If you crouch low, you can almost forget there's a small parking lot right behind you and a road just to your left:

The Notorious R.O.B. used a technique known as tilt shift to transform the Orange Line into an HO train set.

Photo used under Creative Commons.

Channel 25 reports on the evening accident.

Third Decade notes the culverted path of Stony Brook under Jamaica Plain is well plotted out but wonders what path it now takes under Roxbury in its inexorable path to the sea (well, the Charles) - and what other brooks have gotten buried over the past couple of hundred years.

And yes, I said "inexorable path" because I like saying "inexorable path."

I was just going to go out to the store today, but then I saw Anali's calm before the storm photos and decided to detour via Stony Brook Reservation first, to see the forest before it's re-covered in snow again.

Even in the middle of winter, there's a surprising amount of color in the forest:

Michael Blim slinks by the jodhpur-clad transit cops doing a bag search at Stony Brook, but that gets him to pondering the police's newfound ability to conduct searches without warrants, at least on MBTA property:

... The 4th amendment guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure that in many areas of law restricts police searches to those whom they suspect of a crime or who arouse suspicion of criminal intent no longer applies to subway and bus riders. Any city that wants to conduct "suspicion-less" searches on their mass transit can. The judicial trick is that because no one is under suspicion, everyone can be under suspicion. Anyone’s rights can be violated so long as everyone’s rights can be violated. Call it equal opportunity rights violation. ...

Via Brian Kane, who has more to say on the topic.

It was news to Charles (and, OK, me, too), that Stony Brook runs under Doyle's in JP - it being of little actual interest to pretty much anybody until the city decided to auction off the land and somebody outbid Doyle's. Charles digs up the history of the brook, specifically, the Boston Street Department's 1892 annual report, which discusses progress in controlling the brook after the Great Stony Brook Flood of 1886 by basically turning it into a sewer:

... Stony Brook, the largest of the city's watercourses, is now provided with an ample outlet, and gives little trouble. The effect of the development of its water-shed can be seen, however, in the increasing rapidity and height to which it rises now at every rain, compared to what it did eight years ago, although now its outlet is ample in size, and then it was not. ...

He adds that if one looks carefully, you can still find remnants of some of the industrial buildings built along the brook.