Pragerblog

[Cross-posted at “Sustainably,” my other blog.]

I’ve been writing about business ideas to bring better food to your home for quite some time. The first one was Jeff Barry’s Boston Organics, years ago, when I was still at the Globe; I had a feature for a while called “A Click Away,” I think. More recently, I’ve written about Gabriel Erde-Cohen’s urban/personal CSAs.

Now we can add Laurel Friel, the “queen bean” behind The Green Bean, a start-up whose idea is to do the shopping for you at the region’s farmer’s markets and deliver your order to your door. I met her Saturday at the Somerville Climate Action Network’s event I wrote about on Thursday.

The company will deliver to Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, Arlington, Lexington, and Brookline. The fee for most customers in those areas is $200 for the five-month season, up front, though Friel said some of the farther reaches may be face an added distance fee. She put the cost of her service at about $10 per week, on top of the cost of the food.

Her value proposition, she said, is that many people who might want to patronize farmers markets, to foster community, to support local farmers, and to have a stronger connection between provider and eater, can’t shop on the markets’ timetables, have family or work obligations, or can’t find parking. She said she intends to provide weekly updates on farm news and events, to try to build those connections.

Her expectation, she said, was to appeal most to young families in which both parents work, but she has found strong interest among younger people. She said her research suggests she needs about 50 households to make a go of her idea, and she has about 20 after only two weeks of promotion.

Her website is greenbeanboston.com, but when I checked, it was still under construction. You can e-mail the company here, or call 617-417-8943.

Georgie and I have trekked twice to Western Mass. recently to check out green buildings (though the first time, we had the added incentive of attending our niece’s 7th birthday party.

On that trip, I was struck by one commonality of three of our stops: Perhaps the most attractive, striking place architecturally was Maria Chao’s house [below]. There are green features, such as her Munchkin boiler, but its design is a very strong green element: lots of south-facing glass, solar mass, etc. Maria is an architect, and previously lived in Virginia, working with William McDonough.

The most advanced installation was Bob Gutowski’s [below]. He had four sets of panels — three PV, one hot water — plus a 2KW turbine. He also is the broadcaster for a low-power FM station he’s a member of — that’s where most of the solar goes. He has been tinkering with and adding to his system since 1981. Bob’s job is as technician for the FAA, maintaining one of the radar stations that tracked the flights of Sept. 11.

I’m not sure I’ve gotten enough of the third place yet, even though it’s the only place we revisited on our return trip a week later. Incredibly, we had to leave before we were ready both times because of the press of family matters. It is a B&B [below] operated by John Clapp and Dee Boyle-Clapp. John is a builder, and built the house himself.

They tell the anecdote that the electric utility told them it would cost $30,000 to bring the lines in, and when they declined, the utility said, “OK, how about $15,000?” But they say say paid only $11,000 for their entire setup — the panels, the inverter, and the deep-cycle battery array, though it’s true they’re now looking at upgrading the panels and getting new batteries.

In order, that’s an architect, an electronics technician, and a builder. I’d characterize only Gutowski’s as hobbyist (though still quite sophisticated), but in all three cases, the owners had special expertise that made their projects more possible for them than the same work would be for you and me.

Yes, we saw other places that were simply contracted for, but the visits left a clear picture of the recent, early-adopter-only past.

My brother, who is visiting this weekend along with several other family members to celebrate my grandmother’s 100th birthday tomorrow, has started an age-related challenge for himself. On his 50th birthday, he rode his bicycle 50 miles, and this year he’ll ride 53. I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t carry the habit into his 80s.

I’m not doing anything like that. But I did enjoy this week engaging in an event that gave me what I imagine was the same sort of thrill and/or satisfaction. Wednesday night, two days before my 51st birthday, I went to see Radiohead at Great Woods/Tweeter/Comcast Center.

Through a friend inside the promoter’s organization, I bought four tickets (at $20 extra per ticket, which apparently is standard for those with the inside “juice”), thinking that I would surely find three friends who wanted to go. But no. First I sold off a pair to folks on the Arlington list, then I sold the other ticket on the tarmac outside, at a considerable loss (the premium, plus a little more).

A lot of times in the circumstance, I would just have sold all four together, but not with Radiohead. I don’t even understand why what they do suits me so, but they continue to, as they have for at least a decade. And, once there, I felt the sense of belonging that comes with long-term involvement with a band, even if so many others in the crowd are easily young enough to be my children.

I danced as much as I wanted to, at least in the square-meter-style that concerts allow — and what I wanted was plenty. This show seemed to have more undanceable (for me) selections than other shows I recall, but I was with them to the limits of the beat.

I felt vigorous, and proud that I’m not embarrassed by how I look when I move to music, even if few would ever use my name and the word dancing in the same sentence. 51 years old (minus two days), enthralled by a happenin’ band, moved by what I heard, not worrying about what anyone thought of me. These may be pedestrian traits to many others, but they’re not where I was headed at, say, 30, and even though I’ve been that way for … at least as long as I’ve been loving Radiohead, I still have enough awareness to appreciate it.

Meanwhile, the show: Two and a half hours, including a six-song first encore and a four-song second encore. They played most, if not all, of the new album, while still finding room for plenty of the catalog. Idioteque was a highlight for me. They did some fun things with the set this time, mostly via color. The photos that follow are certainly repetitious, given that they were all taken from the same vantage point, but they do get across the point about color.

I returned yesterday from a day and a half in Rhode Island, traveling with my brother, sister and their spouses, after spending the weekend with them, my mother and my niece at my brother’s in Connecticut. But this photo offering is from our trip the previous week to Maine. (Don’t fret, Vermont, we’re coming in September.)

