A walk in the park

Since I'm posting on Memorial Day, I'll start with a photo of the flag flying outside the library located next to our apartment complex. There's another flag at the Crystal Lake Diner, which I pass on my way to the park.

This line of rocks seems to serve no purpose, but it looks nice.

Some of the trees have old, illegible graffiti carved into their bark.

Some of the benches have memorial markers. You can rest and contemplate life and death.

Graffiti provides additional guidance on life and death.

A hole straight through a tree provides a view of the sky.

I'm not so sure I'm fond of this magnet idea.

Why is it that looking at bodies of water is so pleasant?

Looking at paths winding off into the distance is also pleasant.

Hey look - I'm tall and skinny!

Almost home - I can see my apartment from here.

And so ends another little excursion.

The wheeling heavens

I need to figure out how to embed videos. In the meantime, if you click on this link, you will see time-lapse photography of the skies above a volcano in Ecuador. A wonderful minute or so of meditation, observing how our earth turns, providing spectacular views of the stars above as they move across the horizon.

A Day at the Opera

Not really a whole day - just a nice long afternoon.

Photo story at Picasa

No, the photo of the chandelier above is not from the Philadelphia Opera - it's the chandelier at the Prague Opera House. You could probably create a pretty good coffee table book based on chandeliers at opera houses. Check out my photo of the Philly chandelier by following the link above.

Photo courtesy Flickruser BooBooo

In Trust Workshop May 2010

A great two days in Washington DC. The photo above is detail from a painting that won the People's Choice award in the current portrait competition at the Smithsonian. Additional photos from the workshop on Picasa:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ebabcox/InTrustWritersWorkshopMay2010#

Beachscapes

Just a few photos from our recent trip to Florida. I've been to Florida on vacation three times in my life - once we took the kids to Disneyworld, and then we didn't see the state again until a couple years ago, when we stayed in Fort Lauderdale. We loved it so much that we returned to the Miami area a few weeks ago, and these photos are from that trip. I'm still in awe of the beaches in southern Florida - the sand so white, the water so clear, so warm, so vividly blue and green.

I tended to swim/walk on the beach either early or late, trying to avoid the hottest part of the day, which is part of the reason the beaches look so deserted in these photos. But still, even in the middle of the day, they weren't very crowded, which seemed odd since the weather was so perfect and the water so warm. Plus, with all those tall buildings, why weren't there more people around?

Later someone told us that many of them were in foreclosure.

The water was very shallow for a long way out. I love ocean swimming, and most days I spent at least two hours a day in salt water, and another hour in the pool.

Although we were on the beach at sunrise several days, many of them were too cloudy to get good photos. The final day, though, the skies were clear and the sunrise was gorgeous.

Excursion: Looking for Used Books

We drive from New Jersey to Philadelphia across the Ben Franklin bridge. (I really like the names of the bridges between Philadelphia and south Jersey - the Ben Franklin, the Walt Whitman, the Betsy Ross.)

 

We arrive at the Book Haven, a really nice used book store located across from Eastern State Penitentiary, which is now a museum and tourist attraction. Tim finds something to read.

Outside, the weather is lovely, the flowers are blooming, and the penitentiary is cheerful in the sunlight.

People are sitting at tables on the sidewalk today, which I find one of the best things about city life.

 That's it. We bought a couple books and had a good time. And I still had time left for a walk in the park later that day.

Excursions

This is the first post of a series: photo stories about various ordinary trips, such as going to the store or taking a walk in the park. What I really wish is that there had been blogs forty years ago, and I had been posting stories about everyday life all these years. I would love to be able to read them now. I've found that stories of ordinary stuff are what I like to read on others' blogs.

I also wish I had taken photos of everyday things all those years ago. I would love to have photos of my bedrooms through the years, and the kitchen and living room of the house in which I grew up, and the back yard, and that long, dusty (or muddy), potholed road between our house and the mailbox, on which I learned to ride a bike. It wouldn't look like much to anyone else, but it would be a treasure to me.

Perhaps at some point in the future I'll be glad to have these stories and photos of ordinary days and excursions.

(The photo shows our late dog, Norman, on an excursion of his own.)

Cloudscapes

When I fly, I get a sore neck from staring out the window for hours. I just can't get enough of the view from above.

I like it when bits of earth and roads and geography are visible through the clouds.

But I also like the solid fields of snowy white.

It's easyto see why Fort Lauderdale is called the Venice of the United States; when I was here two years ago I rode in a water taxi, and now whenever I get into a regular taxi I sometimes think to myself, "I'm in a land taxi." I suppose you could think of an airplane as an air taxi.

The site of a former trailer park looks like crop circles. I wonder if this is one of the spots a hurricane cleared out?

Really, one of the best parts of a vacation is getting there. In spite of all the inconveniences that everyone complains about, I am completely astounded by the very fact that we can fly at all!