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OK, kiddies, it’s March. When do the Christmas decorations come down. Here are just a few in Hyde Park and Milton I noticed on a walk. I do confess that we kept our tree in the living room through January. It was still good and not shedding much when we took it out.
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Pix Notes: You’re welcome to anything useful. They are Creative Commons, so just cite Mike Ball once. Click images to enlarge.
Even simple infrastructure building is often a big deal. I didn’t take it lightly to be the first cyclist over the newly opened pedestrian bridge over the Neponset by Dorchester’s Central Avenue.
Ribbon snipping was at 1:30 PM today, replete with DCR’s Commissioner Ed Lambert, the district Councilor Frank Baker, state Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry, and like that. They sliced the red cordon to make public the 202-foot Walter Baker Pedestrian Bridge. I didn’t stick around a half hour for that (we have a weekend guest and I was abusing host duty already by riding), but did chat up the DCR folk.
Truth be told, I was not aware this was the day and just happened to be cycling by on the adjacent path. I’ve been seeing work on this for well over a year and figured it would be like so much of the Neponset and cycling projects — always under construction.
Yet as a Boston Cyclists Union member who has been to numerous public hearings on related projects, I need to drop my cynicism. These bits are happening all the time. The city, commonwealth and DCR are still trying to find funding to finish the big piece to and around Mattapan and beyond for the connection to Brush Hill/Truman, but they seem determined.
The flyer they were handing out noted:
This joins the Dot and Milton sides, with the Neponset Trail on the Milton one. Pedestrians and cyclists can pass safely over it. This should encourage picnickers and walkers. It includes a bike rack on the Milton end.
I was the first over and back, but it won’t be my last trip.
Monday afternoon, I was tromping around Hemenway Pond in Milton. Thursday, my wife was tweezing out a tick — rather most of one — from pectoral skin and muscle.
As boomer kids, we grew up cowering under school desks, which was supposed to somehow protect us from a nuclear explosion’s effects. We still get palpitations when we hear a test of a civil alert siren, which we knew as a possible warning of Russian missiles or bombers. We took our polio shots or sugar cubes, lest we spend our shortened and painful lives in iron lungs or leg braces. Our parents vacillated from telling us how good we had it and trying to terrify us into orthodox, prophylactic behaviors.
Yet, we didn’t have AIDS. We didn’t have daily fears of strangers and child molesters OUT THERE. We also knew nothing of Lyme disease.
Now an embedded tick immediately brings to mind that horrible, chronic, debilitating and likely incurable set of nasty conditions and symptoms. And sure enough, when I found an inflamed sore on my left pec near my armpit, my wife was both quick and unhappy to point out that it had a big red circle around it, it was a tick, and it looked like a bull’s eye to her. The bull’s eye, of course, is the classic indicator of a deer tick carrying Lyme.
Now, there’s an alert-making way to start the day!
My wife has many virtues, not the least of which is considerable musical ability of which I have none. However, she is squeamish about blood, wounds and such. In contrast, I grew up with a mother, aunt and other family members who were nurses, first aid instructors, home nursing teachers and the like. Anything short of compound-complex fractures and massive bleeding were usually handled on the spot with gauze, scalpels, tweezers, slings, disinfectants, adhesive compresses (BAND-AID® bandages to you), ice or heat packs and such. As an active, outdoors type, I don’t know how many injuries were patched before I headed out for more.
My wife could sort of look at the tick and kind of get most of it with the tweezers. However, she convinced me it looked bad and that there were visible parts left in the skin. It was an awkward spot or I would have hacked at it myself. I could only see it in a mirror and could not get both hands to the area because of its location next to my armpit.
So, I made an appointment with our doctor-like folk. In this case, it would be a nurse practitioner, Patricia, in the urgent care part of internal medicine. From my own background of being the instruction dummy and then first-aid instructor, I link urgent care to stopped hearts, shock, and uncontrolled bleeding. Instead, there I arrived with a purplish/reddish mound with tick parts in the center. Meh.