On Saturday in Maine, we’d hoped to kayak, but fog descended as the sun rose, and we went to plan B, the second annual Addison-Harrington artists’ tour, in which we bought tickets at the Addison town hall and visited some homes and gallery spaces nearby our home base in Jonesport. Many of our stops were thrilling, if not for the art than for the vistas, or the artists themselves.

I was particularly interested in pen-and-ink work by the son of Ken Graslie and would have purchased one, but Georgie wasn’t as keen on it. All four of us — our friends Chuck and Katrina were our hosts — ended up talking with Ken as much about his bursting veggie garden as we did about his art, but we all enjoyed the encounter. I think we also were taken with Grace Synnott Anderson’s quilts, and we enjoyed meeting Beth Ferriero, artist and proprietor of Gray Wolf Art Gallery, which had work from several of the artists whom we later visited.

But the reason for the post was a visit to the home and grounds of John McMurray, whose kinetic sculptures made of salvaged and repurposed materials spread across his seaside acreage and even into the sea itself. I wouldn’t say all his work is beautiful, but he is prolific and creative in the extreme, and I’m grateful for his inventive perspective on reuse. Here are a few of the dozens of pieces he displays:

It must be the Georgie factor that I was so taken with the front-lawn gardens one sees everywhere in the West Seattle neighborhood where our family lives. But I was, so I share a few pics…

This was one block over [above]. Instead of a lawn, the owner opted for one softly sculpted hedge. I passed this after taking my sis-in-law to the bus stop, and it inspired me to grab my camera and come back.

This [above] is the home right next to the hedge-lawn.

And this detail [above] was just to the other side. I don’t know if the gardener intended for the red leaves to flow into the field of white, but it was quite attractive either way.

Please note: These aren’t opulent, staff-tended plots. They’re what hobbyists did — or, at least, what pleasant-neighborhood suburbanites were willing to pay for.

From what my father-in-law said, Seattle is more temperate than I realized. It is rare for the temperature to get above 90 or below 35, so that may contribute to the mature beauties I saw. It didn’t rain in the four days we were there, which had us thinking just a bit more about moving there than we had previously.

Georgie and I arrived back in Boston a couple hours late on Monday because flights into town were delayed by thunderstorms. But it wasn’t until Tuesday morning that we knew how impressive the rains had been.

We were told they lasted only about 30 minutes, but in that time, runoff down Park Avenue, one of the large through streets in the Heights, chewed up impressive stretches of pavement and undermined a number of storm drains.

Today, the work crews are still in the neighborhood, and slag piles show several spots where the water stopped running — or at least where the fury dissipated.

I don’t seek to ascribe meaning to this one either. I was on my way to the Hynes this morning and saw this fellow slowing traffic on Boylston Street while he gave the vegetated island near the corner of Mass. Ave. a good soaking without alighting from his vehicle. It struck me as just odd enough, on a warm enough morning, that I stopped and snapped.

I don’t seek to make some grand statement with these photos, but they were among the only things to catch my eye during an hour or two that I spent walking around the Esplanade. They do seem to go together, in a disconsonant kind of way.

While this guy was saying something that I couldn’t quite make out — and who couldn’t converse outside the bounds of clearly oft-repeated, Bible-based spiel, other folks [below] were making a statement of their own by getting into the very long line for Starbucks.

Things are nuts here at No. 30, primarily because one of its two principal residents — yo! — is a wacko. ‘Course, my tight, little, small, exclusive circle of readers already knows this.

Hi, there.

This morning, I have cleaned off my desk, and though I’m certainly pleased to have it dusted for the first time in, say, 6 months, it wasn’t in my writing plan for this morning, and the execution of it has been, as the headline implies, “emotionally charged,” shall I say? Sort of like I had too much caffeine, though I didn’t. Making piles, reordering stuff, taping up those few things that I’ve propped up a hundred times, only to have them flop over flat again and again and again. Filing papers, paying bills, putting all those receipts I’ll never need (until I toss one and then need it) in their place. Deciding to put the external zip-disc drive downstairs in the to-be-given-away-in-the-next-Freecycle-episode area, upon realizing that I haven’t needed to store anything on there in at least two years. (This means, no doubt, that I’ll discover a use for it in the next week or so, and have to retrieve it. Or, that that will transpire after I succeed in giving it away.)

Yesterday during my writing time (ha!), I reorganized my CDs. This was tangentially, weakly related to some music files on my iPod that have been missing for, oh, a year? Somehow, at some point, those dozen or so files disappeared, and every time I synced my iPod, it would remind me that those couldn’t be found. So, I went downstairs to get those discs from the CD storage shelves, which got more orderly (but not orderly enough) during our recent, very successful basement reorg of two weeks ago.

(We danced in this space after we were done, but have yet to bowl.)

But I still had perhaps 50 or 60 discs that I’d purchased since I boxed up the CDs (which, for years, have been strictly back-up like any other computer files, anyway) to be moved from Brookline to Arlington three years ago. So I went through the boxes, adding in the new ones, reapportioning them, etc., and almost had enough space for all of them (note the little stack on the bottom left, a new chore that will start slowly boring into my skull any minute now). Didn’t need to be done, not even to accomplish the modest task, which itself didn’t need to be done but did serve to fill the time I would have/could have/SHould have been writing.

