Rain, rain...

...& rain. the past 3 days we had quite some rain. its not too cold, during the night its even too warm, sometimes. ah well, the weekend was really warm, with no rain at all!

above is in new york, a while back already (i think it was in october?), when it suddenly started raining during a protest (it  was the slut walk protest, actually). real new yorkers often tell everyone, whether you want to hear it or not, that new yorkers wear black, black and nothing but black. even their umbrellas. i think thats just bullcrap.... just like any other place, there are people who are dressed in all black, but there are also some that like colors, as you can see here. besides, dont most people have a black coat, just because its easiest and fits with anything else you wear.. ?

Person P46

yesterday i showed you a picture of the last remaining building of the metropolitan state hospital in waltham, which closed in 1992. we were there the last weekend of april. one evening, when i planned to post a picture of it here, and i was looking up some info on the history of the hospital, i stumbled upon a blog that showed its cemetery! cemetery?! we had walked around the grounds quite a bit, but we didnt see a cemetery.... but the mere fact that there was a cemetery associated with the hospital meant that we had to go back and find it, which is what we did last saturday.... even with the directions printed, we had a hard time finding it, we went wrong twice (really, really wrong), before we finally found it; the metfern cemetery. its almost 3/4 of a mile away from the hospital grounds, in the middle of the woods...
above you see one of the "gravestones". P 46. thats it. thats the grave for a person. no name. just a number, and either a P or a C in front of it. P meaning the person was protestant, and a C for Catholic. they were separated on either side of the grassy field (more pics here on my flickr account). some of the markers were toppled over, some were overgrown and others were unreadable. imagine that. you die in a psychiatric hospital, and then you are buried as a number. in fact, between 1880 and 1946 people from the metropolitan state hospital and the fernald school (an institution for people with developmental disabilities) were buried at the mount feake cemetery without ANY individual marker, so this individual number can be seen as an "improvement", which is how they buried their patients from 1949-1979; approximately 300 patients are buried here like this. my questions; why did this occur at another, their own, cemetery? and what happened after 1979? are there any records of the names of the people belonging to these numbers?! 1979 is not that long ago; did they really think this was the way to do it, even just 30 years ago?!! (this is just a subset of my questions...)

as you can see in my set on flickr, it is now sort of clear that that open spot in the middle of the woods is a cemetery, but that didnt seem to be the case originally as you can see here in a picture taken in 2004. moreover, when construction began for the fancy apartments that replaced the hospital, workers were unaware of the cemetery and made part of it a road to be used for heavy construction equipment.... 

im glad there are many blogs etc swimming around on the internet, telling us about these cemeteries (there are more, and i will use another tuesday to show you), so that they still will be visited from time to time.....

for more taphophilia, go here!

Psychiatric hospital

2 weeks back we went to waltham. for a certain supermarket. as i thought it was too much of a drive for just a supermarket (some 30 minutes), i googled around a bit to see whether there is anything interesting to see in waltham. i then found that the above building is on the "national register of historic places" AND is abandoned... so i had to check that out. well... it used to be the administration building of the metropolitan state hospital, built in 1927. built as an enormous complex, with many different buildings on 330 acres of land, it housed the mentally ill. in 1992, it closed, in line with the state's policy to close mental hospitals to cut costs and to move patients into private care. this hospital is located in a rural area, with lots of woods around it. there is not much to be found on wikipedia about it, aside from the sad story that one patient murdered another in 1978, and kept several of her teeth as a souvenir. some other sites mention the place is haunted, since the patients were treated very badly, often.

here you can see how huge the complex was. underground all those buildings were connected by tunnels, so that staff and patients could get to other buildings easily during winter, etc. in 2007, all those buildings were demolished and an apartment complex was built. i think i read somewhere that they did use the foundations for some of the buildings. now you can live on the grounds of a former psychiatric hospital for "just" 1800 dollars a month (1-bedroom). 

i dont understand why they left the building like this. if it is a building of "historic interest", why do they leave it all boarded up? the entrance full of graffiti? it makes its sad past even worse, i think...

if interested in some pictures from the insides of the buildings in abandoned state, click here, and tomorrow i will show you some more pictures of this place.

Abandoned swings

as you can see, these swings have not been used in a long time.... yesterday we saw many of them.... the grass so high around them. i also learned something; when exploring in such high weeds with bare legs, they get itchy... but it was soooo hot this weekend!!

i will tell you more about the place where we saw these swings another time; im still reading about it and trying to figure it all out.... now first some sleep!

Out exploring

today we did a lot! it started actually last night with a movie, and then today we went to the place where that movie was filmed. we also pretended to be interested in an apartment, just so we could see the inside of a building. which turned out to be so impressive that we would really move there had it been closer to boston... (and our lease really expired sometime soon, and not in a year). after that, we went to 2 cemeteries i really wanted to see. one was quite hard to find (we went the wrong direction 2 times before we were on the right path, somewhere in the woods). when driving to our next destination just the supermarket, haha), we ended up at a place that seemed to be entirely abandoned (and had many buildings!), but upon closer inspection it seemed not to be abandoned entirely. that was just soooo weird, and a little scary. after that (still on our way to the supermarket) we suddenly saw a lot of people dressed in medieval outfits, or something like that. there was food, music, some dancing and what not. we had no clue what it was but it was great people watch (see above. im just frustrated this particular pic did not turn out better), and then it was time to go home again (after the overcrowded supermarket). a very interesting, although sometimes confusing, day, haha. now i have many pics to sort out and background information to find, but surely i will post more pics in the coming days!

