Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Bongo in Squaresville . 7 | Sort of Blue



Johnny Hodges - Duke's Blues, 1952
Terri Lyne Carrongton, Herbie Hancock - St. Louis Blues
Phil Woods, Dizzy Gillespie - Goodbye Mr. Evans
Donal Fox - In rehearsal
Rebecca Parris - That Old Black Magic
Rebecca Parriis - All of You
Charlie Mariano - Django
Dave McKenna - Serenade in Blue
Serge Chaloff - Stairway to the Stars
Herb Pomeroy, Donna Byrne - Ill Wind

Image ... Bongo in Squaresville.

March 31, 2010



Image ... The Citgo sign from inside Fenway Park, Boston.

Monday, March 29, 2010

March 30, 2010



cafeRa describes this picture as follows. WordLingo, my online translator, couldn't even begin to parse it. So here goes.
森美術館の アイ.ウェイウェイ展、驚いてばかり。あんなにおもしろい展覧会は久しぶりでした。北京オリンピックの鳥の巣を設計した一人でもある、中国人の現代アート。11月8日まで。いつてないひとは、ぜひ、
More rain from another lashing nor'easter. Perfect for indoor projects. Working in Jamaica Plain at the Brewery Complex for the Boston Pretzel Bakery. Today we're (or maybe just me) building a wagon with old fashioned wooden wagon wheels. I've built some strange stuff in my time. And right there too. The space, now subdivided maybe four or five times, used to be the scene shop of the Opera Company of Boston where I worked as a builder, pattern maker (my specialty), painter, stagehand (at the Orpheum Theatre downtown) and general all around dog's body. I got to stand offstage in the wings with Beverly Sills night after night then watch her sing from a few feet away. My favorite of her roles was Juliet with Tatiana Troyanos playing Romeo. She was about three times as big as he, I mean she.

Whittier in Snowbound has a line, if I remember correctly, about the tremendous 'privacy of the storm'. This isn't snow, thank god or we'd be up to our tits in it, but there's some sort of similar feeling. And it's rather nice. Lying in bed safe and snug, anway, watching the roaring beast through the windows. Until you have to go out in it.

Image ... Bicycles, Bejing.

March 29, 2010



Google's Blogger-in-Chief says in today's Globe that speed is the ultimate app, or something similarly tech-generic. But BlogSpot's creeped down to a crawl since its recent renovations, taking forever to load for editing. It used to be good to go in a flash, but now it spins its wheels.

Day of rain with a few more forecast. In Jamaica Plain, hooked up with A Far Cry and Lovewhip. Programmed a dance set for Radio Roofscape climaxing with the latter. The Gaga of JP. About as politically incorrect as it gets, fun but whipsmart.

Image ... Flying washer. The Starlight Room, Beacon Hill, Boston.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

March 28, 2010



Two client meetings in the morning, then to the garden. Below freezing when I left, warmed up to 50°, just barely, in the sunroom as the sky cleared for a hot minute. The flooding has subsided, down to one inundated bed. Was able to walk to the back of the garden on the wood chip path sloshing like a water bed. More rain predicted.

Sat in the sunroom. Read the free papers I'd collected along the way: Phoenix, Improper, Bay, Epoch, etc. The only kind I read. BP for music, IB for food, BW for dish, Stuff for random useless stuff, ET for, well, ET news, Metro for its bracing dose of intellectual rigor. I bypass Fashion Boston and Barstool Sports. Could be contagious.

Mating and nest building apace. Pine tree of grackles sounding like a haunted house of rusty hinges, cackling ghosts. Robins fishing in the sodden garden beds for drowned earthworms, pale as death, rebounding from their mud berths like rubber bands. Hawk hunting on high. Geese goosing (I guess). Mourning Doves calling mournfully, wistfully, fated in love. Sunday strollers, cruisers and sightseers. The other usual, but often flightier, fauna.

Image ... Statuette. Uphams Corner, Dorchester.

Sunday Gospel Set . 42 | John Wilson




Join us every Sunday to give praise with the Sunday Gospel Set on Radio Roofscape. We usually feature a music video from the set here, but today it's our pleasure to feature a show by an African American artist - John Wilson: Prints & Drawings, an exhibition of works on paper 1943 - 2004. The show runs until the end of April at Martha Richardson Fine Art, 38 Newbury Street, Boston. GO!

And here's the set list for March 28, 2010 ...

Yolanda Adams - Open My Heart
Kurt Carr & The Kurt Carr Singers - For Every Mountain
Shirley Caesar - The Praying Slave Lady
Fred Hammond & Radical for Christ - I Wanna Know Your Ways
The Clark Sisters - It's Gonna Be Alright
Disciples of Christ (D.O.C.) - Deeper
Cece Winans - On That Day (featuring Lauryn Hill)
Kirk Franklin - September

Image ... Native Son. John Wilson, 1945. Courtesy of Martha Richardson Fine Art, 38 Newbury Street, Boston.

March 27, 2010



Programmed the Sunday Gospel Set. This set, #42 (amazingly), is mostly urban contemporary, code words for black, current and commercial; fusing R&B, funk, soul and hip-hop elements in a powerful blend. Yolanada Adams in, Kirk Franklin out and a spectrum of testifying in between.