Patricia gave it her shot. She rooted around in the muscle and skin for around 20 minutes with various stainless steel gear. She retrieved parts, but admitted defeat and the immutable tenacity of a tick leg or two in the wound. It was painful and mostly tiresome, for both of us, but geewillikers, for all the flaying elbow action, I wanted her to say smugly, “Got it!” She didn’t.
She said that so far, the wound did not fall into the bull’s eye category. It didn’t have a pale ring separating the main mound…at least not yet. I’m supposed to watch for that.
She didn’t want to have the tick pieces I brought in on a cotton pad tested. She did give me doxycycline, a single dose of two tablets, as a precaution. I see that it may or may not be effective in preventing Lyme post-exposure.
Of course, the big joke is that ticks carry many diseases other than that one. The incubation period for Lyme and a few of those can be months or years. I think I’ll pass on the worry.
Oddly enough, a few months ago, we went hiking in the Blue Hills as a family, and two of our sons ended up with ticks. They each got a medical pro to pull out the parasite and then got doxycycline as a precaution. It seems to be a family shtick.
I can’t see this inconvenient experience changing my behavior (sorry Scientologists, no engramming here). I’ve been an outdoorsy active guy since I was a wee bairn.
Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, hiking, tick, Hemenway Pond, Lyme disease
When my digital camera died a week and change ago, I ordered a new one. Taking it for a spin today, I looked for varied lighting and color to see what it could do. Here’s what I found in Milton on a walk.
Pix clix: Click a thumbnail for a larger view. If it opens in the same window, use your browser’s back button or command to return.
License note: All pix are Creative Commons-Attribution. Do what you want with them. Just give Mike Ball credit once.
| Just South of Mattapan Square on Rte. 138, I’ve been biking by a big new sign. Today walking, I read it all and took this shot. What was a Jewish temple and what looks for all the world like a middle school will apparently become (ta da) a worship edifice. Oddly enough, I know the outside of the Concord Baptist Church in the South End. To most of us, that grand old building that used to be a Presbyterian church would seem much more like an edifice. I find it hard to believe that the CBC people could spend all that money for Milton real estate and immediately tear down the low brick thingummy, but stranger things have happened in religious history. TBD. |  |
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In contrast to the aspirations and pretension of the CBC sign, the old one from Temple Shalom remains for the moment. It is much more in keeping with the stereotypical Jewish lack of ostentation in things religious. |
| The camo worked. The only reason I noticed this huge katydid was because I had bent to photograph the flowers. |  |
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Pope’s Pond is a small, hidden Milton treasure. This particular birch is in the wonderful canopied path beside the pond. |
| Not all in Milton is jolly. At least one person also doesn’t seem to get the hang of threats. This sign by the entrance to a fancy home is reminiscent of the French invaders in Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail — Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time! |  |
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The sumac by Pope’s Pond is prolific. This one could be in Dune as a sandworm. |
| Along Brush Hill Road are numerous delightful weeds, this one like a yellow waterfall. |  |
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Pokeberries also abound. Birds love the sweet fruit, which are moderately toxic to mammals. Supposedly the juice cooked and without any seeds is edible. |
| I’m not sure what this little gem beside Pine Tree Brook. It seemed to sing. |  |
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Here is a house on Cheever Street in serious need of the spider Charlotte. The house number sign has gone and the spiders were left to spin on the frame, but have not gotten to numbers. |
| I’ll be thumbing through my hort books to find these berries. |  |
Hail to the many who have worked for the better part of two decades for a Neponset River Greenway! Within two years, the biggest missing piece will be complete. Citizens, engineering sorts and bureaucrats alike have ‘er done.
I joined what looked like a little over a hundred in the Foley Senior Center on River St. in Mattapan last evening for another quenching trip to the well. You can grab the straight coverage and a link to the presentation at the Dorchester Reporter. You can also search at that site for excellent past coverage on this trail.
