Category Archives: a sense of place

a week of the commuting life [thoughts]

27 Saturday Jul 2013

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So Hanna and I are back in Boston after a whirlwind week of California (Hanna) and Pawtucket (me, then both of us). The cats are contemplating forgiving us for our absence and the weather is gorgeous — sun, warm-but-not-too, breezy, with low-humidity — so in many ways it’s good to be home to our urban apartment life.

home sweet home

Though I’ll admit it was also hard to leave smaller-city life, and a week spent in a early-twentieth-century neighborhood of small apartment buildings and single-family homes, mature trees, walkable boulevards, and blessed quiet. It was really wonderful to have a table to eat meals at, a kitchen where two people could actually work comfortably, a washer and dryer you  didn’t have to feed quarters into (or stand in line to use), a porch with a swing … the sort of things that feel like “grown up” life to two people in their thirties who grew up in single-family homes (even if Hanna’s didn’t have a washer and dryer, and mine didn’t have a porch swing!).

Not that we need, necessarily, a single-family home or a very large space. After five-to-seven years in this tiny little one-bedroom we’re starting to get restless for a less student-apartment feeling place. Which for us translates into maybe a two-bedroom space (one for office/guest use) with a decent-sized kitchen, a porch, maybe space for a pot garden or ground-garden. A space that has direct access to the outdoors rather than the negotiation of apartment halls.

A space that gives us a little more privacy-negotiation room when we need it. A way to use spaces to move through different daily-life activities: cooking and eating, reading, sleeping and waking, scholarship.

we don’t need a literal white picket fence

Of course, the conundrum in this region of the country is affordability vs. walkability. Right now, we pay to live within walking distance from work and other amenities, and in a robust (though it could be better!) public transit zone. We can live without  a car, and even increasingly without monthly public transit fees (thanks Hubway!). What we pay in rent — $1295 per month — we save in transportation costs.

Work is in the urban center; affordable homes are on the urban periphery. I’m not even really talking suburbs or exburbs … the neighborhood we were house-sitting in was maybe “suburban” when it was built in the 1910s but is now very much an established part of Pawtucket (bordering on Providence). There were shops and cafes walking-distance away, and grocery stores within biking distance; a crosstown bus stop at the end of the block. You would need a bike, perhaps a car for some things, but you aren’t looking at a gated-community / food desert situation.

The “urban periphery” of Boston includes cities in New Hampshire and Rhode Island and Western Massachusetts where people commute daily into Boston (or closer to Boston) and then home again. These places are towns, even cities, in their own right — but their residents have often been pushed out of Boston because although our jobs are here we can’t afford, long term, to live here. And I’m not talking about
“can’t afford” in the “I want a sprawling estate in the hinterlands” sense. I’m talking “can’t afford” as in “current market prices for one-bedroom apartments in our neighborhood are pricing us out” despite the fact we’re living in what is one of the more affordable inner-Boston neighborhoods and we’re making what pass for firmly middle-class wages these days, for a family of two.

We’re hardly the only people our age who are feeling financial pressure to leave urban centers — yet still need to work at our jobs in the city. Not everyone works in a high-tech-enabled, work-from-home, work-from-anywhere position.

I had a lot of time to think about this core-to-periphery migration during the past week while sitting in traffic, or on the commuter rail, en route to Boston from Pawtucket and back again.

In Allston, our alarm goes off at 6:30, we leave the apartment shortly after 7:00, and have Hanna at work about quarter of eight. We travel by foot. As I’ve written elsewhere, I can get from apartment to work and back again in twenty minutes by bike; about forty-five minutes by T. This means that our evenings generally begin about 5:30-6:00pm, when we get in from work and an after-work errand or two.

Walking is free; our public transit options cost us an average of $30/each per month.

In Pawtucket, driving in by car I got up at 5:30 and left the house at 6:00. I got to work at 7:45-8:15 in the morning, after a drive that at-speed would have taken fifty-odd minutes but in rush hour took 1.5-2.5 hours. By train the time is more commensurate — leaving the house at seven put me on the 7:22 train to Boston and I was at work by 8:30. But this, like the drive, lost me exercise (walking or biking) at both ends of the day and added time in the evening commute (I wasn’t back in Pawtucket until 7:00pm).

Then there’s the car, insurance, gas; and/or rail passes, plus parking — which can be hundreds of dollars per month.

Equally unaffordable, in many ways.

