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{this moment} – A Friday ritual (joining Soulemama.) A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.
{This Moment} The clay cat
13 Friday Jul 2012
Posted in Boston Moments
Category Archives: Boston Moments
What Happened to June . . . or Oh, Hello, July!
11 Wednesday Jul 2012
Posted in Boston Moments, Jersey Moments
June: the busiest month.
I don’t often hear strong opinions about June. July steals the show, surely, and then August breaks hearts as it drags unwilling captives back to school, work, and that breakneck sprint to winter.
May, at least, is the month of graduations and a holiday that celebrates both fallen service members and the start of Grill Season. But June . . . June. Wait. Where’d it go?
Listening to my partner’s band, the Clear Deigns, at the Milky Way Lounge (that’s him with the guitar!)
Exploring Great Brook Farm State Park
Browsing a library book sale
Pre-birthday celebration with my family
Dancing and Enthusiasm – Considerations
02 Monday Jul 2012
Posted in Boston Moments, With Friends
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Those who know me well know that I like to dance. Amazingly, going to dance parties around the city has led to my making a good many friends. Which in turn has led to more free dancing opportunities.
I’m not the best dancer -the most skilled, rhythmic, or adventurous but I’ve got enthusiasm. I’ve got laughing. I’ve got style. Leaping and skipping and posturing; all manner of silliness.
Recently, a friend hosted an impromptu dance party at the gazebo on Jamaica Pond. Undeniable beats poured from her impressively loud ipod speaker system, and we were dancing like it wasn’t illegal (park doesn’t close until 11 PM, I hear.) What do we see suddenly but a gaggle of preteen girls swooping in?! The song we had been listening to at the time was a bit chill, a little complicated, so our host made quick dj decision. Beyonce shouts GIRLS! GIRLS RUN THE WORLD. And the girl gaggle before us stops short.
They’re unsure. A group of adult women and a few men dancing on the street at 10 PM. Is it safe, is it scary? To our disappointment, the girls retreat.
Oops, I thought. Was our response too enthusiastic? Enthusiasm and vulnerability, walking hand-in-hand. It was too much, I think, for these young people who have probably been drilled on the importance of safety -physical, emotional, and otherwise.
My theory is, if they’d been just a little younger, or a year or two older, the girls would have embraced our cheerful enthusiasm for what it was: an invitation to dance their hearts out, safely, among friends.
Living in the City, Reading about the Country
18 Monday Jun 2012
Posted in Boston Moments, Green Life, Jersey Moments
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It does not escape me that, living in one of this country’s oldest cities, I spend a lot of time considering the country.
Upon finishing the second issue of Taproot magazine, steeped in the values of living simply, slowly, heart-full, back-to-the-earth, I thought: this is me, this is not me.
I believe in sitting out on the porch, shucking corn. I believe in long walks through green places. In white flashes of deer tails, rabbit tails, and rusty, shaggy foxtail.
I also, believe in escaping the bumper-to-bumper to hit up the ice cream counter. Barely comprehending my luck that this planet holds things cold and milky, vanilla with peanut butter swirls.
I’m a child of the suburbs. Beachtown creaky, my younger years held splinters from Jersey Shore boardwalks, screams from the top of the crickety, wooden ‘coaster. Paper tickets from ski-ball and wack-a-mole games that I traded for spider rings whose cheap plastic pinched my fingers.
The city has me, the country attracts me. In between, I both rue and appreciate the Christmas-light palaces of the ‘burbs.
It’s my lot, I think, to refuse claiming -or being claimed- by one, the other, or the third. I’d rather find value in them all.
It Warms Up
12 Tuesday Jun 2012
Posted in Bike Life, Boston Moments, Green Life
Occupy The Lilacs
04 Monday Jun 2012
Posted in Boston Moments, Learnin'
Since my days organizing for the National Organization for Women, I’ve learned that I am not an activist (by the stricter definitions.) Although I’m a daughter of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and flower child/hippie movements, my skill and interests lie in building community: connecting people, listening, assessing, and building empathy. I’m drawn towards the methodologies of Non-Violent Communication, mediation, Co-counseling, and dialogue.
I enjoy spending time with activists, spinning the energy from those connections into an adjacent creativity and passion (with a dash of impishness) that comes more naturally to me. However: invite me to mini-fy it and I’ll jump right on your bandwagon.
Cutest little Occupy tent ever!
Wake Up The Earth 2012
30 Wednesday May 2012
Posted in Boston Moments, Home
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I love my Canon Rebel EOS automatic film camera, but it tends to make me tardy. What with having to use up all the exposures before I can get a roll developed, and having to schlep all the way to CVS (which doesn’t do that great a job), and then with the sometimes coming out funky and off-color -like what happened with my shots from Wake Up the Earth, a parade and festival organized by Spontaneous Celebrations.
If you can forgive the blue tint . . .
This year’s Wake Up the Earth was my first time at the festival full day. I even brought my mom.
Hi, Mom!
It’s the most amazing festival: color and passion and humor and generosity and music and heartfelt dancing and ginger beer. I invited my mother because, as far as I can see, Wake Up the Earth is a big bite of what makes JP, JP.
And who doesn’t love that?
{This Moment} Wake up the Earth, JP
18 Friday May 2012
Posted in Boston Moments
Tags
this moment} – A Friday ritual (joining Soulemama.) A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.
{This Moment} Art in the Park
11 Friday May 2012
Posted in Boston Moments
Tags
{this moment} – A Friday ritual (joining Soulemama.) A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.
Safety in the City
09 Wednesday May 2012
Posted in Boston Moments
One morning I struggled to keep my resolution to never use my iPod while walking to work. It was a dreary start to the day and I craved amusement -something to keep me company on the twelve-minute trek. In the train car, people stared at their smart phones or nodded serenely to music on their earbuds. Blithe disconnection. When the train stopped, all the little islands stood up and floated out while I scrambled to stow the iPod, battling back my mind’s rationalizations to just go-ahead-and-use-it-already!
Everyone else is doing it.
At 9 AM, what are the chances you’ll get mugged smack in the middle of Harvard Yard?
A year ago, when my cousin prepared for a semester abroad in Paris -her first out-of-country experience- I emailed some admittedly contradictory words of wisdom that I hoped would serve her. How to describe the art of balancing safety with adventure?
Trust no one.
Trust everyone.
Be on constant alert, but hold to your sense of wonder and delight.
Walking with my partner and a friend near South Station, on our way home from seeing a show at the ICA, I noticed a passer-by stumble. He seemed slightly drunk, so I quickly directed my small party out of his path. Neither of my companions had noticed anything amiss. Am I unnecessarily hyper-sensitive?
Better safe than sorry?
A Cambridge blogger writes about watching a woman cross the street to avoid him. I leave a comment about being that woman -the one to cast a suspicious eye, deciding whether to venture forward, or avoid a possible catastrophe.
I understand that I do not have control but, living in the city, I’ve learned to vie, to bet, to cajole, to claw, to zip, to duck, to do whatever I am able to eek, scrape, demand, carve out a bit of safety.
Phoebe Sinclair Writes 