Judy's Dogwood

This is the Dogwood tree in Judy's yard, our next door neighbor.  It is such a joy and a beautiful thing to see in early spring each year.  There is a history of Dogwoods between three houses next to each other.  We had two Dogwoods in our yard when we first bought the house.  One was next to the garage, growing out of the ivy and it was gorgeous!  We had another one on the west side of our property right by the front porch.  Our neighbor for so many years, Larry, had one on the other side of our property line, near our back door.  In the spring it seemed that there were Dogwoods everywhere.  Well, there was some kind of disease going around.  We lost our largest and most beautiful tree by the garage first. Then Larry lost his by our back door, and finally we lost ours by the front porch.  It is amazing that Judy's tree survives and we are thankful for that.

 

Good as New

The Adirondack chairs are done!  I finished putting the last parts on the second chair today.  For the second chair, on the right I had to repair two of the vertical slats that make the back.  The bottoms of the slats had rotted and so I cut off the bad parts and glued in replacement wood.  For the seat, I had to make two new slats that had completely rotted. But now both chairs are as good as new.  I never realized how much work it would take to do the repairs!  That was a surprise to me. But there's a great deal of satisfaction in restoring something to make is look like new again.  By the way, there are some faint shadows on the chairs, so they don't look perfectly white in the photo.

This was what the second chair looked like before I began my restoration process.  As you can see it was in pretty bad shape, 

 

Personal History

I have never been good at carefully keeping track of my photographs and negatives, until the digital age. Back in the age of film photography, in this case in the early 1990's  I attended three photographic workshops with a photographer from Arizona. He took us to really interesting areas.  One year part of our trip was to the Barry Goldwater Bombing Range.  There was an important archaeological area that was a buffer around the bombing range and so the US Air Force was required to allow visitors during certain periods.  There were a group of maybe 14 of us, many who were using 4x5 view cameras as I was.  We camped for a week in the desert areas, one of which was the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Area, which is right on the border with Mexico.  I am sure that now that would no longer be possible because soon after that trip, they shut down The Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument because of migrants using those areas to come across the border to the United States.  It was a great trip, though.  I found some negatives in my darkroom today and this was one of them.  Man, who is the cool dude with the aviator sunglasses?

 

Stan's Talk About Photographing the Space Shuttle

Stan came out from the city this afternoon and we got to hang out and talk and look at photographs and the try out the old Leica lens on my new Sony camera.  Then I fixed Mediterranean Salmon for dinner which is a favorite - he says its the only reason he comes out!  And then we were off to the Astronomy meeting where he gave a spectacular talk and slideshow of what it was like for him to photograph all the Space Shuttle launches and landings for the last 5 years of the program, for Agence France-Presse where he worked.  He had a lot of "behind the scenes" photographs which was wonderful - not the kinds of things we usually see having to do with the shuttle program.

This was one of the photographs in the presentation.  One time he got to go way up on the gantry that surrounds the shuttle until just before launch.  He said it was amazing to be so close to the shuttle and to be able to look down on it when it was on the pad where it was launched from.  It was an amazing talk which everyone loved! (Photograph Copyright © by Stan Honda)

 

"Mare's Tails"

It's Tuesday so we were down at the beach as usual with our coffee, tea and two Dunkin' Donuts.  I was kind of idly looking at the sky and then began to realize the presence of these Cirrus clouds moving in.  They are just spectacular in their beauty in a blue sky, so I quickly jumped out of the car and snapped a few photographs with my iPhone.  These clouds are high clouds, usually seen at between 20,000 and 66,000 feet.  They are made of ice crystals, as you can imagine because they form so high where the temperatures are very cold.  On a standard day the temperature at 25,000 feet is about -30.0 degrees Fahrenheit!  But what this is really all about is how incredibly beautiful nature can be!  What a beautiful thing to see on an ordinary day!  Oh, I nearly forgot - these clouds are also known as "mare's tails, which would be easy to imagine, given their appearance.

 

Blue Sky, New Green Leaves and the Sun

I have checkpoints where I record my times as I ride around my ten mile bicycle route.  This spot is one where I stop and record three times before continuing.  Today I looked up and of course saw the beautiful blue sky.  Then I saw the dark silhouettes of the large trees then the light green of the new leaves, with the sun shining through them.  Something so beautiful with all these things together.  It made my day special to see this.

 

Kathy's Doll

This is Kathy's doll which sits on top of a clock on the chest of drawers in the dining room.  She started making dolls for Vivian, and the earlier dolls were smaller than this one.  The origin of this one is interesting, we visited our friends Dick and Trauti in Rhode Island and Trauti had some dolls that Kathy admired, so she took a few photographs of them and use one of those photographs for making this doll.  She made one for Vivian first, and then decided she wanted one for herself, and this is the result. What is amazing is the hand stitching on the face, of the smile and the glasses.  She was really proud of how the stitching came out.  She is such a cute doll, isn't she?