Welcome to the Boston Metro Journal!

A city may feel static but under closer observation it can reveal itself to be a living organism, and as such it can offer a relationship to flaneur, tourist, and commuter alike.

"Pops' Cup" - Angela M. Counts 2011

In Spring 2011, I began keeping a weekly journal on the City of Boston and surrounding areas. Through this project, I have been able to learn about the city's buried “treasures,” people like Phillis Wheatley the former slave buried in the Granary Burying Ground in downtown Boston, who rose to prominence as a poet in her short but brilliant life. 

"Phyllis" - Angela M. Counts 2011

I was also greatly enriched in by the vibrancy of a city that I experienced through its food, its music, its history, and its natural habitats, as well as by encountering the people here -- citizens, recent immigrants, students and visitors alike.

For more information about The Boston Metro Journal project concept and accompanying photos, please click here, or select "Preface to Boston Metro Journal".

Thanks for viewing and reading! 

L. (Libraries)

Looking out from the W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Library at the SMFA
Photo: Angela M. Counts

The Museum (School) Library

As I close this week -- both this entry and the blog -- I'd like to end sort of where I began...the library. I can't get away from books and the city! Preparing for my final paper for Mexico Art History class, I spent a great deal of time in the W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Library at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. 

Libraries are definitely repository of books as much as they are places for contemplation and art. The following photos are photos I took chronicling the view from and within the library on a nascent, spring day.

Spring day in the W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Library at the SMFA
Photo: Angela M. Counts

The way we see them: W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Library at the SMFA
Photo: Angela M. Counts

Perspective: W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Library at the SMFA
Photo: Angela M. Counts

And last but not least, if you are in Boston and would like to see some of this blog as it appears in the exhibit, Whistling Past the Freedom Trail, the show runs through June 3 at Horticultural Hall, The William Morris Hunt Memorial Library, 300 Massachusetts Avenue.


G. and V. - Lawn Saints and Performance on the MBTA Subway

G. ~ Grottos and Lawn Saints

"Celestial Wreath"

On my way home from an MFA Thesis exhibition at the Tufts Gallery, I briefly got lost down a dark neighborhood street. Out of my right side window, I drove by a celestial vision. A few feet away, I stopped the car abruptly. Thankfully no one was behind me! I'd seen religious lawn ornaments before but none that so beautifully lit up the dark, starless night.

After a bit of research, I discovered that the nighttime vision was most likely St. Anthony holding baby Jesus. For more information check out, "Why St. Anthony Holds the Child Jesus" by Jack Wintz, O.F.M.

Red Line, Alewife

V. ~ Performance Art on the T

The train pulling out that morning from Alewife was vacant, except for a lone traveler and her witness (me). The artist, Veena, prepared for her performance as passengers at the next stop filed in unknowing. Over the course of the outbound journey, passengers came and went, while she transformed before their eyes. The following is a poem inspired by her performance.

"Vacant, Voyage, Vibration"

From Alewife to Andrew's
She sang, waxed and waned
While passengers pulled away
Indian woman, yellow
To the core, applying turmeric
Gently, insanity abounds
Inbound, Outbound
All Around
Can someone help you, ma'am?
Are you sure where you are?

Photo credits and poetry by Angela M. Counts

T. and J. - The Spirit of Trees and Jazz -

"Spirit Tree"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

T...Spirit-Tree – The Boston Public Garden

I took this photograph of a tree in the Boston Public Garden for my girlfriend who is a painter. It was for my girlfriend but like most things, there was an underlying motivation waiting to be revealed. I took the picture of her, the spirit-tree, but she only longed to have me sit a while, to not rush off. She waited patiently while I investigated her with camera, trying futilely to capture her majesty, her ancient story.

She reminded me that we first met in 1991 when for the first time I made a trip to Boston with a fellow intern from the Ford Foundation. We travelled by car from New York City to visit my friend’s Boston cousins and for her family to give me a guided tour of the city. One of our stops was the Boston Public Garden. I remember crossing the Lagoon Bridge, and being the fun-loving young woman that I was, I pretended to climb the bridge and feigned jumping off, while my friend took my picture.

I imagine myself in light blue, high-waisted jeans (the fashion of the time!), big glasses, and a somewhat stylish flattop. I am young in age and definitely in spirit. I know my spirit-tree saw me then and she smiled. But I only noticed her for the first time on a starry New Year’s Eve in 2008. I had recently taken up amateur photography and the visual world had come alive looking through the lens of a camera. In one of the coldest New Year Eve’s on record I ventured out into the public garden and took her picture. She was decked out in snow-lace, and illuminated by colored fireworks. She posed for me again and again, delighted that I noticed her after all of these years.

Mary Lou Williams
Photo: By Permission of Gottleib, William, P (1917-), Photographer

J...Jazz @ Union

Since the 1960s, the story goes, historic Union United Methodist Church in Boston has been producing jazz shows. Longtime members talk of remembering the time that the great Duke Ellington played in the chapel. I can imagine the Duke decked out in white tails and top-hat, playing to a grateful and jubilant audience. These days the jazz concert at Union has been revived by music producer and freelance writer, T. Brooks Shepard, and renamed Jazz @ Union. Most recently the series has honored jazz legend Mary Lou Williams, by presenting concerts that feature one of her jazz compositions, Mass for Peace. I had the honor of writing a poem to commemorate her at the 2010 concert. The following is an excerpt, and the full-length poem can be read at my blog, Creative Living, Creative Writing.

Excerpt from "Tribute to Mary Lou" by Angela Counts © 2010 Commissioned for Jazz @ Union's Women in Jazz - "A Tribute to Mary Lou Williams's Jazz Mass for Peace" ~ United Methodist Church - South End, Boston - February 7, 2010 

Just a 'lil gal but she was jamming with the older men
Her feet tapping the pedal, fingers knowing just when
Feeling the movement and the beat
Always one step ahead of ecstatic feet
This music she knew, from those old slave spirituals to blues
This music she knew, from slave ship to broken shore
From a dream deferred to expressions of evermore
Of freedom, neither black nor white


Jazz from this soil, jazz that changed the world
That’s right, and how couldn’t you adore what she could do with it
These are the days, we remember
The timber and sway, of the music,
Mary Lou’s Mass for Peace

O. and D. - City Walks and Diners

"Mission Hill at Night"
Photo: Angela Counts

"Ornate"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

O...
Ode to walks alone during magic hour
The suns teases and promises to stay,
Makes you wanna linger a while longer on the oranges and the blues.

You don't feel so blue anymore.

Ode to the neighborhood street that nestles
And settles into the city dim
Offers its wares, unawares
Its gas lamps that glow with electricity
Cobble stone walks that don't trip but delight
The doors on brownstones that invite but politely say no
The wrought iron gate, ornate, that shames chain link
And is that art there, the small sphere inviting speculation

Ode to  the city walk, evening magic
Solo, unafraid

© 2011 Angela M. Counts

D... 

"Deluxe"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

In his book, The American Diner, diner historian Michael Karl Witzel in striking photos and text documents how the diner as we know it today started out as a lunch cart in the late 1880s. Sometime in the 1970s many diners that were still standing converted or, more aptly, covered their true origins over with brick. As we now know, the diner by large went the way of the Edsel but unlike the Edsel it is still going strong in many pockets of the country, including metropolitan Boston. One of my favorites is Deluxe Town Diner. On any given Saturday or Sunday, you will find yourself standing in line with a pleasant group of folks -- singles, couples, gay, straight, with kids, without -- talking (and shivering in the winter months). Capitalizing on a captive audience the diner now sells a refillable cup of coffee for waiting customers.  Everyone waits pleasantly, if not a little quietly, this isn't New York after all, knowing that soon they will have a hot plate of flapjacks or sausage and eggs...soy sausage if you prefer. And how about a tossed, green salad with your eggs instead of those potatoes? I've tried it, it's not so bad. 

Photo: w:User:Morven (Wikipedia)

S. Ch. Z. "Gotta Love It..."

"Lovin' It!"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

This week, coming back from Spring Break -- I feel myself as if still in a dream or some would say a nightmare. Somnolent walking. The after effects of the quake continue as we all know, and there are so many problems in all corners of the globe. At the same time, here in Boston, we awake from a long winter to smell the crocuses and to watch the sun set late in the evening in the west. There is a feeling of thawing, if not hope. To describe how I feel, it takes metaphor. And that's what language is... and often that's what the city feels like. We rub up against its realities, but if we take a step we can also appreciate its poetry.

"Boston Red Dogs in the Common"
 Photo: Angela M. Counts

Street. Streets in Boston follow cow paths. At least that's what I was told when I moved here many years ago and found myself lost in a maze of cobblestones. This of course only in the historic parts of the city. But this is too literal perhaps. What about one's state of mind about the streets, whether paths are circular, circuitous, or if one street like Tremont intersects with itself in downtown Boston. What about the person who makes their living on the streets? And I'm not talking about the world's oldest profession, but perhaps the second oldest -- the street vendor. Do maps of the city also map our consciousness, just as much as they point the way to the place where we can grab a salty but delicious meal for cheap, or stop for a moment to delight in musical stylings of the kooky street musician?