The photograph above is of a mural painted on a utility (traffic light, I think) box in Jamaica Plain. It's a map of the nearby streets, with no names or symbols used. Overlaid are the shifting shadows of bare winter tree branches. To me it's a totally satisfying work of art. See another, maybe even better, view of the mural in the March 19 journal entry below. That image will be on the April 15 Roofscape cover, so you'll also get a sneak peak.



Image ... Mural by Elizebeth Nicholson and Hilary Alder. On a utility box at Lamartine and Boylston Streets, Jamaica Plain across from the Stony Brook T Station.

Friday, March 26, 2010

March 26, 2010



Image ... Kylee with Kiwis. Self-portrait by KS.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

March 25, 2010



Greeted at the garden by four hawks soaring together, a sight I've never seen, two couples circling one thermal. Maybe they were double dating, but there were none of those entwined daredevil courtship dives which precede mating.

Roofscape's garden was flooded, about half the beds were under water and all the paths turned into treacherous quagmires. I didn't have my camera with me, but the photo above shows a typical spring high water mark along the banks of the aptly named Muddy River. This might have been the year that, sitting high and dry on the small island surrounding the sunroom, I saw a muskrat swim through the garden.

Image ... Late spring flood in the Roofscape garden. The Fens, Boston.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

March 24, 2010



Updated Garden Girl TV and Beans on the cover. Need a new Beans.

Image ... Street sign. Queensberry Street, Boston.

Bongo in Squaresville . 6 | Hot and Cool: 40 Years of Jazz at New England Conservatory



Bongo in Squaresville is a weekly webcast radio show devoted to the jazz music, of every style and genre, that's gone down in Boston through the last 10 or so decades. Join us at Radio Roofscape every Wednesday night. The music starts at 9:00 and there's never a cover charge or drink minimum.

Check out Roofscape Journal too. Each week we'll be looking at a different aspect of the Boston jazz scene down through the years to today - digging the music, meeting the musicians, hanging out with the fans, making recording sessions and visiting the clubs. Today were celebrating the 40th anniversary of jazz at New England Conservatory.

Here's the playlist for Wednesday, March 24, 2010. Then Tal Farr takes us on a visit around NEC's four jazz decades.

George Russell Sextet
Ran Blake
Gunther Schuller - The World According to Gunther Schuller
Darcy James Argue's Secret Society - Zeno
Noah Preminger - Today is Okay
Bernie Worrell, featured - Slippery People
Marty Ehrlich Sextet
John Medeski - plays Clavinet
Gunther Schuller Orchestra with Jimmy Giuffre - Suspensions, 1957
Ran Blake & Jeanne Lee - Where Flamingos Fly
George Russell, Bill Evans, Billy Evans - The Future of Jazz

Image ... Bongo in Squaresville. he Starlight Room, Boston.

March 23, 2010



An image made in Bay Village, a small microcosim, or microclimate, of the strange plucked from beneath the waves that once washed over Boston Neck. Edgar Allan Poe lived here. Case closed. Lady GaGa, your dress is ready for fitting.

Working on the cover. From the cover on in, as I call it. This involves changing the cover descriptions and links, adding the new articles or features, then updating the relevant department index page. Plus checking for and bringing everything up to the current graphic standard in terms of navBar, ads and layout, etc. It's dogs work.

Edited the N-E-W-S slightly. Swatted some typos moving down the page. New Cookout recipe Curried Cauliflower and Cheddar Soup. A really solid recipe, rich and satisying. The other VIEWS ar staying put until the 4/1 issue, which I'll begin work on as soon as this one's done. Remaining: GGTV, Beans and Thought. I think!

Cut some shelf stock in the workshop for a client job.



Image ... Torso. Bay Village, Boston.

Monday, March 22, 2010

March 22, 2010



Thoreau was a skilled surveyor, one of his many professions of which he claimed to have as many as the fingers on his hands. Writer, naturalist, philosopher, handyman, gardener, builder, explorer, teacher and pencil-maker were among the others.

Thoreau did this drawing of Walden Pond in 1846, in the middle of his two year stay along its shores. Walden remains much as it was when he began his sojourn on Jul 4, 1845. The water retains its mysterious purity and the Raildroad to Concord & Fitchburg still runs along the western edge.

The area is far more wooded than in Thoreau's time when most of Concord was cleared for farming. A path skirts the perimeter of the pond, but it's probably the same one that Indians used for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. An ugly concrete bathhouse defaces the eastern shore. The site of Thoreau's cabin is marked by a cairn of stones piled up by visitors.

Walden is by far the favorite spot for skipping school. Concord-Carlisle High School is just a short stroll down the tracks in the direction of the arrow at the lower right.

Rain has resumed, dreary and depressing, gray and godforsaken.

Bright spot, a great interview with Quincy Jones.
Q ... Absolutely! I love recording studios. That's why I never had a studio in my home — to me a recording studio is a sacred, hallowed place. I used to have a saying: “Let's always leave some space to let God walk through the room.” Because you're looking for very, very spiritual and special moments in a studio. It can't be just some place you hang out in and take for granted.
It doesn't get any better than that.

1661 ... Wampanoag Indian chief Massasoit signed a peace treaty with the Pilgrims.

