Nealmeister

In re: Riding the 'L'

Racing through the State Street Subway (Red Line, Chicago, Illinois)

It's official...

I'm a godfather!

My sister and I became official godparents to our cousin Adrianne's first daughter, Angela. I guess becoming a godparent is one of the hallmarks of becoming an adult; your close friends and family start trusting you enough to spiritually guide their children. Rest assured, this new roll will add fodder to my discussions with my spiritual director.

Welcome to the family, little Angela! (And yes, she does levitate).

Chicago Skyline from Wilson Red Line

Also posted to Facebook.

I sometimes look down the 'L' tracks on the north side of Chicago and wonder what Boston would be like if it actually embraced and maintained it's elevated subways. And every time I ride the 'L', I feel like a six-year old again. I don't think riding the 'L' is every going to get old for me. It is kind of like a dream come true for the child inside of me that still dreams about subway maps and all the places that the 'T' could and should have been able to go.

In re: Edna, Mrs. Bee, Grandma, or just Ma

When Jess and I decided (or, maybe it was more like I decided, but Jess agreed) to host Thanksgiving at our apartment in 2007, I couldn't contain the satisfaction of being able to show off to three ladies that I could pull this thing off without messing up royally: My little sister Ro, my Mom, and my Grandma.

Now, the first two weren't too much to worry about. My mom being my mom and my sister being my sister, I was absolutely certain that they would jump in as needed. Mashed potatoes? "Nope, you're not doing those right..." and so my mom would jump in. Making a veggie tray? "You're kind of slow at this, let ME do it..." and so my sister would jump in. Always coddling me, the two of them.

My bigger concern was my grandma. I spent my whole life trying to impress her, so I had to prep Jess a little bit: "If you think I'm picky, if you think I'm intense, well wait until you meet my grandma. I'm basically fruit cut right off that tree!" Obsessive compulsive disorder eased in on my end and with that, Thanksgiving preparations began. I found myself at Johnnies Foodmaster making sure we had the perfect amount of light cream (not half & half, not heavy cream, light cream), getting the right kind of tea bags, and inspecting dozens of custard pies to find one that looked amazing, (hopefully) tasted amazing, yet looked homemade enough so that I can pass it off as something coming from the fruits of my labor. The pie was important; if there was one thing that I had learned over the course of my then-25 years in being, it was that custard pie at Thanksgiving meant a great deal to my grandma. If there wasn't one, I'd be sure to hear about it sometime, probably later in the summer or at my Aunt Lynn's Yankee Swap at Christmastime. I wouldn't be able to live that potential mess up down, regardless of how many cups of tea I'd make for her.

When my sister told my that my grandma died this morning, that Thanksgiving, oddly enough, was the first thing I thought about. I immediately thought about how lucky I was to have been able to host her at our place. And moreover, to have her let me know that I was doing a good job, that she was enjoying herself, that she was happy to watch me grow into a young man, and that I finally found myself a nice girl.

As to that last point, I let out a nice chuckle then and did this morning too. I had to explain to my grandma that Jess wasn't my girlfriend. So then she asked "oh, your soon new wife?" To which I responded -- shaking my head, muted laugh, all the while carefully placing sweet potato muffins, custard pie, and dark turkey cuttings into her take-away bag -- "Nahhh, Jess has Alex" but that she was one of my best friends from Notre Dame and, for the time being, my roommate while she was at Suffolk for law school.

She didn't believe me. Amidst all of her hard-headness, she still had this playful side that border-lined tricky mind games: "Oh, that's what you say now. You don't have to lie to me. Here." She'd palm a $20 bill to me "for the date and for the dinner" when we dropped her off at her apartment in the Charlestown Projects. I ended up buying a couple of bottles of Red Truck Wine with that. I never really told her (and I guess I can't now) that I wasn't dating Jess. I still laugh because here my grandma was, trying to set me up with my roommate! Unbelievable.

 

• Page from Mrs. Bee's Gardens public service booklet, 1984

The last time I saw my grandma at the Winthrop House -- when I finally mustered up the courage to get out the car in the parking lot without hoping to God that she was asleep -- my grandma couldn't place me immediately. Was I William or the other William or was I Sean?  But she sure remembered that Thanksgiving, apologized profusely, and then continued on about how much of a great time she had at our place.

The custard pie came up. She didn't care too much for the sweet potato muffins, but man, with that custard pie, she relayed to me about how she kept on cutting smaller pieces of the pie until it was gone. She indicated much she really wished she could have a piece of it now. We got decaf tea (although I don't think she knew it was decaf) and I pushed her around in her wheelchair. She asked "what was cooking," so I told her about my many trials and far more prevalent errors related to my spring gardening venture; about how the Illinois bar exam was in 72 days and that I was secretly praying for a cold and rainy summer; about how I was finally doing it -- moving to Chicago -- but that I secretly had butterflies about leaving Boston and my friends and family and everything I knew here; about how I wish I could do more for my parents because I secretly cared about them and loved them immensely, even though I never told them that nearly enough. I told her about how I had a couple of her pamphlets from Mrs. Bee's Gardens at my house and that I was planning on getting a set of them framed because, for one reason or another, the whole thought of those gardens in the Charlestown Projects influenced me in more ways that I imagined. Those gardens planted the seed of humanity inside of me and helped me remember -- in a metaphorical sense -- the roots and sacrifices from which I was able to spring forth and stand where I was standing today.

