Next Door To My Sign

For Sunday Scribblings and the prompt, "What's Your Sign?"

I took this photo a few minutes after midnight EST on June 29, 2007. The overexposed Moon is 98 percent of Full, which it will be on June 30. More detail is in the large view.

I've labeled Jupiter and Antares. Antares is the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. That star is so named because it is the "rival of Mars" (from the Greek "anti-" (against) and "Ares" (Mars)). Slightly above and to the right of it is Sigma Scorpii. The star below and to the left of Antares is Tau Scorpii. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a more complete labeled view of Scorpius here.

Out of frame to the right (to the west of Scorpius) is my sign, Libra. Out of frame to the left is Sagittarius, through which one can view the heart of our Milky Way galaxy....

My attention to the sky comes more from the astronomical than the astrological end. I did volunteer work in the planetarium field for five years, though I can't claim to recognize all or even most of the constellations. I never could find Camelopardalis the Giraffe, for example. But other constellations, Zodiacal and otherwise, are like old friends. When I took the photo above, standing barefoot on the driveway (a brave act, since we're into fire ant season, though I believe they were all asleep), the Summer Triangle was above and behind me: Cygnus the Swan and its brightest star Deneb; Lyra the Lyre and its brightest star Vega (pronounced "VEE-ga"); and Aquila the Eagle and its brightest star Altair. Inside the Triangle are smaller constellations: Sagitta the Arrow, for example. And one of my favorites, Delphinus the Dolphin, which looks like a small kite on a string.

The astrological Zodiac and the astronomical Zodiac are different. Astrology sets all its Zodiacal constellations at 30 degrees across, so that the planets pass through their houses with some regularity. But the actual pictures in the sky cover a broad range of distances. Virgo, the largest in the group, spans 1,294 square degrees -- almost three times the size of Aries, which covers 441 square degrees.


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Libra, my sign, is a tough constellation to find. I took this shot back on May 12, 2006, when the Moon and Jupiter were both in Libra. At noon EDT that day, Jupiter (the bright dot near the top) was 5 degrees north of the Moon, in conjunction with it. That small dot just to the right of Jupiter is the second-brightest star in Libra, Zubenelgenubi.

According to our National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Night Sky, Zubenelgenubi is Arabic for "southern claw." Libra, made a separate constellation by the Romans, was once considered part of Scorpius.

As for the other side of Scorpius...


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Sagittarius the Archer was setting over my garage when I took this shot on October 23, 2006. My camera is not geared toward astrophotography -- I aimed blind through my viewfinder, took the shot using my maximum available aperture (2.8) and exposure (4 seconds), and then used MS Photo Editor to increase brightness and contrast with some decrease in gamma to bring out the stars.

When you look at this constellation, you're also looking toward the center of the Milky Way.

According to the Audubon field guide, "This is a large constellation that was probably first associated with Nergal, the arrow-shooting god of war, by Sumerian peoples of the Euphrates Valley. It was known by the Greeks as the archer, and later came to be identified as a satyr or centaur. There has been much debate over just who Sagittarius is, though it is generally agreed that he is a centaur -- half man, half horse.... It is difficult to recognize a centaur here, but a modern asterism called the Teapot is relatively easy to find within the larger constellation....Sagittarius lies in the same direction of the sky as our galaxy's center, and so the band of the Milky Way is brightest here."

On occasion during my volunteer work I gave planetarium shows, mostly to school children, narrating live. The shows included star and constellation ID, and I once made a blooper as I pointed out Sagittarius. As the field guide says, Sagittarius is most easily recognizable as a teapot (the part I've labeled here), even though that's not what the ancients had in mind when they named it.

I told my audience, "This is Sagittarius, the Archer. Here is the handle, and here is the spout."

Elsewhere in the Zodiac...


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Saturn is still in Leo, as it was when I took this shot back on December 6, 2006. According to the Audubon field guide, Leo, the Lion, "was recognized as a lion by the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Persians, Syrians, Greeks, and Romans." It was a horse to the ancient Chinese, a puma (some believe) to the Incans. Around November 16 the Leonid meteor shower radiates from this constellation.