Hanna and I are a year or two out from looking for our next Boston metro area home — and probably five-to-ten years out from a major relocation. But it was useful to have this hands-on experience at the commuting life. I’m absolutely sure I don’t want it.

The sad thing will be if we end up looking elsewhere not because we actively want to live elsewhere (which may be the case — we talk about Vermont and we talk about Oregon) but because we can no longer afford to live the life we want to here.

pawtucket, rhode island [photo post]

21 Sunday Jul 2013

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Hanna’s in California this weekend, attending a bridal shower and enjoying a few days with our friends Diana and Collin. I’m in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, kitten-sitting for a friend who inadvertently adopted a wee kitten she found in the engine well of her car about six weeks ago (!).

The kitten’s name is Houdini because he is good at hiding and at getting out of enclosed spaces. He was deeply uncertain of me for the first twenty-four hours, but he is now willing to share the same couch and even sat on my lap for a few minutes, purring madly.

He’s the loudest, most automatic purr-er I have ever seen. If you so much as look at him, he starts up like a little motor launch.

Hanna will be joining me on Tuesday, when she returns from the west coast, and we’re going to enjoy a few days’ midsummer getaway before heading back to Boston (although I’ll also be experiencing the commuter life when I go into work Monday, Tuesday and Friday — whee!

This morning I walked the length of Blackstone Boulevard from Pawtucket into Providence. Lots of really well-maintained early 20th-century homes en route for my architectural-history gene to geek out about.

In Providence, I made my way to the local independent grocers for a few supplies (you always forget something!). Though less proliferate than in Boston, there are really great food options here, including wildflour cafe where I got my morning’s delicious coffee and a rosemary-onion savory scone, and three sisters where I went last night for kulfi ice cream (YUM).

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t gone on Craigslist last night to check out the rental market in Pawtucket. Though Hanna and I have enough friends who do the to-Boston-from-Elsewhere commute to know we won’t be moving Elsewhere anytime soon.

Back to reading the draft of my friend Molly’s parenting-while-feminist book project while the cat purrs at me from a suspicious distance!

"not specially interesting to the eye": trollope on boston

15 Saturday Jun 2013

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Boston from Georges Island, 2007

Hanna and I picked up a copy of Trollope the Traveller: Selections from Anthony Trollope’s Travel Writings edited by Graham Handley (Ivan R. Dee, 1993) on the $1 cart at the Brookline Booksmith this morning. While we were reading in the park, Hanna found and read aloud the following from Trollope’s 1862 two-volume travelogue North America, describing his travels across the continent in 1861. The eminent Victorian author had this to say about Boston:

Boston is not in itself a fine city, but it is a very pleasant city. They say that the harbour is very grand and very beautiful. It certainly is not so fine as that of Portland [, Maine] in a nautical point of view, and as certainly it is not as beautiful. It is the entrance from the sea into Boston of which people say so much; but I did not think it quite worthy of all I had heard. In such matters, however, much depends on the peculiar light in which the scenery is seen. And evening light is generally the best for all landscapes; and I did not see the entrance to Boston harbour by an evening light. It was not the beauty of the harbour of which I thought the most; but of the tea that had been sunk there, and of all that came of that successful speculation. Few towns now standing have a right to be more proud of their antecedents than Boston.

But as I have said, [Boston] is not specially interesting to the eye — what new town, or even what simply adult town, can be so? There is an Athenaeum, and a State Hall, and a fashionable street — Beacon Street, very like Picadilly as it runs along the Green Park, — and there is the Green Park opposite to this Picadilly, called Boston Common. Beacon Street and Boston Common are very pleasant. Excellent houses there are, and large churches, and enormous hotels; but of such things are these a man can write nothing that is worth the reading. The traveller who desires to tell his experience of North America must write of people rather than things.

I love how dismissive he is of the city “pish tosh,” you can hear him grumbling, “hardly worth writing home about!”

Lagoon on the Charles River Esplanade, looking toward Boston, 2007

bright colors on an (emotionally) stormy weekend [photo post]

11 Tuesday Jun 2013

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My maternal grandmother, Marilyn Coe Ross, died this past Saturday. It was both not unexpected and terribly sudden. Her health had been fragile for a number of years — just enough time for us all to get used to the fact that her health was fragile and yet she remained with us, in a kind of fragile stasis.

