GOODBYE 2005, HELLO 2006!

This past year hasn't been very good in many respects. Too much war and too many natural disasters. Just now we're dealing with flooding rivers here in northern California. It's good to be rid of 2005, as far as I'm concerned.

The tsunami in Indonesia happened earlier in the year, but was one of the most devastating events. Our son-in-law, Christopher Szecsey, who is a consultant for "Save the Children" got involved in the restoration in that part of the world and spent several weeks out there toward the end of the year. The local news media caught up with him recently and featured him in print and television broadcasts. We're proud of him and the work he does. Here's what the local newspaper, the Press Democrat, put on their front page:

You can enlarge the picture and read the article by clicking here.

Click here for Page A11 of the article above.

Dickie and I had decided not to put up a Christmas tree this year, but, at the last minute we weakened, since we discovered that the Home Depot was practically giving their remaining trees away. The tree came out pretty well, too. Of course, you can't see all the needles that have fallen on the floor!:


Dickie's sister and her husband have been gifting me with Santa Clauses for the past few years, so now we have a real Christmas rogues' gallery of the red-suited fellow. Here they are, all ten years of them:

Click here to enlarge the picture

Santa brought me another new camera lens for Christmas. It's a sharp macro lens that I've wanted for a while. Here's a picture that demonstrates what it can do. I caught one of our neighbors flying his model airplane on the local Little League field. It was a cloudy day, but the picture still looks quite sharp:

Click here to enlarge the picture.

So now it's on to 2006. What will the New Year bring? Hopefully, better days, peace, good health and much joy for all of us! Happy New Year to all!

BACK IN THE GOLDEN STATE

Here we are back in California. We flew back to this part of the world on December 7. It was a long trip, seventeen hours from door to door, according to Dickie's calculations.


We flew on American Airlines this time and had a stopover in Dallas where we barely managed to catch our next flight. In fact, the attendant at another the gate, where we stopped to ask about connections, said he thought our plane had already left. Fortunately, he was wrong by about ten minutes. Not only that, but, after we left the gate, we spent another hour on the ground while the plane was being de-iced. That was a new experience for us. We were still lucky to get in the air. Four hundred other flights from Dallas that day were cancelled.

We literally left the ice and snow behind us when we came west. This is what it looked like in our front yard a day or two before we left:


We got to celebrate Thanksgiving with our East Coast family and also with our son, Peter, from here on the West Coast. Peter had made the trip to Virginia and New Jersey a few days earlier. I also spent some time photographing the gulls as they jumped from the pier posts to avoid the splash of the incoming waves. This is what it looked like:


BACK IN CALIFORNIA

There's no snow in this part of the world. In fact, some of our trees still have quite a few leaves. I took this picture yesterday on our morning walk through the neighborhood:


We also caught this robin taking his morning bath in the local vineyard. He was one of many who are apparently stopping by on their way to warmer climes:


I have to show you one more picture. It's not mine, but I think it's a great one. Our daughter, Gretchen, loves to hike and spent several days in Yosemite National Park this past summer. She got this picture, among many others, on one of her trips:


That's about it for now. Hope you're enjoying the pre-holiday period!

BACK TO THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE

On a recent trip to Philadelphia, Dickie and I were taken by the view of City Hall as it is seen from the north on Broad Street. The building itself has great character. We had recognized that on visit to the city a few days earlier, so we parked the car on a side street and walked back down Broad Street to where I could take this shot:




We were actually on our way out to the Philadelphia Museum of Art which stands on a hill overlooking the Schuykill River. We hadn't visited the museum lately and it was a beautiful day, so we made the best of it. This is the view of the river from the west side of the museum:




When you approach the museum from the east (a view made famous by the "Rocky" movie), you have to climb the many steps leading up to the main floor. That, too, is a pretty sight:




Before you cross the street from the parking lot to the museum you pass by the imposing statue of General George Washington on his horse:




Another interesting feature, before you enter the museum, is the sculptures in the tympanum (an ornamental recessed space) on the north wing. The sculptures are the design of C. Paul Jennewein and were installed in 1933. They depict ten different Greek gods and godesses. Here's a closeup:



The museum was featuring an exhibition of landscape paintings by Jacob van Ruisdael, a Dutch artist from the seventeenth century. Dickie and I made a quick tour of his work and then spent some time in the section which features French impressionists, our favorite kind of art. Flash bulbs are a no-no in the museum, so I had to take photos with available light. This one of Renoir's "Bathers" was about as good as I could do:




If you ever spend any time in Philadelphia, put the museum on your itinerary. You won't be sorry.

NEW HOPE

What a nice title, you say. It is, isn't it? It's also the name of a neat little town on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. Dickie and I visited there the other day. It's the home of the Bucks County Playhouse, pictured below:




While we were in New Hope, we walked out on the bridge over the river and also took a short stroll along the canal that runs along the river. Visitors to that part of the world often take a boat ride down the canal. We've done that on an earlier occasion. It's a great way to party. As you can see in this next shot, the canal doesn't exactly rival the one in Panama, but it affords some nice scenery, especially when the flowers are blooming or the leaves are turning:




On the way home, we stopped by Washington's Crossing State Park, which commemorates General Washington's crossing the Delaware to surprise the Hessians at Trenton, some eight miles to the south. The victories at Trenton and, shortly thereafter, at Princeton are regarded as the turning point in the Revolutionary War. Here's what the Delaware looks like at that point today. In Washington's day there was a ferry crossing here. Today a narrow bridge spans the same water just to the south:





By the way, since it isn't obvious, I suppose I should point out that, if you click on the title, "New Hope", above, you can access more of my photos which I have linked to that title. I've been doing that linking for a few weeks now. The first time I did it by accident. Now I'm doing it on purpose. Enjoy!

PHILADELPHIA

The city of Philadelphia is only 45 minutes away for Dickie and me. That makes it fairly easy to make the trip in off-busy hours. We did that again last week when we went to the Central Library in that city. Here’s a shot of the Library building:




We went to hear Jonathan Kozol, who was promoting his newest book, The Shame of the Nation, which describes how our inner-city schools are now more segregated than ever across the whole nation, with the exception of Kentucky. He’s right, you know. Our country has a problem here that hasn’t been resolved by the civil rights movement of recent times, and the problem won’t go away unless and until it’s addressed honestly and fairly by people of good will. If you’re not aware how severe the problem is, you might want to take a look at this book. Here’s Kozol at the podium prior to his talk:




Just across the street from the Central Library is the Franklin Museum, which is presently featuring an exhibit on “The Human Body”. We didn’t take it in on this visit, but we hope to another time. I did walk by and snap this picture of the newly painted steps leading into the museum:



While we were in Philadelphia, we dropped by the office of our daughter-in-law, Lisa, who is now teaching at Drexel University. Lisa got her Doctorate in Philosophy (Psychiatric Rehabilitation) last spring from the College of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and has just begun teaching in her new position at Drexel. We’re proud of her and her accomplishments. Here’s the happy professor in her office:




Here on the home front Dickie and I put up a new bird feeder on the kitchen window the other day. Now we have chickadees, titmice, and nuthatches dining with us. Here’s one of the chickadees that joined us the other evening:




As I’ve mentioned earlier, occasionally, our daily walks take us to nearby Shadow Lake. It’s a pretty place and private enough that the wildlife can feel fairly secure. Ducks and geese are often present. Here’s a tiny flock of Canadian geese fleeing our presence on a recent visit:

LONG BEACH ISLAND

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http://home.comcast.net/~c.schmidt/


Our travels last week took us to Long Beach Island, a place we became familiar with many years ago as a spot to spend a summer vacation - which we did several times. One of the attractions there is the Barnegat Bay Light House which is no longer functioning, but is still a tourist site. I spent a while talking to the attendant on duty. Bruce was 84 years old and said he still made the climb up to the top of the lighthouse about four times a week and, occasionally, twice a day. We should all be in such good shape. Guess I'm not, since I decided not to make the effort on this occasion.

It was a good day to take a picture, with the clouds in the background. I also found the moss on the rocks along the barrier that protects the beach from erosion intriguing, so I took this picture:

We have our own little watering hole in the neighborhood here in Brotherton Acres. It's called "Shadow Lake". It's only a little over a mile from our house, so we walk to it every once in a while. In fact, we did that again this morning. In California we often walk in a county park that is home to a great blue heron rookery, so we see them there regularly. Today we saw a great blue high-tailing it to the other end of the lake as we approached. The proof is in the picture below. Look carefully, just at the shore line near the middle of the picture. That's him flying away:

When the water is calm, it makes a great mirror. As the fall progresses, the colors will become more spectacular, but, even now, the mirror effect is enchanting. Here's a shot I took on a recent morning when the water was very still. You can hardly tell which is real and which is reflected:

There are some other tantalizing effects that the water produces. There is a drain at the lower end of the lake that funnels the overflow down below the dam there. When the sun is right, the water looks very blue in a photograph, so much so that you would almost think it was sky and, in a photo like the one below, the drain appears to be floating out there in the ether. I call this one "The Black Hole". OK, so it takes a little imagination. Bear with me here:

That's it for today!

INDEPENDENCE HALL

To view our web page and sign our guestbook, click on the following address:

http://home.comcast.net/~c.schmidt/

Dickie and I made a trip to Philadelphia a couple days ago to visit Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and the National Constitution Museum. It's one of those things everybody should do, if they have the opportunity.

