WELCOME TO Bergies Place, MY JOURNAL….

…of commentary and images of places, things, or events that I’ve photographed or remembered. On the right are posts from the past few months; click on one and you’ll be taken to it.  ALL earlier posts can be found by clicking here for an alphabetical index.  if you’d like to get an automatic email whenever I add a post, simply click under Email Subscription at the lower left. You can always unsubscribe.

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In addition to the photographs here in my posts I maintain galleries from twenty-two years of shooting digitally.  They are organized by topic and can be seen by clicking here  and have enjoyed over 730,000 views 

“Apertures and shutter speeds and composition guidelines are very specific and easily defined; VISION! not so. It’s not a setting on your
camera; it’s a setting in your head.”   –  Ralph Berglund

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If you enjoy my photography get some insight into how I’ve done it over my 70 years   of shooting.

Read my new eBook,

“Shooting For Better Images”

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A table of contents and a sample page is at

Better Pix

 

MY CHRISTMAS GREETING – 2020

Christmas in the Sunroom – Right click and then click on View Image to see a larger version.

The tree arrived on the Saturday after Thanksgiving while Barb and I were off on one of our Q-in-the-car trips. When we returned we found that the big outside wreath was up and lit. Obviously the Kiep family elves (Bob, Sigrid, Madeline and Gretchen) had done it again. Inside, the tree was up and lighted and all the seasonal tchotchkes had emerged from their eleven month basement hibernation and returned to duty.

On the next weekend Barb added the ornaments to the tree. A couple of days later Sigrid returned with the church on the right. That’s a piece of work. When switched on it lights up but also circulates the “snow” that we used to have to do by shaking a glass snowball. My, my…technology.

In the following week Sigrid arranged the three Bradford Exchange Kinkade houses, the IKEA candelabra, some trees and snow from the train days and the church, and the sunroom was ready for Christmas.

Now, what’s missing? Oh, SNOW, and that arrived last Wednesday. A perfect scene.

Happy Winter Solstice; three more seconds of sunlight tomorrow!

and

A Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

to all of my family and friends.

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I MUST GO DOWN TO THE SEAS AGAIN…

This image is of the clipper ship Sea Witch painted by Charles Vickery, the distinguished American artist of such scenes. I’ve long been an enthusiast of similar work by the English artist, Montague Dawson, but I came across this print at an antique show and fell in love with his portrayal of the ship, the sails, and the waves. It personifies John Masefield’s poem, Sea Fever. Masefield, the Poet Laureate of England from 1930 to 1967 actually spent his early years at sea on such ships and was well qualified to write of the sea.

I don’t remember when I first read Sea Fever; grammar school, perhaps, but it had an effect on me that has survived. This post is the result of coming across the poem again last summer. Where? Why, of course, at the shore.

I offer the poem as a narration against a background of surf sounds. I hope you enjoy it.

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On this same subject I wrote about a stream of memories of my sea experiences in a 2012 post. I included the words of the poem, and the background music is Debussy’s Dialogue Between the Wind and the Sea from La Mer. Eight years later I find that the post has held up and is still, for me, a moving experience. Please take a look at it by clicking here.

THE PANDEMIC SUMMER AT THE YACHT CLUB

Our summer yacht club social and sports life was sharply curtailed because of the covid threat. Members, as usual, pitched in to do what could be done but the effort was driven by our Commodore (sometimes referred to as the Covidore) Laura Darling. Both the May opening and the September annual meeting were conducted via Zoom. One benefit was that at an in-person opening the bars at the club don’t open until the ceremonies are completed. Watching on line from home I noted that our bar was open.

A covid committee was established to review and plan activities compliant with state mandates. Even they met via Zoom, and the frequent trustee and committee meetings were also Zoomed. Our Friday Night Happy Hours were reduced to social distancing with masks under the open air pavilion. Monthly dinner dances were a thing of the past. The junior sailing program went forward under tight controls as did senior sailing and bocce. For pickle ball and tennis the players are already social distanced. Occasional gatherings for drinks or dinners among small groups were also severely limited and the emphasis was on gathering at home.

Please do not misunderstand me; I know that people were terribly sick and dying. Knowing that was a possibility I think we tried to make the best of what we were fortunate to have. With gallows humor I envisioned our summer sinking away. It didn’t.

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Some of our traditional opening ceremonies had been video taped earlier for inclusion in the Zoom telecast. These included, for example, the raising of the flag to the bugler’s call-to-the-colors. As an addition to the ceremonies, however, the Commodore delivered a wreath which was then cast upon our sailing waters in memory of those we lost in the past year. This included two dear friends, past Commodores Phil Flagler and “Tommy’ Thomas, and to add to the stress of the year, Laura’s mother, Audie, long active at the club.

The annual meeting is always held on Labor Day and includes committee reports, special awards and the election and transfer of flags to incoming officers. Below is a screen shot from the Zoomed annual meeting. Usually there are probably a hundred or more people in this room but it was empty except for these principals and Zoom support.

You’ve read my comments here in the past about the history that pervades this one hundred and eight year old club, and the sense of traditions and continuity but in looking at this image I was struck again by the connections to the past.

On the left is Commodore Darling whose father, Bill Haig, was commodore in 1973. On the right is Vice-Commodore Caroline Flagler whose father, Bruce Rosborough, was commodore in 1992, and whose father-in-law, Phil Flagler, was commodore in 1974. In between are the succeeding commodore, Bob Kiep and his wife, my daughter, Sigrid Kiep.

Those cases in the back of the room contain several sailing trophies bearing granddaughters’ Gretchen and Madeline’s names so we’ve also started to build the family connection. Elsewhere in this “Commodores Room” along the walls there are framed portraits of past Commodores. Many of them are a part of my contribution to maintaining the history of the club either from making the original photos or restoring water damaged earlier versions.

For the pre-taped conclusion of the annual meeting the flag officer burgees and the American Flag were lowered, attended by several past commodores.

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After the meeting it has been customary to have a receiving line in which members thank the officers for their years of service and wish the new ones well. With covid it wasn’t going to happen because members had been asked not to come inside. So, Sigrid Kiep and Caroline Flagler came up with inviting everyone to the club house for a salute to Laura as she left the building. I am indebted to granddaughter, Maddy Kiep, for capturing this scene which I have titled Laura’s Laudation. The event was moving, especially as Laura’s grandchildren ran to join her. (Sound on?)

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Our club has been sustained as has our sense of its history. It’s just going to be remembered as a little different. 

AN END OF SUMMER REVIEW

Summer’s so over that I’m already back in my winter cave at the Old Folks Farm (Medford Leas). Covid or not it was a great summer with family. We had Bob and Sigrid and Maddy and Gretchen and the old guy all mostly quarantining and working our computers from various rooms in the shore house and we all got along.

In the warm early morning September light on the day after Labor Day this was the scene from Grampa’s deck…one lonely sailboat that had anchored over night and one lonely osprey where there had been a family with two chicks. The season was over.

Within another 38 hours I was unpacked back in the cave.

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SUMMER PROJECTS

I completed a couple of projects this summer and worked on others. This one (below) started with a screen shot from an on-line video camera facing a beach on Sanibel Island. I reworked it into more of a landscape scene. Details may be learned here, and a full-size version of the work can be seen here,

Another completed project was the addition of LEDs to the candles in the windows of my Beck farmhouse image. I’ve posted before about this 1874 home in Beach Haven. The land could hold six McMansions and that’s what happened. I had photographed the house before it was taken down, and had simulated a scene in moonlight. Then later I photo-shopped candles into all of the windows. This summer I punched pinholes in all of the candle images and glued an LED behind each. It came out just “OK” but wait till you see the next one. Anyway, here’s the result. Click on the image to see it full-sized.

Another completed project was a redux of my Gateway web page. This page is an overview and entry point for most if the things I have on the web. Click on the image below to be taken there (but please come back.)

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OUR WEEKEND TRAVELS

I don’t get to do the beach anymore so Barbara and I resumed our weekend driving to other places. We particularly enjoyed driving out the dock roads of West Creek and Cedar Run on the mainland opposite Long Beach Island. These both lead to Manahawkin Bay and are characterized by a lot of one-off homes built over the years and ranging from tiny shacks to McMansions.

We also explored the so-called Seven Bridges Road out of Tuckerton which leads to Great Bay. Turns out they never built two of the seven and the official name is Great Bay Boulevard. It passes a number of small marinas or launching ramps and dead ends at Great Bay. Here’s a typical lonely marina from the past.

And what are the odds of running into a traffic light out on the marshes? This one controls access to a one-lane bridge and has a mate on the other side.

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AND THROUGH FORSYTHE

We enjoyed two drive-throughs at the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville. The first was an overcast day but we photographers know that bad days can help create appealing images. Here’s an Osprey family silhouetted against my old home town. (Colleagues: the pole’s leaning; not the photographer.)

On another day we arrived during the mid-tide drainage of the waters bounded by the perimeter road. Those in the know seek out the culverts at this time in order to dine on the fish leaving the interior ponds in the tidal flow.

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BACK HOME

Summer as with all seasons has its bad days. But for a photographer some bad days mean an opportunity to add feeling to a scene. A foggy day does that well.

And on only a slightly better day this Cormorant was thinking about where to dive next.

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I close with this image making its fifth year-end appearance. It symbolizes our sadness about Covid and its effect on so many, and it has always symbolized my sadness at the end of a season with my family.

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NOW, ON TO NEXT YEAR WITH

FINGERS CROSSED.

MY GATEWAY REDUX

I’ve had a so-called gateway page on my website for years and years but it was a neglected poor cousin.  I had the space and support to do it and I long ago decided I needed it internally so as to readily reach the web sites/pages I maintain.  They range eclectically from photography to ruby-stained souvenir glass to Japanese cloisonne to stained glass to antique radios………..

Below is an image of what the page looked like.  It was basically just a list of sites each of which was a hot link to get to that site.  What you see below, however, is not not a live page so clicking on it won’t take you anywhere even though you might hope a click will take you far away, period.

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PRETTY EXCITING, HUH?

(Not!)

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So, as another socially distancing project I found myself trying to fix it up.  For my eleven years of blogging I’ve been on WordPress.com (250+ posts, 60,000+ views).   Most of my picture galleries are stored on and presented on Pbase.com (4700+ images, 720,000 views).  Everything else that I’ve done since 2004 is stored on web space at Ionos.com (formerly 1and1.com) and that’s where I keep BergiesPlace.com.  I’ve found them to be reliable, responsive and helpful as they grew into a multi-national company of server sites and services.

It turned out that I could also load WordPress software on to my Ionos space and thus I could continue to work with an editor with which I was familiar.  This software and support comes from WordPress.org  and I’m able to do more through them than on my WordPress.com blog (I dunno, don’t ask).  Anyhow, here’s the result (wait, don’t click on any of it; it’s a picture of the page).  It’s amazing what a little color and some images and some reorganization of the sentences can do.  The background is from my place mat series; the original was made when Richard Bernabe had us study the surface of a chaotic stream under blue sky and green leaves ten years ago in the Great Smokies.

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Please, though, visit the real thing by clicking here.

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SUMMER ON THE WANE

What? Summer just started. True but I hear my morning coffee guy, Gregg Whiteside at WRTI tell us each day there are a few seconds less daylight.  We hit the Summer Solstice but as soon as that happened and because of the way we revolve around the sun the days began to shorten.  Enjoy the rest of summer.

Before spring ended we had our annual opening of the Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club.  For the first time in its 108 year history, however, it was held on-line via Zoom to all members.  It was a moving event which included casting a wreath upon the waters in memory of members we lost in the past year.

Sadly that included two friends from my shore life and from Medford Leas, both past Commodores, Phil Flagler, 1974, and Tommy Thomas, 1987.  I was asked if I could find Phil and Tom in my archives and I was able to pull them from group photos of a few years ago and to fuzz out the backgrounds.  I wish Photoshop could bring them back.

 

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A symbol of our annual opening has always been our season calendar which is a big-deal production that includes ALL events to be held  i.e. every race, every Happy Hour, every meeting, every gathering of special interest groups such as the book club or the art group, every dance….and it also includes tons of snapshots from last year’s events.  Ahhh, Covid…no events, club closed, what to do.

Well there’s still a calendar but it’s on-line and events are cancelled as necessary.  In lieu of a calendar cover the officer who was responsible for it this year (a little nepotism: my son-in-law, Bob Kiep) asked me if I could come up with something that would fit his vision.  His vision was that of the sun rising once again over our club notwithstanding the pandemic … as it has for so many years .  Well, I’ve been privileged to have done a lot of covers over the years and I had retired but “once again unto the breach.”  Here’s what I eventually produced after submitting several ideas for review.  This was the result of overlaying an older club image on a Beach Haven sunrise.  Details for my colleagues can be seen by visiting “How Was It Done.”

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THE LAST OF OUR SPRING ROAD TRIPS

Barb and I took two more road trips to mark the end of spring.  For that final Saturday my fantasy was to drive out onto Sandy Hook and gaze at Sandy Hook Bay and the Verrazano Narrows entrance to the Hudson River and Manhattan.  This would be revisiting waters I cruised a couple of times headed up the Hudson or up the East River and out into Long Island Sound and on to Nantucket.   BUT,  it  was  not  meant  to  be  !!!

I forgot that a lot of people live in North Jersey and that they were anxious to get to the beach.  The roads were parking lots.  So we turned around and headed south along the beach to Seabright and that, too, was a parking lot.  We pulled off briefly to park on the bay side to eat our lunch as boats motored by.  But we were then politely reminded that it was a no-parking-either-side street so we threw in the towel and left.  Over the ten weeks we did these weekends this was our only failure.  Had  I taken any pictures they would simply have shown cars.

Anxious to make up for it and to celebrate our last trip before summer and our shore life we took off again on Sunday for Fortesque.  (I hear the excited intakes of breath.)  The village is located on the Delaware Bay , southwest of Millville and well to the other end of the state from Sandy Hook.  As far as being crowded we won; the year round population is only some 400 souls.

A crowded day at Fortesque.

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We parked at the beach’s edge and enjoyed our sandwiches and people watching.  It was all pretty much social distancing.

If you know south Jersey you’ll spot the white plume beyond the distant horizon and recognize it as the discharge from the cooling tower at the Salem nuclear generating station.

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THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER

The day after the solstice was Father’s Day and I qualify for that so we joined the family for the weekend.  It was a delight to be with everyone including my granddaughters and their “others” ( I don’t know what to call them but they’re nice guys.)  Later that night we enjoyed scenes from the front deck.   The first is a neighbor’s Father’s Day gathering; the second is when friends sailed by later on their way back to their dock after a sunset sail.

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A few days later Sigrid and Gretchen swooped in to the Old Folks Farm and in 45 minutes packed all the stuff I had spent days staging and writing on lists.

The next thing I knew I was back on Grampa’s deck for morning coffee.

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Yes, all of the sun room plants also came down and they, like me, are

VERY HAPPY TO BE HERE!

 

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QUARANTINING IN OUR CARS

Barb and I have held on to our sanity (to some extent) by driving around on the weekends.  The Governor’s Executive Order 107 states: All New Jersey residents shall remain home or at their place of residence unless they are ….. which is followed by a long list of exceptions which included “engaging in outdoor activities with partners” and Barb and I are certainly in that category.  I admit to not having read the order before the fact; we just decided that if they wanted to put a couple of old geezers away for a while it would at least be different scenery than our apartments.

Here’s an example of the kind of bright, uplifting scene we encountered on our weekend wanderings.  It’s Cape May harbor.

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Over a nine weekend period we covered from Cape May along the Delaware Bay and River as far north as Easton, PA, and from the cape along the Atlantic as far north as Deal, further north in central Jersey, and lots of territory and destinations in between and beyond including even Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware.  Here’s an idea of our travels (not suitable for navigation!)  If you’re trying to see this on your phone click on the image to see a full-sized version.

 

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We just drove and looked around and enjoyed.  We didn’t leave the car except once to pick up some meds at a CVS or to inspect a porta-potty on a construction site..  We packed sandwiches and water and aimed for waterfront scenes where we could park and enjoy our lunches.  Case in point:  the PNC parking lot in New Hope overlooking the Delaware River.

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On another weekend I wanted to return to Greenwich, an18th century customs port of entry into the U.S.  It had been a while which explains (duhhhh) why we wound up driving aimlessly around “the other” Greenwich which is near Paulsboro … not the same.  So, on yet another trip we found it south west of Bridgeton on the Cohansey River.  This is the real deal; the main street is still called “Ye Greate Street” and is lined with buildings from the 18th century.  There is also the headquarters of the Cumberland County Historical Society.

Also on the street is the Old Stone Tavern, built in 1726 by Captain Jacob Ware.  Since my mother’s cousin married Fred Ware in nearby Deerfield I figure I’m probably related by marriage to Jacob’s family.  I always find these things out after the property has slipped away.  Here it is:

Another worthwhile and photogenic site is the Greenwich Boat Works and Marina which includes a graveyard of old, discarded boats.  Among them I spotted a wooden yacht made, I think, by the long-gone Trumpy Boat Works of Annapolis, probably in the ’30s.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Nearby, our charming (it was, once) lunch spot on the Cohansey River.

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Loving Cape May as we do we managed two day trips there…a long drive but so enjoyable driving around the town.  Regrets that we couldn’t stop and enter some favorite shops.  Our lunch spot?  Predictable: Sunset Beach, but a blustery day.

 

Still at the southern extremes of the state we discovered and toured Town Bank on another day trip.  In looking up some things on Google Maps I had noticed a large community layout on the Delaware Bay side of the cape.  Shazam; something to investigate.  It begins from the road that leads to the Lewes Ferry.  The road from there passes north along the bay through North Cape May, Town Bank, the Villas, and then past a number of beaches until ending at Bidwell Creek above Reed’s Beach.  Yup, another lunch spot and we smiled as we ate.

We were entertained by the cormorants just off the entrance to Bidwell Creek.  No social distancing here. On the north shore there were dozens more waiting for an empty piling.

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As seen on the map we also had some trips up north, typically to known scenic destinations.  A favorite is Ken Lockwood Gorge, beautiful though tough to navigate on a single lane road with limited parking.

And the nearby Red Mill at Clinton, NJ, an iconic destination with its red-painted mill building at a waterfall.  Almost everyone shoots the mill and the waterfall from the nearby bridge or the parking lot across the river.  This, however, is what I saw that day while sitting there and enjoying our lunch.

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It was a fun nine weekends during which we saw things we hadn’t seen before as well as old friend sites.  In addition to lunching by lakes, bays or oceans we also enjoyed just meandering through rural areas and farmland.  Route 9 in Delaware north from Bombay Hook is just such a gem…rural villages with periodic glimpses of the Delaware River heading north.  We exposed no one including ourselves but it was sure a good treatment for our heads.  A parting scene….magnificent cherry trees in the Washington Crossing Park.

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BE WELL!!!!

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SHELTERING IN (A NICE) PLACE

As with most of us I’m sheltering in place. I’m in my townhouse at Medford Leas where great efforts are underway to protect residents and staff against the virus. All of the public meeting rooms have been closed except the library and the lounge with its comforting furnishings and fireplace. Even these rooms, however, are limited to four persons at a time. I envision the lounge with a resident in each corner trying to communicate across the room. .
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Sheltering here has, at least, the benefit of my sun room which looks south over the adjacent woods.  This past week’s “pink” moon loomed large over the woods but its proximity didn’t make me nervous (reason later).  Click on the image to see a full-sized version.

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The workout room and the pool and the auditorium are all closed. The assisted living wing and the Woolman sub-acute nursing floor are quarantined.  Access to the campus is now restricted to the Route 70 entrance, and access to the main building is limited to three entrances each of which is monitored by someone who measures our temperature and inquires as to where we’ve been recently and are we feeling any symptoms.
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The two dining rooms and the coffee shop are closed; meals and incidental groceries can be ordered for delivery to our apartments. The medical center is open but controlled as to visitor’s proximity to each other, and the pharmacy is delivering meds to one’s apartment.
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My weekly cleaning person arrives on schedule but masked. At least she doesn’t greet me with, “Trick or treat.” I am a little lonely but secure (and cleaned). I am free to wander outside the main building or off campus, and Barbara and I have done some of that (safely) which a future post will report.
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Inside my apartment I have plenty of projects underway. They range from post-processing some older images to accruing images for a couple of specialty blog pages to such esoterica as completing the restoration of a 1927 Atwater Kent radio (born five years before me) which after a lot of trouble shooting and parts replacement came back to life this week. A future post? Sure. Meanwhile, its restoration has been a great exercise for an old radio geek’s neurons and satisfying as to results.  It’s just too bad that there’s not much pleasant radio on the AM band which is all they had back in those days.
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When not playing with radios in the basement (two in restoration) I can still enjoy the beauty of my sun room which is really what prompted this post.

This image is of a hybrid of Streptocarpus Saxorum which hangs in the room.  The blooms are about twice the size of a non-hybrid version.

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Next is a hybridized African Violet.  I spotted it on a trip to Terrain last fall (remember trips to destinations?).  It was obviously unique and also in a larger pot than usual and also pricey at $20 (which is Terrainian).  I’ve never spent that much money for an African Violet in my long life but I succumbed and I’m glad I did.  Every time I look at it I think, “You’re a lot prettier than a twenty dollar bill.”

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Finally for today, another African Violet, kind of run-of-the-mill compared to the above, but pretty and forming a delightful nosegay.

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So, hanging in and I hope you are as well.

Oh, yeah…that pink moon.  Sorry, it’s fake news; I made it in my little Photoshop.  The moon is a well done lighted plastic sphere that normally sits on a garden table in the sun room and provides a candle-like ambience for dinner.  Its surface is a sculpted copy of the moon’s surface.  For example the well-known Tycho crater can be seen at about five o’clock on the above image.  You can see how it was done by clicking here:  How was it done?    and scrolling down.

 

ANOTHER NICE FLOWER SHOW

I attended the Philadelphia Flower Show yesterday.  I haven’t kept track of how many I’ve seen but I started in 1953.  There have been magical shows and there have been …. (yawnnnn, excuse me) …  other shows but this year was a winner.  I wasn’t thrilled with the arid landscapes that kept edging in under the Riviera idea but I guess they fit the theme.  In general I thought there were more exhibits overall than my last (2018) show, and that the Hort’s own commercial space was somewhat muted vs. 2018.  Good job, Hort!

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I missed the 2019 show because of my medical condition.  My daughter Sigrid, offered to push me through this year’s show in my portable wheel chair.  I can walk around in my apartment and elsewhere for short walks but I just can’t walk very far;  hence the wheel chair which we carry in the car trunk.  So, she dropped me off in front of the Convention Center, parked the car and then got me through the show.

Here’s a typical show scene.  It looks as though we’re on the beach with the Mediterranean Sea behind us.  Imaginative.  I couldn’t pass by the boat.

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I’ve never been a big fan of cell phone photography but, restraining my normal curmudgeonry, I’ve keep quiet about it.  For the show, however, I forgot my super-Captain-Whizbang-DSLR camera and fell back on my phone.  These are all phone images with Topaz and Photoshop polishing and I’m glad I had it.

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Continuing with the Mediterranean influence there was this attention-grabbing display of sails with orchids as trim.

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Colorful imagination created this scene symbolic of the pastel stucco apartments above the Med along the Cinque Terre (the Five Lands) which we enjoyed  a few years ago.  For example the next image below is of Vernazza along the Cinque Terre.  I think the only thing the PHS designers overlooked was the laundry hanging from windows.

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I enjoyed the simplicity and symmetry of these pots against a sun-baked Mediterranean wall.

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Continuing the Cinque Terre mode was this array of hydrangeas decorating the typical wedding cake array of apartments seen along the coast.  Below it and to the point is a scene  of Riomaggiore (again with laundry) as we cruised past on the Med.

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But the best in show for me was this crumpled cellophane stream underlain with blue LED’s and bordered with flowers.  Not sure about the Riviera theme but I liked it.

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I have eight other posts on the show which date back to 2010.  They are listed alphabetically in my index (under Flower Show) which you can access by clicking here.  They have been different as you can guess from this image from the 2010 show.

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Thanks for visiting.

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FROM BILE TO BEAUTY

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We have endured two weeks of vitriol, smearing, posturing, misdirection and…fill in the blanks.  And all that followed on much of the same in the House hearings since September.  Please, no, this isn’t a political post; I wouldn’t do that, but for which ever side you favor it can’t have been very enjoyable.  So, on Saturday my buddy, Barbara Zimmerman, and I drove to the Michener Museum in Doylestown and immersed ourselves in beauty and niceness.  What a pleasure.

We’ve gone there off and on over the years because of my love for their collection of impressionism:  the New Hope school, the Bucks County School, and Saturday I heard of the Pennsylvania Impressionists and American Impressionism.  Wow, who knew?  I’m also fond of the French impressionists as well as the music of Debussy who originally objected to the characterization but grew to accept it.  (For another peaceful interlude see this post of the sea and his music.)

The opening image above is of a 1926 twenty-two foot wide painting by Daniel Garber which was recovered and restored by the museum.  It now dominates a softly lit gallery for quiet contemplation.  Entitled the Wooded Watershed the image is my capture for my personal enjoyment, shown here under Fair Use and not for sale, and the original is, of course, the exclusive property of the museum.  The painting sets a wonderful tone for the entire museum.  Click on the image to see a larger version for study.  Note the bark and rock details, the deer on the left, and the light on the island in the river.  Other items in their collection can be seen here including wish-I-owned-paintings by Fern Coppedge, Edward Redfield and more by Garber.

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A PLUS…THE NAKASHIMA FURNITURE

Another feature of the museum is a small sun room decorated in Japanese style to show off the furniture of New Hope’s George Nakashima.  (Image credit:  Michener Art Museum.) He was known for creating large coffee tables from cross sections of tree trunks, particularly of walnut burl.  His furniture is all graceful; again, balm in a troubled world.  I believe the room was decorated by a daughter.  It features sliding shoji screens and I went through that phase, too. Here’s a pair that I built for the windows of our first (civilian life 1959) apartment.  The rice paper shielded hot afternoon sun and provided privacy at night but could be slid back when we wanted to see the world.

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The museum was established by the Bucks County philanthropist Hermann Silverman with Michener.  SIlverman was a Doylestown resident who also introduced Michener to another famous Doylestown resident, Oscar Hammerstein:  the result? Tales of the South Pacific as a great musical and movie.  Bucks County in those romantic years was full of art and artists and still is.  Beautiful to begin with, playwright and resident George S. Kaufman has been quoted as saying, “Bucks County is what God would have done if he had money.”

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AND NEXT……….

Having healed our psychic wounds we headed home through New Hope.  On the way was another favorite stop, a gardening and landscaping company I’ve patronized since they were in downtown New Hope on a hillside above the canal, The Living Earth.

   It’s almost always a source of some take-home pleasure as can be suggested in this image from their web site.

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A couple of these began to whimper as I started to leave so what could I do?  I brought four of them home.  Here are a Rieger Begonia and a Valentine’s Day Red Anthurium now receiving visitors in my sun room.  More balm.

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Almost completely cured we returned to a comfort food dinner of my daughter, Sigrid’s, meatloaf accompanied with a baked potato and fresh green beans garnished with french-fried onion strips.  Ahhh, recovery.

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