Over Memorial Day weekend, I was visiting Philadelphia, and went walking in the Heinz Wildlife Refuge. I had not been familiar with it before, but it’s many acres of preserved wetland, located right near the Philly airport. It’s surprising, but cool, that a chunk of nature has been protected in such a heavily urban area.
A number of animal species seem to live in or visit the place, as chronicled below.
Here’s the main lake/waterway in the refuge:
There was a boardwalk across the water at one point, and it had lots of small birds flying around it. This one hung out nearby on the railing (almost as though it was expecting to be fed or something):
I’m not sure what variety that is, but there were some blue swallows around as well. Here’s one sitting on one of the many birdhouses constructed in the refuge:
And I (amazingly) caught one of them in flight:
I spotted this creature in the mud at the end of the boardwalk:
A turtle spotted from the walking path:
Further along, there was an egret hanging out in the water:
But then, on the other side of the water, I startled 3 egrets that I hadn’t spotted sooner. I managed to snap a picture as they flew away:
The best find of the day, however, was seeing someone lumbering along the path ahead:
This turtle was at least 14 inches long (not including the tail).
It was obviously scared, and my flash probably didn’t help (sorry!).
Not pictured, a deer that ran away too quickly for me to photograph it, and several mallard ducks and Canada geese (which one can see almost anywhere). I’d highly recommend visiting the refuge in you’re in the Philly area, as admission is free, and it’s a lovely place, at least the portion of it I got to see (which was less than half).
A month ago I made my way to a small, one-day comic convention in New York: the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. It’s a pretty new con – this was only its second year – but it attracted a great variety of talent.
I drove part of the way there, but parked in Connecticut and took the train into NYC. I noticed that there was a book rack placed in the train station by the local public library:
A closer look revealed that all the books on the rack were romance novels:
Perhaps that’s what the library expects train riders will want to read. I did not pick one up, myself.
I rode the train into Grand Central, then took a couple of subways to get to Williamsburg. While walking to the convention site, I saw an interesting Orthodox church:
And also this graffito beyond a freeway overpass:
I wonder where Eggyolk was, then…
Here’s the venue that the show was held in, another church:
Specifically, the event took place in the church’s gymnasium and cafeteria. Here’s the exhibit/signing floor in the gym:
There were a couple of tables on the stage at the far end. I took another picture from the stage:
It’s a bit hard to see the layout of tables in these pics, partly because the place was so crowded. Attendees filled the room all day.
There were a few people I wanted (and got) to see there, starting with Jason Little:
I had picked up the first book of his comic “Bee” back in 2003, and then had lost track of the comic. It turns out, he had only just published the second book, so I picked up a copy from him. Haven’t read it yet, but I really enjoyed the first book, Shutterbug Follies, which is about a woman working in a photo lab who stumbles on a crime plot from clues in negatives that are dropped off.
Also there was Kate Beaton, whose archives I have now read. I was going to buy the book collection of her strips from her, but she didn’t have copies with her. Instead, she had a minicomic containing newer strips, which I bought.
Yes, I seem to have taken pictures of the tops of people’s heads.
Kate said I looked familiar, and I mentioned that I had volunteered at NEWW the previous month. On the back of the minicomic she sketched me and wrote a thank you for volunteering! She may not remember that I messed up her line management, but she probably wouldn’t dwell on it anyway.
The always funky Lynda Barry was there, so I got to meet her for a second time:
She has a new book out about creating art, to go with her previous one about writing. I now have both in my “to read” pile.
I got a few comics signed by Paul Pope, who I had met once before:
And then there was the one creator I most wanted to meet there: someone whose work I’ve been reading for more than 2 decades, but whom I’d never gotten to meet before. My main reason for attending BCGF was to see:
Bill Griffith. If you aren’t familiar with Zippy the Pinhead, well, it’s probably the most surreal strip you’ll find on the newspaper comics page, and one of the most satirical.