Since we live so close to Philadelphia, I made a visit in that area a couple years ago with my brother-in-law, Jim Koehler. We had an enjoyable time stopping in at a replica of Franklin's print shop and taking the tour through the historic buildings. Dickie and I skipped the tour in order to concentrate our attention on the new National Constitution Museum. Here's an outside view of the east corner of the building which displays the opening words of the Constitution on its fascade:

Standing in the museum, we had this view of Independence Hall. The Hall is dwarfed by the modern buildings around it and behind it, but it still holds its own mystique:

We passed by the cemetery where Ben and his wife, Deborah, are buried and I took this picture by poking my camera through the iron fence that provides a view of the grave to passers-by. Notice the coins sprinkled on the slab. It's traditional for visitors to toss their pennies on the grave of the man who reminded everyone that "a penny saved is a penny earned". As you can see, the gravestone is cracked:

An interesting feature of the Constitution Museum is a room in which life-sized statues of the men who devised and established our Constitution are placed around the room so that visitors can mingle with them and actually sign a copy of the Constitution that lies on a table there. Here's a shot I took of Ben seated with other statues around him. Notice the blurred white figure of an actual person on the left:

I caught Dickie standing next to Alexander Hamilton. Notice other visitors in the background. There were a large number of students from Northwest High in Philadelphia who happened to be visiting at the time. Hamilton, by the way, was one of the smaller men (in physical size), although he had a large impact in Revolutionary times:

We took the time to go through the building that now houses the Liberty Bell. Security there is about as tight as at the airports these days, but it's worth the trouble to get a look at the Bell. I took this picture from the back side (so to speak) since the crack is only visible from the other side, but the light is better from the window side:

Here's a look at the crack:

That's it for this week. As I write this, I can hear someone on television in the next room shouting anti-war speech in Washington, D.C. I wonder how our founding fathers would feel about our present-day efforts to plant democracy by force in the Middle East?

BACK IN JERSEY

Dickie and I made the big trip across the country again about ten days ago now. It was a smooth trip with a short stop in Phoenix. We're all re-adjusted to East Coast time and weather at this point, although the past two days have been a bit more humid than we're accustomed to. Guess it's the result of Hurricane Ophelia.

On the past Tuesday we took a ride down to Cape May, just to see what the Atlantic Ocean looks like up, close and personal. The view was great, as the shot below demonstrates:

We had a lot of fun walking around town, taking pictures of the old Victorian houses ("Painted Ladies", according to Dickie) and the famed Inn at Cape May which is what you're looking at in this next photo, with Dickie sitting at a table in the front yard:

After lunch at a restaurant on the beach, we headed back up the road and stopped at the zoo in Cape May Courthouse. I've been wanting to visit a zoo for a couple years now. This was a small one, but there were plenty of interesting animals. Unfortunately for photographers, most of them were behind chain-link fences that it difficult to get a decent picture. If you get real lucky, sometimes the camera will ignore the fencing for the most part. That's what happened when I photographed this lion lying out in a wooded enclosure:

There was no fence between me and the flamingos, so I was able to get a real closeup of this fellow. In fact, this picture below won me a "Picture of the Day" at www.azcolt.com on Wednesday of this past week. I've been sending pictures in to Azcolt and Bestfoto for months and this is only the fourth time I've managed to come up with a winner. I also submitted one picture that our daughter, Gretchen, took in Yosemite and, wouldn't you know, she won on the first try! Of course, taking a good picture in Yosemite is a fairly sure bet, but it still takes a good eye. You can check out her photo at this address: http://www.azcolt.com/images/landscapes0821_2005.jpg

Zoo pictures have a pretty good chance, too, since the animals are not hard to catch. You just have to find them in an intriguing pose. I can't say that about this shot of a toucan who was behind a wire mesh, but it did turn out better than I might have expected:

I did wish this tiger hadn't been behind the chain-link fence, but he's a good-looking creature nontheless:

What surprised me when I got home and displayed the pictures I had taken was that somehow the chain-link fence was completely invisible in this shot of that same tiger headed for his dinner. Rest assured, the fence was still between me and him, but my camera ignored it. Figure that one out if you can:

See you next time!

AIR SHOW

Last weekend was the big air show at our local airport, so I took my trusty camera and wandered over to the end of the runway to see what kind of pictures I could get. I lucked out on a few, although it was hard to catch some of those fast-flying jets as they zoomed overhead. The prop planes were much easier. Here's a shot of a "Flying Tiger". That's the P-40 that was used in World War II:

One of the curiosities of the show was a flying wing. I'm told that there were only four of them built and only two are left. I put two pictures together to make the shot below so you can see the plane from both the top and the bottom:

The real stars of the show were the pilots who put their planes through the hoops in dives and climbs, stalls and rolls that looked awfully dangerous to a neophyte like me. You had to admire the guts and stamina of those guys. It's difficult to capture the daring in a picture, but maybe you can get the idea from a shot like this:

Of course, the real noise-maker was the F-18 that streaked back and forth over the runways with a thunderous roar toward the end of the show. I actually got this shot of it with my Olympus point and shoot camera that I happened to be using at the time:

There were any number of military aircraft, many of which I could not identify. Here are a couple of Marine and Air Force planes that performed together:

One performer that wasn't in the show, but happened to fly by as I was taking pictures was this Great Blue Heron. There were also several snowy white egrets flying around in a marshy area at the end of the runway:

I got back out to Bodega Bay again last week and caught this fellow looking me over:

Sometimes good pictures just pop up in front of you. This is one I took the other day as we were taking our morning walk:

That's all for today!