Brattleboro Hinsdale Bridge

So after I photographed the railroad tracks with weeds growing, I continued on to this bridge over the Connecticut River.  It is a beautiful piece of engineering, known as a "Pennsylvania Truss Bridge."  It was built in 1920 by the American Bridge Company.  One source I read said that bridges here have "been carried away, by floods and ice, on the average of once in every ten years."  Wow, that is amazing, but of course this bridge has lasted almost a hundred years.  Here's the thing, these bridges are expensive to maintain.  Way back in my blog you can find a photograph of a bridge, in a post on Sunday, August 17, 2008, near Owego, NY.  That truss bridge has been torn down and replaced by a concrete bridge and that is the fate of so many of these engineering marvels.  I love the delicate appearance of the truss work as seen from a distance.

Amy Arrives!

Yeaaaaaa!  Amy came to visit!  She took the red-eye out of Los Angeles last night, and then when she got to JFK she got on the air train and took it to Jamaica, and then a LIRR train to Glen Head.  That means I only had to drive for ten minutes to pick her up.  Beats  a 90 minute round trip to JFK and back!  And it is fun to just hang out and catch up.

No Trains Been Through Here For Some Time Now...

I stopped in Brattleboro, Vermont on the way up to the convention.  I stop there because there is this amazing outdoor store called "Sam's."  It is in a huge,  multi-story building, and it is so much fun to wander around just to see what's there.  After wandering in the store, I decided to wander down to the Connecticut river to see what I could see.  On the way I crossed over these railroad tracks, and was taken by how tall the weeds were. And then my next thought was that there haven't been any trains through here in a long time.

They Don't Build Them Like This Anymore...

So many of you are liable to think that because I am a photographer, I notice a lot of things.  I tend to believe that, but this weekend I learned a lesson - sometimes I don't notice stuff.  This is the interior of the Vermont Welcome Center, in Guilford.  It is just a few miles north of the Vermont State line.  I have been stopping here for years now. This particular center was built in 1999 and is designed as a post and beam barn, which pays tribute to Vermont’s agricultural roots.  On this particular day I suddenly noticed the huge beams that support the building.  I must have seen them in all my other stops but I just don't remember noticing enough to take a photograph of the construction. Most of these beams have the adz marks on them, which is cool.  This construction reminds me of my grandfather's barns, which I got to play in as a kid, in Guilford, Connecticut.

Selfie With Cow

When I am away on a trip I find photographs everywhere.  So many that I could post two or three a day.  So what you will be seeing for a few days are the"leftovers" from my trip to Vermont.  This is a photograph from the Vermont Welcome Center, where I stop every year.  They have a new painting on the outside of the building, and when I was there I saw all these people shooting selfies in front of the cow and the horse and the sheep.  It is a brilliant idea that someone thought of putting this on the outside of the building, since selfies are all the rage.

Why We Go To Stellafane...

This is one of the reasons we all go to the Stellafane Convention each year.  At the right is Alan Ward, of Sudbury, Ontario and his magnificent home made telescope.  It is a 6" refractor, made up of three lenses which he fashioned by his own hands, and then he machined the parts for the rest of his telescope.  This telescope won two prizes this year, one for optical excellence, and one for the mechanical construction.  It is an amazing thing to see, all this polished aluminum!  At the left is Al Nagler,  founder of Televue, a company which for years has been manufacturing both the absolute best eyepieces, and telescopes, for us in the amateur community.  Al is truly a legend in the field of optics.

Mass MoCA, Once Again!

I made my annual pilgrimage to Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts today, and was once again was inspired and enriched!  Mass MoCA and the Getty Center in Los Angeles share a quality, although you would not know it by looking at photographs of the buildings.  That quality is that the architecture of the museum is almost as interesting as the artwork it contains!  And that is certainly the case here.  The first photograph is of a woman looking at some abstract art, and I love the white-on-white chairs and wall, and her being in black was perfect.  She walked into the picture and was standing straight, and I shot one frame, and then she shifter her weight to one foot, and there was my photograph.  It is as if she was a dancer.

Mass MoCA recently opened an entirely new building which has been refurbished, and their gallery space has increased a huge amount.  So much so, that I was exhausted when I stumbled out of there at the end of the day.  I did a number of architectural photos, but this is my favorite - a view of windows and sunlight on the floor of the new building.