I was getting too nostalgic. She immediately changed gears: "so, now you're still an attorney, right?"

"Yup," I said.

"Good, because I need a good lawyer. I always thought your father would be a good lawyer. I think Stevie Pothier became a lawyer. Do you remember Stevie Pothier?" I kind of nodded, and she pressed me on to carefully pushing her and her wheelchair. "Now, here, wait a minute."

Now if you didn't know my grandma, she had this way of carrying herself as the Queen Bee; the penultimate politician; a generous caregiver to others who was often a relentlessly tough nut to her own kids and grandkids; the quintessential dreamer; a woman who still thought about some day owning a horse farm in the rolling hills of Connecticut so that all of her 27 or so grandkids could some day learn to ride; the baker of the most amazing Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies I've ever experienced to date; the curious storyteller of Charlestown urban legends, which, even though I now know are not true, still haunt the 10-year old inside of me. Sometimes, I honestly thought that she was crazy. Other times, I knew that she knew what she was doing. And most of the time, even though I knew that I wasn't her favorite grandchild, I was thankful that I got to know at least one of my grandparents.

"I want you to meet my grandson. He's a big shot lawyer in town."

I grinned and sheepishly waived, shook my grandma's friend's hand, and Mrs. Bee kept on going. "He made me this custard pie last Thanksgiving that beats what crap-ola they feed us here. Next time maybe he visits, his wife will make him bring one with him." She turned to me and offered me her trademark grin--the grin that made me pretty certain that she still had the kicks in her. I just shook my head and laughed a little bit. Unbelievable, grandma. Unbelievable.

Edna Boyle, Charlestown, Mass.

1929-2009

In re: Mrs. Bee

"Every spring, the children knock on Mrs. Bee's door to ask her if they can plant gardens again this year. With your help, she'll be able to answer them 'yes'".

Edna "Mrs. Bee" Boyle
1929-2009

A Month Back (and Charlestown Shots)

While on the bus this morning, I thought of two things:
(1) it's been a month since I've been back blogging, and gosh, it does feel good, because the frustrated writer inside of me -- the frustrated, creative person inside of me -- really loves to do this;
(2) I forgot how great it feels to find a photographer that you like, because the frustrated photographer inside of me -- the frustrated, creative person inside of me -- really loves to be surprised by surprising interesting photographs.

 

What it means, I think, is that I need to write some more and I need to shoot photographs again.  And I need to write a note to a certain woman and her husband and child at the University of Utah, via Longmont, Colorado.  I need to _______.

[Photos via Alex Ward shot in Charlestown, Massachusetts]

The Library of Congress Flickr Pilot

Trucks outside of a starch factory, Caribou, Aroostook County, Me. There were almost fifty trucks in the line. Some had been waiting for twenty-four hours for the potatoes to be graded and weighed (LOC)

Grand Grocery, Lincoln, Nebraska.

Who knew?  Now, you have an opportunity to contribute to describing the world’s public photo collection by adding tags or leaving comments on the 3100 or so photos from the Library of Congress. No known copyright restrictions on the photographs, the LOC’s use of Flickr is a brilliant idea.  And it's absolutely amazing seeing the 1930s-40s in color.  I just always think it happened in burnt sepia or black and white.

 Library of Congress Flickr pilot

Cut-out Neal

Well, I was playing with photoshop for a few minutes... I decided that I need to play with photoshop a bit more.

Look at that smile!

Random Procrastination: Shipping Labels

Information that you could use...

Vinyl from CottonCandy Hammer
Vintage Luggage Labels from CottonCandy Hammer
Fantastic 19th Century Shipping Posters
19th. Century Shipping Posters. Clipper ship trade cards are cards that were issued by dispatch lines to advertise specific voyages of clipper ships from one port (usually New York or Boston) to another (usually San Francisco). They were distributed primarily during the late 1850s and early 1860s.

 

Oh, home!

Cape Cod & The Islands from Space

This is a photograph with an aerial view of Cape Cod and "the Islands" from 220 miles above the earth. Visible are the entirety of "the Cape" and the islands of Martha's Vineyard (left) and Nantucket (right), as well as well north of and including Boston, and to the south, part of Long island up to Montauk at its tip. The hook-shaped peninsula of Cape Cod, dotted with over 360 fresh-water ponds, extends about 40 miles into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern part of Massachusetts, with a north-bearing 25 mile long extremity ending at Provincetown.

