What a Pretty Color!

I'd like to change the subject, if I may.

Beautiful color, this ...

Like a palamino horse.

Like waving grain ready to be harvested.

Like fresh clay being spun on a wheel to make a fine pot.

Like ....

Hooray, he's gotten to third grade!!

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://trlani.people.wm.edu/webquest/poncedeleon.jpeg&imgrefurl=http://trlani.people.wm.edu/webquest/webquest.html&h=340&w=528&sz=39&hl=en&start=13&tbnid=NNO4KHyiVnunIM:&tbnh=85&tbnw=132&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dponce%2Bde%2Bleon%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

Are You Feeling Powerless, My Friend?

Watch this video and you'll feel better.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://video.fquick.com/thumbs_sm/2496.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.fquick.com/videos/Hummer_in_Iraq/1748&h=88&w=112&sz=8&hl=en&start=30&tbnid=h7jD6W9jXY13vM:&tbnh=68&tbnw=86&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkayak%2Bwith%2Bmotor%26start%3D20%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

Here's the kayak picture I meant to post ...

... with the yellow/green upright one.

You can rent kayaks here, too. One summer day a friend and I paddled out into the bay and had a wonderful time. It only costs about $40 a day to rent a single kayak.

Biddie, on your trip north why don't you stop here for a day or two and we'll go kayaking?

Spring Colors: All the pretty little kayaks

... waiting for new owners. Who knows, I may be one of them!

From the Internet, so it must be true ...

All About PINK

Cotton Candy and Little Girls: Pink is a softer, less violent red. Pink is the sweet side of red. It's cotton candy and bubble gum and babies, especially little girls.

Nature of Pink: While red stirs up passion and action, studies have shown that large amounts of pink can create physical weakness in people. Perhaps there is a tie-in between this physical reaction and the color's association with the so-called weaker sex.

Culture of Pink: In some cultures, such as the US, pink is the color of little girls. It represents sugar and spice and everything nice. Pink for men goes in and out of style. Most people still think of pink as a feminine, delicate color.

Using Pink: Both red and pink denote love but while red is hot passion, pink is romantic and charming. Use pink to convey playfulness (hot pink flamingoes) and tenderness (pastel pinks). Multiple shades of pink and light purple or other pastels used together maintain the soft, delicate, and playful nature of pink. Add strength with darker shades of pinks and purple and burgundy.

Using Pink with Other Colors: All shades of pink get sophisticated when combined with black or gray or medium to darker shades of blue. Medium to dark green with pink is also a sharp-looking combo.

Using Pink in Other Design Fields:

Feng Shui Use of the Color Pink

Language of Pink: The use of pink in familiar phrases can help a designer see how their color of choice might be perceived by others — both the positive and negative aspects.

Good pink
In the pink - healthy
Tickled pink - happy, content
Pink collar - female office worker (sometimes used in a derogatory manner)

Bad or neutral pink
Pink collar - female office worker (sometimes used in a derogatory manner to imply low person on the office totem pole)
Pink - cut, notch, or make a zigzag
Pink Words: These words are synonymous with pink or represent various shades of the color pink:
Salmon, coral, hot pink, fuschia, blush, flesh, flush, fuchsia, rose.
(from About.com)

Today is Shakespeare's Birthday ...

...and I've just found out where to get my very own Jester's Hat. From the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington (where else?) Only costs ten bucks.

Jester's hat

Another Bird of Prey

This is the post office where I pick up my mail. That eagle in the pediment above is a famous tourist attraction; the thing flaps its wings at certain hours of the day, I think noon and three o'clock and five o'clock. As people gather to watch it perform one stands there and scratches one's head at how easily some people are amused.

(For those who wish to see a Greek temple putting itself together, click on http://www.flvs.net/products_services/2005_showcase_flvs/art/apart/lessons/03_04.htm)

Hillary and Followers in Old Field

This scene impressed me as a politician giving a speech to an enthusiastic but orderly crowd of tulips.
Old Field is a very posh area within Setauket (near Stony Brook). Many waterfront properties. Probably heavily Republican. This is an example of nose thumbing, I suspect.

Owl Warning by the Mill Pond

This is what they have posted to protect the public. Yet the Great Horned Owl's nest seems to be empty and I think the young one has flown.

My first digital picture

A little lopsided, but colorful.

This is fun! The camera (Panasonic Lumix) has a 119-page instruction book, but I finally concluded all I really need to do is set the mode at Simple, point and shoot.

Today at work I copied the 15 pictures to a folder on my computer. Now I know how to do that so look out world, here I come!

These daffodils greet me at my front door and have promised to last another day or two so I can get a really good shot of them.

Help is on the Way!

Holy Moly!! Sacre Bleu!! Ach du liebe Himmel!! Tarnation!! Great Balls O' Fire!!

Biddie, I am SO sorry about the unintended consequences of my last post. What a cat-astrophe! I want to do something to help. So......

I have arranged for the following emergency personnel to proceed full speed ahead to you there in Chipmunk, Florida: 5 veterinarians, 4 nurse practitioners (one for each injured limb) , 3 cleaning ladies (trained in the White House), 2 AP reporters, and a Big Shot from F. E. M. A.

