Still Occupying Boston
So, I went back down to Occupy Boston yesterday. It was a beautiful day out, so it appeared to have more people there than the last time I was there. I went midday, so the sun and shadows are out of control in my pics.
I’ve warmed up a bit to this movement. Initially, I had labeled it in my mind as just a bunch of disgruntled, disenfranchised people looking for a soapbox. While disgruntled and disenfranchised are certainly reasonable modifiers, I was using them pejoratively. Shame on me? Yes and no. There appear to be some people down there who aren’t doing this movement any favors. But I haven’t dug deep enough to be able to qualify that statement with any first hand experience, so – shame on me for making that judgement. But people like this guy
"Please Miss, no pictures"
really irritate me. You are protesting publicly, and you’re on public property. It’s technically my right to be able to take your photo. Maybe he has a good reason, I don’t know. But it kind of infuriated me. Here he is again, in full “incognito” garb…
I noticed several internal schisms down there yesterday – 2 guys on the right accusing one guy (not shown) of stealing something in another tent…
These two arguing with each other over something and the cop appeared to be mitigating it…
Then there was a whole set-up of a tent that wasn’t going as well as anyone hoped…
At the same time, people are volunteering and helping others, and THAT should never be diminished. It is, in my eyes, the greatest thing you can do, be of service to others.
Being of Service
After an hour of milling around and 20 minutes of speaking with a young woman from Maine who was incredibly earnest, passionate about the cause, I decided to leave. I was given a little token on my way out.
Shooting the Occupiers
Yup, that’s right. I went down to South Station with my pal Tracy, and we checked it out.
I wasn’t sure what to think going in, and I was mainly interested in trying to take some good photos. It was very subdued there, with a bunch of grubby college kids, assorted homeless folks, suspected drug addicts, some true conspiracy theorists, and original hippies. It was a motley crew.
Protester at Occupy Boston
…and….
and then there was this guy, the Anarchist/Communist (pick one dude!)
Anonymous Anarchist and Communist
and some of his goodies…
Pamphlets from the Anonymous Anarchist/Communist
then we stumbled upon…The Misinformer
….who told us all that https: was untraceable…which is of course completely incorrect…
Then, I ran into a boy and his ferret
Boy and his Ferret, Nancy Sinatra
And voila, a man in his pink wig appeared
Man and Wig
and the Emperor had no clothes
The Emporer has no Clothes
But I kind of jest, and I certainly don’t want to disrespect those who earnestly have committed their time and energy to trying to make a difference. I have a lot of respect for those who act upon the courage of their convictions, and whether you understand the movement, or agree with it, for those genuine and dedicated people, I hope they can push their agenda forward. It does seem a little crazy – even with our Capitalist structure – that 1% of the people that hold 40% of the wealth…
My Baby Boy
Yes, I know, he’s a cat. But he is my baby. My first born. The Russian! He loves being cozy, like most felines. My dad calls him “Spooky Tooth” and “Triangle Head.” You can see why.
The Russian
It’s Spooky Time!
Stopped at Russo’s in Watertown tonight for cauliflower and some flowers & cake for my neighbor. I love Russo’s, but I don’t go there as often I would like since it is usually a madhouse on the weekend, and it closes at 7pm on weeknights.
Anyhoo….It is fall here in the old N of E. Sunset at 5:45, dark by 7pm (soon to be 6pm with Daylight savings), dry, crunchy leaves and the smell of earth and Halloween right around the corner. I love Halloween. Pumpkins, candy, spooooooooooky behavior, costumes, trick-or-treat, crisp air – this time of year is the best. And visiting Russo’s is a treat – they have Pumpkins of all kinds and sizes, surrounded by velvety Mums in rich fall colors….
Sugar Pumpkins at Russo's
We’ll go to get a pumpkin this weekend with Baked Apple Noggin. Maybe toast some pumpkin seeds…I love pumpkin bread, pumpkin soup, and pumpkin pie is ok too. I had sauteed pumpkin at an Afghani restaurant in Woodley Park in D.C. when I was in college. It was delicious.
The Pumpkins at Russo's
After I got home with two sugar pumpkins ($4.98 – originally almost got charged 12.99 for “mini-pumpkin”) the ole ball and chain came over, and mentioned he felt grubby so he was going to shave and shower…I started chopping up the cauliflower, and then I heard a “Lizzie?” looked up, saw this and gasped in fright because of this…
And that.. my friends, is that. Day over. Hump day next.
What a Turkey!
So, I’m driving home from work tonight, and on my way to the grocery store, I spot – a turkey. A wild turkey pecking around the Waverly Oakes train station at Trapelo and Belmont. The past 5 years there have been a lot of reports of flocks of wild turkeys in the most suburban of spaces and this guy just KILLED me. And apparently, he hangs out there all day! It’s his spot! One rattly old car was sitting at the light, and I swear, this turkey was trying to decipher the Clucking Car like it was kin.
He was just hanging in his little patch. A Suburban Turkey. 5 weeks to Thanksgiving. I hope he gets wise. Perhaps he should call 1-800-CAN-LEARN.
