Makes my soul trip, trip, trip away

Sometimes, when you feel like the cold, windy, wet weather will never go away, you take whatever "sunshine" you can get. This was the window display at Winston Flowers last week.

I actually took this photo because this is the angle I saw when I walked by on my way to the T stop, and my first reaction was that it looked like an little monster face...it just happens that when it's grey and gloomy out, it's nice to find a little sunshiney surprise hidden in your image archives, right?!

Aaah!

Graffiti along the Neponset River Greenway, Lower Mills Dorchester.

From the Archives

This is an old photo, but I went through almost every photo in my (digital) archives this morning* and remembered how much I love it. I took this photo when Whit and I were meeting up for lunch and a photo adventure one afternoon. I thought the clouds looked amazing. I showed it to her when she showed up, and she laughed, pulled out her camera, and showed me these photos she had taken earlier in the day.

That's the Old South Church, a UCC church at the corner of Dartmouth and Boylston in Back Bay. The T sign is for the entrance/exit to the Copley stop on the green line.

On a personal and slightly related note - if you're in Boston and need a good massage, just behind me in this photo, on the 2nd floor, is Boston Bodyworker. See Stephanie, and tell her that Sarah and Whit sent you. You will not regret it.

* Yes, my eyes are very tired and dry right now. I need a break from the computer screen now!

From Above

Remember that wedding at the State Room where I got to show you some awesome shots of Faneuil Hall from above? One of those shots was this - same subject as yesterday's photo, but slightly different angle!

And yes, that ghost-like shadow on the right is my dress reflecting in the window...oops!

One Hand Stand

I've shown you some of these guys before, but I absolutely love watching them get their dance on. They're out in Faneuil Hall most of the year - although with all the dancing they're doing, they probably stay warmer than all of us suckers standing around in 30 degree weather watching them! I have one more photo of them from a slightly different perspective that I'll show you tomorrow...

One More

One more from the pillow fight. This guy was in cahoots with the giraffe from yesterday.

Pillow Fight

Saturday was World Pillow Fight Day, and so of course I headed to Copley Square to make sure that you guys got to see some of the action (apparently I really do go for the in depth reporting, George). That's not snow on the ground (thank GOD!), it's the aftermath of the first burst pillow. And that guy in the middle? The giraffe holding the state flag? He's the one that started it all when he ran into the square with a bullhorn on it's siren setting. Click the photo to enlarge, and make note of the other photog in the photo. There were almost as many people there to take photos as there were to pillow fight!

I took a LOT of photos that day - so many that I haven't made it through all of them myself! Luckily for you, there are heaps of photos of the event here, so feel free to check those out. There was also an article in the Boston Globe about how this kind of spontaneous event is a new trend, and you can read that here.

Sarah Wyman Whitman

One of the reasons I love Boston is that you can't turn around without coming across some little bit of history that you didn't know before...and that statement is especially true when you're standing on a street in Beacon Hill. I was walking down the street just taking pictures of the houses that I liked when I saw this little plaque on a fence. Since I had never heard of Sarah Wyman Whitman before, I had to do some (internet) research, so here's what I learned:

Sarah Wyman Whitman is famous for her stained glass and paintings, some of which are part of the collection at the MFA here in Boston. Some of her stained glass windows hang beside Tiffany windows at Memorial Hall at Harvard.

In looking for info on Sarah Wyman Whitman, part of what I found is about the house itself! Turns out that the house was, at one point, the club house for the Club of Odd Volumes - a society of bibliophiles that started in 1887.

Patience is a Virtue

This little guy was waiting for it's owner outside of Black Ink on Charles Street the other night.
Because I know you guys care, Black Ink is one of my favorite little shops on Charles Street - it's full of things that you love, but would never need!

Light and Shadow

I love how the light reflects off the old Filene's building onto the side of Macy's.

Bike Messengers

Across from the building I work in, there is a Starbucks. It's more of less in the middle of the Financial District, and across the street from the Starbucks there is a small park. During business hours, you can find at least two bike messengers at all times in or around this Starbucks. They lean their bikes against the building and head inside to stay warm and get a coffee during the winter. You can see a few of them walking out of my photo (I don't think that was a coincidence!), and they're heading into a little nook where they often hang out to smoke or stay out of the rain or snow. During the summer, they line their bikes up along the fence of the park across the street and hang out on the benches there.

Hope

I keep passing by flowerbeds like these (this one is on Beacon St), and it gives me a glimmer of hope that the cold weather might actually go away sometimes soon. You can even see a bit of purple blossoms in the top center of the photo (click to enlarge).

On my pessimistic days, I walk by these flowerbeds and think "I bet those flowers DIE because it's so freezing cold out!". Really, it's been in the high 30's/low 40's lately and it's not really that cold, but it's also been wet, which always makes it feel colder than it really is. The wind doesn't help either, and today was a windy one.

First Baptist Church

Fenix's post got me thinking about the fire bombings in JP from the past few years, which had me digging out the series of photos I took of the First Baptist Church a while back. The fire here was NOT arson, it was an accident, but took place only a few months prior to the fire bombing at El Oriental de Cuba (see Fenix's post). It was in January, and the church and surrounding area looked almsot fairy tale-esque for quite some time after the fire because all of the water used to fight it had frozen in layers on both the shell of the building and the surround trees/land. Steve Garfield (of Universal Hub fame...and videoblogging fame, for that matter) as some great photos of it here. This was the second fire in this church's history, and they now have their services in a trailer that sits just out of the bottom left of the photo above. There's a lot of info on the fire and the church in the Boston Globe article you can find here. I just realized that I had posted another photo of the same church here. Oops!

Doorways #6

This door was ajar one day and I thought it looked inviting...

Beacon Street.