The New Ferry Terminal

In May of 2001 they built a ferry terminal in Glen Cove, where commuter ferries would take people to Manhattan..  The building was made out of white plastic, and located on a bulkhead near the harbor.  The fast ferry was water jet powered, and it was run by one of the Indian tribes in Connecticut.  The ferry suspended service in November 2001, only six months later.  The abandoned building was still there in 2009, which is when I took the picture below.  So for the last year or so they have been building a modern new ferry terminal that is a real building.  They have put in new bulkheads and sidewalks and fences and all kinds of new aluminum gangways and docks.  The terminal is almost done, which is why I went over there after reading about it, to see the whole thing.  It was mainly funded by the Federal Government, and cost about 15 million dollars.  According to the story in the paper, they do not have a ferry operator yet.  My question is, if the last ferry service didn't make it, what is there about this new service that will make it successful, where the last one wasn't.  I promise one thing, when it starts running, I will make it a point to ride the ferry once to experience it.  I wish I had done that before.

Last Light of Day

I went into the new back room late in the day yesterday and saw this triangle of light on the wall - the last light of day before sunset.  I had to run into the living room to grab my camera, because the sun moves so fast that it could easily move behind the branch of a tree outside and the light would go away, just like that.  So I got it!

Fountain Pen Tuneup

About a year ago I bought a new Parker fountain pen from a store in London, England.  The problem was that when I used it, it was "scratchy" instead of smooth as silk.  So I set it aside.  Recently I discovered that pen nibs can be "tuned up" by specialists to make them write properly.  Several days ago there was a story in Newsday about the Long Island Pen Show this weekend.  So off I went.  This is a photograph of a woman about my age, who "tunes up" fountain pen nibs, and she is considered one of the best around.  She is working on someone else's pen, using a very fine motorized polishing wheel.  Then she uses other extremely fine abrasive cloths to finish the work.  Look at her hands! This work is really hard on the hands.  They are battered and ink stained, but the mark of a superb craftsman.  I had my pen fixed at another booth, (because I just happened to end up there first) and now it writes perfectly!

A Different Landscape

This is a landscape I did right after we had some rain, and when it was still a bit colder.  I was trying to do a different kind of landscape.  I think the only thing that made this picture worth taking was the puddle of water in the foreground, that was reflecting the sunset sky in the background.  It is a large part industrial, and I am still not sure this is one of the great ones, but I did find it interesting.

What Does the Kitten Think?

This is Grace, inside the house, the kitten who was abandoned by her mother.  The mother cat had five kittens all together.  So we saved Grace, and of the other four kittens, there are two survivors, as far as we know.  Perhaps one or two of them were taken in by neighbors - that's our hope.  In this photograph, Grace is looking out at her two surviving siblings, who we feed from time to time, and her mother comes by as well.  So the really big question for us is, when she looks out at the other cats, is there any imprinting in her brain, that tells her that those cats are her mother, and brother and sister?  Really interesting question, don't you think?

Making Jupiter

When I went to the planetarium tonight for our meeting, I was surprised to find some other people there.  Recently, one of the meeting rooms in the building has been completely repainted, and then a big semicircle  and other circles appeared on the walls.  And then one evening the semicircle was painted as the surface of the Sun.  Tonight these two women had completed the planet Saturn and have just about finished the planet Jupiter.   I asked if I could do a photo of them, and they were fine with that, even when I suggested using their arms to pretend to hold the planet.  Where I failed, was that I didn't ask their names.  Duh!  And I am not sure if they worked at the planetarium, or are volunteers.  Not a good reporting job!

Walt Whitman

The Walt Whitman Mall is a couple of miles up the road from where I used to work, and I would visit it for shopping, back in the day.  I haven't been there in almost a year.  They have been refurbishing the mall, and particularly the exterior, for perhaps the last five years.  I stopped by the mall today to look at something in the Apple store.  I was stunned when I came around the corner after parking my car, and found this beautiful bronze statue of Walt Whitman.  The home where Whitman was born, in 1819 is about half a mile down the road, thus the name of the mall.  It is a beautiful statue and it was wonderful to see that they have installed it at the mall.  The problem of photographing it, is that if I photograph him from the front, then there is the confusing background of windows on one of the buildings.  Thus, I chose to make this a silhouette.