The short of it is that after many meetings and laborious compiling of complaints, suggestions and comments of Milton, Mattapan and Dorchester abutters (and numerous whiners, loudmouths and cheerleaders), the final plan looks like a winner. A large majority apparently love it. It moves from conceptual drawings to engineer docs that can aid in getting the federal money for the project as well as giving the nitpickers and Myers-Briggs S types something to hold and come to terms with happening. They are now figuring that completion of a link from Central Avenue into Mattapan Square for a ped/bike path will happen by the fall of 2013.
Click the pic for a closer view or go to the presentation for it and the earlier schemes. Key aspects are that it starts at the existing path at Central Avenue, runs between the trolley path and river, crossing from Milton to Mattapan on a new bridge by the Ryan Playground, then curves on the north of the river to a new ped/bike bridge over and around the trolley terminus and into Mattapan Square.
This came after five previous plans. After the public meetings and private comments, which the presentation recaps in concepts and numbers, the latest plan seemed to placate nearly everyone.
I came for the details, but left with a felt sense of the democratic skills involved, particularly the the DCR folk in managing a prickly, often nasty process. While he was quick and frequent to spread credit and praise, the diplomat in chief seems to be Jack Murray.
The DCR Deputy Commissioner for Park Operations is unfazed by the hostile, NIMBY and unfair-to-me types. Even at this largely jovial celebration, several dissatisfied folk spoke out and up, without rattling Murray. He’s been though a couple years of rough democracy on this and kept his cool and his smile.
In fact, several of the pols who attended and chimed in their praises (Sen. Brian Joyce and Reps. Linda Dorcena Forry and Russell Holmes) called the process out for its amazing transparency, flexibility, and outreach. There was passing mention of the contention involved from the beginning, and nothing but kudos for a thoroughly open process — perhaps an inspiration for the larger government, ask I?
Murray was also charmingly coy about the MBTA. It refused to allow an at-grade crossing for the trail, leading to among other expensive problems, a ped/bike bridge at Mattpan station. Murray just smiled and said “We love our sister agencies.”
So it’s worth nothing the residual complaints that bring up what the DCR and the many others involved overcame. Last evening lacked the whiffs of racism and classism noted in articles about earlier public meetings. A few of those seemed to mirror the fears that kept Weston from allowing an extension of the Minuteman path. There was only one of those last night, and of course Murray handled that well.
Despite the round praise for the proposal, one resident still wanted her say, there and in some private meeting. It was a wonder to hear. She said the trolley runs behind her house and the bike path will. Her concern was that cyclists would jump the fence and do something nefarious on her property – to her possessions or daughter. Hearing that it doesn’t happen, not in Boston or Lexington, and that bike paths add light and witnesses, making areas safer was not enough. She didn’t seem to notice that she undercut her argument by saying she feared the same of the nearby trolley. The fact that this has never been a problem did not deter her. She wanted some kind of meeting with state officials and not a public one. Meh.
Toward the end of the question-and-comment period another resident tried the it’s-only-a-start ploy. He’s surely sadly mistaken if he supposes something with this much pubic input and accommodation awaits his brilliant revisions and a restart.
Otherwise, the niggles were indeed niggling. People were pleased at the result and particularly at having been listened to. They could see their suggestions, complaints and fine-tuning before them. The Neponset River Tail Phase II is rolling right along.
With the power of POTS and the net, and the grace of human users, I found out about the new mural on the bike/ped path next to the Mattapan trolley. It’s not my style, but for this case, I’m running the bulk of an earlier post with the new info.
I tracked down the woman who is apparently the sole source of mural information in DCR parks (Janice Tenzin). She put me in touch with a couple of people at Boston Natural Area Network, who in turn directed me to the sole expert there (Candice Cook).
The answer to my who, who funded and where’s the plaque questions are:
The original, still ignorant and curious post included:
I suspect I’ve cycled by a few times without noticing the robot and cellphones. When I roll on the DCR path beside the Mattapan trolley, I’m watching for unattended toddlers, unleashed dogs, and adult humanoids blissed out with earbuds. Today I noticed.
Next to the grand mural depicting Native Americans, corn, canoes and such is a new and delightfully garish one. It’s big, it’s bright, it’s bold, and I bet it was done by high-school students.
I called the DCR when I got home. Allegedly the flack in charge of that area is at an event and no one else has any idea of the provenance. I’ve left a message and shall follow through if she does not get back with me. As soon as I learn, I’ll update this.
Pic Click Trick: Click on any image for a larger view. If your browser brings it up in the same window, use the back button or key to return.
This new one is contemporary, with modern electronics, retro tug of war, skater and even the Apple logo. It makes an amusing visual counterpoint to the historic neighbor.
This stretch between the Milton and Butler trolley stops is vying for mural overlord. Up the line into Dorchester are a series of DCR and city supported wall pieces. They tend to be pretty crude and not too visually exciting.
Already just beyond the robot to history pair is a series of stylized nature pieces — ladybird, fireflies, cricket and day lilies. I’m figuring there’s more to come. I and likely hundreds of daily strollers and runners likely are eager for more secret gems in this hidden gallery.
| The robot a little closer, replete with cellphone eyes. |  |
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Whole day lily mural. |
| Adjacent fireflies. |  |
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Ladybird detail. |
| Cricket detail. |  |
Something New Yorkers and Bostonians share is a dread of dirty-smellies, particularly on the subways. I got a chuckle a few days ago from a variation on that theme.
I slid over undulating sheets of iced waves that should have been sidewalks to Mattapan Square. It seems Milton has three very strict snow-emergency rules — Chapter 6, Section 10 forbids sliding or coasting on a public way without a permit from Selectmen or the Chief of Police, Section 13 bans throwing snowballs, again on any public way, and Section 3 reads you can’t move any snow from your property into a public way. The bylaws don’t bother with the silliness of clearing your sidewalks of ice and snow. Harrumph, surely anyone foolish enough to walk in winter deserves the worst.
From there, the Mattapan high-speed rail, a.k.a. the trolley, is frequent and quick to Ashmont. Ah, there where the subway begins, the vicissitudes of urban transit are in charge of your body and timing. The trains arrive when they arrive and leave when they leave. Moreover, many passengers are in for the long haul. They are likely to be headed to Downtown Crossing and many to Harvard, Davis and Alewife.
This inspires you to look carefully as you enter a car. You likely know which end of the train you’ll want to be on for the right exit strategy. You’ll almost certainly have your choice of seats at Ashmont. You’ll really want to be careful about your proximity to cellphone yammerers and screamers, those dirty-smellies, and the obviously demented. You might be elbow to elbow for 20 to 40 minutes.
On my last right north, I smelled him from 12 or more feet away. To my amusement, it was not the scent I might have feared.
I checked him out. He was deep into his tin and not noticing me or anyone. He had on old clothes, but they were clearly clean and well taken care of. I could surmise that he was not homeless, but not quite all the way in the present. Perhaps he lived in a group home.
What he was noticing and into, and what permeated half the car, was the curiously strong Altoids scent. It was the red-trimmed peppermint variety. The oils filled the air between us, aggressively and agreeably. He carefully and with apparent pleasure plucked three or four at a time to place into his mouth. There was a man who enjoyed his mints. He rolled back when they were in his mouth and grinned his satisfaction.
If there was a wee lesson there, it would be to go with what is before you and be aware of it. I might well have seen a not-quite-together fellow and ignored him or worse thought ill of him. Instead even my low level of awareness let in the pungency of his mints and a glimmer of his pleasure in them.