"One-Man Band"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

Change my mind. That's what advertisers strive to do. On billboards, in storefront windows; on the side of tractor trailers. As an example, McDonald's has sold (trillions?) of hamburgers around the world. These days, it may be a no-no to openly admit eating there, especially after "Super Size Me" the movie, but nonetheless there are billions of people on the planet who apparently proclaim in English "I'm Lovin' It" according to Mickey D's. That's what the sign on the side of the tractor-trailer next to my car said. Who am I to argue with the colloquialism or the confession?

"Rental"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

Zoo. No not the kind that houses (or some would say imprison) animals. Kids love zoos. I do too, when I shut off the part of my brain that worries about incarcerating wild animals. But no, I'm not talking about that; although there is an incredible zoo right tin the city of Boston called Franklin Park Zoo. But the type of Zoo I'm talking about is the big business of apartment rentals in the city. It's a realtor's market -- what with the students, medical residents, business people, immigrants and more arriving each month in the city of Boston and its outlying areas. Where are they all to live, and which neighborhood will catch their fancy? Well if you're ingenious enough of a realtor you'll put a mannequin in the window of your storefront, with a T-shirt that says "Rental." As an art student I couldn't help but think that the realtor must be an art school dropout or MFA grad who's doing installation art while trying to make a buck. I'm lovin' it! By the way, that's a McDonald's trademark so be careful how you appropriate it.

Q.F.W. -- What the World Holds

W.heatley

The weekend of March 12, I took advantage of the unseasonably warm day and took a walk through downtown Boston where I found many sites and sounds. Three days before, the people of Japan had been hit by an unprecedented earthquake and Tsunami.  This was on my mind as I strolled through historic downtown Boston, on the rare sunny day in March.

My first stop was the Granary Burial Ground, the third-oldest cemetery in Boston and the resting place for many notable Bostonians including Phillis Wheatley and Paul Revere. I'm always surprised, sadly, to find the occasional notable Black Bostonian buried amongst more familiar Boston figures, mostly of European descent. One wonders where all of the Black folks were buried over the last many centuries. I did learn at the Granary that it was common for slaves to be buried in the same grave or tomb with their former masters, even freed slaves. Boston African Americans have a longstanding history, but I must admit that growing up in Detroit and Los Angeles, this history largely went untaught.

Phillis Wheatley was an exception. I read about her in my high school advanced literature class and later in college. I remembered that she was a famous writer of her time, which was unusual because she was a slave who had been taught to read and write by the Wheatley family. She was eventually emancipated after her work was published and she visited London but she died young. It was gratifying and touching to find that she was buried in the Granary along with Paul Revere and others.

Q.uake F.undraiser

The good people of Boston don't forget their fellow travelers, and on our walk we came across a group of musicians raising money for the quake. Their music lifted spirits but also reminded us that we are bound together on this planet, from birth to death and what blooms will decay. But that we are also bound to find joy in the most unlikely of places and circumstances. What the world can hold. It holds us all -- famous, infamous, forgotten, young, old, grieving, laughing, dancing, loving, dying. It's all here.

List of places for donating to the victims of the Tsunami. I found this on Google's Tsunami Relief Page but I'm sure there are more:  http://www.google.com/tsunami_relief.html.

(U) University and (K)-12 Education in Boston

Cutting down Beacon Hill in 1811; a view from the north toward the Massachusetts State House 

(Photo: Flux.books on Wikipedia)

U – When thinking of the letter U, in Boston, universities come to mind. In fact, working at a job for a university is what brought me to Bean Town.  What college or universities brought you to Boston, dear reader? Mine are Suffolk University and Harvard University, for work. And did you come here for school and/or work? Did you follow a spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend, or come alone? Did you leave after your schooling or period of work, or did you stay? I stayed…

10 things I remember about Suffolk/Harvard:

1.     Construction around the State House and the refurbished gold dome.

2.     Coffee in Downtown Crossing…it always made the long winter walks up the hill tolerable.

3.     Downtown Crossing and Filene’s Basement…no longer there.

4.     Cambridge Street with its New England storefronts, high-end restaurants, along with the more local fare, and the side streets of made cobblestone.

"Fair with Lace"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

5.     Boston Common…the walkways that criss cross in and out of the country's oldest public park, of all them leading up the hill. 