My muscles...

....can you see them? have you heard about them? does it help if i just straighten my back and flap my arms around like a monkey? do you see them now??! perhaps you understand what i mean...

sometimes here in the gym at our apartment you see guys like this as well. sometimes, when im trying to lift some weights or biking really hard, tim is walking around like that. or pretending to lift some very heavy weights while maintaining the "real cool guy with huge muscles" posture. what else can i do than laugh? well, sometimes it annoys me, or i am embarrassed and/or afraid that the guys who seriously walk around like this are offended... one of them even runs like this on the treadmill, haha... sure, im not used to anything. before coming to the us, i had never been in a "gym", and surely didnt work out there myself... nowadays i dare to go alone (in the beginning i would only go when tim went).

yep, another with the blossom trees. were they working out or just showing off..?

Blossom roof

im still not done with the brooklyn botanic garden. here another picture... as you can see, it was really crowded. everyone brought children and cameras, it seemed.... 

my computer is soooo slow at the moment.. :( it takes forever to do something. anything. viewing my photos, etc. perhaps its time for a new one, but spending nearly a month of salary on an apple computer is just SO much...! (today i read that a qualified car mechanic makes 100,000 dollars a year, before taxes, which really makes me wonder whether that could be an alternative career path for me....? do you need to be able to drive a car for that? :)

Harvard yard

this is harvard yard; the oldest part and center of the campus of harvard university. the oldest building still standing dates back from 1720. harvard yard was locked down for several weeks last year, when some students played "occupy boston" and had tents in the grassy area behind the people you see in the pic (as you can see in my old post here). it was then only accessible to those with a harvard id, and thus rather empty, while normally its a very touristy area! it is also the home of harvard freshmen (first year students); 13 of the 17 freshman dormitories are located in harvard yard (you see 2 of them in the pic). must be weird living in a tourist hotspot, although i think most harvard students actually enjoy this attention....

as you can see, also here the grass turned freshly green; it really makes everything around here very pretty (only now you are not allowed to walk on it anymore).

Caged Gracie

this is a life-like statue of grace sherwood allen. she died before turning 5 years old, of the whooping cough (an awful bacterial infection still affecting nearly 50 million people each year, killing nearly 300,000), in 1880. the statue is made of marble, by sidney h morse. without the glass vitrine, it would not have been white like this, being exposed to harsh winters and hot summers for over 100 years. it would have been greenish from algae and what not, like all the other stones and statues. but.. to me it was a little eerie. poor little gracie. caged forever. even worse; during winter this glass cage is covered by a metal one to further protect this "historical object" that it now became.

this is at the forest hills cemetery, of which i showed you pictures earlier. early march, the trees were still bare and the grass was yellowish (normally covered by snow, or just recovering from snow during that time of the year). we had visitors this weekend (from texas), and they themselves wanted to see a cemetery! jeejjj! so we drove to this one, as i have decided it probably is the most beautiful/interesting cemetery in boston. had it been beautiful last time, it was even more amazing this saturday, with the grass so green and blossom trees full in bloom. that time i sort of searched for gracie, but could not find her. we did see some metal thing that we joked could be a rocket of some sort; she then was still caged! and we just had walked around and around and had no clue that gracie was patiently standing underneath. poor little girl. 

her dress is very pretty, also from the back, but i now see i did not really take pictures of that side..... next time, as we will surely return to see how this cemetery looks like in summer.... (if i have the patience to wait till summer).

for more taphophilia, go here..., and here are some more pics of little gracie.

From afar...

... you can still faintly see the boston skyline! just compare it to this picture...
above we were in gloucester, rockport, or somewhere in between.

Whats there...

... to see?! 

this is an old pic, taken during the st patricks day parade. it was funny to see the kids all like above, suddenly. something interesting surely was coming! (it turned out to be a big red elmo....).

this weekend was busy, we had friends over and did "boston sightseeing". even so we do that almost every week by ourselves, im somehow quite tired now!! but it was nice (and i ate too much. beehh. tomorrow i have togoto the gym)! we even went bowling, saw some cemeteries, a museum and whatnot....

Some sightseeing

here you see the boston skyline from the cambridge side, close to MIT.

Wedding shoot

whenever i see a wedding shoot going on i get excited. i like to take some pics too. but not the standard ones the real, professional photographer is taking.... this one seemed like a real fancy one! i have often wondered about the clothes for the bridesmaids. who pays that? who chooses the dresses? so i asked some real americans and they told me that sometimes the bride let them decide, "just" tells them the kind of fabric and/or color. or she chooses, or all of them together. often all the dresses are the same, as above. but the bridesmaids themselves pay for them...

when we were wathing (and photographing) the wedding spectacle a security guard ask everyone not to do so. "since they paid for their privacy". they were in the brooklyn botanic garden. on a saturday. while the blossom trees were in full bloom. so... what privacy?! i just looked up, a shoot, for up to 20 people, costs 300 dollars (thats for the botanic garden, and ofcourse does not include the costs of the photographer and so on...), is 45 minutes and comes with a security guard to enforce time limit and to make sure the session is not "disrupted". ah well, by then i had taken my shots... :)

Spot the...

