A repost with one lovely view of the city today. My version will be up later (much later)….Thanks Ailsa
Category Archives: photoaday
3-30-11 Re-entry
Went down to the river around 5pm and spent a few hours walking it just to reacquaint myself with home. Trying to figure out what caused all of the flotsam, lumber, and tree branches in the water. I knew it hadn’t been warm up here but do not recall hearing about any storms. T’is a mystery.
As I looked up the river past the GW towards Yonkers and beyond, I couldn’t help thinking about Indian Point and Japan. Despite everyone’s best efforts, significant and high levels of contamination seem to be showing up well outside the 20 k zone. In New York terms the contamination found 40K from the plant would be about a mile into the Bronx. We are told not to worry about earthquakes and tsunami’s – ok I won’t…what about hurricanes, or even plain old fashioned accidents?
We may be stuck with this aging, at the end of its originally mandated life, plant for a while but why are we not planning for a different future? Why do we insist that coal, oil, gas and nuclear are the only possibilities? Once upon a time didn’t we dream big? We all remember Fulton\’s Folly , don’t we?
3-29-11 #2 Art of the River
So we came back to NYC today. Arrived late evening (11ish) and since we had been in Mexico we ordered rice and beans and chicken delivered.
On the plane I thought a lot about the “folk” art people make on the Hudson. It is there for a day or three and then time, tides or other people destroy it. Here are a few examples. Remember – if you click on the picture you get a full sized version.
3-12-11 Riding with the Tide
Spring was in the air (to coin a phrase) today. Saw crocuses in Riverside Park. Bare chested college boys running in a pack (assuming Columbia track team) by the river, the first sailboat was out as was a kayaker running upstream with the tide. Distance kayaking on the Hudson is not something you do on a whim. You have to know how the tide is running, when it will be coming in, slack, and going out. The current is something that you want working with you because if it is against you … you will end up where you don’t want to be.
3-11-11 No Trespassing
I was going to write about trespassing signs, river access, railroad right of ways etc., but after the news from Japan, I don’t feel like it.
My daughter, Abigail and her friend, Ari were taken with this picture so I decided it would be today’s image.
Someone asked me how I choose the image I use each day. Ordinarily after I have downloaded the daily images onto my two hard drives, I wipe the RAW files from my memory card and then download the jpegs onto iPhoto and delete all images from the memory card. I skim through them quickly and then walk away and go about my life. I want to let what I saw percolate in my unconscious. I return to the images before going to bed and flag anywhere from 5-10 shots. Occasionally I will play with the exposure and/or white balance or the blacks. Sometimes I will sharpen or soften the image and sometimes I crop (end of tech talk).The next morning I show them to Abigail before she heads off to school and ask her to pick her favorites. She usually comes up with 2 or 3 and then I make the final selection. Since this was the one image that she and Ari agreed on…Father and baby it is.
Abigail did ask me if people thought I was “creepy” sneaking shots of people and their kids. I explained that I never sneak shots of kids, I always ask if I can take their picture. Adults on the other hand do not have a No Trespassing sign as far as I am concerned. If you are out in public…
3-9-11 Dobbs Ferry
Welcome to Dobbs Ferry .
Working my way north train station by train station. Dobbs Ferry is a quiet little village (well off for the most part although its median income is significantly lower than the Westchester County average). George Washington camped in the area during the summer of 1781. He and the army actually covered many of the surrounding villages in the town of Greenburgh but he headlined his letters \”Head Quarters, Dobbs Ferry\”
More on Trespass tomorrow or Saturday…
3-7-11 The Commercial Waterfront
I went for another seminar at B&H today (Making Your Travel Photos Work – David H. Wells) which meant that I was down into midtown. The stretch of River between W 38th Street and W 55th Street is, I think the most heavily commercialized part of the river in Manhattan
Pier 78/79 New York Waterway
Pier 81 World Yacht
Pier 83 Circle Line
Pier 84 Pier 84 Restaurant, Boat Building, Bike Rentals, Kayaking
Pier 86 Intrepid Museum
Piers 88,90 and 92 Cruise Terminals
Pier 92/94 Pier 92/94 is the 2nd largest exhibit space in NYC
Pier 96 Downtown Boathouse is where you can launch your Kayak in the summer and is part of Hudson River Park- FREE!
In the spring/fall and especially summer this area is a hotbed of activity at all times of the day. In the winter, everyone has hunkered down and except for the New York Waterway during the week and the Intrepid and to some extent the Circle Line on weekends it is pretty quiet. The Intrepid Museum is celebrating Women’s History Month with a number of events.
The area is bordered to the North (Pier 98) by a Con Edison facility that includes employee parking, a training facility and fuel oil storage.
The area is bordered to the south (Pier 76) by the New York City Police Tow Impound Lot. Theoretically if your car was parked illegally below 96th Street in Manhattan this is where you will find it but…sometimes it goes to 203rd Street and 9th Avenue and if you had an especially diabolical tow truck driver your car could end up in Mott Haven (East 141st Street) in the Bronx. Take public transportation or park in a garage if you are from out-of-town.
3-5-11 Across the bridge to Fort Lee Historic Park
Since I was in two states today…I think we will have more than one picture…
This has been a weekend full of misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and all around miscommunication and that is just what I am hearing on the streets.
I am told it was a beautiful morning. By the time I got out it was overcast, still warm though, and quite windy. I had planned to walk up to the Bridge and Lighthouse and back but on an impulse decided to walk the bridge to Fort Lee Historic Park because in all my time in NYC I had never done that. I know, a bit odd but so it goes. I know people who have lived in NYC for decades who have never done the Statue or the Empire State Building. I hadn’t been to Ellis Island until my daughter’s field trip several years ago.
The first thing I noticed this time was the Suicide Prevention Lifeline sign Take 5 To Save Lives at the entrance to the Bridge. There is also one on the NJ side. I don’t know if it is new or that I somehow have never noticed it before. When I got on the bridge it was windy! Easily 15mph faster than on the entrance walk. I had about 10 pounds of gear in a shoulder bag and the damn thing kept trying to blow onto the road.
Fort Lee Historic Park has clearly had a rough winter. Outdoor exhibits are run down,
Click on photo for full size image.
the visitor center was closed because of “NO WATER”`but the views of the river, NYC and upriver were wonderful. The only unfortunate element were the couples arguing all over the park. I heard 4 in less than an hour. I guess the idea was to get it out of the house and into the wild. That was counterbalanced by the deer in the “woods”.
20 yards to the river and maybe 50 yards to a 40 story+ apartment building
As I started to walk back I noticed that the Jersey side has a “No Photography” sign at the Bridge entrance. The NYC side does not…
I am from New York.
3-4-11 “Off The Base” A different view of life and a view of a different life
The people at WordPress started a Postaday2011 project which I chose to join since I do plan on posting everyday. If you put a tag on the blog – postaday2011 – it feeds into a page they set up where all “postaday2011″ are published in order of upload sequence. A second task I have set myself is to read the blogs on either side of me each day. I have found some blogs of great interest and some that simply do not intersect with my life or interests at all (most fall in the middle, of course), but all of them have been worth reading for the experience of seeing the world through other eyes. I also decided that if a blog showed up twice I would read it the 2nd time but if it happens a third time I will skip it and move one over. If it is a blog that interests me, I will, of course, continue to drop by but it will not be mandatory (ain’t self-imposed rules great!)
Today I had my first repeat, a blog called Off The Base. This blogs statement of purpose includes: “…Off the Base, is a multi-media project designed to build a bridge and give the civilian community a better understanding of military life for service members and their families…Of special interest are military families dealing with multiple deployments to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
My friends who are reading Quotidian Hudson are well aware of my feelings about these wars, especially Iraq. Within months of 9/11 we had bin Laden in our sites and for whatever reason the politicians chose not to capture or kill him and his cohort but to invade Iraq instead. Iraq was a country lead by a vicious and nasty dictator it is true, but we have not invaded the other 100 + countries run by other vicious and nasty dictators so what was the point? As nearly as I can see it was to make Iraq safe for Chinese Investment. We shouldn’t be there, wasting American lives and money on a completely unnecessary war. We have more than enough problems at home that we could work on rather than whatever the hell we are accomplishing in Iraq.
These political facts have nothing whatsoever to do with Off The Base except that they make a blog of its type necessary. The mass of people in the USA have no connection to the military, to these wars, or to the effects these wars are having on our fellow citizens. Because we are an all volunteer military AND have subcontracted approximately 50% of the war to the private sector, most of us have not felt these wars in any conscious way. We are so bad off that it seems most Americans can’t work out that a massive quantity of our deficit (that not caused by the Wall Street/political axis) is due to these idiotic adventures that are killing our young people and deeply stressing their families.
In the 60′s I strongly supported the idea of abolishing the draft and was very happy when it was eliminated. That was before the chicken hawks took control of the government. I am sorry that Dick Cheney and his ilk regret they missed the adventure of getting killed or watching their friends be killed in Vietnam but do they have to work out their regrets on our children? Did they never visit The Vietnam Veterans Memorial – aka The Wall. As odd as I find these words coming out of my computer, we need to reinstate the draft (both sexes) with no exemptions allowed. Just watch how fast the wars would end and how quickly Off The Base could be honorably discharged.
This has been my first blog rant.
Just for the record…Despite the fact it was the most important day of my life up until that moment I had to google my lottery number (I knew it was high but I no longer remembered it). I was number 270. Makes not winning any subsequent lottery pale in comparison.
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