Visiting Friends

Erik and Glauke were our neighbors next door in Sea Cliff for ten years.  Then they decided to move to Vermont two years ago.  So on this trip, I called them and they invited me to stop by to visit and to have dinner with them.  We had such a nice visit!  It was wonderful to see them and catch up and see their new home which they are working on..  And since they bought a house where there was once a farm, I, of course, decided to do my version of "American Gothic." Unfortunately there was not a pitchfork for the photo, so we found a rake.   Of course this portrait doesn't look at all like "American Gothic."

 

Stellafane Observing!

I got back to the B&B at 2 AM after a spectacular night of observing the stars under jet black skies.  It was a magnificent night for observing!  It was so dark, at 1 AM when two of my good friends approached the telescope I did not recognize them in the dark.  This is the Milky Way, a beautiful and sublime slight that most of the population in the United States has never even seen.  When I want to observe under dark skies, I drive out to the east end of Long Island where you can see the Milky Way on a clear night.  But that was 20 years ago, and now the Milky Way from there is only a faint representation of what it once was.  So to see the Milky Way in all it's glory in a dark sky is good for the soul!

The Dark Skies of Vermont!

So I am in Vermont for the Stellafane Conventon.  I had hoped to do some observing with the telescope I brought from home.  It was clear for most of the day but at sunset approached, there started to be clouds in the sky.  So it looked unlikely that I would be able to view the sky with my telescope tonight.  So I came down off the hill and drove to the B&B.  When I got out of my car, a large part of the sky was visible with clouds around.  So I set up my camera and did a few wide-angle photographs of the sky.  This is the big dipper which everyone knows and it stands out beautifully in the dark skies of Vermont!  If you click on the image, it will be easier to see the stars in the enlarged image.

 

A Day of Astronomy

Our first day at the Stellafane Convention in Vermont was spent at the Hartness House Workshop.  This is a program that has been running for at least 10 years, where professional astronomers and others come speak to us about their work and their discoveries.  That is an all-day event, and then there is a banquet with a keynote speaker.  This year it was the author Dava Sobel, whose first book was "Longitude" a best seller about John Harrison, a self-taught clockmaker , who built the first clock that would keep really accurate time at sea, on a rolling ship.  It was a best seller!  She lives on Long Island and years ago I got to photograph her when her second book came out. She spoke about poetry related to astronomy.  Here she is signing one of her books for one of the members who attended the talk. Her new book is titled "The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars."  I can't wait to read that one because she is such a great writer.

 

In My Happy Place!

Today I drove to Springfield, Vermont to attend the Stellafane Convention for amateur telescope makers.  Traffic was really light the whole way, so I got off I-91 and drove over to Windsor Locks, and went to the New England Air Museum.  I have been there once or twice before but that was years ago.  So another visit was in order.  I saw that they had a North American F-100 Super Sabre on display but there was a chain across the steps leading to the cockpit.  I was talking with one of the docents, who had been an Air Force pilot and asked if I could go up and look in the cockpit.  He removed the chain and said that I could SIT in it!  Wow.  This aircraft is special to me because when I was in the US Air Force I got to refuel this kind of aircraft, and I loved seeing these supersonic fighter jets coming and going, and the takeoffs in full afterburner were impressive to see and hear, particularly at night!  So to finally sit in one was the dream of the 12-year old kid I am!  And the docent was kind enough to use my camera to take a photograph of me.

This is the really impressive ceiling of the entrance to the museum!  Just a stunning view when you first walk in the front door.  So, yes, today I was in my happy place!

 

Wonder Woman Heads Back to Los Angeles!

We took Amy and Vivian to JFK this morning for their flight back to Los Angeles.  Amy is astounding, and when she travels she is Wonder Woman!  Here is Vivian in her stroller which Amy brought and had to unfold. Then she put the car seat in it's cloth case and piled that on top of the stroller.  to the right is a smaller suitcase, with a carry on bag on top of that, AND a white plastic bag that says "I Love NY" on it, which Amy used to bring yet another bag on the plane so that it looks like something she bought at the last minute at the airport because you are limited to how many bags you can bring!  And then to the right of all that, behind the stainless steel bollard is Amy's larger suitcase, which gets checked with the stroller!  So she can wheel ALL of this by herself into the airport and the check in!  Like I said, Wonder Woman!

 

Amy & Vivian Arrive from Montauk

Amy and Vivian arrived from their stay with friends in Montauk, and it seemed as if we hadn't seen them in weeks.  Thats so funny.  But here they are just after arriving home.  Amy also drove to Brooklyn, on the way home, to visit her friend Yvonne and her two month old baby!  They have so much to share and have been friends since forever!  So it is good that Amy and Viv are back, but after yesterday and today, we take them to JFK for their flight early tomorrow morning.  Time flies so quickly sometimes in life!

