Green Stuff

I stop  at about 4 or 5 spots in my bike rides, to write down my times along the route.  For some reason, on this day, I happened to look at the wild green things growing right next to where I stop.  So I used my iPhone to take a few photographs.  I hoped I could come up with a nice design, and I didn't quite get that but I do like the slightly different green colors.  I have no idea what these things are, but if you look closely, you will see Poison Ivy.  At least I know what that is  and not to touch it!

 

Wires

Wires.  The bane of my existence when I am trying to do architectural photography!  Especially with old churches and their steeples.  Wires didn't exist when these churches were built.  This is the Old Presbyterian Church in Huntington, NY.  And get this - it is 240 years old!  How beautiful would this photograph be if there were no wires in front of it!  If you want to see a fascinating historical photograph of this church, click on this link, and you can see a really old photograph with a dirt road passing by the front of the church.  There is also a fascinating history of this church on that page as well.  What a history!  Historic Church Photo

 

Turn Around! Go Back!

I was on my way to my astronomy meeting and as I went by the harbor in Cold Spring Harbor, I saw these magnificent two cumulus clouds.  I thought "I should stop, those clouds are spectacular," but there was a car right behind me and no place to pull over on the narrow two lane road.  Then after driving another tenth of a mile, I KNEW I had to do back, so I pulled into a side street and turned around.  by the time I got back, the clouds had changed some, but I found myself looking at this fishing boat tied up to this dock and now I had a much better photograph, in addition to the clouds.

 

Maintaining the Tradition

So yesterday afternoon we drove from Sea Cliff up to Windsor Locks, Connecticut, where Bradley International Airport is located.  It was a three and a half hour drive, fortunately with no traffic or weather.  The forecast was for rain and thunderstorms.  So we booked a room in a motel and had dinner.  This morning we realized that it was TUESDAY so we looked for a nearby Dunkin, and found one half a mile north of the motel.  So, in order to maintain tradition, we had our coffee and donuts there. The bonus was that the Dunkin was right across the street from the runways of Bradley International Airport.  So we got to watch aircraft taking off and landing.  It's not the beach, exactly, but a nice change of pace.  We were there to pick up Kathy's cousin who was visiting family in Connecticut, and bring her back home with us for a visit.  Fortunately, our trip home was relatively painless, except for a 30 minute delay in bumper-to-bumper on I-95 because of a car accident.  I could have been worse, and we arrived home safely.

This is a United Express flight that arrived during our breakfast, as seen through the front window of Dunkin!

 

Memorial Day in Sea Cliff, 2024

Unfortunately, there was rain early this morning in our area, and so the Memorial Day Parade was cancelled.  I thought I would go up to the village and photograph Sea Cliff Avenue, decorated with flags for the parade that didn't happen. Usually this street is filled with bands and firemen and boys and girls and parents carrying flags and banners for the different organizations in the village. It is a solemn time and a joyous time for the village and so many of its residents.

They do place flowers at several places in the village.  When I first moved to Sea Cliff, in 1966 I lived in an apartment on the second floor of a house that was next to this park and statue.  It was known as "The Headless Statue" by many.  Years later the flag was painted and suddenly we knew what this was.  Here is the story of this statue and the single soldier who it was a memorial for.  Interesting that at the time this statue was placed here, they had not begun to use the term "The Spanish American War."

 

New Neighbors

We have some new neighbors!  We discovered three tiny Robin chicks who have just hatched, in a nest in our Lilac tree right by the corner of the house!  The nest was so well located we hadn't noticed it was there until the mother Robin was out on a branch squawking and we wondered why.  Seems that she saw one of the cats in the window.  The crazy thing is that they only live about two feet from our house but the cats can't see the nest directly, which is good.  I was able to take this photograph using a 200mm telephoto lens, which meant I was about 10 feet away, which is good.  I don't want to disturb them.

So this is the mother Robin and after she gets a worm - there is one in her beak - she flies to the roof of the garage nearby and spends time checking for threats.  If she sees none she quickly flies into the Lilac tree to feed the chicks, and then she quickly flies off so she is not drawing any attention to where the nest is.

 

The Bathroom is Finished!