Down in the cafeteria, below the gym, they had a section with food being sold and a separate panel area. I went to 3 panels during the day. The first was basically a conversation between Lynda Barry and Charles Burns, who were classmates in high school and college.
My favorite moment from this panel was Barry being asked about a lot of recent collage work she’s done, and her anecdote from her childhood about that. She said she spent a lot of time cutting pictures out of magazines her mother (who worked in a hospital) brought home from work. When she was bored or feeling bad, she would do things like cutting slits in a picture of Beefaroni and then have cut-outs of different famous people rise up from the pasta and slide back down into it. It never failed to amuse her, and I can see why.
The second panel I went to featured Evan Dorkin and Paul Pope, and they were supposed to be joined by an old industry veteran Irwin Hasen to discuss his and other artists’ comic work from earlier decades. Hasen was unable to make the con because of illness, and though I’m a fan of the two remaining panelists, they failed to hold my attention much.
Look, I was so bored, I couldn’t be bothered to hold the camera still! 
The third panel had Bill Griffith on it, so I wanted to hear him speak, though the subject was the comic strip “Nancy”, which I’ve never been a fan of.
It was okay, and though I’m still not convinced by the panelists that “Nancy” is one of the greatest strips ever, they did show some funny examples of it and other Ernie Bushmiller work.
I left the convention shortly after that last panel, and went in search of dinner. That ended up being at a little Turkish restaurant where I got some decent (but not great) falafel, hummus, and grape leaves. On the way, I was asked if I was Jewish by a man handing out literature (I admitted that I’m not). It appeared that the local Chabad organization was doing this as part of Chanukah, and they had a large menorah on one street corner:
After dinner, it was back on the subway, back on the train to CT, and then back in the car to home. In between subway trains, someone in front of me on the platform noticed a rat crawling around on the tracks, and declared that she had now had the full NYC tourist experience. Indeed.
First, let me begin by stating that I am attempting to fulfill the requirements of NaBloPoMo this year (National Blog Posting Month). Actually it’s just one requirement – I will endeavor to post something to this blog each day for the month of November. This is the first of those 30 posts.
This past August, we made another trip up to New Brunswick, to among other activities, spend time exploring the beach. Here I present some of my better vacation photos.
Here’s the beach scene one day near dusk:
There were plenty of Gulls around, of course, some of them large, like this one:
This crab was deceased, but I later saw more than one large crab walking around under the water (and trying to avoid humans). I didn’t get great pictures of the live ones.
This is a clam bed, with all the little hole for the clams’ breathing apparati:
At one point I saw something moving across the dry sand, and looking closer, I saw that it was a sand-colored spider!
Here’s a hand for size comparison:
We came upon some fun sculpture in the sand as well. Here’s one where we felt welcomed:
A dragon with a city on its back:
The best was a squid attacking a ship:
I think it’s supposed to be the Love Boat:
I went to NYC for the MoCCA Art Fest again this year. The convention has generally been held in June in the past, but this year they had it in April for some reason. I did it as day trip again, just going down for the Saturday, traveling part way by car and then taking the train into Grand Central. This time, though, I visited the actual museum as well as the convention, because I was interested in seeing their large exhibit NeoIntegrity (there were several artists’ work in the show that I wanted to check out, including Bill Griffith, from whose site I first heard of the exhibit).
I first headed to the East Village, not far from the museum, to see if I could grab lunch at teany, a vegetarian restaurant co-founded by Moby. teany had been closed since last June because of a fire, but had been making noises about reopening since February. I took a chance and stopped by, but alas, it was still not open (it has reopened since I was in NYC).
I ended up getting a falafel sandwich from a street vendor on my way over to the museum. I took in the exhibit, which was fun to look at – most of it was original art from published works, and there were a ton of artists involved. However, in general, the stuff by artists I’m familiar with was stuff I’d seen before. The vast majority of the artists were new to me, though, and there was a lot of funny and interesting work to look at and read.
I left there and headed up to the con at the 69th Regiment National Guard Armory in midtown. There was a line to get in, which I waited in for a bit before I realized that I could just walk right in, given that I had bought a ticket online (I got to go to a separate table where they looked up my registration and sent me on in – I should have remembered that from last year).
Once inside, I headed down to the panel room, as a panel I wanted to see was starting in 10 minutes. It’s a good thing I didn’t wait, because there was already a long line to get into the panel room! The panel was supposed to start at 2:00, but the con staff ended up starting to let the line in at almost 2:15. The room filled up quickly, and I thought I might not get to to see it, but I ended up standing in the doorway.
The panel was on the topic of alternate treatments of superheroes in comics, and featured artists who had done superhero work but more often (or primarily) did more alternative comics. The specific people on the panel were the reason for the large crowd: Paul Pope, Frank Miller, Kyle Baker, Jaime Hernandez, and Dean Haspiel. I snapped a few cell phone pics from my doorway perch – here’s the least bad-looking one:
The guy on the far left was the moderator. The artists proceed left to right after that in the order I named them.
After that, I had a couple of hours to wander the convention floor:
There was a brief signing by Hernandez I was able to hit, and I managed to visit Ted Rall during the hour he was at his publisher’s booth. I discovered that Rall is a Mac user!
Other creators I visited and/or bought merchandise from (but did not take pictures of) included Pat Lewis, Raina Telgemeier, Bill Roundy, Monica Gallagher, and R. Sikoryak.
One of the things Mr. Sikoryak is known for is doing slideshow presentations of his comics. The last panel of the day, which I attended, was him and a few other artists showing slideshows of their work, with parts performed by professional voice actors. It was a blast, and there were even a few slideshows at the end with images in 3-D. They passed out glasses to the audience for those:
Yes, it’s blurry – it was another cell phone picture and the room was dark.
The end of that panel marked the end of the con. I made my way back toward downtown, looking for a place for dinner. On the way, I happened by Gramercy Park:
where I noticed this sign:
Asking people in Manhattan not to honk? I wonder if this law actually works…
On my walk I also saw this rather curvy building on 3rd Ave.:
I ended up eating at a little Afghan restaurant called Khyber Pass on St. Mark’s Place. After that, I headed back toward Grand Central Station, but had some extra time, so I wandered over to Times Square. Who should I meet there, but Hello Kitty!
She was doing what she does best – waving Hello.
Despite all the light and billboards and entertainmentplexes (or perhaps because of them), there isn’t really anything I find interesting in Times Square. One neat thing I saw as I headed for the train station again was a Scottish band playing on the sidewalk:
I didn’t stick around long enough to find out who they were or anything, though. Just part of the New York color. With that, I left the big apple.
This is my final post from the trip to Canada last month. Toward the end of the week there, I got a chance to go hiking in Kouchibouguac National Park, which is about an hour North of the city of Moncton.
Something that’s interesting about the park is the variety of different types of forest and other vegetation found there. The first trail we hiked was through a fairly deciduous forest, with some tall pines (and wild blueberry bushes!), and it came out on a tidal bay, pictured here:
Here’s a slightly different part of the bay, seen at a different point on the trail:
I don’t know exactly what this thing is for, but I would guess it’s supposed to be visible from well out in the water:
The next trail was a boardwalk that went out onto a dune and barrier island:
Dune grass:
A sandpiper:
The estuary between dunes and shore:
After that, we took a short trail that went through a salt marsh. Here’s a picture of the marsh grass:
According to one of the signs, some of what grows there is known as elephant grass, which can get as tall as 3 meters!
On the way back from that trail, near the parking area, I spotted this critter:
To give you an idea of its size, here it is in front of my foot:
Next we went on a trail through a cedar forest. The cedars are traditionally considered sacred by the Mi’kmaq Nation, and the tribe has a wigwam near the trailhead for teaching visitors about their customs and culture:
Nothing was going on inside while we were there:
The trail itself certainly had a number of cedar trees, some of which had a strange-looking moss growing on them:
We went on one more trail after that, which supposedly contained an abandoned beaver lodge, but at the point where a sign talked about the lodge, it was completely hidden from view by bushes. No pictures from that trail.