Walden Pond. Drawing by Henry David Thoreau.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

March 21, 2010



Breakfast at Charlie's yesterday. On a Saturday. Which no one sane does, but I got there real early. Managed to move up to my personal seat, last down back, against the mirror, in gradual stages. Cheddar omelet, whole wheat toast, potatoes (the real deal) and side salad (with chickpeas). It comes with all of this, although you can refuse the sides, but who would. One of the most satisfying meals on earth.


Image ... Charlie's Sandwich Shoppe. Boston, Mass.

March 20, 2010



To the garden. Flooded after the storm. Sat in the sun reading, doing mostly nothing. That's what gardens are for, to help you do nothing.

Bought a new, and much-needed, notebook for the camera bag at Staples. Got 6 jalapeno bagels with jalapeno cream cheese at Espresso Royale, Haviland Street, and a large collard greens at Mo's BBQ, corner of Magazine and Norfolk.

Image ... Incident in the Lagoon. Mission Hill, Boston.

Sunday Gospel Set . 41




Join us every Sunday to give praise with the Sunday Gospel Set on Radio Roofscape. Our featured video this week is with the Fisk Jubille Singers. And here's the complete current set list ...

Mary Mary - Get Up
The Golden Gate Quartet - Swing Down Sweet Chariot
Dixie Hummingbirds - Zion Used to Moan
REM - Losing My Religion (live in Athens, Greece)
Yolanda Adams - Open Up My Heart
Clara Ward - For the Rest of My Life I'm Gonna Hold On
Fisk Jubilee Singers - Sacred Journey (Mawu Nye Lolo)
Kirk Franklin - Oh Happy Day
Deep River Boys - Go Down Moses

Friday, March 19, 2010

March 19, 2010



Pete and I are working on a project at The Brewery complex in JP. It's a dense warren of various thriving small businesses located in the old Haffenreffer Brewery on Amory Street near the Stony Brook T stop. The area used to be the center of the German immigrant community in Boston and there were five breweries close by, of which Haffenreffer was the largest, along with other homey amenities of Germanic life - musical societies, social clubs, schools, etc.

The brand no longer exists, or at least not here, replaced by Sam Adams Beer, The Jamaica Plain School of Dance, Ula's Cafe, Bikes Not Bombs, Mike's Gym, Boston Pretzel Bakery, Milky Way Cafe, Bella Luna, etc. - 50 businesses in all employing 250 people. It's a really pleasant place with constant coming and going and Ula's is always packed. Good pea soup, almost as good as Charlie's. And the sun is out, spring is here. Smiling, relaxed faces everywhere after this rough winter.

Image ... Mural by Elizebeth Nicholson and Hilary Alder. On a utility box at Lamartine and Boylston Streets, Jamaica Plain across from the Stony Brook T Station.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

March 18. 2010



Does anyone want to buy a beautiful old Victorian house with me?

Image ... Abandoned house. Humphreys Street, Dorchester.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Bongo in Squaresville . 5



Bongo in Squaresville is a weekly webcast radio show devoted to the jazz music, of every style and genre, that's gone down here in Boston through the last 10 or so decades. Join us at Radio Roofscape every Wednesday night, the music starts at 9:00 and there's never a cover charge or drink minimum.

Check out Roofscape Journal too. Each week we'll be looking at a different aspect of the Boston jazz scene down through the years to today - digging the music, meeting the musicians, hanging out with the fans, making recording sessions and visiting the clubs. To start off, we're going to look at the scene in the 40's and 50's when Boston was one of the great jazz mecccas.

Here's the playlist for Wednesday, March 17, 2010, then Tal Farr takes us to the Hi-Hat Club, pictured above.

Serge Chaloff Sextet - Sergical
Charlie Mariano - Celia
George Garzone, Brian Blade, Chris McBride - Untitled
Dabe McKenna - Poor Butterfly
Terri Lyne Carrington - Dorian's Playground
Gary Burton Quartet with Eberhard Weber - Intrude
Rebecca Paris - Darn That Dream
Ruby Braff - Lonely Moments
Jaki Byard - Jazz Piano Workshop, 1965
Phil Woods - Willow Weep for Me

The Hi-Hat

The Hi-Hat - located at the corner of Massachsuetts and Columbus Avenues in Boston's South End, where the Harriet Tubman House now stands - was known for big names and big money.

Charles Walker, age 87, saw Sammy Davis, Jr. at the Hi-Hat, once on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Columbus. “You had to have money to go there,” he says of the club, which had a restaurant and lounge downstairs, while the music was upstairs.

The Hi-Hat was the first jazz club in the South End. It was established after World War II, when big bands had gone out and performers such as drummer Buddy Rich, Count Basie and Charlie Mingus were traveling with small combos.

“The Hi-Hat sort of became a symbol of jazz in Boston. It was popular; it inspired other young guys to open clubs,” says Ray Barron, who used to book the acts for the club. He started the popular Sunday jam sessions at the Hi-Hat.
Charles Walker and Ray Barron quoted in South End Jazz: An invisible tradition, by Drake Lucas.

