Scribbles and Photos

Gingko (Central Park) This week, I've been happily pinning to my 2012 Olympics Moments , a Board I created over on   Pinterest .  Since I last blogged about Pinterest, my enthusiasm has waxed and waned. There are things I like: It's easier than clipping things out of magazines/newspapers and filing them away. There are a lot of people out there collecting really cool things and organizing them using Pinterest. It's a perfect way to keep track of something like the Olympics. And things that I don't like: Pins that lead nowhere (you know, a photo of a really cool place with no comment as to where it is and if you click on the pin, you just get a bigger version of the picture);  Pins that lead nowh...... oh, I said that already.  Sorry. The copyright policy (it got better but it's not great). The sometimes insane focus of the social media world on Pinterest as a tool for building your brand. Pins that lead... A Rose is a Rose Nowhere. Ye...

I can still remember my father filming us kids with an 8 millimeter camera and my older brother still has his old video camera (big, clunky, requires a bag).  This video, on the other hand, was shot by my iPhone camera -- standing on the window ledge during yesterday's thunderstorm.  Amazing how far we've come in my short lifetime.  Add some sound effects, edit out the LONG minutes where there is no lightning i had a video in fairly short order. Of course there are a lot of videos featuring lightning over Manhattan so I'm not expecting this to go viral -- but it was fun making it.    Happy viewing! And no post would be complete without a picture from the archives.  This one from a trip to Botswana in 2007.   Zebras Looking

Lily Interiors I was an early aficionado of Trading Spaces   – and its British counterpart, Changing Rooms .  Like most British imports, the original was better (and less time-consuming) than its American counterpart (and for the record, I loved Lawrence).  One thing I hated about the shows was that design often trumped function.  People would ooh and ah over a room even if the TV had been located behind the couch (yes, that did happen).  I always admired the home owners that were willing to take the risk of ending up with an awful living space – particularly given that the overall budgets for each room were not all that ample.  I wonder how those rooms – slapped together in a 48-hour period – have held up over the years? Another place where form often trumps function is the magazine business.  Now that I have an iPad (and its precursor, a Kindle), I usually only pick up a magazine or two at the airport to get me through take off and landing....

I have been meaning to post some photos of the gardens at the Hotel Bel-Air  where I stayed with the intrepid Nancy B (aka the B) on my recent "mini-cay" in southern California. The gardens definitely offered an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with an older (and more cantankerous) camera -- the Olympus Utz.  For the record, it still has a mind of its own when focusing and it still performs just "so so" in low light.  On the positive side, it's a lot smaller and easier to carry around than my usual travel companion (the Olumpus 520 DSLR). I've waxed rhapsodic about the Bel-Air in a review,  Oasis in a Big City , on TripAdvisor.  It is a great hotel that came out of a two-year renovation ready to host the Hollywood elite -- and folks like me -- for another decade or so.  As for the flowers -- it's clear that a lot of hard work goes into the gardens and grounds and that work pays off in a big way. They grow them big and showy in southern Califo...

Sunday, I headed West to Riverside Park to check out the restored section of Hudson river walk (between 96th street and the Boat Basin) and see what was up with the 69th street Transfer Bridge.  Since discovering Central Park's Conservatory Garden, I hadn't spent any time in Riverside Park in well over a year.  I was reminded that the walk along the river is one of the best in NY -- particularly the section below the boat basin which has been restored to feel like a boardwalk meandering among sea grasses. Much to my surprise and delight, the 2012 Model to Monument (M2M) show had opened on Thursday.  Brought to us by the Art Students League of NY, M2M has art students working under Gregg Wyatt (sculptor in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine) to learn how to create site-specific public art on a monumental scale. Of the seven sculptures ( map ), my favorites are Cope (Damien Armondo Vera) and Proceeding Being (HakSul Lee). Cope The only angle you...

Selected photos from the Conservatory Garden in NYC's Central Park (and an experiment with linking to Picasa rather than importing photos so just click not the photo below and enjoy). Spring Garden

Yet Another Coronado Sunset By now, you likely have heard of Pinterest -- the online community for organizing and sharing, well, just about everything one can find on the Web as long as there is an image (or Video) to share!  Pinterest aims to connect everyone in the world through things we (you and me that is) find interesting.  That is a BIG goal. Famous people who are pinning include Barack Obama  (while his campaign is pinning for him -- you don't really think the leader of the free world has time to pin do you?).  Nicholas Kristoff was pinning for a while but his Boards seem to have disappeared.  Perhaps he got a little antsy about the copyright ownership polices  (which are better  than they were).   Like Facebook, there are a lot of "fake" famous people (e.g., Lady Gaga and Britney Spears each have multiple boards).  Artists are using it to share their work and marketers are busy figuring out how they can tap into all those...