Here's my labelled version of that shot:


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Nowadays Saturn is practically on top of Venus, so I'll have to see if I can get a good shot of them paired up.


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Both the Hyades and Pleiades are in the Zodiacal constellation Taurus, the Bull. Both are star clusters, the Pleiades a group of young, still-forming stars. I took this photo on August 22, 2006. The Pleiades form what look like a tiny dipper at upper left. The Hyades are clustered around the stars near the bottom. The bright red star at the bottom is Taurus's brightest star, Aldebaran.

Says the Audubon field guide, "Taurus is assuredly one of the oldest constellations recognized, for it was among these stars that the Sun appeared at the beginning of spring between about 4000 and 1800 BC.... The bull, a symbol of strength and fertility, figures prominently in the mythology of nearly all early civilizations, from Sumer to India to northern Europe."

The field guide continues, "According to Greek mythology, the Hyades were the sisters of Hyas, a great hunter whose death they mourned....Zeus placed the nymphs in the sky in gratitude for their service and pity for their grief.... Taurus's better-known group of 'maidens' is the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, a small but very noticeable cluster of stars on the bull's shoulder.

A labeled version, showing the names of the major objects, is here.


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I took this shot on June 6, 2006, overexposing the Moon to show its proximity to Spica (the brighest star in the constellation Virgo) and Jupiter. Spica (pronounced "SPY-ka"), 262 light years away from us, is really two stars that orbit each other about every 4 days, with 3 other fainter components. Its name is Latin for "ear of wheat," the name actually going back to much more ancient times according to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign department of astronomy.

You can use the Big Dipper to find Spica by using the mnemonic "Arc to Arcturus and speed to Spica." If you follow the curve of the Big Dipper's handle you will reach a bright reddish star. That's Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Bootes (pronounced "bow-OAT-ees," with the type of bow you tie). From there make a beeline to the next bright star; that's Spica.


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Almost exactly a year ago I took this photo, on June 28, 2006, showing the Moon, Mars (the bright dot just to its lower left), and Saturn (the brighter dot further away, just below middle right). This celestial trio was in Cancer. Here, the overexposed Moon (11% of full) is visible with Earthshine.

In Earthshine, the moon reflects light from two different sources. The thin crescent is light reflected from the sun. But the larger, dimmer illumination, in which one can see some hint of the mares ("seas"), is reflected from the Earth, which itself is reflecting sunlight onto the moon. Hence the term "Earthshine." That dimmer illuminated part of the moon is doubly-reflected light.


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Here, the bright dot above the houses is the planet Venus, which joined a Moon three days past New in the constellation Pisces. I took this shot on the evening of February 20, 2007. On that day in 1962, John Glenn had become the first American to orbit the Earth.

Here's the crescent Moon from that same evening photographed with and without Earthshine:



The left-hand shot showing Earthshine was a 4-second exposure at f/4.5. The right-hand shot was a 1/30-second exposure at f/8.

Back to tonight -- after I took the photo at top of the Moon in Scorpius with Jupiter and Antares, I focused solely on the Moon:



Non-Zodiacal constellations I've caught on pixel so far include Orion the Hunter, Canis Major the Great Dog, the Big Dipper portion of Ursa Major the Great Bear, and Cassiopeia the Queen.

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Don't Tell

--------------------------------
cynicism
generates secrets
hidden in plain sight
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For Sunday Scribblings (theme: "I have a secret").
[end of entry]

Eccentricity

For Sunday Scribblings.

A Surinam cockroach -- North America has parthenogenic females only, eccentric creatures themselves -- models a miniature version of Mary's broad-brimmed straw hat. Between capturing and releasing this critter (Pycnoscelus surinamensis, Family Blaberidae) back in October and then playing Invertebrate Fashion Police, I'd say I've crossed over into the "eccentric" realm....

On Friday I was leaning into a hot phone booth outside the post office, taking portrait shots of what I'm pretty sure are venomous spiders, probably brown widows.


