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A Visit to Sandy Hook National Park

07 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Home, Jersey Moments

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Tags

jersey, summer, travel

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My birthday wish this year included visiting Sandy Hook, a barrier spit and Jersey Shore National Park that my family frequented in our younger years. I remembered the long, flat, pale landscape sandwiched between the Lower New York Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Smell of salt and pines and sand. Charming tide pools and holly trees.

But I’d forgotten the abundance of prickly pear cactus. The visage of old armaments.

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Remembered horseshoe crabs. Forgot fiddler crabs.

Remembered how the ocean pushes. Forgot how it pulls. Remembered seeming stability of sea-earth beneath a swimmer’s toes which can just . . . disappear.

Then, driving past blond, brick buildings, most now dilapidated beyond use, I remembered the smell of thick, shiny floor varnish, the sound of a wide, wooden door squeaking shut for the evening, warm light in a kitchen, and camp counselor taking time to be silly with just-me. I remembered the fierce bloom of affection for that person, those moments among preteen GirlScouts I met once then never again. The swoop of a windsurfing board catching wind to take my ten or eleven-year old body, long-limbed, nervous yet ecstatic, tacking across the water beneath a sky that stretched, pure blue, over everything.

There was the special treat of the holiday weekend: a Sandy Hook I’d misplaced, regained.

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New Jersey = Mothership

27 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Home, Jersey Moments

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jersey, spring

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Somewhere along the wandering lines of my life, I started thinking of New Jersey as the Mothership. Born and raised in the Township of Neptune, this description seems appropriate.

beach-weeds

Though the sand and soil on which my baby toes trod has no true name beyond what we humans (temporarily) bestow, I too am named. Jersey girl. Tristate resident, East Coast style. Yankee. American.

I leave, yet I do not. The smells, the sights, the feel are stamped upon my brain. Every new place I visit I impulsively, helplessly compare. Haven’t lived on that crabgrass patch, that blond stretch of overheated beach, that collection of crab shacks and kitsch, that mass of shopping malls, for twenty years, but nor can I abandon it. Follows me -to the Ring of Kerry, to Paris, to Boston, everywhere. The Garden State can’t stop, won’t stop, refuses to let me go. And I find I don’t want it to.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Hey, Mama Jersey –beam me up!

Sometimes It Can Best Be Said . . .

17 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Home

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cat-love, winter

With a cat.

Orange cat beneath green plant

Winter.

A Christmas Day Stroll

30 Wednesday Dec 2015

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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

Red garden orb

Some years it’s weather that prompts us to tarry longer than we planned before making the 280-ish mile trek to coastal New Jersey. Other years, a dip in health. Some, friends’ invitations to holiday engagements. Others, energy (or severe lack there of.)

This December, check ‘D.’ All of the above.

Frosted leaves

Flower display outside Vee Vee

Christmas Day, instead of opening gifts in David’s parents’ ocean-edge, cliff-top home, D and I took a stroll in the record-setting warmth. The sunlight was gorgeous, so naturally I wandered with my camera.

Dried hydrangea

We weren’t the only ones out and about. (Close, though.)

See the squirrel

Run, squirrel!

Daughter and mother bike on sidewalk

Centre St. Post Office in sun

Silk flower

Bench in sun at Jamaica Pond

We were among the few seated for a treat at one of our favorite Jamaica Plain restaurants, Cafe Beirut. Ah, well. More for us.

Rosewater lemonade 2

Bhaklava

Baklava, I declare my love.

35

05 Friday Jul 2013

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

as-we-are-living-it, food-n-cookin, gratitude, potlucks

It’s a pivotal age, I think, 35. For one, I can no longer click the radio buttons for 30-34 on demographic questionnaires. I’ve been bumped to 35-40. That’s kind of sad.

Muffins fresh from the oven

Potatoes getting ready to be hashtags

On the plus side, I’ve enjoyed my thirties -the feeling settled in my skin as my own quirky self, the way others appear to listen more closely when I speak from that space of knowledge which comes with experience- so more thirty, more delight, right?

