This afternoon, amputee soccer teams representing the New England Revolution and the New York Red Bulls played at the laters training facility in Whippany, NJ. It was the first amputee soccer intra-regional match contested within the United States. The facility could not have been more pristine and the Red Bulls organization could not have been more welcoming. Nicolai scored the opening goal for the Revs with a lovely, outside of the foot, one-touch flick off a perfectly-served cross. The Red Bulls equalized to end the first half. A new addition and youngest player on the team, Musa, scored a second goal for the Revs from a well-placed pass delivered by Nico. With 30 seconds remaining to play, the Red Bulls equalized sending the match into extra time. Absent any subsequent scoring, the game was settled with penalty kicks and New England emerged victoriously. After the match, the entire team and family members who came to spectate were treated to tickets to the evening soccer match between the actual Red Bulls and Revolution. I had originally planned to attend but thought the better of it with a 4.5-hour drive standing between me and my own bed. I will post more photos from the game tomorrow.

Located on 80 acres near New Canaan, Connecticut, Grace Farms is a humanitarian and cultural center serving local and global communities. Pritzker Prize-winning architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, designed the dramatic River Building pictured here. Whenever I make a car trip, I spend some time on Google Earth surveying my planned route for interesting features that I might want to photograph. Naturally, this unique architecture jumped off the screen. I am headed to New Jersey to watch Nico play amputee soccer in a match tomorrow. I also paused at the Croton Gorge Dam, another really beautiful place that I like to revisit any time I am in the area.

Despite its beauty, this female Downy Woodpecker is a less than welcome guest in our yard. She and her friends are responsible for several holes in the soffits and siding of our home. Woodpeckers aren’t interested in the wood but rather the insects that dwell within. Hopefully, we will not have the same trouble with the new home we are building. Properly installed siding will shed water and allow for proper ventilation and drying from the back surface. When dry, woods like cedar are naturally resistant to insects.

I captured this male ruby-throated hummingbird in the backyard this morning. With wings flapping at 50+ beats per second very high shutter speeds are required. Professional photos use strobes to freeze motion. Unfortunately, my lighting gear is all in storage and it will likely be a full year before I have access to it again.

Today, I was invited to attend a Zoom meeting to celebrate a key milestone for a company that I have recently added to my client list. The company makes a consumer product that connects to the telephone network and solves a problem experienced by anyone with a landline. The product will enter beta testing shortly and I will share more details once they become public.

During her return flight from Seattle, Jeanine flew over one of the wildfires raging on the west coast and took this photo. In Massachusetts, much of the state is under an air quality alert due to the smoke which has travelled here from across the country, an indicator of just how massive these fires are. I can only imagine how bad things are for folks closer to the devastation. My heart goes out to anyone who has suffered due to this natural disaster.

You can tell if you have Morton’s toe just by looking at your foot. If your second toe projects out farther than your big toe, you’ve got it. A study of American college students found that 45.7% of men had longer second toes. Other populations report the frequency to be less than 10% for this hereditary feature. Research suggests that Morton’s toe may even be an advantage in athletics. A 2004 study comparing professional athletes to non-athletes found that professional athletes tended to have Morton’s toe more frequently than non-athletes. Toe length aside, this post is about the passage of time. The bruise under my big toenail has been growing out since December when a heavy piece of deconstruction debris fell on my cuticle. There is a good reason why professionals wear steel-toed boots when doing this kind of work. I estimate it will take another 3 or 4 months before it has grown out completely.

Pictured above is the Concord Carlisle High School campus. The nearer of the two soccer fields is my team’s home turf. I showed up there at 8 am this morning expecting to find my teammates for a practice session. I must have mixed up my days because I was the only one present. Instead, I returned home where I did a stationary bike workout while watching the second half of the US National Women’s Soccer team’s match against New Zealand. Later in the day, I replaced the drive belt on the dryer that was left here when we acquired our new house. It self-destructed yesterday while drying our only set of sheets and towels (we are in “camping” mode until the new house is built). Amazing how unpleasant sleeping and bathing are without these essentials. I was amazed that I was able to secure an overnight replacement for a dryer that is probably twenty years old. The repair took about an hour and I now have dry linens and will look forward to a better night’s sleep.

