environment

Wrong place at the right time

I missed the eclipse! In person, that is, I watched it on tv.

I didn’t get any glasses and I asked around and no one I knew had any or any extras, so I just stayed in and didn’t attempt to look at the partial eclipse we had here in Miami. It was 45% here.

The neighborhood was quiet, I didn’t see or hear any neighbors out, so I guess it wasn’t a big thing here like it was in the total eclipse areas.

One thing I liked was seeing all the people watching the eclipse together, shouting and enjoying the moment together. It reminded me of July 4th, when I’m usually in NYC watching the fireworks over the river on July 4th. I’m with friends and/or family and surrounded by thousands of people in the city enjoying the same thing – cheering and oohing and ahhing while watching the fireworks, almost like the eclipse experience.

But I seem to be getting lazy as I get older. In the past I would have made an effort to get to one of the prime areas in the country. And I definitely would have had glasses to see the local version if I couldn’t make it to one of the prime areas.

Since the pandemic, I’ve been complacent. I’m not out and about doing things like I always did. There was a time in my life where I was at the beach almost daily; sometimes for an hour, other times all day. It was a thing I did. Now I don’t. And so many other things I used to do, I don’t do anymore. And it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I am a creature of habit. I easily get into habits and stick with them. The pandemic put me in a sedentary state and I’m still there.

My goal for the rest of 2024, and I guess forever, is to get out there and live, like I did most of my life.

I was always at the right place at the right time. One time in New Orleans I was walking down the street and there was the Olympic torch running by (with a person actually carrying it – there’s a cartoon in there somewhere), another time in traffic, I looked to my left, and there was Madonna driving next to me. Another time, I was an “accidental extra” in a tv show, just because I was standing at a filming location and they thought I was part of the paid background. I was always “there,” at the right place, at the right moment.

I’m going to strive for that again. I guess these days we would call it, “Instagrammable moments.”

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Operation Lighthouse Rescue

I was telling one of my cousins last week that I watch a lot of PBS. She assumed I watched a lot of “nature shows” or educational stuff, but I told her I watch a lot of British tv – britcoms, mysteries, etc.

I love Doc Martin, Escape to the Chateau, Poirot, Are You Being Served, Keeping Up Appearances (my mother loved Hyacinth Bucket) and Death in Paradise (my father loved this show), to name a few. And interestingly enough, I saw this great episode of NOVA last night, an episode from 2016 called “Operation Lighthouse Rescue.” It was about the Gay Head Light (lighthouse), in Martha’s Vineyard, that has been a fixture since 1856.

The lighthouse was in danger of falling off of the cliffs, as the erosion got closer and closer. So a plan was set in place to move the much-loved and historic lighthouse back 135 feet to save it for another 150 years or so.

I kept picturing people 150 years from now doing the same thing- moving the lighthouse in another 135 feet, cursing the people in 2023 for not doing it at the time. But they can’t move the lighthouse too far back, – it still serves a purpose and needs to be visible by boats at sea.

It’s a fun program, talking about the history of the lighthouse, showing the village people of Martha’s Vineyard and the actual crew doing the job of lifting the lighthouse four feet off the ground and moving it without it collapsing under its own weight.

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How to take pictures of the moon with an iphone

**All three photos taken with an iphone.**

I got a great picture of May’s Flower Moon. It’s reddish, lit by the sun at night.

I took pics on Friday night, but they were not so clear, I was never able to get a clear picture of the moon in the past. But a friend posted a beautiful image she took the same night.

I said to her, “You always take such great moon pictures.” She said she took it with her iphone and she’ll show me how to do it.

Having no patience to wait for her to show me, I googled it and I found out how to take a picture of the moon with an iphone or any night shot for that matter. And on Saturday night, I got the image I was always trying to get. A beautiful moon image.

If you don’t have patience, like me, and don’t care about how to do it, just skip the rest of this below and just enjoy the pics here!

You need to use the 1x Wide lens or the 2x Telephoto lens if using the latest iphone. For some reason, the 0.5x lens doesn’t work for night images. There is a night vision icon (a moon) at the upper left when looking at the phone/camera. The icon usually pops on by itself, but if not, it will be white. Just tap it to put the night mode on.

I had seen that working the night before, it does a count down, holding the shutter open, but I didn’t know what it meant and I kept stopping it from doing it’s thing.

But that’s what you want – it will count down the seconds it needs to capture the night image – usually 3 to 5 seconds. Maybe more in a very dark space.

After that, you need to play with the editing feature on the phone. Edit the image to get rid of all the light and bring up the brightness of the image itself. Make the sky around it black.

Save it. And after saving it, you may see a halo around the moon. Open the image again, and darken it.

So you’re going to edit it twice – first time using everything you can to bring out the brightness and clarity. Second time, getting rid of the by darkening the background.

Hopefully that works for you.

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Ruining paradise

This New Yorker cartoon by Ellis Rosen made me laugh, and cringe.

I live on the water; well, at the water’s edge. I could almost jump out of my window and be in Biscayne Bay and for all the years I’ve lived here (20 years), I’ve thought of the issue of over-development. I’ve looked out over the bay and thought, “What if someone wants to build some sort of condo or something a few feet out from my seawall, literally in the water on stilts or landfill. Is that possible?”

It would be the same if you lived on a lake or river or any open space. Of course it happens on open land all the time. You have a forest in front of you for years and the next thing you know, it turns into a housing development.

And here in this cartoon is something so similar. This looks like an oil rig.

On Florida’s Gulf coast there are permitted sites where oil rigs and gas wells can be drilled, but currently while permitted, they have not been drilled. In 2010 there was an oil rig explosion in the Gulf, which killed 11 people and polluted the water. Sludge is still popping up onshore.

On the Atlantic Coast, I remember some years back, every time you walked the beach, you managed to step in black gooey oil slicks which smelled and of course polluted the area, not to mention your feet. I believe those were caused by cruise ships. I haven’t seen that problem for years, so apparently something was done.

Anyway, back to the cartoon – it reminded me of my thoughts over the years of looking out my window and seeing some structure being built out in front of me – in the water – in the Bay. As it is, our small village is turning into a city. As you look out over the village you see construction cranes dotting the sky. Greed. It’s all about greed. Nothing else. “Let’s destroy a small arts and sailing village to add high, sun blocking, traffic enhancing buildings,” is how the developers and city leaders think. Screw the quality of life, it’s all about money.

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Living small in NYC

This is amazing, a guy turned a 400 square foot apartment in SOHO, NYC into a “large” apartment with all sorts of clever ideas.

When I’m traveling, I often picture my hotel room as an apartment. I think, “How could I live in here full time?” and I try to picture where things would be – the kitchen, the living room, the couch, all in a small area. And this guy did it.

This video is about 20 minutes long, but once you start watching, you can’t stop!

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Land crabs and tourists

*Land crabs looked like this after it rained a few decades ago.*

I’ve noticed something – but maybe it’s nothing.

When I was a kid, come winter, every other car on the road was a foreign plate – you know, from a different state. It seemed that everyone drove down to Florida.

Over the years, that disappeared, I didn’t notice it until the last couple of years when the foreign plates showed up again. In droves (no pun intended).

I am guessing that maybe it had to do with the pandemic, and maybe people felt safer driving their own cars than being crammed up together in an airplane and I noticed it even more during the period when flights were being delayed or canceled by the thousands, I guess people felt they could depend on their own cars rather than the airlines. Also, I know it was very hard finding a rental, I tried, so I guess bringing your own car along was the thing to do.

Now I notice the cars with the out of state plates are gone. But the airlines are starting to cancel flights again, so who knows. But then again, it’s summer, so there really aren’t tourists here in summer.

Another thing I noticed when I was driving today was a large sign that warned people about land crabs. I don’t know if it was warning them not to drive over them or not to pick them up.

When I was a kid, that was an issue. After it rained, the streets were full of land crabs who were flooded out of their holes/homes. You had to be careful not to drive over them or they might puncture a tire. These crabs were all over – by the hundreds – they even appeared in back yard pools. They would break the screening around the pool areas and just end up in the water.

I have not seen that for years because of all the over-development. I thought the crabs disappeared due to that, so it was interesting seeing the sign today, warning people of the crabs. The sign might be left over from the big rains/tropical storm thing we had a couple of weeks ago. But again, I didn’t even know there were any land crabs to be warned about, I haven’t seen any in decades.

So far, as of today, I haven’t seen any tourists or land crabs. Things a good thing.

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Things are getting back to normal; unfortunately

I’ve been seeing a lot of trash in the ocean and bay lately. Not too long ago, at the beginning of the pandemic, I had written about how the planet was healing itself and nature was reclaiming itself. The water and air were so clean. Now it seems to be getting back to normal, although I don’t remember seeing so much trash in the water as I do now.

What I mean is, I live on the bay, so daily I look out at the water and for all these years I really didn’t see anything floating around in the water. Now I do on a daily basis. It’s trash – paper and plastic. I’m not sure why there is more these days than in days past, but it’s out there.

The cartoon above is not really funny, it’s sad, it’s a commentary on how our wildlife is being treated.

Ironically, I’m not seeing as many people out in the water as during the pandemic. Back then, there were people in boats, paddle boarding, kayaking and I used to see one couple floating around on a large inner tube for hours – on a daily basis. They would lazily go from one end of our little inlet to the other. And with all of these “quiet,” “gentle” forms of water activities, there was no pollution or trash. Now that we’re back to motors and boat tours, ships and tourists and the lot, it’s showing.

I got the cartoon idea below, which ran at the beginning of the pandemic, by what I would see daily – lots of water sports activities.

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Pumpkin pickin’

On Saturday, we went pumpkin pickin’ in the Hudson Valley, one of the most beautiful places in the country.

The leaves hadn’t really turned yet, but it was still fall up there.

We stopped a few farms, got pumpkins, apples, apple cider, apple cider doughnuts, you know, the works. We also got mums for the season.

Going pumpkin picking and the works is a new tradition – a great one.

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Summer in October

Friday in NY was fantastic. It was like summer.

I usually prefer fall and would want the weather to be in the 50s and 60s, but this past summer was crap – 107 degrees or heavy rain constantly and this past week was blah, overcast and not really cool, but not really hot.

But Friday, was bright, the sky was blue, the temperature was 80 degrees and it seems like the whole city was out. Every park was full of people of all types from school children to office workers.

I watched in delight as some school boys climbed up on one of the statues in Union Square, where one of them struggled to get up there with his friends. Just matter-of-factly, two friends grabbed him by the arms and dragged him up. And then it looked as if they all had lunch sitting up on the statue base.

An older guy played the guitar and sang old hippie songs from the 1960s, and was amazing. The whole day was amazing.

I took the subway out to Coney Island. While the weather was great, strangely enough, there weren’t many people out there and it wasn’t as lively as it was in the summer. But I still enjoyed it.

Thursday night I spent with my cousins, We all went to dinner and it had been almost two years since we did that due to the pandemic, so it was very enjoyable, one of those nights I’ll always remember.

We may go apple and pumpkin picking upstate this weekend, but the weather is supposed to turn to rain again, bringing in a cold front, so we’ll see. The rain would stop us from going, not the cold front.

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Naked and Afraid

I based the title of today’s cartoon on one of my favorite shows, “Naked and Afraid.” I actually like “Naked and Afraid XL,” better, but didn’t at first.

“Naked and Afraid” is about a man and a woman who are stranded in some god forsaken place with nothing and they have to survive for 21 days. There have been variations where there are three people, or shorter periods where fans take part, etc. Each week, it’s a different couple or set of people.

Then came “Naked and Afraid XL,” which I didn’t like at first, but then grew to love. XL is a continuation- it’s the same people in each episode for the season. It’s usually 12 people in groups of three and they eventually find each other and craziness ensues. Usually it’s people who are fan favorites or those who have been on the show before. Some times as many as five other times. They are sort of regulars.

I guess this all started with “Survivor,” which I still love, but “Naked and Afraid” is more raw, although I still can’t not picture the guy behind the camera eating a burger while the naked folks suffer from not having food or a drop of water for a week. Survivor has been on hiatus due to the pandemic, but Naked and Afraid seems to have found many strange and dangerous places in the United States, where this year’s episodes have been taking place. They are usually out somewhere strange in the world, but it’s been domestic this year and the regions have been just as dangerous.

I interviewed Ryan Holt one time – one of the regulars, because I thought he was the super hero of one XL season and then the day the interview ran he disappeared on the show, supposedly eaten by a lion in Africa. At least that’s how the cliffhanger was left. But of course he ended up being ok, since he’s been on future episodes.

But you always learn something different – like that Ryan didn’t get eaten, and you learn how to skin a snake and eat it and how to avoid wild animals, but it’s all about the interaction between people. One favorite Jeff, turned out to be a schmuck in one episode – he turned out to be a selfish jerk who would catch food and eat it in front of starving people without sharing – “Let them get their own.” I never liked him since then.

I recently learned that the canvas bags they carry around are not to hide their named bits, it turns out the microphones are in there! Besides, they are naked but you really don’t see anything, it’s mostly blurred out.

It really is about human interaction and survival.

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