Earlier this week, I cleaned up a bunch of the wires in our electronics corner, putting up the three power pads on the board, and ordering them so that, for example, the next time the modem, router, and/or network needs to be reset, it can be done with one button, without later having to reset the digital clock. Believe it or not, this is the “after” picture:

(Note all the labeling, that’s Georgie’s influence.)

The subtext of all this “reportage” is that I’m again/still having trouble writing. I did do some this week — a couple of hours that resulted in three paragraphs, which I may or may not end up using, at the same point of attack I’ve been for several weeks.

Another subtext you may have picked up is that I’m not very settled with how/what I’ve written recently. As I’ve said before, I’m praying often, on my knees, asking for help to express the creative voice of God within me, including yesterday, right before I started organizing the CDs, and today, right before I embarked on the desk cleaning.

I do believe in the power of prayer — it is obviously, rightfully, called belief in this case, given recent results — and part of my formulation around it is that just ’cause I ask, doesn’t mean I’ll get what I want, or perhaps it means that the answer won’t come in the form I expect, or in the timing I want. It’s hard to believe that peripheral CD organizing was God’s answer to my request for help with creativity, but for right now anyway, I’m sticking with that.

Even while I am dissatisfied with the result, and beating myself for not writing.

That’s supposed to be part of the surrender process, to ask for help and then give up the outcome. I have definitely asked for help, but I’ve not given up the outcome. It makes no sense that I could ask God for help — if I could think that the result is up to God — and then beat myself up for not doing what I feel urgency to get done, but there it is, where my paradox rests today.

One could say that I’m writing right now, and that’s so, but I grow slightly less interested in the blog as time goes on, because I want more readers than I’ve been able to get. This, too, I’ve shared before: I’m grateful for you who do read, but many good friends and close relatives don’t bother, because it’s doesn’t have enough to attract them, and if I can’t attract them, it’s hard to see how I’ll attract anyone not personally connected to me. And I’m discouraged by that.

I’m aware that most blogs I’m aware of, and that I like, have some important organizing point, such as progressive politics, or green living, or the Sox, and that they purvey information of interest to those who come and then return. On this blog, of course, the only organizing principle is me, and I recognize that that means you have to be interested in me, or my outlook, to want to come back. I do, personally, think I have interesting perspectives, but the world is voting otherwise.

Meanwhile, if I’m writing in my blog, I’m not writing my book, which is the only writing that I really care about right now. I did the one freelance story and have two more simmering, but I’m thinking that the more of that work I do, the less time I’ll have to write the book. That’s silly and almost nonsensical, since a) I got plenty of time and b) I got 63,000 words written while having a full-time job, and c) possibly the answer to my prayers is this other writing — I’m not in a position to know. Both the stories on simmer are green-related; maybe that’s where I’m supposed to be. I dunno.

Anyway, now I’ve filled the time until lunch, and I’ll come up with some other stuff to perseverate about, or clean, or organize, after I eat.

The grass is fairly well filling in in the backyard, making the projects of the past months seem more finished…

[ I took this from my vantage point in the second row, right behind, from left, Ed, Debby, and Evelyn. Using a mechanical device in the sanctuary, on the sabbath, in the middle of the service, was mean affrontery, and after this attempt (for which I thankfully disabled the flash and palmed the device so few if any could see it), I realized the gravity with which others would view my snapping, and stopped. That’s Benjamin, blurred, on the bimah.]

The grandson of my grandmother’s sister was bar mitzvahed on Saturday, and I was able to attend for the entire three-hour-plus ceremony which, among other things, allowed me to observe that coming fashionably late is still a very temple thing to do. I would say that no more than 10 or 15 percent of the guests were present from the beginning.

I wasn’t pleased that it took that long, but it was fine nevertheless. I found I was able to meditate a bit, which was nice, but unable to get very far in trying to work out my book problems, which wasn’t. Meanwhile, the prayer book had English translations on the left-hand pages, so I was able to read along, which has remained in long memory as one of my complaints of my intensive (for Conservatives) Jewish upbringing. When I was bar mitzvahed myself, for example, I sang syllables to tunes, without knowing what I was saying. Same for my haftarah portion. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that at least some of the prayer books back then also gave translations, but if they did, I had no curiosity for them or they left no impression.

By reading along, and ahead (skimming English goes more quickly than singing in Hebrew), I felt as though I was learning, or in some cases being reintroduced, to Judaism. Some portions I found consonant with my view of spirituality, which impressed me, but others, such as those that described Jews as God’s chosen people, clanged harshly on my ear. (Our cousin Wrenn has a bumper sticker that comes to mind, “God bless everyone. No exceptions.” Love that.)

The rabbi, cantor (I think that was her position), and congregation president are all women, which I know is a well established trend in the religion, but especially given the conditions when I was a regular temple attendee, the troika stood out. Benjamin’s mother, Debby, and an aunt of his both read from the Torah as well. They didn’t just have aliyot; they did the actual reading. Very impressive.

Benjamin held up his end very well, too, if a bit shy when it was his role to lead the congregation is songful prayer. The descriptions of him by those who parented, taught, and honored him were consistent, of a very smart guy, warm-hearted, quiet but with an adult sense of humor. He clearly had learned his stuff, and whatever anxiety he had seemed imposed by having to be up in front, instead of doubt over his command of the material.

For myself, I felt every bit of the old, distant, vaguely familiar cousin who I’d previously experienced only through the eyes of the bar mitzvah boy, 37 years ago. And as they were to me, I was good for a middling check and not much else; I tried to engage him in conversation, but on this day, I was certainly tied at the bottom of the priority list.