It became the new normal, as they say. Until this weekend when a sudden aneurysm brought her body to a halt. I got the phone call from my mother at the end of (for a series of unrelated reasons) what turned out to be an emotionally exhausting Saturday.

I have a post full of thoughts about my grandmother, a fellow book lover, writer, and (volunteer) librarian, which I will be sharing when things are less raw.

This is a post about how, following our exhausting Saturday, Hanna and I decided we needed to bring some color back into this campaign before the weekend beat us. So we forged ahead with a pre-planned trip to IKEA for a new chair for the living room and came back with this:

Hanna says it must be something to do with her Finnish genes; I have no excuse.

Geraldine, per usual, felt the need to be in on the action in a very present sort of way as we put the chair together.

Teazle was initially suspicious of the new furniture, but within a fairly short period of time made it her own.

After furniture construction, I went out to buy chips at the CVS down the block and decided on suddenly obstinate impulse to follow through on my recent threat to dye my hair again.

Purple seemed like a good plan, though in the end it’s come out more magenta.

I might go for tricolor next time, now that I’ve got the hang of it. Although I wish I could just use my mother-in-laws organic indigo dye, since the chemical stuff is not something I feel very comfortable using or disposing of!

I hope all of you had some good moments this past weekend and are looking ahead to a productive second week of June.

from the neighborhood: arnold arboretum

19 Sunday May 2013

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Me on a knit-bombed bench, Arnold Arboretum (photo by Joseph)

This weekend, my friend Joseph is in town from Michigan, where he works at Arrowhead Alpines and recently published a book on plant breeding at home (aka plantsex!). Obviously, we spent at least some of the weekend exploring plant-y things in the Boston area, including a glorious visit to Arnold Arboretum.

I hadn’t been to the Arb since maybe 2008? I’m absolutely not going to leave it so long before I go back.

It was a perfect half-cloudy day to wander around experimenting with nature photography.

Next time, though, I’m gonna bring a book and a thermos of tea and settle in for a long afternoon of reading out-doors. Maybe in this tree …

Joseph was super-excited to see this dove tree, planted in 1904; he says it’s the oldest dove tree in the United States (the earliest tree we saw was a bonsai started in the late 1700s!)

The azaleas were blooming everywhere in all shades from white to deep fuschia. These were a salmon red, though the camera made them come out pink.

As were the lilacs…

I’m looking forward to chilling by this lake sometime soon with my wife and a picnic from the Harvest Co-op.

biking in boston: my first week using hubway

11 Saturday May 2013

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This is the second year of Boston’s point-to-point bike share program, Hubway, and while Hanna and I were merely bystanders as it got up and running last year, this season I decided to take the program out for a spin. Happily, just as I was weighing the cost/benefit of Hubway’s $85 annual membership*, they rolled out a new monthly plan for $20 — so I thought, what the hell! and signed up.

(via)

Here’s how it works. You sign up via the website and are sent a key that allows you to unlock bicycles at dozens of locations in the Boston metropolitan area. Then you can ride the bike to any of the other locations and lock it back up (no need to return to the original check-out station). Any ride under 30 minutes is included in the subscription plan, and additional time is charged in increasing increments to discourage long-term rentals.

I got my key last Saturday (after signing up on Thursday — quick work, Hubway!) and activated it online. I bought myself a bike helmet on Sunday (at REI for $35 … did you know you can get helmets now that cost $180?! are they made of titanium?) and was ready to go!