6.     Suffolk University housed in a small high-rise on a quaint side street.

7.     The little brick building, where the Diversity and Community Partnership (DCP) program is housed on Harvard’s medical school campus. 

8.     The 39 bus that picked me up in front of my house and dropped me off around the corner from DCP.

9.     Longwood Medical Area – Children’s Hospital, Dana Farber, Beth Israel, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and more.

10. The Fenway, just less than a mile to the North of Longwood Medical Area, with Fenway Park, the Landmark Center, and the Emerald Necklace.

K – Like many people coming to Boston, those years ago I associated the city with the big universities – B.U., M.I.T., and Harvard. The architecture and myth of those places loomed large, how could you miss the big concrete dome of the M.I.T. building crossing the Mass Avenue Bridge into Cambridge. But tucked between the Ivy, are a myriad of Boston schools and with them associated after-school programs.

K represents elementary education, and specifically biomedical education: K-12 as it’s commonly called. I worked for a department at Harvard called Diversity and Community Partnership, and ran the biomedical research programs for youth, middle school through college. Through this experience, I met the teachers, Boston City school students, Harvard Medical graduate students, HMS scientists and doctors, and non-profit workers who strive for higher education for underrepresented minority youth in the sciences and in healthcare. It is another face of Boston that people rarely see and it is also a racially, culturally and ethnically diverse face of the city. Check out some of the links below, particularly the one on the K-12 program. The photos are copyrighted but K-12 the website is a good place to begin. 

Links:
Landmark Center
History of Filene's Basement
Harvard Medical School
Emerald Necklace
K-12 Programs - Harvard Medical School

Discover… Y, H and Ñ

Photo: Angela M. Counts

Often we encounter a city nostalgically, never really seeing it’s real attributes but looking at it through the lens of old movies, novels, and popular imagination. Think London, Paris, Cairo, Hong Kong, Mexico City, and Chicago, even our dear Boston. “Go Red Sox!”

But what if we slow down and enter the space we’re in? Breathe it in. Look at its contours, like reconsidering an old lover. What do her hands really look like?

"Yield, But Don't Walk"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

Y – Yield. As a constant commuter and not a flaneur sadly, I view the city from its road signs. I must always be ready to yield, to stop, but rarely can I pause or reflect.

H – Honan-Allston Public Library. Upon entering this quiet space of books, I notice the soaring skylights and just below old men perched on cushy leather chairs facing the sun and Harvard Street. Walking further, I find tucked in the back of the library a room where an English language tutorial is taking place. And just outside of the classroom is a hallway dedicated to an art exhibit. 

Ñ – As I walk the labyrinth of the Allston Library, I hear the voices of an ESL teacher and his student.  The teacher: How old are you? The student: My son is five and my daughter is two. The teacher repeats the question twice more, and then the man replies “I am thirty-two.” His voice is much older sounding than his 32 years. But there is determination in it.

"Dirty Money"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

Just past the room with the two men, I encounter a turnstile, like the kind one used to see in five and dime stores, the kind that used to hold paperbacks. In this section of the library are resources for new U.S. immigrants, and on the turnstile is a novel with the title: Dirty Money. While I position my camera to take a picture of the turnstile, a youngish man waits patiently. I peruse the books and English language guides enclosed in plastic, a respectful distance between us. I feel like an immigrant, that there is an unspoken bond between us. A half-hour later, I leave the library with a new card and a new book by Joyce Carol Oates. Up ahead, I see the man walking down the street with one of the books enclosed in a special plastic carrying case. 

R. I. - The poetry of the place

R.

Rock.

That's what the city's built on.

Or dust, that's what comes after.

Or water, that's what they took away,

Built over.

Rock, we forget it's there

Worn, like our teeth, they wear

Down.

Up, from the earth, it

Protrudes, a face

To be written on, a trace

                                                          
Of who was here.

Wolly, pure thing

Didn't have an "a", or

Maybe an animal, came before

Wolly, the wooly mammoth.

Before paint, and spray

The rock was there.

Now you build around it, toothpick

Homes, two car lot

Snow, and the wild words,

Cascade.

© 2011 Angela M. Counts

"Rock/Church"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

I.

Iglesia, Church

To you, tucked in

City walks, talks.

The voices we hear.

Iglesia, so much

Better than church,

revered, sacred.

Church crunches, explodes

In broken teeth. Iglesia

Too, broken bones and

Bonds, but still living on.

