Happy Halloween!

Every year, without fail, I get a pumpkin and carve a Jack-O-Lantern and put a candle in it, and when I light it up and see his face, it always makes me smile!  I like that he is a smiling Jack-O-Lantern, and not a scary one.  It would not be Halloween without my Jack-O-Lantern sitting on the front porch railing, smiling out at the world.  Happy Halloween, everyone!

 

A Sweater for Vivian

This is a sweater that Kathy made for Vivian.  Isn't it just beautiful!  She hadn't made a sweater in years and years.  This one was fairly difficult for her, but she stuck with it.  At times she would talk to my sister Betsey, and another friend of hers when she would run into a difficult part.  And with a lot of patience and perseverance and some ripping out of stitches and doing it over again, she produced this magnificent piece of knitting!

 

Moonset in a Strange Land

I am so lucky that I do the “photography thing.” I went to the grocery store before dinner to buy a couple of last minute things, and when I got out of the car, I saw the crescent moon down low!  So I walked around to find a good foreground and found these trees, between buildings, which had their tops chopped off!  It was such a strange foreground! But after thinking that I didn’t like the foreground at all, my brain finally switched and I realized that the strange foreground was actually really interesting!  I wandered around looking for a better view, but this was the best.  After I took the shot and was walking around in the grocery store, I was feeling a "high" from finding this shot, while on an ordinary trip to the store.  My trip was suddenly very special.  I am so lucky I do the photography thing!

 

Fall Color

I am seeing something this fall that I don't remember seeing before.  Strings of red, orange and yellow leaves that are clearly from some sort of creeping vine.  I have seen it in our ivy the back yard, on a tree a ways down on Laurel avenue, and on our neighbor's wall, crawling over the ivy.  The leaves look a lot like Maple tree leaves, but they are clearly not.  In any case, it is really the first brilliant fall color we are seeing so far.  I love that this shows the colorful vines, but some remaining rose blossoms, as well as the blue branches of the plant in the lower right that I cannot remember the name of.

So Ron guessed from what little of the plant was showing in the lower right corner of the photo, that it was Russian Sage.  So I went out an photographed it, even though it was dusk and it was getting dark out, thinking that a close-up would help.  When I came back in, Kathy was awake from her nap and she did identify it as Russian sage.  Thought you all might enjoy knowing this, since I absolutely depend on my gardening friends for help with so many flowers and plants!  I also noticed, by the way, that my original photograph was much too dark, so I lightened that photograph as well.

 

Eastbound on the LIE in the Dark

 

What an idiot!  That guy is shooting while driving again!  And he just took an AAA Driver Safety Course! What is wrong with him?  Well, nothing, actually.  It is a skill I have developed over the years.  I am not looking at the back of the camera.  I just hold the camera in one hand over the steering wheel, and I do NOT look at the camera, I am looking ahead on the road.  And I just click and click without seeing what I am getting.  I may take a quick glance at the back of the camera after a few frames to see how things look but only for 2 seconds.  I really love this photograph because of the design of it, with the double white line the main graphic element.  And no "airbag moments" as well.

Happy Diwali 2022!

Monday was the start of a five day festival celebrated by Hindus around the world that celebrates the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance and good over evil.  Diwali is a national holiday in India and also marks the start of the Hindu New Year.  It is a festival of lights.  That's why I thought this photograph was a good choice to mark the holiday.  I learned about this holiday from some of my friends who are involved in astronomy and I really love what this holiday celebrates, especially in light of the difficult times we are going through, where many people are not kind to each other.

 

So Now I'm a Fashion Critic?

This woman was ahead of me in line at Dunkin' this morning.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw her leggings.  First, it just seemed strange to see so much of her leg in the first place, and then to see the leg criss-crossed with the black strips was so strange.  It just felt kind of creepy.  But what do I know about fashion anyhow?

 

Late Afternoon Shadows

I went into the downstairs bathroom to wash my hands late in the afternoon the other day, and I saw these shadows on the wall!  Yikes!  I quickly ran to the living room and not having a second to spare, I grabbed my little Sony Rx100 and raced back to this room.  The sun seems to move SO fast at a time like this, so I didn't waste any time and just shot a few frames, then I looked more carefully and moved something on the glass shelf with the glass on it, to simplify things just a bit.  Then I took this photograph!  Just another unexpected "normal" thing that happens every day, if we happen to see it.

