Tomorrow some new building will scrape the sky

[sovay]

From my office window, I just watched a visitor deliberately smell a Bradford pear and regret it. The trees have really broken into bloom, so I took my camera out into the blotter-paper overcast that kept thinking about raining and then not quite.



A leftover shot on the digital roll captured a mourning dove, an all-weather staple of Hestia's bird theater.



The neighborhood cherries are having their moment.



The shadowed translucence of this set made them look carved.



I could not resist the juxtaposition of the fallow house and the flowering tree. The little tag on its trunk from the City of Somerville identified it as an okame cherry.



Further adventures in local lichen.



The hyacinth looked more photorealistic than real.



I learned to recognize almond blossom five years ago with the help of thisbluespirit and Cicely Mary Barker.



I do not feel in bloom. I feel like something dead since the winter before last. I would enjoy feeling alive at some point. In the meantime I photograph flowers.

spatch has been showing me Hill Street Blues (1981–87), which after a season and a handful I can see resembled nothing else in the Nielsen ratings of its time, structurally, tonally, perhaps even politically, since what I would not have expected from a cop show of the early Reagan administration is so much emphasis on what we would now call non-toxic masculinity as an ideal if not always achieved. Its attitudinal snapshots are fascinating. It is working seriously for diversity. Its interlocking narratives and human messiness make sense of it as the yardstick for J. Michael Straczynski in creating Babylon 5 (1993–98), which is how I heard of the show originally and what it is currently doing in my eyes. I am also enjoying the worldbuilding of its fictional city, whose geographical location is deliberately obscure but whose individual neighborhoods and businesses and sports teams are throwing out runners all over the plot. Actually, to my surprised pleasure, it reminds me distinctly of Frederick Nebel's Kennedy and MacBride.

Comments

[gullyfoyle]

I loved HSB. I remember hanging out in my dorm's TV room one night jawing with the usual crowd, and we were all there by choice, man!, when people started noticing what was on the TV. It turned out to be the series premier. When it faded to black, a room full of jaded college boys was left speechless and very much impressed. I haven't seen it in decades and can still name most of the characters from memory. I never even learned all the characters names in, say, "Star Trek: Discovery."

[sovay]

I loved HSB. I remember hanging out in my dorm's TV room one night jawing with the usual crowd, and we were all there by choice, man!, when people started noticing what was on the TV. It turned out to be the series premier. When it faded to black, a room full of jaded college boys was left speechless and very much impressed.

What a wonderful way to discover the show! spatch and I encountering it in midlife have been very impressed. I spent much of the first season commenting almost non-stop on everything about it that I didn't expect from its era/genre and frankly it's still coming out with narrative techniques or tonal shifts or plot elements that look mostly normal now, but cannot possibly have been by broadcast standards of 1981–82. I am not even a very television-oriented person and I am completely unsurprised it racked up its shelves of Emmys.

I haven't seen it in decades and can still name most of the characters from memory. I never even learned all the characters names in, say, "Star Trek: Discovery."

I am predictably fondest of Renko and Hill, Belker, and Henry Goldblume. Howard has gotten exactly three-dimensional moment so far, but I admire his actor deeply for representing exactly what would happen if Sam the Eagle turned human and got a firearms license.

[thisbluespirit]

Those are lovely blossoms! Thank you for sharing, especially when you don't feel in bloom yourself. *hugs*

[sovay]

Those are lovely blossoms! Thank you for sharing, especially when you don't feel in bloom yourself.

You're welcome!

*hugs*

[selkie]

It’s just a bit more tiring to feel not abloom but aflame.
*hugs*

[sovay]

It’s just a bit more tiring to feel not abloom but aflame.

Why isn't anyone in this bar a phoenix?

*hugs*

[regshoe]

*hugs*

Those are some very beautiful blossoms, even if some of them smell unexpectedly bad :D The mourning dove is lovely; I was interested to learn from your hover-text that despite looking fairly similar they are not in the same genus as our local collared and turtle doves, Streptopelia.

[sovay]

Those are some very beautiful blossoms, even if some of them smell unexpectedly bad

There are so many Bradford pears in this city and they look wonderful and they smell ridiculous.

The mourning dove is lovely; I was interested to learn from your hover-text that despite looking fairly similar they are not in the same genus as our local collared and turtle doves, Streptopelia.

I didn't know until you left this comment! That's so neat. I always pictured the kind I knew in the folk song. I will readjust.

[regshoe]

Streptopelia turtur is a gorgeous bird, and sadly rare these days. I've never seen one, though there is a population hanging on not far from here, so I might hopefully get a chance sometime.

[lauradi7dw]

I didn't watch HSB, but was aware of it as part of popular culture. I remember standing on the Green Line overhearing a conversation in which the people were talking about *other* people talking about it.

[sovay]

I didn't watch HSB, but was aware of it as part of popular culture. I remember standing on the Green Line overhearing a conversation in which the people were talking about *other* people talking about it.

I love that as a third-hand fandom experience. I was aware of it for years in the vaguest of ways and so far it entirely deserves its reputation.

