pt at large

Osprey nest building blitz blankets Westport Rivers

The boom in remodeling and rebuilding homes isn't limited to those occupied by the two-legged denizens of Westport. On Oct. 14, the Massachusetts Audubon Society hatched a plan to rehabilitate 13 of the 88 osprey nests in Westport.

Photo: Jim Dorsey, Paul Doran, and Ray Bosse rebuild a nest as navigator George Yeomans looks on.

If location is the most desirable feature of a home, the ospreys have the best places in town to raise their families. All 88 of the osprey nests are located on the marshes and islands that dot the east and west branches of the Westport River.

Some of the nests' platforms were originally constructed in the 1970s. Westport residents Gil and Josephine Fernandez realized that after years of ingesting pesticides like DDT (banned in 1972), ospreys produced eggshells so thin that even the weight of the incubating bird would crack the eggs. Their solution was to gather healthy osprey eggs from the Chesapeake Bay, place them under local ospreys and even build platforms on which the birds could raise their offspring.

Their labors took flight. From 10 successful nesting pairs in the 1970s, there were about 70 nests that produced eggs this year.

Over the years, the platforms have been repaired on an ad hoc basis but the Audubon Society decided it was time to inventory the whole community of osprey nests.

"One day in September, my husband Vic and I visited all 88 platforms," Audubon osprey monitor Lora Fasolino said. "We took photographs of each one to determine what repairs were needed, how many boats we'd need to do the job in one day, how many people needed in each boat and what materials each boat would need. We determined that 13 nests needed work - either complete replacement or strengthening the bracing or the platforms."

The undertaking was no helter-skelter operation that typifies some volunteer efforts. "My husband Vic and I have taken part in Habitat for Humanity  "Building Blitz" events in which professional home builders join together and build decent, affordable homes in five days. We modeled the osprey nest program on the Blitz," Ms. Fasolino said.

When 17 volunteers in seven boats showed up at the state boat ramp south of the Fontaine Bridge to help at 10 a.m., Ms. Fasolino was waiting with her truck full of work packets for the blitz. Each work team was given a laminated 8 x10 color-coded map of the rivers identifying the locations of every nest, and a 5x7 laminated color photograph of the nest they'd work on. On the reverse side of the photo was a list of materials needed, tools needed, and complete description of work to be done.

Ms. Fasolino handed each crew a work packet containing nails, screws and every piece of wood, necessary to complete the job. Many of the pieces had been precut by Ms. Fasolino and her husband. Volunteers were advised in advance what tools to bring for the job. If a platform needed a new pole, the pole was pre-cut to the right length and marked so the work crew could see how deep to plant the pole.

"Nothing was left to chance," said Westport Fishermen's Association board member George Yeomans, who navigated for the Fasolinos when they took their inventory of the empty nests in September.

Some volunteer rebuilders came from the ranks of Allen's Pond Sanctuary supporters who currently sponsor osprey nests on the river. "I keep in touch with the 52 sponsors, send them emails every two weeks or so giving updates about the platforms. In July, after the fledglings had left the nests, we told them we'd be doing a maintenance weekend in October and asked them if they wanted to help rebuild nests that needed repairs," Ms. Fasolino said.

One workboat crew included Ray Bosse, Paul Doran, and Jim Dorsey. Mr. Bosse lives about a mile and a half from Allen's Pond. "My wife Denise read an appeal in local newspapers to sponsor an osprey nest. We talked with Gina Purtell and began sponsoring a nest last year," Mr. Bosse said. Mr. Bosse has also participated in bird mortality studies with SEANET (Seabird Ecological Assessment Network),

"I've been around the river forever," Paul Doran said as he packed his bag of Bosch battery-operated tools into the workboat. "My neighbor Jim Dorsey called me about this. I've always supported the WRWA. My daughter wrote a paper about Gil Fernandez when she was in school and my wife has invited him to speak to her first graders at the Paul Cuffe School in Providence," he said.