I was grateful that he acknowledged in his speech not only his two living grandparents, but also Mama Ruth, who attended with the Millers. During the luncheon afterward, she not only said she was glad to have attended, but she seemed as if it were so as well. She seems to do this: Decline to go out, fret about going out when she does agree to it, then enjoy when she does.

Of course, she sat wheelchair to wheelchair with her sister Evelyn for the duration of the luncheon, but it was hard to imagine that they were able to communicate much above the din, with Ruth’s loss of hearing and Evelyn’s spotty ability to complete a thought, which was sad to observe. Perhaps the chance to be together again transcended the observable difficulties.

Though I skipped the evening party, I did attend a brunch the next morning that seemed planned for the out-of-town contingent, and I was graciously kept company by Howie and Maribeth (sp?), uncle and aunt to the celebrant. I’d hoped to chat with Matt, their aspiring-writer son, but he cut out of the Saturday event after the ceremony, and didn’t attend the brunch. Still, my discussion with Maribeth was broad and warm, and I was glad for the chance.

Left: Brothers Howie and Eddie at the Sunday brunch. Right (from left) Jim, Robin, and Larry Miller at the Saturday luncheon. To my eyes, Howie more strikingly evokes Uncle Ben, and I’ve been struck before by how much Jim evokes Papa Solly. I had a twang of pleasure and poignance when I made out the check to “Benjamin Gaynor”; I didn’t know the celebrant’s namesake that well, but have pleasant memories of him.

[The man himself, Sunday morning.]

This is another in a series of “duh” posts from my trip to the City. Billions of bytes and barrels of ink have been expended on the Apple Store in midtown, but it was my first time there, and it was impressive. If Steve Jobs really had this sort of success in his vision way back whenever, I just marvel at him.

The store teems; Bill said he has been there at midnight more than once and found what I did on Tuesday afternoon, the largest Apple store I’ve seen yet, and more crowded per square foot than others I’ve seen (San Diego, Minneapolis, Cambridge and Burlington), even if those, too, were impressive for their foot traffic.

At least a dozen people were in front of us in the checkout line, and this is despite a number of black-shirted workers cruising the floor, handling smallish, non-cash transactions via handheld computers. I’m not sure, but I think that they have so many of these black shirts that one of them is actually a coach, positioning his many minions for maximum effect.

The Genius Bar was also plumply staffed, and every stool was occupied. (The photo shows barely half of it.) (This is still Apple’s dark underbelly, reliability. Regular readers know that I’m on my fourth 60-gig iPod, all obtained for the price of one because I purchased the extended warranty. It was definitely worthwhile to buy it, just as I needed the extended warranty on my G4 (and still had to pay a third party to recover the data on the drive that failed).

(I generally don’t buy warranties; in general, consumer authorities consider them superfluous come-ons. But I do buy them with Apple products because I know by now that I’ll be sorry if I don’t. But what this means is that the product that I paid, say, $300 for really costs $450, or whatever the extended protection plan costs. If they sold them at those prices with the protection included, they’d sell a lot fewer, I bet.

(One caveat of this digression: Maybe, if I bought some other company’s products as faithfully I do Apple’s, I would experience the same. That is, I’m complaining about Apple’s reliability, but partly that’s because I have decided to buy their products, even taking into account their defects.

The primary reason I remain an Apple fan is the company’s design brilliance, which is evidenced not only in every one of its products, but in this store. As I noted elsewhere, it is right across the street from the Plaza and caddycorner to Central Park, as prime a location as you could want. So far as I know, it wasn’t an obvious spot to put a store; I believe it was previously just a plaza for the GM Building, and couldn’t have accommodated a typical, opaque structure.

So they built a 32-foot-by-32-foot glass box, which stands out while blocking nothing.

I found the box to be derivative; I.M. Pei had the same idea, even more brilliantly conceived in pyramid shape, for the Louvre 20 years ago. That pyramid solved the same problem: How to provide access without building something that obscures the surroundings.

So they took an unobvious space, built a store in the basement, filled it with light, and made a landmark. Good thinking, no?

This was no big deal, but I thought it was slightly comical. Bill and I were sitting outside on the plaza where the entrance to the Apple Store is (59th and 5th, across from the Plaza), when I saw this…

The reaction of the typical driver in this case would be to offer to move the car before getting written up, but not in New York. It appears that in this case, tickets are just a cost of doing business. I don’t imagine they get charged to the client, but the client is certainly why he wasn’t moving; it wouldn’t do to not be in the expected spot when the client comes out. I assume that the economy that has evolved just places fines on the same list with insurance, fuel, and salary.

Meanwhile, the city has a built-in revenue stream, from all the livery drivers who will just take the ticket, even if they are able to avoid it.

We spent the weekend at Mount Washington with friends Ron and Laura, in a very nicely appointed rented condo.

Mostly, we just sat around and talked, and watched some baseball, but we did do a fairly short, fairly vertical hike on a trail that would have led us to the summit of Mount Jefferson, if we’d intended to go that far.

Laura is less than a year removed from knee-replacement surgery. She’s an avid hiker and outdoorswoman, but this was her first serious return to the mountains since the surgery, and I, for one, wasn’t unhappy that we had to cater to her abilities. She and Ron went for other walks during the weekend, but this was just about the only movement I engaged in.

Anyway, when we finally reached a clearing just about at the outermost point of our intended hike, we relaxed on a couple of huge boulders, looked out on the muted colors of the changing fall scenery, and looked down on the impossibly grand Mount Washington Hotel.

