25 AUG 12

Small things ...
Been playing with the camera and Photoshop ...
learning what I can about using both.
I'm liking what I've managed to do so far
but I'm sure there is more magic to be discovered
in the world of digital art.
If I'm up to it, I'd like to take some classes in either
photography or Photoshop. I think BOCES offers
both.

One discovery is the beauty of small things living wild.
Here are photos of small plants growing on the property:

                                                                 Wild Daisies

                                                  Yellow Flower (species unknown)

  

                                                                    Fallen Leaf

                                 At wood's edge ... Flowering Shamrock (last light)

 

-Fini

PS: There's also the captive beauty of a domesticated plant:

                                            Red Impatiens among White Wax-Begonias

                               Bandito Orange Sunrise ... last light

                                             

 

23 AUG 12

A twice told tale ...
From 1989 - While working in my brother's inn, up in Maine, I got into a disagreement with a local tough guy and trouble maker. He outweighed me by about 80 pounds and was gonna come kick my ass. I was working as maitre d' for the restaurant. Some of our customers included veterans being treated at Togus VA Hospital. A couple were former marines. We got to talking and when I mentioned that I had been at the 8th RRFS back in '67 - '68, they all wanted to buy me a drink. Seems one veteran had been Force Recon on a mission where they'd run afoul of a sizable NVA unit. They were caught in a valley with poor com links. They couldn't talk to the choppers sent to extract them. They could talk with the 8th ... and the 8th could talk to the choppers. We steered the rescue birds in and the recon team was extracted with minimal casualties.
These guys told me of the rescue. When they heard about my run-in with the bully, they all showed up on the night and had a "talk" with him outside the inn, in the parking lot. Had no more trouble with him after that.

-Fini

22 AUG 12

The Rundown ...
What's going on around here:

• A grandson is in the hospital, Luke Geocos. He's had surgery on the muscles in his legs to stretch them out. This is a necessary procedure. His Cerebral Palsy and subsequent confinement to a wheel-chair brings on muscular atrophy.
• Another grandson, Thomas Keane, is going off to his freshman year at college next Sunday ... which happens to also be his 18th birthday.

Don't believe that I wrote anything here about my wedding anniversary this past July. It was our 8th ... and the 4th of July was chosen as our wedding day because we used to host a family get-together on that date and since the whole family would be here anyway ... why not have the ceremony then?
(Besides, it would make remembering the anniversary date that much easier.)

                          Small montage of Barbara and I on our wedding day.

     

There aren't many good photos from that day. We thought to buy a bunch of throw-away cameras, place them on all the tables ... then let the guests snap pictures when they wanted, from many different angles. Unfortunately, I purchased the extra cheap Chinese-made one-time cameras from the Dollar Store. They were a buck apiece. They took very poor photos ... dark and fuzzy. The few pics that were good enough were saved ... the rest were tossed.

-Fini

15 AUG 12

Musings ...
In the film, "The Teahouse of the August Moon," the main
character, Captain Fisby, complains loudly and longly
of the malevolence inherent in the workings of ordinary machines.
I've often had the same thoughts myself.
Any technician, with experience, will tell tales of encounters with
the intermittent problem ... where the operator swears that the
equipment wasn't working a minute ago ... "but it's working now."

Here, today, in my own kitchen, the same game is being played out. I had installed a Coby undercounter television set back on Superbowl Sunday. It performed well up until last week when the picture began to fade. The screen became white and various geometric patterns began to appear at random ... then it would clear up. Weighing the difference between a repair and purchasing a new TV, I opted for new. The new television arrived last Friday via UPS ... since that day, the old TV has performed flawlessly. And I'm wondering, "Does it know, somehow, that if it's removed that it's then bound for the junk-yard?"
Wouldn't surprise me at all.

-Fini

PS:
One of my favorite scenes from the film:
http://youtu.be/EbtuWlu0r8s

10 AUG 12

Weather ...
Again, the weather is the news.
Right now, it's raining cats & dogs ...
with severe storms moving through the area.
It's a daughter's birthday today and we're
going to her house for dinner ...
weather be damned!

Tornado warning ... New Jersey and Suffolk County, Long Island ...
Damn!

-Fini

06 AUG 12 (2)

Photoshop art ...

                           From my front yard - Iris Plant.

                     
                   From the back deck - potted Wax Begonias

                  Another from the back deck - Yellow Begonia.

       From a hanging pot on rear deck, Bandito Orange Sunrise

                     From beside the house - Blue Hydrangia.

             From the front porch - Impatiens, a Mothers' Day gift.

(All these subjects to shoot and I never left the property.)


-Fini

06 AUG 12

Begin anew?
Age
Ailments
Loss
And so it goes ...

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!"

-Tennyson (Ulysses)


-Fini

03 AUG 12

"Umgawa ..."
So spake Tarzan of the Apes ...
at least the Johnny Weissmuller version.
I've been a Tarzan fan since childhood.
I read all of Burrough's books.
My very favorite movie-Tarzan was Gordon Scott.

There is an old saw about putting aside the things of
childhood when one is no longer a child.
So it was with Tarzan.
Attending college, in the '90s, I took a few psychology
classes. Doing the heavy reading, I found out that a "Tarzan"
could never come to be ... not in real life.
It's the biology.
If a child is not exposed to language by the age of three,
the necessary synapses in the brain do not develop and
the child will not ever learn to speak a language.

                                                        Gordon Scott as Tarzan

 

-Fini

PS:  A question that puzzled me in later life ...
       Why is it that Tarzan never needs to shave??