Well, it's taken long enough!  But then again it was more difficult than I first thought.  And I am also a perfectionist, so no shoddy work here!  We have removed wallpaper before, but it was always easy compared to this room.   Something about the wallpaper paste that just would not come off, even with all kinds of wallpaper removal liquids.  Then there was all the filling of little "digs" in the plaster because of having to use sharp tools to scrape the wallpaper off in places.  Then a primer coat everywhere of "Killz" primer, which is a mildew suppressant, just in case, because this is a damp room during showers.  Then a finish coat, and then the surprise that I would need a second coat to get a perfect cover!  So a lot of work but it is just beautiful now, and we are so pleased at how it looks!

So this is a good reminder of how much work was involved.  What surprised me is that I neglected to do a photograph of the bathroom before I began!  Duh!  And here is one more photo during the stripping and preparation process.  Whew!  Glad this is all done!

 

Ready For Memorial Day

On the way to the grocery store today I drove by St. Boniface Martyr Church.  This is where Liz and Amy were baptized and confirmed, and went to grammar school.  I was so pleased to see all these flags displayed on the lawn as they do each year as part of the Memorial Day celebrations.  We will be traveling to Connecticut on Memorial Day, and so this is the first time I will not be attending the Sea Cliff Memorial Day parade since 1986.  I had never gone to any of the Sea Cliff parades, but in 1985 I read a story in Newsday by Leslie Hanscom, a writer who I worked with from time to time, called "A Memorial for Memorial Days Past" about how the parades in the small town in Maine where he grew up were no longer taking place.  I realized that we were so lucky that Sea Cliff had Memorial Day Parades that I started going every year.  So I am sorry I will miss the parade this year.

 

The Sand Washer

                               

I was looking for some negatives in my collection, and stumbled across this image.  It is a contact print - one of four on a sheet of photographic paper.  This is the Sand Washer, across the harbor in Port Washington, in the sand pits.  One of the little known facts of Long Island history is its contribution to the building of New York City. The high quality sand found on Long Island was used for over a century in making the concrete for New York’s skyscrapers, sidewalks, subways and bridges. Between 1870 and 1920, workers were drawn to Long Island from all over Europe to mine this resource. By 1930, 100 million tons of sand had been delivered from Port Washington to the metropolitan New York area.  The washer was the principal structure in the sand-mining process. Here the sand was washed with spring water and moved on conveyor belts onto metal screens where the sand and gravel where sorted. From the washer, the material was moved on a conveyor belt to a tunnel that went underneath West Shore Road onto docks and poured into waiting barges in Hempstead Harbor. At its peak, 50 barges a day would be towed by tugboats out of Hempstead Harbor to deliver sand to New York City where it was mixed to make concrete.  This sandpit closed in 1989 and I would go over and photograph some of the remains, because I love to photograph industrial ruins.

Exploding Stars

This is Dr. Alan Calder, of Stony Brook University who spoke at our meeting tonight.  His topic involved some of his recent research on supernovae, which are stars that explode at the end of their lives.  Our sun will not do that, you will be thrilled to know, but we won't be around anyhow.  Dr. Calder was using some of the latest data from the Webb Space Telescope, and he also uses super-computers to model the different theories of what happens during these explosions.  He is pointing out one such supernova in this image of a galaxy.  He is so busy and yet he took time off to come speak to us, as he does almost every year which we really appreciate.  We are so lucky that he really enjoys these outreach sessions.

 

A New Dress for Vivian!

Every once in a while Kathy will say "I need to do some sewing."  And with that she orders some fabric online and finds a pattern and makes a new dress for Miss Vivian.  She is such a good seamstress and each dress is a little more complicated and involves some new techniques.  The difficult part of this dress was sewing the button holes on the sewing machine.  But she is a trooper and watches youtube videos to find out how to successfully learn to complete the projects.  This dress, as you can see is a real beauty.  She mailed it off today.  When it arrives, Amy always sends a photograph or a video of Miss Vivian wearing Kathy's latest creation, which is fun for us to see!

I Hung Them Out To Dry

Well, all the painting is done in the bathroom!  Finally!  But then I realized that I had to paint the shutters, which I had forgotten about.  So I had to take all the hinges off of each shutter and then brush them to get rid of the dust.  Then I put a screw hook in the bottom of each shutter, and I hung them on a clothesline and sprayed each one on both sides, but very gently.  I tend to forget and make too many passes and end up with too much paint on them and then I get runs.  So I did two coats with a couple of hours in between and then left them here to dry.  They look really nice now, but it will take a while to put all the hinges back and then re-hang them in the window.

