Bridge & Ropewalk

The first time I saw the Tobin Bridge out of the back of the Navy Yard, I was enthralled. It's so big & green and when the sky is blue and bright, it's really striking. I don't think this photo does it justice. Who picked Tobin Green? Wouldn't it be cool if it was painted blue?

The building in the foreground is the Ropewalk. There's a Longfellow poem about a ropewalk. This wasn't the only ropewalk in town; there used to be several of them at the foot of Beacon Hill. This one was a steam-powered ropewalk and it was in use until 1971. It's a quarter mile long. If I had the money I'd buy it just to be able to run a quarter of a mile in a straight line indoors. But the bridge is really bad feng shui, so I wouldn't really buy it. Or maybe I'd buy it, run back & forth for a while, use it for a really great haunted house in the fall, and then sell it back. It's probably full of asbestos anyway.

THE ROPEWALK

IN that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,
Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their threads so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.

At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor
Light the long and dusky lane;
And the whirring of a wheel,
Dull and drowsy, makes me feel
All its spokes are in my brain.

As the spinners to the end
Downward go and reascend,
Gleam the long threads in the sun;
While within this brain of mine
Cobwebs brighter and more fine
By the busy wheel are spun.

etc. etc.

and a pile of displaced snow:



So, I was really uncomfortable standing with my back to the sun for the bridge photo, and I've been watching this snowpile for weeks now. I figured I'd document it. This snowpile is now located on a chained-off piece of tarmac beside an unused warehouse. It used to be located in the middle of the Navy Yard. Backhoes have been carting off the big Navy Yard snowpile. I thought they were dumping it in the harbor-- that's what they did last year, but they were just moving the pile. In this photo, the chunks look like they're all peering expectantly back towards the Navy Yard. "Can we go back now? What about our friends and relatives? Hello? Can we go for another ride?" I like the way the sun models the chunks. It snowed again since the pile was moved, so there's old snow and new snow. Snowpile, in a month you will be a film of gray sludge in a place no one ever goes, but I will remember you. You were a heroic snowpile fighting an epic battle against the forces of backhoe and sunlight. There is no overblown Longfellow poem to you.

More Ice

The ice at the edges of the harbor has cracked into a swirly pattern and each piece has a little fringe of shattered bits and new ice. I like the way it all moves up and down. It's an ice collage. The lines are kind of like the Hockney pool water lines. The MFA would have you believe the whole town is Hockney-mad right now, but I'm not sure we'll be seeing middle-aged women running around town with Hockney reproductions on tote bags. He's got a bit too much of an edge... an uncomfortable unblinking gaze, improbably bright colors and strange fashion preserved for history.



Over on the other side of the locks, it looks like bits of litter in the river have collected ice around their midpoints. It's very strange to see an old coffee cup wearing an ice tutu and bobbing in the water. I didn't get a good shot because it is really brutally cold today, and I felt a little self-conscious about taking pictures of litter bobbing in dirty water.

The locks collect a nasty assortment at the corners in every season. Maybe I will get a shot of it to deter would-be litterers. On the other hand, maybe litterers are immune to a purely aesthetic argument if you look at the kinds of things they throw away-- fast food cups, chip bags, styrofoam.

Ice

Thanks to some wicked cold temperatures lately, the pond is about half frozen. Part is covered with snow, part is scrubbed smooth, and part is still liquid.



The water that was liquid was deep navy blue at midday.

It's hard to capture the blue of the sky when you've got the sun in the frame. Here is how blue the sky was today:

Snow

falling

on

gargoyles.



Today was the wet cotton sky. What can you do with such flat light... no reflections, no shadows, nothing defined in the sky. Wet cotton is useless for many things, including taking pictures of dramatic light. Today's sky was a tough one to work with. I enjoyed it the tiniest bit because it was different. It was some consolation to see the snowflakes change size & intensity.

I knew it was supposed to snow today but I didn't recognize it as a snow-filled sky right away. This morning I was sitting near a bright window reading, and I looked up to see really small snowflakes falling. It hasn't been that long since it last snowed, but snow is an odd enough thing (bits of solid stuff falling all over the place) that it's always a bit surprising, and the ground didn't look particularly wintery to receive it. First it was talcum powder snow. Then it got fewer in number but larger in size. Then it took a break, and later it came back with the kind of big puffy flakes that one might call christmas snow.



It's still snowing, but now it's dark. I can't report on the current volume & intensity.

Zakim

The area around the bridge is so complicated. I think it seems less so for drivers on this and other bridges. There is still a lot of construction activity around the ends of the bridge. I know at one point plans called for Paul Revere Park and the Museum of Science to be connected by a bike path but I'm not sure where exactly it is supposed to go. Last year there were machines that did the same thing as wrecking balls but under the water and I was hoping they were clearing the way for the bike path supports to go in, if the path will go over the water like the one under the BU bridge.



On the Boston side between North Station and the Charlestown Bridge, the empty gray, dusty & concretey area above the tunnel has been fenced off forever. Yesterday I was surprised to see workers installing huge granite blocks-- to me granite means people might be having a close look at the area, even though it seems very perilous to be venturing close to the point where the Big Dig takes a steep turn underground. I have heard that it might be the location of the new skate park. That would be awesome. What would be even more awesome is if the whole Zakim/underground artery thing could be closed to traffic for a day so skateboards and bikes could ride it. Hey, we want our turn on the eighty bazillion dollar project! I would love to ride this part of the roadway. Downhill, at least.

