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Looking at pages of Peter Koch's edition of Joseph Brodsky's Watermark. Venice, 2008
I'm not positive I took this picture.* It may have been taken by Peter's wife Susan Filter. I found it among my photos of Venice, and I know I was sitting right there, but the size of the image suggests it might not have come from my camera. Still I thought it ought to be shared, so I gave it a polish and here it is! It was an amazing afternoon; the light from the water three stories below were dancing across the fresco behind the Count.
Brodsky was a guest in this palazzo while writing Watermark.
Here's Peter on the same trip. I definitely took that one!
*Postscript: I have now confirmed the original file definitely came from Susan's camera!
Rhyming text that repeats and is predictable introduces families of animals. It starts with one animal and builds to a family of 10 animals. Animals that live in a meadow are presented which includes: turtle, red fox, robin, chipmunk, honeybee, beaver, frog/pollywogs, owl, spiders and rabbits.
At the end the musical score for singing this as a song and all the lyrics are printed.
The illustrations are lovely and unique. Some are full colored and others are pencil-gray with a yellowish color.
Multiply the quantity of graves in this photo by 250 to equal the quantity of covid-19 deaths in U.S.A.
Photo taken on Memorial Day morning in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Saint Louis County, Missouri.
Caring Counts: Ambassador Winant and the Special Relationship. A lecture by Ambassador Matthew Barzun at the US Embassy London, 7 December 2016.
3 Slices Ham and spaghetti letters
'Light' chicken noodle cup soup (not pictured) and steamed courgette
Quinoa with prawns and tomato
3 Liquorice Comfits and cubed melon and grapes
437 overall
Verdict: 10/10; yummers! Was never allowed tinned spaghetti as a child and now am embarressingly hooked on Alphabetti... it's SO FUN! Only wish it had punctuation...
Countes Mary Margaret of Waldstein is one of the prominent benefactors of the Loreto. She financed the extension of the chaple of the Nativity and the main axis in order to transform it to the appearance of a church. She also supported the Capuchin convents generously.
The Prague Loreto is a Baroque historic monument and a pilgrimage destination in Hradčany, a district of Prague, Czech Republic.
Website: loreta.cz/en/index.htm
Google Street view: www.google.com/maps/@50.088952,14.391334,3a,90y,22.94h,95...
Recently, radio commentator Rush Limbaugh said that cutting taxes to US president Obama is like the Holy Cross to (Count) Dracula. US recovery hinges on providing tax cuts to create employment helping lift poverty. Former president Bush wanted to cut taxes for rich business owners.
A poll worker carries a sealed bag of votes after they were counted in Tabarre in Port-au-Prince on March 20, 2011, in the second round of the presidential elections. Photo copyright Kendra Helmer/USAID
All rights reserved
This Photo was taken on a short trip to Washington, D.C. Walking around our Nation's Capitol Downtown area, I came across this man very much in concentration on counting his change. Hopefully he has enough...
Lynn Shirey (Harvard University), Patricia Figueroa (Brown University), Jesus Alonso-Regalado (SUNY, Albany), and Marisol Ramos (University of Connecticut) counting 2011 SALALM ballots in Cambridge. Photo courtesy of Patricia Figueroa.
Drummer Gary O'Toole playing with Steve Hackett's band at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, last October.
My thanks are due to Steve and Jo Hackett for arranging my photo pass.
You can see other pics in my Steve Hackett set.
INTRODUCTION
Peak Blue Shieldbug counts on the Kingmoor Sidings Boardwalk, Carlisle, April to September 2016.
In 2015 I accumulated a mass of data on Blue Shieldbug sightings in the Carlisle area and presented the information in histogram form in an attempt to give an indication of the life-history of the species in this locality. Basically each month was divided into three segments, the first two of tens days duration and the third comprising the rest of the month; the total number of counts summed from all sites were then included in each interval, with adults and nymphs being treated separately (for convenience this has been copied into the host album).
