We went to Zoo Lights last night.

I still need a lot of work with the new camera.

However it was a nice warm winter night and the lights were beautiful.

 

Winter stops by for a visit each year.

Dead leaves cluster around.

They know what is coming.

They listen to some silent song.

Over Montana

William Stafford

Hardware store roses inspect a snowy landscape

Good news Christmas has been great. I got two books on using my Canon camera.

Maybe the pictures will get better. Thanks for the good wishes and great gifts.



They got chocolates I got a ribbon.  When is the turkey ready?

I have enjoyed collecting a few Nutcrackers. 

I admit I have never watched the actual ballet.
I suspect I just like collecting shiny toy like things.

I think I will start looking for a mouse or two.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Christmas Bells 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Every year I leave my Christmas cards too late and end up feeling a bit harried.  However the real sadness comes when you realize you have one less to send.

"The shadow of the loon will soon embrace

the shadows of the continental shelf

as night becomes a shadow of itself."

                The Shadow-line

                                William Logan

The ornament was left to us by a late friend who loved loons.

New York

This is the last post on the New York trip.  Often the things that we enjoy in any trip, and it was no different in New York, is not the big attractions like the Empire State building but small unexpected treats.  How small corner stores would open up as you went in, with a second floor full of beautiful deli counters and wonderful cookies. 

The brownstones dripping sculptures, the reminders of the past sandwiched into the present. The fall of light on old buildings. The views of rooftops and water tanks. I am not sure I could live there but I would love to go back.


                        
                          "Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender,
                          strong, light, splendidly uprising towards clear skies,"


                                Mannahatta
                                Walt Whitman

    

New York

We went to New York in late Sept. Central Park was still green, every tree heavy with robins possibly the same robins that had haunted our lawn a few weeks earlier.  It was wonderful, dogs and trees, the glimpses of the great buildings that ringed it.

The Conservatory Water of Stuart Little fame ( I am thinking book )

" (He was an adventurous little fellow and loved the feel of the breeze in his face and the cry of gulls overhead and the heave of the great swell under him) "
                                                                              Stuart Little
                                                                                     E.B. White

And of course Alice

" Things flow about so here!" she said at last in a plaintive tone, after she had spent a minute or so in vainly pursuing a bright thing, that looked sometimes like a doll and sometimes like a work-box, and was always in the shelf above the one she was looking at.



Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
       Lewis Carroll
         

More on New York

" And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are

                more to me and more in my meditations, than you

                might suppose."

                                                “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” Walt Whitman

We did not take the ferry.  But we did try to take a three hour tour ( shades of the Minnow ) around the entire island. However  we only got as far as Harlam when a transformer fire at the base of a small bridge wreathed the river in thick black smoke and the captain wisely turned back.  It was a great way to see the city though, all the iconic building, bridges and the evocative place names did make me think of Whitman and his list like poems.

" Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills

          of Brooklyn. "
                                                 “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” Walt Whitman

                             
We did get ferried in a way on our trip.  We stayed in a hotel by the American Museum of Natural History ( WOW ). One night Obama hosted the UN there.  When we came back from supper the cement barriers we had seen for days had morphed into several walls.  To cross the street thru the line of limos and security staff you were ferried across the street by a policeman in groups of six or eight. Once across more police examined id, passports in our case and another policeman escorted even smaller groups to their apartment or hotel.  As we passed one very large very expensive looking building we a saw a father with several pj clad little girls.  He was alternately talking on his cell phone and saying " Can you see mommy she's waving".  Everyone seemed very relatively good natured about the whole thing but given how big the throng across the street was I wondered how long it took mommy to get across.  We had been one of the first groups to cross and we stayed in out hotel for the rest of the night.

A slightly crooked photo from a recent trip to
New York. Favorites the American Museum

of Natural History, the Met, MoMA.

Henri Rousseau,  Giorgio de Chirico,

 Marc Chagall and the dogs of Central Park.

"How long will the light go on?

Longer than you. Still you ought to live like a city,

rich and fierce at the center."

       HalfLife

                       Meghan O'Rourke

Invaders



Where did these towers come from

amid the nighted houses, the round bales, the head down horses.

Tall sucker armed aliens blinking at the steel grey twilight

flinging silent messages out to the world.

The horses don't look up, the bales hear nothing

 the house sleeps on.

                                                       Guy