Lydia Likes It

Little Free Library

Once upon a time, when we still lived in Boston's South End, my husband Ted and I served our community as its only little free librarians. Ted built our library out of scrap wood and pieces of an old Nordic Track, with help from his friend Matt, and painted "make way for readers" ducklings on the roof; our neighbor Ken Clark contributed the duck feet. The library stood on our front stoop and anchored the street. It could hold nearly 50 books, depending on size, and the idea was simple: take a book, leave a book. Thanks to its placement near the intersection of a major walking street, our Little Free Library turned over nearly one quarter of its contents every day, and any children's books we were lucky to get disappeared almost instantly. We ran the library for three years, until we sold our house. Another neighborhood group adopted it, repainted it, and moved it a few blocks away. There are now more than 150,000 Little Free Libraries worldwide, in more than 100 countries. Ours was #24,688. When you're out and about, pull up the map on the website, and search for them on your travels.

Breathe Life

Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs is a visual artist and organizer who has transformed the cultural landscape of Boston through graffiti art since 1991. His murals in the Breathe Life series can be found on buildings and schools in Boston's Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods. This stunning mural occupies a prime position on Boston's Rose Kennedy Greenway, one that until now had featured more generic work by out-of-state artists. Here is ProBlak's artist statement about this piece: "Growing up in Roxbury during the Hip-Hop Golden Age, I saw the power of graffiti as a form of self-expression. Graffiti became a tool for me, and others in my community, to chronicle and immortalize our culture and history. For me, graffiti acts as a contemporary form of hieroglyphs, a way to document and pay homage to underserved, underheard communities in the city. My vision is to beautify the predominantly Black and Brown communities of Boston, this is a driving force behind my artistic practice and vision." The girl in the mural? ProBlak's daughter. Learn more about his work here. This piece will be up until May 2023, on the Greenway near Amtrak's South Station.

Fog

Can you see it, the 50-story office building towering over downtown Boston? No? Living in a high-rise apartment in a coastal city, I have learned to love the fog. Some mornings, I wake up to a blanket so thick that I can't see the John Hancock building or the weather beacon, the Charles River or Back Bay or Beacon Hill or Cambridge, or the building next door. When I lived on the ground, I didn't appreciate the fog in quite the same way. Up here, up high, it's a treat.

Gilbert Stuart

Gilbert Stuart lives practically next door to me, in the Central Burying Ground in Boston Common. One of America's most famous early 19th Century portrait artists, Gilbert (as we call him, being neighbors and all) is perhaps best known for his unfinished likeness of George Washington, often called the Athenaeum Portrait; it's the image that graces the US one dollar bill. In his lifetime, he painted more than 1,000 portraits, including those of six presidents, yet thanks to bad spending habits he died a pauper, which is how he ended up as my neighbor in a not-very-swank cemetery in downtown Boston.