My dear friend Jess told me her fiancée Heather was glad to see I had a new post up that wasn't a commercial (she was obviously not sharing my breathless excitement about the iPhone). Then when the photo from Saturday's hike loaded she laughed that it was essentially a commercial for Nalgene water bottles. Or maybe for cold and ice. But anyway it was still a commercial.

So I vowed I'd finally get some photos up that my students took last semester at Umana/Barnes Middle School in East Boston. This is a still life shot by Gloribel, who has a fantastic eye and took some real stunners through the course of the, uh, course.

The thing is, though, that people are ordering copies of these photos through me as a way to contribute to the kids. $10 a pop for 4x6 or 5x7 and all the money goes to the kid. Which makes this, alas, sort of a commercial. Hope Heather doesn't mind. I'll post more in due time. Along with some info about this remarkable school.

PS: The gourds and pumpkin are resting on one of those ubiquitous blue hard plastic school chairs in front of the one corner of the Math classroom we used that wasn't covered with posters from a unit on probability. Nice colors though, huh?