BOX 255: Boston and Sheboygan.

You're looking at Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, with the Charles River and the city of Cambridge in the background (including M.I.T.'s Great Dome), with the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge on the left. This was the view from our hotel window when Anne and I visited Boston for a weekend in October 2006. It was fine fall day, as you can see; the weather the day before was less fine:

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had gotten a digital camera for Christmas in 2005 and used it for our travels during most of 2006--but I had one leftover roll of slide film that I used up on our Boston trip and at home at the end of the year. So this post shows the last of 255 boxes of slides that I've been scanning and storing on my desktop and presenting in this "travel" blog/slide show. "Travel" is in quotes because I've been writing about past trips, not ones in progress or just completed, and because my "slide shows" also include lots of family photos at home (and not nearly enough pics of friends).

I see, having scanned this latest box, that we stopped at Copley Square, where I took this photo of the John Hancock Building with some fall foliage:

I like being able to learn from Google Lens and Street View that I was standing on Boylston Street, with the Central Library in the foreground and a bit of the Berkeley Building (the "Old" Hancock Building) to the left.

We walked along Commonwealth Avenue, lined with some of Boston's most elegant townhouses:

I singled out two stately homes along the avenue: first, the flamboyant 1899 Alfred Burrage House:

. . . and second, the 1900 Frederick Ayers Mansion, with windows and interiors designed by Tiffany:

We also visited the Harvard campus, and had lunch at the landmark (opened 1960) Mr. Bartley's Burger House:

Here's part of the Harvard Yard:

And here's the Victorian-era Memorial Hall:

These are all the Boston photos I took--I recall other places we went (museums, a Boston Symphony concert) but didn't use my camera. The next slide in the box is from Thanksgiving Day, showing Timmy, Sam and Forest clustering around the computer, with Kade Byrand in the red shirt in the center. (I deduce that it's Thanksgiving from the facts that the living room couch has been moved to the computer room to make way for dining tables and the Byrand family always came over for the holiday.)

Here are Timmy and Forest again, standing on the legs of Brian, Becky's boyfriend at the time:

On a day closer to Christmas, here's Kona under the tree:

The last photos on the roll show Forest and Timmy with Tiffany out in the back driveway and alley after a snowfall. You saw Timmy as a newborn in just the previous BOX, in January 2004.

So--255 boxes of slides, each box averaging either 22 or 36 slides, all scanned! The project began over a decade ago, when I made a very tentative start using equipment on my UW-Sheboygan campus, but I didn't get seriously down to work until I bought a scanner for home--the Covid lockdown of 2020 providing the extra motivation. I'd thought of writing a "travel" slideshow blog before then, but again it was the extra time--plus Michelle Berryman's assistance!--that allowed me to start posting in September 2020.

I could simply stop now (with hope of finding a couple of missing boxes sometime in the future); or I could try using my Epson 550 to scan printed photos--I did take a few during my years of mostly slides. I could also go over my earliest posts--the ones showing my Kodak Instamatic pics--and apply the editing skills I gradually learned to make some of the photos brighter or more dust-free. More ambitiously, I could continue this blog by posting--more selectively--my digital photos from 2006 onward. But would more than a small handful of readers be interested? I'll give it some thought.