Jim Dorsey and his wife sponsor two nests a short kayak paddle from their home on the East Branch. "My wife Wendy learned about the osprey's migration flights all the way to South America, and attends MA Audubon meetings," Mr. Dorsey said. "Westport is one of the few places in the Northeast where so many of these wonderful birds have a habitat. They are majestic fliers, their sheer presence in Westport makes it a special place to live."

The Massachusetts Waterfowl Corporation solicited donations for the project and contributed money for what wasn't donated. "We've been in business for about seven years," Chairman Bob Rebello said. "We've been raising money for wetland protection and this is the first year of helping directly with osprey protection." The corporation provided a hearty supply of sandwiches and beverages for the volunteers at midday.

By mid afternoon, each workboat had returned to the boat ramp bearing volunteers with soggy boots and big smiles. Every targeted nest had its makeover.

"This was a wonderful hands on effort that galvanized residents up and down the river. The level of preparation was the key to success," Allen'sPond Audubon Sanctuary Director Gina Purtell said.

"It was a fantastic team-building experience. I think everyone not only had fun, but also walked away with a sense of accomplishment and pride from marking their own little stamp on the osprey habitat here," Ms. Fasolino said.

The ospreys returning from their winter sojourn in South America are in for a pleasant surprise when they glide back to their Westport nests next March.

 

Example of building blitz work packet

E39 - Complete Re-build! (photo at right)

Materials needed: new pole, new platform, upper bracing pak, 3 lower braces with 3 cedar stakes, 40 screw pak

Tools needed: hammers, catspaws, screw gun, small sledge hammer, battery operated or hand saw, digging tools

Description of work:

1. Remove old platform, breakup  into organic pieces, remove nails

2. Attach new platform to new pole using upper bracing pak

3. Plant the new pole at least 24" into the soil

4. Add lower bracing in three directions using cedar stakes

5. Add some branches to platform to "put out the welcome sign!"

Toad revisited, Shwang swings

Toad revisited -Shwang with Anita Suhanin
Toad, 1920 Mass. Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140  • 617-497-4950
November 20, 2006

ptatlarge revisited Toad last Monday, caught Shwang’s second set and wondered why he ever went anywhere else on Monday nights. http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2005/08/shwang_with_ani.html

Anita Suhanin and company have got to be one of the best little cover bands in town. This woman effortlessly swings from blues to ballad; her tiny band locks into her stylings and nails solos that cause the patrons to holler in appreciation. The narrow place was packed to the gills, all eyes were on the tiny bandstand at the end of the matchbox of a bar, and the band was revving up and downshifting as they followed Suhanin’s slalom through the set.

The bartender was pulling drafts by the bucket. Customers preemptively drain a couple of inches off the top so they don’t end up wearing their pints while they bob heads and jiggle body parts as they stand, which half the crowd had to do, and keep time with the music. The band’s synergy and raw talent threaten to burst the joint’s seams with joyous vigor.

Lou Ulrich, Andy Plaisted, Anita @ Amazing Things Arts Center [photo M. Moran]

Normally either Duke Levine or Steve Sadler plays guitar for Suhanin. “Play” is such a lame word to use to describe what they do. Either guy regularly brings the house down with his talent. When both of them show up, as they did tonight, you get a seismic set on the order of 6.0. Levine tends to finger the frets to coax imaginative lyrical riffs and nimbly pick his way through a down and dirty lick. Sadler wraps his big paws around the neck of the guitar and chokes it with gorgeous plangent chords in raw roadhouse style. When they solo in tandem, delirium ensues.

The well is deep. Anita Suhanin has an overstuffed black notebook filled with hundreds of songs she likes, including a generous handful of her lovely originals. When she feels like a change of pace, she riffs through the book, pulls a rabbit out of the hat, calls the title to the band, claps out the time signature, and they’re off. She actually cradled the book in her hands as she refreshed her memory about the lyrics of the Platters’ ‘Twilight Time.’

The work week hasn’t even dried off from being delivered on Monday morning and we’re rocking here. Show up at Toad any Monday night between 8 and 10 and I guarantee you’ll leave humming at least one song you heard and saying to yourself, I gotta come back here next week.