Tucked in between, found

on the sly. The spires,

Stone, hard streets,

Dark interior, soul.

Craving what's lost,

And found again.

You see what you are.

© 2011 Angela M. Counts

Creation/Destruction and the City

"...every act of creation is also an act of destruction."

--Ruben Gallo, The Mexico City Reader

C. is for Coffee and X. marks the spot

"C is everywhere, and I consume it" 

"The First Sip"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

"Waiting"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

City Feed and Supply, a neighborhood grocery/cafe/deli in Jamaica Plain, is one of those places reminiscent of Old Boston, Old New York, Old Mexico City -- any where, where vendors once hawked their wares, their food, in modest wooden crates. 

"This Just In"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

If I crop the pictures just so, it may even feel like a hundred years ago. 

C = care. C = caress. C = city-time. C = careful. C = see me. C = love. C = friendship. 

C = Neighborhood in the city. Jamaica Plain. 

Contentment. The city on a small scale. A wasting not of time, but a gathering of time and space, if only just for a moment. 

"0.0.3.6"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

X on the other hand is a mystery. 

In the English language it is rarely used at the beginning of words and not so much seen in the city, except perhaps in spray-painted X's that mark the spot in a series of ongoing Boston construction projects. 

We see X's on the packages of gum or antacids. X feels like the shorthand of doing more with less, or some ubiquitous device to draw our attention (X-tra, X-tra!).

"When The Money Didn't Come Out"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

But what of the city's visual culture can be found in the letter X and in Boston Metro no less? That's an X-cellent question. Perhaps one can ponder on "X" as an absence of something. 

Recently I started documenting the machines in the city that don't work. Money that doesn't come out of an ATM when it's supposed to. The meter that doesn't work, but takes your money anyway. The parking machine that charges your credit card twice. The city is full of what is X'd out, what isn't working, and what isn't seen. I must confess that I want to look into this concept more. X is truly intriguing.

A.M.E.N.

Front Cover of Centennial Celebration for 

Union United Methodist Church, South End, Boston

A.M.E.N.

Coming from African American Protestant Church roots, the letters A.M.E.N. call to mind the hands of my grandmother and her friends clapping together, the dark, veined hands of many Black people who brought their joy and pain through the doors of store fronts, large brick Gothic buildings, and modest wooden structures, to bow their heads, sing out load, have a silent cry and take their problems to the Lord.

From humble beginnings in working class Detroit, to Los Angeles, New York, and Boston, I look at these letters through new eyes, as an invitation into seeing the environs of the city in which I live more closely or more broadly, whatever it entails. Like the photographic dictionary of the grand, sprawling metropolis Mexico City -- ABC DF: Graphic Dictionary of Mexico City -- I will use the Spanish and English alphabet each week to examine the experience of the city more deeply. I use the term "city" to broadly mean those places literally, figuratively and imaginatively that surround Boston Metro, including the environs of Cambridge and surrounding areas as well.

"A"

America:
Boston Common
Freedom Trail
Faneuil Hall
African American History Museum
Union United Methodist Church and the Jazz Series "All Blues" by Angela Counts, honoring Boston Native Jimmy Slyde (2008)
Harriet Tubman Park, South End Boston

Excerpt from work in progress -- "Steppin" by Angela Counts

"M"

Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Morte/Death

Movie. I shot my first super 8 film on location in the cemetery. The following is a photo taken on my location scout. In the Garden: Silent Movie on Vimeo

"Althea Path, Mt. Auburn Cemetery"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

"E"

"The Way to Work"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

The Emerald Necklace. The parks that run through the city of Boston, designed by Frederick J. Olmstead. The iconic landscape artist who designed Central Park in New York is an obsession of mine. I learned about Olmstead while reading The White City, a fictionalized account of the Chicago's World Fair in the late 1800s. It tells of Olmstead's massive design of the park that housed the fair and a parrallel tale of a true life serial killer. 

The J.P. Pond and surrounding park is a park of the Emerald Necklace. The photo above was from my car window during the two winters that I drove through Jamaica Plain, past the Pond on my way to work. I was struck by how the Pond changed with the seasons and imagined how it must have undergone changes throughout the centuries. 

"N"

Nor'ester

Neighborhood

"Looking Out Her Window"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

This is a view outside of my window. The storms are unrelenting and at times create a blanket of quiet on the city. I look out and see art in the snow and the world outside. According to Wikipedia: A nor'easter is a type of macro-scale storm along the East Coast of the United States and Atlantic Canada, so named because the storm travels to the northeast from the south and the winds come from the northeast.