Here is something you need to know about me

It seems I'm unable to hold a camera straight to save my life.



But I like these backlit clouds. This little park looks so clean. I think it's because there was a brutal wind this morning-- everything without roots or not made of stone was swept away. Later on, the light faded and the sky became more uniformly overcast, until just before sunset... the clouds were no match for the wind that was twice as strong near evening. Plus, I'm sure a few of them froze in place and fell to the earth as microscopic ice crystals.

Another thing about this picture is that the city looks deserted. I believe there was a normal amount of traffic on the Charlestown Bridge: buses, trucks, cars, bikes, people. The sidewalk & roadway near the middle of the bridge are made of metal mesh, so while you're walking you can look down and see the water. This photo, however, looks like the dawn of a day when everyone stayed planted indoors in their beds so the wind could blow really hard and not inconvenience anyone.

From looking at this picture I'm sure you're wondering why I walk to work. Why not kayak? It was my intention to do that at least once, but kayaks and canoes and stuff like that are not allowed near the spillways by the Museum of Science dam and the locks. Some nonsense about being sucked into the current or something. How cool would it be if you could, though? You'd have to bug the parking office about where to park your boat.

The glowering sky

This was this morning. I was really trying to get a picture of the digging machine and had to wait until it turned sideways. Then I realized I could get the sun in the frame too. So once the digger turned sideways, I had to wait for crowds of people to pass to get a clear shot. But when the people cleared the street, the traffic would start moving again. I have a whole series: digger turned frontways so you couldn't see the elbow. People in the street blocking the digger. Cars driving along the street. And as it turns out you can just barely detect the digger.

All the while, I didn't notice the clouds changing across the sun. I'm going to add a sun series.






Now I'm really going to stop the camera back up. This is not a black and white shot. I know it's dark.

ain't no sunshine

when she's gone.....



but she's coming back today, hooray!

Sunny day

This picture was not taken today, but today was a sunny day so I'm serving leftovers. The sun in this picture is a lot brighter even though today was cloudless too. It seems the sun shines harder when it's cold, but is it just less S02? I saw yellow haze on the horizon; I had a 2 hour meeting in a skyscraper and had all the time in the world to look at it. I wanted to get a bridge picture today, but I had to wait until the shadows formed angles and it didn't work out.

I love the shadow of the bus stop sign; it makes the light seem so theatrical. I love the reflection on the road. I like having the sun in the frame. As the winter wears on, the sun is higher & higher in the sky in the morning and it's harder to include it in the frame.

I see this scene every day and never get tired of it.



I could drive to work. I choose not to.

Evening picture

The last was a morning picture; this is an evening picture. The ride home is often a treat... for the eyes, for other parts it's windy and cold and you just wanna get home and the train can take way too long to get there.

Capturing the colors of a sunset has always been a challenge for me. Yesterday I stopped the camera down by -7 and the colors came out pretty well. I really wanted to remember the bright line above the clouds. A moment later the sun was melting into the cloudline below like an eggyolk.

I've painted this scene, too, from a wider angle & photo taken on a different day. It may be one of those scenes that appeals to only one person, by means of familiarity or association. For me there's a lot going on. It looks homeward. There are people standing around casually, impatiently & anonymously. There are lights from the cars below, and reflections on the river. It's a bit Hopperesque because everyone is in their own little boxes. You're staring at them (what else are you going to look at-- you're lined up across from them maybe 20 feet away) but they still appear unobserved.



Note to MBTA: love the new windows at this stop.

Step One: Write Something

I'm starting a blog... for the second time, the first effort was abandoned but hopefully this one will take. I'm not sure I can produce the number of words and assortments of thoughts that are necessary. I'm actually kind of muddleheaded about stuff like chronology and facts. We'll give it a try, anyway.

I take photos on the way to work. I'm going to post some here. I don't have a particularly visually striking commute, I love to see the way the sky changes and the way the pavement changes. Sometimes it's like a birthday present on a non-birthday. This evening on the way home, the sky was so beautiful it made me want to cry (admittedly, I was somewhat weepy for other reasons). The sun was on its way down, but still high enough to make a white blaze in a pale yellow field, fading into bruised-looking gray clouds. Despite the sun, there was a fine layer of gray haze, as if it was snowing just a little bit nearby. I didn't get a photo of it, but it made me think of Mark Rothko, whose biography I was reading just yesterday. He claimed his work was not about color, when most people think his work is about nothing BUT color. I'm not sure if Rothko ever did a pale yellow/gray over blue painting. He did work a lot with white paint mixed into colors. Usually I don't like white mixed into colors; I prefer to layer colors instead. If I was painting this sky, though, it would definitely be yellow mixed with white. I'm trying to think of what feeling the pale yellow conveyed, to me at least. I think it had to be comfort. The nearest concrete thing I can compare it to is a gender-neutral baby blanket, and you're a mother with a new baby and you're exhausted & drained & just want to sink your face into the yellow blanket.

This is not from the pale yellow sunset, this is a picture of the pearly sheen of the frozen harbor. This was this morning.