachusetts. (i found this all here)

there was also supposed to be one grave with a dutch inscription, so of course i wanted to find that one. that wasnt easy, but eventually i did find it (by then tim was really, really bored..). perhaps i will show you that some other time!

for other taphophiles, go here...

Roa mural

i had a really hard time choosing one of the pics i took from the mural i want to show this week. finally i choose this pic, but to see the entire mural, you have to click on it! unfortunately, my pics dont do this piece justice... :( it was sooo impressive! this is in miami, the sunbather that i showed earlier is on the wall to the left. if you go here, you can see a few more pics, close ups etc.

the one above is made by the street artist roa. of course, i had to look what i could find about him online (where would i be without the internet!). roa is from ghent, in belgium. he has painted in many cities in europe and the usa, including london, paris, new york, los angeles, and recently he had a show of his work in paris. he mostly paints animals, in various stages of decay. in this interview i found, he mentions that the type of animal depends on the region where he paints, as he likes to paint the ordinary animals from that location. quote; " I dream to go one day to Africa or Australia to extend my choices". he likes to paint abandoned places, as you can see here (you should really check it out! many beautiful, and funny murals). i think his work is really beautiful, and very well fits the locations!!

here you can see more monday murals.

Sunday slogan

today was a much too long day. beeehhh. its good that in such cases i can always just let the church have their say.... what a great play on tooth decay....  this was during our holiday, somewhere in florida, but already i would have to look where approximately i took this photo. grrrrr....

good night!

Hmmm, pizza!

today we had a pizza from this place for dinner... somehow i got to know about groupon one day (and then livingsocial, and then bloomspot, luckily for me, this was only a few months ago), and now my inbox gets loaded every day with their "daily deals". grrrr.... essentially it means that i now sometimes spend money on things i otherwise wouldnt, "because its so terribly cheap now!". this time it was a coupon for 10 dollars, giving me 20 dollars to spend at upper crust, the pizzaplace. there are always nice rules coming with such groupons (only one coupon per table, only valid till..., not for alcohol, have to spend the entire amount at once, etc etc). ah well... the pizza here is really good, and actually too expensive, so with the groupon it was worth it...  (and then we went to the movies with another groupon, the ticket now only was 6 dollars instead of 11 or 12!)  :)

picture again from last week. all the snow is gone! it was very, very sunny today, didnt feel like winter at all!

Last saturday...

... it looked like this when getting off the subway in chinatown. i was surprised, it actually looked like quite a snowstorm... :) but it wasnt that bad at all, they just hadnt really cleaned the streets here yet. today it mostly rained, but tomorrow its supposed to be sunny, and not too cold.

ah well... im not in a writing mood. good night!