Someone in this building holds the keys to my upcoming travel to Iceland and Denmark. When I booked the trip many months ago, I checked to ensure my passport would still be valid. I did not realize that when traveling to countries in the European Union, your passport must be valid for 6 months after your scheduled return. My passport will expire in October providing only 2 months of extension. Renewing a passport by mail, even with expedite fees is currently taking three months. My only option now is an emergency renewal which must be done in person in this building not more than three days in advance of travel and by appointment only. The problem is it is currently IMPOSSIBLE to schedule an appointment. The online system for doing so was taken out of service on Wednesday because third-party bots were booking all available appointments and selling them to desperate would-be travelers. The automated phone system they put in place to replace it is currently non-operational and no matter what you do, you wind up with a busy signal. Out of desperation, I drove into Boston to try and get an appointment in person. The very well-armed security staff there made it abundantly clear that you could not enter the passport office without already having booked an appointment. What a complete and total cluster f**k.

Jeanine travelled to Seattle this morning to attend the wedding of her close friend Tess. She has been living with her partner, Ed, for something like 20 years. Apparently, they have concluded that they like each other and are ready to tie the knot. I thought my six-year courtship of Jeanine was prolonged. These guys are in a league of their own.

As it is now in the public domain, I feel comfortable sharing a photo I took of my whiteboard from work. It provides a tiny window into my penchant for innovation and preference for visual expression (note the ratio of words to pictures). Also, note the dollar bills taped near the top. Whenever I am confident that my view of a technical issue is correct, I will bet an engineer with a different perspective a dollar that I am right. Over the course of my career, I have never lost such a bet, but have only made enough money to pay for a couple of cups of coffee. Even so, the bragging rights are priceless and hence the prominent display.

The Italian Home for Children campus is located in Jamaica Plain. Their mission is to provide an integrated network of powerful and effective programs to help children and families with emotional, behavioral, and educational challenges thrive in their communities. The devastating influenza epidemic of 1918 orphaned many Italian children of Boston’s North End, and the community and clergy responded by establishing the Italian Home for Children to care for these orphans. As decades passed, the needs of the children arriving at the Home began to reflect more complex crises. The daughter of one of my soccer teammates recently joined the organization as its Director of Communications and one of her first priorities is creating a promotional video. She learned from her father that I am an aerial photographer/videographer and he asked if I would be willing to capture some footage for her. I did so this morning and think she was quite pleased with the results. I will post a link to the finished video when it becomes available. Located across the street from the campus is the Arnold Arboretum where I spent the next 2 hours on a very long and enjoyable walk.

The number and different varieties of mushrooms that can be found in our yard are growing by the day. The one pictured above also features two insects on its stalk. Some of these literally emerge from the ground in a matter of hours. Most get eaten by the local squirrels, chipmunks, and groundhogs, all of which seem to be stoned after dining. It has been joyous to discover and witness the amazing ecosystem that exists just outside our door.

It has been raining on and off, but mostly on, for the last several days. All the rivers in the area are overflowing their banks, including the Sudbury on which we live. Pictured above, you can see the main channel of the river on the right going under the bridge. On the left, the flooded areas have reached lake-like proportions. Fortunately, the lowest portion of our basement is still 64″ above the waterline, as we are located on a small bluff. Pictured below is the Elm St. bridge which looks to have 3 or 4 feet of clearance before its arches are covered.

I am fairly certain this insect is a robber fly. I spotted it on the ground while walking in the yard today. If you click on the image to enlarge it and look carefully, you will see that it is pointy on both ends. It eats most insects including other robber flies. It will not sting or bite humans unless provoked and I am happy to report that he took little issue with being photographed at a close distance.