 

International Astronomy Day!

So yesterday I mentioned that I was at the Vanderbilt Museum for an event.  That event was International Astronomy Day, which is celebrated around the world on May 18, and again in the Fall on October 12.  Our club supports this day at the Vanderbilt Planetarium and it is always fun for us to show both children and adults our telescopes and tell them about observing the moon and planets and the night sky.  A mom and dad came by with their two children, and after this boy looked THROUGH the telescope at the eyepiece, he came around to the front and looked inside!  Wait, wrong end of the telescope!  It happened so fast that I nearly missed this!  It cracks me up, but it is also a tribute to the curiosity of children.  There is a mirror in the other end of the telescope which what makes it work, so what the child is doing is actually  pretty reasonable!

Planetarium staff had all kinds of activities for children.  This one involves using markers to add color to drawings of Earth and the sun and planets and galaxies, on a printed sheet that then folds up into a  tiny book!  This is Victoria and she is helping everyone get started making their own books.

This is Charlie, a museum staffer and he is using a flexible piece of black fabric in a circular shape that deforms with weight.  In the center is a small cast iron ball, which represents the gravity of the Sun and he has the children use marbles and they spin them on the fabric and watch their orbits as the marbled descend down into the sun..It is a demonstration of the deformation of gravity in space.

Here is a dad and his young son, and the son is looking through the eyepiece of my home-made telescope.  I printed out a photograph of Saturn, from the Hubble Space Telescope, and taped the print to a wall about fifty feet away, and that's what I pointed the telescope at.  It does not look like it would at night, but the children and adults see that the photograph a long way off, suddenly looks really close through the eyepiece of my telescope.

 

The Eagles at Vanderbilt

I was at the Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium today for an event.  As I have mentioned before, I am usually here in the dark and so I miss some things.  I have passed through the entrance to the facilities a million times, and really never took note of these eagles. There are two of them, one on each side of the cobblestone driveway.  Well, today I stopped and photographed one of the two eagles.  They are magnificent!

Then I read this plaque just under each of the eagles.  The information here is really interesting.  If these magnificent eagles graced "Grand Central Depot" where they were placed in 1898, why would they be removed in 1910?  Want to know why?  Because William K. Vanderbilt II who built his home here was the president of the New York Central railroad!  I guess he could do anything he wanted!  The second thing, really cracks me up.  They refer to Grand Central Station as we know it now as Grand Central Depot!  I think of a depot as a small railroad station somewhere out on the line, not the main terminus in the middle of a city!

And I photographed these magnificent columns once again.  You could do a search in the upper left for the word "Vanderbilt" and you will see other views of these columns.  But I liked this composition today.  Here is what I wrote after some research on the columns, in an earlier post:  So I Googled the columns and am stunned by what I found!  These six marble columns are ancient and come from Carthage, now Tunisia!  When William K. Vanderbilt II (1878-1944) began building Eagle’s Nest, his Centerport estate and the home of the Vanderbilt Museum, he installed them here.  Each column is 14 feet high, 59 inches in circumference, and weighs 4,000 pounds. The Cipollino marble was quarried on the Greek island of Euboea.  I am blown away by all this new information!

 

A Car in the Rain

I photographed this scene the other day when it was raining harder.  I put on my rain gear and decided to go for a walk.  You can see the water in the foreground rushing down Laurel Avenue.  I am not sure why the car is stopped at the top of the hill with the door open, but it makes the picture.  I love this cobblestone street.  This street, picturesque as it is, has a hidden hazard, though.  This street is much steeper than it appears.  I think there is a sign up where the car is, that says "No trucks down this hill." Probably once every three months I will come by this street to find that a truck is hung up.  The bottom of the truck hits the street when the truck gets to the bottom, and the front bumper hits Laurel Avenue and the back wheels are hanging in mid air!  It takes a tow truck to extricate the truck from that predicament.  Pretty, but deadly.

 

Azalea Blossom in the Rain

There was a gentle mist coming down two days ago when I went out to the car to go somewhere.  I needed to put my telescope in the car to take to a talk I gave and so when I walked around to the passenger side I brushed up against this Azalea bush.  I thought I would lean over and sniff the blossoms in case they had a scent, but instead I noticed all the water drops on the pedals!  OK, THAT'S a photograph!  So much more interesting than just the flower alone.  The water made it so much more interesting.