Second set playlist

• ‘Sugar’ - a ballad penned by Suhanin. Suhanin gets warmed up, Levine and Sadler follow suit.
• ‘Slowly but Surely, I’ll find my way in’- a ballad penned by Suhanin. Anita closes her eyes, rocks back on her heels and croons poignantly, Levine and Sadler solo with trademark virtuosity.
• ‘Things to remember’- by Willie Nelson. Upbeat swing with monster Sadler solo
• ‘”Til I kissed ya’- Everly Brothers. Up-tempo beginning, downshift to slower ending with Sadler.
• ‘Never go home’- Up-tempo blues number written by Anita Suhanin.
• ‘Twilight time’ - The Platters, for god’s sake! Anita is reading lyrics from her big song book and ends with slow vamp.
• ‘It’s a sin to tell a lie’- a Slim Whitman version of this old swing tempo song. Levine hits his notes in a Les Paul mode, Sadler answers Levine’s solo with trademark chunky chord changes. Suhanin ends with yodeling the lyrics. Oh, yeah.
• ‘Have love, will travel’- this funky hard driving tune from the fifties features a Lou Ulrich solo on bass and Andy Plaisted solo on drums before Levine and Sadler nearly torch the joint with pile driving, amplifier defying solos.
• ‘If I had feelings’- wtitten by Noam Weinstein. Suhanin sings an achingly sweet bluesy ballad, the kind you end up humming all the way home.

http://www.toadcambridge.com/
http://anitasuhanin.com

The Andros Diner, big plates, small prices

The Andros Diner
“Since 1974, authentic Greek cuisine and Homemade American Favorites”
628 Trapelo Road
Belmont, MA     617-484-7322
M 6am-8pm, T-Sat 6am-9pm, Sun 7am-2pm

Sit here for five minutes any weekday in the early afternoon after the lunch crowd has departed and you’ll get the flavor of this little Greek diner. The waitresses and host are yakking it up in Greek, senior citizens are ordering what will be their lunch and dinner, pairs of women who’ve finished shopping are comparing purchases, and every other person who enters is greeted by name. Welcome to the Andros Diner way out on Trapelo Road in Belmont.

The small eatery is usually packed at meal times with good reason. The prices are reasonable, the portions are huge, and the taste is your-mother’s-kitchen good. (actually, much better than my own mother could cook but that’s another story - sorry, mom).

“You come at the right time,” says the short Greek accented host with a sunny grin as I push open the door.” Sit anywhere you want and have anything you like.” If the food is as homey as the greeting, ptatlarge will like this place. Six oversized booths that would easily hold six people line the walls; several glass topped tables fill in the middle. The terra cotta tiles and exposed beam ceiling add warmth to the room; six large windows allow light to flood in from the Trapelo Road side.

The Andros is in the lineage of scores, maybe hundreds, of Greek restaurants and diners that dot the greater Boston area. Open seven days a week, they develop a loyal clientele by serving good food, predictable and generous portions. Come around often enough and you feel like part of the family. The owners are usually behind the counter or, on this day at Andros, “downstairs making dressings and sauces from scratch,” according to my waitress.

The bouquet of red roses next to the cash register? A welcome back token to a waitress who’s just returned after a year’s absence. From a customer, of course. One of my waitresses has worked here for ten years, and she’s not the senior girl by a long shot. Like a good soup stock, this place has been put together from scratch: an owner’s desire to feed a neighborhood - and thereby his own family, friendly waitresses, a menu for value-oriented patrons, and fresh ingredients with which to cook it.

The menu, several pages long, indeed covers Greek standards and American favorites. The pages range from Appetizers, Specials (5.00-12.00), Vegetarian (5.75-6.95), Seafood (10.50-14.50), Fried Foods (8.40-13.90), Cold Plates (5.95-6.30), Sandwiches (2.25-5.95), Shish Kabob (10.50-13.65), Souvlaki (7.95-10.85), Gyros (6.95-7.65), Sausage (6.95-7.85), and a Children’s Menu (all $4.95 with a soft drink and ice cream).

ptatlarge orders a homemade Chicken Orzo soup and settles on a special - Char broiled Pork Souvlaki over a “melody”(maybe the spirit of Zorba the Greek was singing in the kitchen when the typist created the menu) vegetables stir fried in a touch of oil, garlic, and soy sauce.