Although the results gave a true indication of my observations the chart bore little resemblance, structurally, to the one presented by R D Hawkins in Shieldbugs of Surrey - my only point of comparison available at the time. The most obvious difference was the lack of a clear double peak in the adult population, as the vast majority of my adult sightings occurred later in the year, whereas in the reference work a substantial proportion occurred before the mid-year dip.
A number of reasons for this discrepancy have been identified, but the most significant factor is that at the start of the year I had minimal experience of finding Blue Shieldbugs and in fact had only seen two of them before - both found at the same location in December 2014; however, as the year progressed I accumulated more and more information about the sites favoured by this species, and so I became much more proficient at finding them. Also, whenever a "hotspot" was discovered it was subsequently re-visited throughout the rest of the survey period which clearly had a distorting effect on the results.
In order to avoid this issue the original intention for 2016 was to repeatedly survey a small number of known Blue Shieldbug sites from start to finish of the survey period and only include records from these sites in the analysis - bugs found elsewhere would merely be reported. However, this was ultimately judged to be too time-consuming, and instead the decision was made to derive the data from a single location. For reasons described in the following section the site chosen was the Kingmoor Sidings boardwalk.
To ensure that bugs were not counted more than once during any given ten-day period only the number counted in the highest scoring survey was used in the chart, regardless of the number of surveys carried out. Although this substantially reduced the record-keeping burden it's a fundamentally different approach to that adopted previously, and is considered further later.
It can be seen that the nymphs are divided into two categories: early and final-instars. As no first-instar nymphs were seen, and as only a single second-instar was found, in practice the first category essentially comprises third and fourth-instar nymphs.
The inset photographs were all taken on the boardwalk. In the case of the nymphs, they were temporarily transferred onto a piece of cm/mm scale graph paper to facilitate measurement.
A number of noteworthy findings were photographed over the monitoring period - eg a Blue Shieldbug nymph feeding on an adult. Although these photos have already been posted on Flickr, and are not directly relevant to the study, a selection have been copied into the host album in case anyone is interested.
THE KINGMOOR SIDINGS BOARDWALK
The Kingmoor Sidings Nature Reserve is positioned on the outskirts of Carlisle and a sketch map is included in the album. The boardwalk is located in Area 2, at ca NY385580. A number of photos giving an indication of the surrounding vegetation are also included in the album. The total extent of the boardwalk is about 212m, with the width ranging from 0.45 - 0.52m (with a weighted average of 0.5m) giving a total upper surface area of about 106 sq m.
There are a number of reasons why it was chosen as the site for this study, but the most important factors were that Blue Shieldbugs were frequently found here over the previous year, and that Kingmoor is my local nature reserve, with Kingmoor Sidings being just a few minutes' drive away. Also there's an excellent (free!) car park just across the road in Kingmoor South.
The choice of the boardwalk, as opposed to an area of vegetated terrain, was also critical as it allowed a comprehensive - and repeatable - survey to be carried out in under 10 minutes, with a fair degree of confidence that any bugs present had been spotted.
How the boardwalk Blue Shieldbug population at any given time (or even time-averaged) relates to the population present in the surrounding terrain is not a question I feel competent to answer; however the basic premise - possibly flawed! - is that the shape of the life-history chart derived from the boardwalk data is indicative of what's going on in the "natural" environment. (This issue it speculated on later.)
COUNT DURATION, FREQUENCY AND VOLATILITY
Although I found my first Blue Shieldbug of 2015 on 19 March (on Scaleby Moss), boardwalk monitoring only started in earnest 14 April this year when six Blue Shieldbugs were found in close proximity in a small area of Kingmoor North that I'd been studying for other purposes. Monitoring formally ceased on 20 October after having seen nothing since 24 September. As I've found Blue Shieldbugs in this area of Kingmoor Sidings as late as 5 December (in 2014), I accept that there's a possibility that the odd one may still turn up later in the year. In which case I'll just append the information to the text, without amending the chart.
Ideally I'd have liked to carry out surveys at fixed intervals over the monitoring period but this just didn't happen! Although on some days I specifically set out to visit the reserve to carry out a count, most of the surveys were done as I just happened to be passing the Kingmoor South car park en route to other sites I routinely visit. If time allowed two counts would be undertaken - one on the way in and one on the way out. Although comprehensive records were not kept (see following section), I'm confident that at least six counts were carried out over every ten-day period, and in some cases perhaps up to 15.
