A visit to the cemetery

Last Sunday Laura mentioned would be leaving for work early, to stop by the cemetery (to visit her parents's graves). That, unexpectedly, planted the idea in my head to go visit my father's grave. Today I left home early, and stopped by the Maimonides Cemetery in Elmont. I remembered that his grave is beyond Grant Avenue (the up and down streets have Biblical names, the cross streets names of US presidents.

As it turned out, my father's grave is beyond this intersection.

I found it, in part, by searching for an elaborate plot where two de Rotschild graves are located. As we said the day of the gravestone's unveiling, it's a nice neighborhood.

After a bit, I walked over to the other side, to another up and down street, to look for Uncle Benjamin's grave. He's buried inside of a section for graves of people from their native Polish town.

An old practice, from a bygone age.

From 1928.

Cousin Susie, Ben's youngest daughter, died of breast cancer at age 48, nearly 20 years ago.

Uncle Ben's grave. My older son is named after him; he is also Benjamin Weir.

1909-1966: 57 years of age. Not quite 57. In my memory, he seemed older. I was not allowed to go to his funeral, another old practice that is bygone. Having gotten to see his grave was a satisfying feeling. Closure? Perhaps.

A picture of the neighborhood, as it were.

It was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon; Daylight Savings Time ended the prior weekend. Thus, all in all, the afternoon sun was low in the sky.

PC: perpetual care. All those stones have been there for years, but for the one on the right, which I added on my visit. I recognized a couple of the large ones as having been put there by my son David.

A warm November day

Took a walk to Downtown Flushing, to do some shopping. First stop, X'ian Famous Foods, for a lamb burger: that is a spicy cumin lamb burger, served in a bun that looks more a pita than a white-bread bun, with a slice of jalapeño and red onion. Three bucks. Can't beat that. Bought a cup of coffee for a buck at a bakery down the block, and managed to get it without sugar (not an easy task).

On the walk back, I passed this thing on 38th Avenue; I suppose it's a tree. Or was. But why is it there?

On Bowne Street I caught this Smart car parked between the stop line and the crosswalk lines. Now, that is a parking space no other car could possibly get.

On 38th Avenue, near 147th Street, there is an old house wedged in between the parking lot of an immense nursing and rehabilitation home and rows of attached houses. Consider the ivy covering the face of the house; yet there are vehicles in its driveway.

going to New Jersey

At the Brick Church stop on the New Jersey Transit train, I took a picture of the eponymous church.

At the front door of an Italian restuarant in South Orange, I caught sight of a squirrel chewing through the bottom of a paper bag containing the day's bread delivery. I could not get closer without disturbing it, and, alas, my phone camera does not have a zoom.

And on the eastbound train platform, on the way home, I got a shot of the South Orange Fire Department building.

New York photographs

In an H-Mart in Linden Hill, a warning.

Sunday afternoon, 2 October, driving through St. Albans, on the way home to Flushing, I came upon this: BusOmove, a bus that provides entertainment: a party bus, a movie bus. Ingenious.

On the way back to my vehicle, from getting lunch at Fishnet Jamaican Restaurant, I came upon this part of a brick on 190th Street, just south of Linden Boulevard – across the street from where New York Shoes (as I titled the picture of shoes I took a month earlier, and, yes, the shoes were still there, in the same spot).

New York Shoes.

Now that it has snowed for the first time in October in New York City, this picture seems especially incongruous. It's a house in Bayside, and the climbing vine contrasts with the still-green bush, 6 days before the snow.

 A vehicle in Flushing, this morning, showed a small amount of snow, but in October, any snow is weird.

The intersection of Brookville Boulevard and 135th Avenue showed traces of snow.

And I was at that intersection in my quest to find the waterway that makes its way to Conselyeas Pond, Brookville Park, and hence to the swampy area near JFK. I can not tell if the water makes its way to Jamaica Bay, but I guess that it does.

What fascinates me is this obscured waterway wending its way through the concrete of southern Queens.

October snow

Intense October Storm Moves Into Northeast trumpets wUnderground.

wunderground Weather Underground: Record report: 1.3 inches of snow in NYC. "an inch of snowfall has never been recorded in the month of October" wxug.us/gf0d

Winter brings colors to weather maps, and it ain't even winter (on the calendar, though sure as anything it looks wintry outside).

At 1pm, it was a coating of slush. I was headed back inside after lunch.

