Duck Boat on the Charles

The Longfellow Bridge, connecting Boston to Cambridge, is undergoing repairs and is expected to be completed by December 2018, two years behind schedule.

A Larger Instrument

A National Park ranger plays the trombone on the Arch grounds. The whole area is a national park, technically the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. It's about the 1803 purchase of a huge tract of land west of the Mississippi River from France (including here)  by President Thomas Jefferson, nearly doubling the side of the U.S. Napoleon needed money for his passtimes.

A trombone is rather less subtle than an blues harmonica but has more power. The ranger did a pretty good job.        

Swan Boats

Swan Boats returned to the Public Garden this weekend.

Watch the wind

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Walk four minutes down my street and you will abruptly be in the wilderness. 
Here's a little video I made on a windy afternoon, just because the golden grass was rippling in waves so gracefully.
What was all green during the winter rains now becomes golden and soon, in the long dry summer everything will be brown. 

When I walk alone in the desert at this season I can't help but sing an appropriate song from my youth:

Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plainAnd the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweetWhen the wind comes right behind the rainOklahoma ev'ry night my honey lamb and ISit alone and talk, and watch a hawkMakin lazy circles in the sky 

We know we belong to the landAnd the land we belong to is grand . . . 

 -- from the musical Oklahoma! by Oscar Hammerstein 

You can hear it on YouTube. 

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 (As you may have guessed, I'm linking to ABC Wednesday's O Day.)
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The Blues

No, nothing to do with the hockey team, which has been quite successful in the first round of the playoffs.

There was a blues band playing in the new extension of the Arch grounds. This man was easily the most visually interesting. He is playing a harmonica, a blues harp in musical terms. The sounds he could make were quite amazing.