The most troubling aspect of the study was the extreme volatility of the counts. For example on 20 June virtually nothing was seen during a survey carried out on the way into the reserve; but when the count was repeated about an hour later on the way out, under nominally identical conditions, nine adults and five nymphs were found! At times this made me question whether anything of any value was being achieved. In fact it was only because the opportunity cost was so minimal, with a survey taking less than 10 minutes, that I carried on with the project.
RECORDS AND RECORD KEEPING
Rightly or wrongly, I made the decision fairly early on that the parameter I'd be plotting on the life-history chart was peak counts. This significantly reduced the requirement for record keeping - for example if five adults were counted on day one of a ten-day period, then there was no need to record any further sightings of adult bugs over that period till a higher number was achieved. On reflection I regret this decision, because if comprehensive records had been kept then it would have been possible to analyse the data in several different ways (for example using average counts over each 10-day period) which might have been revealing.
Also record keeping wasn't as good as it might have been for the nymphs. Although I initially recorded the numbers of third and fourth-instars separately, on some occasions I only recorded the total number of thirds and fourths together - although final-instar nymphs were always recorded as a separate item. For this reason only two classes of nymph - "early" and final-instars -have been charted.
Adults were found from 14 April to 24 September, and nymphs as follows:
Second-instar nymph: 20 June (single record)
Third-instar nymphs: 12 June - 30 June
Fourth-instar nymphs: 12 June - 16 July
Fifth-instar nymphs: 30 June - 5 August
RESULTS
Despite the reservations expressed above about various aspects of this study, the forms of the life-history charts, for both adults and nymphs, are broadly consistent with expectations for shieldbugs. Specifically, the adult chart is twin-peaked with a mid-year dip, indicative of last year's population dying off before this year's adults made a showing. In the case of the nymphs, the rise and fall of the early-instars is followed - as expected - by the rise and fall of the final-instars, with a noticeable degree of overlap. One might rationally have anticipated a gap between the peaks of the final-instar nymphs and this year's adults but this isn't apparent. However, it's noted that these peaks were coincident for a number of shieldbug species covered in R D Hawkins' Shieldbugs of Surrey as well.
Had average as opposed to peak shieldbug counts been used in the study, then presumably the charts would have been much smoother, but as noted above this option was precluded due to lax record keeping!
The question remains of how the boardwalk Blue Shieldbug population at any given time (or even time-averaged) relates to the population present in the surrounding terrain. In particular, are the densities comparable, or are the bugs attracted to the boardwalk resulting in higher counts?
Although Blue Shieldbugs were seen adjacent to the boardwalk on a number of occasions, no attempt was made to survey this terrain and so there is no directly relevant data available to answer this question. However, a number of surveys were recently carried out on a broadly comparable 0.5 hectare site in Kingmoor North (designated Area 5), and highest number of Blue Shieldbugs recorded was 17, or 0.0034/sq m, on 4 September. Applying this figure simplistically to the boardwalk area of 106 sq m gives an equivalent bug count of 0.36. As four Blue Shieldbugs were recorded on boardwalk on 1 September (the nearest date for which a count was recorded) this might seem to imply - all things being equal - that the boardwalk count was artificially high. However, if an allowance is made for the fact that only a proportion of the Kingmoor North bugs would have been seen, and that a more typical boardwalk count for early September was one rather than four, then the case is less clear cut.
For what it's worth my own view is that the boardwalk counts are probably artificially high with reference to the surrounding terrain. This could be for a number of reasons - for example on several occasions Blue Shieldbugs were seen feeding on the carcases of insects crushed by the boardwalk foot traffic, and so perhaps bugs are drawn here for an easy - if risky - meal? (At least 20 crushed Blue Shieldbugs were found on the boardwalk over the period of the survey!)
However, even if this were true, there's no reason to believe that it invalidates the findings qualitatively.
(Text to be checked - and probably revised!)