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If my guess is correct, this is Latrodectus geometricus, Family Theridiidae (Cobweb Spiders). I'm waiting for confirmation from Bugguide.Net. Until recently I hadn't known how much variety brown widows can have in their coloring.

Says Bugguide, "The brown widow ... may be almost white to almost black. Typically, it is a light to medium brown, with an orange-to-yellow hourglass marking on the underside of the abdomen; the coloration of the hourglass often is a good indication of this species. The leg segments are banded, with one half of each segment lighter in color than the other half. The back often has a row of white spots (rarely orange or light blue), and there are a few white stripes on each side. Darker individuals lack these markings and are difficult to distinguish from black widows."

Female brown widows rarely bite and are normally quite shy. Males and juveniles don't bite at all. Says Bugguide, "The brown widow produces clinical effects similar to that of the black widow but the typical symptoms and signs being milder and tending to be restricted to the bite site and surrounding tissues."

This one is also probably a brown widow.


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Compare with this photo from Don Cadle.

I also spotted this much smaller spider in the phone booth and am waiting for an ID:


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Based on this graphic from Lynette Schimming showing the eye arrangement, this might be a spider in the Dictyna Family (Mesh Web Weavers).

I've become enamored of Florida's bugs (and arachnids) because half the time they're at least as eccentric as I am. I have a special fondness for the owlfly, which I've seen only once so far and which had stymied me completely. Something that looks like a cross between a dragonfly and a butterfly will do that. Add on "divided eyes" that look like they've been split in two, and by the time you're done you've got an insect constructed by committee.


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Here's a close-up of that divided eye.


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I've been stopped by the police for photographing bugs. Seems this eccentricity of mine can fall into the category of "suspicious behavior," as reported in this entry. But my near-arrest, as it were, for photographing a Southern Emerald Moth had a pleasant follow-up. Three months later I photographed a Red-Fringed Emerald Moth and combined the two moths with a shot of the snapdragons in my yard. The resulting collage I created for this entry has been chosen to be the cover of the forthcoming Summer issue of Harp-Strings Poetry Journal.

The Datana moths are back in town. Mary calls them "helmet heads," for reasons evident in this series of photos:


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Family Notodontidae. According to John B. Heppner's A Checklist of the Lepidoptera of Florida, Florida hosts 8 species of Datana, and most of them look fairly identical to me. (Bugguide: "Distinctive as a genus, difficult as to species.")

I counted about 10 Datanas on the post office wall on Friday. When I first saw them a year ago I thought they were so cool, and so weird, that having them appear in the same state as the Daytona Speedway gave me a pun I couldn't resist. So I'd put this collage and entry together.

Mary shares my appreciation for the bizarre, hence her episode with a Martian here.

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Pictorial Meanderings

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This white ibis and Eastern gray squirrel were keeping company in a neighbor's yard: one of various sights captured in local travels....

Eudocimus albus, Family Threskiornithidae. Says eNature.com, "Around their colonies, ibises eat crabs and crayfish, which in turn devour quantities of fish eggs. By keeping down the numbers of crayfish, the birds help increase fish populations. In addition, their droppings fertilize the water, greatly increasing the growth of plankton, the basic food of all marsh life. White Ibises gather at dusk in spectacular roosts, long lines of birds streaming in from all directions." Down here they also hang out in people's yards, digging in the grass for food.

The Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis, Family Sciuridae) is by far the most abundant of Florida's three tree squirrel species. (The other two are the fox and flying squirrel.)

"Here in Florida, squirrels usually produce 2 litters of 2-4 young each year," according to the University of Florida. "The first litter is born in January or February while the second arrives in mid-summer. Young squirrels mature rather slowly for a rodent and are on their own in about 2 1/2 months."


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This pair of Mourning Doves sat at the edge of my yard as I arrived home from my walk. Zenaida macroura, Family Columbidae. This species is among the 10 most abundant birds in the United States, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The dragonflies have returned to our "post office pond."


