scrottie

I'm going to go ahead and claim that I've been a fan of beautiful fall leaves ever since college in Boston in the late 90's/early 2000's.

Yesterday on my commute to work, this ginkgo tree caught my eye. Here's the deal with leaf-peeping: you have to appreciate it all at multiple scales. Behold, the entire tree:


(well, except that itty part at the top I accidentally lopped off)

Now let's get closer.


Look at how the shapes of the individual leaves and branches create patterns.

One part of a branch:


Even closer:


...and that's as close as I got, that time. I was on my bike and I did need to actually make it to work at some point. If you're personally out among the leaves, you should probably get even closer than that.

Yesterday afternoon in the golden hour I happened to be outside in time to see our campus trees all lit up like a massive, multi-color stained glass, only better, because bigger and everywhere. Here are the trees at a somewhat less glorious time of day, still giving the viewer so much color to see and so many things to think about.



I had figured this spectacular maple would be well past its prime, but it apparently wants to keep stopping me in my tracks to admire it.



Right now the squirrels are so fat that they can't run very well, and there are more of them than usual dead in the road, struck by cars.

Today was the first morning back riding through the intersection where I was hit on Friday, and it was emotionally harder than I had hoped it would be. That section of road has never been a great area to transit through, and now I'm doing even more head-checks and unintentionally second-guessing myself even more. I only use that road because there aren't any better alternatives; it's the road that goes where I want to travel. And there's evidence that it's problematic: there are old pavement markings that indicate that lane management and directions of travel were different in the past.

I hope this helps me sustain more empathy for other people who are stuck in their own trauma. I don't particularly want to be stuck in trauma, but that's the point, innit?

I should probably take a photo of my legs today because they're at the maximal gory-looking black-and-blue stage right now. And honestly, they look bad but it could be far worse.

I was biking in downtown Albany on Broadway, on my way to work, heading northbound. Person driving southbound looking to make a left turn into a parking garage didn't see me in time, but heard my scream in time to slow down.

Left knee and right ankle got banged up. I don't think my head hit at all - nothing on my helmet and EMT checked my spine and that all seems fine. I made the driver stick around to have a police report filed; he was very cooperative and apologetic, at least.

Physiologically hard to process this adrenaline right before teaching, ugh.

Second time I've been hit while on my bike in Albany. So far.

When I woke up this morning, I was just a tiny bit sniffly, with slightly sore lymph nodes in my throat. Should I go to rowing practice? I had to figure I should at least try. There's near-constant background conversation and commentary on practice attendance, because whenever someone misses a practice, boat line-ups have to be redone, and that's a hassle and slows down the process of getting out on the water. On the other hand, we're adults and life happens, so there needs to be some give-and-take about it all.

On my way over to the boathouse, the sniffles turned into more of a cough. When I glanced at the attendance list, I noted there were 9 of us signed up for practice. 9 is an odd number, meaning someone would likely wind up in a single. It's now cold and dark enough to be unpleasant and a bit dangerous to be out in a single in the morning. So I let our coach know that I would be willing to sit things out, and she was able to put together 2 quads for practice instead. I biked back home and then crawled under a blanket for a few more minutes of rest. By the time I got back inside under a blanket, the coughing and sniffling subsided. This is more like allergies than a head cold. Eventually, I got back up, got back on my bike, and headed in to work.

The fall leaves are quite lovely, but I do miss being able to breathe.

There used to be an Artist and Craftsman Supply store in Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA. I don't know when it closed, but it's closed.

Since visiting Freiburg and *almost* making it to the amazing little stamp shop, I've been on a quest for some rubber stamps here in the U.S. When we were in Chicago for the Chicago River Half Marathon, we did stop by Atlas Stationers, and while they had some stamps, their selection appeared to be dominated by a specific style of cute Japanese stamp - formulaic and not quite what I was looking for. In a last-ditch effort, a teammate and I also stopped by a small Paper Source chain location. Rather than carrying supplies that one might use creatively, the store appeared to mostly sell various themed tchochkes - Halloween candles and the like. When asked, a sales clerk noted they didn't have any craft punches in stock at that particular time, but whenever they did, the craft punches would sell out immediately.

In any case, the hunt for specific rubber stamps and for specific craft punch shapes would continue. I figured my next major opportunity would be during this visit to the Boston area for the Head of the Charles. More than one of the original craft punches I've used to make reflective stickers came from a longtime Paper Source chain location on Mass. Ave. and I still have many fond memories of making the walk from Tufts along Mass. Ave. to Harvard Square, poking my head into various shops along the route, then slouching and lurking for a while in Harvard before taking the T back home.

So on Friday, after we failed to go out for a practice row*, I figured I'd ride Princess TinyBike back along Mass Ave towards the Alewife T station where I'd parked, with a stopover at the Paper Source to see what they had.

Well, like the one in downtown Chicago, this one also seems to have devolved into something that has very little to do with stationery anymore, and instead is trying to pitch holiday- and other-themed junk retail therapy. They did have a small handful of rubber stamps, and another small handful of Japanese-style ones, but nothing at all interesting or inspiring. No craft punches that I saw.

Bob Slate is still hanging on, in Harvard Square, but they have never really dealt in rubber stamps or crafting, so I'm not especially motivated to try and go back over there to check things out. Harvard Square has always had an element of weirdness because it simultaneously caters to a wealthy entitled class along with having nooks and crannies appealing to artists, punks, and poor college students. Right now, with the escalating costs of living in Boston, anything appealing to middle- or lower-class residents seems to be disappearing.

In better news, almost directly across the street from the Paper Source in Porter Square there's a bustling local bookstore that I don't remember seeing before. Its attached coffeeshop was full of people reading paper books and writing in paper journals - a refreshing spectacle.

Anyway, right now in an overall ranking of the stationery stores I've visited, Payne's in Berkeley is the best. I suspect Payne's is hanging on in large part because of a longstanding culture of creativity in the Bay Area that has prioritized local businesses.

So it seems the major options at this point for my small quest are to get into mini linocut prints, and/or shop online, and/or do without. Ultimately, the things I'm looking for are small luxury items, and rather silly. It's just pathetic and depressing to have to recognize that American ways of doing things mean that we generally just can't have nice things. Worse, there's the predictable cycle still playing out: chain store moves in and displaces local businesses, then chain store inventory degrades into junk, then there's nothing of interest to anybody left. Shopping moves online, with further degradation in quality and production of insane amounts of packaging.

Originally I was thinking I'd try and go back today and watch some more racing (cheer on our youth boats) and slouch around for a while, but instead I think I'll just head back to Albany, because there are plenty of other things to tackle on the home front. Besides, that coffeeshop that S and I discovered last weekend is an excellent candidate for slouching.




*This was fine and actually probably for the best; it took one of our club's other boats about 1.5 hours to get launched because the lines of boats were so long and chaotic.