• Here Comes Trouble
  • Writer
  • Wanderer
  • Friend

Phoebe Sinclair Writes

Phoebe Sinclair Writes

Category Archives: Boston Moments

Phoebe’s best of Boston

The Pines, Arnold Arboretum

19 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Boston Moments, Green Life

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

jamaica-plain, trees

I’ve long loved trees.

PA110469

When I was a kid, I can remember trying to decide which I preferred: deciduous or conifer.

PA110462

Well, deciduous are great because they sprout tiny leaves that grow into bigger leaves, change from green to gold or red or brown, and then fall to regrow in just a few (not that short) months.

But conifer. Conifer remain. Sun. Rain. Sleet. Wind. They are Always. Smell so good against a bright, clean expanse of snow. And pinecones! Who doesn’t love pinecones?

PA110367

PA110457

Aside from some weird seemingly in-betweens (looking at you, juniper; what ARE you, yew?) for which I couldn’t always identify the correct team (scientists could tell you, I bet, should you distract ’em long enough from the argument about camels), I decided deciduous and conifer had a pretty good competition going on. Satisfying in that winless way.

PA110371

PA110420

All these years later, I haven’t truly picked a side. Though I have favorites, like a pin oak at the edge of a church parking lot near where I live, and the Arboretum pines.

PA110465

They take twenty minutes to a half hour to reach, walking, but worth it! The pines, and firs, and weird in-betweens can be found just over Bussey Hill. A collection of big, stout, expansive, narrow, prickly, soft, smooth and otherwise not-yet-discovered (by me). When I have the spare hour, I wander to see what’s new, to smell sap and tar and soil. To discover what I’d forgotten since my previous visit.

PA110472

PA110459

PA110326

Walking Boston – A Sonnet

09 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Boston Moments

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

boston, poetry, writing

Conversation with a friend today brought to mind an Italian Sonnet I wrote for ‘Forms of Poetry,’ a class taught by the luminous and charmingly irreverent Bill Knott back in my time at Emerson College.

Ask me today what distinguishes an Italian Sonnet from an English or Contemporary, and I couldn’t begin to tell you. Similarly, I’m not 100% sure why some words in the poem are bolded, other than it has to do with willfully breaking the rules related to pentameter.

I’m not much of a poet. To my memory, that was my reasoning for enrolling in this class (and by enrolling, I mean taking my poetry-phobic self by the figurative collar and giving myself a good shake) that I count among my favorites and most influential. Though I remain, not much of a poet, I do love the sonnet.

Enough dylanizing, as they used to say in my high school writing classes.

Walking Boston/Eyes Shut
(1998)

See my mistake? I leapt to learn this town
Inside and out but now I know so well
(too well) the streets, the smells, the way brick walls
can soak in sound like snow, and have you found
my error? How I spend my time withdrawn,
how I trek the streets alone until
my thoughts run dry and I give up and stroll
with my eyes shut to pass the time. I’ve known

All along my mistake, my faulty thinking.
I thought this Boston winking down at me
Was magic. But perhaps I put the splendor
There? Maybe, while I dreamt-walked, it sank in.
When I awoke to cross the street I may
Have lost it and the city let me wonder.

IMG_0139

New Year’s Jam

03 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Boston Moments, With Friends

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

as-we-are-living-it, jamaica-plain, winter

In the wee morning hours of 2014, a surprise bedroom concert featuring my partner David on electric guitar, party host Adam on acoustic, vocals and lead bed-jumping, and friends on back-up vocals, harmonica, and drum-n-shaker hullabaloo.

flag on chandeliers

harmonica and acoustic

friends play drums and acoustic guitar

Me on camera. Happy New Year!

friends revel in music on NYElistening to the musicadam and dave

Neighborhood Lights, Winter

01 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Boston Moments

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

jamaica-plain, winter

When I was a kid, my mother used to take my brother and me driving to see Christmas light displays around Coastal New Jersey. We especially enjoyed those surprise cul-de-sacs where it was obvious the neighbors engaged in friendly competition.