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Male Blue Dasher, Pachydiplax longipennis, Family Libellulidae (Common Skimmers). According to Bugguide.Net, these dragonflies range across "much of the United States, and just edging into Canada. In the United States, absent from the Dakotas and the Rocky Mountain region. Range continues into Mexico."


Large view.

Male Eastern Amberwing, Perithemis tenera, Family Libellulidae (Common Skimmers). According to Bugguide.Net, "Except along the U.S.-Mexican border, this is the only tiny dragonfly with amber wings on the male." By tiny they mean about a one-inch wingspan. The range of this dragonfly is the eastern two-thirds of the United States and south into Mexico. "Primarily a summer species; active all year in the far southern U.S."

Our strip malls (the two I most frequent are what I call the "post office strip mall" and the "supermarket strip mall") have been abounding with wildlife:


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Thanks to Jeff Hollenbeck at Bugguide for identifying this as Plexippus paykulli, Pan-tropical Jumper. This is the only species of the Plexippus genus in the U.S., and one of two jumping spiders (Salticidae) in Florida that have been imported by humans from the Old World. "Both are almost exclusively associated with man-made structures, usually buildings where they may be numerous around lights at night, catching the insects attracted to the lights," according to the University of Florida.

I have a photo of the other Old World import, the gray wall jumping spider (Menemerus bivittatus), here.


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I spotted this katydid perched above eye level and decided to engage it in a staring contest.


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I'm guessing that this is a Squirrel Treefrog, but I'm not entirely certain. After a while it got a little camera shy and hopped onto the mulch at bottom right.


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Curved-tooth Geometer Moth, Eutrapela clemataria, Family Geometridae (Geometrid Moths). Before now, the only other member of this species I'd seen had been a dead one, so I was happy to discover two living individuals. I took the top two photos with flash on the evening of June 10. This male, a bit worse for wear, was on the wall of the "post office strip mall." I found the more robust male perched at the "supermarket strip mall" two days later.

According to Bugguide.Net, clemataria is the only species in this genus in North America listed at All-Leps. I used this guide at Dalton State College to determine the gender.

And the bunnies are back.


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This one was enjoying a neighbor's yard around dusk. Eastern Cottontail, Sylvilagus floridanus, Family Leporidae (Hares and Rabbits). One of two species of rabbit in Florida (the Marsh Rabbit is the other), the Eastern Cottontail also "has the widest distribution of any Sylvilagus. It is found from southern Manitoba and Quebec to Central and northwestern South America. In the contiguous United States, the eastern cottontail ranges from the east to the Great Plains in the west." (University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.) Grass accounts for about 50 percent of its diet.

Early afternoon afforded this glimpse of a male Eastern bluebird:



Sialia sialis, Family Turdidae. Writes John Ivanko in Michigan Today (Fall 1999):

"The bluebirds' color was so remarkable to Henry David Thoreau that he felt compelled to describe this species' coloring as 'carrying the sky on its back.' An insightful description since the bluebird's blue color does, in fact, come from light waves scattered by the structure of their feathers, not from blue pigment in their feathers-a blue suncatcher, so to speak. That's why a bluebird appears gray on an overcast day."

Adds the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, "Populations declined in 1960s and 1970s, but increased thereafter. Increased popularity of nest box campaigns probably responsible for increases. Vulnerable to competition from introduced nest-hole competitors, such as European Starlings and House Sparrows. Common and increasing in eastern North America."

And just because I thought this looked rather cool...


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Someone's beautiful kite has gotten stuck in a palm tree.

Our theater has been busy doing double duty, serving as the art center's meeting place during renovations and preparing for our summer feature, The Music Man.



The 200-seat theater is not built to handle flies (which I recently learned are painted scene curtains that are raised and lowered, requiring a very high ceiling), so the stage designers came up with an ingenious system of four-sided components that can be separated, rotated, and pushed back together. Having to use the theater for my free-writing meetings means I'm getting to see behind-the-scenes preparations for the first time. Had I more time after our last meeting, I'd have taken shots of an almost-completed painting job, plus rooms filled with costumes being put together.