[princessofgeeks]

I loved that show in real time SO MUCH. Thanks for the reminder. And yes, it was very NOT Reaganesque for a cop show.

[sovay]

I loved that show in real time SO MUCH. Thanks for the reminder. And yes, it was very NOT Reaganesque for a cop show.

You're welcome! I love that you had the fortune of encountering it in the wild. It is reminding me a lot of pre-Code Hollywood.

[sabotabby]

*hugs* Thank you for sharing the cherry blossoms.

[sovay]

Thank you for sharing the cherry blossoms.

You're welcome! I started photographing the ones on our former street in the first year of the pandemic and it stuck as a tradition. Also I just enjoy it.

*hugs*

[drinkingcocoa]

LOVED Hill Street Blues. My favorite was the Joe Spano character. I was just thinking about a couple of his plot lines the other day. One involved a girl at a porn theater liking him. The other, a gay guy. I don't know how those portrayals would strike me now, but in the 1980s, they made an impression.

[sovay]

LOVED Hill Street Blues. My favorite was the Joe Spano character. I was just thinking about a couple of his plot lines the other day. One involved a girl at a porn theater liking him. The other, a gay guy. I don't know how those portrayals would strike me now, but in the 1980s, they made an impression.

I haven't encountered either of those plots yet, but I will let you know when we reach them. I am extremely fond of Henry. (And the show already got my attention in the first season for dealing with kink in a non-jokey, non-conservative-panicky way, so I could trust it with the premises you describe.)

HSB was a must-watch at our place

[jesse_the_k]

and the characters truly do learn and grow over the run.

That you perceive a house peeled back to its structure as fallow, not decaying or trashed, conveys much about the tropical real estate market in the universal hub.

May a sudden noise-canceling, sweet-smelling event enclose you in bliss, soonest.

Re: HSB was a must-watch at our place

[sovay]

and the characters truly do learn and grow over the run.

I've seen it carry over from the first season into the second, but I'm glad to hear it keeps up: that the show does not settle. It is continuing to impress me so far.

That you perceive a house peeled back to its structure as fallow, not decaying or trashed, conveys much about the tropical real estate market in the universal hub.

I mean, the real estate market is a disaster, but I like to think that houses can regrow.

May a sudden noise-canceling, sweet-smelling event enclose you in bliss, soonest.

Thank you!

[pameladean]

I love the term "fallow house."

And I loved HSB. I don't think any of Steven Bochco's other shows ever lived up to it. I loved Belker's expressive face and the fact that though the show tended to see women through the lens of the men they were attached to, it couldn't do that successfully with Lucy Bates.

P.

[sovay]

I love the term "fallow house."

Thank you!

And I loved HSB. I don't think any of Steven Bochco's other shows ever lived up to it.

I've never seen any of his other shows, but even on short acquaintance this one looks like a career-best.

I loved Belker's expressive face and the fact that though the show tended to see women through the lens of the men they were attached to, it couldn't do that successfully with Lucy Bates.

She's really coming into her own as a person in the episodes we've just been watching and she's wonderful. (Belker I have been attached to from jump.)

[gwynnega]

Lovely blossom photos!

[sovay]

Lovely blossom photos!

Thank you!

[larryhammer]

Having watched the first couple seasons of HSB when it was airing, I can confirm -- there was nothing else like it on at the time.

[sovay]

Having watched the first couple seasons of HSB when it was airing, I can confirm -- there was nothing else like it on at the time.

It still doesn't look like it and I'm so glad to hear it.

[aurumcalendula]

Those are lovely photos!

[sovay]

Those are lovely photos!

Thank you!

[asakiyume]

Love your mourning dove--they are pretty birds! And yes, your neighborhood cherries really **are** having a moment.

So those last blossoms are almond blossoms? I somehow thought almonds needed a warmer climate!

In that photo you look like a sybil. The petitioner works in Somerville road repair, and I feel certain you will tell them what's what.

[sovay]

Love your mourning dove--they are pretty birds! And yes, your neighborhood cherries really **are** having a moment.

It's been a grey flat couple of days, but I am hoping to get out for more blossom tomorrow. The mourning dove was a grace note.

So those last blossoms are almond blossoms? I somehow thought almonds needed a warmer climate!

They were firmly identified for me in 2020! I had thought they were a fancier variety of cherry until then!

In that photo you look like a sybil. The petitioner works in Somerville road repair, and I feel certain you will tell them what's what.

*hugs*

[rushthatspeaks]

In an impressive moment of irony(?) I could not see the Almond Blossom Fairy due to a Cloudflare glitch, so that I sat there for a while with a screen reading that flowerfairies.com was trying to tell whether I was human. Still uncertain about what the site would have considered the correct answer, as it froze and I had to close the tab.

[sovay]

I sat there for a while with a screen reading that flowerfairies.com was trying to tell whether I was human. Still uncertain about what the site would have considered the correct answer, as it froze and I had to close the tab.

Perhaps for the best that it didn't find out.

(Love.)