I found another great LP cover to share with you today. This is Earl Bostic Plays Sweet Tunes Of The Fantastic 50s (King 602, 1959). I'm not sure why they decided to ornament the cover with a lovely painting of the X-15, but they did. The artist is L. Paleno. Pretty cnazzy, eh? The lady at the junk store where I found this suggested I frame it. I told her that if I framed all the great LP covers I have, there'd be no wall space left in my humble condo.
You know how I love doodles of musical instruments, so here is a whole passel of instruments from the flipside of Henry Mancini And His Orchestra-The Mancini Touch (RCA Victor LPM-2101, 1960). You also get a tag from the front cover, "Swing Softly". Henry Mancini is one of those composers who was just about everywhere you looked. From the 50's to the 90's, from Peter Gunn to The Pink Panther, he scored it all.
Some things are hard to do. I've had my cat for something like four years now, and taken hundreds, if not thousands, of picture of her. This is the first picture of a yawn. I don't even mind that I cut off part of her ear.
The calendar page for this month is a great shot of the old Plant Hotel (on the campus of the University of Tampa) silhouetted against sunset. I shot this from across the Hillsborough River in downtown Tampa, Florida. I was really shocked when it turned out as well as it did. I wish I could tell you how I set up the shot and planned for just the right moment, but that's very rarely how I get good pictures. I just take lots of shots, and then pick out the best ones. It's more fun that way, I think. And their digital, so all I've lost is my time if they don't turn out.
Here's a fun little doodle for you from Six Family Mountain-Takin' A Ride With The Wind (National Ski Patrol). I don't know much about this LP, other than it's a little bit more modern than most of the LPs I feature here. But I couldn't resist the little skier going up and down the slopes, especially when he goes down the really steep one and meets with a pretty unfortunate end. Sales of this LP appear to have benefitted the National Ski Patrol.
There's only one day of this week in the month of October, so you won't get to look at this picture for very long. Which is a shame really, because this is a pretty good picture. I shot this pelican flying into the setting sun while standing on the North Skyway Fishing Pier. I had no idea it would even turn out, but I was very happy with what I got. I think I even used this in one of my monthly calendar pages, so you've seen this shot before.
Here's some more of the not-so-wildlife in Ohio. I shot this frog at Stan Hywet in one of the decorative ponds behind the house. I have to admit that I didn't spot it first, though. A group of young girls with their mother had noticed it, and I wandered over and got the picture. The girls were almost as excited about me taking the picture as they were about finding the frog in the first place.
I was in Ohio over for something like ten days, and I only found this one buckeye. And I found it on the last day of my trip. You'd think that since everything in the state is named buckeye-this or buckeye-that, they'd be more common, but that turned out not to be the case.
This was the closest I came to a picture of snow in Ohio. It's some sort of fungus, and you know how I love that fungus. Beautiful, isn't it?
Three years ago when I first visited Ohio, I drove past this cemetary and was fascinated by the masonary wall you see above. It circled the entire area and looked like it was made from old factory walls and recycled city streets, even bricks from old chimneys covered in once-molten slag. And then all these items were thrown together in a bizzarely random pattern. So I made it a point to get some better pictures on this recent trip. The wall is every bit as interesting now as it was then, just a little bit older. I also got a shot of the funeral home on-site, which is made in a similar style. I called the cemetary to ask about the wall, and their only comment was that it had been built by drunken masons. And in a cemetary, who's gonna complain?
The countryside up in Ohio is dotted with little farms and barns like this one. I spotted this barn while I was lost and trying to get back to a place I was familiar with. I knew I had to stop and get a quick shot though. I pulled off the road and it felt like my van was about to roll over. The shoulders on the roads up there are much steeper than what I am used to here in Florida, and I was afraid my weight was all that was keeping the van from rolling over or sliding down into the bottom of the ditch. But I survived and got the shot to boot. The dome near the center of the roof up there is actually a silo behind the barn. I couldn't get around to that side to get a shot, especially with it being on the shaded side of the building.
As I've mentioned, I took lots and lots of pictures in Ohio, and I'm slowly in the process of sharing them out. This shot is a covered bridge on Everett Road, again in the Cuyahoga Valley. This bridge is a rebuilt version of a similar bridge that was destroyed in a flood back in the seventies. It's now closed to vehicular traffic, but there is often plenty of equine traffic clip-clopping back and forth across it.
Did I mention they have a lot of deer in Ohio? I spotted these guys running across the back nine at some golf course in the Cuyahoga Valley. I spotted deer about 5 times during my trip, but only one buck. They're wiley little critters, so I had a hard time getting any photos. Most of the time it was late in the day when the light was poor. These golfers were out at around 11 am, so I had pretty good light for once. They kept running back and forth for no good reason, ignoring the human golfers on foot and in carts, as well as the large mower you can see at the right.
How about a curled-haired alpaca? You don't get much wilder than that. Actually, these guys were very calm, almost sedate. They put up with lots of people wanting to pet them and take their pictures. I came across these guys at a winery in Ohio. Don't ask me what a winery was doing with alpacas...
I showed you Brandywine Falls earlier, but I had to revisit it later after it had rained. You can see there is a little more water in it now than before. And there's a little more color in the leaves, too, I believe. In the springtime, this entire rockface will be covered in snowmelt.
I came across this guy along a trail near Brandywine Falls (which I showed you earlier). I don't know if a goat counts as something wild, but it's all I've got at the moment for you.
Been a while since I had a doodle up for you, so here's a pair from Lawrence Welk. Everybody loves Lawrence Welk, right? Or maybe they just liked the champagne. These two doodles seem to exist along those champagne lines. The first is Lawrence Welk And His Champagne Music-Shamrocks And Champagne (Coral CRL 57036) and the second is Champagne Dancing Party (Coral CRL 57226). Pretty similar, eh?
I knew that Cleveland had a copy of Rodin's The Thinker somewhere, but I had forgotten about it. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across him in front of the Cleveland Museum Of Art. Pretty impressive, sitting up there on his big pedestal, looking down over the world. Hard to tell from this shot, but the base of the figure has been badly damaged from an act of vandalism back in 1970. Some people have no respect. (I love my polarizing filter. Look at that sky!)
I was in Ohio a couple of weeks early. They told me that in two to three weeks, the leaves would be a symphony of orange, red and yellow. The best I found while I was there was this young maple that looked to have been recently transplanted. Perhaps the stress caused it to turn colors a bit prematurely. Other than this tree, the only color I saw on the trees was green, with an occasional leaf or branch turned. I could tell there were more and more little bits of color as the week went on, but nothing solid like this guy. Maybe next year they'll have me back up, and I can go later in the year.
OK, gang, I'm back from my little sojourn to Ohio, but that doesn't mean you've seen the last of the pictures. I have days and days worth of stuff I didn't share because I was really busy and the internat connection at the hotel was flaky. So over the next week or so, I'll throw up some more of my trip for your perusal. This shot is the south end of a northbound Canadian goose. I tried to get a picture from the other direction quite a bit during my trip, but to no avail. It's hard to scare them towards you for a good picture. I was lucky to get this one, I thought.
Here's a nice little water lilly for you. Well, at least the flower is nice, the leaves behind it look a little bug-eaten. If memory serves, I shot this in the courtyard of Mote Marine here in Sarasota, Florida. They had quite a few of them in a fresh water pond there. Everyone else was looking at the sharks and rays and exotic fishes, and I was shooting flowers.