I also learned that our art center's roses are insulation-colored:



I found the rose and insulation positioned as is and liked the juxtaposition. The rose grows outside the rear entrance to our building under renovation:



Who needs "Snakes on a Plane" when you've got this?



I like this photo because I finally found a room that's messier than mine. This is the site of our main gallery. Compare with this photo from March 15.

The art center's been posting my photos on a rotating basis week to week on its website.

In other news, I've gone over the edits from Koboca for Covenant and am working on a couple of writing assignments. I also received the great news last week that my story "Hermit Crabs" has been accepted to Electric Velocipede.

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The Warmth of Spice

This tin of cinnamon measures 5-3/4 inches high, 4 inches wide, and 2-1/2 inches deep. It moved from Brooklyn to Florida with my parents in 1980 and was still in the pantry when Mary and I arrived here in 2003.

For Sunday Scribblings.

I grew up across the street from a man who worked in a spice factory. Our pantry was filled with tins, usually one-pounders, that I'd bought for five or six dollars. They contained cloves, nutmeg, garlic, cinnamon -- and herbs like tarragon and rosemary. Saffron, the most expensive of the lot, came in smaller packages but could still be had for a song....

Experimentation was cheap.

Marinades were my specialty. I sniffed first one open tin and then another, deciding what and how to mix. I let my concoctions age in the fridge to see how the flavors blended. I learned the properties of sauces like A-1, Worcestershire, Pickapeppa, and Tabasco. In the 1970s a friend had taught me -- in a restaurant in New York's Chinatown and to an audience of waitstaff -- how to mix dipping sauce using soy sauce, vinegar, and chili oil. Like me, he didn't measure, conveying his instructions by way of hand movements. This long a pour. That many shakes. He wanted to go to a culinary school back then. I wonder if he ever did.

In early February 1985 I had no refrigerator and had lived without one in Massachusetts for almost two years. I ate mostly out of cans, storing perishables in a plastic grocery bag that I hung out my kitchen window in winter. That scheme had proved successful for solid objects, but using it to manage a marinade would have been tougher.

I'd made tentative dinner plans with a friend who wasn't sure whether or not he could visit. It didn't matter. I had a hankering to cook. I bought spare ribs and made a marinade of garlic, hickory sauce, English mustard, soy sauce, Worcestershire, Tabasco, red cooking wine, and A-1.

Lucia's grocery still stood then; in about a year it would give way to a franchise. "You're A Stranger Here But Once," read the large block lettering painted on the red brick of its side wall. I lived around the corner and could wheel its cart right to my doorstep. Even so, the people at Lucia's stared at me when I brought a Styrofoam cooler and bags of ice to the checkout counter accompanying the meat and fixings.

They must have wondered who in their right mind would be buying all that ice when a blizzard was raging outside.

I didn't care. I had a nice flat surface on which to place my bowl. My meat and mixture remained cool for two days in a house that I usually kept at 55 degrees during the winter because I was paying for my own oil -- and back then my oil bill came to about a thousand dollars a year. I left my kerosene heater behind when I moved out of Woburn and into a Cambridge apartment that included heat. Living in New England introduced me to thermal underwear, which I use even here in Florida, where I've experienced a winter low as far down as the teens.

Although lacking a fridge in Woburn, I did have an oven, a condition that was reversed in my first Cambridge apartment (my second Cambridge apartment finally had both). When my dinner date didn't materialize, I carried my small feast to the end of the block.

I knew that my neighbor Helen -- my friend of 14 years, until her death in 1998 -- had been low on cash. I didn't know until I entered her apartment that the only food she had left was a single box of macaroni and cheese on an otherwise bare pantry shelf.

She, her boyfriend, and I ate well that evening.

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Emergent

A chance encounter with statuary in dusk light and a hankering for collage....

Mary and I had walked several miles and were heading home at around 8:30 PM, when I saw this statue. I thought the light was perfect for a shot, and my neighbor was gracious enough to let me train my camera on her property. I've got prints that I'll bring to her when I next head out that way.