The Hi-Hat was an example of a larger club where the bands, waiters and waitresses were black, but the audience was white. People would come from all over town. When I got out of the army in 1946 I went down there to hear Count Basie.
Thomas O’ Connor, Boston historian and Boston College Professor

Sunday afternoon jam sessions were a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Only the squares were home. No matter if it was summer, fall, winter, or spring, the Sunday afternoon jam sessions at the Hi-Hat was where you belonged if you were hip.
Ray Barron, Pick Up the Beat and Swing

Image ... Mural at the site of the old Hi-Hat CLub. Harriet Tubman House, Boston.

March 17, 2010



On this day ... in 1901, the City of Boston officially celebrated Evacuation Day for the first time. In early March of 1776, Continental troops managed to move heavy cannon to the top of Dorchester Heights. When the British realized what had happened, they knew they could no longer hold the capital. The lowly Continental Army forced the British to evacuate Boston. One hundred and twenty-five years later, the Mayor proclaimed March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, a legal holiday. The city could commemorate an important historical event — George Washington's first victory in the American Revolution — and celebrate its place as "the capital of Irish America." Even today, schools and government offices are closed on March 17th in Boston and Suffolk County.
... Courtesy of Mass. Moments.



Image ... The Evacuation of Boston, 1776.

Monday, March 15, 2010

March 16, 2010



The Biggest Storm Ever clearing out, sun breaking through the high thin scud following its traces. That storm soaked me twice, on bike and by foot. The week is supposed to be sunny and up in the 60's. Hurray, finally! This has been a b... bear of a winter. Biking to JP this morning to start job for a new client.

Came up with a possible name and designed a logo for RP. Having though it over a lot for a few days, it took maybe ten minutes, inspired by spring.

Photographed in JP by the Stony Brook 'T' Station. The traffic signal box is decorated with abstract designs like the local street map.

Image ... Yachts. Charles Sheeler.

March 15, 2010



A storm-swept trek to Brighton by bus and on foot. Soaked to the skin the minute I stepped off the bus. Disoriented - the map being not the territory, plus the map was on my iBook - and lost. On the edge of hypothermia by the time I caught the #1 back home. The storm continues but it seems to be blowing itself out.

Image ... Garden umbrella. The Fens, Boston.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Quiet Desperation . 2


March 14, 2010



A wild nor'easter with lashing wind-driven rain, gusts up to 40 mph. Look at the size of this storm in the satellite image below. This thing is huge, swirling from the Caribbean to Canada, covering the whole eastern seaboard west to the Mississippi. Perfect for an indoor Sunday, writing, reading and cooking (Roofscape's special mac 'n cheese). I can't believe I was out biking in this storm yesterday. It looked so innocent when I left the house, just small showers, but when I left JP several hours later it bared its fangs.


On this Day ... in 1794, Westborough native Eli Whitney applied for a patent on the cotton gin. Raised on a farm in Massachusetts, he invented a machine that made growing cotton so profitable that the South became a "cotton kingdom" where millions of Africans toiled in slavery. After nearly a decade in the South, Whitney returned to New England and developed what became known as the "American System" of manufacture. He designed machines that turned out standardized, interchangeable parts. These machines made mass production possible and were critical to the coming Industrial Revolution. Eli Whitney's innovations transformed the economy first of the American South and later of the North.
... Courtesy of Mass. Moments.



Image ... Upham's Corner Firehouse. Dorchester, Massachusetts.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Sunday Gospel Set . 40




Join us every Sunday to give praise with the Sunday Gospel Set on Radio Roofscape. Our featured video this week is of The Ishmel Sisters singing Follow the Drinking Gourd and reciting The Joys of Playing by George L. Davis. And here's the complete current set list ...

Tolbert Family Singers - Ride the Gospel Train
The Ishmel Sisters - Follow the Drinking Gourd
Albert Ayler - Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Nina Simone - Sinner Man
Marion Williams - Michael Row the Boat Ashore
Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon - Steal Away to Jesus
Golden Gate Quartet - Roll, Jordan, Roll
Ramsey Lewis - Wade in the Water

THE JOYS OF PLAYING
by George L. Davis, II

JASHANNA - Janel
Play little ones, with the sun on your shoulder. With bright smiles and sepia skin, let the wind breeze through your hair. Your afro puffs glisten with the sheen of the starlight, and your full lips taste the cool waters of rivers flowing from your ancient past.

JANEL - Jarinne
See now the gentle rain fall on the playing sisters, in Sofala, in Soweto, in Savannah, in Santo Domingo. See them jump and play and shout and dance. See her twirl, arms uplifted, in parabolic joy. See her roll and roll and stop with her face to the wide open sky. See her laugh and chuckle and giggle and slap her knees at her sisters, while they share this moment to never come again, but always remembered in times yet born.

JARINNE - JaShanna
Play little ones, with the moon on your ear. With the silence of the half light and the call of the night, melt away into the twilight. Your bantu countenance to illumine the midnight sky, silhouettes of golden memories, to the night prime. A primrose path for your beckoning eye for these joys, we sigh.

March 13, 2010



Biked to JP to visit our new client and finalize project details. Showers, a 35 minute ride. Lunch with Renee at the new J'Way Cafe. Tucked under Jamaicaway Books on Centre Street it serves some down home, soul food cooking. Had the gumbo, $3.95 for a bowl, and it was right on at the right price. Biked back, soaked, in the driving rain of a nor'easter moving up from the south.



Image ... Shoji screens and stairs.

