Coo-Coo-Ca-Choo!

Happy Birthday, John! We sure do miss you.

Theme Thursday - Game

I have some games hanging around here.

Monopoly!

My games shelf

The games folder on my hard drive

Music time! I'm about to show my age again and become an old fogey, but all the songs that occurred to me that had some relationship to "games" come from way back in my youth. The first is truly unforgettable - "It's All in the Game", the late, great Tommy Edwards' mega 1958 hit. For some reason this song sticks out for me as the sound of Baltimore, always a big African-American music city, in my childhood.

The next song that popped into my head was "Games People Play" by Joe South, which was a big hit 10 years later in 1968. This one always fascinated me; I like Joe's voice and that great intro on the Danelectro Guitar Sitar, and I've always liked his mix of Country twang with psychedelic/hippie sensibility. It's truly a '60s classic!

Believe it or not, there were three songs titled "Games People Play" in late 20th Century pop music; there was Joe South's 1968 hit, there was a song by the Alan Parson's Project in 1982 (which I don't particularly like, so you won't hear it here!), and then there was the song by The Spinners in 1975. These guys were the masters of the suave, hip '70s Soul sound, and this song is the epitome of that sound. They're graced on this tune with the fine female vocals of Barbara Ingram.

And that's my take on this week's Thursday theme. Don't forget to check out the rest of the Theme Thursday entries.

Photos & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Autumn Weather Returns

Yesterday the rain was so heavy that my morning walk was out of the question. Luckily that was the last day of the wet weather. Today was overcast for most of the day, but cleared up this afternoon, and the air is noticeably cooler. And I found some interesting things for you on the morning walk:

The scene inside the back gate - on Dixon St. - to The Elms mansion.

The Artful Lodger Inn on Spring St.; I've always loved this sign.

Lily-of-the-Valley berries in Morton Park. Yup, this is what those lovely little bell-shaped white flowers turn into! Note the little visitor down there on the bottom edge of the shot; I didn't see her until I processed this shot in Photoshop.

And today there's a bonus. A friend dropped by at lunchtime and I convinced her that she wanted to take a drive down to Hazard Rd., and she fell for it. So I managed to get you all some more shots of Gooseneck Cove in some advancing Autumnal glory:

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Tuesday Morning

Today was a miserable weather day; patches of heavy mist changed to drizzle which changed to light rain. So I didn't do my usual long walk to work. I did take a somewhat scenic, if well-covered and generally straight, route, and these scenes caught my eye.

The porch of the Yankee Peddler Inn on Touro St. decorated for the season.

Scene on School St; what an antique coach horn has to do with one of Newport's early schools is beyond me!

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Running Errands

I was all over town today running errands, and in some cases took the scenic route to get to them. Naturally the camera came along.

Two shots of the Common Burying Ground

A typical Queen Anne style Victorian house on Old Beach Rd.

A Herring Gull floating on the wind off the Cliff Walk

The entrance to Bois Dore, a mansion on Narragansett Ave.

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

An Intimate Sunday Constitutional

At least, the photos I got today on my weekly long walk felt more intimate than usual - macros of mushrooms and flowers in Ballard Park, and wading birds hiding in the marsh grass on Gooseneck Cove.

[Note: For those of you who saw the warning earlier - I'm back up and running on the Internet. That tech support guy was as incompetent as I'd suspected. When I got back from the hike and after I'd had lunch, I came in here to discover that my Internet connection was just fine; it had been an outage on the local Verizon network, not my modem. So I'm back to normal!]

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Oops!

Hey everybody! I'm gonna be offline for a few days. It seems my modem has died and I have to wait for Verizon to ship me a new one. I'm at a friend's computer at the moment. I'm also on my way to my Sunday constitutional at the moment, and seeing how the weather is so wonderfall and Fall-ish, I'm sure there are lots of photos waiting to be taken. I may try to do another post, with pictures, tomorrow from the computers at the public library. Until then...

More Fences

I had so much fun shooting fences yesterday for my Theme Thursday post that I decided to look for some more on this morning's walk. This time I stuck to the neighborhood around Salve Regina University, between Bellevue Ave. and the Cliff Walk.

On Ruggles Ave.

On Berkeley Ave.

On Merton Rd.

And of course the ubiquitous New England rock wall, complete with ivy. This one is on the SRU campus.

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Theme Thursday - Fence

Well, this was an easy one for me. Newport is full of interesting decorative fences, and enough are within easy reach for them to be the focus of my morning walk. So here are some fences along my usual routes.

Along Dearborn St.

Marble House, Bellevue Ave.

The Flower Cottage, Bellevue Ave.

Music video time! Of course, the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the theme was Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In". And my favorite version is the late great Ella Fitzgerald's!

And here's the trailer for one of my favorite movies: Rabbit-Proof Fence. It's about the government program in Australia in the first half of the 20th Century to take mixed-race children - half Aborigine and half white - away from their Aboriginal mothers and place them in a school to bring them up to be servants to white Australians. They became known as the "Stolen Generation", and the movie is based on the memoirs of one of those stolen children. I first learned of it through Peter Gabriel's website; he composed the score to the movie. By all means find out if your public library has a copy of this; it's well worth watching!

Don't forget to take a look at the other Theme Thursday entries this week!

Photos & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Wednesday Morning Walk

I was down in the wharf area below Memorial Blvd. again. There's always something scenic on the wharves!

A boat docked at Brown & Howard Wharf

Lulu's Gifts & Antiques on Lee's Wharf. I've always paused and admired this storefront; this time I paused and shot!

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Theme Thursday - Stretch

A tad late, I know. But I didn't get an idea for this until this morning, when I was looking at the pictures I took on Sunday again.

Great Egret youngsters squabbling amongst themselves. The stretch their necks and croak at each other.

Only one video this time. It immediately popped into my head when I saw what the theme would be. Yup, Kate Bush's "Rubberband Girl". Gotta love it!

Don't forget to visit the other Theme Thursday entries.

Photo & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

A Gloomy Day at the Beach

Yesterday slowly but surely clouded over, and we got some fairly heavy rain in the overnight. Today has been solid overcast with some drizzle and mist. And of course my thoughts went right to Easton's Beach, which can really have a lot of character on a gloomy day. So I stopped by on my way to do some errands.

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Sunday Constitutional

Today's walk photos concentrate on Gooseneck Cove and the salt marsh at Hazard Rd. Mama Gaia has had her paint brush out and has begun to decorate the Cove for Autumn.

And of course there were birds. The first I saw was this immature Double-crested Cormorant, who let me get within 5 feet of it. It was nervous at first and shuffled its feet, but settled down when I made no threatening moves. After a while it actually started making "feed me Mommy!" moves, spreading its wings a little, shuffling its feet, and opening its beak. Obviously I had no fish to give it. When I saw some Mullet break the surface a little later I pointed and said, "There's food, dummy. Go get it!" Believe it or not, it looked where I was pointing, walked off the rock into the water, and swam in the general direction and dove. You just never know!






















There were a lot of Egrets around. On the flats to the east of the road I counted 12 Great Egrets and 5 Snowy Egrets. Here are two shots - the top one a group shot of a bunch together, and the bottom a shot of a single bird to emphasize the salt marsh's first blush of Fall color.

But the coup of the day was the fact that I was able to get some decent shots of one of the Belted Kingfishers who hang out at the Cove. There were two there today, a male and a female, but it's the female who tends to hang around the area of Hazard Rd.; the male tends to hang out down around where the dam used to be up from the Green Bridge on Ocean Drive. I got two usable shots of the female on both of her preferred perches - on the Osprey platform on the flats and on a wooden split rail fence down at the bottom end of the flats. I've been trying for years to get a decent shot of these people-shy birds who never sit still. Success at last!

And that's my Sunday constitutional!

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Pastel

Just one image from this morning's stroll - the outdoor dining area of Asterisk, a restaurant on lower Thames St. The color scheme has always fascinated me!

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

A Gray Morning

Today's morning walk was a tad gloomy - overcast and some fog. I went up to the area known as the Point, largely populated with some of Newport's oldest colonial-era houses and overlooking the upper harbor, Narragansett Bay, and the Newport Bridge.

The view from Battery Park

A backyard wishing well along Bridge St.

The "secret garden" at Bridge and Second Streets

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

A Morning Walk by the Harbor

I took a walk down lower Thames St. this morning before heading in to work. I figure I get up at 6 every morning (no alarm, I just naturally wake up between 5:30 and 6:00) and it only takes me 2 hours (or less) to get fed and ready and my morning emails and blog-reading done, so I might as well make the hour and a half I have left useful. So this morning I did a brief harbor walk.

M/Y High Tea, a classic 1930s motor yacht.

High and dry! It was the name of the boat that caught my attention.

Firehouse Pizza, a Newport institution. Their pizza's nothing special; it's the funky (and beery) ambiance that has made it legend in the memories of college students past and present (at least, for those who have any memory left after all the beer).

And just around the corner and a whole world away, the entrance to the Ida Lewis Yacht Club.

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger