Tree Bones

My walk on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays to school takes me through a cemetery which is also an arboretum. It is a beautiful piece of land and the most secluded section of my walk. I walk through a park near our house and then next to a reservoir. Both, however have a great deal of street noise with the reservoir walking path close to one of the major commuter routes. The connector streets between these pieces of nature are not too long, so most of my walk is surrounded by trees, birds, and other wildlife. One day in the cemetery, I even came across a coyote.

Today's walk led me past an amazingly still reservoir. Yesterday, the cold wind was making the waves choppy enough to splash noisily on the shore. Today, the pond was almost wrinkle free.

Today, I was struck both in the morning and upon my return trip by this tree. It is beginning to gain color in the tips of its branches, a reddish hue, and I am sure leaves will follow. Right now, however, the stark whiteness of its branches and trunk stand in stark contrast to the emerging color of spring. It is almost as if the snows, now dirty piles hiding in building shadows, is making one final statement.

midday walks

One of the lovely features of being part-time this year is that I can take midday walks with Rose. We walked by some beautiful miniature irises that are blooming along with the crocuses and snow drops. I saw them yesterday and had to return to get a photo.
Also, the utility company has just pruned the trees around the power lines. With the sap running as strong as it is, there are many trees on the street dripping their springs' blood away.

I went to Tags Hardware today to get an outside thermometer having been fooled by good looking days only to find they were very chilly once outside.

Morning glow

This morning as I walked to school, the sun lit everything with a honey glow. This tree, seemed to echo the sun's sentiment that it should be warm. Unfortunately, it was bitterly cold, and I was deceived by how good it looked outside. I didn't wear enough layers to keep me warm, so thawing out was the first thing I did after arriving at school.

a very long backup

Often, I stop my computer backup mid-stream thinking that the once in a while that I let it go the whole night does the trick. However, I decided to let it finish, and found it wanted to go for over three days. Much slower than copying the files, but perhaps the software knows best (humph). I did stop it after two days because I had no way of knowing where in the process it was. I started a new backup, and it gave me a status bar and a file count. That went on for quite a while, but it finally did finish. yay. I didn't want to mess with the machine while it was toiling away, so no blog posts for that time.

Here are some images and video to make up for the long delay (for the people out there who check this thing).
Thursday's walk took me by the same iced part of the reservoir. Winter has receded to only the shaded north bank of this pond.
My backup that took for ever.
Rose in her natural state
Rose in her natural habitat. She pulls clothing from the bins and tosses it around the floor.
Rose is a critic during writing group. She tried to eat Carol's work.
Legs are a little too short to reach the ground on this truck.
The joy of swinging.
On the ground. Rose crawled around, picked up a small stone which I kept from her mouth, and then managed to get a bit of twig in her mouth when I wasn't looking. Had to sweep it out with a finger when I got home and noticed she was chewing.

Waiting Game

Today was a waiting game. First the cleaners came an hour late, and then the real estate appraiser canceled after saying he was coming late. Thus, the errands I had planned to do around Rose's sleeping pattern were kicked in the head, but I didn't start anything major at home because I didn't think I was going to be there.

We did have a visit from Allie and Rachel. We went to the playground, swung on the swings, and hung out at our place waiting for the cleaners. Today, Rose sported the sweater and hat knitted for her by Charlene who is a fiber and bead maven.

Walking again

This morning I walked to school again after not having done so for a while. It felt great. On the way there, I saw the ice sheet that has retreated across the face of the local reservoir. On the way back, I saw some brave crocuses that think the warmth will last.

Who watches?

Well, I am an uncle! yay. More on that later.

I went out to see a movie, The Watchmen. I don't remember the last time I went to see a movie with friends. Those who know my love of movies may find that hard to believe.

I spent the morning at school setting up for the open house. These are the table displays I created.

Art imitates life

I am working away on my current art project for class. We were given an old text book and have to create a modified book that focuses on teachable moments in our lives. I have been going through old photos to use in my modification project, and I came across this one of me. I scanned my parents' boxes of slides (medium format) a few years ago in order to make the images available to all of us in the family. So here I am, an infant, with a bear I still remember and a smile on my face.

Long Friday

Today was very long. I left early to get to school and get the room in shape for this weekend's open house. We then had a faculty professional development day in which I had Rose for part of the day. She was none too happy about having to sleep in the classroom in her stroller. She entertained the other teachers while we were discussing history. I then was going to stay for a few more hours to finish getting materials ready for Sunday's open house, but Reena called to relay that she and her dad were locked out of the house because the lock was not working. I had to come home and break into the house. Allan enjoyed feeding and bathing Rose tonight and gets a full day of her tomorrow while Reena and I go to a couple of parenting workshops.

Winter's dirty secret

Well, it's not so secret! These snowballs are all that remain of the recent snowfall. My students had fun during recess rolling these, and the growing mounds of snow picked up quite a bit of mud on their paths. As the snow melts, the mud collects on the surface of the balls.