Bostonside (not surprisingly, I suppose), I don’t see much evidence of this love for the bright and twinkly, for those gaudy challenges to stake as many leaping plastic deer on the lawn as possible. Bostonside, subtley reigns.

lights along the porch

lights on the fence post

lights along the latticework

a string of color lights

holiday light bush

porch lit under the stormy sky

string lights close-up

I guess some might consider these simple strands stodgy, but I rather consider the situation: different folks, different strokes of light.

moon over the jamaicaway

Boston Halloween Bike Ride 2013

01 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Bike Life, Boston Moments, Community

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

bike-love, events, jamaica-plain

The bad news: Below is the only photo I have from the October 31st ride.

Going up hill on bike

The good news: It was our third year taking part in the ride and I was blown away. Hundreds of people turned out, so many I couldn’t keep up with the costumes. Unicorns and a school of sharks and elephants and a lightning bug and zombies and tigers and several boombox trailers blasting James Brown and Loki and lighthouses and a CFL lightbulb and police officers (not official) and bacon and snack cakes and a harem of zebras and Captain America and a bumblebee riding a lobster bike and . . . wow.

Our group meet up at Green Street MBTA station in Jamaica Plain and traveled into Boston proper, where we met the second group and lit up the streets around Mass. College of Art and the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Then through Fenway and over to Cambridge; Central Square, Harvard Square; ’round to Allston and through Brookline; back to JP. My favorite moment was riding through the Cambridge Street tunnel in Harvard Square, bikes-only, everyone hooping and hollering and shouting their hearts out in the cavernous, echo-y space.

Even if you don’t ride, you gotta see this thing and cheer us on. Next year, friends!

Two viking ships (on bike helmets)

Handcrafted by my partner, two viking ships off to sail the seas

Lost and Found with Boston Nature Center

15 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Boston Moments, Green Life

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

bike-commuting, city-farm, community

IMG_6562

On a bike ride home from Dorchester, I got lost.

One confused turn led to another, to another. Traveling down a road lined with brick homes that reminded me of the old military base I once lived near in New Jersey, I stopped in front of a welcoming yellow building. And then I was found.

View of Boston Nature Center

Boston Nature Center front

The best thing about getting lost in Boston is that it’s a fail-proof method for learning what is where and how the neighborhoods connect.

Stick lean-to in progress

The Boston Nature Center is an urban wildlife sanctuary located on the grounds of the former Boston State Hospital. It offers programming for elementary school age children as well as miles of trails and many bushes under which rabbits graze to their heart’s content.

Rabbit spots the photographer

Lots and lots of rabbits . . .

Rabbit with tail up

Rabbits just chillin

Two rabbits hide in grass

Look closely for two sets of ears!

Right nearby to the Nature Center are the Clark Cooper Community Gardens. Described as some of Boston’s oldest, this impressively large collection of community gardens probably does not welcome rabbits. In the past, friends and I once spotted some wild turkeys loitering around the edges.

Horse trinket on fence

Green roof at Clark Cooper Community Gardens

Fence post

Gardens in the sun

So what have you found when you were lost?

Boston Pride Parade 2013

24 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Boston Moments, Community

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

color, community, events, jamaica-plain, photography, spring

Man in leather underpants

My first Boston Pride Parade was a revelation. Leather clad ladies on motorcycles. Gyrating men in their underpants dancing to club beats. A politician or two shaking hands while proclaiming progressive platforms. Local health and advocacy groups tossing beads and colorfully packaged condoms, littering the streets with flyers and candy.

I was mesmerized. I was amazed. I’ve gone back again and again.

"Dyke" on rainbow pedal bike

Pride street signs

"Queen" wearing ladybug hat

In the decade or so that I’ve attended (and once, marched with Greater Boston NOW,) the parade has changed. Perhaps matured? Strong in its themes of inclusivity, celebration, activism, and pride, there have been -over the years- a noticeable reduction in near-nude men festooning flatbed trucks and an increase in religious communities, families, politicians, and corporate allies.

Fish-man in tractor with pride wheel

I don’t know. You tell me.

Boy on unicycle handing out fans

Weekly DIG newsletter box monkey costume

Even though I don’t identify as gay, lesbian, queer, or transgender, I’m never the odd person out at Pride, whatever it’s current styling. Which is more than I can say for a certain high school history class where I slumped, hot-faced and confused, as my teacher rattled on about how gays couldn’t serve in the military because they were too limp-wristed and lisping. (Way to disrespect our service members, Mr. Name-I-Can’t-Recall.)

Roller derby lady

Boston Ballet represents at Pride

I’m so grateful to my alma mater for helping to release me from the tight hold of an inherited prejudice. My four years at an arts and communication college in Boston were a key folding back a metal lid, out from which exploded a beautiful confetti.

