I pass the Lincoln Public Library every day on my commute to Cambridge.  Today it was decked out with American flags and a lovely wreath.  I have no doubt this was done to commemorate Memorial Day which means I have driven past it two times this week without noticing. I often use my commute time to think about design challenges at work which renders me oblivious to anything other than collision avoidance.

The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurs (NFTE) helps foster a future generation of business owners by working with high school students in under-resourced communities to develop the skills needed for success.  Each year they sponsor a nationwide business plan competition. Students have 7 minutes to pitch their business concepts and 3 minutes to respond to questions from judges.  This evening I had the honor to serve as a judge in the Northeastern Regional Finals which were held at District Hall in the Seaport district. The top prize at this level is $1,500. The top two finishers will advance to the Nationals where the first-place winner will receive $15,000 to be used for their business or for their education. 

With the grass in the field behind our house growing taller, a number of deer have taken up temporary residence.  Each morning heads can be seen popping up to survey their dormitory.  I only spotted two today (see if you can find them in the photo) but I have seen as many as ten before. 

Despite an overcast day, Jeanine and I spent the afternoon walking the grounds of the 281 acre Arnold Arboretum located in Jamaica Plains.

The Arboretum was established in 1872 when the trustees of the will of James Arnold (1781-1868), a whaling merchant of New Bedford, Massachusetts, transferred a portion of his estate to Harvard College. Arnold envisioned a park which contained “all the trees and shrubs . . . either indigenous or exotic, which can be raised in the open air. The Arboretum is now part of the famous “Emerald Necklace,” a 7-mile-long network of parks and parkways designed by Frederick Law Olmsted for the Boston Parks Department.

On our drive home we passed through the Chestnut Hill and Fisher Hill neighborhoods where we paused at the Fisher Hill Reservoir Park. The reservoir was built in 1888 to supply water for Brookline and retired in 1970. It was recently transformed into a public park containing a soccer field with spectator seating on the sloped landform, surrounded by various landscapes: a reconstructed woodland, meadow, and wet meadow. The original gatehouse (pictured below) is listed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks.

The New City Microcreamery was voted by Zagat, as one of the 15 hottest ice cream shops in the United States. Located in Hudson, MA, it was our destination for an early evening family outing. The expressions on Maya and Kyle’s faces tell the story as they return to the counter for a second order. Made on-site with locally sourced ingredients flash frozen with liquid Nitrogen, the ice cream lived up to the hype. Fortunately for our belt lines, the shop is located 25 minutes away which should limit our visits to special occasions.

WaterFire centers around a series of nearly 100 bonfires that blaze just above the surface of the three rivers that pass through the middle of downtown Providence, RI. The string of fires illuminates nearly two-thirds of a mile of urban public spaces and parks, as residents and visitors gather to stroll along the river, listening to music and watching performances.  Although it seems far away, reaching Providence for Jeanine and I took less time than my commute into Boston.  We arrived late in the afternoon and started our visit at the State House where several young ladies were celebrating their Quinceañeras. We then walked along the river and stopped for dinner at an Irish Pub.

The Waterfire festivities were kicked off with a Japanese drumming performance followed by the lighting of the floating bonfires.

At the risk of being overly nostalgic, I am posting another batch of athletically themed images from May 2005.  Kyle still plays soccer on rare occasions but can be found weightlifting at the gym everyday. Nicolai still plays volleyball and soccer with the same intensity as he did in his youth. Maya has moved past soccer to ultimate frisbee while Jeanine continues to ride her bike and play tennis.  I am approaching the end of my soccer playing days but still share the pitch with more than half my teammates from 13 years ago.

This month marks the 13th anniversary of this blog and this is my 6,927th post. Between photography, post-processing, and writing, I spend an average of about 15 minutes each day (72 days in aggregate) keeping it updated. A labor of love, no doubt; but also a time each day to relax while photographing and writing about the people I love and the adventures we pursue. To put 13 years in perspective, here is a look back at the family from May 2005.

At Superpedestrian we have been working recently to diagnose some problems we have seen with one of the seals we use on the Copenhagen Wheels.  Using my camera stand and a ring light, I took a high-resolution photograph of a suspect seal so that we could use available software to perform critical measurements (a poor man’s optical comparator).  The most tricky bit of this setup was ensuring that the camera sensor plane was dead parallel to the seal.  I also made a set of images with my flatbed scanner which offered higher resolution at the expense of 7 minutes per side scan time.