I took the statue from "Stargazer," as I named the shot, and combined it with three other images:



I don't know the species of this seed fluff, but it grew back in March by the same lantana patch where I've photographed several species of butterfly. The patch is located between a relatively new housing project and a strip mall.



This female Checkered White butterfly (Pontia protodice, Family Pieridae (Whites and Yellows)) was in my front yard, also this past March.



I didn't use this exact photo in the collage, but another taken of this same flower, which grows in the parking lot outside a nearby supermarket, photographed in April of last year.

The resulting collage, done with MS Paint and MS Photo Editor:


Large view

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The Town Mouse & the Country Mouse

East 5th Street in Brooklyn, NY. Photographed in the early 70s from my attic "sanctuary."

For Sunday Scribblings.

Tropical Storm Barry blows outside, a relatively calm wind compared to others we've experienced. A car engine revs up. Otherwise, our Saturday morning is quiet. Here in the lightning capital of the U.S. I know to unplug and give this computer and modem a rest if the thunder draws closer than the occasional rumble I've been hearing.

I remember sleeping on the front porch couch when I was seven, when the crutches after my accident made climbing to my second-floor bedroom impractical. From the porch I listened to the rock band rehearse across my Brooklyn street, and to the motorcycle revving repeatedly around the block.

We get revving around here, too, and boom-box sounds, though they are not so omnipresent. The most noise comes from lawn care vehicles: weed-whackers, riding mowers. Chainsaws, when the trees are trimmed prior to hurricane season or after storms that have downed limbs. Mostly I marvel at the ibis flock cruising the neighborhood, or the frog choruses in our retention ponds. Or the Milky Way stretching above me on a clear night.

I grew up a city girl. But even the city had its pockets of paradise....

Brooklyn, New York



I took the first photograph in this entry from the attic bedroom of the house where I grew up, about the same time as I took the shot directly above. My current style of decorating hasn't changed all that much.



Friends Field, about three blocks from where I lived, was my outdoor sanctuary. After high school I took my homework, my creative writing, and my transistor radio to a picnic table and wrote while catching glimpses of a Little League game. The field was bordered by the F train subway el, Washington Cemetery, and residential streets.

I took this photo back in the early 70s. I don't know who this boy was, but I thought it was pretty cool that he had climbed a tree.



East 5th Street, photographed with the next six shots during my visit to my old neighborhood in 1996. Except for the model of automobile this street looks no different from the way it had when I was growing up. Behind me is Avenue M; ahead is Avenue L. This was the first leg on my walk to elementary school.



Crossing Ocean Parkway formed the second part of my walk to school. This was the major thoroughfare in my childhood neighborhood. I rode my single-speed, foot-brake, purple bicycle down its bike path.

The path, lined with benches, drew large outdoor gatherings in the warm weather. My mother once told me the story of how the movie The Ziegfeld Follies had saved my life. She and other young mothers used to congregate, wheeling their baby carriages to one of those benches every Sunday. Same time, same bench.

Except for one particular Sunday, when The Ziegfeld Follies was being aired on TV. The mothers decided to all stay home that day -- having no clue until later that they and their babies escaped the wreck of a drunk driver who had spun off the road and climbed that very bench during the broadcast.



The corner of East 10th Street and Avenue L. This was my last turn on the way to school. P.S. 99 is the tall building in the background, just to the right of the foreground tree.



I was the second-tallest girl in my class. In warmer weather we lined up in the schoolyard before being marched inside.



P.S. 99 is now also called the Isaac Asimov School. I attended 99 from kindergarten through the eighth grade.

The first "major decision" in my life came in the sixth grade, when I had to choose whether to continue at 99 or attend an accelerated program at Huddy Junior High that would let me cover the seventh through ninth grade in two years. My best friend had chosen Huddy, which made my decision tougher, because I felt connected to my teachers at 99. I decided to stay where I was, though I ended up finishing high school in three years and graduating at age 16.

High school had me walking from home in the other direction, toward the elevated tracks of the F train.