Walkers appreciating out-going Mayor Thomas Menino

Walkers appreciate out-going Mayor Thomas Menino, long-time a friend to Boston Pride

Blessed are the fabulous car

Pride Asian fans

And thank goodness.

What Is It: Fat Frog Ice Cream

14 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Boston Moments, What Is It

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

jamaica-plain

Spotted this near the Johnson Playground in Jamaica Plain. Our first thought: Fat Frog Ice Cream.

Fat frog ice cream

What do you think?

Flyering – A City Contact Sport

11 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Boston Moments, Community

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

community, events, food-n-cookin, somerville

I have this idea that posting flyers is unique to city living.

Posting a flyer inside the Union Square record shop

It’s not, exactly. As a kid in New Jersey, my family sometimes pinned notices about kittens (FREE!) to the local grocery store bulletin board. Summers, I hand wrote bubble-letter yard sale announcements on bright pink poster paper.

Unstraight and the Clear Deigns show announcement

I’d claim flyering in the ‘burbs plays “rarely-visiting distant cousin” to the “endless house guest” of taking to the streets with packing tape, cracked box of pushpins secured with a rubber band, and slowly wrinkling stack of flyers tucked under an arm as one narrow-eyes a telephone pole, wondering how long a notice might stay before someone else covers it up, or rips it down . . .

Triple portrait in window - Phoebe, David, cyclist

This weekend, my partner and I flyered for his band’s upcoming show in Somerville. I’ve beat the streets fairly consistently since my days organizing the Boston NOW Feminist Culture Club (defunct) and Boston Knit-Out & Crochet festivals (re-imagined), also frequently flyering for my current job. So I had a few ropes to share with David: do’s and dont’s, whys and hows of this decidedly analog approach to getting out the word.

Phoebe’s flyering dos and don’ts
DO design your flyer to catch the eye and make good use of white space
DO include a call to action (i.e. “COME to our wicked-awesome dance party!”)
DO post wherever you find a dedicated board – check libraries, coffee shops, post offices, supermarkets, thrift stores, ice cream parlors, and realtors – and it’s polite to ask before posting if the pizza guy is staring you down while flipping his dough
DO use flyering as an opportunity to better get to know your neighborhood AND grab a treat while you’re out

DON’T cover up someone else’s flyer, if at all possible (DO exercise your Tetris skills and shift other flyers around -removing any that have expired – until everybody fits)
DON’T flyer near signs that read “post no bills,” especially if the flyer has your name and contact
DON’T flyer at colleges, universities, or city offices unless you’ve secured clearance -they patrol and your flyer might be removed immediately (what we-in-the-business call “wasted effort”)

Union Square donut and ice coffee

Treats!

Our treat, while in Union Square, Somerville, was to finally get a taste of the popular new donuts I’d been hearing so much about. Lucky for us, there were none of the purported lines or long sold out pastries, and all of the clever flavors, cheerful, enthusiastic staff, and fluffy-buttery deliciousness. Yum!

Donut case and ice coffee chalkboard sign

Snuffy doll atop sign invites people into the donut shop

{This Moment} Near the Northwest Laboratory Building

31 Friday May 2013

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Boston Moments

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

spring, this-moment

IMG_5859

With Soulemama.

← Older posts
Newer posts →

Bike Life Bloggin Noggin Boston Moments Community Green Life Home Jersey Moments Learnin' Librarytour Readin' Skillshare Travelin' What Is It With Friends Writing Life

Twitter Updates

  • RT @LEEandLOW: Do you dream of a New Voices or New Visions Award seal on your book like the ones below? We're here to tell you it can hap… 13 hours ago
  • RT @tablefor7press: This week, T47's Megan Mullin shares her Reading Roots ... where her love for fantasy began, and how it evolved over ti… 3 days ago
Follow @wholeheartlocal

Goodreads

Recent Posts

  • National Novel Writing Month 2021: In Miniature
  • News from the Homefront
  • Whole Heart Update – Spring 2018 Edition
  • Whole Heart Hiatus 2018
  • South & Bardwell Book Hutch Refreshed

Flickr Photos

IMG_4118
More Photos
  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Phoebe Sinclair Writes
    • Join 83 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Phoebe Sinclair Writes
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar