Monday, March 31, 2008

This one's for Cheryl


Read all about it....






Where's Oppy?

On vacation?

In the pokey?

On a sentimental journey to the East?

Well, if you should see him tell him I am making some photocopies of pages from "Berkeley Heights Revisited" and will mail them to him. I think that's allowed by copyright law, single copies, not made for profit, only for educational use...

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Earth Hour

At 8pm today let's all turn off our lights for one hour!

http://www7.earthhourus.org/

Who knows, the ice caps may re-freeze!

P.S. take a look at Google today http://www.google.com/

Monday, March 24, 2008

Periwinkles


Two of them are blooming by my front door amidst the ivy! Spring is here!
(Picture not taken by me)

Saturday, March 22, 2008

You guys ...


forgot my birthday!

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Alcatraz

I'm on vacation from work...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14874295

BH, continued



Well, the book arrived, "Berkeley Heights Revisited". It's mostly photographs. I was a little disappointed to see how few were from the 1950s.
Biddie, you bought a copy, didn't you--look on page 28...isn't the "unidentified" person your mother?!!
It was good to see pictures of some Columbia School teachers (Mariner, Woods, Kashuba, Linskill, and Sup. Bothwell), the cafeteria, the gym, those custodians, and Mrs. Wrathall.
Oppy, I think you were right; the first book must have different photos. (Who's going to buy it?) Wish I could post some of these pictures; alas, copyright considerations.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Gas Pains


What's the price in your area?
I paid $3.399 a gallon yesterday for Regular.
I'm so glad I don't have an SUV!

Friday, March 14, 2008

Calverton Grasslands: Some publicity

A few weeks ago I mentioned the wonderful grasslands out in Calverton that are under threat.
Well, the big guns have taken notice. It seems the birds have friends in high places!
There is an article in today's New York Times, and I dearly hope the publicity will do some good in the campaign to stop this insane project.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/nyregion/14slope.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=short+eared+owl&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Fascinating books on Berkeley Heights

Oppy has loaned me a history of Berkeley Heights, published in 1977, "From the Passaiack to the Wach Unks". It is fascinating! Really, it never occured to me before that anything went on in BH before 1938 when my parents bought the house on Mountain Avenue (just kidding) . What a perspective this gives me on my childhood.

Another book on BH came out in 2005, "Berkeley Heights Revisited", by Virginia B. Troeger. Oppy, you said you saw this on Amazon.com. I wonder if you saw the photos that I just discovered there. One shows the Class of 1954. The year ahead of our class. All the names were familiar to me. (Cheryl and Biddie: see top row.)

I think I'm going to buy this book! I can't help wondering what else it contains. Class of 1955?

Here's how to see the photos: Go to Amazon.com. Search on Books: Berkeley Heights Revisited. Click on title. Click on Search Inside This Book. Click on Excerpt, which brings you to Introduction. Click on small white triangle on right side. Fourth click shows class.

Here's a puzzle: 1950 photo mentions library. Was there one in the old building?

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

More Chinese Brush Painting

" Did you hear the latest about Tweetie? Bzzzzzz...zzzzzz."


Monday, March 10, 2008

Two Emoticons for "Cat"

=^.^=

∑:3



The whole list of emoticons is amazing


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon

Friday, March 7, 2008

Aamir


I am so proud of my friend Aamir Jamal (Omer and Danny's father)

There's hope for the world when we have such people in it.

http://www.ucalgary.ca/news/uofcpublications/oncampus/online/march6-08/jamal

I miss having 5 cats ....

This is Winky, one of my feline herd from the 1980s. The picture was taken about 1988. Her mother was Becky, a black-and-white shorthair, and her father was Ginger, an orange and white Persian. I took both of them in as kittens. My irreverent vet at the time would say each time I brought Winky in, "Now that would make a pretty potty cover!" I could have slugged him.


Thursday, March 6, 2008

That's funny...

I just posted a photo of a cat of mine and it appears in the February 20 position (which is when I saved the image as a draft)

Does anybody know how to move it over to March 6th?

Sunday, March 2, 2008

It hasn't changed much (at least from the outside)


This is where I began my library career
as a page,
nearly fifty years ago.

Gosh.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Yipes! What did they see?

Who said the classics are not relevant! The following passage from the life of Lysander, the Spartan general who defeated Athens in 406BC , contains an intriguing digression by Plutarch,

XII. "Some affirmed, that when Lysander's ship sailed out of the harbour of Lampsakus to attack the enemy, they saw the Dioskuri, like two stars, shining over the rudders[147]. Some also say that the fall of the great stone was an omen of this disaster: for the common belief is that a vast stone fell down from Heaven into the Goat's Rivers, which stone is even now to be seen, and is worshipped by the people of the Chersonese…. [Then Plutarch speculates about the origin of shooting stars for about ten lines. Then he relates a sighting, 500 years before his day, that has a familiar ring to it. Colored italics mine]….
This theory of Anaxagoras is confirmed by Daimachus in his treatise on Piety, where he states that for seventy-five days before the stone fell a fiery body of great size like a burning cloud, was observed in the heavens. It did not remain at rest, but moved in various directions by short jerks, so that by its violent swaying about many fiery particles were broken off, and flashed like shooting-stars. When, however, it sank to the earth, the inhabitants, after their first feeling of terror and astonishment were passed, collected together, and found no traces of fire, but merely a stone lying on the ground, which although a large one, bore no comparison to that fiery mass. It is evident that this tale of Daimachus can only find credit with indulgent readers: but if it be true, it signally confutes those who argue that the stone was wrenched by the force of a whirlwind from some high cliff, carried up high into the air, and then let fall whenever the violence of the tempest abated. Unless, indeed, that which was seen for so many days was really fire, which, when quenched, produced such a violent rushing and motion in the air as tore the stone from its place. A more exact enquiry into these matters, however, belongs to another subject."