Fire and Nice | Ugly Betty 4.15 | Rooftop Movie Night




Betty's entire family moves in with her after their salon/house burns down. Poppi and Justin both suspect they might have started the fire, but Hilda has heated suspicions about the Telurcios. Mark St. James and Justin have a heart to heart. Wilhemina reconnects with an old flame. Things heat up between Hilda and Bobby.

Daniel gets hot under the collar and discovers he has a long lost brother. Amanda totally has the hots for Claire's love child, although she and Daniel are currently 'fun buddies'. Betty dates a highly annoying fireman to speed the Suarez fire insurance settlement and stop the disaster they're making of her life (she gets thrown off the Lady Gaga account when Poppi slips an omelette in her laptop).

The Telurcio and Suarez families meet for Pasta Puttanesca ('whore sauce', Hilda calls it) at Betty's apartment and tempers flare. We finally learn who actually started the fire. Clue - who's the world's most flaming klutz?

Friday, March 12, 2010

On the Cover . 5 | Seven50 Grill



This is an image I made a block away from our office in Dot.MA. We're looking into the 'conservatory' or 'greenhouse' seating area of an abandoned restaurant, the Seven50 Grill. The light at this particular time of day melded the interior view, looking through the glass, with the exterior scene behind me, reflected in the glass. No compositing was used, although a little editing was done to create a painterly texture and bump up the saturation. Camera: Olympus D-620L. The image will run on the 3/15-4/1 cover of Roofscape.

Image ... Seven50 Grill. Dorchester, Massachusetts.

March 12, 2010



There's a spectacular witchazel tree floating over the small patio of the Appleton Cafe at the corner of Appleton and Dartmouth Streets. No mere bush/shrub this, but a 20-foot tall, beautifully maintained tree, redolent of the distinct fragrance. Well worth a visit.

Meetings this weekend. New client, possible partner, new digs. Moving on, moving up. Decided, however, not to move to New Orleans. There's too much holding me here, I'm too invested in, too obsessed with Boston. And then there's the Dr. King in Boston book which, well, kind of requires being in Boston as the title suggests.

Next week will be crazy with new client projects, so today is Roofscape day, getting the new cover (they change on the 1st and 15th) ready for release on Monday. The new cover image is a photo I made in February looking into the now abandoned Seven50 Grill 'greenhouse' or 'conservatory' dining area, melding both the interior and exterior views (reflected in the glass). See On the Cover, the entry just above, for a sneak peek and some background on the photo.

Writing the welcome section just below the image and the brief intro to the magazine.

Programmed a set of spring music on Radio Roofscape.

Image ... Witchazel in the Snow. The Fens, Boston.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

March 11, 2010



Job for a new client in Bay Village. Biked to garden. Sat in the sunroom watching the world go by, thinking, but not much. It began to cloud up thickly, turn cool and start to shower. End of idle idyl. Pork lo mein at Pad Thai Cafe. Biked back in the rain.



Image ... Along the Minuteman Bikeway. Arlington, Mass.

Bongo in Squaresville . 4



Bongo in Squaresville is a weekly webcast radio show devoted to the jazz music, of every style and genre, that's gone down here in Boston through the last 10 or so decades. Join us at Radio Roofscape every Wednesday night, the music starts at 9:00 and there's never a cover or drink minimum.

Check out Roofscape Journal too. Each week we'll be looking at a different aspect of the Boston jazz scene down through the years to today - digging the music, meeting the musicians, hanging out with the fans, making recording sessions and visiting the clubs. To start off, we're going to look at the scene in the 40's and 50's when Boston was one of the great jazz mecccas.

Here's the playlist for Wednesday, March 3, 2010, then Tal Farr takes us to the Hi-Hat Club, pictured above.

Chick Corea & Gary Burton - Monk's Dream
Ruby Braff & Dick Hyman - When It's Sleepy Time Down South
Jaki Byard - Round Midnight
Terri Lyne Carrington - It's You or No One
Ralph Burns - Introspection
Harry Carney - Baritone solo, 1964
Charles Mariano - Celia
Serge Chaloff Sextet - What's New

The Hi-Hat

Standing at the crossroads of Massachusetts and Columbus Avenues in the 40's and 50's, jazz joints stretched away into the distance in every direction. One of the swankiest was the Hi-Hat Club on the southeast corner of the intersection where the Harriet Tubman House, a community center, now stands. The image above is a detail from the mural adorning the building which celebrates the legacy of this famed club.

... Continues next week.

Image ... Mural at the site of the old Hi-Hat CLub. Harriet Tubman House, Boston.

Quiet Desperation . 1




I've only seen a few episodes, OK webisodes, of this reality sitcom based in Boston, but so far so good. It's shit, but it is funny as shit. Check out the current Boston Phoenix article on Quiet Desperation. Above is episode 1 and the Phoenix features the newest, #18.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

March 10, 2010



This image was made yesterday on a walk back home through the South End. It's a view into a fortune teller's storefront, melding the items in the display window with reflections from the sky and street.

There are three fortune teller shops in the South End. How this is possible and who frequents them I can't imagine. And they seldom seem to be open. This one I've never seen any signs of life in. Maybe they can just predict that you're coming and somehow be there. Maybe there's an article in this. Or maybe it's unlucky to repeat what a soothsayer says. So to speak. Very mysterious.