The gentle sound of raindrops falling upon the earth set the perfect mood for the celebration of Birgit Caliandro’s life. Family and friends gathered in an open-air pavilion to remember and honor a woman whose spirit was as generous as her smile and whose love for her children was boundless. Birgit did not surrender an inch to the cancer which took her last April. She lived life to the fullest and her impact on those who knew her was profound. Her daughter, Isabella, was a classmate of Nicolai’s growing up and the two have remained close friends to this day.

On my first day of work at Markforged in 2015 as their new EVP of Engineering, the then CEO told me that the company would be out of business in 45 days if we could not resolve a production problem with their carbon fiber printing filament (pictured below along with the printer). The original supplier of the carbon fiber had redirected their production to automotive applications and when the company switched to the only other supplier in the world, yield plummeted to near zero. Customers who had been waiting for the material for 9 months were threatening to return their printers and the sales team had lost confidence in any schedule commitments from engineering. The situation was bleak and analogous to trying to sell ink jet printers with an IOU for black ink. During my time with the company, we quickly sorted the carbon fiber problem and introduced a much more reliable second-generation printer that sold like hotcakes. Yesterday, the company started trading on the New York Stock Exchange with a market cap of nearly two billion dollars and the stock I acquired when I left the company is now quite valuable.

A brief tour of the yard yielded a couple of interesting mushroom profiles. These two were in close physical proximity and I am led to wonder if the one below is a younger version of the one above. I will have to keep an eye on them to see what develops.

Also featured today is a television news piece on the Amputee Golf Tournament that Nicolai played in earlier this week.

As we near the start of our new home construction, I took a special interest in this massive new building foundation being built near Kendall Square. I was in the area for a meeting with a potential new client in the life science sector. I have secured three advisor/consulting engagements thus far and would like to pick up one or two more. My goal is to work no more than half-time in aggregate until I transition into full retirement. Anticipating potential traffic and parking delays, I arrived early. I used the extra time to photograph this construction site, launching my drone from the parking garage top level. Every time I see one of these huge buildings going up, I can only wonder what impact it will have on traffic.

Nico placed third in the 2020 Gorham Savings Bank Maine Amputee Open golf tournament held at the Brunswick Golf Club in Maine. The 36 hole stroke play event was run by the Amputee Association of Maine and is Nico’s first competitive tournament. He shot a pair of 81s competing in the above-the-knee amputee category. I suspect he was the only participant who played without a prosthetic and question if that left him on equal footing, no pun intended. I have a feeling this will not be the last post about Nico’s golf exploits. Local television news coverage of the event can be found here.

While attending my soccer teammate’s birthday party yesterday, I captured this image of him with his adult daughter. Steve and I share Italian ancestry and I love that our people demonstrate a propensity for close physical contact with family and friends.

I am the oldest member of my over-55 soccer team at 62 but some of my teammates are not far behind. Steve, pictured center, enjoys a surprise 60th birthday to which we were invited. The gathering included dozens of friends and family but I think Steve was most surprised to see us there. We gave him a signed soccer ball and a Team Italia soccer jersey with his name printed on the back. Later, a group of us met up at a local sports bar and grille to watch the EuroCup finals. Obviously, I was rooting for Italy based on my ancestry and represented a small fraction of the bar patrons I was surrounded by. Their victory was even sweeter as a member of the vocal minority. Even so, I do feel sorry for all of my English friends who had to endure yet another penalty kick defeat.

Seemingly overnight, our backyard has erupted with a crop of mushrooms. Fortunately, our groundhog, Gary, cannot get enough of them and can be seen dining on them throughout the day. I used to think bird identification was difficult. The world of fungi is something on an entirely different level. Currently, scientists have identified some 120,000 species of fungi and recent estimates put the total number on this planet between 2.2 and 3.8 million! Identified mushrooms, however, number a mere 14,000. Suffice it to say, I gave up trying to identify this mushroom rather quickly.