Water, water everywhere

The roof above my room at school has a pesky leak. It has been worked on multiple times, but it continues to drip on our heads. As a result, there is much water to deal with which can be annoying at times, but it also leaves some interesting results. This is the underside of a chair. The paper acted as a dye separation as the water crept up with capillary action. I thought the resulting image was eye-catching.

another hdr

I took this photo while on a walk. It is an hdr merge of two images.

Why do I put the shovel away?

Yep, I put the shovel away again. You know what happened next?

Sunday's Walk

Today was as warm or warmer than yesterday. I took Rose on a walk to Harvard Square to pick up comics and just be out in the sun. I think others had similar ideas because the place was swarming with people just sitting around and soaking in the rays. On the way back, I stopped by the Cambridge Artists' Cooperative. This is where I first saw the leaf print plates that Reena and I registered for our wedding. I just window shopped today as the baby carriage was a bit much to bring into the store.
Here is Rose enjoying the warm day. I was in tee shirt and jeans and quite warm.

Looking for Spring

With lack of sleep, grumpiness, and stale air urging me to get outside and walk, I exited the house this morning with the goal of looking for Spring. The air was warm, my browser tells me that it is 54 degrees right now, and the snow is rapidly melting. Water stands and runs everywhere, and the warm breeze carries birdsong and the liquid sounds of running water. The most prominent sign of spring was the amount of people out running or walking dogs. There were few people out just to walk. I did run into the mother and grandparents of one of my students as I walked around Fresh Pond. Some solitude, in an urban setting, was found on a muddy and mostly submerged path along one side of the large reservoir. I love the waterproof boots that I finally purchased in January.The first flowers of spring.

Death of winter

Melting reservoir.

Reflections in a pool on top of ice.

Yellow branches fallen from a spring hued tree.

Last year's cattails.

I ended my walk by visiting Iggy's Breads of the World, a place of much yumminess!

Subsiding Snow

As this last (and final, hopefully) batch of snow melts, it is creates interesting pattens. It reminds me of some sort of animal hide.

The Nature of Glass

I know that many of my posts in recent months reveal my love/hate relationship with the long winters in New England. I do not like the duration and darkness, but I love the ice and snow (until I have to shovel too much of it). Ice, especially, is an amazing substance that appears in a vast array of forms. I think its changeable and impermanent nature makes it even more attractive, because a striking image will be gone tomorrow if not in a few minutes' time.

Glass captures a few of the qualities of ice in a more permanent way. This year's fundraising auction item that my class worked on was a set of four serving plates that they designed the pattern to be etched. I gave some parameters to make the groups create images that would end up looking like a set but still gave them enough freedom to make their own piece. This is the result.

Time of wiki wiki

I have recently received a host of requests to present my work incorporating a wiki into my classroom teaching practice (last year). The first of these was presenting to a group of new teachers at Brandeis University. I messed up the timing of the presentation and did not get them time to mess around with my demo wiki. Other than that, it went ok. I set up my presentation before people arrived, figured out the technology in the room, and then managed to turn it all off minutes before I was supposed to present. gaah. No problems, though. Got it all back on and ready in very short order.

One step closer.

More work got done on the house today. The outlets for the washer and dryer were moved upstairs. Here is where they used to be.
Here is where they are now. Plumber comes Thursday to get the plumbing put in place and to move the toilet a bit.
On my walk to art class, I saw these pieces of ice that had fallen from a gutter. They reminded me of the basalt columns at Devil's Tower (image linked to source page).




















Icicles cling to a tree branch. Pictures can't capture the flashing lights that refracted and reflected sunlight cast as I walked past the ice.

Are we there yet?

Sunday night, the snow started falling. Several hundred schools called off Monday, but I got in bed at 11:00 not knowing if my school would be off or not. I checked again before sleeping, and luckily it was called off.
It snowed pretty hard at night leaving the ground covered with about 8 inches of snow. Lots of shoveling to do, but no rush. The neighbor next door couldn't bury our cars as they were parked in front of our house. The last few snow storms, we have been parked in front of his house, and he dumps all the snow from his driveway on whatever unfortunate car is parked next to it.
Nature dumped enough snow on my car! Love the wind-swept look.
Here is the driveway looking toward our back yard. The apron that leads to the street is shoveled as is the front walk.
The wind created nifty contours in the snow on my car.

Where is spring? Are we there yet?

Paper Cut

I was looking at our ketubah today, and I wondered if Melanie Dankowicz had used the images we sent them of our wedding ceremony. Melanie did the paper cutting and her husband, Harry, does the lettering. Sure enough, on the ketubot page, there we were. Later in the cycle of images, there was a close-up of our ketubah as well.

February's End

In the morning, I went to my writing group which often meets near the Cambridge City Public Works. On Saturdays, they are open to the public to drop off household waste that can be recycled but is not picked up at the curbside. Metal, fluorescent bulbs, electronics, plastic film (like bags, bubble wrap, etc), packing peanuts, and more. I like going there when I am already in the area because I was already using the gas to get there.
On a walk I took later, I saw this tree that was bursting its leaf buds. The bright red color doesn't come through in this photo, but the tree was glazed in a sheen of red.