- Wild Turkey on Trapelo
- Wild Turkey Rules the Corner of Trapelo and Belmont
- From the Side
- Wild Turkey at Trapelo & Belmont
9/5
I was just writing a to-do list for my Labor Day. As I dated it (I like specific dates for things), I started laughing as I thought of the song “9 to 5″ from the movie of the same name.
“Tumble outta bed and I stumble to the kitchen
Pour myself a cup of ambition
Yawnin’, stretchin’, try to come to life
Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumpin’
Out on the streets the traffic starts jumpin’
And folks like me on the job from nine to five….”
I remember one of my great friends calling me up and telling me that she was DONE with planning her wedding, that everyone was making her crazy. The final straw was her mother requesting that the band at the wedding play “9 to 5″….She told me that when she told her mother flat-out “No, 9 to 5 will not be played by the band on my wedding day…” her mother suggested that she was being very “bridey.” My friend told me “…and that was when my mother heard a dial tone.”
I have howled over that for many years now. Images of the bride and groom doing their first “dance” to it, one of them typing away on the typewriter, the other one pouring coffee, all the while in their matrimonial dress.
Where Were You on 9/11?
It’s 10 years since 9/11, the most horrific, surreal day I, and millions of others, have ever experienced. I find that as I get to know people, I always want to know where they were when they heard the news of the Trade Center. I don’t know why, but I guess it’s just trying to comprehend it still. My story isn’t extraordinary by any means, and I didn’t lose anyone. I just felt the need to write it down, for no particular reason. I am interested in other people’s experiences that morning. Not sure why, but if you feel like sharing, I would love to read your experience. Where were you? What were you doing? What did you think was happening? Where did you go?
My Experience
It was a beautiful day out. Stunning. No clouds in the sky, dry, probably mid-60s in Boston. I can’t experience a day like this without thinking of that day. So beautiful, and such horror.
I was living in South Boston at the time, and my mom was visiting from Florida. That morning, she was taking the Acela train to NYC to visit with an old family friend. Funny, I though I vividly remember the morning, but that is not true. I remember parts of the morning vividly. I can’t remember if I dropped her off at South Station for her train. I feel like I did, but I can’t remember that part of the AM.
The day was a little different in that I wasn’t going work – I was on my way to Quirk Nissan in Braintree to go pick up a used Nissan Sentra I was planning on buying after I had my dad’s mechanic check it out. So, I got down there, and was talking to the guy behind the desk who told me I couldn’t take the car back to Dorchester to get it looked at. I was arguing with him, and saying “I need to get it checked out, I won’t buy the car if you don’t let me check it out, I will walk right out of here.” He told me he’d see what his manager could do for me. He came out and started telling me that he couldn’t let me take the car to the mechanic. I can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure they told me that it would be ok to do that when I called them the day before. In any case, I said “Well, I’m not buying the car if if doesn’t get check out by a neutral mechanic.” He told me he would see what he could do.
As I was waiting, and I thinking I might have been playing around with my cell phone (which consequently had an antenna on it, my how much things have changed.) It was then that I heard the first guy I was talking to say “A plane just hit the World Trade Center!” And I remember thinking “in Boston? Or NYC?” So I asked him – he said “NYC.” I figured it was a little plane, someone had just dinged it – this was the image that came to my mind. Maybe the pliot was dead, maybe there was some debris. Figured people probably hadn’t even stopped working unless it was close to their floor.
The manager of the dealership came back to me and told me he had a way to make both of us happy, and we agreed that they would get that car checked out by a local mechanic. I said “fine, sounds good” and went and got in my rental car and felt a little bizarre – head toward 95/128, but decided to pull over in the Barnes and Noble lot and call my pal Bettina – I cannot remember if I knew about the 2nd plane, but I think I must have heard it on the news because I was worried about her as I knew she worked in Liberty Plaza, right in the area.
Dialed her number, I can’t remember if I got her immediately or not – but one way or another, we were soon talking – she was at home that morning because she was scheduled to go play golf with clients. Her husband Larry worked at Marsh McClennan in Mid-town, and she said he was ok. I felt shaky and sick, and she told me that there was a Marsh office in one of the World Trade Center buildings.
I can’t remember how we got off the phone, but we did, with promises of being safe. I was shaky, and my head was foggy. I literally couldn’t think straight. I called my boss at Lycos, but I had to call the main number and dial him through the directory, because I either didn’t know his number or I couldn’t remember it. I said “I’m on my way, but what the fuck? This is really scary!” He said “Dude, don’t bother. Just go home, and be safe. We’re all probably on our way home soon.” It was weird, because I didn’t want to be alone, and I didn’t know what to do.
I knew my mom was ok, she wouldn’t be near NYC yet, but were they going to bring her there? I can’t even remember how I found out that they had stopped her train, and the plan was to drop everyone off in – Stamford? Maybe she called me? Did I call her? At this point, I was trying to call my uncle on the Upper West Side, and my sister in SF. You couldn’t get a free line – “all circuits are busy”….At some point, I had gotten on the highway toward work, and off the highway and had no idea where I was, and I just wanted to get home because you didn’t know what was happening, what was next, were there going to be more? Were we at war? Seriously – everything was so unknown. So scary.