 

The Hill-Stead Museum

After the Saturday party at my sister Joan's we drove up to Meriden and stayed overnight.  Then on Sunday we couldn't check into the Lake house, so we found this museum, and stopped to visit.  Unfortunately, there were no openings on the tours of the house, so we could only wander the grounds, but that wasn't a bad thing, because there was no entrance fee, if you did not take the house tour.

Hill–Stead Museum is a Colonial Revival house and art museum set on a large estate in Farmington, Connecticut. It is best known for its French Impressionist masterpieces, architecture, and stately grounds. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark as a nationally significant example of Colonial Revival architecture, built in 1901 to designs that were the result of a unique collaboration between Theodate Pope Riddle, one of the United States' first female architects, and the renowned firm of McKim, Mead & White.  This is the beautiful sunken garden, with the "Summer house" in the center.

This is a view of the house from the entrance driveway.  The porch on the left was modeled after Washington's home in Mount Vernon.  It is a huge house of 33,000 square feet.The house is extensively furnished with paintings, prints, objets d'art, and fine furniture and rugs. Highlights of the collection include major paintings by Eugène Carrière, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet and James McNeill Whistler, among others.

This is one of the roads on the property that leads to some of the barns.

I love this photograph of a barn, because nothing is square in the photo.  That happens to really old buildings as they tend to settle after one hundred years or so.

This view of the buildings shows how it is building after building after building, all connected together.  This is such a normal thing to do in New England architecture.  Apparently the taxes are less if all the buildings are connected together.  This is a wonderful museum and I hope that we get to come back here one day.

 

Coyote!

A day or so after we first arrived at the Lake house. Liz was standing on the back deck and said she saw a small, thin Coyote quietly walking on a path in the woods surrounding the house.  Then she saw it one other time when we were both in kayaks touring the lake.  I never got to see one, however.  Until, on the last day and we were just about packed up, we saw this one cross the road, and unconcerned with us, walked up the street behind us.  I had the trunk open so grabbed my small Canon and it's 400mm equivalent lens, and managed to get this photograph.  When Liz mentioned how thin the Coyote looked to the man who owns the house, he said it was OK and it looked thin because it was shedding its fur because of the heat.  Well, OK, but it sure looks thin to me.  So I looked up some information about them and found this: "The species is versatile, able to adapt to and expand into environments modified by humans. It is enlarging its range by moving into urban areas in the eastern U.S. and Canada."  "Primarily carnivorous, its diet consists mainly of deer, rabbits, hares, rodents, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, though it may also eat fruits and vegetables on occasion."  I am guessing this one may have trouble finding enough food to eat in this urban environment. 

 

Guess Where We Went!

Guess where we went!  Yes! To the movies!  For the first time in probably three years.  This was a movie that we NEEDED to see on the large screen!  Can you guess why?  I can't tell you the name of this movie because there are bots on the internet that go around looking for "stuff" that shouldn't be posted on the internet. So that's why you have go guess at the name of the movie!  This movie was really wonderful, by the way.  Really well done and a good story, and there was lots of first rate footage of something in the movie that I like to see a lot of! So I was not disappointed!

 

Fun With The Sprinkler!

When we got home from the lake, Gus and Amy went out for a while, touring Sea Cliff and Glen Cove to see the spots where they grew up.  So Liz and Kathy were watching Vivian, and decided to put the sprinkler on the garden hose and set it up in the side yard.  Vivian was fearless, and laughing and really enjoying the water from the sprinkler!  She even bent over and put her face in the spray.  It was so much fun for all of us to watch how much she loved the water.

 

A Lot of Photographers in Our Family!

This is such a typical scene at any of our family gatherings!  I am not the only photographer present - everyone is a photographer, with either cameras, or cell phones!  It really is wonderful, because I love that we all are photographers.  And everyone has fun doing it.  And sometimes, like in this case, when I am the subject holding a birthday cake and everyone is just photographing me, it does seem funny, so I grabbed my camera and did this shot.

 

Happy Anniversary Gus & Amy!

Gus and Amy celebrated their 15th anniversary when we were all at the lake house! We almost forgot the date.  Then my sister Betsey reminded us!  Good for Betsey! There was a lot going on, so we didn't have any kind of special celebration, we just wished them both a happy anniversary!  This was a nice week for celebrations.

 

Thunderstorms!