My initial observations are as follows…

PROS

  • Super-easy to access, if the stations are near where you live/work/travel. The Hubway folks re-distribute bikes throughout the day, so you can be fairly confident that bicycles will be available to unlock and/or spaces will be available for you to dock a borrowed bike (though more on that below). All you have to do is insert your key to unlock the bike, adjust the seat, and you’re off!
  • I like the handlebar carry rack, which comes equipped with an elastic band to hold one’s shoulder bag or shopping in place. I’ve used it to carry my messenger bag, a cloth tote full of groceries, and bag of potting soil. 
  • Door-to-door, biking is as fast as taking the subway from home to work. With a much lower chance of motion-sickness (although you lose the reading time). I usually plan 35-50 minutes door-to-door on the T, and by bike it takes me roughly half and hour from unlock to docking.
  • Exercise! I love forms of exercise that double up as “getting shit done,” which is what walking and biking can do when combined with running errands or the morning/evening commute. So the fact that I can replace the (faster than walking) subway rides with equally-speedy biking is a nifty solution.
  • We have a really tiny apartment, with absolutely no place to store a bike except maybe in the bathtub (which would mean no more showers, which would suck). So being able to access communal bikes is a wonderful space-saver. Like Zipcar, which we’ve participated in since 2007, Hubway offers the convenience of transportation without the maintenance or storage. 
  • Relatively affordable at the annual membership fee … I took 13 trips in the past week, for a total of 3 hours, 23 minutes; that extrapolates into less than a penny per minute and an average of $0.16/trip.
CONS
  • The half-hour limit is going to determine whether Hubway works for you, particularly if you live further from your workplace than Hanna and I do (about three miles) — unless you can station hop your way to work, cycling to one station (say) halfway to work, swapping bikes, and riding the rest of the way. Obviously, you can keep the bike for longer, but this adds to the monthly and/or annual cost. I had one commute to work this week where I dropped something from my bag and had to circle back for it, ultimately putting me forty-three seconds above the 30 minute ride and adding $1.50 to my bill. 
  • Occasionally I’ve come across full stands which means I cannot dock my bike in that location. Luckily, this hasn’t been a deal-breaker so far — but I can see how it might be frustrating if it happens a lot in locations where I want/need to be. It could also put you over your 30 minute window if you had to search for another location to lock up. Completely empty racks are also an inconvenience since they mean walking to another stand (some are 1/2-1 mile apart). I’ll be tracking this full/empty phenomenon to see how often it happens, and how it alters my use patterns.
  • The bike design is clunky. They’re making an all-purpose utility bike, not a touring or long-distance bike, I get that. And it has to fit as many bodies as possible. But I still find them kind of awkward and heavy to handle. 
  • They only have three gears, and the three gears they have are about a notch too easy for my taste. The first gear is so low (high?) that it isn’t really usable except on extreme uphills; the third gear is still easy enough that if you’re on even the slightest downward slope it’s not worth pedaling. A bit more power would be nice to have.
  • Adjusting the seat every time is kind of a pain, although I’m sure I’ll get used to what notch I need them at. I feel like I’ve spent the week getting them just a little too high or a little too low. And sometimes they seem to tilt forward a bit, so my ass is always sliding off the seat.
  • City traffic! Gosh-oh-golly, I grew up learning to bike along spacious town boulevards and rural roads. This whole dedicated bike lane business and high volume bike/car traffic during the morning commute is a whole different world. I’m glad I can (mostly) get from point A to point B on side streets, avoiding the main thoroughfares — and Hanna breathes a sigh of relief as well.

In sum, I’m glad I signed up and will probably roll the trial month into an annual deal this year to see how it goes. Stay tuned for further adventures.

*I was pleased to see that the City of Boston is subsidizing memberships for eligible low-income riders.

springtime in Boston, 2013 [photo post]

04 Saturday May 2013

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Last Sunday I took the camera with me when I set out to meet friends for lunch. Here is the T arriving at our local (above ground) subway station.

I met friends for lunch at a new food truck on the Rose Kennedy Greenway in the North End, the park system that replaces what used to be an elevated freeway slicing through central Boston (what the infamous “Big Dig” project took underground).

Clover Food Lab is one of our favorite restaurants in the Boston area, and they operate almost entirely out of a network of food trucks spread out across Boston and Cambridge. Their menu has a few staples (chickpea fritter sandwich ahoy!) but changes daily and seasonally as ingredient availability demands. On Sunday I had rosemary french fries and lavender lemonade.

On the way home from my lunch date, I walked up through the Boston Common and the Boston Public Gardens. People were out everywhere sunbathing and enjoying one another’s company. I’m not sure where the artist working on this painting had gone off to, but I got a nice shot of their work looking toward the pond!

Those of you familiar with Make Way For Ducklings will recognize the swan boats in the background — to the right under the willow tree branches you can see the island where the ducklings in question were born!

I never thought I’d be That Tourist Taking Pictures Of Tulips, but this bed of blooms made me (almost) miss Tulip Time in my hometown of Holland, Michigan, which begins today!

Our neighbors up the way have a lovely garden we walk by every morning on the way to work.

And the blooms in our neighborhood park are particularly stunning this year.

I hope you all have a restful weekend with wonderful weather, wherever you are.

from the neighborhood: sledding & sunshine [blizzard of 2013]

10 Sunday Feb 2013

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It’s sunny this morning in Boston, a brief respite before tomorrow’s predicted rain. Teazle is excitedly (and vocally) watching birds fluffed along the branches of the trees outside, and Hanna and I are sitting on the couch reading and writing and listening to the BBC classical music stream while watching cars get stuck in the snowdrifts on our corner.

