We Hope You Had A Wonderful Thanksgiving

We are so glad we drove to Rochester to have Thanksgiving week with Vince and Jo Anne.  We have enjoyed hanging out together, inside for the most part, except for some walks around the complex.  We had a wonderful traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings, thanks to the hard work of Jo Anne and Kathy.  So here we are, before we ate dinner.  Even though this year has been difficult, we are still so thankful for all our blessings.

 

A Brother & Sister Walk

We have been sitting around way too much since we arrived at Vince & Jo Anne's.  So yesterday we started out doing some walking.  Kathy and Vince decided to go out for a short walk, so I decided to join them.  This photograph is the result.  I really love this portrait of brother and sister.  It is not easy to get a photograph where both subjects look their best, and also that you get them both smiling at the same time!  I was going to say "I was lucky" but the truth is that I worked at it, taking a lot of photographs to get this one, and I am proud of how good they both look.  Be sure to click on the image to see it in more detail!

No Dunkin' - Swan Song

I have been doing my Tuesday posts of "No Dunkin' Donuts" for 38 weeks now.  I had no idea when I started how long this would go on for.  But it feels as if I need to stop now.  I realized the last couple of weeks that instead of having a relaxing coffee and donut at the beach, I spend most of my time trying to find yet one more photograph.  So our Tuesday ritual has become something else, and so I have decided that this is the last post in this project.  I had done a photo of me holding one of these donuts between by thumb and forefinger months ago.  I wanted to make the ultimate version of the shot, so later on I brought two chopsticks with me, stuck them into the bottom of the donut and took this picture.  Then I carefully retouched the chopsticks out of the image, and here is my surrealistic image that I really love.  It may be my favorite photograph of the whole series!

So here are our empty chairs on the beach as a way of saying goodbye.  We will continue our weekly ritual, and things will be much more relaxed for me, not having to find a picture each week. I mean, if I do find something wonderful, then I will do a regular post on the blog.  I first learned of the term "swan song" when I was in my early years at Newsday.  Someone talked about one of the reporters who was leaving, as "writing his swan."  I had no idea what that meant.  This is what Wikipedia says about a swan song:  "The swan song is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement.  The phrase refers to an ancient belief that swans sing a beautiful song just before their death, having been silent during most of their lifetime.  This belief, whose basis in actuality is long-debated, had become proverbial in ancient Greece and was reiterated many times in later Western poetry and art."

Upstate Skies

We left Long Island this morning enroute to Rochester, NY where we will be staying with Vince and Jo Anne for Thanksgiving week.  Not to worry, we have been hunkered down for 38 weeks, and Vince and Jo Anne have been doing the same.  So we will all be safe together.  We knew we were upstate when we drove from sunny conditions into overcast clouds, which is kind of a signature of the weather here.  The clouds are a beautiful silver gray, the only problem is when you see cloudy skies for weeks at a time.

 

Facetime with California

We decided to do a Facetime with Amy and Liz and Gus and Vivian this afternoon!  It was so nice to have a conversation in real life and and to see Vivian in real time.  She was good for a while, but then it was her nap time and she was tired, so I didn't get a smile from her.  But everyone else looks great, don't you think?  One of the reasons we wanted to chat with them was that we have decided to cancel our JetBlue flight reservations for Christmas.  The Covid infection rate is climbing through the roof in California and we think it is just a risk we don't want to take.  But we were SO looking forward to the trip!

 

Big Leaves, Little Leaves

I spent a few days trying to get this shot.  The driveway was covered with leaves from all the trees around here and I was trying to find a nicely designed picture that included the beautiful little yellow leaves from the Japanese maple tree and the larger brown leaves from the Hickory tree.  I must have taken my Nikon with the close up lens, out to the driveway at least four times, trying to get the best shot.  The rain was really helpful - I tried two different times when it was not raining, and those photographs were not as interesting as this one.

 

The Crescent Moon

I went out to photograph the crescent moon tonight all by itself.  The moon was one of the three objects in my photograph that included two planets that I posted the other day.  So tonight I celebrate just the moon.  Our moon.  It is such a wonderful thing to look at, either with our naked eyes, or binoculars or a telescope.  I think my favorite way to view the moon is with high power, through a telescope.  You would not believe  how battered the surface of the moon is.  It is battered because the surface was smashed by all the small rocks, and some not so small ones, that were left over after the formation of the solar system.  It is astounding thing to see.