What arrives is a 12 inch plate half of which is covered with a huge mound of stir fried broccoli, carrots, zucchini, onions, green beans, the other half with a pile of rice with mild tomato sauce and six large char-broiled pinkish-in-the-middle chunks of tender pork. The half that remained after I stuffed myself went home with me in a take home container. Nearly everyone left with a ‘doggie bag’, attesting to the generous portions. The cup of lightly creamy chicken orzo soup was perfect for the chilly afternoon and had the fullness of taste resulting from hours of simmering.

So if you’re ever in the neighborhood, say shopping at Yolanda’s or Party Needs or Shaw’s or working out at Waverly Oaks Sports Club, the Andros Diner would be a fine place to refuel and practice your Greek language skills.

 

Shemekia Copeland belts out the blues

Shemekia Copeland
Grammy-nominated soul and blues singer
Regattabar, Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA
Second set
November 16, 2006

Shemekia Copeland knows how to belt out the blues. At the tender age of 27, Copeland is on her way to becoming a hip shakin’ mama in the mold of Irma Thomas, to whom she tipped her hat during the show. Copeland’s compact, broad shouldered body and prodigious lung capacity are ready made for the long haul.

“We can play whatever we want in this second set,” she said with a big grin. Despite whatever energy she and her band poured into the first sold-out set at the Regattabar, she wasn’t about to coast.  The first result was an upbeat “I’m a wild woman - and you’re a lucky man.” The men bobbing their heads during this first Shemekia shimmy weren’t just keeping time - they were agreeing.

No genre more than the blues seems to authorize performers to let the audience in on their loves and losses. In the first of several ‘true confession’ song introductions she made during the show, Copeland confided, “You know how relationships have a way of getting comfortable, then just breaking apart. And the more you try to keep them going, the worse they get. Well, I’ve had four or five experiences with that. I know what I’m talking about.” Then unleashed “The harder I try, the harder it gets.” We knew what she was wailing about when she sang “got to let go, I know it in my heart, I got to let go, it’s the way its gotta be.”

“The worst thing is when another woman tries to steal your man but it’s harder than that when the other woman turns out to be me,” she said and launched into the gritty “The other woman was me.” We could hear her pain as she sang,  “…never said he was married, didn’t wear no wedding ring, I’m not the kinda woman to steal another’s man, she needs your sympathy.” We were ready to offer it in buckets. Shemekia’s big big voice hit the final refrain in a slow Aretha type boil. Answered by Neilson’s classic bluesy licks,  Copeland seized every bit of soul in those last lines and took down the house.

What, you ask, would funky blues be without the Hammond B3? As good as Shemekia can belt ‘em  out, “Seems like everything I do is wrong” was owned by Jeremy Baum and his B3. With the B3 capturing this funky blues in its distinct way, the band seemed to get into high gear. They weren’t just performing now, they were playin’. Hard.

The set turned biographic as Copeland introduced “Beat-up old guitar,” an homage to her late musician father Johnny “Clyde” Copeland of Houston. Although the senior Copeland moved his family to Harlem, “where I came about in 1979,” she said, he never lost his love of Houston. “We buried him wearing that Houston guitar strap that he wore all the time.” The other band members slipped off the stage and Neilson pulled up two folding chairs for him and the singer - and cradled a silver National Steel guitar in his arms.  In the right hands, the National has the capacity to evoke the soft focus images of life in the bygone Delta. Its sweet, twangy sounds recall the flash of the whip and the scent of magnolias in the evening breeze. Johnny Clyde didn’t live to hear her break out, but the crowd in the Regattabar felt the daughter’s love. She enrolled the audience to act as the choir to sing the final refrain, “…but he could really play the blues on that beat-up old guitar.” It wasn’t revival tent vigorous but it hit all the right notes.

The song offered a welcome change in tempo and modulation. Whether the limitation was due to the Regattabar’s system or the band’s amps, each song’s sound had been coming down as a unisonic wall of music, the same decibel level. It all rocked but had a tendency to sound redundant.