By 3 pm it looked whiter. That's the parking lot of the Peninsula Public Library.





Nice selection of pictures in dailybeast.com

Wisteria on Murray Lane

Monday 9 May 2011, out for a bicycle ride; taken on Murray Lane, Flushing, NY

Same house, same wisteria, same bicycle, same camera, Tuesday 11 October 2011

Autumn leaves

In the neighborhood bounded by Farmers and Springfield, on 183rd Street.

Along Rockaway Boulevard, looking south, headed east.

Across Rockaway, on the north side, one of many businesses located near JFK Airport.

A picture of my taking a picture of autumn leaves behind me, using the side-view mirror.

Further down on 183rd Street, apprioaching 144th Avenue.

Street names

On 71st Street, near Union Turnpike, across and up one block from Forest Park.

Just visible: Sybilla Street.

Lives in photography

Edward Steichen : lives in photography

Amateur photography

,

 Oops, car post in way: looking at car port on corner of 196th Street and 116th Road, St. Albans. (Here is an older shot of same scene that looks far better)

 Oops, same car post; looking at Baptist church on 196th and 119th, St Albans.

The zig-zag intersection at 196th and 120th Avenue (and reflection of dasboard on windshield).

122nd Avenue ahead.

Nashville Boulevard and 197th Street, 9 October, noontime, on my way to Hewlett.

 One of those interesting houses on 224th Street (where they are on east side, only; on 225th they are on both sides, and on 226th they are only on the west side).

Funky little house on 224th and 133rd Avenue. Nice shadow effect on stop sign.

Brush has been cut back, quite recently; it used to spill over onto the east-bound lane on 149th Road, near 262nd Street.

Red painted on bushes outside HWPL. That's the Children's room, behind the school district parking lot.

86,060 miles on Rocinante.

This is a structure between 22nd and 223rd Streets, south of Merrick Boulevard; I can not figure out what it is (my guess is a gas tank, but that's a pure guess).

Another look at it. Both shots are from my ride home, after 5pm.










One of many pretty houses I pass by, in St Albans, along 196th Street.

Riding along a very narrow street, 190th, approaching Hillside Avenue. The angle of the light poles intrigues me.

A picture is worth ...

Photographs of Chris Hondros

From Foreign Policy:



On April 20, war photojournalist Chris Hondros was killed, apparently by a rocket-propelled grenade, while covering the front lines of Libya's civil war in the besieged rebel outpost of Misrata. For the staff of Foreign Policy, Chris was far more than a credit line under a photo, though he was certainly that: His name appears on countless FP stories, from a devil's grab bag of locations -- Liberia, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Haiti, Egypt's Tahrir Square, and most recently, Libya.

But we didn't merely rely on Chris's ability to vividly capture the most extreme moments of human existence -- from the immediacy of close-quarters combat in ravaged Libyan apartment blocks to a quake-injured Haitian child looking for solace in a makeshift balloon. We also considered him a friend. His humanism, courage, and artistic brilliance will be sorely missed in this office as well as in many, many other parts of the world. In celebration of Chris's life and work, we present a selection of our favorite photos.

Black and White Photography

Recommended by HW patron

Koudelka

Featured photographer in the email newsletter I received from Magnum Photos yesterday: Josef Koudelka. On a whim I looked up his name in the Nassau County OPAC, and found two entries under his name:

Exiles: photographs by Josef Koudelka; essays by Czeslaw Milosz, from 1988 (call no. Q 7792. K)

Gypsies: photographs, 1975 (Q 779.2 Koudelk)

Great day in Harlem

Numerous sites have this famous photograph by Art Kane

Alec Soth

An interesting composition, and interesting subjects (to say the least).

Phoenicia flooded

“I’m good, baby.”

A photographer working for the New York Times was severely injured by a bomb in Afghanistan.



This slide show is taken from the memory card that was in Joao Silva’s camera on Oct. 23 when he stepped on an antipersonnel mine at Checkpoint 16, near the village of Deh-e-Kuchay, Afghanistan. Mr. Silva, a contract photographer for The New York Times, and Carlotta Gall, a Times correspondent, were on patrol with a squad of 10 or 15 American soldiers and a unit of Afghan soldiers and police officers. Mr. Silva lost both his legs in the explosion and suffered internal injuries. He is recovering at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Joao Silva’s damaged equipment.