I Heart Boston

I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge what just happened in my state yesterday, in my old college stomping grounds.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by it, but I was.  It was only a matter of time before a major sporting event was attacked.  I just always thought it'd be like the Superbowl or the Olympics.  I admit that I almost expect it.  But not at the Boston Marathon.  Not in my state.....

I am so upset and keep getting all weepy, even though I wasn't there or even close by.  I live about 55 miles south, but I have been on Boylston x Exeter hundreds of times when I lived at Emerson.  That's the Back Bay and it was my old neighbourhood. 

Patriots Day has always been kind of a big deal here in Massachusetts.  Time out of mind, I remember it always falls the first Monday of spring break, it's a state holiday but not a federal one, the Boston Marathon is always run that day, and the Red Sox always play a home game at Fenway at 11:00 a.m., the only day of the year a game starts that early.  You can count on these Patriot Day things in the Bay State, just like you can count on Christmas.  It's part of our fabric, and I didn't forget it at all when I lived out west.  I was always aware of the day of the marathon and by rote would also immediately think, '11:00 start time for the Sox'.  

In April of 1986, my senior year at Emerson and with a month left before graduation, I walked up to the marathon finish line area, although I really don't remember much of that day, except that it was wicked crowded.  I had been working at Boston's Hot Hits WZOU answering the request line for a few months and found the ZOO crew.  I had a lot of friends that worked or interned at ZOU; it was one of the local media outlets that always, always hired Emersonians.  Here's a pic of fellow Class of 86 friends, Tom on the far left, and my best friend Ellen, on the right.  She was the one that got me in at the station because she was working there part time since we started senior year in the fall of 85.  The man in the middle is DJ Harry Nelson, who I grew up listening to on WRKO when I was a little girl. To be in his presence....to get to answer the request line on his show which I did a few times, was like....well, imagine someone you've always admired and emulated, who inspired you to pursue radio and communications, and then getting to work for them and that's what it was like.  The fact that he was a truly a wonderful, kind, patient and friendly man was the icing on the cake.  Everyone loves him. This is my only real memory of the Marathon in 1986.  

Right after the news broke, I texted Russell to let him know since he is unaware of news while he's on the road.  He called me and we talked a few minutes...it was just good to hear his voice and say I love you....he was far away in NJ.  Then Marsha invited me for dinner and it was good to be with people as chaos ensued up north.  But after I got home I had to step away from all the conjecture, media vultures & misinformation.  This is why I left TV news.  It bugs the shit out of me that the stations are posturing to be the first to break new information that they mislead everyone with rumours.  It's so that later on they can do promos saying they were first.  BFD.  It also bugs the shit out of me that TV stations will do whatever they can to find a person that was there or knows someone that was there, as if that person's presence links a whole other region to the tragedy.

I decided that I was gonna have to go to the beach the next day and I was on Scusset by about 9:15.  It was still low tide and I was the only one there.  

So I serpentined up and down the tide lines, looking for flat rocks and glass.

So pretty.

Coast guard

This made me laugh.  It's at the top of the Scusset jetty.

I couldn't resist making a little guerrilla beach art.

EPIC scores today.  This is a record for Scusset.  Those blue chunks are amazing, and the olivine glass is unusual.  The piece next to the blue is a very pale purple, and next to that are 2 pieces of pale aqua.  And a piece of ceramic too.  Plus a couple of heart shaped stones, and up at the top on the left some unusual quartz, a button and a little clam shell.  And a pretty purple bit of shell next to the heart rocks.  Beach brick down the bottom.  

I hope they find the bastards that did this, and soon.

Napier Lane

San Francisco has a lot of hidden gems and 'best kept secrets'.  This includes Napier Lane, The City's only wooden street.  It's located below Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill.  You can see where it's located on this map; the street name is under the 'H' of 'Hill' 

There is only one very narrow road up to the top of Telegraph Hill, and a tiny parking lot.  The waiting time to park up there can be a long one, so often the easiest or fastest way to get up there is the grueling hike to the top by foot.  The tourists go inside the tower, take pictures of the sweeping views of The City, Bay and bridges, jump in their cars and head out.  Oddly enough, I never made it up to the top of the tower.

