INDEPENDENCE HALL

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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!