We were immediately joined by what Ron identified as a gray jay who clearly ruled the area, without any fear of the people who pass. I was surprised when it came fairly close to me to take a sip from a rain-filled little bowl in the rock close beside me. It posed for a pic not only there, but from the top of a nearby tree that was barely more than eye level from our perch.

Then it started sitting on hands. First, Laura put her hand out and it lighted; I dunno if she was purposely providing a roost, or if the jay was just opportunistic. Then Ron put his hand out with definite purpose, and the jay obliged. And when I did it, Georgie was ready with our camera:

I’ve been feeling buzzed with the drive to create the past few days, though it may be that the back yard is continuing to drain off enough of it — not my plan — to keep me from other ways I might express the urge.

I spent parts of four days this week completing what I’d thought would be a one-day task, which I’ve mentioned before, to regrade a strip of land between the patio and the brick garage next door. I’d never liked the strip, because it was bumpy and because a void of dirt had developed alongside the concrete patio pad, both of which made mowing difficult.

But when I built the wall and regraded the adjacent area, I saw that this needed help as well. This was particularly evident when I filled the planting bed I’d disturbed to put in the wall. When I put dirt back in that space and laid two bricks on their sides to hold back that soil, I saw there was no place to put dirt in front of the bricks, meaning they’d move at the first opportunity.

Meanwhile, the bricks that defined the rest of the bed, placed also on their sides when the original bed builder installed them, were all but underground; that was about how much regrading would have to be done, the height of bricks that had been laid flat.

But that also meant that I would have to re-place all the bricks, and lots more besides, standing upright, so they would be of sufficient height to hold the level of soil in the bed and still have a good part of them underground, for stability.

In effect, this created a raised bed, albeit a much lower one than what we created with the wall.

Since it was removing a little bit of soil here, and adding a bit there, and moving a couple of bricks, I thought I’d do it in a day, perhaps a day and a half, but it became the major task of the week.

This is as viewed from the lower yard, through the hedge. The row of flat brick in the foreground was unnecessary, but Georgie and I decided on it in the design phase (a two-minute conversation one night during the job, when I’d dragged her outside upon her arrival home to gander the beauty I’d wrought). From this perspective, grass will be planted beyond these bricks and around to the left.

Only the absurdly incurious would not wonder what the frick is going on with the bottle buried in the dirt. Well, we’re not sure, at all, it’s going to work, but that’s actually a dismembered bottled, with the decapitated portion stuck on temporarily, trying to house a sprinkler head that’s now a couple inches below grade. We could have the sprinkler guy come and raise it that amount, and may do that some day, but we both think he’s both greedy and overpriced, and I’m not willing to pay for this unless I absolutely can’t solve the deficit another way.

What remains for the yard is the hardscape in the area we grill in, but especially with the reminder of how long this little boondoggle took, I am leaning toward leaving that one in the futures pile.

No, I haven’t done any more work on it since last I wrote on it. But my attitude has changed.

It needs more work to be done in the image I’d intended, but for now, I’ve decided to let it be the way it is. This almost certainly means that, barring unforeseen, unacceptable circumstances, I’m leaving it the way it is and moving on.

The issue, you may recall, was that the mortar didn’t stick between the top two layers, so now I’m where I would have been had I never attempted the mortar, except now there’s a bunch of mortar in there, pretty unsightly in places. Maybe five of the approx. 20 stones did stick, but that’s a pretty lousy success rate.

But, the wall is “performing” well enough, not only containing what we’ve built up behind it, both as an architectural feature and as a seating area, as at our party. (Unfortunately, we got very few photos of the party, and none from the yard that I’m aware of.)

And, I have other projects I want to do, and there is the writing to be done, of course. For today, I’m more willing to have it be the way it is than I am to put more time and effort into it.

I have some photos from the job, not exactly effective documentary communication, but the best I have available…

This is our “before” photo, not taken for the purpose and not showing the slope that I wanted to level, but still, here’s what it looked like before the project wormed its way into my brain.

This is very early in the digging; late April is reflected in the trees, still bare. The hose was an original proposal for the line of the wall, but we later decided to go in a different way. Right in the center of the photo you can see the ledge whose eventual removal led to my carpal tunnel and right elbow tendinitis. (I see the hand specialist Oct. 3.)

Actually, this second area of ledge (the more solid-looking rock roughly framed by the faint guide strings that I erected) is what cinched the carpal tunnel, when I rented a jackhammer to take it down; unfortunately, it took me down, to the emergency room the following day.

At this point, the crushed stone bed and the foundation stones have mostly been laid. In the foreground, you can see the conduit for the speaker wire emerging from the ground, where it had been fine until I lowered the grade. I had to “fix” the conduit three times before I succeeded, requiring almost enough trips to Home Depot to provide their clerks comic relief (as in, “can you believe that guy is back again?!) Even now, I would have done it differently, in one more respect, but mostly, I would say only I notice it.

I include this mostly to memorialize the summer of rubble in the back yard. BTW, the upright white conduit was conceived as an umbrella stand, but it turns out the sun comes up in the east, rendering it pretty much useless.

A facet of the project I’m particularly pleased with is the way we transitioned the slope from the original to the new area, achieved by planting paver stones, on end, in a curved line emanating the point where the wall itself curves in a different direction.

I like it for two reasons: First, because it was more of an inspiration than the rest, which was planned, mulled, and developed over some time; this solution presented itself, whole. Second, because it expanded the flattened area, which was the main original goal. When done, the bed is bigger and the flattened area is smaller than I’d wanted — I think that’s one possible outcome for projects that are planned, mulled, and developed over time. But then this idea sprung itself and gave us substantially more area. And third, I think the two curves complement each other. And fourth (yeah, I know I said it was two): Georgie likes how it gives a “formal” beginning to the yard. We expect to plant trees on either side just before the step-down, and perhaps build an arbor, in the future. Who knows if it will ever get done.

