Fine Dining

What you are seeing in the foreground is the last part of a MacDonald's Egg McMuffin.  I had not had an Egg McMuffin for perhaps 30 years, no kidding.  (Egg McMuffins started in 1972.)  A couple of years ago I was in Northfield, Minnesota, and needed a breakfast I could take with me while driving (!) to Minneapolis.  So I grabbed a McMuffin and it was really delicious.  So cut to Tuesday, here on Long Island.  We have a Tuesday morning ritual which started when I retired.  We go out for coffee and a donut every Tuesday.  So we did that, and then while at Dunkin' Donuts, I said "I want to go to McDonalds and get an Egg McMuffin!"  So that's what we did this morning.  It is still delicious!

The Birds!

The Birds!  The Birds!  I swear it sure looked like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's movie.  I was looking out the dining room window and suddenly what seems like a hundred grackles landed in the side yard.  And then in an instant another hundred or so landed.  It was astounding to see.  They would lift off the lawn as a flock and then set back down in ten seconds and then lift off again.  I grabbed my toy camera and was only able to get three frames.  I cannot believe I got the four birds in flight just outside the window!

A Tree with Headlamps!

I went to the grocery store for a few things for dinner and as I got out of the car, I looked up and saw this tree against the sunset.  What was different about it is the two "headlights" in the midst of the branches!  Wow, a tree with eyes!  The story is that they have recently built a new parking lot, which is good.  What is bad is that they have also installed new lighting all over the place!  It looks like a major league baseball park, it is so bright.  Not good.  But it does make for an interesting photo.

A Little Bit Tedious...

For the last several weeks I have been stripping paint from about one-third of the front porch floor.  The one-third at the other end where the steps are, is already done.  This is seriously tedious work, since there must be 8 or 9 coats of paint on the floor here.  Many of them I put down since we bought the house in 1971.  It finally got so bad, with cracking and peeling paint, that adding one more coat of paint wouldn't fix a thing.  So I am using a really good paint stripper, but as good as it is, I have to apply it four different times, scraping after each application, in order to get all the paint off, and to get down to bare wood.  Whew!  It will be nice when it is done.

The 5:19 to Oyster Bay

When I take the train home from Manhattan, I have to change trains at Jamaica Station.  That's because they use electric trains from Penn Station to Jamaica, but we have to switch to diesel trains to get to Oyster Bay.  So I am standing on the platform, and the fading light in the sky attracts my attention first, and then I notice the bright yellow line leading directly toward the headlights of the oncoming train.  A picture!

More Signs of Fall

When you get to the top of the hill that we live on, the road intersects this road, and up near the top are these grasses.  What's nice is, toward the end of the day, the sun is behind them, and illuminates them until they appear to glow.  It is a beautiful scene, and at this time of year, I photograph them a number of times.

Coastal Artillery

Back in the 1980's I worked on a personal photo essay for the Sunday Magazine, called "The Ruins of War."  I had discovered shore batteries where giant guns were installed in concrete fortifications, and these guns were used to protect, for instance the entrance to Long Island Sound, out on the tip of Long Island.  I photographed these batteries in the 1980's, in spring and it was a beautiful photograph and was the cover of the magazine.  When I was flying around the other day with Russ, I flew over to where these were, and we circled around while I shot them again.  They looked completely different - the difference between Fall and Spring.  The giant guns were located in the center of the circular parts of the concrete in the foreground.  Some of these guns could shoot a projectile 25 miles!