 

Haunted House

This is a house in town, across from the post office.  You might remember it because I have photographed it before.  I went to the store to get ravioli for dinner and remembered I had three letters to mail, so went by the post office.  As I turned away from the post box, I saw this, and fortunately had my "toy" camera with me and made this shot.  The yellow light is from a streetlight - I think it must be an old sodium vapor lamp, because they are yellow.  That light is what grabbed my attention and made this scene interesting. 

 

The Guessing Game, Part 2

OK, here is the answer to the Guessing Game!  Here are all the parts you saw in yesterday's photograph, assembled together.  This is a mount for a small telescope! It is called an Alt/Az mount, which means it allows the telescope to point up and down as in "altitude" and to rotate from left to right, as in "azimuth."  It is the simplest kind of telescope mount.  I designed and built this mount which can be easily disassembled and the parts packed in a suitcase when I travel to dark skies out west.

And this is what the mount looks like when attached to a photographic tripod, which I always bring on trips, and when the telescope that I built this for, is attached to the mount.  This is a small telescope by normal standards - the lens in the front is about 3 inches in diameter.  My other telescopes have lenses or mirrors that are 6 inches in diameter, or 8 inches, or 10 inches.  I would rather bring a larger telescope to dark sky sites, but larger is heavier and the excess baggage fee would cost a fortune.  But just to give you an idea of how telescopes can improve our ability to see faint objects, this 3" scope improves our ability 81 times.  A 6" scope improves our ability 324 times.  And a 10" scope improves our ability 900 times!  So, yeah, I would rather have a 10" telescope under dark skies, but...  This telescope, by the way, is only 16 inches long and will fit in my backpack and only travels as carry-on.  That's the only safe way.  And under dark skies, it will give beautiful views of celestial objects!  Oh, and this mount is not varnished yet.  When it has three coats of spar varnish, it will be stunning to look at! 

 

The Guessing Game, Part 1

I just finished a woodworking project that I am kind of proud of.  It is something that I thought up in my head, and set about fabricating it, hoping that when it was done, it would function as I had imagined.  So I decided to have some fun here, and see if anyone can guess what this device might be.  These are all the parts that comprise the device.  The wood pieces you can see are made from 3/4" Birch plywood.  The white circles with the little hole in the middle are 1/16" Teflon sheet, and of course there are some metal hardware pieces.  Good luck to all...   Answer tomorrow night... 

Stan Speaking at ASLI

Yesterday afternoon Stan came out here and we spent the afternoon copying some old negatives with a camera setup I built, and then we went though the talk he had put together for a presentation at our astronomy meeting last night.  Then I made my Mediterranean Salmon which Stan loves.  And Kathy made a blueberry pie for dessert.  Then off we went to the meeting, and he gave a terrific talk illustrated with a number of his recent night sky photographs from Yellowstone National Park, and from Haleakalā National Park, on Maui.  The perfect ending for a really nice day.

 

The Feather Against the Sky

After sitting in the car having our coffee and donut, we got out to walk on the beach for a bit.  It was pretty windy which is why we had our Dunkin' in the car.  As I walked along I found this feather in the sand.  I think it is a seagull feather, but I can't be sure.  For some reason I held it up against the sky to look at it, and when I did, I thought "I need to take a photograph of this."  I was aware that I needed to use a large lens opening so that even though this was shot with a wide angle lens - 24mm, that the background would be out of focus so it didn't interfere with the sharpness of the feather.  This feels like one of the best photos I have done recentlyl.

Fall Color Begins, Sort of...

What day was this?  Right, Tuesday.  Where will you find us on Tuesdays?  Right.  At the beach with Dunkin.'  I did notice that there was the first hint of fall color in a tree there, the first I have seen this season.  I have friends in upstate New York and in Vermont who are seeing brilliant color everywhere where they are,  and so I have been watching for any signs here on Long Island.  Yeah, it sure it subtle, but it is something.

 

SERIOUS Halloween Decorations

I have been going to the local hardware store a lot lately, and a nearby Home Depot with all the work I am doing on the dining room floor.  The other day at the Depot, I saw this Halloween ghost and skeleton on display!  Are you kidding me, look at the size of these things!  The skeleton is billed as being 12 feet tall!  It comes with a hefty price, $299, but you would have one of the most impressive displays on your block, certainly.  And to think we only have two pumpkins on the front steps.  We are way behind the times, obviously!

 

The Diet

So Kathy and I have both been on a diet, and it has really worked for me because she has not been doing her favorite thing, which is baking!  She LOVES to bake.  And that always torpedoes my attempts at weight loss.  So we are still on the diet, but Kathy wanted to bake a lemon meringue pie.  So she did, but she used a really tiny pie dish.  And then we cut normal looking slices from the pie.  But I think the diameter of the dish may only have been 7" in diameter!  So this almost looks normal until you see that the slice of pie is only slightly larger than the dessert fork!  It is so funny looking because of it's size.  So you could say that we "had our cake and ate it too" because we ended up with about 4 bites and had that delicious taste, but did not ruin our caloric intake for the day!

 

I'm Losing My Touch

 I am losing my touch!  Today Kathy and went up to the St. Lukes Church Fair, just to wander around.  I brought my camera, of course.  As we went into the yard by the church, there were two young girls sitting in the grass enjoying their ice cream cups.  I said "Those look delicious" when one looked up, and one said "Thank you."  So here I was looking at this wonderful scene with the two girls, and I could not bring myself to bring my camera up to my eye and take a photograph!  You know why?  I was worried that someone would see me taking a photograph of two young girls and accuse me of creepy behavior.  Isn't that sad?  It killed me not to take that slice of life of two young girls enjoying their ice cream on a sunny afternoon.  But I think I made the right decision.  

So then to my second photograph, above.  I decided to do some kind of overall photograph of the tents and people in the park.  But it was dull without people in the foreground of the photograph.  So I stood there and waited until people walked into the shot.  This is the third couple to walk in that I photographed.  I did a few photographs and figured I had my shot.  But when I was doing the editing at home, I realized I missed THE shot.  I thought the subject was the fair with some people in it.  Wrong!  The real subject of interest was this couple!   I love how this couple is dressed - the woman has such beautiful hair so nicely arranged, and she has the wonderful wrap over her shoulders.  They are the most interesting thing in the photograph.  And I didn't realize that until I was editing the photographs much later.  Yup, loosing my touch...

 

A Nice Place to Relax

One more photograph from our trip to Rhode Island and Massachusetts.  I think of Dick and Trauti as living in Rhode Island, but I know better.  Dick was born and raised in Rhode Island and worked for The Providence Journal for most of his newspaper career.  So that's why I sometimes forget that they live in Massachusetts, just across the Rhode Island line.  This is a scene in their front yard, late in the afternoon. Doesn't that look like a lovely place to sit and read or relax as the light of the day fades?  Yet another creation from their joint gardening talents.

 

Dark Matter and Dark Energy Lecture

We had an astounding lecture last night at my astronomy club.  It was by a professor at a nearby university, and she was amazing.  Her topic is Dark Matter and Dark Energy and if I tried to tell you about it, it would take days, trust me!  In the most simple explanation, believe it or not, the largest percentage of the universe is made up, not of what we can see, but what we CAN'T see - Dark Matter and Dark Energy!  So I was just taking photographs once in a while at the lecture and trying to find interesting photographs.  This is the professor pointing to an image of a supernova, which is when a star explodes.  I love this photo because she is standing in between the projector and the screen, so there are stars on her face.

She was really dedicated to helping our group understand some complex information and was very patient in answering questions.  What a wonderful speaker.

Here is one of our members asking a question during the lecture.  What I thought was amusing is the expressions of the other members as they watched him ask his question!

And the good thing was, as you can see, that the mathematics involved were really easy to understand, right?  You all "get" this, right?  The math explained here would take me two days to explain, IF I understood what it meant.  BUT...  She explained what each of the symbols meant and then what the significance of the equation meant, and that was the most important thing.

 

Chewy is Here!

Cats!  So funny!  We got the latest delivery of cat food. We buy online from Chewy.  Their prices are good and their customer service is second to none!  During Covid, when things were in short supply, they bent over backward to keep everyone supplied with food.  They would ship maybe half the order which kept us from being high and dry, with a promise and a date for more as soon as they could get it.  Anyhow, the cats love the food, but they also love something new in the house.  After the cans had been removed from the box, and we walked away, I came back in a couple of minutes, and look who was in the box.  Of course!  Something new in the house to sit in.  Cats.  Ya gotta' love them!

 

An Amazing Sander!

