I know there are some out there that appreciate the occasional wobble into the ridiculous, right? Well, that's what's
on tap tonight - a ridiculous photo experiment on Holland Street in Somerville, right outside Davis Square. I was just minding
my own business, doing an errand and glad to find a nice spot up Holland so I could just park and walk over. But on the way
back, after I got into the car and started up, strapped in and everything, I looked out across the street and saw this, and
thought, oh CRAP. Like, I have to take a picture of that, but I can just do it out the car window, right?
Um, wait a minute. What's that on the windshield?
At this point, two things happened pretty much simultaneously. The first was that I sighed and turned the
car off. A ticket was just too good to pass up on a campaign truck like this. Too good to pass up, I tell you. But the second
thing was that I was headed to do some photos in the woods anyway, so I actually could stop and take some pictures. I thought,
here's an experiment: I'll take a series of pictures so that each person's sign is visible with the ticket also in the shot
somewhere. (There's a goofy punchline at the end, so hang in there a moment). So it's not enough to just isolate each person's
sign on the truck, I had to find an angle that also included the ticket, preferably in a place that worked from a compositional
point of view as well.
Joe Curtatone gets the anthropomorphic treatment, but there's this thing on his eyebrow...
Tony LaFuente gets a vertical shot with moving car in back. I just like moving things in pictures, ok?
And Rachel Heller's shot is saved by an angle high enough to pick up that ticket through all the auto glass.
OK, what's so funny about that. Nothing, really, it's just goofy, I know. But here's the rub, do you remember
any signs in those photos? No? Well, I doubt whomever parked this truck missed the rules of the day here.
So now, a final note and a final zing. This is not a political story. Actually, I think it's pretty funny,
really, that this truck actually got a ticket in the first place. I mean, Curtatone's the mayor. Well, good for them
for enforcing the rules. Oh about that...
Whenever whomever got ticketed here, presumably for staying too long, returns to take the truck somewhere,
they are going to have to pay at least one, maybe more tickets. See that brown brick building just down the street from the
truck?
That's the Somerville Office of the Parking Clerk. They got their ticket within sight of the very office responsible
for enforcing the parking rules. By the way, I'll just point out, in a snarky way, that there's a mailbox down there in front
of the entrance in case they don't want to, you know, go in there.
Yesterday was a horrible morning. You see, last week I
wrote about this wonderful encounter with a hawk. Yesterday, I'm pretty sure I was responsible for its death. The identity may
be in doubt, but the death was not. It was awful.
I was driving the same route I had been on when I first saw the Red-tailed hawk. I had just taken a turn when
I saw a really small streak of motion in my right-side peripheral vision. Follow by a very loud impact as the hawk hit the
worst possible place on the car at a pretty good rate of speed. The impact was just below my line of sight under the headlight.
I knew immediately then what had happened as did the car behind me: The hawk came out from between two houses at considerable
speed and low to the ground. Perhaps it had just taken a run at another animal. When it was coming across the sidewalk (where
I caught a blur of it) it was barely three feet off the ground. There was no other possible outcome and no way for either
I or the hawk to do anything about it.
I'll get to the conclusion, but first, the photo. After considerable thought I concluded this was the
best way to memorialize the poor hawk - showing beauty, complexity and frailty all at once. Or at least trying to.
Now, the last thing I wanted to do was to leave the bird in the middle of the road, so I pulled over, got
out my cell phone and started dialing. Eventually, I reached someone by calling Belmont Animal Control. However, the actual
officer with that role was not around. They told me, after I asked them what I should do, that they would call the highway
department and have them send someone around. Or something like that.
Hasn't happened yet. I'll spare you the rest.