 

Abby and Her Radio Telescope

This is Abby and she gave a talk tonight at our astronomy meeting.  She has been a member of our club for a while now.  She is a senior in high school AND is headed to UCLA for college next year, to study astronomy and astrophysics!  This is a radio telescope she built to receive transmissions from space of the 21cm. hydrogen line which is radiated by some astronomical objects.  She is amazing - last year she spent a week at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia where the largest steerable radio telescope is located!  That's where she got the idea to build this radio telescope.

She explained in her talk everything we would need to know to build both this "horn antenna" and the radio receiver underneath it, made from a 1 gallon can, containing some electronics!  This is amazing!  She got a great reception and much applause at the end.  What a wonderful project this is.

 

The Tree Where I Stop

I stop at this tree every day I ride.  It is at the top of a short hill and it is one of my checkpoints, so I always stop and write down my time.  These roots are amazing and I am thinking this is a really old tree, based on the roots.  I did a search and based on the bark and the shape of the leaves, I think this is a Beech tree.  I would love to know how old it is.

 

The Rider Pauses

On my bike rides I have checkpoints and I keep track of my times as I pass each one.  I always want to see how I am doing on one ride compared with another.  After a winter with not much time on the bike, my times are slow, and then during Spring, they gradually get faster, which is fun to see!  Anyhow, there are a couple of places along the route when I stop to write down the times, because I can only remember three different times before I forget.  This is one of those stops at the top of a hill and when I saw this shadow, I thought it was a picture.

 

Little and Big

The Fern bank is such a joy and it is so beautiful, especially in the spring when they Ferns first come up.  There is one problem with the fern bank, however.  We have Grape ivy vines that are always trying to take over the ferns, and tiny maple trees that sprout every spring as well, as well as some other weeds.  it is a constant battle to keep the fern bank clear.  Well, the other day it was time to do my first weeding and clearing of the ferns.  On my way down the driveway, I happened to see these tiny flowers which jumped out because of their brightness.  I loved the comparison in size between the giant ferns, and the tiny flowers.

 

Cherry Blossoms

These Cherry Blossoms, ( I HOPE) they are Cherry Blossoms all over the ground and the road caught my eye as I came around a corner on one of the roads I usually ride on.  It was like snow on the ground! the blossoms looked a bit tired, so I was wishing I had come by the day before.  The scene was so beautiful seeing so many blossoms.  After I took this photograph, I decided I would do one of the tree which still had lots of blossoms on it, in hopes someone would be able to identify the tree from this second image.

 

One Last Image

One last image that I took when leaving the upstairs gallery at ICP.  I happened to turn around for one last look and saw this silhouette of a man sitting back on a couch, nearly in the dark, looking at his phone.  So I took maybe 6 frames, some closer and this one a wider view.  Just an interesting silhouette in an uncommon looking room. My last post from my day in the city last week.

 

ICP

I keep talking about the International Center of Photography, also known as ICP but I have never taken a photograph of the galleries to show you what it looks like.  The galleries are in a large space two stories high.  You can see three walls of photographs here on the lower floor, and the second floor galleries are walkways around the open space with photographs on all the walls there.  What got me to take this photograph were the two figures, one on each floor and they were one above the other, which gave me a center of interest - the "something else" which makes a photograph more interesting.  Please click on the image because it is so much more interesting to look at when it is larger.

 

I Have No Idea

We were walking away from the International Center of Photography looking for a place to have lunch, when we passed these figures on this wall.  I have no idea what this is about.  But I think I recognize Ray Charles and I think the blonde woman is Annie Lennox.  But I don't recognize the others.  I have the feeling that this is some kind of art installation.  I am not sure if the graffiti is part of this, or if someone tagged the wall after the sculptures were up.  It is unusual for me that I am not able to come up with more information, but even Google couldn't help in this case.  Do you recognize any of these people?

 

Subway Puzzle Pieces

I had to wait a long time, for some reason, for the downtown subway to ICP the other day.  So, naturally I am standing on the platform and with nothing else to do, I am looking around.  Then I see this scene as I look across the tracks for my train, and over to the platform on the other side to the uptown platform.  I am enjoying the "windows" that appear in the concrete supports and walls. which are made up of concrete columns that hold up the station, and openings in the concrete wall that separates the two tracks.  So now I have my "checkerboard" and I keep the camera to my eye as people walk by on the other platform, all going in different directions.  The people are what make this photograph interesting, in the end,  I think.

