New York City: Hot Afternoon in Coney Island (Part 1); Wasilla: Cold Afternoon on Wasilla Lake

Ten days ago, I took a walk along the beach and on the boardwalk of Coney Island. Just as I was preparing to leave and to walk off in search of a cat, I saw this scene. Why is that girl prancing about atop of a school bus in high heels?

But wait! Even as I photograph her strange antics, my peripheral vision picks up some additional action off to my right:

It is a little girl and a woman, framed in the space formed between the jaws and hearts of a pair of public lovers.

 

She is modeling for a fashion shoot. Both she, the photographer, and their light man, who holds a large reflector just out of the frame, are students at Parsons. They hope to make it big, one day soon.

They're still at it.

I decide its time to leave, to go search for a cat. It will be dark soon, so I resolve not to take anymore pictures until I find a cat; I don't want to waste what little daylight I have left and miss out on the cat as a result. I have no idea how long these two stayed here, thus engaged.

I suspect they welcomed the dark.

Before I can find a cat, I come upon this Christ statue, at a Catholic church. Despite my resolve, I pause, and shoot three frames.

I found four Coney Island cats, and here's three of them, along with Santos, the man who fought city hall to keep their home from being destroyed so that someone could build big buildings on the place where these cats play, and hang out with chickens and ducks. I will post the full story on Grahamn Kracker's No Cats Allowed blog, but not until sometime Friday, maybe early, maybe late.

Even now, though, there are other New York City cats on that blog, should anyone be interested.

Today, on Wasilla Lake

 

This morning, I had a vexing internet problem. I could only log on for a second or two and then no more, no matter what I did. So I spent hours consulting with my service provider and Macintosh support, and then, for reasons that no one knows, it started working again.

It was now early afternoon and I was exasperated. I had to get out of here. I grabbed Margie and drove off to Taco Bell. So exasperated was I that I forgot my camera. I never forget my camera. But I did.

"You watch," I told Margie after I realized what I had done, "something wonderful will happen, and I will not have my camera."

Sure enough, as we drove past Wasilla Lake on the return home, we saw some boys playing hockey far out on the ice of the lake. "Damnit." I said.

Then, as we passed by an elementary school, we saw several small students, all standing in a neat row in radiant light alongside the road, a teacher watching over them. "Damnit," I said.

After we got home, I decided to get my camera, go back to the lake, photograph those boys, ask them a few questions and put the images and their answers in the blog. For a moment, I even thought about taking my big guns, the ones that I have hardly touched since my injury - my Canon 1Ds M III and some telephoto and wide angle lenses. I could handle it now, and it wouldn't be for that long, anyway.

Then I decided against it. I would just take the pocket camera, the one that I have been doing all the images in this blog with and work within the parameters that it limited me to.

But when I got back to the lake, the boys were gone. Two girls now walked across the lake. I suspect that they were headed home from school.

That's Fred Meyer's in the background, built right on the edge of the lake.

Our little town has been the brunt of much ridicule these past couple of months, but damn! What a setting we live in.

Hey, I love New York. How could anyone not love New York? But trade this for that, even though a past mayor and the city council let Fred Meyer build their box store in the completely wrong place?

Ha!

And then there was Bill Maher, on TV, looking at my buddy, Jim, the black cat. Man, he is smart. And so funny. I am not being sarcastic. I mean this, sincerely. And yes, our Governor and the little town that all of us who live here, even we who voted for Barack Obama, share with her, absorbed the brunt of much of his humor.