My friend Robin worked in Midtown, and her husband worked downtown on Wall Street. I was so terrified for them and what might have happened, I literally couldn’t call. Even if I would have been able to get a line, I couldn’t call. I was paralyzed by fear. I really feared the worst for them.
I finally made my way home, after about an hour and a half driving around neighborhoods in Boston I had never been in – I literally was controlling the car, but had no idea where I was or how I finally got home. Was listening the radio, learned about the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania plane (I think!) while driving. I think I talked to my sister. I think I talked to my dad who was in sales at the time so he was always driving all over Boston. I told him I didn’t want to be alone. He told me he would come by.
Got home and saw my landlord with her two sons – she same in and we watched some of the coverage on TV. At this point, I think both the towers had fallen and I hadn’t yet seen it – so the TV continued to replay it. It was surreal – at some point during the chaos, I must have talked to my mom and she told me she was hooking up with some of the train people to rent a car and rive back to Boston. She was sitting next to a terrorism expert on the train who she has since seen on CNN multiple times…The woman – I think – said “Terrorism.” before anyone had confirmed it.
Dad came over and he hugged me, and we both just watched the TV, and he was in shock too, I remember him saying “I can’t comprehend what I am seeing. I simply cannot comprehend this. I see it, but I can’t comprehend it.” I must have talked to my aunts, but probably later in the day.
I remember being so scared – what was next, who was doing this to us, and why? I also remember thinking that they would find alot of injured people. I remember wondering how many people might have died, I think I was thinking – and heard on the news – 10s of thousands. It was so surreal. SO_Surreal. It was still impossible to get through to people on the phone. All circuits are busy.
Absolutely nuts. You didn’t know what was happening. I realized how completely defenseless I really was. I had no recourse if we were going to be invaded. But who was big enough to do this to us? Who was organized enough to start this war? And WHY?
I still can’t understand really what we all witnessed that day. I have heard surreal stories of people’s experience that day, and read books about it, watched all kinds of documentaries. It still doesn’t seem real.
Where were you? What were you doing? What did you think? Did you know anyone who dies?
Listening to the author of “The Facebook Effect”
I am sitting here listening to NPR and the author of “The Facebook Effect”, David Kirkpatrick, has just plugged his book which I may have to buy. A few of the main nuggets:
- Zuckerberg sees Facebook as a ‘social movement’, not necessarily a business. He believes that you can’t have separate personas, ie business and personal. He’s all about building ways to share more, making relationships, and the world, more open. Monetization? That’s really secondary.
- The biggest privacy offenders? Your friends. They’re the ones that are out there exposing you personal information. But really – hasn’t that always been the case?
- Anyone who believes that posting personal information on the internet, ie Facebook, is naive. He cites the head of British Intelligence’s wife posting pics of her kids and information about their address. Gee, good thing the head of British Intelligence is married to her.
- Facebook is valued at $25-26 billion, and 125 million Americans log on for 7 hours a month. 500 million people are registered. This thing is here to stay.
I personally have had a great experience with Facebook. I’ve reconnected with old friends, gotten to know people better, and managed to keep in touch with friends and family this way. I know people who have initially reconnected on FB and their relationships have flourished because of that initial connection. There are so many success stories.
There are also the FOOLS who share way too much, and wonder why people know so much about them. People – listen carefully: it’s the I-N-T-E-R-N-E-T. My rule of thumb? If you don’t want it printed on the front page of The New York Times, DON’T PUBLISH IT ON THE INTERNET. It’s THAT simple. And PLEASE don’t act surprised or offended when people call you out on it. You should EXPECT it.
Action Can Precede Motivation
Earlier this week, I was having a conversation where the person told me “One of the most profound concepts I had ever heard was that action can precede motivation.” It was as though someone had just turned on a light – I mean, I have practiced this plenty of times before, conciously and unconconciously, but to hear it spoken aloud by someone else, gave it a gravitas I’d never quite felt before.
I believe that I am a person who likes to consider all the angles, run all the scenarios on any given proposed action/reaction. While this is surely a great quality for a job like the one I am currently in, applying this analytical process to the banal is probably as inefficient as having the AC on while you’re driving with all the windows down (which, BTW, I do every once and a while. Carbon footprint? Hey, I recycle).
So, from simple questions to “Should I go to the gym?” to the more complex ones like “Should I buy this house?”, I occasionally find myself exercising the same intensity of critical and analytical thinking to both questions to find the answer, as though each outcome carries the same weight in the grand scheme of my life. This “analysis paralysis” can render me immobile, but never inert. So, while I’m sitting there computing all data to support the arguement of NOT going to the gym, the neurons are firing, and combusting when all I really need to do is put my friggin’ Nikes on and “Just Do It.”
I’m going to practice that here. So, I don’t know what I want this to be when it grows up. But how about I just feed it a bottle for now, and see what happens next? I’ll write before I know why I am writing and see where it brings me…
Off to my Sat morning gig. Toodle-Ooo for now.
Telling It Like it Liz
Telling it Like it Liz
Flickr Photos
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