The Familiar, noticed again.

I've seen these trees countless times, driving up and around UMass/Boston. They are part of the mental landscape in a not very attractive environment.

And they are on the cover of a text book on beginning black-and-white photography that Henry Horenstein wrote and that I recommended for years before I realized that no one was going to read anything except the mimeographed data guide and I'm not too sure about that. Or if anyone was going to read anything it would come from the pile of books that I'd left up in the photo lab.

Maybe I'm noticing color more because Krissy's ex, Chris, is living downstairs and he's from California and Florida so he's entirely surprised by the changes in the leaves. For whatever reason I've never noticed these trees when they were in their gold stage, as they were today when I got there early enough to have time to walk down and photograph them. I'm not at all fond of color images, but here we go -- gold trees looking good in pictures and in reality.

And the fox that isn't art isn't entirely  useful in chasing away the Canadian geese -- its function. I was surprised the first time I saw the two of them, placed at odd angles in a field, not understanding what on earth they could be for and thinking that they were, probably, art. There always used to be a class that specialized in making installations all around campus and there was a time, near the end of the semester, when pieces would appear in the corner of the library or as motifs on the top of roofs. 

But Canadian geese are another thing altogether and to be avoided at all costs. My dog, Bogie, otherwise a discreet gentleman of the highest order, thinks that goose turds are caviar. He's wild with hunger in any park that geese frequent. And that leads to the all-night poops. He'll wake up, jump off the bed and sit, staring at me. If I don't get up right away, he makes low, throaty noises, very politely, until I make the right motions. Even if I'm slow getting putting on a coat and shoes, he remains polite, then runs down the stairs, out the door and around back. Sometimes this goes on two or three times during the night if he's been in a park where there are a lot of Canadian geese and I've not kept him on the leash and watched carefully. 

I hate Canadian geese.