Toys for our young visitor

Friends discuss

D & G at brunch

I rarely engage in big shindigs just for myself, so this year, having friends over for a light brunch, strolling through one of Boston’s grand community gardens, dining at the funky-fine establishment of my favorite Boston-area baking/restaurant mavens, and catching sight of the Boston Fireworks in an unexpected local, felt perfect.

Berkeley St. Garden Welcome Gate

Paper lanterns at Meyers and Chang

Phoebe at Meyers and Chang

What the Cat Gets Up To When We’re Not Home

27 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Home

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cat-love, jamaica-plain, this-moment

When I leave the apartment most mornings, the usually last sight I see of Jack (orange puffball who lives with us and commands food and “pets” daily) is him sitting quietly in the living room. I wonder what he gets up to during the day when we’re not around.

What the cat gets up to

My first guess is sleep, though sometimes I discover otherwise.

A Job For Digi Clover San

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Home, Jersey Moments

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

jamaica-plain, jersey, photography

Like most well-trained kids-of-consumer-culture, I spent a fair amount of time wishing for items I don’t own. And many more moments attempting to correct, or redirect, this behavior. Recently, my obsession has centered around digital cameras, and my lack of a good pocket-size model.

Enter Digi Clover San.

No, it’s not a “good” camera. Better description: toy. And, yet, there are many occasions for which Mr. Clover is up to the task.

Neon Buddah sign

Sun toy

Around JP and Jersey this weekend, I declared: This Looks Like A Job For Digi Clover San!

In progress

Weezie

Whole Heart . . . Blizzard?

11 Monday Feb 2013

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

arnold-arboretum, as-we-are-living-it, food-n-cookin, hikes, jamaica-plain, winter

A blizzard will most certainly reset a person’s weekend plans.

Instead of crawfish at a friend’s Mardi Gras party and a charity dinner hosted by Haley House called the Souper Bowl (yes, pun intended), we enjoyed sleeping in, snowshoeing at Arnold Arboretum, reading, shoveling with neighbors, and -because we were lucky enough to have power throughout- cooking/baking. Lots and lots of cooking/baking.

Outside-blizzard-2013

Jade vs snow

Gluten-free cranberry muffins

Poached egg breakfast

Cat chills

Snowshoeing - taking a rest

The hard part was standing up again!

Arbs sledders

Holding out under the snow

How did you take advantage of the opportunity to do a little less?

The Art of Staying Home

03 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Home

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

cat-love, craft-tastic, goals, jamaica-plain

Rain and drapes

I’ve been trying to teach myself how to stay home. No easy task for a kid who likes to get up and go. Bike tours! Museums! Friend’s kitchens! Theater! Community classes!

Staying home affords numerous luxuries, however infrequently I convince myself to partake in them. Laundry and folding and Studio 360 podcasts. Yarn crafts and Desert Island Discs or On Being podcasts. Baking. Movies screened on a window shade draped over our wooden clothes dryer, via the fancy hi-tech projector. Hand quilting and talking dreams and desires with my partner. Dancing alone to many fabulous vinyl albums, played scritch-scratch free on a stereo I’ve had since age eleven.

Yarn skein on record player

Staying home is also fairly cheap. Being out means dinners out and, for my partner, gas usage as his car eats up the miles between work, band practice, and game nights. Me, I’m more likely to fall victim to some gift item I NEED to purchase for friend or family. Similar, the compulsion to purchase things to be creative with, instead of using what I have, which is plenty.

It’s hard. The world beckons and I itch to follow the whistle.

Lovely are the moments when I can ignore the piper. (Bet you wondered where that analogy was going.)

Jack cat with the records

Wake Up The Earth 2012

30 Wednesday May 2012

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

arts, cambridge, events, jamaica-plain

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 . . .

Legalize chickens

This year’s Wake Up the Earth was my first time at the festival full day. I even brought my mom.

My companions

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.

Float

Chorus

Young dancers

99%

And who doesn’t love that?

Yarn bombed

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