Yesterday, we went hiking in the Minnewaska State Park Preserve in New York.  Thank you to the New York-New Jersey Trail conference for marking and maintaining 1,670 miles of hiking trails!

We hiked a 8.7-mile loop that wound through hemlock, blueberry bushes, pitch pines, rhododendron, white pine and mountain laurels.

Almost immediately after we entered the woods on Mossy Glen Path, just before we crossed the stream called Peters Kill, Cara spotted an animal, about the size of cocker spaniel, on the path ahead. It’s the dark shape in the middle of the path below — barely discernible.  We couldn’t figure out what it was, so we approached cautiously.

It turned out to be a porcupine!  It did an about-face as we approached and trundled along the trail, not too hurriedly.  Just before our little procession reached led by the porcupine reached the stream, it turned off the path and quickly climbed a tree.  Deserted by our spiky guide, we continued on.

Spotted a frog near the stream:

And signs that a coyote and bear had traveled along the same trail we were using:

The younger members of the hiking team:

And the spectacular views near the end of the loop:

Turns out it was a juried show — the juror was Charles J. Magistro, an art professor from William Patterson University.

My photo “Laundry Day in Santorini” won Honorable Mention!

FOCUS New Jersey –2009

Art Center of Northern New Jersey, 250 Center St., New Milford, 201-599-2992

The art show runs until December 15.  Gallery hours are Monday – Thursday 10 to 4 and Friday 10 to noon.

My photograph “Laundry Day in Santorini” has been accepted into the FOCUS New Jersey art show:

Art Center of Northern New Jersey

250 Center Street

New Milford, New Jersey  07646

201-599-2992

The exhibit runs from November 13 to December 15, 2009.  Reception: Sunday, November 13, 2 – 4 p.m.

Last Friday evening, I went to Provincetown to attend the artists’ reception for the “Icons & Art: Michelle & Barack” at the J. Lucas Gallery.  Gallery owner and artist Jon Lucas has posted a YouTube video of the show, and here are a couple of my photos from opening night also:

“Hungry, Hurried, Broke for Obama” (my work) can be seen below.  It’s hanging on the wall, framed in black, near the center of the photo.

It was terrific to attend the reception and meet Jon, but it was also wonderful to visit Provincetown, which was bustling with visitors, but not overcrowded, on the first fall weekend of the year. Saturday was a perfect Indian summer day on Cape Cod.

Here are the vistas and sights I’ve been longing to see:

Race Point Beach, Cape Cod National Seashore:

The Old Harbor Lifesaving Station viewed from the beach below:

A gray seal, below, cruising along, not far off the beach, appearing as curious about me as I was about it.

Seals are now a common sight off Provincetown’s beaches, although scientists are not sure why:  Is the Canadian seal population growing and moving south or are there other environmental causes that have made them a common sight?

Back in town, goofy tourists in front of the Provincetown library, currently under renovation:

The attention-grabbing van belonging to a Bay State supporter of the Kennedy clan and the late Senator Ted Kennedy:

The spire of the Unitarian/Universalist Meeting House, built in 1847 by seaman and fisherman:

A view of Race Point Beach from the top of Pilgrim Monument, 350 feet above sea level,:

And to wrap up this post, Pilgrim Monument itself (next to the wonderful appropriately quirky and idiosyncratic Provincetown Museum that has one of the best museum gift shops anywhere):

I was vaguely aware that the Newport half marathon was about one month away, but today I received an e-mail from Amica Marathon alerting me that it will be held in exactly 37 days.

Even without the reminder from the race organizer, the half marathon has been on my mind, both because I’ve been running more than usual and because I just read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, a wonderful memoir about running, writing and life.

Murakami’s quiet, self-effacing outlook and his steady, calm observance of his own nature and his surroundings are compelling.  He has the soul of an artist, but he believes that the creation of art requires physical vitality.  He maintains his vigor through exercise, mostly running, but he also swims and bikes.

In the memoir, Murakami lives and runs in Hawaii, Japan and Cambridge.  He writes about the Charles River and how people are drawn to to water:

Seeing a lot of water like that every day is probably an important thing for human beings.  For human beings may be a bit of a generalization – but I do know it’s important for one person:  me.  If I go for a time without seeing water, I feel like something’s slowly draining out of me.  It’s probably like the feeling a music lover has when, for whatever reason, he’s separated from music for a long time.  The fact that I was raised by the sea might have something do do with it.

That’s how I (also raised by the ocean) feel, and one of the reasons that I want to run the Newport half marathon.

Second or Sachuest Beach in Middletown, RI, January, 2007

I won’t run past Second Beach, my favorite beach, on the half-marathon course, but Tyler will when he runs the full marathon.  Although Second Beach is in Middletown, it’s not far from First Beach in Newport — just a mile or so farther east.  The land at the distant side of the beach in the photo above is Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge — a gorgeous spot to hike and watch the ocean.