This time I walked down Avenue M (shown here), toward McDonald Avenue. In the 1970s McDonald's old trolley tracks still came up through the macadam, though the trolley itself predated me. The storefronts here are little changed from back then. Gone, however, is the old Avenue M Bowl where my mother and I belonged to a league, and the corner store where I bought marbles for my collection and enjoyed the most heavenly egg creams I'd ever tasted.



This was my subway stop, Ave. N on the F train. From here I could look in one direction toward the Manhattan skyscrapers, and in the other direction toward the Verrazano Bridge leading to Staten Island. I also watched the World Trade Center go up as I stood on this platform waiting for the train I took to high school.



Subway pass, 1973. I started riding the subway solo at age 12, but I remember screaming as a toddler in my mother's arms as an enormous black train screeched to a halt on the Ave. N platform. Back then the seats were made of scratchy yellow-orange wicker alternating with soft red cushions, and the poles and handholds were covered in white ceramic. By the time I was in high school the trains were a graffiti-covered silver, with plastic seats and metal poles.

I wrote in my journal on the trains, keeping my arms loose so they could serve as shock absorbers. Between rush hours I learned to stand with feet widely planted and knees slightly bent, so that I didn't have to hold onto anything. I lived on the subways in both New York and Boston. I wouldn't get my driver's license until I was 31, and I wouldn't own a car until I was 44.



Photographed in the early 70s. I was the only female in a group of handball players who spent part of our free time smacking a hard black ball against the John Dewey HS back walls. The elevated tracks in the background belong to the B train. My journey from home had me taking the F train from Ave. N south to Stillwell Avenue, the terminal stop for several lines and the location of Coney Island. From Stillwell I took the B train one stop back, to Bay 50th Street.



Photographed in the early 70s. I received an extraordinary education at Dewey, for which this statue is an icon.

John Dewey High School was an experimental school begun in 1969, and run on the "learning by doing" philosophy of John Dewey. If 14 students wanted a class and a teacher was willing to teach it, that class was born. Students could take subjects on independent study; those ambitious and thorough enough could design their own courses. Extended hours gave students the choice of spending time at a resource center, where teachers were on hand to mentor. Alternatively, you could spend that extra time in the library, the labs, or the campus grounds. If you had a good chunk of time, you could scoot off to Coney Island a single subway stop away. A girl like myself could take Mechanical Drawing instead of Home Economics, and fulfill part of my phys. ed. requirement by taking Bowling. Creative arts reigned, along with a well-rounded liberal arts curriculum. By the time I graduated in 1975, the first budget cuts were being lowered on the NYC Board of Education; two decades after Dewey fell victim to those cuts, local school boards across the country started reinventing the wheel with charter schools. They'd have done well to keep the original blueprint for a successful revolution in education. That blueprint, in my opinion, was and still is Dewey.



John Dewey High School's 30th anniversary reunion in 1999. Second from left is reunion coordinator Mike Lustig, who taught social studies at Dewey when I was a student there in the early 70s.

Woburn, Cambridge, and Dorchester (Boston), Massachusetts



This six-room rental house in Woburn was my first home after I started living on my own in 1983. My rent was $425 a month, unchanged to the day I moved to Cambridge in 1986.

I loved this place. Its only downside was the commute. Without a car I had to rely on public transportation. Local buses stopped running at 7 PM, and the subway didn't get out this far (about 15 miles northwest of Boston). The Commuter Rail, which stopped running at midnight, left me at the Winchester Depot about 2-1/2 miles from home. But if I really wanted to attend an event that ended after the cabs became unavailable (they usually closed shop around 11:30 PM), I walked -- including in multiple layers in frigid winter weather.

This house is the location of the entry, "Gang War on Centre Street".



Horn Pond was my outdoor sanctuary in Woburn, Massachusetts. In addition to the pond itself I loved walking its trails. This is the site of my entry, "The Shrine on Horn Pond Mountain".



I lived only a few blocks from the Woburn Public Library and the field next to it. I also hung out in Library Field -- my adult version of Brooklyn's Friends Field -- reading, writing, and watching the local baseball teams play.



