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 photographed 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.
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.
This website is dedicated to sharing, with family and friends, the day-to-day adventures of the Calabria family.