I am going to run the Newport Half Marathon on October 18!

Tyler inspired me because he recently registered for the full 26.2-mile marathon.

Every street along the half marathon route in the city where I was born has meaning and associations for me:

The course starts just off Goat Island in Newport Harbor.  My father’s father, a skilled machinist, worked at the Naval Torpedo Station (today’s Goat Island) during WWII when it was genuinely an island (now it’s connected to the mainland by a causeway).

Newport Harbor, with the Newport Bridge in the background. Goat Island, barely visible, off to right

My paternal grandfather, Raymond M. Leary, Sr., (1891-1954)

Left turn onto Long Wharf –  a beautiful view of boats in the harbor and home of the Newport Yacht Club

Newport Bridge and Newport Harbor at night

Right turn onto America’s Cup Boulevard — In a small park next to the boulevard, a stone marker commemorates one of my Barrington High School classmates, Jeff Sharver, a first lieutenant in the Marines at the time of the 2003 invasion of Grenada.  Tragically, he was killed trying to rescue a fellow Marine.

America’s Cup Boulevard becomes Thames Street (rhymes with games, for native Newporters).

Lobstermen still bring their daily catch in to the wharves along Thames Street.

Aquidneck Lobster Co. on Bowen’s Wharf (Lynne and Troy in 2005)

Many of Newport’s most famous restaurants, bars and shops are also located on the Thames Street wharves.  When I was a child, the city’s waterfront was sleazy, but after the federal government closed Newport’s active naval base in the 1970s, the city focused its economy on tourism and Thames Street went upscale.

Tyler, let it be noted here, likes to eat at The Black Pearl or the Clark Cooke House on Bannister’s Wharf.  Bryan Waugh, another former high school classmate of mine, is the chef at the Clark Cooke House.

“The Wave,” one of my children’s all-time favorite statues, is located just off Thames Street.

Troy and Lynne climbing on the wave and the bodysurfer’s feet, 2005

Right turn onto Wellington Avenue and into Newport’s Fifth Ward, a locale where I spent some of the happiest times of my childhood.

[Heading straight on Thames, instead of turning off on Wellington, would lead to my current favorite Newport restaurant, Asterisk, 599 Thames St.]

My grandmother, my beloved Nana, lived at 73 Roseneath Avenue, off Wellington. The Fifth Ward is not a  political ward (Newport only has three), but a neighborhood, originally settled by Irish immigrants.

My beautiful Nana, Mary Catherine Sullivan Leary Finn (1905-1988)

Am I Irish?  Take a look at these names:  My grandmother, Mary Catherine Sullivan, was born in 1905.  In 1924, she married my grandfather Raymond Moore Leary.  Three years after his death in 1954, she married Cornelius Anthony Aloysius Finn, always called Con.

Dashing Con (second from left)

Con was also a lifelong resident of Newport’s Fifth Ward.  He served as a Seabee during WWII and returned home to work in the Newport’s public works department.

Cornelius Anthony Aloysius Finn (1913 -1974)

Never previously married, Con began his courtship of my widowed grandmother in the late 1950s at Siggy’s, the Fifth Ward’s favored deli.

“Hello to the prettiest girl in Newport!” he said to Nana, when he spotted her shopping in the deli.

In his job, Con helped maintain Newport’s public spaces, including King Park (we always called it King’s Park) on Wellington Ave at the start of Roseneath next to the harbor.  The waterfront park has a playground, a small bandstand and a ballpark.  When I was young, the sign over the dugouts read, “A diamond is a boy’s best friend.”  At some point over the years, the sign was repainted, corrected and now reads:  “A diamond is a kid’s best friend.”

King Park also boasts a statue of Comte de Rochambeau, who arrived in Newport in 1780 and helped General George Washington defeat the British at Yorktown in 1781.

Nana often walked my sister and I down Roseneath to the park when we were children.  I have taken my own kids to the park many times, too,  when they were young to play on the swings and slides, climb on Rochambeau, hunt for mussels, pop seaweed and gaze out over the harbor.

Continuing along Wellington, the half marathon route passes the Ida Lewis Yacht Club.  Lewis, born in Newport in 1842, helped her mother tend the lighthouse and her siblings after her father became an invalid.  She was known as the best swimmer in Newport (quite an accomplishment, especially for a woman) and credited with saving at least 18 people.   She eventually became a beneficiary of the Carnegie Hero Fund.

Left turn onto Halidon Avenue. No longer fronting on Halidon Ave. is Halidon Hall, former home of the Cowsills, a 1960s family singing group.  Halidon Hall is almost directly behind 73 Roseneath.  When my family visited Nana and Con during the Cowsills’ brief heyday, my sister and I were thrilled to hear them practicing, despite my father’s scornful teasing about their bubblegum pop.

