Nehind the United ticket counter and in front of the security queue, yet seemingly hiding in plain sight, is a marvelous contraption that routes balls through a complex 3D switchyard of rails, chutes, worm gears, gates, trampolines, rakes and roller coaster paths, banging on objects that produce tones and other fun sounds along the way. It's a work of art and science that's built to delight, and if you;re in as much of a hurry as me, you're likely to miss it. There's a smaller one here in Santa Barbara. Maybe I'll get the artist's name the next time I'm there.

My GPS told me the tide was at extreme low at that very hour, as dawn approached.

Here you can almost see how most of the hills of Southern Mass are "drumlins": piles of landscape left by glacier that melted in retreat only a few thousand years ago.

It's hard to see, but the green patch near the top of this shot is a field in the town of Hull — a peninsula that juts out into the bay — is occupied by two red and white guyed towers. These transmit the 50,000-watt full-time signal of WBZ/1030am. The signal at night is one of the biggest in the country. I've heard it in Palo Alto, California. Even in the daytime, it is audible along the coast from Maine to Cape Hatteras.