After a brief residence in a studio apartment near Harvard Square I moved to North Cambridge, a block away from the next-door town of Arlington. Spy Pond in Arlington was located about a mile from my home. On warm days I walked to the pond with my "inflatable yacht," the Intrepid, folded in the duffle bag I'd slung across my back. Often I visited Elizabeth Island, located roughly in the center of the pond. Elizabeth Island is the location of the entry, "Hare's Grove."



The Whittemore Avenue Community Garden was located about a block from where I lived in North Cambridge. I belonged to it for five years, growing cucumbers, zucchini, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, green peppers, basil, and other vegetable crops. Mary added corn to our repertoire. Our plot was one of 60, and we enjoyed exchanging vegetables with our gardening neighbors and swapping caretaking duties when we or others went on vacation.

Here Mary and I also grew squash hybrids, letting our zucchinis cross-pollinate with canteloupe to produce "zukelopes" or "cantechinis." Further hybrids produced a kind of ridged "green football."



I trained for and did the first Boston-New York AIDS Ride in 1995. I took this shot while walking my bike (a 1983, 12-speed Univega touring bike) as part of the AIDS Ride contingent in my first Gay Pride parade.



This photo was taken on September 14, 1995, the night before I and thousands of others departed Boston's World Trade Center for a three-day, 261-mile journey to lower Manhattan. Behind me are bicycles waiting to be ridden out.

My adrenalin level was still so high after I'd completed the ride from my adopted to my native city that I went out dancing afterwards. "Pilgrimage," my series of articles on training for and doing the ride, appear here.



Mary and I moved from Cambridge to Dorchester (Boston) in 1998, renting the top floor of this house. From here I had a commute to work of at least an hour each way: walking 3/4 mile to the JFK-UMass subway station, taking an approximate half-hour ride, and then walking another 6/10 mile to my office. This was the last place we lived in Massachusetts before moving to Florida in March of 2003.



Mayfield Street in Dorchester, looking toward Pleasant Street. I walked this way en route to the JFK-UMass "T" stop for the commute to work.



JFK-UMass "T" stop, on the Red Line. Outside this station Mary found the snake that features in my entry, "The Snake in the Butter Dish."



Carson Beach on Dorchester Bay, about a mile from home, was my outdoor sanctuary when I lived in Boston. Often on weekends Mary and I walked out to Fort Independence on Castle Island and back, about 7-1/2 miles round-trip. On one occasion we took a 20-mile urban hike that included Franklin Park.

I also plucked broken crockery and sea-worn glass from Dorchester Bay at low tide and used them in mixed-media art.

Carson Beach is the location of my entry, "One Summer's Day in 1999", which can also be heard in this open mic performance.



Mayfield Street outside our apartment, looking toward Bakersfield Street. We headed this way to get to our neighborhood cafe, A Strong Cup of Coffee.

This was the scene as I packed and wheeled Media Mail boxes to the post office for delivery to Florida. I took this photo in February 2003, about a month before Mary and I traveled with our two cats down to our new home in a Penske rental van. Another blizzard delayed our loading, and we did not leave on the day of our intended departure.

It was just as well. On that day we heard of a 100+ car pile-up on I-95 in Attleboro. Had we left when we planned, we might have been part of that accident. "Why I Don't (Yet) Mind the Heat" has the story of our move.

Citrus County, Florida: "the other Beverly Hills"

I wondered if I could adjust from being a city girl to living here. As this blog attests, I've been thriving so far.



I took this photo in December 2002, during the second of three trips I made between Boston and Florida between the time of my father's death in November 2002 and the time of our move. This shot looks toward the retention pond (beyond the two flagpoles) where I'd heard a spirited concert of frogs and toads at 2 AM on June 13, 2006, before Tropical Storm Alberto made landfall.


Large view

The inset photo at upper left shows our home in April 2003, just after we'd had new plantings added to the yard. Prior to that, our only plant life was the front porch hedge and a lawn of mostly sand. Four years later our yard teems with a combination of bought and volunteer plants, plus rain barrels and compost bins. Here I've labeled the array.

We will soon enter our fifth summer as Floridians.

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