The total hiking distance was around 10 km, and we spent about 4.5 hours there (including a break for lunch). It’s a lovely park, and I hope to go again sometime. If you should ever find yourself there, though, bring some mosquito repellent, because there are great hordes of the insects there.
While in Canada we took a day trip to Belfast Mini Mills on Prince Edward Island, just as we did in June of 2007.
The company makes small machines for every step of the fiber milling process (from raw fiber to yarn), and they also run a mill operation themselves. This is the mill building:
And here is the mill store, where they sell yarn, batting, and various woven and knit objects:
Since the last time we’d been there, they had also opened up a tea room, where we had lunch:
I also had a pot of lovely, local blueberry tea with lunch.
Of course I had to take pictures of the various animals on the property, including llamas:
Pom-pom ducks:
Chickens, one of whom had very feathery feet:
Inquisitive goats:
and some young birds in a cage, which may be some sort of game bird:
There was also this little dog behind the counter in the store:
You can see pictures of individual machines on their site, but here’s a bunch of them in the mill:
Next: Canadian National (Park)
No, it’s not another bike training post. I’ll be alternating those with a few posts about our trip to Canada last month. We went to New Brunswick, as we’ve done a couple of times before (2006 and 2007). Where we were staying, we were only about 100 yards from the beach, and so we went down to the water to walk a number of times.
Here are some views along that beach. The water is the Strait of Northumberland, which flows between NB and Prince Edward Island.
The water was cool in some places, and warm in others, and those places seemed to vary on different days. We also were there at different tide levels. In most cases, there were a number of sandbars sticking out of the water, and those seemed to be favorite places for building sand fortifications:
Usually there were a number of gulls around:
But also little beach dwellers in the water:
The water left interesting patterns in the sand:
Next: Trip to the Island
My last full day in Memphis began with the conference, but that finished in the mid-afternoon, so I had a lot of time ahead of me. I first went to the National Civil Rights Museum. It’s located South of downtown, in the old Lorraine Hotel – the site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.
A white wreath hangs on the balcony railing where King was shot:
Photography is not allowed inside the museum, so I have no pictures to show of the interior. Much of it is not necessarily worth photographing, as it has a lot of informational text on wall displays, with some images to illustrate. The whole museum is structured so that visitors traverse it in a linear fashion, and are following a timeline of the African-American struggle for civil rights in the U.S. It starts in the days of slavery and progresses forward, but most of the length deals with the events of the 1950′s and ’60′s.
There are certainly some eye-catching exhibits, though, such as a bus from the period, which visitors can walk through, and which has a statue of Rosa Parks sitting in a seat near the front. There’s also a lunch counter mock-up with statues of student protesters sitting at it; a partial, burnt-up bus illustrating the Freedom Rides exhibit; and a garbage truck flanked by statues of striking sanitation workers, wearing “I am a man” signs. The tour of that building finishes with visitors walking by a preserved version of one of the rooms from the time, right by where King was staying, and being able to look out the window onto the spot on the balcony where he was shot.
One then leaves the building, and crosses the street. One goes through this gate (which was slid to the side when I went through – I took this picture after the place closed).
This leads to a tunnel, which goes into the basement of this building:
One then ascends to the top floor and goes through an exhibit all about the investigation of the assassination. This includes being able to look at the bathroom from which James Earl Ray fired the shot. The small window in the middle of the picture below is that bathroom window:
The main floor of the building finishes the museum, with exhibits dealing more broadly with other struggles for rights and equality, and detailing some progress made in Memphis and the nation since the ’60′s. The place was certainly money and time well spent.
After I left the museum, I walked West toward the mighty Mississippi. At one point I got to a stairway that descended to a road, across which was a park by the river. Here’s a picture taken from that stairway:
Here are views of the river taken from the riverbank – looking North:
and looking South:
I walked North along the river for a while, which took me back into downtown. I came upon a smaller park on the edge of downtown, and was a bit surprised (though maybe I shouldn’t have been) to see the name of the park:
I wouldn’t think too many people would want to commemorate the Confederacy, but then there was a big fight to keep the Confederate flag atop the South Carolina capitol a few years ago.
Soon after that park, I came to a city visitors’ center, which was closed, but had this mosaic egg out front:
From there I moved away from the river a bit, and headed North up a different street. I encountered this interesting piece of sculpture:
I went inside that large part on the left, which had a bench around the interior.
I could look up at the high part:
and then I went back outside and looked up through the high part:
I also took some pictures of the sculpture’s underside:
A bit further North is The Pyramid, which is a currently-unused arena:
In front of the place is this statue:
Just past the Pyramid was a bridge over to Mud Island, which has a parks and residences on it. I walked across, taking a couple more pictures of the water – this time of the narrow channel that runs between the Tennessee bank and the island (known as the Wolf River). This is looking South:
That’s the island to the right, with the Interstate 40 bridge going over it. This is looking North, with ripples cause by a boat heading in to dock:
Technically, the ‘island’ is a peninsula. If you look at a map (or satellite photo), it is connected to the mainland at the Northern end. I did venture that far, though. Once I crossed the bridge, I headed across the main road, and into another park, where I could look across the large part of the river, and watch the sun set on the Arkansas side:
I then headed back the way I’d come to go back to the hotel. On the way, I was passing under I-40, and saw these bears propped against a column:
Perhaps they were put there as a memorial to someone? Your guess is as good as mine.
In mid-July, I went on a business trip to Memphis, attending a conference put on by a software vendor. It was my first time being anywhere in Tennessee. The person who wanted me to go, and who was in charge of the travel budget, insisted that I should stay in the same hotel where the conference was taking place: The Peabody. It’s a rather fancy, historic hotel, but when I checked in, I was informed that I’d been upgraded to the Peabody Club. Among other things, this meant that my room would be on the exclusive 12th floor, which you can only get to by putting your room key in a slot in the elevator (this turned out to be more of an inconvenience than a feature – it’s certainly not like I was worried about the riff-raff populating my hallway).
My room turned out to have a few amenities I’m not used to from past lodging experience. For one, in addition to a couple of chocolate squares on the night table, there was also a plate of confections:
That’s a white chocolate-covered strawberry, a petit-four, and a white mixed-nut cluster. It turned out that they put a new such plate in my room every evening (and it was the same stuff each time, except that one night the cluster was dark chocolate instead of white).
The room also had an lcd tv, which wasn’t of much interest to me since I didn’t watch any tv while there. It also had a nice Bose radio instead of the usual cheap alarm clock. Here are other pics of the place:
And here is the view out one of the windows:
Including a little architectural feature:
The room was in a section of the building that jutted out, so another window had a view of the building wall, and the edge of the roof:
Later on, I was on the roof, and took a picture of that window from above (the one with the rounded top):
The rooftop had some nice views of the city (and the river):
Also on the roof was this structure, which one could not enter:
But it had these creepy-looking paintings of children in the windows:
Here is the neat sign on top of the place:
The Peabody is also home to the “World Famous Peabody Ducks“. I had not heard of them (or the hotel, for that matter) before I planned this trip, but apparently they are pretty well-known. The ducks live most of the time in an enclosed area on the roof called:
In their palace, the ducks have their own little fountain, as well as a miniature version (not exactly to scale) of the hotel:
At one point they were all partaking of some salad:
Part of each day, the ducks are not in the palace. They are led in the late morning to the fountain in the lobby of the hotel, and there they stay until 5pm. I got a few pics of them in their daytime workplace:
The ducks seem to be a major attraction, as people come to the lobby in large crowds (whether or not they’re staying at the hotel) to see the twice-daily duck marches. Duck logos are printed on all of the hotel’s materials, stationery, etc. Did I mention that they even have duck-shaped soap?
That soap in now in use at our bathroom at home.
Next post: a different kind of palace.
