More good. Less pretty.

   One way to take better pictures is to stop trying to take pretty ones.  Stop looking for the aesthetic shot, and start looking for the one that tells a story.  Or the one that just captures the moment.  Like this one, taken with my first Canon Powershot, right after Megan's high school gymnastics team won the divisional meet at Needham.  As a matter of technique and equipment, it's awful.  But it's a favorite of mine.  It captures a bit of the emotion, the delirium, that exploded when the meet results were announced, with teammates and family mobbing each other, seeking each other out, some in tears.  That the team logo on the sweatshirt at left came out so well is a bonus.  It's this sort of thing, not the athlete in action that I'm always trying to capture, that makes a good sport pic.  

Trophy

   A Sunday afternoon in January.  You take your daughter to volleyball, shop for groceries, read a good chunk of the Sunday Times instead of watching sports on TV, roast several pans of vegetables for the week, and decide, at about 3 pm, that while none of this may get you in the Husband Hall of Fame, a small trophy just might be in order.   

Magic cold

   It's cold here, finally -- low 20s, with a wind chill around 5 degrees.  But not amazing cold, stunning cold, like it seemed to get every winter when I was a boy in Vermont.  Like 20 below.  That's when you learn it's all about the wind.  There would be days when it was well below zero, but still, and when the mailman had come and put whatever was in the box across the street, you could run over without your coat on and grab the mail and run back and feel the deeply cold, dry air, but not be hurt by it at all.  It was like running your finger back and forth through a candle flame and not getting burned.  Like a little bit of magic that you did.

Lawyas with attitude

   Walking through the mall on the way to the train I pass by a young woman who left our firm a few months ago. A large black woman with attitude.  She pretends not to see me and avoids making eye contact.  That works for me.  A middle-aged white man with attitudes of my own. 

 Seeing the young woman reminds me of a breakfast KC and I had years ago, before we had kids, at the Holiday Inn across the expressway from LaGuardia.  What took us to that place I can’t remember. 

The hotel was full of enormous black women, there for some kind of convention.  The older women cling to each other in the elevators, as if being transported to their third-floor rooms is an adventure, and one not without risk; as if the elevator doors might open onto the freeway, or the middle of the forest, instead of the third floor.  The younger women, the really big ones, ask me in loud voices if I know where the pool is.  When I admit that I don’t, they mutter something I don't quite catch.

Two of the older women sit at the table next to us at breakfast and spend a long time studying the menu.  I listen with one ear as they try to figure out how to eat for three dollars apiece.  They each settle on a side order of sausages, thinking toast must be included.  They sass the Japanese waitress when they learn they have to order the toast as an extra side.  When their food comes they spread grape jelly on the toast and roll the sausage links up inside and eat it with their hands.  They sass the waitress some more when they ask for more jelly.  And again when they ask for ice water.  As if the waitress has it in for them.

I can't help thinking that the slim Japanese waitress is disgusted by all of this.  I imagine she had a bowl of rice and a small piece of broiled fish and tea for her breakfast, and has never sassed anyone in her life.

I am embarrassed by all of this, including my own reactions to it.  We were a sad group there at the Holiday Inn.  And no better, twenty years later, walking through the Prudential Center Mall.

Waban Arches

   A cold still day at the end of December, heavy with clouds, but it's good to get out of the house anyway. Rachel and I pick the crosstown trail that meets and crosses the Waban Arches, the terrific nine-arch structure that carries the Sudbury Aqueduct over Waban Brook.  And that has become the favored spot of Wellesley's graffiterati.  

   I need to come back and make more of a study of this.   

Tuesday morning in Northfield

   The cook at Rooster's Bistro is an attractive young woman with what seems like a lot of makeup for a Tuesday morning in Northfield, Massachusetts.  With four customers at 8 in the morning, the Rooster would not seem to need a waitress as well, but here she is, an even younger woman with short, bleached blond hair, plenty of makeup of her own, and a small ring in her nose.  One of the customers turns out to be her boyfriend.  He drinks black coffee.   When the waitress comes over to visit with him, he makes a joke about how cold her hands were this morning.  

   A TV hangs over the back counter, playing The Today Show, "live from Rockefeller Plaza in New York City."  A celebrity chef shows us how to make a glaze for our New Year's ham.  A financial expert reminds us to max out our 401(k) contributions before year-end.  "If you're under 50, you can put aside up to $16,500, and your employer may match some of what you contribute!"  I wonder if the cook or the waitress even makes $16,500, much less has a 401(k).  

   They are, in any event, concerned with other things.  The cook has moved to an area near the back where she has pulled a curling iron from her bag and begun primping her hair in a mirror.  If someone else comes in, she will be able to see them from there.  It's a small place, and she can see the whole thing, absolutely all of it, from where she is standing right now.

Commonwealth Avenue Mall

   Turn your back on the financial district in Boston.  Turn your back and walk the other way, through the Common, past the Frog Pond and the ball fields, all the way to Charles Street.  While you wait for the light to change, buy a bag of roasted nuts from the vendor on the sidewalk and then munch them as you stroll your way through the Public Gardens and on to the Commonwealth Avenue Mall.  What a wonderfully rhythmic name, the Commonwealth Avenue Mall.  And a rhythmic walk it is as well, moving west a block at a time, past the statues and benches and the city folks with all their little dogs.