Thunderstorms were forecast for today, but the surprise was we had the first one pass just north of us at 7 AM this morning.  We were taking Liz to JFK for her flight home, and the last thing I wanted to drive through on the way to the airport early in the morning was a thunderstorm.  But we lucked out.  It passed just north of Sea Cliff after we were half way to the airport!  Whew!  But Liz was not so lucky - she boarded her plane on time, and it taxied out and was in a long line of aircraft waiting to depart.  She sat in line for an hour and fifteen minutes!  The storms made a mess of air traffic in the NY Area all day!  So we had storms moving through the area for perhaps four hours this afternoon.  I was on my way back from the grocery store at about 6 PM and I saw that the sky to the north was really dark, so I drove down to Sea Cliff beach and this was the scene I saw.   The cloud angling down and to the right is a thunderstorm happening in the middle of Long Island Sound!  I love that this is a color photograph, but there is not even a small bit of color visible anywhere in the photograph.

So you get two photos for the price of one today.  This is the view to the left of the first photograph.  It is the city of New Rochelle sticking up on the horizon.  It is not as good as the first photograph, but it is interesting enough to post.

 

Fun on the Water

One of the attractions of this vacation home that Liz and Amy found was that they had a whole bunch of boats that we could use.  Canoes and Kayaks, take your pick.  I love the design of this photo with two similar kayaks waiting at the dock.

Liz and I went to Wal-Mart and she bought these two inflatable water toys - one like a regular car inner tube, and the other larger and with a part that holds your legs up in the water.  What a photo, of Amy and Vivian and Gus, floating around in the lake!

Each day Liz and I would each take one of the fast kayaks and paddle the mile-long length of the lake and back, taking time to paddle slowly and investigate the nooks and crannies off to the sides of the lake.

Karen and Jessica came down from Rochester to spend a day with us on the lake, and they took to this canoe in a second and enjoyed their ride around the lake.

I love this shot of Liz in one of the fast kayaks slowly paddling on an absolutely smooth lake, showing almost a mirror image of her and the boat.

Here are Liz and Patrick returning from a tour of the lake by canoe.

Liz and Amy in a kayak, and to the left, Karen and Jessica in one of the canoes.  It was so nice to be out on the water every day, or floating in it, to cool down at the end of the day.

 

How To Eat Breakfast

Vivian is so good with her ability to use a spoon for all her meals.  It is amazing to see.  But on this morning, when she had eaten most of her breakfast, and there was only milk left in the bowl, I was so surprised when she lifted the cereal bowl to her face and drank the milk.  And it also cracked me up. It is clear to me that she knows what efficiency is when it comes to eating!  Fortunately I had the camera handy and was able to get the photograph before she put the bowl down!

 

The Usual Suspects

We have a joke in our family that if you don't have a photograph of some event, than the event never happened!  It is only a joke, but in our family of photographers, there are not many family events that are not photographed!  And of course there is the classic "line everyone up and shoot them" photograph that I am good at.  So these are the participants last Wednesday on the busiest day at the Lake House.  I will not do a "left to right" photo caption, but my three sisters are here, and our nephew Patrick and his wife Liz from Attleboro, MA, and our niece Tracy from Wallingford, CT and Vincent and Jo Anne from Rochester, and Joan's daughter Jenny and her brother's twins Grayson and Evelyn, and Vivian, and of course Liz and Amy and Gus.  I decided to order some tee-shirts for many of our visitors as a memento of the day.  Even a tiny one for Vivian! 

Cute Beyond Belief!

Miss Vivian!  What a cute and beautiful child!  I did this thing where I ordered a whole bunch of T-shirts for family members coming to the gathering at the lake house.  I was thrilled when the T-shirt company had children's sizes and the smallest size would be perfect for Vivian! How stylish is she in the shirt I designed!

You saw Greyson, Vivian, and Evelyn in the foreground of the family portrait I took at the gathering of my sister's last Saturday.  So Greyson and Evelyn came to the Lake house with their aunt, and once again they immediately took to Vivian and were very protective of her.  The three of them were playing in the lake with adults, and when they came out, they were all wrapped in towels, and when I saw this, I nearly fell over!  Is this a photograph, or what!

 

The Cloud Parade

Yesterday, the weather forecast included possible thunderstorms in the evening.  After dinner we were sitting on the upper porch just watching the sky.  After a while, we did hear some distant thunder to our west, but the radar app on our phones showed storms passing north of us and south of us but we received no rain.  We did, however have this wonderful "parade" of different kinds of clouds move across the sky to the north. 

Eventually the towering cumulus that is part of a thunderstorm moved across the sky to the north, and the buildups were lit by the setting sun, which was such a beautiful site.

