Photos, Hebrew and Alcotts

Not only is my good friend Natasha selling her marvelous photography in all forms of product in person ,at fairs and also online at Photography by Natasha.  But she is also doing an amazing lecture/discussion at Limmud Boston.

Her list of thought provokers include:

1. Are you leading a life of quiet desperation?
2. When you come to die, will you discover that you have not lived?
3. How can we be joyful when there's so much suffering in the world?
4. Why does Walden quote Ecclesiastes so much?
5. Did Henry D. Thoreau plagiarize the Bible?
6. Was his cabin at Walden Pond really a sukkah?
7. Is wisdom worth it?


Also, for those of you who are Alcott fans, the author Eve LaPlante, will be speaking about her book, Marmee and Louisa at First Parish.

Writing this from NYC, it is easy to miss the Walden area this weekend!!  Off to edit my own tribute to The Pond, my novel calling "The Swimming" written for NaNoWriMo.  Consolation prize, indeed!

Pictures of the Swimming Spot

In the Boston Globe today, they have a series of pictures of the past century of swimming.  The HUGE concrete pier and floating docks.  I had thought it was a trick of memory, but this is really what the beach used to look like!

August 18, 1946.  The War is over and summer still has a few weeks to play out.  Maybe the concrete pier is standard to most swimming places, but it reminds me of pictures of kids beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.  As if jumping off industrial pilings were more favored than just running straight into the water from the shore. Man conquering nature.

This is what I remember from when I was younger:

August 2, 1981

Lifeguard Beach is bigger than it is currently.  I love how you can SEE the shallow rectangle for swimming on the main beach.  And how the buoys are much further away than they seem this summer.  (Currently, there are 2 sets, one up to my waist and another one just over my head)  Those other dots seem too big to be individual people.  Somehow it looks bigger in the photograph, but I think it's an illusion.  Swimming there now is like swimming in a huge canyon of water.  You can't gauge distance by anything other than a few landmarks.  (But that's what I love about it!)

It is less crowded now (thank goodness), but is it serving fewer of the people who really need it?  Maybe kids used to be bussed in from the inner city.  I'd like to think that with all the available swimming spots in MA, that the kids are just more dispersed.  Camps, ponds, or other "recreational" activities.  I don't wanna think about videogames, nannies, television or whatever else that occupies young minds other than the joys of swimming.

The original link is here:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/specials/insiders/2013/08/28/bucolic-walden-pond/5RInDg0J595Ca21aFOem3O/picture.html