If the tourists had a little looksee on the back side of the hill, they'd discover the Greenwich Street steps....

The Filbert Street steps....

And the most curious street of all, Napier Lane.  I stumbled on this quite by accident when I was checking out the above staircase streets (several streets in SF turn into staircases and in the 90s I was on a quest to see as many of them as possible).

There are a lot of homes that cling to the side of the hill, and Napier Lane is a real address.  Can you imagine having to move in or out of these places?  Or just bring your groceries home?  The homes sell for close to a million dollars too.  Great views but you'd have to be in great shape to live here!!  This area is directly above the notorious Barbary Coast of 1800s San Francisco, and rumour has it that prostitutes took their clients up to these homes, where they were drugged and 'shanghaied', only to awaken late the next day on a ship far out to sea.

If you ever find yourself in San Francisco, you must check this out for yourself.

Marbles

Back in the early 70s, my elementary school used to hold an annual Marble Tournament.  I never participated in it, but I did play with friends at recess.  I never liked to play for keepsies because I didn't want to lose any of my small bag of them.  When I made my First Holy Communion, my aunt & uncle in New York gave me a rather large collection of marbles as a gift.  Although I didn't really pursue collecting them till I was an adult, I hung onto those marbles and never, ever used them to play. 

I have a very modest collection now, including this awesome solitaire game I scored up in Port Angeles, WA on the way to Victoria.

A maple syrup jar full of pee wees.

I have quite a few jars, glasses and vases with these more common machine mades from the 50s to the 70s.

Sulphides are among the most expensive of the antiques.  I own four of them.  This one is the best of the four and cost me about $250 off ebay.

Antique onion skin

Smaller German swirls and onionskins

Contemporary art marbles are also among my faves.

Several years ago I scored a very large and amazing collection of marbles off ebay for cheap on Christmas Day.  It included some of these unusual pieces.  

More antique onionskins and German swirls.

I made those 6 marbles on the clam shell (the flat one is half of an amber sulphide I got off ebay) in a class at The Bead Factory in Tacoma.  Mine don't really roll, so much as wobble.  

If anyone out there has a collection of marbles they don't want anymore, I'd be more than happy to take them off your hands!  ;-)

Lenticular Clouds

Lenticular clouds are so named because they are lens shaped.  They form over very high mountains, although I have heard of some that didn't.  I used to see them on Mt. Rainier all the time.  The popular expression in Western WA was that Mt. Rainier was wearing her hat.  The most dramatic ones I ever saw are in the photo in this blog's header.  I broke A LOT of traffic laws trying to get home that day, December 5, 2008.  I didn't routinely take my camera to work with me every day, so when I left for home that Friday afternoon and saw the clouds when I got on Highway 16 in Tacoma, I had the pedal to the metal.  They could dissipate at any time.  I called my office to tell Steve and Debby because I knew they'd want to see them.  I called Brian at home and told him to get my camera and wait in the driveway with it.  I flew into the yard, and he practically tossed it through my window because I don't remember actually stopping the car, so that I could get to a good vantage point to shoot.

The following sunrise photos were taken on December 23, 2009, from the same place I shot the 2008 picture (I had a fave mountain-shooting spot in Bonney Lake).

They are sometimes mistaken for UFOs

A teensy one on Christmas Day, 2009.

These were also pretty funky.  I shot this on January 26, 2011.  At that time, I had already decided I was going to pursue a new life with Russell on the east coast, so it was somewhat bittersweet, knowing that these would probably be last ones I'd see.  And they were.

Kalakala

There was a wonderful old art deco ferry in Washington State, called the Kalakala. It's pronounced: kah-LAK-ah-lah, not Kala Kala.  lol  She was the world's first streamlined ferry and was launched in 1926.  'Kalakala' means bird in the local Chinook language.  She ran between Seattle and Bremerton.

There she is in her hey day.  She was the second most popular attraction at the Seattle World's Fair of 1962, after the Space Needle.  She was not without problems, however.  It had vibration issues and was hard to dock.  Retired in 1967, she was purchased by a fish canning company and sent to Alaska as a factory ship, then as a crabbing ship, and finally beached in Kodiak, AK in 1970 to be used for shrimp processing.