The photograph was taken from a window of the Space Shuttle Atlantis by Dan Burbank, a coast guard captain and mission specialist with NASA, on STS mission 115 to the International Space Station in September, 2006.

Photos of the STS mission 115 may be found on NASA's website.

BarBri is Done!

Kids, there is hope. Jim, Mark, Horowitz, Simone, Neal, Christine and Tony guarantee that much.  Bar exam(s), here we come...

Love is more than just a game for twwwoooo...

Just wicked beauteous, I say...

Kevin and John and Christie-Lee & Company, you make Madison, Wisconsin fabulous!

Are those flowers I see?  Catch them!  Catch them!  No, they're mine biatch!  Move... get out the way... I'm PLAT'NUM!

Hotness.

If only you knew.  Everyone should just love Wisconsin.  Really now.  To be continued, Massachusetts style, for sure... ;-)

Suffolkers

Little Compton, Rhode Island
colored: antique
Summer Bar Day 59

In re: Brown Sugar

Well, looks like we were really working hard during PMBR, with 61 days left to the Massachusetts Bar Exam (or at least the Multi-state portion).  I guess this is what Bar Review has really come to: eating at Brown Sugar on Commonwealth Avenue (which, for all of you non-Bostonians, is a wicked awesome Thai Restaurant in Boston... there's one near Fenway, but the BU one is better) followed by a pillaging of the City Sports sidewalk sale.  What a diversion back to the Green Line.  Damn, Boston University campus really tainted us Suffolk kids!  I can't imagine what kind of distraction summer weather's going to have on all this bar studying....

At Brown Sugar: Jess, Maise, X-tine, Gaye, Alex, Me, Greg, Jen & Long

Someone's made a good buy!

Alas, yes, world, you are indeed beautiful

There's some pictures that just perfectly capture joy.

This, I think, is one of them.  I want it framed.

Even thought this one is from Mexico, the tone and the framing remind me of some of the pictures that my dad has from the Philippines, and from those early years in the late 1970's, as my mom and dad traveled from San Diego to Boston.  Some of the photographs are from my mom's home village I think.  I don't know if my dad took them or not, but you can just tell that the people on the other side have this awe for the thing -- the camera -- that is snapping before them.

Of course, the shirts, the colors, and the tall tube socks say everything.  In a way, the picture here is a lot like that.

I am going to have to scan the picture of my mom at the windmill on Cape Cod.  It's too good.  And it reminds me that my smile is a perfect mix of both my mom and my dad.

Maine Day Two

Just as I express every June, July, and August when we go white water rafting in Maine, I think, people, that I could quite possibly live in Maine for the rest of my life.

 

Porch off the condo in the ski area.  Yippee...

Errr... I don't do this shiznit, especially at night...

Maine Day One

I suck at snow boarding.  But at least I can take pictures.

crazy Christmas cubicle I've been telling you about

Courtesy of Dan Masse: 

Hey everybody,

 

Well - I've told some of you about this guy at work who decorates his cubicle.  I guess some of you have no idea what I'm talking about, so here's the story:

 

This electrical engineer (haha) at work takes the last 3 weeks of the year off every year and comes into work anyway - not to work of course, but to decorate his cubicle.

 

Last year he had a train running on a trellis above his cubicle walls and animated stuff, snow guns, fake fireplace, etc.

 

This year (as you can see) he built a roof out of PVC on his cubicle and roofed it and inside he has all kinds of animatronic stuff that sings and dances and makes noise.  Some of it runs off motion sensors so it goes off when you go in.

 

As you can tell it's quite an attraction at the company so we've got all kinds of people coming up on field trips from other areas and with the songs and stuff we don't get all that much work done around here this time of year. (I'm two doors down from him)

 

He's also got a train in there this year and free ornaments that he made and candy canes and stuff.

 

Anyways, enjoy the pictures !

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

Masse / Dan

Closer:



Front:



Inside:



Inside #2:



Other side:



View from Dan's Cube:

beautiful view #293

Hesburgh Library and the "Word of Life Mural", aka "Touchdown Jesus" ...

awwwhhhhh {dreamy... and its summer time there...}

Post Secrets

   

   

Perhaps the reason why I've really gotten into PostSecrets is because I can totally relate with about half of them and then empathize with about all of them... the only downshot is that most of them of are really depressing.  But watch out; I might send one in... it will be deep and funny at the same time.

good photography

From one of the Photographers I bumped upon in pbase...

Spring in New York.

Lazy Key West

Something that will be on one of my walls in my apartment (yes, people, I'm moving out of the homestead at some point this summer...)

A shout out...

Boston College weekend, at Fiddler's Hearth in South Bend...

Roselyn called me Friday night to let me know that she, Chris, JR, and I'm assuming Sara & co. were at Donald Trump's casino in Chicago. I, meantime, was working on my energy paper. But good times for them...!