Tags: harrumph, massmarrier, MBTA, Milton, subway, Ashmont, Altoids, xenophobia, Boston
The Burma Road trail in the non-hill Blue Hills hiking/cross-country skiing route. The uxorial unit was inspired by the DCR XC brochure (art below lifted from this). Its wee description of this is:
Skiing from Fowl Meadow Parking Lot
Located at the intersection of Neponset Valley Parkway and Brush Hill Road in Milton
4 miles (2.5 hours) Easiest
This long, level course through the wetlands of the Neponset River is nearly a straight line, terminating at Interstate Highway 95. Easy terrain but a lengthy route. Great for endurance-building and diagonal stride practice. Start behind the bulletin board and follow the trail to the beginning of Burma Road. Ski to the end, at Interstate 95, and return.
Indeed it is very flat. It also runs through what must be marsh and meadow on each side, planted with trees. We kept waiting for the hills, as we are used to in the reservation. It has the feeling of the Cape Code Rail Trail instead. Yet, it was a workout by its length.
We also got to play a bit of Holmes too. One skier had been through before us today, followed by a hiker with a dog.
The latter pair was clumsy and messy. For the first mile of the trail, they tromped and excreted on the ski tracks (an unfavorite of mine). The dog was prolific, wet and dry, gold and brown.
The skier was more intriguing though. The tracks were close together and shallow, suggesting someone slender with narrow hips and light, perhaps 100 pounds or less. The pole basket holes were not far from the tracks and close together, suggesting that she had narrow shoulders and likely short arms.
We appreciated that she had blazed the trail, so to speak. After the first mile the booted one and canine companion headed off and back, leaving a decent track for us. On the way back, our tracks made the route even faster.
I’ll do that again. Also, while it’s not on Ranger Tom’s Suggested Hikes, I’m sure we’ll try it in the warm. If it isn’t too marshy and buggy, it should be a fine adventure and nature gawk.
After a glance, my uxorial unit declared the backyard looks like a field of Marshmallow Fluff®. That’s how winter should be, and how it is in my childhood recollections.
We’ve been a week with scant new snow. We had a pathetic dusting last night, sky dandruff. Yet, the air has been colder than average and not modulated by that famous ocean effect that Boston gets. Our 18 inches up on this hill stays a solid foot, even after several sunny afternoons.
For much of my childhood, I spent vacations and for a few years lived in the Eastern panhandle of West Virginia. To my memory, snow that came stayed.
Romney is in the mountains and on a plateau surrounded by them. The huge apple orchards and corn fields overlooking the Potomac were white from the first flakes, on and on, with regular new snows.
Normally 
in-town snow in Boston, if it deep enough to cross-country ski in, stays that way one to three days. Temperatures above 30F, bright sun, and no new snow quickly reduce the good stuff to intermittent grass decoration and junk that sticks to skis.
I’m quick to grab the skis (sometimes snowshoes instead) and head to one of my Boston ski resorts — the Arnold Arboretum, Franklin Park’s golf course or the nearby Blue Hills Reservation in Canton/Milton. Alas, I used to walk to the Forest Hills Cemetery when we still lived in Jamaica Plain, but two years ago, the management there got grumpy, nasty and non-accommodating.
It’s not a huge deal to drive 45 minutes or even a couple of hours to get to a bona fide cross-country course. They have groomed trails, warming houses or huts, places to pee and such. They do charge say $20 a person, but the big thing is that they are OUT THERE. It’s fabulous to ski Boston. I have an odd pride in being able to do so, even hitting someplace twice a day or more than one location.
So, I’ve been grokking the cold weather keeping the deep snow for my amusement and sport. Tomorrow again will be bitterly cold — more obvious in the arboretum or particularly on the Devine golf course, which only means faster skiing and no slogging in the gummy stuff.
If global warming means hotter summers and colder winters, at least the second part keeps my fluff deep and hard enough for play. Bring it on and keep it on the ground, if you please.
Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, skiing, snow, Boston, West Virginia
Like an obese tourist couple on the Red Line, Wellesley-fication plops ever closer to Boston. We really don’t have the land in this jigsaw puzzle of a city for the distinguishing ostentation of the burbs…at last anymore. Yet, as with five-carat cubic zirconia rings on the shiny nailed hands of parvenus, mac mansions need only the slightest encouragement.
Ostentation must have its display!
A few hundred yards from our new-to-us Hyde Park home, this apparently will play out in all its tawdry splendor. The vagaries of zoning dovetail elegantly with the whims of the privileged.
The short of it is that an early 20 century mansion on Brush Hill Road slowly became dilapidated and then quickly lost much of its roof in a fire on April Fool’s Day eve, 2008. Its six-acre plot is under agreement with the Ruscito family of Brush Hill Properties. They want to tear down the mansion and its nearby carriage house to make way for a subdivision of five huge houses.
A little (17,000 square feet) of the land is in Boston, but the rest in Milton and the Boston bit would be lawns and not houses. The Milton Planning Board does not like the project, nor does the Brush Hill Neighborhood Association. (The Bulletin papers do not make issues easily available online. The article on this appears in the 9/2/10 issue.)
In a short-notice public meeting, locals apparently were shocked to hear of plans for five houses of 4,000 to 4,500 square feet each. The abutters, planning board members and others seemed left to sputter likely ineffective objections. For example, with limited drainage and one catch basin, where would the rain go? Yet underlying it seemed the real concern of aesthetics.
Legally though, the developers seem solid. I recall this tale from my old JP Woodbourne neighborhood. There, a family catercorner from us slapped up a pre-fab looking house for their daughter on a tiny lot, just inches outside the requirement for distance from the adjacent house. Even though it was an historic neighborhood, the new construction did not fall under the strictures and elaborate approval process of the simplest addition or other exterior changes would have.
Milton town planner Bill Clark said that the purchase-and-sale agreement provides for subdivision. Nominally, the planning board has to approve this. Likely though, while Milton could make the family alter the proposal slightly, this appears a sure deal.
In their favor, the Ruscito folk are locals. They have built and occupy their own mac mansions on Metropolitan Avenue. They are listed at 124, 130 and 140. Their sprawling, junior-college or suite-motel looking properties may not be to the tastes of old money Milton. So what? Money power, pursuit of happiness, home is your castle and so forth…it’s all as American as keeping up with and racing past the Jones.
We strolled around the existing mansion recently. The images here are from that trip. Click on a thumbnail for a larger view and use your browser back button or key combo to return.
The fire that hastened this process got brief, but thorough coverage at the time, like here and here. The reclusive and forlorn looking resident, Valerie Boyle, has the made-for-TV-movie look. We are left to imagine her life in the run-down home without water or electricity. The mind jumps immediately to thoughts of Grey Gardens, minus the cats.
Estimates at the time put the value of the then 102-year-old mansion at around $2 million. That could have bought a nice annuity, were she inclined to leave the family home. Meanwhile, before the fire, Milton officials had apparently told her that the house was unsafe for habitation. Her 80-year-old brother-in-law Edward Fallon, lived in the carriage house and the property apparently was owned by a family trust.
One news article in the Patriot Ledger summed up the future of the property — Fallon said Valerie Boyle has lived alone in the house since one of her brothers died several years ago. Boyle has no children. Fallon, a retired real estate investor, said the family will probably raze the house and sell the nearly seven acres of land. He said the younger family members have moved away and taking care of the huge house and rolling grounds has become increasingly difficult as the years have passed. “I guess it’s time,” Fallon said.
Now, one Milton Planning Board member would like to see a cluster development instead of a land subdivision. Another would prefer a single large condo building. Regardless, I’d bet the Ruscitos have their way, maybe with a few placation changes for the neighbors.
Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Milton, mansions, development