When we bought our house in 1970 there was a lot of work that needed to be done to "freshen it up."  Mechanically it was in great shape but we had to paint, and install rugs, and I built bookcases in the living room and repaired a whole bunch of stuff.  I added plumbing for the washer and dryer and did electrical wiring to add capacity and outlets to the house.  My friend Jim Wildey said that my world began and ended at Sears, in the tool department!  So many of my tools, like sanders and electric drills and electric saws were purchased back then at Sears and they have all been well used.  But the world has changed, and I have replaced a number of these old tools, which still work perfectly, with newer replacements that are better or more efficient.  Well, this is the newest addition to my collection.  It is a "DeWalt Random Orbit Sander, variable speed, 5 inch."  It is an amazing machine.  It runs at speeds between 8,000 and 12,000 RPM and that can remove a LOT of material in a short time, and yet there is no risk of digging a hole in the floor.  It has a little bag on the back of it.  So when you look at the sanding disks, they have a circle of holes in them.  I wondered why they were there.  There is a powerful fan in the sander that sucks up all of the sanding dust through the holes and into the little vacuum bag!  Just astounding.  And another part that is a gem is that the sanding disks do not use any kind of adhesive.  Each new sandpaper disk has a kind of tiny Velcro on the back of it!  You just push the sandpaper in contact with the round rubber disk on the sander, and it just plain sticks!  So I am having lots of fun using this to sand the floors in the dining room, at present, before varnishing them.  Men and boys and all their toys!

 

The Magnificent Full Moon

It has been crystal clear the last two nights, so I have set up my telescopes in the side yard and spent time observing the full moon as well as the planets Jupiter and Saturn.  It was really nice being out under the stars on a beautiful night.  The moon is actually much more dramatic when it is only half illuminated at it's first quarter phase.  Then you can see the incredible rough surface of the mountains and craters.  But there is one thing about the moon when it is full that we can see best, and that is the "ejecta" that results when a meteor has struck the moon.  When that happens the power of the impact blows massive amounts of the moon's surface out of the inside of the crater.  There is so much force involved, that the material is blown as far as 200 or 300 miles for some of the craters!  Two of the craters with the largest rays are Tycho at the lower left, and Copernicus just above the center on the left.  Now you know one more thing about the moon,  Please click on the photo to see it larger.

 

In Memory of Deceased Members...

This seems like a good time to show you yet another sculpture of a human figure, after my posts about the Civil War and WWII memorials in Rhode Island with their beautiful sculptures.  This statue is more local - it is in a nearby town.  It is in memory of deceased members of a fire department.  I first saw it when it was installed in the early 1980's.  I remember being surprised at this the first time I saw it.  The proportions of the fireman just seemed strange.  I did wonder about the people who commissioned this sculpture.  I wonder if the artist created a maquette, which is a scale model or rough draft of an unfinished sculpture,  which everyone could see before giving the go ahead in creating the full sized statue.

 

A Saturday Shock!

Almost every Saturday morning for who knows how long, I have driven over to a Bagel Store three miles away (sometimes I ride over with my bike).  I buy enough bagels for Saturday and Sunday morning breakfasts.  I can't remember when I first went there, but it has to have been more than 20 years ago.  It was run by a Chinese couple who I always chatted with, and 10 years ago or so their children worked with them at the store as well.  I saw a piece of paper fastened to the door when I pulled into the parking spot in front.  I was in shock when I read their note.  They were always busy, and whether it was snowing or a storm, they were always open, even during the worst weather.  They could always be depended on.    It does seem so strange that they closed so suddenly, with no notice at all.  I guess it will always be a mystery...  I am so sad to know that they are now gone.

 

World War I Monument, East Providence, RI

This is the second memorial in East Providence that I spoke of yesterday, this one in honor of those who died in WW I.  This World War I Memorial was designed by Pietro Montana, an Italian-born painter and sculptor. For the design of the sculpture, Montana modeled Charles Atlas and "strove to communicate the U.S. doughboy's upstanding character and valor by way of a muscle-bound physique.” At the dedication, Major General Charles Pelot Summerall gave an address which highlighted the handicap placed upon the soldiers by a lack of preparedness and "invoked the fighting ideal embodied by Montana's doughboy."  I decided to crop into my original photograph so you can see all the detail.  What a handsome man he is!

Here is the whole statue.  It is such a beautiful sculpture, and below I am showing a detail of his feet and his helmet.  And here is the good news, if any.  I mentioned that almost 280 people died from East Providence during the Civil war, for WW I they list 23 soldiers who died.  The plaque in the last photograph at the bottom shows all the names, this time

 

Civil War Monument, East Providence, RI

We were driving to Dick and Trauti's on Route 44 in East Providence, and within two minutes passed not one, but two monuments with statues of a soldier on them!  And this is in East Providence which is much smaller in population than Providence itself, with one-quarter the population.  The current population is 47,000.  I mention this fact because on the face of the rock, are a list of nearly 280 names of soldiers from East Providence that died during the Civil War!  Local politics split over slavery during the American Civil War, as many had ties to Southern cotton and the slave trade. Despite ambivalence concerning the war, the number of military volunteers routinely exceeded quota.  I have come to love these beautiful sculptures of soldiers that I have seen in the last ten years or so.  I think the first one I noticed was in front of City Hall in my home town of Milford, Connecticut and I posted it on my blog at the time. Here is a link: WWI Doughboy, Milford.  Two years later I really saw, for the first time, a sculpture of a soldier in Glen Cove which I hadn't really noticed and I have been by it thousands of times since I arrived here in 1966.  The Soldier. It was by the SAME sculptor!  So these two figures in East Providence meant I would have to come back and photograph them and find out more about them, which I have done.

Boy I didn't do a good job on this "assignment" because I only photographed the top of the plaque and this is only one-third of the list of names, totaling nearly 280 men who gave their lives.  I was not able, by the way, to ascertain who the sculptor was.  Tomorrow I will show you the WW I memorial with statue.

 

The Magic Tree

                                             

After the astronomy meeting tonight, I walked to the parking lot with my friend John, and we were standing by this tree chatting, when I started to notice this tree.  So I was thinking about how I might photograph it.  So I took out my Sony Rx 100 which I always have on my belt, and cranked the ISO WAY up to 6400.  The exposure time was 1/2 second and I stood there and hand-held the camera and shot.  Well, what is the chance that the photograph would be sharp?   Not much.  Then I stopped being lazy and walked the thirty feet to my car and took out a tripod and started taking some photographs.  John headed to his car and apologized for what would happen when he turned on his headlights, and I said "don't worry about it."  As he drove away, he stepped on the brake pedal and the red tail lights lit up the tree and that was my shot!  Thanks, John!

The Water Garden

This is the water garden at Dick and Trauti's home.  Yesterday's garden is in the front of the house, and this water garden is at the back of the house, so that when we are sitting on the deck in back, this is the scene we see and it is so relaxing when we are sitting around talking.  It is such a beautifully designed garden.  I made a mistake yesterday in describing the building of the front garden - Trauti wrote and reminded me that it was Dick who did all the brick work on the walkways, and who did all the carpentry in building the picket fence that surrounded the garden.  Sorry for my failure to give him credit!  Credit where credit is due!

 

The Garden Gate

In the 1970's Dick and Trauti bough a piece of property in Rehoboth and had a house built. Trauti is a wonderful and talented gardener and she works tirelessly in her efforts.  After a while she had a beautiful garden in the front yard and it has brick pathways, and a wood picket fence around the whole thing.  She is an elegant sense of garden design.  Well it is now 50 years later and there is only one section of the fence left, along with an opening for a garden gate.  It is still a beautiful garden even with the fence gone.

 

Memorial Bridge - By Richard Benjamin

How stunning is this photograph!  It's not mine. I realized that after posting my photographs of the memorial walkway yesterday it didn't really give any sense at all of what a magnificent structure this is.  So I turn to my friend Dick Benjamin, a master of photography.  He knows Rhode Island like the back of his hand.  He knows the city, it's mood, all the best views, and knows exactly when to be at a particular spot at the perfect time!  He really is a master!  For this photograph of the The Michael S. Van Leesten Memorial Bridge, he used his DJI Phanton 4 drone so that he could get just a little elevation, so you can get a much better sense of the whole structure as well as it's relation to the river and the city.  That would be good enough, BUT...  He waited for the perfect sunset before going to the site where he got this absolutely stunning photograph!  Like I said, Dick is an absolute Master of whatever he photographs!

 

Van Leesten Memorial Bridge

The Michael S. Van Leesten Memorial Bridge is a footbridge crossing the Providence River located in the city of Providence, Rhode Island.  The idea of building a pedestrian bridge on the old Interstate 195 piers was suggested in 1999 by a Rhode Island School of Design architecture student. Since money would have had to be spent on demolishing the concrete piers, from the old I-95 bridge the rationale was to instead build a simple footbridge with those funds.  In 2008, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation allocated two million towards its construction. It got a long way from simple after that and the final cost was over  twenty-one million dollars. The length is 450 feet.  It contains wooden benches, illuminated tables, built-in chessboards, and stainless-steel railings. The upper deck is made of Brazilian Ipe hardwood, while bluestone steps lead to terraced lower levels containing LED lighting and grass planting.  It is a beautiful structure with wonderful views of the city as you walk over the Providence River and back. It is such a beautiful thing and is a destination for visitors to Providence. Please be SURE to click on the images - the first one is a higher resolution image which will open almost full screen.