Yesterday, the hill outside our living room window was turned into a sledding hill until the travel ban was lifted at 4pm.

And a couple of still photos by Hanna … 
This morning, the sun was out but the snow remains.
Some streets are clear, but the sidewalks are piled high with snow that has nowhere else to go.

Gerry and Teazle are finding all of the excitement outside quite entertaining as “kitty TV.”

Stay warm, everyone, and wish us luck as we slog to work in the rain tomorrow!

from the neighborhood: blizzard of 2013

09 Saturday Feb 2013

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I promised photos to several people yesterday from the “snow emergency” here in Boston, so this morning while Hanna did yoga in the living room I tumbled into my boots and winter gear and re-learned how to hike through knee-high drifts in order to bring you some pictures from our snowy neighborhood.

As a baseline, here’s what the view from our window was like around two o’clock yesterday afternoon:

Shortly after I took this picture, the poor red car had it’s rear bumper sheared off by a neighbor’s car that skidded through the intersection.

Thankfully, no one was hurt!

By the time we went to bed around 9pm, this was the view out that same window (note the red car, sans bumper, now half buried in snow).

Waking up this morning, it was difficult to see outside, so I decided to venture out.

You can see I was perhaps the second person to leave the building on foot this morning; with the snow still falling and blowing, and a travel ban in effect state-wide, few people are bothering to dig out.

We have no sidewalk currently!

And these cars aren’t going anywhere soon…

Above, wind whips snow across a nearly-deserted Commonwealth Avenue (this was taken about 7:30 this morning).

Snowplows were out in full force on the main roads, trying to stay on top of clearing the fallen snow.

But most apartment buildings showed little signs of activity.

I saw a few people out on foot who weren’t municipal workers, but the lack of traffic was eerie, particularly at usually-busy intersections (below is Harvard Avenue looking south from Commonwealth).

Side streets had higher drifts, and as I made my way back home through Brookline’s residential neighborhoods, I saw a few people out trying to clear snow from their sidewalks and cars.

These cars aren’t going anywhere soon!

The playground was deserted.

I was the first pair of feet to walk up our cul-de-sac on my return journey.

… and then I had to climb over this to get to the back door!

Now we’re enjoying breakfast and planning to nap the day away inside. Stay warm and safe everyone!

corey hill, after the snow [photo post]

30 Sunday Dec 2012

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We had a proper snowfall in Boston last night for the first time in a couple of years (!), and with temperatures predicted to remain in the twenties this coming week hopefully winter is here to stay … at least into the New Year.

While Hanna was doing yoga this afternoon, I walked out (and up) Corey Hill. Corey Hill in Brookline is one of the neighborhoods the abuts our section of Allston, and one about which I have serious real estate envy.

I mean, the downside about Corey Hill is that, well, it’s a hill. So living on it would be akin to living anywhere  in San Francisco: you’d get your cardio walking to and from work every day, no problem — whether you wanted to or not. But the upside is that they have lots of brilliant little turn-of-the-twentieth-century houses, most of which are still in pretty decent repair, and many of which have been converted into multi-unit dwellings.

I’ve always had a thing for photographing flights of stairs, and the Corey Hill neighborhood definitely provides ample opportunity.

Even before I moved to Boston, I liked wandering around neighborhoods that weren’t my own to engage in “what if…” imaginings about the life one would have living there, or the home-making possibilities of the houses therein.

(For example, what’s with the pink door below the stair?)

At the summit of Corey Hill is a public park which lends itself to sledding (the man in the black coat was a supervising adult waiting for his sprongs to return from the latest run). In July, this is a favored spot for watching Boston’s city fireworks.

In addition to adorable brick cottages, there’s this imposing art deco structure near the summit park, and also a few truly outstanding Victorians (I assume vestiges of the original settlements).

One of the cool things about snow is the way it makes you see color in a whole new way. Like the greens and yellows behind the row of icicles on this recessed garage…

…and the turquoise on this second-floor balcony.

While I suppose the “house” below might be a little too tiny for us, I’d like to imagine that some day — if we stay in Boston — our little household of two humans and two cats might be able to afford a home of our own in a neighborhood not entirely unlike this one.