Nicolai and his soccer teammate, Rafa (left), met with the Mayor of Revere, Brian Arrigo (2nd from left), and Artur Braga, a representative of Brazillian radio station Nossa Ràdio USA. They have secured the use of the Revere Stadium for a US National Amputee Soccer Team intrasquad friendly to be held August 7th. Over that weekend the American Amputee Soccer Association will be conducting an ID camp to determine which players will represent the United States in upcoming international competition.

We celebrated Nico’s 27th birthday at the Dumpling House in Cambridge this evening. The dinner was great, the conversation even better, and the opportunity to enjoy each other’s company; priceless.

To date, I have been the keeper of birth certificates, social security cards, and vaccination records for the children. This evening each received an envelope containing their respective documents and are now in charge of their security and retention. They all groused. Perhaps the handoff represented the final acknowledgment of their status as bonafide adults. I, on the other hand, felt a sense of liberation from a responsibility I had grown weary of. Although he chose to pose with the meal’s leftovers, Nicolai’s package also included his Master’s Degree diploma which arrived at our house earlier in the week.

My nephew Mario, a day older than Nicolai, turned 27 today. A scholar and athlete and the nicest person you will ever meet. Among the cousins, he is the most proficient at self-levitation.

Nico, Maya, and I drove to Hartford, CT this afternoon to watch the US National Women’s Soccer Team (USNWST) play Mexico in their final match before heading to Japan for the Olympics. The US looked very sharp in the first half, scoring 4 unanswered goals, each a masterpiece in its own right and very exciting. The scoreless second half was played with less intensity and I suspect that the priority was to ensure no one got injured ahead of the Games. It was a great outing that will be long remembered and left us with an even greater desire to follow our women’s team on their quest for gold.

Jeanine took this photo of her sister Susan over the long weekend while visiting with her in Burlington, VT. The two spent a lot of time indoors playing Dominos with friend Jean Cass because of inclement weather but did manage an outing to Lake Champlain during a break in the rain.

Each 4th of July, the USS Constitution (“Old Ironsides”), the world’s oldest ship of any type still afloat, sails 1 nautical mile from the Charlestown Navy Yard to Castle Island and fires a 21-gun salute. She is often incorrectly described as the oldest commissioned warship. That honor, however, belongs to the HMS Victory, but she has been in dry dock since 1922. This morning, I drove down to Fort Independence to experience the 21 cannon salute in person. It was quite thrilling and definitely worth the effort. I hope one day to photograph her with more than one tiny sail deployed.

On my way home, I stopped at the Mount Auburn Cemetery and climbed Washington Tower for a view of downtown Boston. I contemplate returning in the evening to photograph the fireworks from this vantage but learned that the cemetery closes at 8 pm.

Jeanine is spending the long weekend with her sister in Burlington, VT. I spent most of the day at Kyle’s new house where I helped him to deconstruct part of the basement. When he purchased the house, he did so with an eye to renovating and then renting out this space. We spent a little more than 4 hours removing walls, drywall, ceiling tiles, and paneling. Nicolai arrived at noon with burritos which we enjoyed while watching the Denmark vs. Czech Republic UEFA/Euro 2020 quarterfinal soccer match. We put in another hour of work before relaxing to the England vs. Ukraine match. Although my back continues to bother me, Kyle did all of the heavy lifting and I otherwise thoroughly enjoyed spending the day with my boys.

My semi-retirement is off to a good start. I picked up two additional technical consulting clients this week and have a line of sight on two more. My goal is to work no more than half-time in aggregate and only on projects that are really fun. Speaking of fun, my soccer team had our end-of-season dinner in the Seaport District at Davio’s, a northern Italian steakhouse. The food was phenomenal, as was the company. With each season, the tales of past glory seem to grow ever more impressive.