I never laughed so hard in all my life as I did at your narrative of the explosive event. Well done!! I was rolling on the floor and foaming at the mouth.

My New Singing Teacher

Yes, we all need lessons now and then....

Her lack of inhibition is marvelous.

She (my new teacher) has at least 5 videos on You Tube. How 'bout that?

And her name is ......ZOEI TOH!!

Check her out!

Pillow attached

Okay, so it's Friday and I don't feel inspired.
What kind of bird is this?

Hooray!! Broadwater's Dead!!

The Federal Government's plan to plunk a huge LNG (liquified natural gas) terminal right in the middle of Long Island Sound (nine miles from our shores) has been nixed by our new governor Paterson!!

Big sigh of relief......

It seemed like a crazy idea, putting such a thing, surely a target for terrorists, right in the middle of prime recreational waters near New York City, but there are so many crazy ideas around these days that I was afraid it just might go through. This is good news indeed.

Score one for common sense.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-LNG-Terminal.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

And The Winner Is .....

Correction, the winners are... (It's a tie!)

Cheryl ( for Meeow/Woof)

and

Kristen (for the double headed Q-tip caption)

Congratulations, winners! Your prize will be delivered early Friday morning. Look toward the east and shade your eyes or wear sun glasses. We went to a great deal of trouble to arrange this and hope you will be pleased with this unimaginably splendid prize. Gardeners will love it.

Second prize... the panel of judges was unable to agree on a second prize winner. It has therefore decided there will be a six-way tie for second place. Congratulations all! And your prize? Yours will be visible in the night sky starting on Thursday. and it will actually grow on succeeding nights. No sunglasses necessary.

Our thanks go out to everyone who participated in the contest. (Bugsy survived, by the way.)

Who blew my cover?!

Rats!!

I thought I could hide out up in that big oak tree beside the Mill Pond and no one would bother me. I squeezed into a cormorant's nest, which is pretty declasse, let me tell you.

But now all these people keep gathering below and pointing their cameras up at me and I'm so flustered I can't even concentrate on laying my eggs. I wish they'd go away!

Humph!!

Humans are crazy!! No wonder the pink-footed goose left town.

And that word was...

“OPPOSITE” Only 3 syllables… but so hard to understand!

Peppy (6) and Herbie (7) are standing beside the maple tree at the border between their two properties having a deep discussion, as children will. H (an exalted first grader) speaks of something as being “opposite”.
“Opposite? What’s that?’
“Opposite…you know, like when something is not like something else.”
“Huh?”
“Like my shoe is black and that flower is white…they’re opposite.”
“Huh?”
“Like…see that tree over there, okay, we are here…so we are opposite.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, y’know this tree, when you climb up to the top [I often did], I’m standing down here…that’s opposite. Get it?”
“No.”
“Well (patiently persisting), you know how an ice cube is, cold?”
“Yeah.”
“And the stove is hot?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they’re opposite, see?”
“Our stove is white… is everything white opposite?”
“No, no, no! …Look, you stand over there, and I’ll stand right here. Go on.”
Little Peppy runs over to the spot indicated.
“Now … we are opposite. You get it?”
“No, I don’t feel hot.”
“Urrrr… okay (sigh), that car (pointing to Mountain Avenue) is going that way, and that other car is going the other way. They are going in the opposite direction.”
“Oh!……….oh! I get it!”
“Opposite, opposite, opposite,” chortles Herbie, his mouth popping like a little pop gun.
Ding-a-ding-a-ding, goes the dinner bell my mother is shaking out the back door.
Inside the kitchen, “Mommie, Mommie, Herbie taught me a new word!”
“Oh?” alarm in her voice barely concealed. “What word?
“Opposite!! I know what opposite means!!”
“Ah, that’s nice, dear.”

Dr. King

It was 40 years ago today that Martin Luther King was assassinated. Gosh, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I got the news.

On April 4th I was six weeks away from finishing my 2-year course at Rutgers Library School in New Brunswick. That day I had taken an elderly gentleman from Free Acres with me to the campus so he could talk with the Special Collections Librarian about donating some papers he had (letter from FDR, etc.). I left him in the SC Dept. and went to my classes, saying I would be back at 4:00 to pick him up. Well, when I returned at that hour he wasn't there and someone informed me he had been taken to the hospital as he had collapsed. Great!

I drove to the hospital and sat in the Emergency waiting room. A young doctor came out and asked if I was Mrs. B. When I said no he sort of smirked (man 86, woman 27). I called the real Mrs. B and doctor talked with her, then said he couldn't release him, even though he had regained strength, because X-rays showed a darkening on one lung. Mrs. B said pooh, it had been there for a long time. Talk, talk, back and forth. Finally they said Mr. B could be released. I'd been in the waiting room for several hours by now. Suddenly, as we were getting ready to go, an ambulance driver walked in the door and said Martin Luther King had been shot. Shock, pure shock, horrible. Another assassination! Well, I carefully put Mr. B in my car and we drove home. He was okay. But all we could think about was the horrible event. My car didn't have a radio so we couldn't even listen for news. It was a long, unforgettable day. Forty years ago.

The Bugs/Yeti Encounter

The person who can supply the funniest/most ingenious caption for this [borrowed] image will win a prize of ... unimaginable splendor.