I just found an interesting resource for learning what living conditions are like in different cities. http://www.bestplaces.net/ It tells you the basics in cost of living, housing, schools, crime, and so on. But the best thing is the comments, where you can express your opinion of the place.

Here's what I've learned about all the places I want to move: the housing prices have increased a lot in the past five years; it's getting too crowded, especially with illegal immigrants/people from the north, traffic and crime are increasing; too many hispanics; it's expensive to live along the coast; it's boring at night; it's lost its southern charm what with all the yankees moving in.

So I guess I'm learning more about the kind of people who use the site than I am about these cities. Alexis suggested I check what people are saying about Boston, to get some point of reference. Mostly people said that Boston is expensive and the weather sucks, which I go along with; there was some grousing about militant liberalism and bad drivers; but my favorite review is this one:

This place is full of depressed, worn out, and bitter people. It will wear you out and, before you know it, you will be depressed and bitter too. Take a walk around and you will see what I mean. People are untidy and wearing wrinkled clothes, smelly winter coats full of cat hair, long untidy hair and with that charateristic sour face. People have facial hair, nasty moles, crooked teeth, worse so than in one of the slums of London. They also like butter on everything. It is simply unbelievable. It is so expensive that no one has any cash in their pockets which only adds to their misery. Doctors and lawyers live in small old buildings without elevators, central air or parking. It seems like the women don't have money for make-up, manicures, or perfume.

Well, he's right about the buildings that doctors and lawyers live in, and about my untidy and wrinkled clothes. If the women don't wear perfume because they're broke, then good. I don't like perfume.

I checked Brookline, too, and mostly people love it, except that it's insanely expensive, you can't park anywhere, and one person complained that someone scolded them for running their dog off-leash. Alexis makes an impression again!

(if you don't know what I mean by yelp, I mean http://www.yelp.com/, which is handy for restaurant reviews and such.)

I need to post these pictures before I load the new batch on to Photobucket or I'll go batty! This little guy was stuck to the zoo hospital one early morning. He was gone later when I remembered he was there.

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While at a stoplight on Blue Hill Ave, on a zoo errand in the zoo van.

sorry i'm getting behind on my snapshots. this is taken from the hospital van while at a stop light in dorchester. i'm kind of fascinated by the big blue church. the parking lot is for burger king, just out of camera to the right.

Several birders have seen a fork-tailed flycatcher at Chandler Pond in Brighton! This is the first time in 18 years that this South American species has been seen in April or May in Massachusetts. It has been sighted for the past three days at the pond, so if you want a rare birding experience, go soon, before this confused fellow sorts his migration out!

(cross-posted to urban-nature, b0st0n, and birdlovers)

Everybody's favorite harbinger of spring, pussy willow.

( an easter message and a city block )

Last Sunday there was an Urban Nature Walk in section of Franklin Park called "the Wilderness." It's a wooded puddingstone hill, originally intended as a place where city dwellers could experience what it looked like in the area before European Settlement. Here Pete has climbed a puddingstone ledge.
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I really like this picture that Alexis took, not just because of the cute dog in it. She took the picture standing in the Riverway, and is facing the block we live on. It makes me realize that 95% of the pictures I take within 100 feet of that spot are taken facing the other way. This really shows what my neighborhood looks like.

( looking both ways )

A little taste of Boston. Not my video: I wish.

According to someone on the Boston Critical Mass group:

*Name: Louie
*Birthday: 11/27
*Age: 54 years old
*Likes: The Red Sox, Mozzarella sticks, The Rattlesnake bar and grill,
Dick's last resort, Miller High Life (that's how you know hes a good man).

*Bike information: The sticker on the back says "kryptonite", frequents
Back Bay Bikes for repairs..

*Siren: apparently he's saying "move, move" which would make sense to
those who have been hit

*VIDEOS of Louie in Action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqcYdS0x_2w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Ke-miqHs8&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhEb73t-Stk


If I remember correctly, he has cerebral palsy so he needs leg braces,
which would probably prevent him from riding a two-wheeler.


http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/01/07/keeping_the_wheels_turning/

When I worked at Drumlin, I posted pictures from work all the time. Will all the restrictions on what I can publish regarding my work at the zoo, I haven't posted hardly any.

This past Monday was rainy and very warm--it reached 60 degrees. Here are some pictures from Monday:


I keep finding hidden groves of witch hazel in unused parts of the zoo. ( Read more... )

A thick coating of sticky snow makes everything photogenic! I saw many people out with their cameras trying to capture the all too temporary fairy tale like atmosphere of it all. The snow brings out the character of the trees, who are always there, but are otherwise ignored in winter.

( 3 more pictures, including one inordinately large one )

This is in the back of Stash's Pizza on Blue Hill Ave in Dorchester. Roxbury is named after rocks (specifically Roxbury puddingstone) but Dorchester isn't named after doors.
(x-posted to doors_v_stene, a Russian language community for posting pictures of doors--I forget which lj friend told me about it, but thank you!)

Norway rat, Franklin Park, Boston.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Pepperweed.

"NAT PECKS"

This stuff always makes me think of Futurama:

Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.

When I came home today a blimp was circling the area. Then I walked to my mailbox (coincidentally in the direction of Fenway Park) and there were several helicopters nervously hovering around.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Tulip poplar, an attractive native tree, that this year began turning about a month and a half ago.

This Sunday I'll be leading an Urban Nature Walk up Mission Hill. This is a very meaningful event for me, because Mission Hill is the first neighborhood I lived in when I moved to Boston 20 years ago. It's where I became an urban person, and where I first developed an appreciation of urban nature. It was on Mission Hill that I had encounters with leopard slugs and Ailanthus trees that led me to make The Urban Pantheist zine, which eventually became this journal.

Behind the cut is a timeline of the history of Mission Hill, from European settlement to the 20th century. I like how the timeline dovetails with the one I wrote for the Stony Brook Reservation walk. I wish I knew a little more about what happened there before 1630 (how did the Natives use the hill?) and in prehistory (how did the hill come to be? most sources call it a drumlin, but it's a solid rock hill).

( here's the timeline )

By the way, my icon is a picture taken from Mission Hill with the skyline behind me.
It's good to be researching and planning a walk again. Life intrudes too much on my life.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Beggarticks. (Don't worry, it's a plant--probably one you recognize, too.)

Dead man's fingers (Urban species #181), Drumlin Farm, Lincoln.


180 Stair Gap, Landmark Center, Boston.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Agelenopsis spider.

cottonmanifesto has been encouraging the dodder which is parasitizing the Japanese knotweed along the Boston side of the Muddy River near our house.





It's doing quite well.

I have a lot of pictures to upload from last week, and a lot of things to do today. I'll try to share some pics and be reasonably productive as well. This rock balance is on the sidewalk of Brookline Ave in Boston.( Read more... )

On Monday I went to the State House to watch a hearing on several "dangerous dogs" bills, along with several dozen other opponents of breed-specific legislation. I don't have much to say about the experience at 6 in the morning on a Saturday before I go to work, except that BOY those people can talk. Not that they were saying much, just restating themselves over and over and over. I think I understand how a filibuster can happen now. I left after two and a half hours and no one from the public had testified yet (but I did hear from the reps from the MSPCA and ASPCA, who totally rule). This picture is a none-too-subtle illustration of my opinion of the media's role in government.

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