“Beat-up old guitar” gave us the unmitigated pleasure of listening to the authority and range of Copeland’s voice, and to focus on the unique sound of a classic blues instrument. The show would have been richer with one or two other songs that highlighted the smoky muted sound that Copeland’s voice and band can certainly manage.

“Who stole my radio” gave Shemekia a chance to lament the dearth of blues music on mainstream FM and to tell us about her weekly Saturday afternoon gig on Sirius Satellite Radio. Her folksy introduction compared the differences in going to church in NYC and the south. “NYC people sing with passion and get into it but in the south people shout, teeth come out, wigs fall off, pantyhose falls down to the knees, they let it all hang out.”

Shemekia closed the set with a satisfying romp of “Has anybody seen my man” in which Neilson peeled off some spectacular bluesy chops,  Baum jammed Billy Preston style, and Kevin Jenkins’ bass and Damon DueWhite’s drum kit got to show off their talent for the final tune of the night.

With four CDs and several big time awards to her credit,  Shemekia Copeland is going to inherit territory that Irma Thomas and the just departed Ruth Brown have owed for a generation or two. She’s only gonna get better.

Roomful of Blues, an eight piece house on fire

Regattabar, Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA
November 10, 2006

The Roomful of Blues band fails the truth in advertising test. Roomful of Blues, N’Orleans tinged Funk, and sashaying Swing is more like it. They burst out of the gate of their second set at the Regattabar in Cambridge, MA with licks that packed the energy of most bands’ finales. And they juiced it up from there.

This eight-piece group has the biggest sound of any little band you’re likely to hear. Piano, two saxophones, trumpet, lead guitar, bass, percussion, singer/harmonica player, - a perfect example of the expression “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

The saxes and trumpet are a teeny front line that can blast or croon with equal intensity. The piano and guitar lay down classic licks that you can feel coming a mile away. The bassist and drummer aren’t just there to keep time, they’re adding their own ideas to the mix. The lead singer (and most recent member of the band) switches from smoky to swing with equal authority.

Photo from Roomful's web site

Their playlist was flawless. Short, tight arrangements, shifting genres and pace, mighty or muted sound. Most in the audience were boogying in their seats and wishing there was a dance floor handy.

The Providence based group’s roots go back an astonishing 37 years. Personnel have changed but not that party sound. ptatlarge got a last minute invitation to hear them play and showed up without so much as a napkin to take notes upon. Result?  Short on details but long on recommendations. This Roomful is a Houseful of Blues.

Check out their web site at http://www.roomful.com  (The current lead singer seems to have more range than the singer on the video)

The Ice Breaker- this play satisfies

The Ice Breaker, written by Davie Rambo, directed by David Zoffoli
The New Repertory Theater
Arsenal Center for the Arts, Arsenal Street, Watertown, MA
October 25 - November 19
A play in two acts, one 15-minute intermission, running time approximately 2 hours

Maybe this production is flying under the radar because it’s playing in the suburbs but ptatlarge recommends you make a reservation to land in Watertown before it closes on November 19.

This is one of the few plays you’re likely to see that successfully combines a heady mix of science and sex, content and context. That a play whose axis rotates around the subject of global warming can become riveting personal narrative is quite a feat. Without the compelling performances from the play’s two actors, it wouldn’t have happened.

The Ice Breaker, a play written by David Rambo and presented by the New Repertory Theater, satisfies. From the time that a brash young graduate student Sonia (Amy Russ) bursts into the quietude of the discredited former top-notch researcher Lawrence’s (Will Lyman) desert hideaway, these two seem poles apart.

Sonia is one complicated piece of work; her sense of urgency to debunk current scientific theory about the ice melt in the Antarctic is counter balanced by Lawrence’s long ago surrender to the forces that toppled his professional and personal life. In a whirlwind entrance, she demands that he read her thesis and uses every tool in her considerable arsenal to persuade him to do it. Is she a crackpot or the real deal on speed? It’s a joy to watch Russ’s Sonia show her precocious intelligence behind her funny, slightly manic, scientist-as-seducer persona.