Visited clients in Bay Village and Beacon Hill. Hung out in the garden soaking up the sun.

Emails from Richard Vacca and the South End Historical Society this morning regarding the King project.

Image ... Buddha at the crossroads. Boston, Mass.

March 9, 2010



Stopped at Charlie's for lunch - hot sausage sandwich and coleslaw. Asked Arthur, the owner, about the Western Lunch Box, where MLK used to eat (according to Trumpet, if recall correctly). He'd never heard of it, but said that there were loads of joints back then. He was cooking on the line at the time, but business was slow so he took the time to bend my ear. Filled me in on South End history and the Savoy Hotel at the corner of Columbus and West Newton, one of the few places blacks could stay in Boston and site of the original Savoy Cafe jazz club.

Did a half hour of PR. Saw the most incredible witchazel tree (no shrub this tree - tall, full, carefully groomed and pruned) outside the Appleton Street Cafe in their outdoor patio at the corner of Dartmouth. Stunning. The best I've ever seen, all the others by comparison merely bushes. Stunning scent.

Biked to Beacon Hill. Did a small job then more PR for an hour. Biked to the garden. Sat in the sunroom soaking up rays.

Day lilies several inches up. Wild onions six-inches tall and drooping down. Grackles back populating the big pitch pine. Geese, doves and other birds singing mating songs and swooping around in spring flight.

Image ... Stars.

Monday, March 8, 2010

March 8, 2010



A day filled with practical stuff and business, spent in the office as spring blows into town, 58° on warm zephyrs. Clear, sunny, breezy.

Word Watch (the archaic adjective arm of) ... carking: causing distress or worry; his carking doubts. Pull that out at the next opportune party moment and enjoy the utterly blank stares.

Image ... Lief Erikson monument, detail at base flanked by white cleomes. Commonwealth Avenue at the Fens, Boston.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Thomas Dorsey | Precious Lord | Sunday Gospel Set . 39




Join us every Sunday to give praise with the Sunday Gospel Set on Radio Roofscape. Our featured video this week is Thomas Dorsey singing Precious Lord. And here's the complete current set list ...

Albert E. Brumley - Turn Your Radio On
Thomas Dorsey - Precious Lord
Mahalia Jackson - Rock of Ages
Swan Silvertones - Sinner Man
Golden Gate Quartet - You Better Run
MotherWillie Mae Ford Smith - I'm Bound for Canaan Land
Fairfield Four - Lonesome Valley
Clara Ward Singers - Swing Low Sweet Chariot
James Cleveland - I Don't Feel No ways Tired
The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi - In the Wilderness
Dixie Hummingbirds - Personal Jesus
Fisk Jubilee Singers - Roll, Jordan, Roll

Asparagus Soup | Cookout . 12


Intro


INGREDIENTS

3 bunches (2-1/2 pounds, 10 cups) asparagus
2 cups onions, chopped
2 medium potatoes, chopped
1/8 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 cups vegetable stock
2 tablespoons fresh Italian parsely, minced
4 teaspoons lemon zest, finely grated
1 tablespoon fresh tarragon, finely minced
1 garlic clove, minced and mashed or pressed


PREPARATION

Text

March 7, 2010



Hawk perched in the hemlock. Flocks of ducks and geese heading north. Mating calls of mourning doves and geese heard in the garden yesterday. A fast flying falcon earlier winging west. Gulls sailing lazily in the sky. Cloudless, strong sun, warming away winter. Sunbathing in the office.

Image ... Cantaloupe grown in a roof garden.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

March 6, 2010



On the road all day. A clear, beautiful day with temps climbing into the 50's.

Biked to the Carter School to check how the street addresses run on Northampton Street. As you face the school, the even numbers are on the left. That means that 396, where Dr. King lived, is right in the middle of the school lot, and indeed the building. Which is why its address is currently 396. Because it was.

Biked up the Southwest Corridor to Jamaica Plain to visit a new client, The Boston Pretzel Bakery. It's located where I used to work, in the scene shop of the Opera Company of Boston on Amory Street in the old Haffenrefer Brewry!

Crossed town to Coolidge Corner, Brookline and completed job for the painter with a South End studio.

Biked to the garden and sat in the setting sun. Headed home arriving at dusk.

Image ... Warren Avenue. South End, Boston.

Friday, March 5, 2010

March 5, 2010



Worked in Brookline all day for a painter with a studio in the South End. Coolidge Corner has everything, and lots of it. Whatever you could possibly want is on sale there. What doesn't it have? Nothing. Went into the craziest tobacconists I've ever seen. And they had everything, all in one cramped, claustrophobic mon and pop hole in the wall, or perhaps just pop, with his hundreds of pipes arranged in cases like rare museum pieces.

Stopped for coffee and later had lunch at Panera Bread. Good onion soup, and I usually hate everyone's soups. Not a traditional French presentation, however - a sprinkling of grated cheese and a few repurposed salad croutons which didn't really fit, with a section of baguette on the side. Potato chips or an apple as an alternative. Go figure.

I do like the ambience of the place however, and the ambience of almost all restaurants is another thing I hate about them, bad or mediocre food being first of course. A big armchair in front of a (realistic) flickering log gas fire, with WiFi, on a chilly winter's day. You got me. Qualty chains can sometimes get things really right. But the other candidates currently escape me.