This is how it looked this morning from the second floor window, and shows, among other things, the garden behind the wall, which, to some people’s eyes, is as important as the wall. Note, also, that the pavers don’t go all the way to the corner of the house; this is because that circle just to the right of the stones is a junction box for the sprinkler system, and hoses traverse that area. That’s also why there’s a gap between the last stone and the others. Luckily, the grade is almost gone at that point, so the lack of a step is not an issue.

We don’t intend to leave it dirt. We’re awaiting a proposal from an organic lawn guy to see whether he will plant there, or if we will. Either way, growing will start within a couple of weeks. Before then, possibly today, I will regrade the strip between the patio and the brick wall. It’s much more subtle than the rest of the project, but I want to get it all set now. As we used to say in the news biz, set it and forget it.

Bill K. and I caught three ballgames last weekend in St. Louis’s new Busch Stadium, the 9th of the 9 new-to-me parks I visited this summer, and I have to say that I place it in the top tier of the 37 parks I’ve now visited.

You may have noted, as I did when writing it, my phraseology of “have to say,” as if I didn’t want to. This might relate to my St. Louis antipathy, or an ingrown desire not to hand out superlatives because the more I do that, the more each one devalues.

Regardless, it is organized well, the view beyond the outfield is as good as any park I’ve been to, and the presentation of stats and other information to fans better is unparalleled. For years, one of my fantasy jobs has been to control the boards at Fenway, because those in charge, for all their genius in remedial architecture, message control, and market exploitation, have been profligately misusing their Diamondvision/etc. real estate.

Little of what they do in St. Louis is complicated or all that clever, but that just proves that it doesn’t take much cleverness or sophistication to do a lot better than Fenway, and most parks, do.

One nice touch at Busch is the auxiliary signs over each bullpen, where the team posts pitching stats such as name, number of pitches, pitch speed, type of last pitch, etc. That info is given in most if not all stadiums now, but it sometimes takes me an inning or two to find it, even in stadiums I’ve been to before. Just think of it: pitching stats in the areas of the park devoted to pitching! The same signs provide names when relievers start to warm up, which is such an obvious, logical idea.

Other little things they do include keeping the lineups for both teams posted all the time, so it’s easy to check on which position in the order is up, whether the batter is the shortstop or the second baseman, or whatever. When they post situational stats, they are just the right ones for the moment: If it’s the ninth inning, the stat might be how the batter fares in the ninth inning. (Friday night at Fenway, meanwhile, a stat they put up late in the game told me that, in his lifetime, the batter was 0-for-1 against the pitcher, a practically useless datum if the intent is to help me anticipate the coming action. To me, that sort of crap is worse than posting nothing at all, not only unhelpful but totally tone deaf.)

Busch’s façade is brick, echoing the city’s housing stock, and you see evocations of the city’s even-greater symbol, the Arch, in the architecture. You also see it in the view. (No matter the vantage point I saw it from during the weekend, inside the park and out, it demanded attention, even though this was my fourth trip to the city. Natives must stop noticing it, or getting excited about it, at some point, but I’m not there yet.)

We had three vantage points in the three days. I had no complaints of any of them, and the seats behind home plate on Friday night were every bit as good as they should have been.
We could have sampled even more sightlines, since fans wary of the heat stayed away in droves, especially for the day games Saturday and Sunday, so empty seats were plentiful. We had extra tickets both days and were unable to unload them at any price (Dave D., take note); Sunday, lower boxes were selling on the street for $10 apiece if they were in the sun. We never even went up to our section because it was in the sun; we were squatters in shaded right-field seats and never felt even close to being evicted.

Mostly, it was a positive experience, but I feel compelled to mention the Major League price-gouging going on at the concession stands. An example is a small farm of vending machines in straightaway center field where you can purchase 20-oz. Coke products. They are true vending machines, but according to the aide stationed there, the machines never work, and he has to open a machine for each sale.

The cost of these personally vended jewels? $5.75 each. The same product sells in other vending machines at $1.25, maybe $1.50. Supermarkets, way less. Costco? Forget it! I know, I know: Higher prices at the ballpark are not news. But if those bottles were, say, $100 each, we’d be talking about it, and I’m just saying, let’s start now.

(Footnote: I noticed on Friday that the same product, delivered to my seat at Fenway, was only$4.25. What a bargain!)

Can’t remember the last time I did anything resembling nightlife in Cambridge, and last night I had to race from one to a second one.

First up was a 90-minute set by guitar god Sonny Landreth at Regattabar.

I try to see him whenever he’s around, even though he now gets up here regularly; for the first 10 years or so after I saw him burn up a small stage at the Jazz Fest in New Orleans, he seemed never to get north of Virginia. But now it’s usually twice a year, sometimes with multiple stops on the same swing through, such as in November, when he’s playing at the Bull Run in Shirley on the 2d, followed by a return to the Iron Horse in Northampton on the 3d. (Tickets on sale now.)

He was his usually virtuosic self, which is misleading phraseology, since what he does with an ax is never usual. Having seen him at least a dozen times, including once from 2 feet away during a TV interview we did, I’ve seen so many of his tricks, but his left hand did some fret-board diddling I’ve never seen, by him or anyone. The set lacked his signature Congo Square, perhaps in part because he and his two-piece rhythm section included three songs from the next album, two of which raised my hopes that I’ll like the next one as much as I’ve liked the previous ones.
That’s always a concern for favorite artists: Will their artistic growth have led them away from my artistic tastes? My theory is that with most bands we like, we are attracted by whatever we hear first, even if it’s the band’s fourth or fifth album, and the further we get from that point, either past or future, the less likely we are to stay interested.
I can’t count the number of acts that at some point I loved completely, and intended to buy every album they ever made, only to end up with disillusionment and disappointment embodied in dust-covered jewel cases. Examples that come to mind: Al DiMeola, Sting, and Hall and Oates (yes, their first three albums, at least, contained clever, appealing, substantial music; no, really).

Artists are allowed to grow in new directions; in fact, it’s an imperative. There is nothing to say that said growth has to please me, of course. But when a band does something fresh, and I’m still drawn to them, and then they do it again, and then again, and then again, I find that the mark of greatness. Examples that come to mind: Los Lobos, U2, and particularly Radiohead, whose directions continue to puzzle me, even while they stay in highest rotation on my iTunes; I don’t have to understand it, as long as I get it, and in the case of Radiohead, oh do I. Of U2, I’ll concede the obvious, the essential greatness is not defined by my tastes, but I will add that I liked even “Pop.”

I got out of Sonny’s show in time to race over to Inman Square, where I barely missed the surprise sprung on good pal Geoff Edgers on the occasion of the release of his young people’s book, “Who Was Elvis Presley?” For me, the gathering was a chance not only to congratulate and celebrate with Geoff and his wife, Carlene Hempel, but also to see lots of my favorite Globies, some of whom I hadn’t seen since I departed Morrissey Boulevard in April. I don’t miss the place, but I sure miss a lot of the people.

[BTW: Sorry for the photo quality. My Lumix, which served me well for the entire long trip, failed when I took it to the Cape and it’s still down, so I was forced to use my phone. And as you can see, as a camera, it is one awesome PDA.]

The first half of my baseball trip to the Midwest last week was in Kansas City, and boy was I surprised. Not to get there, of course — it was printed on my ticket and everything — but what I saw there, which was much more than I expected. I don’t know whether it’s more accurate to say that I no expectations or low ones, but regardless, I was impressed, and I would gladly return to see more.

Let me count the ways:

• The baseball park is impressive in its way, not on a par with the new crop but surprisingly comparable, considering that it is now 35-plus years old. For that long, I’d been hearing about the fountains that ring the outfield, and yes, they’re pretty cool. I learned that they have a context, too; by numbers, styles, and civic personality, K.C. is a city of fountains.

Hardly anyone attends games there (21K on Wednesday night, 14K under a searing sun Thursday afternoon), so it was easy to do a park crawl, sampling sight lines all over, and there appears not to be a bad seat in the house.

The name of the place is Kauffman Stadium, which shouldn’t go unmentioned because its one of the few parks I’ve been to this summer whose naming rights haven’t been sold off. (The others, out of the 10 I’ve been to: The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, and Fenway Park.)

I wanted to impute integrity into that circumstance, but one of my traveling companions, with deep K.C. roots, suggested the reason might be that no one wanted to buy.

• The Nelson-Atkins Museum, which I’d barely been aware of, and then only because of research I’d done related to the Museum of Fine Arts’s huge capital campaign. The Nelson-Atkins also was conducting one, of smaller magnitude, and the result is the Bloch Building (named for H.R. Bloch, a local success story), a Stephen Holl design in which the treasures inside must compete for attention with their housing.

Much longer than wide, it opened only in June. This is probably only an egocentric back formation of the curators’ plan, but a small stroke of brilliance was to locate the indoor Isamu Noguchi sculpture garden down almost at the end. It was the first thing I noticed on the map, and my desire to see it drew me down the length of the tube, exposing me to the sculpture, paintings, and photography along the way.

My friend Bill Keveney and I stayed in the museum district, within walking distance not only of the N-A, but of several other appealing art houses. They are part of what I’d like to go back for.
• The city’s amazing housing stock. Our man of K.C. took us out west of the downtown to show us block after block after block of what had to be million-dollar homes erected in the ‘teens and ‘20s. One palace after another, with stately grounds and along stately thoroughfares, punctuated by statuaried fountains. He estimated that in K.C. and over the state line in Overland Park, Kansas, there are at least a hundred square blocks of this, which is just stunning to contemplate. One hundred square blocks of million-dollar homes? What sort of place can support that? If you’d heard that description and been asked to name the city, how long before you’d have answered Kansas City, Mo.?
• Eighteenth and Vine, site of the combined Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and the American Jazz Museum. We had time only for the former, but it was entertaining and informative. A highlight for me was the opening of a 15-minute introductory film that had perhaps the best rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner” I’ve ever heard. It was sung by an unnamed Kansas City Monarch, perfect in pace and diction, dulcet in tone, without any of the forced and silly stylings of every artiste invited to kick off the old ball games of today. I had heard of many of the black stars, such as Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck O’Neill, and Cool Papa Bell, but there were others of great exploits whom I’d never heard of. (I’d like to share their names, but I didn’t take notes, and already, they’ve receded back into anonymous history, at least within my view.)

I may, finally, be reaching the end of my reports from the cross-country trip. Not sure, topics and memories keep bubbling up. But for now, here are my 22 favorite pictures from the 975 snaps that have survived both immediate viewfinder deletion and several rounds of iPhoto editing.

Some I like for content, some I like for composition, some I like for quirky, and some are so freakin’ awesomely wicked cool that I’m sure I’ll win a Webby, if not a Pulitzer. Though 22 is only roughly 2 percent of the total, it still seems a bit high, and I know if I had an editor, she or he would make me winnow it much further.

For now, I’m presenting these, and asking you for your editing eye: please vote for those you like the most, and for those you would kick off the coffee table.

This kid was having such a good time, tossing stuff into Lake Jenny. Some of the Tetons are in the background.

This is the moose picture I’ve been saving for this post, ’cause I’ve liked it since the moment I was about to shoot it. It’s a little soft, a result of being on fairly high, digital magnification, but to me, in addition to its literal qualities, it suggests the rabid enthusiasm of a compulsive overeater in the throes of a binge.

I have no idea what’s going on here. This is actually the second time I saw this on a secondary road linking I-90 and Boulder Springs, Mont. There are file boxes, inside wire fencing, in a field by the side of the road. Suggestions, anyone?

The foreground struck me as an alpen meadow, not the first place I’ve had that thought, even though I’ve never been to the Alps. In the distance is the far (south?) wall of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. I took this on the way day from the summit of Mount Washburn.

OK, so this isn’t the first time this photo has been taken, and it surely has been taken better, but it is the first time I’ve taken it. My transit from Park City to the Tetons took me through Logan, Utah, on the day of its annual Independence Day weekend parade, and the street was lined with chairs by people claiming their viewing positions. It still struck me as a funny scene, even after I realized what the deal was.

The roof of the Metrodome in Minneapolis.

Certainly one of the more ephemeral photos I took, and perhaps hard to defend for inclusion here. The morning light at “Lightning Field” seemed so sharp, and it seemed to bring out such luster in the old wood and and old hardware of the cabin.

This is one of the few repeats from earlier posts, but I just think it is hilarious — standing at attention in the hot dog line at the ballpark. I took it at servicemen’s Sunday at Petco Park in San Diego. I showed it to someone along the way, expecting them to like it as much, but all I got was a blank stare. It must be me.

A four-story escalator at the Guthrie in Minneapolis. I found the theater, which is open all day long, not just when shows are on, to be just a shooting gallery of shapes and color and cleverness. The down escalator seemed to present an even greater photo opportunity, but there wasn’t enough light without a flash, and too much flash reflection with it.

If you read the previous post related to this place, you know I wasn’t going to stop, but happened to be speaking with Georgie at the time and exclaimed at how interesting the view was. She insisted I stop and shoot it so she could see it, and I’m glad she did. I liked all three images I took, and feel certain that with more time, I would have found more to my taste. I may like the shot I used with that other post even more.

Basically, I’m making fun of this guy, who assumed the stance to ensure that he caught just the right image of a sign for the Needles section of Canyonlands N.P., just off the main road.

Selected for my promixity, and ’cause he looks like he’s stopping to smell the flowers.

I think this is from the Fountain Paint Pot geyser field at Yellowstone, which I thought was among the best ones I visited. The colors, apparently, are evidence of microscopic life within the hot springs that are of high interest to biologists because of their survival properties at such high temperatures. I just thought they, and the line of the stream, made a pleasing image.

I shot a vertical of this spot at well, leaving out of tread marks, and I still am not sure which is better. It comes at the first steep transition on the Osprey Falls trailhead, which is flat from the road to this point. A quarter mile later, the signs prohibit not only 4-wheelers (which aren’t sanctioned here anyway, though clearly, from the tracks, some do get there), but cycles as well, as the trail become almost entirely a series of sharp, steep switchbacks of narrow width and lots of rockfall. Loved it.

This is what you find at the bottom of that trail, heading back up (slightly) toward the cascade. There’s another image of roughly this view with me in it that I like — the only other people there, a couple from upstate New York, took it for me — but what I like in this one is the way the line started by the falls continues on the path; it’s an excellent example of an image I made turning out to have an outstanding feature that I didn’t see at all in the taking. I wonder how much serendipity actual photographers experience.

To me, this is similar to a) Logan, Utah, chair shot and b) the guy taking the picture of the sign outside Canyonlands. To the former, because many others have taken this photo before, and many have taken it better, but I liked it when I saw it, regardless. And to the latter because I’m making fun of the guy, trying to make him look like he’s missing the point when, in fact, he’s just shooting one of the other elk nearby.

Quite possibly the least deserving photo of this bunch. It’s from an auditorium inside Temple Square in Salt Lake City where the church makes its most overt pitch to visitors to join the flock. I wasn’t framing at all; I held it low, pointed, and hoped something might result. I bet most others will think that nothing worthwhile did.

Not surprisingly, this is from the Needles section of Canyonlands, a vast park with three entrances, one of which can’t be reached by two-wheel-drive vehicle and whose other two are more than 70 miles apart. These upright formations are what they mean by “needles.” What surprises me is that this vista, which has the density and feel of an urban skyline, is just some other part, not at all venerated as one of the really cool places inside the park. I saw it, looking back behind me, on the way to Chesler’s Park, which is regarded one of the special locales.

I shot this cauldron at Norris Basin, across the street from my campground, in the early morning of my third day there, on my way out of the park.

And finally, this one, which is also a repeat, from a post I did on the rodeo I attended near Park City. It is blurred because of the fading light and the lack of flash, which I’d turned off because I didn’t want to stick out as the city slicker shutterbug. (I feel certain that the flash would have frozen the action better and completely ruined the picture, but I can’t claim it was an artistic decision not to use it.) This photo, too, has been done, and done better, but I still like the colors, the scene, and the suggestion of violent movement.

Actually, I think that’s only 20. I did a little more editing along the way.