The family returned to Concord arriving just after 1 am this morning.  I had much to catch up on at work and little time for anything else. These photos were taken yesterday before Nicolai’s commencement ceremony. I was up before the sun and was well positioned in time for golden light at the Garden of the Gods.

Nicolai graduated from Colorado College today with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education. Over the summer he will be doing professional development for the college museum’s docent staff. In August, he will join the Teaching and Research in Environmental Education (TREE) program staff as a fellow. He has also been accepted into the Colorado College Masters Degree program in Education which he will begin in September 2019. Nicolai has thrived at CC, made a wonderful group of friends, and taken advantage of all his college experience had to offer. We are very proud of him.

Jeanine and I enjoyed a walk on the Colorado College campus and through parts of downtown Colorado Springs this morning.  Seating and stages for tomorrow’s commencement ceremony were already set up and worthy of an aerial photo based on the colors and geometric symmetry. If you examine the set of black chairs on the right, you will notice that they form a point with two chairs at the end.  This is where I will be seated during tomorrow’s event, carefully picked for the angle it offers of the stage and unobstructed sight line.

After our walk, we rejoined the family and those of Nicolai’s roommates for a lovely brunch.  Afterward, we gathered the group for a photo in a nearby park my first such photo using the drone.

Later in the day, the sibs hung out while Jeanine napped and I set off to visit Seven Falls. It is worth a double click to examine these falls covering a drop of 181 feet. 

This evening we dined at Four by Brother Luck. Brother Luck (that is the chef’s real name) was the winner of Food Network’s Beat Bobby Flay where he won the judges over with his love of pork and also a finalist on Food Network’s Chopped. Our four-course meal was delightful and shared with Nicolai’s roommate Thomas, his family, and Karuna. Afterwards, we attended Colorado College’s Commencement Reception and Dance where Nicolai performed on the keyboard with his band. It was the first time the family had a chance to hear him play in public and he was fantastic.

Earlier in the day Jeanine and Maya walked through, Kyle ran around, and I enjoyed photographing the Garden of the Gods. Despite overcast skies, it was nice to be in the great outdoors. Nico joined us afterward for a truly memorable breakfast at a nearby restaurant of the same name.

Jeanine, Kyle, Maya, and I flew to Denver this morning and then drove to Colorado Springs. There we were reunited with Nicolai and introduced to Kubo, the dog he gifted to his girlfriend Karuna. He is very nice and reasonably obedient. It is very clear that we are a dog family. Kubo received as much or more attention than Nicolai.

When Maya joined the ultimate frisbee team at Olin College she was new to the sport. Her only frame of reference was soccer which, for those who know the game, involves a great deal of physicality. Her Olin teammates were amused when she innocently inquired at the teams’s orientation meeting if ultimate frisbee was a contact sport; it is not, she was informed. During her first practice game Maya leaned heavily on her soccer training and apparently on the opponents she was guarding as well. This style of play quickly earned her the nickname “Punchy.” On most levels this is really not a very apt nickname for Maya, but it does have a slight ring of authenticity to it — a debate with Maya leaves you feeling like you just went 15 rounds in a boxing ring with the champ. It remains to be seen if “Punchy” will replace her current family nicknames of “Maya Moo” and “Maja.”

Earlier today she moved out of her campus dorm room and returned home having successfully completed her freshman year of college. She will be here for a couple of weeks before heading to Indianapolis where she will begin a summer engineering internship with Rolls Royce.

Before the rains struck yesterday, I was asked to photograph some Copenhagen Wheel-equipped bikes for an upcoming review article. If you look closely, this bike does not have a kickstand yet it is standing upright with no visible means of support. It is about two feet from the wall behind it and there are no strings or rods of any kind supporting it. Any guesses as to how this was done? I will share the answer in tomorrow’s post.

My work commute is bad enough under normal circumstances. Add in torrential rains and it becomes downright unbearable. It took me 1 hour to travel the first 3 miles of my return home this evening. I could have made better time on foot. The final 17 miles took another 30 minutes making for a very frustrating experience. I made a lot of experimental photographs while stuck in traffic including the one above. It is taken through my rain drenched windshield of the car and traffic lights in front of me.

Olin’s Expo is an end-of-semester celebration of student learning and achievement, where students from every class share their project work through poster sessions, interactive demonstrations, and artistic performance. The projects range in topic, including but not limited to course assignments, competition teams, passionate pursuits, and research projects. Jeanine, Kyle, Caleb (Maya’s boyfriend) and I were in attendance as Maya shared two of her projects. The first a mobile app called Thrifter, a sustainability project aimed at extending the life of used clothing by facilitating barter exchanges between interested parties. The second, a data visualization project showing the shooting location and conversion rates for NBA players compared to league averages over the last seven years. Maya was as confident as she was ebullient. It was an inconvenient time of day to miss work but I am very happy I did even if it meant staying at the office until 10:30pm to make up for it.

