songbird's crazy world

 Interesting fountain    Fall flowers I’m curious what this street will look like for Halloween  Can you believe 5bese still exist? Lions This house has two front doors! I drive past the place all the time, always wanted to know what  Thin Cookies  is. Interesting porch.  Even more interesting decoration. Sunflowers    I love this flag   A classic Monte Carlo

 It’s too early! It was 82° when I took these photos.  Still summer. This house is very ….blue.

 I admit, I know very little about NASCAR. I’m not totally in the dark. I mean, I know the difference — on a superficial level — between stock car races and races with cars built specifically for racing.  I know there was a movie called  Talladega Nights , about stock car racing, but I never saw the movie. Back in 2001, I took Jen and Becca to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.  There was a restaurant at CityWalk called the NASCAR Cafe.  Really cool place, they had actual stock cars suspended from the ceiling, and we got to sit under one of the cars.   A famous stock car driver, Dale Earnhardt, died on February 18, 2001, in a racing accident in Florida.  I remember the date because it was two days after we ate at the NASCAR Cafe.  And also because my birthday is February 18.   So … now that I’ve told you everything I know about stock car racing …ask me why we’re talking about NASCAR. Well, it seems there’s a racetrack in Riverhead that r...

 I was sad to learn of the death of Mark Volman on Friday.  Volman and his friend Howard Kaylan were the founding members of The Turtles, and later appeared as Flo and Eddie,  The first time I saw them perform was in the 90’s, at a free lunchtime concert sponsored by oldies station CBS-FM, in the plaza of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. For many years Volman and Kaylan headlined the “Happy Together Tour”, an annual tour consisting of various bands and artists popular in the 60’s.  Drew and I saw the tour many times, starting in 2010. Some photos.   Some of their best. It Ain’t Me Babe    She’d Rather Be With Me    They recorded Eve of Destruction before Barry McGuire …      Elenore     And who could forget Happy Together?      And here’s how each Happy Together tour ends …       

 And the theme:    Yesterday was National Grandparents Day.  Either honor yours or your grandchildren through with your song picks  I don’t have grandchildren yet, so I guess that means honoring my grandparents. All of my grandparents were born in the 19th Century and came to America in the early part of the 20th Century.  My paternal grandparents died before I was born.  They were from the same village in what is now Belarus. (Some records say Ukraine, but I’ve confirmed it was Belarus.  Both were part of the Russian Empure at the time.) My grandfather came to NYC in 1909. My grandmother followed in 1911.  They were married in 1912 and settled in Brooklyn.  My father was the youngest of their five children. My maternal grandmother, the only grandparent I knew, was born in Poland - it was part of Austria then.  She came to this country in 1920, sailing from Rotterdam to NYC.  When I visited Ellis Island, it was her voice I hear...

 “Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?”  Tonight’s full moon is called the Corn Moon. The lyric I quoted is from Disney’s Pocahontas .  Disney took a lot of creative license with that movie.  When I took my daughters to Jamestown in 1996, one of the tour guides was dressed like the Disney character.  It was her job to tell tourists the real story of Pocahontas and the Powhatan tribe. We’re going to Jamestown next week, part of our visit to Colonial Williamsburg.  The good folks who live in that part of Virginia were kind enough to recommend several restaurants where I can easily get gluten free food. I’ve been to Williamsburg several times. First time was in 1974, when I was 14.  Then will my kids in 1996.  And with Drew in 2012.  But I’m looking forward to going again. But getting back to the moon … there’s a total eclipse happening …but it can only be seen in Australia parts of Asia and parts of the Pacific.  Oh well...

  Part of two of the most memorable moments in Mets history … Orioles player Johnson making the last out of the 1969 World Series … and manager of the 1986 NY Mets …

  The neighbor’s mushrooms 🍄 have grown. “No mow May” apparently became “no mow all summer”. The beginning of fall foliage.  It’s early,  usually we get one or two trees in mid to late September, but we don’t peak until the end of October. Nice porch.  Gives the house a real old-fashioned farmhouse feel.  It’s a modified Levitt ranch. Little [not red] Corvette.  License plate says it’s a 1971.

It's So Nice to Be Nice Welcome to  Saturday: 9 . What we've committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do "random questions," so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don't have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today's meme! Saturday 9: It's So Nice to Be Nice  (to Your Neighbor) – 1947 Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it  here .   1) In this song, Monica Lewis encourages us to greet our neighbors with a smile and a hello. Tell us about one of your neighbors. I don’t really know our neighbors.  We’ve only been here about a year.  Our next door neighbor is a man named Tom.  I’ve never met his wife.  They’ve lived here about 26 years.  His bushes and shrubs overhang our driveway, and periodicall...

 Duchess remembering that she’s actually a cat.    Shadow and boxes … I bought this cat tree for Duchess, long before there was a Shadow.  Shadow took it over, but the other day … There’s been a lot of “chase me chase me” lately.  Sometimes Shadow starts up with Duchess, sometimes Duchess instigates …. Paws raised but claws sheathed…No hissing … I think they’re playing …When they chase each other up or down the stairs…it sounds more like a herd of elephants than a couple of house cats. Duchess by the window Shadow’s turn Shadow relaxing Ooh, leather .., She looks so innocent …you’d never know she’s looking at Shadow hiding behind the blue chair…

  #skywatchfriday

 These are recent photos of the house I lived in until I was 8 years old. The style is called “split level”.  The shingles were brown, not yellow, when we lived there.   I don’t know what it looks like inside these days, but I remember exactly how it looked when I was a child.  The house was built in 1955.  My father bought the house on the GI Bill, as a home for himself, his sister and his parents.  My grandmother died in 1956, my grandfather died in 1958, and my parents married in 1959. That window next to the front door is the living room.  The living room and dining room form an “L” that wraps around the eat-in kitchen.  You access the backyard from a door in the dining room.  We had a couch that took up two walls, and a round coffee table with a marble top.  There's a photo of me and my sister posed on that table.  My father joked that the kitchen was so small that  if you were sitting at the kitchen table you didn’t have ...

 12 years ago today, Drew and I took a trip to  North Shore Animal League  and found the most beautiful gray kitten … Three months old and already full of cattitude. And she’s still gorgeous.  And still exuding cattitude. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

 The Levittown houses were built from 1948 through 1952.  There were two models, a ranch and a cape.  The houses were mass produced, so that every house on the block was identical— all capes, or all ranches. Levitt set off a building boomer in Nassau County, as the previously rural communities became bustling suburbs. When I walk north into Hicksville I see houses, built in the mid 1950’s, in a variety of styles.  They were not mass produced, so there are several styles on each street. They’ve all been altered over th3 years, too, though probably not as much as the Levitt houses, since most of 5bese houses were larger than Levitt when built. I do like wraparound porches, I really like that porch, but I would have extended it to the side door.