Corn Snake

We have been back from Los Angeles for two whole weeks now, but I have continued to show photographs from the west coast.  That's because it is so much easier to take photographs when I am away from home.  The Sunday after we got home, our astronomy club brought our telescopes to a program at Old Westbury Gardens called "Kidsfest."  A bunch of organizations having to do with nature and science had displays for kids and their parents.  The people across from our table had a Corn Snake.  What a beautiful animal!  I thought it made a good photo because of the green background.  The young man who was holding the snake offered to let me hold it, but I politely declined!

Stop the Pig!

The thing about Venice, California is, that there are a lot of artists living here, and if there are community issues, you can expect to see paintings here and there having to do with the issues.  One of the major problems in Venice is that in many areas, there were all these wonderful cottages where families lived and raised their children.  When you drive around now, these cottages are being demolished and giant mansions are constructed on the tiny plots where the cottages once were.  One abandoned cottage on a small plot next to Amy was sold for 1.3 million dollars!  Now there is a monster house on the property that towers over the other homes.  No wonder people are upset.

Architecture of The Broad

I have shown you some details of The Broad museum in another post, but I haven't given you a good sense of what the building actually looks like.  I had to take four images, from left to right, and then join them together with software in order to get this wide-angle view.  It wasn't possible to get any further away than across the street, so you either need an extreme wide-angle or you need to do a panorama.  You will be interested to know that the indentation in the front of the building is called "The Occulus."  There are windows in the occulus, and you can see out of them from inside.

Abstract Expressionism

I stopped to look at this bicycle on Abbot Kinney, because I have never seen a bicycle wheel with this many spokes.  I was going to make a snapshot just of the wheel, and then I noticed the shadow of the other parts of the bike on the sidewalk, so I spent some time trying different compositions to see if I could make an interesting abstract photo.  Whaddya think?

Leftovers in the Trunk

So we went to this restaurant in Santa Monica.  They served huge portions and *some* of us couldn't eat all of their dinner.  So some of us left with doggie bags.  When we got to the parking garage we decided to put the leftovers in the trunk.  Then for some reason, both Amy and Liz decided to photograph the three styrofoam containers side by side!  I thought this was funny, so of course I had to photograph them photographing.  And, no, I have no idea what they did with their photos!

Oliver!

This is Oliver the cat, one of the two cats, and two dogs, who reside in Liz and Sarah's house.  He is a friendly guy, after he gets used to us.  I found him here at one of his favorite places early one morning, the back kitchen window checking out the back yard. It is hard to tell from this photo, but Oliver is missing his left front leg.  He was a rescue cat, and he gets around just fine with only three legs.  And you can see, he is a beautiful animal.

Melinda Ketelsen, September 22, 2016

Melinda Ketelsen, the wife of my dear friend Dean Ketelsen, passed away last night after a three-year battle with cancer.  She is second from left in pink, and Dean is in orange.  Dean has documented her heroic battle with the disease on his blog, and her endless regimes of chemotherapy.  You may know Dean from all his wonderful comments on my blog.  He is a legend in Tucson with his outreach work in astronomy, and he works in the Mirror Lab, finishing 8 meter astronomical mirrors for observatories.  This photograph is the result of a trip that Stan Honda, to my left, and I took to Tucson  back in April, to spend a week doing astronomical things with Dean, and my long-time friend Mike Terenzoni, in center of photo.  We got to meet Melinda, spend time visiting, and have some dinners together, and she was such a lovely person.  My heart is saddened.