Beauty in the Back Yard

I looked out the dining room window and saw this scene, early in the storm today.  I couldn't believe my eyes!   The scene was just stunning!  So I grabbed my camera and went out on to the front porch.  What makes this wonderful is the snow sticking to the tops of all the branches and vines, which was then muted by all the snow falling at the time I took this picture.  This shot was a gift!

Right Place, Right Time

We were all at the Vanderbilt Museum for the video shoot from 3:30 PM until 8:30 PM yesterday.  Which was lucky because I was there as the sun set.  It was overcast all day, but as the sun was going down, it broke through the clouds for a moment and illuminated these huge smokestacks.  I love the darker shades of blue and purple, as a background for the brilliant red and white of the stacks.  And this photograph only existed for a few minutes, so I was lucky to be there.  More on the video shoot in tomorrow's blog post.

The Spaceship is Landing

How lucky am I!  A space ship is landing, and a child walks over near it, and I am there to record it!  What phenomenal luck!  This is cool, right?  OK, the real story is that one of our astronomy club members owns an SUV from an upscale automotive manufacturer, and because his passion for astronomy, they are doing a commercial, just for the web, about him, and his car, and his hobby.  So the filmmakers came to where we meet and set up a star party so they could film it.  They started in daylight, and then set up lights and filmed at night.  This amazing thing is called a "balloon light" and it is huge and bright, at 1000 watts.  The child is the grandson of the subject of the film.

Celebrating 25 Years

This is Father Rony, and he celebrated the Mass today, because this is his twenty-fifth anniversary as a Priest.  He comes from Haiti, and told the story of his graduation from High School, and then making a start at several different professions before realizing that he was called to the Priesthood.  He is a wonderful Priest and gave a moving tribute to all the people who have helped him in his life, and he thanked all the members of St Brigids church, and all that they have done for him.

There was a reception for him after the Mass, and everyone wanted to photograph him (including me, of course) and then they were showing him the photographs on their cellphones.

The Cat Show

Wait!  The title of this post is "The Cat Show" and these are birds!  What gives?  Good question.  Kathy saw a notice in the paper that there was a cat and dog show at a college in Brentwood, so we decided to go down and take a look, just for fun.  I love cats, but 20 feet inside the front door there were two people from a wildlife rescue center, and they had two raptors with them.  This one is a Red-tailed hawk, and the one below is a Great Horned Owl.  These are absolutely beautiful birds!  We couldn't touch them, of course, but they we could get within a foot of them and see them in great detail. Please click on each of these photos to see more detail.

Then we went into the separate room where the cat show was.  I sat for a while and watched the judging for various categories.  I watched two of the judges, and it was wonderful to see that they really loved the cats they were judging.  They handled them with such care as they examined each of them to see how closely they matched the standards of the breed, and they were judged on coloring as well.  We saw some amazing and unfamiliar types of cats at the show.

The Angry Sea

We had a Nor'easter come through here today, as all of you know by now.  The winds were 30 knots, gusting to, get this, 46 knots!  46 knots is 53 miles per hour!  It was howling around here.  When I went to get bagels this morning, I saw some waves crashing here.  After breakfast it was high tide, so I went back down to the end of our street, and the crashing waves were much larger, and the whole street was flooded!  Please click on each of these to see really interesting detail.

As I was standing at the end of the street, I couldn't believe the cars who drove into deep water.  Look at how far this car is submerged!  He turned the corner coming toward me, and kept going.  This is salt water!  I was sure his car was going to die, but it didn't, at least while I was there.

I drove to Sea Cliff Beach, to see if waves were crashing on the boardwalk, and they certainly were.  One of the interesting things was that a surge of water would roll in from the right, crash into the sea wall in the center of the photo, then reflect back out to the right, and crash into another wave coming in, which made for some spectacular waves.

Some of the waves crashed into the sea wall, which you can see in the previous photograph, but then the wind out of the north caught the waves and blew them across the roadway, which was pretty cool looking.  It was an amazing day to see the force of nature at work.

Early Morning Flight

I got up at 5:15 AM this morning, so that I could take Liz and Sarah to JFK for their flight to Burlington, VT.  Then I came home and had breakfast, and went back to bed!  I was wasted for the rest of the day!  Liz and Sarah  rented a car and drove to Lake Placid, NY for the wedding they are going to this weekend.  This is funny, I got a text from them, and they were so close to Dannemora, NY that they decided to drive there so that they could see the prison from the outside.  It is called Clinton Correctional Facility, and two years ago that's where there was an escape and two men were on the run for three weeks, before one was killed and one was captured.  I have been in that prison to do photographs of an inmate, years ago.  It is a bit creepy to be behind those tall prison walls.