Having decided to give my knees a couple of weeks to recover from soccer competition, I decided to photograph my teammates as they cruised to an 8-0 win this morning. When you reach the over-56 age group, the game becomes less physical and more strategic. While just as satisfying to play it does not produce the same level of photographic drama that can be found in younger age groups. Even so, there was still plenty of action to shoot. A full set of photos from the game can be found here.

The 2,100-acre Crane Estate in Ipswich was home to the family’s summer country mansion built between 1924 and 1928.  The Great House, as it is called, contains 59 rooms and is surrounded by no less than 21 outbuildings. I stopped here briefly yesterday as I drove from Rockport to Plum Island where the final three photos were taken.

Rockport is a quaint and extremely photogenic fishing village and artist colony located at the tip of Cape Ann located about 40 miles northeast of Boston. I have visited several times and taken many photographs of the iconic Motif No. 1, a red fishing shack at the end of a granite wharf. The picturesque old structure may be the most painted building in the United States, if not the world. It has also appeared in movies, as an award-winning float, on magazine covers, on a postage stamp, in a 1960s Winston cigarette ad and as a Kentucky bourbon bottle. Using my drone, I was able to capture some new perspectives of the shack and bay.

I was deleting old text messages this morning and came across this photo from Maya of a project she did with a partner at Olin. I believe they had to design a boat hull and then mathematically predict at what angle it would capsize followed by experimentation to confirm their calculations.

John F. Kennedy was born in a house on Beals St. in Brookline, about a mile from my office. Later this month will be the 101st anniversary of his birth. I decided to make it my morning walk destination. It is a rather simple home which really makes you appreciate the ambition of the Kennedy family. During my walk, I had a chance to enjoy some very beautiful spring flowers in bloom.

If the water isn’t frozen, you can expect to find crew teams training on the Charles every morning. Now that warm weather has arrived, I may elect to do a little rowing in the morning instead of walking. This will require switching vehicles with Kyle since the Audi is the only one of our cars fitted with a roof rack. I have kayaked the Charles before but have long since forgotten where I was able to park and put in.

A business meeting in Bedford took me past a lovely park this morning. I paused for a few minutes to see what I could see and was glad I did. I love living in such close proximity to beautiful natural settings. As Jeanine and I contemplate where we will move after downsizing, it is becoming increasingly apparent to me that I would not be very happy living in an urban center.

Alissa is my only sibling to follow in the footsteps of our parents who met on the ballroom dance floor and danced together for the rest of their lives. My mother, soon to turn 90 years old, still dances every week.  Alissa has created a website to document her performances and those of her daughter Rachel and husband John as well as those of our mother and father.  The impressive collection of videos can be found here.  I often think of myself as being fairly athletic (my substandard performance on the soccer pitch this morning notwithstanding) but the truth is that both of my sisters are even more so, Alissa with her dance and Mayela with her swimming and hiking.

A brief visit to the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge netted some nice photos. Pictured above is a marsh wren, the first I have been able to capture in 15 years of visiting.  They are very small and rarely stay perched for more than a few seconds. Below we have a clouded sulphur butterfly and water snake. The former has to be followed until it lands; virtually impossible to photograph in flight. The latter is easy to photograph but hard to find.

(a) Toddler chain gang

(b) “Make Way for Ducklings” reenactment

(c) Iditarod training

I walk to Central Square from my office twice daily; once for breakfast and again for lunch. The shortest path has become quite banal so each day I seek to find a new, if somewhat longer, route. Today I was rewarded with daffodils and construction motif artwork.

Last month the Phase 2A section of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail opened to the public. It includes this pedestrian/bike bridge over Rt. 2A/119.  The next two phases (2B & 2C) are in Concord with scheduled completion dates a year from now. Once finished, the trail will follow the 25-mile route of the old New Haven Railroad Framingham & Lowell line.  I stopped for this photograph on the way to a business meeting in Westford this morning.

The Boston Common and Public Garden was my morning walk destination today. Spring will be here and gone in a matter of days so I took advantage of the nice weather to visit one of the prettier destinations in the city.  I only had time for a 15 minute visit but found many nice compositions in that time.