Right turn onto Harrison Avenue. My sister and I were always reminded that the sculptor of the famous Iwo Jima war memorial, Felix de Weldon lived at Beacon Rock, 147 Harrison Ave.

Also, along Harrison are the fields and pastures of the SVF Foundation, formerly the Beacon Hill estate, known locally as the Swiss Village Farm.  The foundation’s mission is to preserve rare and endangered breeds of livestock. Usually some of the foundation’s heritage sheep, cattle or goats are grazing near the road, but the property is only open to the public one day a year, and I haven’t yet had the chance to tour the grounds and buildings, which have been beautifully restored.

The half-marathon route takes a right turn into Fort Adams State Park.  Construction of the fort began in 1824, and was completed 30 years later, with the help of Irish stone masons.

Fort Adams, viewed from Newport Harbor, with a rainbow above

My father signed up to serve in WWII at Fort Adams (it didn’t become a state park until 1965).

My father, Raymond Moore Leary, Jr. (1926-1987), with his parents, at 73 Roseneath Ave.

Another right turn out of the park and back onto Harrison Ave., past Hammersmith Farm, originally built by John W. Auchincloss in 1887.  He was the great-grandfather of Jacqueline Bouvier’s stepfather, Hugh D. Auchincloss.  Hammersmith Farm was her childhood home, as well as the site of the wedding reception of Bouvier and John F. Kennedy, following their wedding at St. Mary’s Church.  JFK used the farm as his “Summer White House.”  I remember driving by the house when I was a little girl with my family and having the Secret Service and guards at the gates pointed out to me: “The President is in town.”

Hammersmith Farm and its boathouse from the water, 2005

A note about St. Mary’s Church:  The oldest Catholic parish in RI, it was founded in 1828.  The  congregation grew when the Irish began to help build Fort Adams.  Nana’s parents were married in the church, and she attended its parochial school.  Raymond M. Leary, Sr., my grandfather, was baptized at St. Mary’s.  The funeral masses for both my father and grandmother were held at St. Mary’s.

To be continued in my next post …

All the buzz about bees confuses me.

Are they dying off?  How can we grow our fruits and vegetables when bees, nature’s pollinators, are all gone, mysteriously felled by the syndrome called colony collapse disorder (CCD)?

In my backyard, only four miles from Manhattan, bees still seem able to manage the pollination of the 10 tomato and two zucchini plants in my vegetable garden (photo above taken on the Fourth of July).  But maybe there aren’t enough bees zooming around to do their work in the small orchard that we optimistically planted in 2008.  Last year, the nine upright twiglets didn’t bear any fruit.

This year, we have nine recognizable young and healthy fruit trees, but only two have gone into production — a few small, stubbornly growing apples can be spied, hidden among leafy branches.  No pears or figs, however.  Is it a scarcity of bees that prevents the trees from setting fruit?

A survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that 29 percent of American bees died between September 2008 and April 2009.

There is a morsel of good news:  It’s possible the bee death rate is declining — 36 percent of bees died between September 2007 and April 2008.

Despite the scale of the great bee die-off, no one understands why.  Is it climate change?  Pesticides?  Pollution?  Cell phone towers?  Has the overall health of bees been weakened by mites?  Or maybe by commercial beekeeping practices?  All of the above?

It’s not an inconsequential issue.  Honey bees add more than $15 billion to the value of American crops each year, according to the Agriculture Research Service.

In New York City, it’s illegal to keep bees, and the fine levied for beekeeping can be as high as $2,000.

Perversely, this ordinance coexists with Bloomberg’s NYC 2030 sustainability plan, the green movement and the recognition that city kids, in particular, need to be re-connected with nature.

Let New Yorkers keep bees!

Saw Disney’s movie EARTH last night.  The videography is stunning, vivid, lush.  And thank goodness that Disney can afford to follow and film the trek of elephants across the Kalahari during the dry season and the migration of a mother humpback and her calf from the Artic to the Antartic.

The film didn’t, however, live up to its promise to follow its third family, the polar bears, through any kind of comprehensible cycle or conflict.  Before the movie abruptly wrapped up the bears’ story, the cubs and their mother had been wandering around searching desperately for food.  At the sudden conclusion of their story, the cubs were thriving.  What happened in between? What happened to their mother?

Some fascinating animal characters — the lynx in the boreal forest, for example, — are shown very briefly, then, frustratingly, never seen again.

The movie covered too much territory and gave the moviegoer an unsastisfactory story arc for virtually all the animals and left one wondering sadly, as all nature films do now, I guess, how long are these animals going to continue to exist?

Note:  Ty taught me the html code to change the font size and color, and I used it in this post!  Thanks, Ty!

Yesterday, it took Eric the Eagle only four and one-half seconds to hope out of his cage and soar away to freedom after 17 days of rehabilitation.

On February 27, Eric Glidden, who works Useppa Island, spotted an injured bald eagle huddled in a bush.  Chuck and Paula Berry, the island’s emergency fire and medical team immediately contacted CROW, Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife, to arrange for his rescue and rehabilitation. The Berrys used a large fishnet to trap the eagle that was coated with dried blood and unable to fly.  They wrapped towels around his head and neck to quiet him, and then loaded him into a large crate, where he huddled in a corner, unmoving.

John and Gretchen Coyle, island residents, transported the eagle by boat to Sanibel, where CROW is located.  The clinic’s two full-time veteranarians, Drs. PJ Deitschel and Amber McNamara, treated the bird of prey with fluids and pain medications.  Dr. McNamara said that Eric the Eagle, named for Eric Glidden, had probably been injured in a fight with another eagle or an osprey.  The bald eagle’s wounds were limited, but he was battered, bruised and in shock.

At the clinic, the veteranarians treated the eagle with pain medication, fluid and rest.  By the second day, he had recovered enough to eat herring, and he began to move around at the start of the second week.  They moved him into the clinic’s flight cage where he could stretch his wings, and as he recuperation progressed, he began to eat rats, as well as fish.

On March 16, Eric the Eagle traveled back to Useppa in the dog cage on the Lady Chadwick, a luncheon excursion boat out of Sanibel.

Dr. PJ  and Dr. Amber carried the eagle in his cage off the boat and down the dock.

Chuck wheeled him onto the island

and held onto the golf cart that Paula drove down to the field where the eagle had originally been rescued.

The release team arrived at the field.

Chuck and Dr. PJ carried the cage to the middle of the field.

Dr. PJ opened the door to the cage,

Eric the Eagle took several quick hops, then soared away over the treetops.

Here’s the rescue team:  Eric Glidden, Chuck Berry, Dr. PJ Deitschel, Dr. Amber McNamara, Paula Berry.

And Eric the Eagle, at rest in a tree near the field after his first post-rehabilitation flight, before he disappeared into the wild blue yonder.

Back to sightseeing — On the morning of January 1, 2009, we took a small van from our resort back to Stone Town, not far from the airport.

Stone Town, designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2000, was once the center of Zanzibar’s trade in slaves and spices.  We met our guide Mbwana near the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral.

In 1860 alone, 25,000 slaves were transported to Zanzibar out of Africa’s interior. About 8,000 slaves were exported, 4,000 put to work in Stone Town and 12,000 sent to work on Zanzibar’s plantations.  By 1873, however, Zanzibar’s sultan had put an end to the island’s slave trade, in response to the efforts of British missionaries, including Dr. Livingstone.

Who knew the explorer Dr. Livingstone (of I presume fame) played a huge role in stopping Zanzibar’s slave trade?

We followed Mbwana into the church, appalled by the low ceilings of the two slave chambers and narrow window slits that barely allowed in any light or fresh air.

Outside the church, we could see a mosque nearby.  Mbwana pointed out the juxtaposition as an example of modern day Zanzibar’s religious tolerance.

Regardless, almost everyone in Zanzibar today is Muslim.  The U.S. Department of State says that 99 percent of the island’s one million residents are Muslims.  Mbwana and others that we asked while we were there gave answers ranging from 85 to 95 percent. Almost all women and girls in Zanzibar wear long dresses and head scarves–no shorts or short skirts.  Cara and I had to be much more sensitive about taking people’s pictures in Zanzibar than we had been previously on this trip.

We walked from the church to Stone Town’s marketplace.  Hard to stop shooting photos of everything and everyone.

This woman pushed a wheelbarrow full of bloody horns,

and this man shoved a huge swordfish, bent into a u-shape, in his cart along the street.

Once we got inside the fish and meat market, the stench was overwhelming.  I gave Lynne a hand wipe to hold over her nose to prevent her from gagging.

Outside, where the fruits, vegetables and spices were sold, the air was much fresher.

In the past, Zanzibar was the world’s largest grower and seller of many spices, but after its government  began experimenting with socialism in the 1970s, other regions overtook Zanzibar in the spice trade.   Now, tourism is Zanzibar’s largest source of revenue, but few natives of Zanzibar find jobs in the tourist industry. Most people in Zanzibar still earn only about one dollar a day.

I have too many photos of colorful, exotic Stone Town to post on my blog! Not only did our group tour continue all morning, but Cara and I remained behind in the afternoon to take more pictures.

Look for a Zanzibar photo essay on my Web site by April 1.