The Great Hilliard Street Squirrel Massacre of 2015

Get a pro? I'd want the pro who got the 11 squirrels, though their lives rate higher in the poster's mind than "rats/racoons". I'll leave it to the reader to assess the implied value of life of "dogs/cats/kids".

And how do we know it was poison? Personally, I suspect some young Jem got himself a BB gun after watching To Kill a Mockingbird just down the street in Harvard Square last weekend.

This squirrel harvest does make you wonder what's on the menu at Darwin's, the sandwich shop at the end of the street:

"The Hilliard... Smoked Turkey Breast, Dill Harvarti, Dijon Mustard, Lettuce and Tomato $8.30."

The counter staff at Darwin's have been rude to me for 20 years, so I spit rhetorically in their food. Dijon mustard, it's Grey Squirrel Poupon.

To Kill a Mockingbird in Harvard Square

The movie To Kill a Mockingbird was shown Saturday Night in the Palmer Street alley between the Coop buildings. If you missed it, it will also be shown on Monday night under the sponsorship of the Harvard Square Bookstore at the Brattle Theater, after which the Coop and the Harvard Square Bookstore will fight at midnight for the right to sell you the newly published but musty Harper Lee novel, Go Set a Watchman.


Scout on the tire swing, which will later be rolled down the street with her inside it.


Scout and Atticus, still on his pedestal for a couple more days. In the new book, which features an adult Scout in the 1950s, Atticus is said to be portrayed as a racist segregationist. So Scout grows to not admire her father so much as she did as a kid.


The liberal with a rifle scene. Unlike the "shoot the rabid dog" scene in Old Yeller, you don't want to cry.


Doomed defendant with his lawyer. Atticus should never have put Tom Robinson on the witness stand. Yeah, right, the deputy was shooting to wound and missed his aim.


The Halloween Ham. I've always suspected Scout has a knife in there.


Boo Radley gets the credit for knifing Bob Ewell. But did he?

I read To Kill a Mockingbird at the Carnegie Library in my hometown when I was a kid. The book focuses on Scout, the movie focuses on Gregory Peck as Atticus. I think the new book, which Harper Lee actually wrote first, will put the focus back on Scout.

You Celebrate 1776 While We Celebrate 1775

And remember 1770 too.

A Gallery of Obsolescence

Self-portrait of this blogger as reflected in an old pay phone.


Hole punch system for train tickets. I wish I had video of the conductor. Instead I've got a picture of my finger.


These days, the train trestle at the BU Bridge carries more graffiti than trains.


What passes for agriculture in these parts.


New publish-on-demand book press at Harvard Bookstore already feels obsolete.


Trust me, the new art installation in the Radcliffe Yard is no more interesting if you do touch the stalks and sensors. Perhaps it needs a reboot.

Cambridge Street Scenes May 2015

I'm not sure this note will work but admire the effort. It's got a ready answer for the hearing officer trying to say, "A broken meter just proves you didn't pay."


This effort seems a little lazy. You want the meter maid traffic enforcement officer to be able to read your whole note before lifting the wiper to insert the ticket. You don't want to admit you didn't pay.


Brazilian barbecue skewers in the window at the Midwest Grill. I'm a little afraid of this place. Every few minutes the servers come around to bring you more meat.


Boston geese can't read. Cambridge geese would keep off the grass.


Make way for goslings.


"Unattended children will be given espresso" is a promise you may not want to keep.


Speaking of expressive unattended children ...

Fifty Shades of Snow

The record winter of 2015 is gone but not entirely forgotten:


Last snow pile in Cambridge on April 19, in the parking lot at Fresh Pond Mall.


At home, here was the Great Wall of Snow on February 16, after what turned out to be the last major snowstorm.


The last remnant of the Great Wall of Snow on April 8.

A study in contrasts:


Lilly white Radcliffe Yard.


Well trod and crisscrossed Harvard Yard.

Life finds a way:


March 6.


March 12.


April 2.

For the buried bicycles ...







... the winter did not always end well:

The Calm Between the Snowstorms

A few days after the big blizzard, things had gotten back to normal in Harvard Square.


And in the neighborhood, we were even seeing the garbage at the end of the snow tunnel.


But we are getting more snow this weekend and continuing into Monday.


It took the couple who own this car snowbank 45 minutes to dig it out Sunday afternoon.On Sunday night it's well on its way to getting plowed back in.


My Jeep is ready to go just as soon as I brush the snow off the windows, which I'm not doing because the inspection sticker expired February 1.


This is what counts as a plowed street after two weeks of snowstorms. My Jeep needs that berm of snow to protect it from the idiots with poor traction trying to come up that ever-so-slight hill.


Here's another walkabout, between the snowstorms.