Lyman’s Will isn’t impervious to her charms but he has his own reasons for refusing her request and advances. He’s chosen solitude and anonymity to salve the hurts of a train-wrecked promising career and painful divorce. Sonia’s uninvited presence reminds him of all he wants to forget.

As the two passionately discuss the dire scientific implications of core samples from deep inside Antarctica’s ice sheet, they’re boring into each other’s fragile emotional cores. With glacial momentum, their intellectual combat begins to create sexual heat between them.

Every time the play veers toward the didactic, it’s rescued by dialogue that penetrates the armor that has frozen the two scientists emotionally. Lyman is especially gifted at showing Lawrence’s inner conflict through his body language. And Russ often discharges tension with a mannerism or her perfectly timed twentysomething sense of humor.

The play revels in contrasts, The shoot from the hip young woman vs. the reserved older professor; the woman who isn’t above using her body as a bartering tool vs. the man who’s been burned in love and harbors a fearful secret about his marriage; a scientist who’s hanging her reputation on forecasting events vs. a scientist who’s devoted his life to explaining them. And then there’s the age-old mystery of why opposites attract.

Credit Director David Zoffoli for reining in the actors enough so they remain characters, not caricatures. The narrative arc of this play is satisfyingly organic. The casting of Lyman and Russ is brilliant. They’re allowed to evolve slowly and convincingly.

The play’s finale was open ended enough for us to draw our own conclusions about their futures. By then, we know enough and care enough about these two very human scientific seekers to believe that breaking through the ice has saved them from being locked in it forever.

Post Script;
News this week that 100 icebergs, broken off from the Antarctic, have been spotted floating north toward the shipping lanes off New Zealand, casts an eerie sense of reality to the play’s underlying theme.
http://www.breakingnews.ie/2006/11/03/story283744.html

The Copley Society, A Co/So Treat on Newbury Street

Copley Society of Art
158 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02116 / 617-536-5049
Tues - Sat 11 - 6, Sun - Mon 12 - 5
“Here and Abroad” October 19 - November 25
“Holiday Small Works 2006” November 9 - December 23

In this era of makeovers, we can excuse the Copley Society of Art for renaming itself the oh so au courante moniker of Co/So. Luckily for us, the society’s tastes are firmly anchored in the traditions of representational art that have been its general focus since its inception in 1877. ptatlarge says “luckily” not out of antipathy for non-representational forms of art but out of relief for not having to rent a headset to comprehend the artwork assembled on the walls of this intimate two level gallery on Newbury Street.

The upper gallery’s juried exhibition - “Here and Abroad”-  is easy on the eyes and the lower gallery’s  “Holiday Small Works 2006” is easy on the pocket book. Around 200 of the society’s 550 members submitted work for “Here and Abroad.” The jury chose 18 pieces representing 16 members whose work they believed best captured the theme: “Display a strong sense of place and, with their vividness, are able to transport the viewer to destinations far and wide.”

All the pieces succeed technically. The piece that earned the ptatlarge prize was Carol Monacelli’s Petit fer a Cheval, an oil painting, (40”h x 30”w). The slightly subdued palette, the postures of the two waiters in mid-conversation, the distinct European grounding of the tavern, are vivid. One can almost hear the clatter of plates, clinking of glasses, the shreds of conversation, and spot that one couple at the table in the corner who’ve provoked such pensive speculation from the two garcons. If the limit on your credit card is $10,000, exercise your plastic and take the painting home.

The annual “Holiday Small Works 2006”is a wild west of small pieces. Traditional, representational, whimsical, and abstract images in the usual mediums are mounted chock a block on the walls of the lower level. Every Co/So member could submit three pieces to this non-juried show and boy, did they ever. Scores of them are mounted on the walls and hundreds of them are piled in a small mountain in the gallery’s corner floor. The prices here aren’t scary and range from $100 to $600.

Most pieces are small enough to carry out the door under your arm. “This is a “cash and carry business” says the gallerista, as she wraps a piece for a customer.  It’s a unique opportunity to score a little gem for that wall in the hallway or space in the house you’ve been wanting to gussy up.

See the collection of all 18 oils, watercolors, pastels, and photos at http://www.copleysociety.org/Here_and_Abroad_06_online.htm