Renee's coming to dinner tonight. Our former house mate who we haven't seen in awhile.

The Boston Massacre [March 5, 1770, 240 years ago] is one of most important events that turned colonial sentiment against King George III and British acts and taxes. Each of these events followed a pattern of Britain asserting its control, and the colonists chafing under the increased regulation. Events such as the Tea Act and the ensuing Boston Tea Party were further examples of the crumbling relationship between Britain and the colonies. While it took five years from the Massacre to outright revolution, it foreshadowed the violent rebellion to come. It also demonstrated how British authority galvanized colonial opposition and protest. ... Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Image ... The Bloody Massacre. Paul Revere engraving.

The Jazz Decades | Louis Armstrong

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Bongo in Squaresville . 3



Bongo in Squaresville is a weekly webcast radio show devoted to the jazz music, of every style and genre, that's gone down here in Boston through the last 10 or so decades. Join us at Radio Roofscape every Wednesday night, the music starts at 9:00 and there's never a cover or drink minimum.

Check out Roofscape Journal too. Each week we'll be looking at a different aspect of the Boston jazz scene down through the years to today - digging the music, meeting the musicians, hanging out with the fans, making recording sessions and visiting the clubs. To start off, we're going to look at the scene in the 40's and 50's when Boston was one of the great jazz mecccas.

Here's the playlist for Wednesday, March 3, 2010, then Tal Farr takes us to the Sunday afternoon jam session at Wally's, the last of the classic Boston clubs ...

Duke Ellington / Johnny Hodges - Going Up
Billie Holiday - I Cried for You
Dreaming of Your Love - Tony Williams
Charlie Mariano & KCP4 - Live TFF Rudolstadt 2007
Professor Longhair - Go to the Mardi Gras
Dave McKenna - Nobody Else But Me / I'm Old Fashioned
Leon Collins - Flight of the Bumble Bee
Kid Koala - Basin Street Blues
Serge Chaloff Sextet - What's New
New Black Eagle Jazz Band - Perdido Street Blues
Louis Armstrong - Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans


Wailin' at Wally's ...

Local jazz joints like Wally's are curiously rare in Boston, home of the Berklee College of Music and the Boston and New England Conservatories, each one of them world premier schools for jazz training. But the city hosts dozens of other schools and universities as well and the kids there, like kids everywhere, are rockers. Boston is a big rock and roll town, home of some of the biggest bands of all time - the band Boston, of course, the Cars, the Pixies, New Edition, the J. Geils Band and a million others you've never heard of praticing in chilly warehouses and playing in sweaty clubs of all sizes.

Wally's lives in a time warp. Back in the day when Wally's was founded, by Joseph L. 'Wally' Walcott on January 1, 1947, Boston was a jazz-mad town. Throughout the forties and fifties the intersection of Massachusetts and Columbus Avenues was a mecca for jazz lovers with famous nightclubs like the High Hat, Savoy Cafe, Chicken Lane, the Wig Wam, Big M - and Wally's Paradise, across the street from its current loaction at 427 Massachusetts Avenue. All the hottest bands of the day played these clubs.

Then one day it was all over. My former neighbor, singer Charlotte Bartley explained the end of the era this way:
"The Weekend of a Private Secretary', my first big label solo record was about to be released in 1964. RCA had hooked me up with first class producers, songwriters, arrangers and jazz musicains, including Tito Puente's band. It was what today would be called a concept album, maybe one of the first ones in jazz. Private Secretary follws a young gal's hinjinks around Havana where she's run off on a fling for a few days with her (maybe married) boss. It was hot and naughty and the company was expecting a huge hit."

"Then the Beatles arrived in America [2/9/64 was the first Ed Sullivan show, watched by half of America - ed.] and it was all over, RCA abandoned the album. My career ended overnight. I was finished - and many other big and small band jazz musicians along with me."
Wally's survived the demise of jazz and the big bands as America's popular music through stubborn persistance and a strategy of billing less expensive local musicians, but still stellar talents, who mostly didn't have the big names and big traveling and touring expenses, but walked a few blocks with their axes from their day gigs teaching or studying at Berklee or one of the conservatories. Wally's has provided a stage for the development of countless musicians, many now famous names, and continues to do so - 365 days a year, as the sign says, with never a cover charge.

My favorite time to visit Wally's is for the weekly Sunday jam sessions between 4:00 and 7:00. There you'll see and hear a succession of the baddest cats from around the world crowding the postage stamp size stage making all kinds of music with some competitive cutting and carving contests bubbling up occasionally. The other days of the week are each devoted to a different jazz genre and the bands play from 9:00 to 12:00.

The room is small, intimate and the pure, unamplified sound is superb and envelopes you. It's the way music was meant to be heard and so seldom is these days, so it's a special treat. A long bar runs along one side of the club and tables down the other with the small stage at the back of the club. Drinks are reasonably priced and they serve a simple menu. Photos of the jazz greats who've gigged here crowd the walls. The atmosphere is very low key, friendly and often elbow-to-elbow, so you'll inevitably strike up conversations with your fellow listeners or the musicians between the sets.

March 4, 2010



Finished research and writing - for now - on the Dialectical Society, the informal weekly philosophy club that MLK ran during his 3 years at B.U.