.... deer!

do you see them? we saw them when having a walk in the woods in lynn, 2 weeks back. 1 was actually on the main road, but ran away upon hearing/seeing us. they were not very scared and just did their grazing a little further away from us. amazing how they just blend in... i guess thats how they were designed... :)

Happy feet

just a quick post. we were so busy cooking/baking various homemade things (bread, dutch apple pie..) this evening, that we didnt have time to eat... or almost. it was almost tempting to go to the mc donalds to have something quick, which we both found very funny. then we did make some dinner...

above stone i found at the local cemetery. i expected somehow that it belonged to a young(er) person, but he was quite old. i only took pics of this side of the stone, and dont remember the name anymore. there was no reference as to why this was on the back. i found it a little odd!

for other taphophiles, that probably did a lot more effort for their posts, go here... :)

Dutch baby!

it is theme day again, and this time its "bakeries". this evening we spent quite some time making bread.... tomorrow we will bake it, so no picture of that.. anyways, as i wrote before, im not that good at taking pictures of food..

above a dutch baby we now sometimes make during weekends. its so good! i had never heard of a dutch baby before, and it has nothing to do with the netherlands, as far as i know. there is a wikipedia-entry about it (here), if you would like to read more about its origin; apparently it was introduced during the first half of the 1900s somewhere in seatlle. wikipedia also says that its similar to the dutch "poffertje", but its not!!

how to make one? preheat the oven to 400F. then mix 3 eggs, 2T sugar, 2/3 cup milk (buttermilk is ok-ish too, if you dont have milk, but it wont puff up as much), 1/2 cup + 2T flour, 1/4t vanilla, 1/4t salt and 1/2t cinnamon. while doing that, also put an ovensafe dish into the oven (like a round pyrexdish) with 1 to 2T butter. the dish should get hot and the butter melted, then spread it evenly over the pan. dump in above mixture and put it back into the oven until it puffs up. it really puffs up, thats so funny to see! then sprinkle some lemonjuice onto it and some powdered sugar and enjoy!! (i like to add a lot of lemonjuice, it tastes soooo good with the pancake and the sugar). above we went a little crazy, and added sliced strawberries. we got 3 entire boxes for only 5 dollars, but their taste was not the best. to get it better, i incubated them for a while with some liquor (like rum, or whatever you like), sugar and lemonjuice. when the dutch baby was done, we put the strawberries on and put it back in the oven just until the strawberries were nicely warm. hmmmmmm......!! the recipe i got from here, i just reduced the butter as it is far too much and upped the cinnamon... now i just hope our bread tomorrow morning will turn out good...

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

While driving...

... dogs like to stick their head out of the window. i always find it so funny, even cute, sometimes... :)

this was taken when the weather was a bit better. now we have heavy rain, and its a little chilly. but it makes boston very green, trees are getting leafs again and grass is coming back. pretty! 

(this should have been posted last night, but somehow i fell asleep on the couch. that usually doesnt happen to me on a monday.... grrr!)

No news

no news today... (that sentence always reminds me of this song, which i only know because it was once used in a dutch commercial for... milk). i still didnt look at the pics i took yesterday (grrr!), and i didnt take any new today. it was time for some house cleaning. i keep finding it frustrating that this task is never ending. it takes so much time to do, and it can be tiring. worst of all...  the reward is... that you have to do it again, eventually. and again. hmppf.

ah well...

(this pic was actually taken at the occupy boston-camp, but i didnt find out what you are supposed to tell all your friends)

Freaky image

who doesnt know this image? i never entirely saw the movie, but i think more or less everyone knows this scene, and to which movie it belongs...

today we drove a bit around boston, and went to see the remains of a psychiatric hospital. once, the grounds were huge, but now only one building remained. it is abandoned, but it was interesting to see... i actually wanted to post a picture of it and write something about it, but i spend the entire evening reading about hospitals for the "mentally ill", looking at other blogs, reports of such places being haunted, photographs of people more brave than i am who went inside such buildings to picture all the creepiness. there are many huge psychiatric hospitals in the us, and many are closed by now. many abandoned, others converted to luxury apartments... highly interesting (but also sad) to read about all that stuff! but.... its way past midnight and now im too tired to look at the photos i took myself. grrr...  so... you will have to do it with this freaky iconic image of jack nicholson that we saw in new york last weekend. 

good night!

Free ride!

saw this on the window of some shop, quite a while ago... 

the week has gone by so fast! this evening me and tim both started with (almost) the same ingredients for making bread. only he used yeast and i used a sourdough starter... and... he is better at kneading the dough it turns out than i am. tomorrow morning we will bake them to see which bread tastes better. im very curious!! perhaps soon we wont be buying bread anymore...