Here's a mural of it in Port Angeles.

It was refloated, towed back to Seattle in late 1998 and moored at Lake Union where it continued to be a controversial eyesore.  No one wanted to spend the money to refurbish it.  It was then towed way out to Neah Bay, the farthest Northwestern point in the state, in 2004.  It was almost immediately evicted by the Makah tribe and then towed back to Tacoma.

Poor old thing began to list horribly in Tacoma.  The Coast Guard declared it a navigation hazard, and the owners tried to sell it for $1.00.  There were no takers.  

It's now in such bad shape that restoration may not even be possible.  A very sad ending to the grand lady of Puget Sound.

Jetties

If you grew up in coastal New England, you are familiar with the use of very large rocks on the beaches known as jetties, or breakwaters.  You find them mostly on the Bay side of Cape Cod, and they are placed on the beaches to help slow down erosion from the waves and tides.  Oddly enough there are no jetties at Sandy Neck Beach, despite it's location on Cape Cod Bay.  They were fun to climb and play on when I was a kid, leaping from stone to stone, although I dare not try that now with my bad knees and weak ankles.  Now I pick my way very carefully over and on them!!  I always search the nooks and crannies for beach glass that gets lodged from the shifting sands and tides.  Erosion has taken over as time has gone by over the last 40+ years.  The jetties in front of the giant home that stands where my dad's cottage used to be are all buried in sand.  The 'top rocks' are now just about beach level and the rocks that used to be beach level & created the pool effect have been long buried.  I'd guess there's at least 6' of sand that's on top of them.

When I was growing up and went to our cottage on Spring Hill a lot, the jetties were my fave place to play. Like little beach forts made of rocks.  It was fun to play around them during high tide because the large spaces between the ones that were beach level filled up with water like little pools.  I used to sit on the rocks for hours, daydreaming and and watching the water.  If it was windy, you could sit on the beach with your back against the rocks and it'd be more comfortable.

I shot these on Town Neck Beach, near the entrance of Old Harbour in February.

Incline Village, NV, Home of Bonanza!

We're not a one to saddle up and run -- Bonanza!
Any one of us who starts a little fuss
Knows he can count on me
One for four, four for one
This we guarantee
We got a right to pick a little fight -- Bonanza!
If anyone fights any one of us
He's gotta fight with me!

Bet you didn't even know that the Bonanza theme song had lyrics!  Well it does.  And for many years, you could visit the Cartwright house in Incline Village, NV.  

When my dad and I went to California for three weeks in 1988, one of our destinations was the Ponderosa Ranch.  It's on the Northeastern shore of Lake Tahoe.  I went again in 1990.  It opened in 1967, at the height of the show's popularity, and closed in 2004.  The land was owned by the Anderson family, who frequently had people show up on their property, asking to see 'The Ponderosa'.  They seized the opportunity for a money making venture and contacted NBC and producer David Dortort to discuss opening up a theme park on the property.  Only 15 episodes of the show were ever shot on this property, however.  The rest were shot in Los Angeles, mostly on soundstages!

 Hop Sing's kitchen.

There's ol' Ben!

The actual costumes worn by Dan 'Hoss' Blocker and Michael 'Little Joe' Landon.

 The view of North Lake Tahoe from the ranch.

Also on the property was a replica of Virginia City.

There was also a chapel (not shown) where people could get married.

You could even get a Hoss burger for lunch if you were so 'inclined' (see what I did there?).  I was not.  lol

Unfortunately the land was purchased by a billionaire software developer in 2004 and closed the theme park.  The son of the original ranch owner sold it because the land value was so high.  It's a shame that, as usual, the dollar means more than sentimentality.  Supposedly a 'new and improved' theme park was planned but nothing has been done, and the last I heard, it was sitting there empty.  I just hope they don't raze the buildings and turn it into a parking lot or strip mall.

How Great Thou Art

"How Great Thou Art" is an album by Elvis Presley which came out in 1967.  I am not an Elvis fan, but the picture on the front of the album is the First Church of Christ in Sandwich.  

Li'l ol' Sandwich featured on a Presley album!  How cool is that?!