Wordless Wednesday
One Word Photo Challenge: Contrast
First Day of School
School begins today- a new first grade class coming in. I was going through my photos and came upon this pathway, and the words written in it jumped out at me- all a reminder for today. A new path, and important words.
The Weekly Smile
This weekend my husband and I visited a local Zoo. My last time there was in 1964 on a 2nd grade class trip. Back then zoos were quite different from how they are today. There were no natural habitats for the larger animals to roam around in, they were locked in metal cages.I think back to it and cringe. The Zoo underwent a many million dollar update years ago and has been an accredited member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums since 2006. An improvement I must say. We wandered the zoo, taking in the sights, but my weekly smile came when I spotted the train. All aboard! You’re never too old for a train ride!
Black & White Sunday: Portrait
This is one of my closest friends, June. I took this photo on a cold winter day in front of the restaurant we had just had lunch in. She never likes to smile in photos- she insists her smile is always crooked, her teeth too “English” as she is from Great Britain where straight teeth she has told me, are not as important as they are in America. She has a dry wit which seems to come through to me in this photo whenever I look at it. It is one of my favorite portraits.
Daily Prompt: Sidewalk
Weekly Photo Challenge: Mirror
Feathers on Friday: The Gray Catbird
Gray Catbirds are relatives of mockingbirds and thrashers, and they share that group’s vocal abilities, copying the sounds of other species and stringing them together to make their own song.  A medium-sized, slender songbird with a long, rounded, black tail and a narrow, straight bill. Catbirds are fairly long legged and have broad, rounded wings. They have a small black cap, blackish tail, and a rich rufous-brown patch under the tail. I am always startled when I hear them “mewing” they do sound just like a cat!
Thursday’s Special: Eye Contact
There is nothing quite like making direct eye contact with an animal. Their eyes seem to be able to speak to you when they do.
Black & White Sunday: Towering
Paula’s Black & White Sunday challenge this week has towering as a theme. My mind immediately went to the Freedom Tower, the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, and the sixth-tallest in the world. I have driven past it going South on the West Side Highway, I have approached it coming North, I have viewed it from Liberty State Park across the river from it, but no matter which direction I am looking at it, it fills me with awe. Towering above all other structures around it, standing out as a symbol of rebirth from the horror of 9/11.
The Weekly Smile
Summer is coming to a close, it is back to school for orientation this coming week, readying the classroom and meeting the incoming students. So this past week I made sure to spend a day at the beach. My husband and I walked 3 miles round trip, along the shoreline taking in the sights on the sand and in the water. My weekly smile
Weekly Photo Challenge: Frame
Through a car window- The Brooklyn Bridge
A stanchion on the George Washington bridge framing a view of Manhattan
Skyscrapers framing the Empire State Building
Country Roads
I visited my best friend this week, she lives an hour from me in the “country” quite different from the town in the “suburbs” where I live. Once you leave the highway, the difference becomes apparent as the roads are dotted with barns and farms.
We visited a farm where you can cut your own flowers to make a bouquet, the name of the farm is Tranquility, as is the town, very fitting.
There is a donkey/zebra on the farm-first one I had ever seen or heard of!
It’s good to leave the hustle bustle and crowded streets for the rural beauty of the country- and to come home with fresh flowers that I picked myself!
Hope you all are enjoying your weekend!
Cee’s Which Way Photo Challenge
This is one of my favorite local stretches of highway-at this spot in the road a view of the Manhattan skyline comes into view- this day it was a bit hazy but straight ahead is the Empire State Building. Landmarks make it easier to know which way you’re going!
Witness
What better moment to witness than the joining of two people in marriage. To think of the lives that lie before them, the love, the challenges, the sharing of their lives. I always find I am choked up watching them come down the aisle with their parents and returning after their vows arm in arm with one another. Witnessing the beginning of that transition into a new life taking place, right there before my eyes. Seeing the joy in their faces, the excitement and knowing for this moment they feel it is just the two of them, together. Thinking back to my own wedding, waxing nostalgic, and remembering the feeling of embarking on a that new journey, unlike anything before.
Witnessing a moment of the future, of hope, of love.
Thursday’s Special: Pick a Word
This week Paula gives us the opportunity to choose between five unrelated words and to make a photo post (in colour)
The words are: elusive, profusion, viscid, brilliant, disorder
I have chosen brilliant. The photo I chose to use is of a sunrise over the ocean I took this summer- I have not retouched the color at all- the brilliance of the sun and the color of the sky as it rose was just breathtaking.
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Trees
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Feathers
A World of Toothpicks
This past weekend we visited a wonderful exhibit called Toothpick City. The man who created these wonderful structures is Stan Munro, not a student of architecture, but a fan of it. Toothpicking has been his hobby since his 5th grade art teacher brought a toothpick project to the classroom. Stan stayed with it, and almost 30 years later he makes a living at it. The structures he builds are amazing to see, especially when you become aware of the tiniest detail he has paid attention to. Here is some of what we saw.
Wordless Wednesday
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Bathrooms and Outhouses
Black & White Sunday: Composition
This week Paula’s theme is composition – telling us we may decide to show photos where we paid special attention to this important element in photography, where we either respected the conventional rules in photography (such as the rule of thirds) or we chose to broke them to make the image more interesting, or we may take an entirely different approach in our interpretation. The focus does not need to be on the layout of elements that make a photo; we can simply show us a photo of a composition, and that can be just about anything.
I can never pass a barn without taking a photo- this one is near where I live, and I never tire of seeing it standing in contrast to the open sky.
Cee’s Which Way
The Weekly Smile
Last week my husband and I went to a “paint your own” pottery place. You choose a piece of unfinished pottery and paint it, leave it with them to be fired in the kiln and come back a week later to pick it up. My smile this week came after picking up what we had painted, and seeing how they had been transformed.
Thursday’s Special: Traces of the Past
My husband and I visited the Morgan Library last week. It was founded to house the private library of J. P. Morgan in 1906. John Pierpont “J.P.” Morgan (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and banker who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. The library was made a public institution in 1924 by J. P. Morgan’s son John Pierpont Morgan, Jr., in accordance with his father’s will.
The walls of the library reach a height of thirty feet, and are lined floor to ceiling with triple tiers of bookcases fashioned of bronze and inlaid walnut. Two staircases, concealed behind bookcases at the corners of the room, provide access to the balconies above. A trace of the past very present in NYC today.
A Day In The Life 
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