 

The Electric Stairway

At the International Center of Photography, you take an elevator from the ground floor up to the third floor, where the exhibits begin.  Then when you have seen everything on the third floor, you take the stairs down to the second floor.  When I saw these stairs illuminated like this I nearly fell over.  It looks like some outer space thing, I think.  What makes it so cool looking, and so brilliant in design, is that there are channels under each railing and in the recess of each railing are strings of LED lights!  What a cool way to light the stairs!

 

Blinding Light

When I got off my train, I walked a fair distance to get to this new stairway that runs directly up from the Long Island Railroad concourse to the street.  A real shortcut, compared to other ways of getting up to the street in the old days. But on this day, the sun was out and a lot of scaffolding up on the street had been removed and now all of the light up on the street poured into the opening and reflected off the polished stainless steel of the escalators!  I had never seen it this bright!  It literally stopped me in my tracks.  Well, for maybe 5 seconds and then I had my camera up to my eye and stood here for a few minutes trying to get interesting silhouettes in the foreground.

Relaxing on the Stoop

 

Another photograph of some citizens of Manhattan.  When Stan and I left the International Center of Photography, we went out the back door and this is what we faced!  It is the strangest thing.  All the buildings on this side of Ludlow Street look like this.  There is graffiti everywhere, and I think that perhaps this entire block is set to be demolished at some point in the not too distant future.  All the buildings like ICP on the other side of the street are modern buildings in beautiful condition.  I only discovered this fact when I used google maps to check out this location and saw all the buildings marked in graffiti.

Riding the Subway

Riding the subway is such an interesting experience.  It's a United Nations, when it comes to riders.  When you sit in your seat, you are facing a bunch of other people opposite you.  Socially it is an unusual situation to be looking at other people face to face and not that far away from you.  So you look up at the ads or the floor, or to the left and right at other riders who are not directly across from you.  It is something I love about the subway because I love looking at people, but the rules are, you don't stare.  So you pass your gaze along and only look at people for a second and usually you don't make eye contact.  Those are the rules.  I thought these two were an interesting couple.  I love the woman's bright green NY hat and her bright red shirt.  My camera was in my lap, sideways, and I could not come up with a way to point it at them, even if it was in my lap.  I know they would have seen that and been suspicious. Then I noticed others using their cell phones vertically in their laps!  So I got my phone out of my pocket and had it in my lap, and it was tinted forward at 45 degree angle and I pretended to be touching it and swiping it, and then I tilted it back a bit until it was vertical and then I clicked the shutter a few times, and was not noticed at all.  This photography stuff is hard work!

Star Child

I went to the city today to meet Stan and see the 50th anniversary exhibit at the International Center of Photography.  After we left, we were walking down Broome Street to the subway.  We walked right by her before I noticed her and it was too late to take a photograph, so we kept on walking.  When we got to the next corner, I told Stan I had to go back to try and get a photograph.  So I walked out in the middle of the street because there were trucks parked along the curb that shielded me from her.  So then I turned around at the end of the block and walked by her again on the sidewalk, with my camera ready.  I set the focal length to 35mm and held the camera down at waist level, and as I approached I kept clicking the shutter.  After I went past her, I stopped and looked at the photographs, and I was not close enough to her!  So, out to the street again, back down to the start of the block, set the focal length to 50 mm and walk by her once more.  My pointing was perfect with the camera right at her and she was larger in the image, and I was undetected, and I got the shot.  Third time's the charm!  She looks like a child, until you look closely.  She is on a coffee break no doubt with a cup of coffee on the stairs, a cigarette in her fingers, and she is relaxing reading something on her phone.  Just a typical New York scene.

 

Our Astronomy Meeting Tonight

We had a different kind of meeting tonight.  Instead of everyone facing forward listening to a speaker, we gathered in a semi-circle and had a group discussion about the Artemis mission which will return astronauts to the moon.  It is a huge, complicated project and a number of companies are all working together with NASA to accomplish this mission.  A number of our members are following this closely, so there was a lot to be learned from different people offering information.  And instead of everyone sitting there quietly, it was a lively back and forth discussing advantages and disadvantages of the program.

We are seated this way because there were members at home also taking part in the meeting using Zoom, and everyone could see them on the projection screen at the front of the room.  It was so nice having a change of pace in how our meetings are conducted, and it was so successful that we will be trying this again in the future!