Welcome to our home

Welcome to our home. We hope to give you a sense of place.
You are in a house once lit by gas and warmed by coal.
Others added electricity and indoor plumbing,
and we are adding our own small details.
This house is also on top of a continental plate
that is shifting even as we speak.
A few hundred million years ago that plate—and this spot—

were south of the Equator.

We love this quiet corner of Medford Hillside,
now comfortably ensconced in the northern hemisphere.
The playground next door has been a park, and a school,
and has heard the voices of children
raised and hushed for a hundred years.
In the other direction is the Mystic River,
where swans and herons and turtles have replaced the shipyards.
Before the houses, the river wrapped around farmland.
And around the farmland, there were woods.
Over the river and through the woods—

those words were written a few hundred yards east of this spot.
Our cherry and maple trees now strive each spring to reclaim the land,
though we keep to other plans for our garden.
 

Other words from another place:
We hope you have fun.
We hope you find at least one surprise.
We hope you leave thinking about something interesting
you hadn’t thought about before.
 

And one more hope from us:
Before you leave, we hope you’ll stay a while.
We find comfort and inspiration in the company of friends.
We are all spinning around the axis of the Earth at 750 mph,
and flying around the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour.
Share your stories with us. Our stories are our seatbelts.