Sometime later after sunset this cloud moved across the sky.  I thought it looked just line a map of Long Island, with a rounded left side and the twin forks of Long Island to the right!  Well, OK, so it is not a PERFECT map of Long Island, but it suggests the shape of it.

 

Mai-Tai Time!

We started a ritual yesterday, Mai-Tai's at around sunset, before dinner!  The girls first had Mai-Tai's on our trip to Hawaii a few years ago, and so, when we got home, I ordered the fixings for that drink.  We have only had a couple of drinks since.  But when Liz and Amy showed up, we started making them before dinner, and they brought all the bottles of stuff needed for making the drinks!  "But wait," you say, that's a glass of wine on the railing, not a Mai-Tai.  And you would be correct.  This is Jo Anne's glass of Riesling which she would rather have as her drink.  So I borrowed her glass of wine and photographed it in several places and this is my favorite shot.

So today, instead of everyone sitting around the table for their Mai-Tais, we lined up the chairs facing the setting sun and the lake, and took in that beautiful scene while leisurely sipping our drinks!  A lovely way to end our day!

 

The Lake House

                                                                                                          

Because of all the trips I have taken around the sun, 80 of them to be specific, the family decided that this year we should all get together and celebrate the milestone.  Also, so many family members have been born in July so this was a celebration for all those born this month.  So Amy and Liz did  their "thing" and found this wonderful house on a lake in Connecticut.  So we are really excited to be spending the week here, and family members from New York State and Massachusetts, and Connecticut will be joining us here for a day throughout the week

So today we took advantage of the collection of canoes and kayaks that come with the house.  Liz and I went out for a canoe ride this morning and paddled to the southern end of the lake, which was fun.  We are having beautiful weather with blue skies, cumulus clouds, and a nice breeze.

A few hours later, Karen McAvoy and her daughter Jessica arrived from Rochester .  So the two of them and Liz and Amy set off on a trip around the lake as well. So I used my 400mm lens to photograph the paddlers and a view of the lake.

It's About the Tree

We stayed in Meriden, Connecticut last night, and so Liz and I went to a Stop & Shop to get a few snacks and some soda to drink with a pizza we ordered and were going to eat in our motel room.  When we were coming out of the driveway from the store we came face to face with this scene.  We were rushing to pick up the pizza while it was still hot so we couldn't stop!  About an hour or so later on after we had our dinner, I drove back to the church to photograph it.  I loved the almost ghostly steeple of the church which was not lighted as the front of the church was. But what drove me to come back to do the photograph was the small tree which was right in the middle of the center of the front of the church.  For some reason, that tree made this photograph of the church something really different.  So glad we needed snacks and soda!

 

July Family Picnic

We had our annual July Family Picnic today, and it was a wonderful day.  We have had these gatherings before I was born!  So many of us, both living and passed, were born in the month of July.  My mother and father were both born in July, and  my sister Betsey was, and Amy was, and my niece Kelsey was!  So that's why the giant gatherings in the past.  Fewer people now, but Kathy and my three sisters are seated, and standing, Amy and Liz, then their cousin Kelsey, then Joan's son Jonathan, and his sister.  The twins are in the first row, the children of Jonathan and Lauren, who was in New Jersey at her family today.  And the twins are holding Miss Vivian and the three of them entertained each other all afternoon.  They took such great care of Vivian it was a joy to see!

There is a photography gene in the Spencer family, as displayed by Liz and Amy, taking a photo of my sisters and I.  Look how much fun they have taking pictures!  A chip off the old block, as was said many years ago by my Grandfather Spencer.  It was such a great day having us all together.

 

Washout Repair Progress

Back on October 8, 2021 I did a post showing the washout of the hill behind this house, that almost took the house with it.  Look at this link, and see how much has been changed, from what was back then,  in order to repair this hill:  First Washout Photo.  What a shock to see what an enormous amount of work has taken place in order to save this house.

Here is another slightly different view of the scene.  What an enormous project!

 

Moon Watch

We had an outreach program tonight at Old Westbury Gardens.  It was a moon watch event, and we were mobbed, which was wonderful!  I couldn't believe how many people came.  They were all very patient because even though we had five telescopes set up, there were so many people who wanted to see the moon that we had long lines.  This is a view down the line of telescopes, with people waiting.

This is my telescope, with one of our visitors looking through it at the Moon.  I first showed everyone in my line the Moon at low power so they could see all of the Moon.  Then I told everyone not to go away after seeing the first view, because I was going to show them a detail of an area of the moon with high power that had only craters, one after the other!  Everyone was so thankful for us coming with our telescopes.  We had young and old and everyone in between, and men and women, which was particularly nice to see.  It was such a great evening for our club, and for the people who came to see the Moon.