The Rehearsal

Wow, an amazing thing happened yesterday!  Stan had called me a couple of weeks ago and said he had an extra ticket for a morning rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic and would I like to attend!  Man oh man, a rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic!  Are you kidding me!  So I got up at 6 AM and took a train to Penn station and then the No. 1 subway up to Lincoln Center by 9 AM.  What the orchestra does is to run through their performance for the concert the next night.  It is like attending the real performance except...  The orchestra is dressed in street clothes, and the house lights are on the whole time.  It is strange not to see the orchestra dressed in black.  But the performance was astounding.  Three dance pieces by Leonard Bernstein, and then George Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F, and finally one of my all time favorites, Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" by Antonin Dvorak!  What an astounding program!

You can only take photographs when the musicians are not playing so I waited until the end of the Dvorak piece and quickly snapped this shot when the conductor turned around for a brief moment.  I did bring some small binoculars with me so I could watch different members of the orchestra as they played and that was so illuminating, to see them make music.  What an amazing experience!

 

Mother and Child

I was in the city today, more on that tomorrow.  I was riding the No. 1 train back to Penn Station and I saw this mother and her child.  A few moments before I saw this shot, she was checking on her child in her lap, seeing if thechild was asleep, and then when she was sure, she put her head back and appeard to be sleeping.  It reminded me how hard mothers work, taking care of their children, and all the other chores they do as a mom in a household.  No wonder she was tired. 

 

The Bridge and the Moon

I was so proud to tell you yesterday that I actually stopped the car to take a photograph.  Well, now I have to confess that I shot this out the windshield as we were crossing the Tappan Zee bridge.  Sorry to disappoint you.  But I love this beautiful, modern cable-stayed bridge and then when I saw the moon up there in the sky I waited until we got really close and the moon was then down between the concrete towers.  Unfortunately, because I was using a wide angle lens, the moon is really small.  But at least you now know what that white dot is.  Please click on it to see it larger.  Thanks!

 

Driving Home from Upstate

For years when we went up to Geneva to visit Kathy's mom and then my friends in Rochester, NY we always took the New York State Thruway up to Albany and then west to Rochester.  Then a friend at work suggested taking route 17, which took us along a more rural route, to Binghamton and then Route 96 from there to the Finger Lakes and Geneva.  We love this route because 96 is a two lane road through farm country and we love looking at the farmhouses and barns and scenery.  So on the way home today I actually STOPPED the car to take this view of a farmer's field!

When we first started out today we did run into some minor now showers and you can see the road is wet here and there is some haze in the distance.  Just a random scene along route 66.  Weather was good today, and traffic was light most of the way home, which we were really thankful for.