Includes the Merrick Room and Foyer. Guests have access to the Maritime Exhibit in the Lobby.
Classic and elegant, the Counting Room provides the perfect setting for smaller events such as a business or board meeting, small dinner reception or intimate lecture.
▪ 40 - 60 seated ▪ 100 standing
Rental Fees:
▪ Monday thru Thursday - $1300
▪ Friday and Saturday - $1500
▪ Sunday - $1700
Just a portrait this time.
And a cool song;
"You think the birds are pretty
and you sleep eight hours a night.
And I'm fog, out of the city,
and still you stake it all.
And trains stop for you and so do the boys,
when you run your fingers through your hair.
But resistance is futile.
And I am gonna drink your blood.
And I am gonna drink your blood.
And I am gonna drink your blood.
And I am gonna drink your blood.
..."
Starling Murmuration at the RSPB Ham Wall reserve. lSomerset Levels. UK. Photo Kevin Keatley, Camera Nikon D800, Lens Nikon 200-400@200mm, F4.5, 1/125 Sec., ISO 800. Low light photo. Used a Double bean bag for stability plus Camera & Lens cover
Yesterday I attended the funeral for the Mother of a very old friend. We have grown apart, but I care about her. When I learned her Mother had passed I knew I had to go. I was a little nervous about who I might see. In particular the boy above, my first lover. I was thrown out of the house over him. Estranged from my own Mother for 3 years while I lived with him. Turned out she was right about him, but I had to find out for myself. He was possessive, jealous, and had an explosive temper. He didn't like to work, and he loved to smoke dope, but he had some good qualities too, like most people. He loved nature and hiking, and appreciated my creative nature. we had some great adventures together. After 30 years I certainly hold him no ill will. Anyhow I'd heard he got married, had 2 daughters, and it seemed had got his shit together. I guess he did for awhile, but apparently it didn't hold. I was surprised not to see him at the funeral, and found out indirectly that his wife divorced him about 3 years ago, and he is now living on the streets of Baltimore. That blindsided me. It also made me take stock of my good fortune. I too am a self destructive person with addictive tendencies. I could easily have fallen through the cracks but...
I have an amazing man that taught me unconditional love is possible.
I have an amazing Mother in Law and deceased Father in Law that that also taught me this.
I have a beautiful safe home, even if we don't own much of it.
I have kick ass friends that prop me up when I need it, and are always there for me.
I have the possibility of an art career which is my dream.
I have good health.
The list goes on, but for now these are the main things.
I cannot express how grateful I am, it is beyond words.
Lastly, Thank You to those of you here that have supported and encouraged me. It is so appreciated.
May you find your way Buzz. This is for you.
This is also for you Steve. Thank you for my life!
A true master of the night, and known for his hospitality. But his castle appears to have a little bit of a rat problem...
The Wikipedia says: Counting sheep is a mental exercise used in some Anglophone cultures as a means of lulling oneself to sleep.
I think I will do that right now :-) Good night!
Bain News Service,, publisher.
Count Haeseler
[between ca. 1910 and ca. 1915]
1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.
Notes:
Title from unverified data provided by the Bain News Service on the negatives or caption cards.
Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).
Format: Glass negatives.
Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.
Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
General information about the Bain Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.ggbain
Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.17784
Call Number: LC-B2- 3292-15
~TITLE OF ARTWORK~
~ Count Quint Baker ~
ARTWORK CREATED ON: Acid Free Paper
APPROXIMATE SIZE: 8.5" x 11" inches
Media:Acrylics, Watercolors, Pen & Ink
This piece is Signed - Dated & Titled
Artwork Created in July 2009.
There is a real life vampire named Count Quint Baker. He contacted me a couple months back about my art and he lives in New Zealand. I talked to this vampire and he told me that the raise of the vampires is at hand within the next couple years. He told me that I should not be worried and that I should be happy because I was on the list to be turned and not just dinner. In a way I was happy but what about my friends , my fans , my family ? Are they on the " good" list ? I hope so...
BID NOW ON EBAY !! HERE IS THE LINK ---> cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130317785298