A few weeks ago I traveled to NYC for the day, and attended the MoCCA Art Fest – an indie comic convention that I’ve been to twice before.
As I did last year, I drove to Norwalk, CT, and then took the train into Grand Central Station. I was able to walk to the convention from there, as they were holding it at a new venue – the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Ave. It was about 16 blocks South of the train station.
On my way down to the con, I discovered that several blocks (6 to 8?) of Lexington were closed off for a street market of some kind:
There were several booths selling clothing, jewelry, souvenirs, etc. as well as lots of food and drink booths. I needed to get some lunch, so I got a chicken kabob/pita sandwich, and ate it while I walked the rest of the way.
The con was supposed to start at 11:00am. I got to the building at 11:40 and found that they hadn’t started admitting people yet. Apparently, movers were late getting con supplies there and unloading, so the organizers were still getting setup. The line to get in snaked around the corner and halfway up the block on 26th St. After I got in line, many more people lined up after me, eventually snaking around the next corner.
Here’s the line in front of me:
and behind me:
I was standing in the sun, and hadn’t brought a hat (or any sunscreen). Fortunately, I had my laptop bag with me (sans laptop) that I was able to hold on top of my head (and managed to balance it there for quite a while). It provided much needed shade.
While waiting in line, I saw this gold topped building:
Not sure what it is (I haven’t tried looking it up – anybody know?).
The line finally started moving around 12:30, and within 10 minutes I was inside. Unlike previous years in the Puck Building, they had all the exhibitors in one big space (so big I couldn’t get it all in one picture):
A brief rundown of people whose tables I visited, in no particular order:
Jim O. was supposed to be debuting his new book at the con. It’s called T-Minus, and it’s about the space race leading up to the moon landing. It was written by him and drawn by Zander and Kevin Cannon. Unfortunately, Jim’s agent, who was supposed to be bringing the copies of the book for Jim to sell, never showed up. Jim sold plenty of his older books, but it was still disappointing for him. The Cannons were there as well, at a separate table, and they had some copies they’d apparently gotten from their local comic store. I ended up buying the book from them, and then taking it to Jim for a signature.
I went to a few panels during the day. The first was the Comics Bakery panel. That’s the name of a collective of 4 artists: Raina Telgemeier, Dave Roman, Marion Vitus, and John Green, and the panel was them going through the history of how they all met and started collaborating, and eventually got married (well, they’re 2 married couples). Here’s a pic of 3 of them (Vitus, Green, and Telgemeier) during the panel:
The room where the panels were held had murals on all 4 walls of scenes from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars (it is a National Guard building), which made for an unusual backdrop for the presentation (why no, there’s nothing distracting about Confederate soldiers being bayonetted by the Union Army!).
The second panel I sat through was less interesting. It was about the state of comics publishing, and had 7 publishers on it. Not much to report from it.
The third panel was about the humor magazine Humbug. I had never heard of it before this con, but it was apparently published for 2 years in the late ’50′s, and involved 5 writers/artists, some of whom had worked for MAD Magazine. Two of the founding members were on the panel: Arnold Roth and Al Jaffee (left and center, respectively):
They talked about working on Humbug, and various other topics that may or may not have been related, and were pretty funny throughout. Jaffee was the reason I was there, as I am very familiar with him from reading MAD.
This was him talking to the moderator after the panel.
Al Jaffee wrote and drew various features for MAD, including ‘Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions’. He also was responsible for the MAD Fold-In, which was always on the inside back cover of the mag, and featured an image and question, which yielded a different image and the answer when you folded the right side over to meet the left side.
After the panel, Roth and Jaffee were doing a signing. I have a bunch of old issues of MAD from the ’60′s that my Dad had collected, and though they’re falling apart, I still have most of the covers. I brought a few fold-ins with me for Jaffee to sign.
Click here to see the fold-ins, and to “fold” them.
The con ended for the day at 7, I went and had a lovely dinner at a Middle Eastern deli, and then walked back to Grand Central to head home. The end.
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