Earlier this week- Heinz History Center and Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden.
Laura and Charlie and I enjoyed visiting a couple of Pittsburgh’s highlights while James attended a conference.
We are fortunate there is so much to do in the city.
We drove from Columbus this afternoon and pulled into Pittsburgh and went straight to the Phipps Conservatory Botanical Garden to see the train exhibit before they change exhibits after Sunday.
Do you ever throw a coin in a wishing well or a fountain and make a wish?
Here is Michael making his coin splash, thinking about his wish.
He told me to wait to take the picture as he was thinking about his wishes carefully. I was scrounging around in the bottom of my purse pockets for coins.
Charlie made a splash, too.
I was trying to get the moment of impact on the water.
Here are the trains.
These past few days driving around the city I’ve seen a lot of freight trains. I pulled over to the curb in the Strip District by the junkyard to catch the Wheeling Lake Erie cars overhead. And while visiting at my friend’s house I love to watch the tugboats push the barges on the Ohio River. The tanker truck was in front of me on the RDFleming Bridge while at a red light. Lots of demolition on the hillside there, too. Right now, as I write this post just before bed, I can hear the train whistle repeat itself loudly in the night.
The Little Engine That Could. There have been lots of different editions but this one that Maura is reading to her cousin Charlie is the Complete and Original. The author name is a pseudonym as I looked up the Watty Piper. Lots of discussion about the origin of The Little Engine That Could story in this throughly researched article by Roy E Plotnick- University of Illinois in Chicago
There’s an abridged version and a board book one out in bookstores now and the illustrations have been updated?jazzed up. (Not necessarily for the better in my opinion_ Guess I’m “Old School”.
Charlie loves trains and he likes the flow of language in the story……”I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” and the rhythm of “I thought I could, I thought I could, I thought I could, I remember my mother reading it to me.
Little boys love trains. It was fun going to experience the model trains through Charlie’s eyes.
“There are five miniature trains running on 280 feet of track.”
Monday morning, Laura and Charlie and I went to the Columbus Main Library downtown to see the Huntington Holiday Train Display.
The train display is a tradition since 1992 built by Paul Busse. He created all the buildings with moss, seeds, pine cones, bark and natural plant materials
The setting is Bavaria in Germany, buildings patterned after Rothenburg and Bernkastel- the Frauenkirche Cathedral is one in Dresden- Columbus Sister City. You might recognize Mad Ludwig’s castle.
in the Children’s Library there is a wonderful aquarium.
http://www.columbuslibrary.org/come-see-huntington-holiday-train-main-library
The Girls at the Boy Scouts of America Booth- Eyeing Mobile Ropes Course
Michael and Maura eye Goldie and Tiger
We didn’t play any games but these goldfish were foisted on us by a girl who won them. Sadly, both are deceased already(the first within 24 hours) despite the investment in an aquarium with filter and lights and pretty gravel and conditioning the water etc etc.
The Railroad Display
Petting a calf. The calf was a prize in a drawing. No, we did NOT enter the drawing.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
All seven kids on the inflatable chair at the State Farm Booth. And obviously had them pose for this shot.
Shot through a chain-link fence.
I was in the passenger seat and I had my camera out. The 70-200 lens.
We were headed to the wedding reception from McKeesport to Greentree. (Lots of double ee)
Crossing the McKeesport-Duquesne Bridge. A truss bridge.
And there was a tugboat pushing filled barges on the Monongahela. (Monongahela means “Falling Banks”)
Pushed the shutter and shot shot shot as fast as I could, no chance to change settings. Lucked out with the cables on the edge and the gull in flight. The chain link fence gives the photo a soft haze and fuzz to the sharpness.
I’d asked my friend to drive a little more slowly but everything whizzes by when you are moving and it was unrealistic to go slow on the bridge. Couldn’t have done it if I were driving as there was no place to pull over. It was a squeeze.
and might as well show you the failed shots, the ones with the bridge cables, the blocking the view, the actual fence.
Photography can be exasperating. You would like to get it right.
There was no time for a turnaround, rerun, do-over.
It was the one shot that worked. Lucky day. Oh yes, at least three below that didn’t.
