To outer space!!!!!

Yesterday I was on an afternoon excursion in Chestnut Hill. The excursion was successful, so I was walking home. I spotted a pool I have photographed before covered in snow. There was just one small obstacle. A ton of snow. A ton of snow around the pool. Oh and a concrete barrier.

As usual, I thought “well, I’m never going to see this again, so let’s give it a shot.” I sunk into the snow pretty deeply and got a ton of it in my shoes, but I got my photos. Looking weird…

Its nearly time to say goodbye to this winter from hell, but not before I get a few more shots of it:

Bubbles?

Yeah, finally I fulfilled a life long ambition to photograph — bubbles.
It was all I ever thought it would be:

**Nope. Just Boston harbor from the University of Massachusetts campus

Into the flood again.

Drifting by me, soul exertion.

So I made a big mistake.

Am I wrong?

OK so I went to college in the mid-1990s, a particular time in the evolution of popular culture that introduced combat boots as a fashion staple and made it OK to everyone to wear flannel. Oh and those chunky John Fluevog shoes. Yes. You are welcome.

For reasons I cannot fully explain, sometimes when I feel bad or just kind of down or nostalgic I listen to Mid 1990s college rock. I really think that music is fantastic and it reminds me of a different time in my life, not necessarily a bad one, but also not and unabashedly good one either. It reminds me of dorm rooms, late nights, boys with dreadlocks and being away from home for the first time. And learning how to do photography for the first time and how I much grew to love it.

So, here’s to the photo service darkroom at the University at Albany campus center 305:

Yeah, usually we start with a story, then we continue to the pictures, but hey, let’s break with tradition just this one time and have the photo first. I realize it is very orange. It is absolutely in no way alternated to look like that.
At the Okemo Resort in Vermont, which I visited yesterday, they have installed these bubble lifts with heated seats. Now I am in no way overstating this, but this is just about the greatest thing to ever happen. Why? Chair lifts are traditionally a somewhat torturous exercise one has to endure to get to the top of a mountain. Its freezing cold and you cannot wait to get to the top to start moving and warm up.
Enter these orange bubbles. The orange bubble arrangement keeps you warm and makes you feel like you are traveling in a futuristic space ship. Did I mention they keep your butt warm?

Honestly, I got to Okemo with medium hopes. I’d never been there before and really wanted to go but I didn’t want to spend the day torturing myself with some kind of ridiculous moguls. And I didn’t have to. It was smooth sailing all day. In fact it was the best ski trip of the entire season. Crazy great. Just what I needed. Cleared my head, did some excellent runs on some nice black trails and generally had a lot of fun.

As usual on the slopes, I did some deep thinking. Sometimes I get into my head too much and I get wrapped up in my own stuff. Somehow I this ski trip, I started to think “let your mind go and your body will follow.” It was a great feeling.

Okemo, welcome to the list of my favorite ski resorts.

Let’s celebrate with some photos:

One of those moments when everything comes together:

A trite, cliche start, but something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’ve been thinking about how I treat people and how they treat me. I’ve also been thinking about how what we say can be so opposite to what we actually do.

I guess I can go around saying that I am against people being homeless and hungry, but that’s all just bunk unless I do something about it. I can also say that and then walk right by a homeless person on the street asking for money or food.

Tonight I went to help out at the Paulist Center’s weekly supper club, where the center prepares a meal for anyone who wants one. Many of the people are homeless and some of them just down on their luck. I helped to distribute meals to the people who came for the dinner. The work is hugely satisfying and it also made me think a lot about the people I was serving the food to. No matter what we all think, they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. It could be any of us with just a little misfortune that ends up in the same situation as the people who came to the center tonight.

Getting dinner ready: