Saturday Ramblings

I got paid for my jury duty service this week. I received a check for $40 for one day's work. My attitude is it's 40 bucks I didn't have.

I have recently been involved with Twitter. I have Twittered myself, and also follow a wide range of celebrities... such as Alec Baldwin (who is very funny and very clever); Jane Fonda; Bill Maher, Albert Brooks, Dennis Leary (terribly cynical and he makes me laugh); and others. Like Craig Ferguson. If you are not familiar with Twitter, you can send 140-character messages so the challenge is to say something cogent in a short space. But you can also provide a link to a photo. Craig Ferguson just Tweeted:

One of my favorite views on this planet that doesn't involve cleavage or bacon.

and here's the photo, which I also agree is one of my favorite views on this planet that doesn't involve bacon. I'll skip the cleavage part.

This scene is even more beautiful when the leaves are really colored but you can see they are just beginning to change.

On other topics, I can't remember the name of the book, but there was this well-known self-empowerment book which instructed that we make "artist's dates" with ourselves to do something creative and relaxing -- to make an appointment with ourselves and make a plan. I did that for a while, and I have nice memories from the acitivities I did.

The question, of course, is why do we stop doing it? I just received a new book today -- a National Geographic coffee table book on the Civil War. I opened the package and put in on my coffee table and then observed it sitting there and thought that I am going to make an artist's date with myself and relax for an hour -- I want to say with a glass of wine, but I know that won't happen -- but with a glass of Diet Dr Pepper and actually enjoy this book. That's on the agenda for tomorrow.

And, courtesy of Amazon, here are two photos from the book:

And last, in these ramblings, I came across a web site about the old estates of Long Island -- some of you may know that I grew up on one of them, when it was converted from an estate to a school and my father was headmaster of the school and we lived on campus. Anyway, this web site has photos of the place from when it was an estate which were fascinating to see.

In the meantime, a grade school friend of mine who grew up on an estate that had been sub-divided for houses had some photos of the original estate which was torn down (so sad, but it was the fate of many of these estates). When I had dinner with her this past July, she later emailed me some photos she had. I emailed the man who does this website, asking him if he wanted to see these photos since he had also written about this estate on his site. The estate was called "Meudon."

He said yes, and I emailed them to him. He is, among other things, a historic preservationist, and here's part of his reply:

Opening up these emails was like getting a birthday present. I am a very big fan of CPH Gilbert, architect of 'Meudon', and of 'Meudon' itself. I have accumulated quite a number of images of the house but have never seen any of these before. They are absolutely incredible...they were taken from angles I have simply never seen, only had hoped to see. They are really amazing and I don't think I can thank you enough for sending them over.

So here are some of those. These photos really speak to a time gone by:

this is the back of the mansion

This is my favorite -- maybe because it's on a scale that I can appreciate. It's captioned the "Waterhouse" and I love the swans and the waterlillies. Here is where I should be looking at my Civil War book! Note there's a chimney so there was a fireplace inside.