A Sign

Over at my other blog, The Backside of America, I chronicle the hidden elements of our world, from run-down mills and abandoned factories, to ghost signs, shuttered movie theaters and forgotten quarries. Of late, I've been consumed with putting together as full a picture of possible of the backside of my adopted hometown, Newton, Mass.

I spend a LOT of time poring over old atlases and maps on the City of Newton web site and conducting online searches to try and figure out what the 13 neighborhoods of Newton looked like a hundred years ago. I'm trying to ascertain which buildings from the early 20th century are still around, and how their uses have changed. I also want to know what buildings are long gone, and what's in their place now.

I also peruse Google Maps, as I look up addresses from old atlases and see where they are so I can take pictures. While looking at online maps today as part of an ongoing process to learn about an abandoned house in Newton's tony Chestnut Hill section, I came across this image on Google:

I'm used to seeing people walking their dogs on Google Maps, or just strutting along, but this image stopped me in my tracks. This property is a convent owned by the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth. I'm not religious in the least, but I'll take this as a sign that an answer will come soon about the nearby abandoned property....

Going On the DL

I'm having arthroscopic hip surgery tomorrow, and will be on crutches for as many as six weeks. I will also need physical therapy for roughly the same amount of time. So that translates to perhaps three months of being on the disabled list.

Yesterday I went for a four-mile walk, something I will miss in the next few months. I haven't been able to run in a long time, and my surgeon told me that since I'm not an elite 48-year-old runner, I shouldn't return to that activity. So I've been enjoying walking over the last several months, two or three times a week.

I walk along a path that for much of the time is adjacent to the Charles River. I really enjoy hearing the birds, seeing other walkers, runners, cyclists and kids playing along the banks. I've been monitoring the progress of a new apartment development behind the Stop & Shop.

Simple things like walking up and down the stairs, going to the grocery store and hanging out in the neighborhood will be much more difficult for the next several weeks. I won't be able to amble about taking photos as much, either, which is why I went out today and snapped a bunch of pictures in Chelsea, a small, blue collar city just north of Boston. I'll be posting pictures broken out into a few series on my other blog, The Backside of America, in the near future.

My brother and his family, along with my sister, will be visiting here two weeks after my operation. We plan on doing some things in Boston, but I'll have to take it easy, unfortunately. I'm hoping we can do a duck boat tour and a few other things that won't tax me too much.

I'm going to miss the annual golf tournament in my hometown that I attend every year -- another bummer. I'm going to miss going to a Red Sox game with Owen on August 1st.

And I have no idea how much better I'll feel after the surgery, recovery and therapy. At this point, I'm not even sure exactly what the surgeon will do. I know he'll be cleaning out some torn cartilage that's gumming up my hip. I don't believe he's repairing the tear, but it's conceivable that he will.

The doctor told me I won't be back to 100% at any point, so I don't know what that means. Will I be able to do four-mile walks, three times a week, and not feel the discomfort in my groin, hip and lower back that I often feel? Will I be able to play softball and run the bases a bit?

Only time will tell. What I do know, is that I'm gonna have plenty of time on my hands to post updates here, and to read books, and to write a short story that I promised my buddy Jim Corrigan for his next anthology. Stay tuned....

Cloning

Driving home from Connecticut last weekend I saw gold everywhere along the highway.

In the woods, buried under generations of leaves. Scattered across the fields, hidden 'neath the soil. Even deep below the foundations of houses.

I found myself wishing for a metal detector, or at least a very good and magical shovel. And some clones, so I could be everywhere at once, digging in my backyard; exploring sites in my hometown in Connecticut, with which I've become newly fascinated with in recent months; stopping at random points in any town or city and taking pictures, poking around for pieces of history, learning as much as I can.

I've long had a fascination for archaeology, for ancient and not-so-ancient history. I also love old buildings, whether in good condition, or in a state of ramshackleness. I post about these sorts of things on my other blog, The Backside of America.

As a kid I collected coins, a hobby that began when I was digging in the dirt at the field complex where I played Little League baseball. I found a Mercury dime, something I'd never seen before. Soon I was poking through my piggy bank, my father's coin wallet, his box of stuff from his Army stint in Europe, looking for cool old coins. My Grandma Jo helped me by sending along old pennies and special sleeves to store them in.

I had a brief stint as a bottle cap collector, as well. I would scour the parking lot of the school behind my house where the hoods drank beer, blasted loud music and tinkered with their muscle cars at night and on weekends. I walked along the railroad tracks looking for caps to add to my collection, which I housed in a shoe box.

Now I take photos of rusting cars, abandoned railroad tracks, hulking old factories covered in graffiti and the like. But I feel like that's not enough. I want artifacts. I want to dig in the earth and discover old coins, buttons, arrowheads and pottery sherds (I prefer "shards," but anything I read in archaeology publications uses "sherds").

I've been volunteering at the local branch of the National Archives, which satisfies my history jones somewhat. But I long to get involved in a real dig. I found out that the City of Boston has an archaeology program that welcomes volunteers. I may check that out.

I subscribe to American Archaeology, a magazine published by the New Mexico-based Archaeological Conservancy. They offer various tours throughout North America, and one day I'm going to join one.

In the meantime, I'm committed to taking pictures to preserve pieces of history before they disappear. And I really want to get my kids involved at some level, so they'll gain an appreciation for the past.

It's not glamorous, but it sure looks like fun. And I dig that WBUR used a Consonant song for this clip.

Diggin'

Maybe it's nothing.

Maybe, as one wag on Facebook wrote after I posted this picture on my timeline and wondered whether it was an arrowhead, Stone Age tool or a petrified shark's tooth, "It is a shard of rock that by chance is somewhat triangular shaped and looks like all the things you mentioned."

Maybe I let my imagination run wild. Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe some kid in my neighborhood spent a day fashioning a triangle out of stone in order to teach himself geometry.

Maybe.

I've long been fascinated by archeology, "the scientific study of material remains (as fossil relics, artifacts, and monuments) of past human life and activities," as Merriam-Webster defines it. I don't recall what sparked my interest. Perhaps it was reading my parents' copy of Erich von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods?" when I was a kid. Von Daniken theorizes that the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge and the giant head statues on Easter Island, among other artifacts and monuments, were produced by extraterrestrials or by humans with help from ET's.

As I've written before, the book also sparked my life-long interest in UFO's (see August 7, 2011, "Sucked Back In").

My other blog, The Backside of America, focuses on archeology in a completely non-scientific way. My fellow contributors and I share an interest in taking pictures of forgotten highway overpasses, abandoned factories, dilapidated barns, rusting cars, run-down diners, faded signs painted on old brick buildings, sanctuaries hidden in the woods, etc. and writing about them. Sometimes we just share our photos; other times we provide some insight into why we took the pictures, and the history behind the subjects.

Time machines don't exist. Therefore, the best way to travel into the past is through researching and understanding who our ancestors were, how they lived, where they lived, what they did, how they died, what they loved, what they hated, what they made, and so forth.

On my recent trip to New York City with my family (see April 23, 2012, "NYC Three Times"), I was surrounded by skyscrapers, traveled underground on subways, rode in cabs on jam-packed streets -- the total urban experience.

As much as I love being in Manhattan or Boston or other big cities, I find myself trying to imagine what the land beneath the concrete and metal looked like 500 years ago, when rivers flowed, trees swayed in the breezes, animals roamed freely and Native Americans lived in small villages and planted and hunted for their food.

Then, I think about what our world will look like 500 years in the future. Will it be a Space Age utopia, like we've been hearing about for decades upon decades? Will the population maintain a manageable level? Will there ever be a universal peace? Will we control greenhouse gases? If not, will humans die out, and Mother Nature reclaim the landscape

Bigger questions than I usually write about or think about, but ones that pop into my head from time to time. And when I stumble across something as simple as a triangular stone that may or may not be an artifact from an earlier citizen of my neighborhood, I can't help but be fascinated by how quickly things change in our world, and how quickly we forget those who came before us, and to learn from them.

Maybe all these thoughts are coming to me lately because, having recently turned 47, I'm starting to truly feel middle-aged. I listen to the music that my nearly-10-year-old son, Owen, likes -- trance techno -- and shake my head. I see an older man, perhaps 65, shopping at the grocery store and wearing sandals and sporting an earring, and I identify more with him. "I can see him flying his freak flag during the Summer of Love," I tell myself.

I look all around me everywhere I go and see everybody consumed by smart phones and I wonder about the questions that archeologists 200 years from now will have about all these gadgets, which, as cool as they may be now, will seem so primitive in the not-too-distant future.

And I wonder about my own legacy. Am I raising my kids the best way I know how? Will they turn out OK, and be happy with who they are and what they do? Will sales of my short story collection soar after my death? Will I ever put out that UFO concept album I've been talking about for years? And the companion novel? Will I publish the children's books I've been tinkering with for the last couple years?

Let's hope the answers to those questions are: yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.