Did the Bongo in Squaresville . 3 Journal entry, seen just above. This week we visited Wally's and looked into the demise of the classic Boston jazz scene with jazz chanteuse Charlene Bartley, a classic in her own right.

It's snowing again. The tomatoes (5), hot peppers (2) and basil (4) potted up in the office window are sneering at it, thinking spring. "So don't I," as we often say in The Bean when assenting to something.

Image ... Stork Club. The Starlight Room. Boston, Mass. This is the domino, or mask, that my client Meg Gurnon scared her friend Christopher Walken with, himself sorta' scary if you ask me. Oh, and a new Stork Club recently opened in the South End at the corner of Columbus and Northampton, the street Dr. King lived on.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

March 3, 2010


Yesterday I discovered where MLK and Coretta lived when they returned to Boston in the fall of 1953 after getting married in June and spending the summer in Atlanta. It was 396 Northampton Street, according to the timeline of the King Papers at Stanford.

I checked the address with Google maps and it pulled up the name and a view of the William Carter School with a link to their website. I emailed the principal of the school asking if she knew of this and had any information or possibly a photo of the apartment building that stood there before the school was built. She didn't know this, was quite amazed and had no infomration. We exhcanged several more emails and I filled her in on the background of Dr. King's time in Boston.

Carter is a Boston public school devoted to developmentally challenged kids. Currently they are struggling to find funding to build a swimming pool for their students. With no facility of their own they have to drive, just a few at a time, all the way to a special (zero-access entry ramp) pool out in Waltham. In my first email, I said that King would no doubt be proud to have the Carter School on the spot where he once lived. Marianne Kopaczynski, the principal took it a step further in one of her replies.
Dear Mr Bastide,

I had chills reading your e-mail. Thank you so much. Have you seen our website www.williamecarterschool.org?

We are attempting to fund raise to build an aquatic therapy pool for our 25 severely cognitively, physically, medically challenged students. I can’t help but think that Dr King would be willing to help with this endeavor and perhaps the angels will intervene and make a break through.

Our staff is overjoyed with this information. Thank you so much for sharing. It has made our day. We feel blessed because of his goodness.

Marianne Kopaczynski
Principal
Carter School
396 Northampton Street
Boston, MA 02118
I think that those kids are going to get their swimming pool.

Today I filled her in on King's 1965 March on Boston. She emailed me back to say that bricks from the former apartment building at 396 had been dug up while making the new bus shelter last year and, previously, the Sensory Garden.

Worked on the King article, writing about the 1965 March and the Dialectical Society.

Biked downtown to meet a client, do an errand and visit the garden. Snow flurries and cloudy with errant winds. Felt good though after being housebound for days, almost fun. Almost. The garden was totally intact. Just a few beer bottles heaved over the fence and mice made a huge nest over the lava rocks in the gas grill. Mud season, slogging in and out. Garden renewal applications came today (or recently anyway). What to do? Think.

Image ... Saint's Way. North End, Boston.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

New Orleans News . 1



The view from Roofscape is about to change once again. For a fresh perspective we've decided to move to New Orleans. Much as we love Boston, where we're currently based, we've always considered Boston to be New Orleans North and New Orleans to be Boston South.


Image ... Club New Orleans. Boston, Mass.

March 2, 2010






March 2 marks the 55th anniversary of one of the seminal events of the civil rights movement. On this day in 1955 an angry black teenager, Claudette Colvin, refused to surrender her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama and was dragged off to jail shouting, "It's my constitutional right!" This was nine months before Rosa Parks, age 42, secretary of the local NAACP chapter and trained at the Highlander Folk School, took the same stand.

To learn about this major, but not well-known, civil rights figure and get a fresh perspective on the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott, we'd like to recommend an excellent new book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose.

Hawk sitting in the bare tree outside the office window all afternoon, swiveling his head 180° left {mostly) and right. Did an enourmous white pooper, then fanned and preened, maybe digesting and passing a local rodent. Watching and waiting patiently for another potential kill. A juve I think, from a tail-on view.

Oh-and-uh ... We're moving to New Orleans. Maybe in early May.
See New Orleans News . 1, just above.

I'm also going to be writing about the Wheatlands, Cynthia and Richard, favorite friends who passed away in '08/'09. Extraordinary people - with grace, wit, class, learning, style - and the very last Boston Brahmins, especially of the Beacon Hill branch. I enjoyed and miss them so much. And still do in my memories, which I'll share with you.



Image (at top) ... Basketball Court. North End, Boston.

Dinner and a Movie | Siteseeing . 3



Siteseeing is an ongoing walk around the W3. One of our favorite destinations to sitesee, and be seen, is Twitpic, the online image hosting companion to Twitter.

Name: Stephanie Duran.
Location: California (La-Bay).
Title: Dinner and a moviee with @dewbieeee.
Web: http://www.myspace.com/thatbeezysteph.
Bio: Knowin' nothin' in life but to be legit. Smile and I'll smile.

Monday, March 1, 2010

March 1, 2010


A busy day buzzing with practical matters, maintenance and business affairs. Accomplished all. Could be a first. But not the last.

Image ... School's Out. Allan Rohan Crite. A scene in the South End.