Oh, the Spanish-American War had its day

[sovay]

Today was overcast and curiously warm until we had a sudden thunderstorm and now it's drafty and cold, so here are pictures from yesterday's walk.



Either a very optimistic or a very confused day lily.



An elm grows in Somerville!



It says so on the label. I am calling it "Bella Ptelea," however, since that's the name I gave on the form when I put in with the city to adopt it, and defending this flagrant piece of macaroni on the grounds that it sounds like a medieval spell.



I am fairly confident there shouldn't be water underneath the School Street Bridge, since it runs over train tracks, not a river, but we've been seeing it for weeks and now there's a sort of pump set up out of shot. I liked the square of reflection floating in the seepage. It seemed to mimic the drowned pieces of crates.



The war memorial in front of the Somerville Public Library has been removed. I can't tell if its absence is construction- or politics-related. I always thought it was for the Spanish-American War, but it turns out to include also the Philippine-American War and the China Relief Expedition. It used to get Phil Ochs' "Sailors and Soldiers" stuck in my head (the version I learned from Sid Griffin and Billy Bragg, specifically) and now, to the annoyance of his shade, I expect, it's given me Dylan.



Looking from the Walnut Street Bridge toward the Medford Street Bridge, which you may just detect is partly missing. There's quite a lot more high school in that skyline than there used to be.



Under no circumstances did we even think of taking home this sidewalk couch, but it seemed to be making the leaf happy.

TCM will be running the long-lost, recently restored film debut of Harpo Marx in November and The New England Journal of Medicine has officially had it with this government. I appreciate both of these things.

Comments

[yhlee]

holy shit, i have never ever imagined i would see the nejm (justifiably) lose their shit like this even in an editorial.

(granted that i last read it 30 y ago bc my dad would leave his issues lying around the house and back then it was staid articles on things like hypothermia but holy jeez wow0)

sorry typing around a acatrtten

[sovay]

holy shit, i have never ever imagined i would see the nejm (justifiably) lose their shit like this even in an editorial.

I think it's unprecedented. I got the news from a friend who is a doctor and has been on several COVID front lines this year. He sounded clarion about it.

[yhlee]

i mean. again, not a medical person myself and i last read the journal literally decades ago, but at least at that time i had the distinct impression that the nejm was the staid, conservative, button-down business suit of medical journals! i was genuinely shocked at how forthrightly angry the editorial was, not because they're wrong, but bc i really wasn't expecting it from this specific journal.

[sorcyress]

Right there with you --I mostly never read them, but my da had a subscription growing up, and I remember as a kid being very scornful that his magazine had _no pictures_ in it. I sent him a link (he'll get a kick out of it, because thank god, Fox News has not taken my parents).

[moon_custafer]

Right now it’s a monument to traffic cones.

[sovay]

Right now it’s a monument to traffic cones.

Our city is full of those!

[cyphomandra]

That NEJM editorial is fantastic (and, sadly, all too justified).

I love the couch for falling leaves! Why shouldn’t they have a nice soft landing :D

[sovay]

That NEJM editorial is fantastic (and, sadly, all too justified).

They really don't mince words.

I love the couch for falling leaves! Why shouldn’t they have a nice soft landing

I like that way of thinking of it!

[moon_custafer]

Leaf fainting couch.

[nineweaving]

Righteous anger from the NEJM!

Never knew that Harpo had performed without his brothers back then. I am trying to imagine the plot of this Ruritanian farrago.

Nine

[sovay]

Righteous anger from the NEJM!

I hope it makes a difference.

Never knew that Harpo had performed without his brothers back then. I am trying to imagine the plot of this Ruritanian farrago.

I have no idea if it will be any good at all, but assuming we still have a country by the end of November, I plan to watch it.

[gwynnega]

That is lovely news about the Harpo Marx film. It makes me happy when long-lost films are resurrected!

[sovay]

That is lovely news about the Harpo Marx film. It makes me happy when long-lost films are resurrected!

Same! Did you see the news about Chess of the Wind (1976)? Which I had never heard of and which sounds amazing.

[gwynnega]

No, I hadn't seen that news! It's mind-boggling to me that a film from 1976 would have to be resurrected in that way, but thank goodness it happened.

[sartorias]

This can't be Harpo's first appearance, a few seconds in a weird early sound film in which he sang.

[sovay]

This can't be Harpo's first appearance, a few seconds in a weird early sound film in which he sang.

Humor Risk (1921) was shot first with all four brothers, but never released and now lost. I went looking to see what happened there and fell down a conspiracy theory, which seems to happen often where this film is concerned.

[sartorias]

I saw a short segment once, and heard the (distorted) sound. It was in rough shape, and was only a few seconds, maybe half a minute at most. I forget where, now. It was really rough.

[sorcyress]

I continue to be endlessly pleased by your photos of my workplace, and watching it change shape. I am sorry for the destruction coming alongside it, but not at all sorry that someday I will get to teach in a building where the pipes don't burst because someone left a window open overnight because the room was 85 degrees in the middle of January.

(Next door classroom, not mine. Was very exciting!)

~Sor

[sovay]

I continue to be endlessly pleased by your photos of my workplace, and watching it change shape.

I'm glad they are being useful to you! I agree that nobody wants exploding pipes. (Says the person whose toilet has been making weird noises since last night, apotropaically.)

[thisbluespirit]

Fascinating photos! Thank you for sharing. ♥

[sovay]

Fascinating photos! Thank you for sharing.

You're welcome! The elm photo is kind of a mess because some people suddenly approached on the sidewalk and showed no signs of social distancing, so I had to snap and bolt, but it is at least a record, and I like the rest.

[kate_nepveu]

unrelated:

this sounds profoundly weird and fascinating and is free tonight, apparently? https://slate.com/culture/2020/10/angels-in-america-covid-amfar-oral-history.html?via=rss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8o_jGJV5qw

[sovay]

this sounds profoundly weird and fascinating and is free tonight, apparently?

Thank you for letting me know! Whoa.

"I was like, 'Where is your threshold of revelation, Mom? Is the threshold of revelation next to the bathroom?'"

[cmcmck]

That is a very relaxed looking leaf! :o)

[sovay]

That is a very relaxed looking leaf!

It has a nice couch!

[gilana]

Yay Harpo! You've read Harpo Speaks!, right? I'm pretty sure Rob was the one to turn me on to that in the first place. Probably my favorite autobiography.

[sovay]

Yay Harpo! You've read Harpo Speaks!, right? I'm pretty sure Rob was the one to turn me on to that in the first place. Probably my favorite autobiography.

I have! There was a copy in the house when I was growing up, along with Joe Adamson's Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo (1973) and Arthur Marx's Not as a Crocodile (1958). Due to my relationship with movies, I almost certainly read about the Marx Brothers before I saw them.

[asakiyume]

The leaves are happy to rest on something soft! (Although the color of the sofa is the exact color of a certain sort of building stone, and it took reading your photo description before I really understood that it wasn't, in fact, stone.)

That's a tenacious day lily!

[sovay]

(Although the color of the sofa is the exact color of a certain sort of building stone, and it took reading your photo description before I really understood that it wasn't, in fact, stone.)

I think that's very appropriate for a leaf's bed.

(And you're right, that kind of sandstone that is called brownstone, especially when it weathers.)

That's a tenacious day lily!

I was not expecting to see it! Most of the blooming things of the spring and summer have long since rolled up and gone home. It was nice.

brownstone

[asakiyume]

Yes! I thought of the historical part of Cambridge Public Library--the accent stones.